Deepok Chopra’s wisdom

Each of us has a story. Some of them are happy, some are about rising above tragedy, some are so sad that the heart is torn open and bleeding. I love history and still read a lot of history and biographies. I seek to know the world better. To understand more and how to avoid some of the toxic situations.

Mysticism is a way to rise about all that has hurt, scarred or tortured us in our pasts. Mystics from various traditions have in common the experience of feeling at one with all that exists. Spirit prevails if we look for it. Mystic writers acknowledge the oneness of everyone, the absolute lack of separation of the mystic religions. The mystics show us that when we see others as being “them” instead of part of us, hatred and violence are the results.

I am going to share excerpts from Marge Piercy’s poem with you. It is called

The Sabbath of Mutual Respect

“Habondia, the real abundance, is the power
to say yes and to say no, to open
and to close, to take or to leave
and not to be taken by force or law
or fear or poverty or hunger.
To bear children or not to bear by choice
is holy. To bear children unwanted is to be used like a public sewer. To be sterilized unchosen is to have
your heart cut out. To love women
is holy and holy is the free love of men
and precious to live taking whichever comes
and precious to live unmated as a peachtree.

Praise the lives you did not choose.

They will heal you, tell your story, fight

for you. You eat the bread of their labor

You drink the wine of their joy. I tell you

after I went under the surgeon’s knife

for the laparoscopy I felt like a trumpet

an Amazon was blowing sonorous charges on

Then my womb learned to open on the full

moon without pain and my pleasure deepened

till my body shuddered like troubled water.

When my friend gave birth I held her in joy

as the child’s head thrust from her vagina

like the sun rising as dawn wet and red.

Praise our choices, sisters, for each doorway

open to us was taken by squads of fighting

women who paid years of trouble and struggle,

who paid their wombs, their sleep, their lives

that we might walk through these gates upright.

Doorways are sacred to women for we

are the doorways of life and we must choose

what comes in and what goes out. Freedom

is our real abundance.

——–Marge Piercy, feminist writer and poet

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors.”

—-Czeslaw Milosz

Some sculpture is so beautiful it opens the heart and the heart breathes the beauty as if it were oxygen. Photo and copyright by Barbara Mattio