playing in the coloured sky....


Friday night I walk.
I walk for many hours – as I approach home the sky is the most brilliant red.
Crimson all round.  The mountains reflected on the water of the dam are purple.
Two fish eagles fly above me – circling, calling, and soaring.  The dams are empty and awaiting rain.

Listening, hearing, there are an awful lot of dogs barking, from all over the village.
The waning moon rises.  The following morning, I am again woken early by the dogs,
I get up to let them out, the sky is again this crimson, this brilliant magenta, flashing all around, and now in the morning the mountains are black.

Red sky at night
Shepherds delight
Red sky at morn
Shepherds warn and with that arising in mind, I decided to be alert to weather and patterns as a shepherd would need to be.  Wanted to understand this red sky thing.

Decided on the spur of the moment to take the teens and pre teens up the mountains.
It is fun for some, hard work for others, extremely challenging for one or two.  Iona went up ahead of me and twice got into trouble but thankfully Cian had chosen to shadow her and guided her.
This inspiration of kids moved so effortlessly up these boulders and rocks, shining with aliveness at being in the wild again.  Sasha asked me what I thought about the sun that day and I said it was strange because I had been thinking how very weak the sun was on that Saturday.  There were thin clouds that it would normally penetrate by 10 in the morning, but the whole day it was obscured almost like the sun in Mumbai is always covered by the smog.  I have never seen the sun so weak.  It was almost as if the atmosphere had changed and become thicker somehow.  She said the same thing.  And yet I read that people in the North are saying how fierce the sun is.

At the top we sat a while, some exploring further.  The strangest thing happened.  The air became extremely warm and the leaves off some of the trees blew off with some force. Something shifted that was totally felt by us.   Sitting up there I felt completely at the mercy of that wind and what it could bring as effortlessly as it has been doing in the past few weeks.
I felt this sudden urge to get down off the mountain.  No one argued, and  we descended.  When we had past the tricky part we settled again and no storm came.
Yesterday I went back to the mountain, but alone this time. The sun was still fuzzy and weak. 
 I found a very old oak tree, extremely large, stretching to eternity both upwards and outwards.  Three enormous branches had stretched themselves out just a few inches above the ground.  They each twisted and turned as if they were vacillating about which way they wanted to point.  To the cliff face, or to the softer mountain, To the valley or to the forest.  Enormous branches long dead,  just spiraling down and hanging.  I get an urge to swing it, to give it movement – it swings widely.
The urge then arises to sit on the one mother branch.  Sitting with my knees falling outwards,  almost like a squat.  Feet bare in the rich soil.  Fallen, monocoloured leaves in varying stages of decomposition.  The most recently fallen ones, the most newly dead are in actuality the most dead.  The liveliness of decay has not yet begun.  It is only when they are soft and pliable that they are consumed with life force again.

Many dead branches lean against the other branches so in this squatting, it sets the branch running adjacent to the one I was seated on,  which stretched forward and banged on a very young oak, creating a sound,  a drum beat.  The sister branch would move simultaneously, and I could never see the link other than the trunk which was several meters away.  Both these branches created sound, two drumbeats, and the the swishing of a branch against the leaves, and the few bird calls coming in and fading out.  Nothing else.  No other sound.  No other motion.  Just me and this tree and the fuzzy sun.

And then it occurred to me that this would be the perfect time to do the sun salutation.  And once that faded then chanting began.  None of this planned or even contemplated.  Constantly surprised by what unfolded.   
Gate gate
pāragate
pārasamgate bodhi svāhā 
 "Gone, gone,
 gone beyond,
gone utterly beyond, Enlightenment hail!"……….
 This tree as a fully awakened, realized being.  The most powerful presence I had ever been in and along with that playful and joyous beyond measure.  Sometimes chuckling for minutes and then laughing out loud.   Then the thought about leaving would arise some other movement would happen.  That part of the forest was alive with movement and music.   I would find myself climbing up the branches, hanging from a branch, lying on a branch, lying on the thick leaves.  It seemed like my whole life had brought me to that moment where I would spend several hours in the full presence of the tree.  This is what it was actually for.  I could never have imagined such playfulness.  Such intrinsic joy.  This body stretched and fell and moved and breathed and this rich untouched tree essence weaves its magic.   


And from this space, and this pure joy, it was my wish that all beings could feel this lightness.  that humanity can  transcend the bullshit it has created as itself and return to the primal joy.  The joy which is dependent upon not-hing.
In the last week the talking about the coming changes, to the actuality of the changes has happened.  To me every day I feel a palpable shift.  What was solid in the past is not so today, what was known yesterday is questioned today.   The light is still different. 
The crimson sky, the ancient tree, such wisdom and strength revealing  itself shows to me the perfection of it all – even the perfection of the imperfect bits.

And that night the rains found their way to the landscape.  Gentle rains that lasted longer than five minutes, yet soft enough to leave the land undisturbed, unravaged. 


Comments

dublinmick said…
You are making a lot of sense, you can't bring much peace if you are not at peace. That is sometimes hard to accomplish in this world.

Of course in all the turmoil we can only make peace with ourselves. Nature and the world will find a balance again even it has to knock out most of the humans in this prison colony.

I have been thinking too SU, I got some mail from Bho and it was talking the future man not needing food. Now we are talking about a real change here. but think about it, how else could the lion lay down beside the lamb? It could be very possible if the lion realized he did not need food and there was no reason to kill. Can this new particle, ether, do that?

