The Courtship Verses

This page is dedicated to my courtship...
...with myself :)

Over the years, I have been working on understanding various aspects of myself. I have had glimpses of the feminine and the masculine in me. I have known the corrupt and the divine in me. In this journey of shedding the corrupt and embodying the divine, I have come face to face with several facets of my corruption: my fear, my anger, my jealousy, my sadness... and I have also glimpsed my divine, that is all embracing and powerful.

What follows in this page is a series of inner dialogues between aspects of myself. It is my hope that they help you, the reader, to remember and work with aspects of yourself and move towards integration.

The courtship verses is dedicated to my integrity with self.


(The terms 'God', 'Divine', etc. in this series of poems are indicative of the highest potential in aspects of self and do not refer to any religious/personal god.)

The Divine Masculine spoke...

Welcome Goddess, unto to this new moment
This moment that holds the potential of union.
What do you bring as your gift, Goddess?
Do you walk light with curiosity and faith;
Or do you lug forth the baggage of hurt?
Do you anticipate the joy of reunion;
Or do you anguish over memories of separation?
Memories do not make a future, Goddess.
They have to be left to populate the pages of the past.
If you carry them along, the past has to come along too,
And then, there is no space for the future.
Time stands still, waiting for you to drop your bags.
Even as the future beckons, it cannot welcome
What rightfully belongs in another time and space.
Yes Goddess, I ask for a gift
But it is not a gift you have to bear;
It is a gift you have to be.
I ask for a gift from you, for you:
The gift of freedom from yourself.
Just as moments in time are free of each other
So that each moment can create afresh
A joy that never was, never will be
And each, therefore, a sphere of discovery.
Come to me Goddess, free and aroused
To discover the music we can create in this moment
And the next, and the next,
So that our being is the song of freedom.


The Mother speaks...

I seek to unite, Mother
The God and Goddess in me.
I seek to be held
As a river is, by its banks
Bubbling and glowing
In absolute abandon.

Do not seek, Divine Child
For it is not something unknown.
Long instead, to return to fullness
So that the banks hold and serve
As the river gushes and nourishes
In complete presence.

Why should I long and not seek, Mother?
And why must I flow in presence?
I aspire to transcend
The boulders that block my flow.

Seeking implies lack, Child
And you are already abundant.
You only long to reunite
With what you had merely forgotten.
You need not transcend the boulder that is life;
It is the vehicle you are to engage with.
You chose the path of life
Not to leap over it,
But to go through it, with it.

Why did I choose a path so laborious, Mother?
A path that makes me forget myself?

It is not the path, Child,
But you who make it laborious.
You are offered the gift of presence.
You choose instead, to dwell in the past
And drag memories into the future.
Presence needs no effort, but it calls for courage
To drop identities you guard your memories with.
The fruit of the past was experience
Memories are only the peels to be discarded.
If you store and carry them,
Do remember, it is in their nature to rot.
Yes, you have learnt to accumulate
And believed in building identities.
But your fullness is in the wealth within
And in breaking your limiting images.
Do you have the courage, then
To give up education for wisdom?
Then the river will flow and not flood;
For it allows the banks to serve it,
Receiving the service in grace and gratitude.

In the Divine Womb

(A conversation with the Wholeness in me)

When I see you

I feel jealous that I am not you

I feel anger about my smallness

I feel sad I am not good enough

I feel unsafe about my future.

When I reach into me

I seek acknowledgement for my contribution

I seek growth in every moment

I seek to honour every bit of existence

I seek to know, that I always live.

When I reach deeper into me

I am relieved I can acknowledge this

I cherish my nature that seeks growth

I am in gratitude for the gift of time

I celebrate that I am alive and conscious.

In this moment of connection

I know I am whole

Even if parts of me are broken

For I am not yet in connection with them.

My wholeness makes me yearn

For the broken parts to unite

And it waits in trust.

It knows that brokenness knows the way back home.

Brokenness speaks the language of emotion

Wholeness knows only compassion

My needs bridge the two

And reveal this womb that is existence.

All that I need to do

Is to choose to exist

And the womb nourishes me

For that is its nature.

The Divine Feminine Speaks...

You yearn to dance, Goddess,

The dance of creation.

And yet, you wonder, will you dance gracefully?

Drop your fear, Goddess!

