At the core, uncontrolled
fires melt metallic dreams
neither realized nor remembered,

So rapidly are they rendered
amorphous in the flaming furnace
of the dreamer’s subconscious mind.

Beyond the biological determinism
of deoxyribonucleic acid, dopamine,
and molecularly imprinted memories,

Does free will exist or is it merely
a conceit that science will dismiss
with other dated dogmas, Cartesian
dualism and the pope’s flat earth?

Am I sitting beside you in blissful
contentment at the dictate of genes
and neurotransmitters, or do character and
love transcend molecular machinations?

Smiling you reply that relationships
shape us and I should not lose sleep
over the number of neurotransmitters
that might dance on the head of a pin.

Catherine OBrian is a medical writer with a background in academic biomedical sciences. She has over one hundred scientific publications, but is relatively new to creative writing. She is a member of the Poetry Center of Chicago and has a poem accepted for publication at Penny Ante Feud.

Editor’s Note: “Cartesian Doubt Revisited” originally appeared in Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine.

hitchhiking through the landscape of my mind.
thumbs up.
pants down.
wanting to explore new territories. vast expanses.
go north to the cold disconsolate bleeding regions of regret and frozen dreams.
go east to the hot drought stricken lands of past lives and nightmares of blood soaked hands.
go south to the tropical lands of rain, hope and expectations. densely forested and under-populated by desires still felt but as of yet unmet.
go west young explorer. to conquer and explore and ravage lands new to me and as of yet unexplored by my mind’s eyes. lands that are already known and already possessed by far more fortunate souls than i.
explore the northern reaches of my mind.
wander the southern most extremities and walk….
walk away….
walk to….
walk from….
walk with.
blindly traverse questions that have always already been answered. yet still unknown to me. keep asking. keep wondering. keep wondering why. pondering the complexities of life until my skeletal bones have rotted and decayed. dust. leaving nothing of me. leaving nothing of what you were to me. how to create and keep a part of me alive.
immortal.
undying.
for future archaeologists of life and thought to find. the love of knowledge and the search for personal truths will end. i will end. time continues. life continues.
disappointments add up to the sum of my whole.
trying to solve the equations that measure life.
mathematical certainty.
the circle.
continues on.
multiplies.
pi
faith in chaos…..
that no matter how turbulent how seemingly innocuous and random life is. chaos is the only certainty and beauty in life.
the unknown will always be.
unpredicted. wild.
driven by the storms of passion.
if known the probability of change increases in proportion to pain and shattered hopes.
although if changed the beauty that created the pain would be lost and forever missed. to avoid pain would create a life unlived. alone. an invention and a creation and a product of dullness.
stagnation.
fear.
live bravely.
feel freely.
IMPLODE IMAGINATIVELY.

Tanya Marie earned her degree in Women’s Studies while living in the Pacific Northwest. She has written two books, Signifying Nothing and Faith In Chaos. Tanya is an active member of her communities. She has planned the Take Back The Night March, interned as a crisis counselor, and drove for her school’s rape prevention shuttle.

Did you mean to do that

Well, I did it

But did you intend to

I must have

It was me who did it

But do you recall if you chose to do it

I recall

What

Doing it

And how did it come from you

What do you mean

Literally, how did you do it

What was the process

You mean was I angry

I don’t know

Was that it

Did you act out of anger

What was the source of the act

I was hurt

There it is

You acted out of hurt

Why didn’t you just tell me that

I didn’t know

Until you told me

Michael Elliott is a clinical psychologist.  His graduate work was at California State University, San Francisco and University of Washington. His training was in the social psychology of human communication and in clinical psychology. He has practiced clinical psychology for over a quarter of a century. The poems in his book, Waterfalls of Therapy, are about what he has learned from his patients.

We are the poems of history.
We are saying nothing.
The all-important nothing-
that resonates in the mind,
and nourishes
the spirit.

We are the topography
of all that never was.
The memory of what could not be.
We are the note in the cosmic music of chance,
the lost tomes of our foremothers.
We are our guides.
We are the light-
the hope.
We are divinely lost-
and we dance.