There was also a link to Avebury and a crop circle that seems to show an alignment pretty close to what we can expect when Elenin shows up later this year. You know it has to be. Somebody made stonehenge and Glastonbury for a reason. What higher reason than to signal the possible changing of the magnetic poles?

I am thinking Elenin is the big Kahuna everyone has been talking about, Nibiru. You know in the cuneiform tablets it speaks of a great war in heaven where the gods (the planets) warred with each other. It appears there will be a wrestling match with the planets when Elenin shows up, a struggle to gain polarity, which Nibiru always seems to win by the virtual size and dictate the gravitational fields of the solar system before it leaves again.

I guess nobody sits around and reads this kind of stuff like I do.

I guess the goal is to try and convince those around not to kill off the lions and the lambs before all this can take place. That seems impossible sometimes because the mass of man just seems unreachable. I have tried, you can see the vacant look in their eyes.
su said…
dub,
when the floods affected Pakistan last year and there were millions of homeless, hungry people, it occured to me that the next significant evolutionary step would be to become more fluid. to lose the need for shelter and food. the lions and sheep shape shifting on prana.

i guess ether - ethereal - why not hey. anything is possible in this dream. that vacant look is soul destroying is it not.

and i am most grateful that you read all this stuff - it means i can play in the tree and read about it without too much depth.
thanks for that.
dublinmick said…
You have good instincts, yogis you may recall sit for weeks sometimes in trees because the trees recognize kindred souls and transfer energy, (prana) to them! :)
Anonymous said…
su this post is not showing up over at ninas its showing the old post still,wrote a poem on the other one for you but seems to of gone,sorry I havent been around been messed up lately....

also this is a really colorful post,and will be back with a poem a bit later....

respects and love to you su from the center of hell itself england
... neil

ps I could do with a mountain to go to to sit for a while
neil said…
mountains wonder
oceans play
stars circle
fire's flame
lifting passion
tempest free
vibrance spark
old oak tree
speaking winds
of colored sky
wild and fresh
opened high
rising moments
of loving chords
strike in sequence
living awe

..peace..
su said…
ah dub
wow.
the family has just been in the chill outside looking at the most amazing sky i have ever seen in my life. the clouds the colours, even blue and green in the mix, smooth mothership clouds.
god willing i can find the download cable and share it.

neil,
again you seem to have been with me and captured the essence in completeness.
the words
'rising moments
of loving chords' - yes

and yes mountains do wonder
and oceans certainly play
and stars infinitely circle

beautiful. thank you.
su said…
neil,
if you ever want to rant about what is going on for you - feel free.
there is a bottleneck before the river becomes free flowing i am told - i think we are about to taste true freedom. we just have to get bashed against the rock a little while longer. to tenderise us perhaps. to extract gratitude. who knows.
nina said…
I am certain the bottleneck is absolutely a real and necessary part of all creativity, like writer's block, etc., and yet when we finally can't stand not participating in it any longer, and make the leap from passive to active, what happens is more thrilling than ever before.

Your post just showed itself on my list, 11 days after you wrote it. Technology is no sure thing. Sure, an automatic coffeemaker, for example, is quick, but the Melita is far superior.

I will photograph an amazing Oak down the road for you. Long I have been observing and painting them, but this one lives unfortunately a few feet away from some kind of metal power box, you know the kind I mean? A ground based transformer? Every single extension from this mighty Oak is heading upwards as if electrified.

One more thing Susu, I have begun to see clusters of wildflowers as families and picking any one is kidnapping.

I wish I had been with you on the branches, you tell it so well. Made me feel like I was there. Thank you.

Was the red sky natural?
Erin Parsley said…
I love what you're saying here Su...

"there is a bottleneck before the river becomes free flowing i am told - i think we are about to taste true freedom. we just have to get bashed against the rock a little while longer. to tenderise us perhaps. to extract gratitude. who knows."

I've been squeezed lately myself, terribly terribly squeezed. Envisioning the flow coming soon. Now, to hold one's breath through the tight bits, or take a chance and gulp water while hoping for air?
dublinmick said…
Heads up!

http://bigthink.com/ideas/38858
The Nabro volcano has erupted in Eritrea and ash plumes range from 13 KM to 150 KM in height according to which story you read with ash particle headed North West toward the direction of Europe at present.

This is part of the African rift system which as been threatening to form an inland sea in Africa. Hard to say what effect on airlines this will have but the Chilean eruption has shut down some airports in Australia already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afar_Depression
su said…
life in creation,
yes that squeezing and breath holding. i don't think there is anything one can do.
i think the absence of fear helps but that either happens or it does not.

i am very taken with sun gazing to the extent that nothing else seems to have much value in comparison to it. going to write about it soon.
hoping by now, you are in a state of recovery - there is only so much squeezing one can endure.
Erin Parsley said…
The squeeze has been coming in waves .... just as I can start to breathe again, something comes along to plunge me under. The sun would help me very much if I could ever get a glimpse of it around here... ;@
su said…
life,
i know what you mean. i aliken it to a hurdle race. you have just cleared one hurdle and immediately you have to prepare for the next one.
life can be so dam relentless.

sorry about the absence of sun.
here we have 340 days sun a year. if it is cloudy for more than three days i have to climb my car with the windows closed and scream.

you are welcome to come and visit and imbibe the rays.
Erin Parsley said…
Transport me there with you Su! I'm ready....

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