It is merely what you have adorned

As a chain to shackle yourself.

Let go of your doubts

Those are bonds of restraint

You have donned to limit yourself.

You embody power and yet you choose

To be small and contained?

The dance of creation is not one of effort and skill;

It is a choice to celebrate all of you

By being in active flow with the moment.

It is not passive concentration where you lose yourself

In the pursuit of lending all your focus unto another.

Flow demands presence; it calls for choices:

The choice to drop your fears;

The choice to stop doubting your potential;

The choice to not concentrate on one little pursuit,

Just because you believe that is all you are capable of.

Flow is courageous ownership

Of the power that you are.

The dance of creation is not a performance.

It is a potent moment of claiming all that you are,

Devoid of the smallness you use as a shield

To protect you from yourself.

If you want to dance with me, Goddess

Drop your shields

For the power that you fear, is you.

The impoverished that you embody, is you.

The light and the shadow, is you.

Light never fights the shadow,

So why do you fight the duality?

Duality exists because you reject one

And believe there is only space for the other.

Dance with me, Goddess,

Knowing I am a saint and a sinner

And you are the creator and the destroyer.

These are not opposites, merely aspects of power.

Our dance is presence.

Our dance is awareness.

Our dance is choice.

The Sacred Union

The Divine Masculine says...

Trust me, Goddess, that I hold your space gently.

Lead me towards the path you wish to pave,

Nurture me as you cradle me in your womb temple,

Honour your wisdom that knows its purpose.

Relax in my arms when your body calls for rest.

Dance with me to create the music of the spheres.

Empower me, Goddess, as you shine your light upon the world.

And the Divine Feminine says...

Hold me God, as I release myself in purposeful creation.

Guide my steps as I look for new paths to tread.

Support me as I seek to embody more of my essence.

Honour your strength in facilitating my wisdom.

Believe in me, even as I sometimes dance in the dark.

Understand my rhythm as I sing the song of the earth.

Love me, God, with all of yourself.

Together, in Sacred Union...

I need you, not to make me whole,

But because I am an expression of You.

Your presence in Me is an awakening

Of that authentic life source that is Home.

May be the greatest pain is not sadness and suffering,

May be the greatest pain is in floating through existence, not completely alive in the moment.

May be our divinity is not a grand radiant light,

May be our divinity is in that ordinary moment

Of looking into your eyes and seeing a quiet mirror.

May be Sacred Union is that wordless, compassionate space

Where You and I meet,

Where love marries power, and creates life.



Emergence

She trudges along the sand

Wearing the weight of her history.

She contains in her womb

Stories of hurt and harm,

Tales of rape and rejection,

Memories of sadness and sorrow.

Even as her feet move ahead

Her veil stretches far, far behind

Stuck on the thorns of history.

She drags her feet

Holding on to herself.

Her stories have been her identity,

Reminding her of who she was.

Till a moment comes

When her womb cannot contain them any longer.

The water breaks

Pouring emotions into the earth

And her past is delivered into the sand.

She stands still

With an empty womb

In the middle of the desert

And listens to the silence.

The barren land

The scorching sun

The still air

Her empty womb

All wait, for her to claim the moment.

And she realises: This moment has no history.

This moment has no history.

It never existed before

It never will again, in the future.

This moment offers choices

And choices gift her power

To create as she wills.

She looks at the land, the sun

She merges into the moment

And picks her trailing veil off the thorns

To take the next step.

This time, the step is light

She is empty, but now she owns herself.

History does not own her.

And she takes another step

And another, and forms begin to emerge around her.

Forms of other women, in their worlds

Who have emptied their wombs

And walk only with themselves.

Their steps till the earth

Their choices plant the seeds

Their freedom waters the saplings

And the land grows green.

Their veils are now wings

That fly them from one moment to another.

Some moments bring joy

Some bring judgement, from their worlds.

And yet, they know, neither matters.

There is only choice in the next moment,

For that moment, has no history.




He: The Womb

He seeds, She gestates
He holds, She nurtures
He breaks, She floods
He pushes, She opens
He releases, She births.
He is Her womb.
He is Her temple.
As the bank holds the river and its beings
The womb holds Her creations.
She holds Her power in Him.
He nestles His love in Her.
Her honouring of the womb is sacred union.
His resting in Her is sacred union.