Lewis J. Kahler is the Dean of the Center for the Arts and Humanities at Mohawk Valley Community College. He also is the co-editor of Portrait literary magazine and is the author of No Mind: A Collection of Haiku (Portrait Publishing, 2008). Lewis was a contributing editor to Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide (Ten Speed Press, 2002). His poetry has appeared in the Resonant Review, Ampersand, Fusion and The Oracle Literary Journal.

I’m trying to think of a word.  It’s a word that I’ve forgotten, that I suspect we’ve all forgotten.  We knew it once, it’s on the tip of our tongues, something just reminded us.  No, it’s gone.  Love?  No, no.  Good?  Well, close, but not quite.

It’s like, when I was born, wrapped up in a white blanket, and put to my mother’s breast, my guardian angel leaned in to me and, with breath reeking of Maker’s Mark and Marlboros, whispered it to me.  He said “Here it is.  Check it.  Dude, it’s all that you need to know.”  And I understood, and felt at peace.  And I know that I won’t remember what the word was until my heart monitor stops beeping and they disconnect me from my respirator, and my guardian angel returns, pulling the pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jacket and offering me that smoke I’ve waited so long for, since I quit in order to prolong my life on earth.  He’ll hook me up with a match, light his own cigarette, then smirk at me with that arrogant, knowing grin of his.  The dick.  “You remember what I told you?”  he will ask.  “Almost,” I’ll answer.  “God knows I’ve been trying.”

It’s the word that we’re missing from all of our common vocabularies, regardless of language.  It is all parts of speech, but it is not a vulgarity; far from it.  It is the word that connects one idea to the next, that links one narrative to another, that clears up all misunderstandings.  The Christian, the Jew, the Muslim, and the atheist could find all that separates them made insignificant by its utterance.  “Oh, that’s what you meant,” they’d say in unison, then have a hearty laugh over the misunderstanding.  It all seems so obvious, once the word’s been spoken.

The word names the bond shared by all who live.  It soothes us when we worry, it alleviates our fears.  It is the name of the universe, and the name of the universe’s creator.  It is the knowledge that brings us closer to the Supreme Person, it expresses the best possible tidings to those who have faith and do good works; in the beginning, it was there with God, and it was God.

My guardian angel will lean in closer to me, excited.  “Do you give up?”  he’ll ask.  “Just give up.  None who lives ever remembers the word, even though they all want to.”  And then he’ll tell me, and I’ll shake my head and groan at my ignorance.  It was there all the time.  How could I have missed it?  It will all seem so obvious, when I’m dead.

In the meantime, though, I’ll get by the best I can, with my ignorant, half-formed ideas formed by my insufficient vocabulary.  Most of the time it doesn’t even bother me.  Hardly at all.  I stand in the kitchen, stirring the pasta and watching the clock.  The house fills with the scents of the dinner that will be ready soon.  These are the moments, I know, when my wife loves me most.  This is when I love her most, too—during these relaxing hours after we have escaped from the office but before we start preparing for the next day’s labors.  And when we’re loving each other the most, the word love seems insufficient.  So my wife comes into the kitchen and stands behind me while I stir.  Her left arm goes around my waist, and she stands up on her toes to kiss my shoulder.

“I love you,” she says with a sigh that indicates frustration with the word’s inadequacy.

“I love you too,” I say, sympathetic to the shortcomings of our language but content in the knowledge that we understand each other regardless.

William Bradley’s work has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Normal School, Brevity, The Bellevue Literary Review, and other magazines.  He teaches at Chowan University in Murfreesboro, NC, and he can often be found acting like a know-it-all on his blog, The Ethical Exhibitionist (http://ethicalexhibitionist.blogspot.com).

I would like to mention
that there is no preparation
for wonder.

It doesn’t appear on the pages
of all those books
you’ve read.

It doesn’t linger
on the backside of memory
with the most delicious taste.

It can’t fall out of the sky
like sun showers
to dazzle you.

It doesn’t rise like waves
full of pushing forward
with small tingles of anticipation.

Or appear from outside
like phone messages
blinking your attention.

No, it hovers,
waiting for you to be ready
to see it.

