The Soul Road

……..when silence speaks to us, why break silence……

……..its voice is more eloquant than a thousand poets, and, more filled with meaning, heart and the presence of soul….than all the words we cast about it…..

…..our bodies too speak, have their language, and their silence, forged in the greater silence of being…..what greater poetry is there than the body of Life!? Yet, it, like the voice of silence, is oft drowned out by the cacophony of worldly life…..

Rumi said…….

‘We have fallen into the place where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes rise into the atmosphere, and if the whole world’s harp should burn up,

there will still be hidden instruments playing, playing

This singing art is sea foam.

The graceful movements come from a pearl somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach wanting, wanting

They derive from a slow and powerful root that we cannot see.

Stop the words now.

Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out!’ (1)

It has been said that we arrive here forgetful, of our path, the one we have come to find and make, its destination and meaning, and the one we have trod in coming here. Yet, forgetting, we forget again. And, the world is filled with noise…..

You would think, we must be in shock, as, we learned, long ago, if the voice of our heart be true to the origin of memories we carry, that we are children, that we are at play, forever at the onset of our road, finding the voice of its story, and forgetting…….in that moment the story of our life is the gift we have come to deliver, and, how close to our true voice we are as children……cast around, and listen….do you hear that voice, present in the world, amidst the hubbub…..it is there….if the heart is open to hearing it, once again……

Yet, we have shod our hearts in ill-fitting shoes of lives forgotten, poorly remembered, as yet unlived…..shoes that we would have the soles of our souls protected by, out of the hope that we might in wearing them walk the extra mile, and in doing so, recollect and remember our soul roads……

Our shoes filled with earth, with the legacy of stars, with blood and ancestry, our hearts filled with long memories walking the soul road, this body is more than ourselves, borrowed from the wind, the fire, the ocean, the bodies of those who have gone before us, all birthed from the one womb we call Life, and her daughter, Earth…….

…..it were better we cast off our shoes and let the silent beauty of the breathing Earth speak once more the magic every child knows in their heart to be our guide, as we travel the remembering pathways of our own soul road……

Let there be silence and let its fullness flow from the heart of all things into our hearts, if only for the blessed moment in which the voice of the Beloved is heard, and we are held, in the ecstacy, the delicious perfume of Its song….

and find the Soul Road, the path we came to here to travel…….once more.

(1)  ‘Where Everything is Music’ – Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (Jalalu’ddin Rumi, Maulana), 13th century Persian poet, founder of Mevlevi order / Whirling Dervishes of Sufi tradition – tanslation by Coleman Barks.