POEM: The Waterfall 💦 and Links for This Week's Events

Join me for meditation and sacred heart infusion ♥️

Dear Friends,

Tonight, I gift you with a poem I wrote to capture an experience I had this morning at High Falls. Some of you might know the place…some of you might know the experience: a shamanic dismemberment, a mummification, a grinding of the bones, a shedding. I’m grateful for the sensitivity to know such help is available and to notice when it’s being offered.

Some of you know me well already…others are newer to my work. It’s all about sensitivity to the subtle dimensions: practices, meditations, and prayers that put us back in touch with the body, the imagination, and the intuition. It’s liberating work—liberating us from the weight and tyranny of secular materialism; liberating us to play in mystical realms; liberating us from the oppression of this dominator paradigm. Through this work of refining our sensitivity, we remember ourselves and re-collect the capacity to heal ourselves, others and the world. Come play with me…come see what it’s all about. There are two opportunities this week:

Tuesday (tomorrow) morning from 9-10am is Coming Home meditation. It’s drop-in, collective, collaborative, pointing out meditative instruction. No need to register, just show up. “Doors” close 10 minutes into the session.

Thursday evening from 8-9pm EST is a Sacred Heart gathering for women. We come together, meditate and weave ourselves into a shared heart space and then abide there and see what comes up. It’s a deep and potent transmission of the power, stillness, love and acceptance that are the essence of the Sacred Heart. Please register in advance here:

Both sessions are pay-what-you-can / by donation. Suggested donation is $10-20. You can donate via Venmo @ElizabethSchuyler-Brown. Paid subscribers are already covered. Thank you!

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Poem: The Waterfall 
Schuyler Brown 
June 3, 2024

A secret trail 
Trespassing it could be said 
A solo approach 
To the most wonderful 
Waterfall

Slipping sandals 
On vertical rocks
As close as one can get 
To the sound of tumbling
Water 

Unexpected evidence of a feast 
Dismembered crabs 
Or are they crayfish? 
We are so far here 
From the sea

I sit and close my eyes
Stunned to hear the waterfall 
With my whole body 
Surprised to see it
With my ears

A study in gravity 
Downward force 
I reverse it and feel the thrust
Gently upwards 
To the Source 

A movement 
I’m being watched 
Suddenly I’m surrounded 
It’s disquieting to be set upon 
So stealthily

I allow invisible hands 
I have no choice
Or the choice was made 
at some other time
For a ritual cleanse

They take my body 
with all its pain 
With all the infestations
With all the degradation
I give it up

Sweet relief 
As they carry the flayed skin, 
the empty carcass away
Picking it apart
Washing it in the falls

They are all business 
They clean every socket 
Every place of in and out
All the sensory channels
All the holes

Then they slit my torso 
From throat to pubis
Exposing the organs
My heart beats
Removing all that is not mine

They open the scalp
And the water pours over my tired mind
My bad habits
Unhelpful thought patterns 
Undone by the pounding 

The men are speaking
But I cannot hear what they say
If I could even understand 
Prayer
In that tongue 

The women hold my limp body 
Empty now 
under the rushing water
One final rinse
And a gentle float in the pool 

They place a flower garland 
On my head
And lay my pain body 
On a rock to dry
As the sun grows bright and warm

There I rest 
With the cracked shells 
And empty claws
Of the former crayfish 
All of us skin and bones 

Now they’ve gone 
And I’ve gone too 
Leaving that corpse 
To be devoured by time
Keeping only the experience that is mine.
~~~