And swim in it
and absorb it
since it’s always there.

That something-joy
born of your
letting go.

Jan Keough lives in Northern Rhode Island and is part of the Origami Poems Project of RI. (www.origamipoems.com) She’s received 1^st Honorable Mention from the Bay Area Poets Coalition. Her poems have appeared in New Verse News, The River Poets Journal, Providence Journal, and the RI Writer’s Circle 2008 Anthology.

Oneness / Home

Evolutionary enlightenist Andrew Cohen writes, “And that’s what the world so desperately needs: mature, enlightened human beings who are willing to wholeheartedly take responsibility for the entire process, forever – to participate in the creation of the conscious universe, with and as the very force that created it. That impulse is . . . your very own Authentic Self.”[i] Authentic Self is that Spark of Divine Fire, that initial God-individuation that is the Greatest/Highest Self; Authentic Self is Oneness with identity.

Built into each of us, sitting in our deepest heart, is a longing for connectedness. Sitting alongside the yearning is a belief and fear that we are ultimately alone.  The longing for connection is about Home, the Great Source of Being that many of us call God. The “good news” is to be found in the truth of the reality of Oneness – meaning that whether or not we know or experience it, we are literally One with All That Is.  Every tree and tank, every hellion and healer, every bully and baby, are One and cannot be separated from the Whole.

That we exist here on this duality planet as unique individuals by necessity means that there exist many distinctly differing paths to bring us Home.  What works for one will not necessarily work for another, and to me, this is part of the beauty and grace of Consciousness Itself, of Creator, of Home.  Eventually, we will come Home to the undifferentiated Oneness.  Yet we can also choose to come Home here and now as our Authentic Selves in form, which means that we must live and “behave as if the God in All Life matters”[ii].

The Keyword of the Times is “Change”

Huge changes are upon us.  Time seems to be speeding up, and the consequences of the conscious or unconscious choices we make show up almost immediately.  This instantaneous response lets us see that there’s no longer any room for doubting our authorship of the experiences we have.  It’s time to wake up to the fact that we, like the God Who made us in its image and likeness, are Holy Creators who must now take authority over both what we will make and what we have made.

We are all in the movement of Life together.  In fact, we ARE the movement, we ARE Life.  Whether we are completely unconscious of this truth, or at the edge flirting with the idea of conscious evolution, or already immersed in the soup and fully engaged in creating a life of deep, profound spiritual responsibility and integrity, the times are calling loudly to each of us to take our place at the table and consciously create a new world.

For the Sake Of

Why the urgency?  Because this Universe and our beloved Earth – a living, conscious Being – will no longer support our hiding behind the mask of separateness, another word for victim consciousness; we simply no longer have that luxury if humanity is to survive and thrive.  You and I must really “get it” that there is literally no separation between us – you are another me and I am another you – and that every choice, every action, and every belief affects the Whole.

For the good of All, for the sake of the Whole, and in service to the One, we must look at what it takes to embody Authentic Self so that we will choose to live and behave as if the God in All Life matters.  We must examine the ways and means of “healing the holdings of the heart” and look at how it is we create both the joy and suffering that we – and others – experience.  When we take such a level of self-responsibility to heal ourselves, we help heal the world by becoming a healing presence wherever we are.  From this embodied authenticity, we love each other back into our forgotten Wholeness by living as Authentic Self, that over-arching Aspect which has never left Home, and which holds the door wide open, waiting for us to remember who we are.

[ii] Phrase taken from the title of Machelle Small Wright’s book, Behaving As If the God in All Life Mattered, published by Perelandra Ltd.

Amy Pierce is an ordained Minister in Integrative Healing with a Master’s degree in Applied Healing Arts. She is well known in North Carolina’s Triangle region for her holistic, ecumenical approach to spirit mind body healing through her teaching and writing, as well as her counseling ministries. Visit  www.authenticself.us or read Amy’s blog: In Spiritual Wonder

Connecting to Divine Energy

Sit in a relaxed pose with your feet on the floor and your hands in your lap, palms up. Imagine there is a cord of any
color or thickness going from the base of your spine to the center of the earth. Once you create your cord, it will always
be available to ground you. All you have to do is think about it. Your cord can go through solid objects, even if you are
on the top floor of a tall building or flying in an airplane.

