Tuesday, May 20, 2008

THE JOURNEY

As summer is heating up here in South Florida, and the school year is coming to an end, I am feeling an urge to lay back a little and simply stare at the passing clouds. I was stopped today at the direction of a crossing guard, and I gleefully watched the sea of children that passed before my car. Such a variety of sizes, colors, ethnicity's- all totally engaged in the journey of heading home. Not in the destination, no. They were laughing, chasing, teasing, tugging, running, calling out as if their utilization of the current moment was all that mattered in the entire world. What brilliant little teachers! I found myself so mesmerized in watching them that I barely saw the guard waving me on to where I was headed. My destination seemed much less important after watching my little gurus. I was tempted to pull over and park, and perhaps skip along behind them. At the very least, I was drawn to the attitude of abandon that they were so joyously displaying.

As much as I always loved school, I LOVED the feeling of summer vacation equally as much. The feeling of freedom, of lack of structure was so very appealing. It still is at times. I am by nature a fairly disciplined person, and I also love times of total non-doing and playfulness. I think all humans, children and adults, need those times of "no-time." Of kicking back, and really letting go. Of sitting and staring, or laughing and dancing. Often times, adults lose the art of playfulness. The role of being grown up and responsible, while certainly appropriate in many instances, can be a burdensome task if we don't take regular time outs. Even spirituality can be approached with a heaviness that makes it another "to do" on an already crowded to do list.


Particularly in the north, the approaching Memorial Day weekend is the entrance into summer vacation time. It begins, as the song says, those "lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer." Perhaps we could all take a cue from my little school age friends and invite some added playtime in the coming days and weeks. Perhaps we could allow playtime to be a non-negotiable. Perhaps we could really, beyond cliche, enjoy the journey through this miracle of life without focusing on a set destination. There are truly wonders all around us, but they require a sense of inner-wonder to notice what is about.


Stare at the clouds. Dance under the stars. Race a squirrel up a tree. Laugh loudly and love outrageously. For no reason other than that you can. After all- summer is almost here.








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Monday, May 5, 2008

MAY RADICAL EXPRESSION

I am unashamed to say right here on the World-wide Web that I am a man with mother issues. I was, and probably still am to some extent, a mama’s boy. This issue is not limited to just the woman who birthed me into this world. I have always been surrounded by a number of wonderful women who have mothered me to varying degrees. As this is the month where mothers are acknowledged with their very own day, I thought I would contemplate in print this rich relationship with “mother,” and what it means at this point in my journey.
I have always been profoundly informed by the metaphysical meaning behind the parental relationships I have known in this incarnation. I believe that we each are birthed into families whereby we may know a maximal amount of spiritual growth. Where there are challenges regarding the relationships with the mother and the father archetypal patterns, represented in the challenges with the men and women who parent us in our physicality, there is great potential in terms of healing our way into the full Knowing of our Source. One of the challenges that may present its self as the archetypal mother is the quality of attention in which we hold ourselves, and in which we perceive we are being held. In Truth, there is an aspect of the Universe that is as a Vast, All-loving womb. It holds all of creation in Its Ever Inclusive embrace. We are each moving about eternally in the Glow of Its All-Loving gaze.
This is very often not the case in terms of our human parentage. All parents are doing the very best that they can based on their current level of consciousness, so there is no blame in any unskillfulness. Amid the very best of intentions, children are often surrounded in fear-based parameters and over-protective scrutiny. The desire to give children the very best of up bringing can leave children with a sense of inadequacy and inferiority. We are reared to believe that we are worthwhile when our behaviors are deemed acceptable, rather than for whom we are at the core of being. If a mother is over scrutinizing, the inner atmosphere of the child will bear this same energetic. That child then brings the quality of attention to adulthood, and tries in myriad ways to compensate for the perceived inner lack.
The healing of this inner atmosphere is the aligning with the Mother aspect of the Universe, and allowing ourselves to live in the embrace of that which gives us Life. We need do nothing to earn the Love that is our Source. Everything that we do is held in an unconditional acceptance uncommon in human experience. Even as I tend to always be surrounded by many “mothers” in the human dimension, we are all surrounded by and In the Mother of One. It is a Cosmic womb of unwavering love, mercy, compassion. It beckons us to come home and to rest within Her. It invites us to align and to entrain in this same loving energy, and to live and to give of Its all-nurturing nature. The quality of the Known Universal Mother is the quality of our attention. The quality of our attention, the attention in which we live, is the very quality of our life experience.
My “mother issue” is one of letting go of the number of ways that I scrutinize and find myself wanting. I am devoted at this point in my emergence to being ever mindful of the Cosmic Mothering Embrace in which I dwell. When I find myself faultfinding, I relax open in the One that Knows me beyond what I think I know about myself. I listen to the Universal heartbeat of One Mother Love, and I am brought to Peace. The In-spring of this unwavering Love lifts me up, and sets me free.
Gee, thanks Mom.




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