Posted on by Glenn Mower

secret books & gnosis galore

The Oxfam Bookshop on Park Street

has offered me the chance to buy The Nag Hammadi scriptures.

£8:95 and the complete 1945 discoveries are at my finger-tips, and now happily are upon my desktop too.

First expedition in the unknown; The Secret Book of James:

 

on Being filled and lacking (3,38-4,22)

‘So you should lack when you can fill yourselves and be filled when you lack, that you may be able to fill yourselves more. Be filled with Spirit, but lack in reason, for reason is of the soul. It is soul.’

To the ears of my heart this guides and glides me further into meditating and ultimately living contemplatively.

unpicking the two sentences, I follow:

  • So you should lack when you can fill yourselves 

Morning and evening are times when I can intentionally wait to be filled with Spirit.

These 20 minute bookends to my day are my precious times of Centering Prayer. Times when I initially pause and ask, hope and wait to to be emptied (lacked?) of body, mind, sight, sense and feeling.

20 minutes nearing to nothingness. A process of gently feathering my incessant thinking upon the breath of God. Time, yes much time to let go of thoughts and to nestle, nestle and nestle again within wideness and depth beyond this skin.

To become Another’s vessel.

20 minutes, twice a day where I AM resonates somewhere deep and unseen and well and well and well beyond this surface practice of sitting upon a cushion, of waiting and welcoming and repeatedly letting go of all earthly reasoning, of breathing, opening to release these-every-day-ego-driven-collections-and-confections-of-this -and-that-and-the-other.

In other words, to hope beyond words and to become no thing at all.

And after the bell sounds, after the 2 further minutes of peaceful momentary pause, I come back to the waves and vibrations of this bodily living.

  • and be filled when you lack, that you may be able to fill yourselves more.

The peaceful evening pause often helps me glide into a sleepfulness where my lack is unconsciously met and processed, sometimes without trace, sometimes within the sweat and ruffled bed-sheets.

The peaceful morning pause however can become consciously dismantled and plunged into active lacking in minutes, seconds even.

And yet even within the greatest shift into earthly lack, into this worrisome world of  soulful endeavour, even when face down in ego and mud,

A sense, an internal shift towards openness, towards a potential filling with Spirit,  has indeed been growing day on day.

Now, when buffeted by my so-say-sufferings, when daily bemused and angered and hurt by the daze of human botherings tiresomely gathering around this blood, flesh and bone,  I can sometimes pause.

Pause and somehow re-taste elements these 20 minutes, twice daily. And in this glimpse, I can meet the lack in us with a silence and a smile that greets suffering with  an overspilling, unnameable, abundancy that is well and truly beyond the very fabric of me.

Next blog: Know Yourselves (12,17-13,25)

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Recent offerings for a meditation group

 

‘ Draw me into the flames of Your love. Unite me so closely with You that You live and act in me….It is all about love melting in Love.’

St Therese of Lisieux.

‘Just as those who look at the sun cannot but fill their eyes with light, so they who always have a steady gaze into their heart cannot fail to be illuminated…for the heart is our knowing centre, the place of Divine encounter…God speaks in the great silence of the heart.’

St Augustine.

 

A re-fertilised Lords Prayer

Blessed Mother-Father of the Cosmos,

whose delight flows through us in wave and particle,

whose presence is with us always

and whose Spirit dwells within.

Hallowed be your Name of names.

May your kingdom come,

and may your pleasure manifest in us in light and form,

to shine in our lives and on this earth,

just as it does in everything and no-thing.

Thank you for giving us this day.

Thank you for freely pouring out all that we need for sustenance,

nourishment and growth.

As we turn away from your enduring love,

forgive us for these times of un-ripeness.

Oh Birther of all that is and that is not,

forgive us when we trespass against you and those you put in our lives,

and help us forgive those who trespass against us.

Keep us from yielding to temptation,

and guide us away from anything or anyone who distracts us from your highest will.

Divine Light of light,

Deliver and protect us from all that is unripe and guide our spirit

that we may sparkle like jewels in a thousand petalled lotus flower.

Water plentifully our individual and communal roots

so that your living desire may blossom within us.

For all glory, power and abundant ripeness are yours almighty God

Just as it was before the beginning-ness,

it is now and always shall be radiant in Oneness and Love without end. Amen

This adaption is based around a guided centering prayer meditation offered by Maria Gullo (accessed via Insight Timer App), it is fertilised by the words of Neil Douglas Klotz and watered into further growth by Glenn Mower.

 

 

Open the pores of my heart Lord

Open to pause in our hearts

Breathing your love in me

Breathing out Unity.

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

stilled i long

Silence:

O h h
deep rooted kiss
gift me Your mist
within this
blandishment
of body and brain.
M m m
yes yes stilled i long for such and such a
feathering breath for
Prescience to soothe
this slightness of mine
enlightening tight fists
un-pounding pale hearts
to soften free beats vibrating in Time.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Wakefulness begun

St Therese to chaplain Piere Belliere, in 1897,
a few months before her death at age 24:

I am not dying, I am entering into life.

Wakefulness again begun.
Bleeding free upon glimpsed shards of Luminous trust
that mysteriousness between this and this
sensational suffering mind.

yes

quietly wake to still
this and this constantly re-fining will
re-fuel oneself to wait upon

that still small Voice

that Glittering Jewel

that active, in-active othering choice
to re-ignite in blessed hoped for souls renewal
by sinking-in ankle deep
that Ground grown moist
from leakages of wonton wounds and size nine feet

Now

to stretch those tiny toes deeply deep
into that oozing boiling balm
that heated hopeful weight full ness
immersions that convert alarm to dozing daze and waits to be
replenished and be-calmed in fertile fires and shining mists
of Love and Grace said to exist beyond this and this
pre-occupied pre-possessed never ended re-positioning of grasp and cling to
flesh and bone and time and test.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

dust rich Flesh

 

May I live so:

‘if on my dust a tuft of grass were to grow, every blade would tremble with my devotion for thee.’ (from Invocations by Ansari of Herat)

 

Teacher

Teach.

Come towards to hush this

tightly

taught

dissecting

I

this mind of ‘my’

I

mine alone

this owner’s

ship of listing skin

this un-

contained husk of

lack and lust for

being seen as different and

distinct, these

sentient addictive flaws

I

darkly sow

now

deep within this sentimental hold, these

envious skeins, these half-

digested and indulged

unwatched

unwashed

infatuations of the

I

sores that pray to be

left alone to

infect

mindscapes over grown, to

freshly pull at scaffoldings of

braking bone

overwrought, this

 iron will of  ego intent can only glimpse

waverings

of such and such discontent,  for

I

have heard but seldom feel

the real and awesome unsaid

Word

that roots

and shoots

green leaves anew

to sway with ease

while anchored true to

dust

richly fed

deep within

the sacrificial flesh of

You.