Next, visualize a large ball of sparkling, golden light about a foot above you. Bring this light gently down into the top of
your head. See it moving throughout your body: your throat, heart, solar plexus, and abdomen. Send it down your arms
and legs, and back up. Finally, flush the light down through your grounding cord, taking with it any “dis-ease” or
negativity.

Connecting to Earth Energy

Begin as above, but instead create a cord attached to the bottom of each foot. Visualize earth energy moving gently up
towards you through these cords. Feel it enter your feet and begin to rise up into your body until it has filled you
completely. This energy will feel thick and relaxing. Try this meditation when you feel over-stimulated, stressed, or
have trouble sleeping.

This article is excerpted from Psychic Surgery and Faith Healing: An Exploration of Multi-Dimensional Realities,
Indigenous Healing, and Medical Miracles in the Philippine Lowlands by Jessica Bryan (Red Wheel/Weiser/Conari, 2008).
Jessica is a spiritual medium, energy healer, and freelance book editor. Contact Jessica in Southern Oregon at 541-535-6044 or editor@mind.net. Read her blog at: www.psychicsurgery.wordpress.com.

When I was fourteen all I wished for were to die.

I wallowed in a deep depression that seemed to never end. Then a sudden rush of love washed over my entire body one day. It was truly amazing. Something straight from Heaven. I loved everything around me. All I knew was I had never felt like that before.  Well, maybe I did when I was younger. Infants and children often feel like this before their bright spirits are dimmed by the constant distractions in life. It’s a balancing act, and sometimes the scales can tilt. You see, as we age, we get wound up in issues, whether caused by our families, by peers or through messages found in the media.  And some lose sight. I was supposed to be a child of Light.  So that day I promised myself that it wouldn’t happen again. But like anything, without practice, your lessons will soon fade.

Avoid the reminders, and things can get worse. Like what happened back in 2006.  Broken by a number of countless relationships and a career that wasn’t taking off, I felt lost. Why wasn’t anything working for me? So I opened Pandora’s box by concentrating on all the negativity.  Then came the illness. I had flu-like symptoms that wouldn’t go away, zero energy and my hair began to fall out. I can still recall sitting at my desk typing away and feeling hairs breaking off from the top of my head. It was embarrassing and frightening. So what was wrong? Well, no one knew.  Test after test claimed that I was healthy. But I knew.

Desperate for a cure, I began to investigate alternative approaches to healing. And discovered people who had been in the same boat as me. Who had failing health but tested out healthy as could be. I began to incorporate what they recommended and soon found healing too. Then a few people told me to check out Louise Hay’s book, You Can Heal Your Life. So I did. It was uncanny how her book kept coming up in random conversations. So I read it in just a few days. And then odd things began to happen. I had premonitions while I slept and noticed I was becoming clairvoyant too.  For about a month, I could wake up and know what was going to happen each day. Even whom I was going to run into. I thought to myself, “it’s boring being a psychic because you live a life of no surprises.”

As I continued to meditate, pearls of wisdom came to light. I understood that God, the Universe, or Whoever/Whatever you believe in is already inside of us. And each person has the free will to reflect that Light back to our world in any way they wish. Some choose a dimmer Light while others are bright. Since the source of this Light is all the same, it is important to love yourself and others alike. Unconditionally. Every single person can be as bright as Mother Teresa or as dim as an inmate on death row. And all have the power to adjust their Lights at will.

I was in ecstasy. Pure nirvana. And since then have wanted to share this message with all of you. To help others brighten their Light. And bring about healing too.

In 2006, Sarah was chronically ill and desperate for a cure so she began investigating alternative approaches. She discovered people who found peace when adapting more self-aware lifestyles, so she practiced them… and began to heal, too.  Enthusiastic about her experience, Sarah’s goal is to share her knowledge with others. Working on a novel, her next book will highlight her journey toward total-body healing. Contact Sarah at: colormyspirit@yahoo.com