Category: Spiritual Truths

The Greater The Depth The Darker It Gets: Pioneering The Pathless Path

Whether the ocean, the earth, the cosmos or the psyche….the greater the depth the darker it gets.

Shadows still exist because they are the egregores of our ego. But, their borders bleed into the blackness. Doing the inner work here is harder. You can’t see anything at all. You can’t feel anything at all. You can’t smell anything. And, there is no flavor. Yet it is not “nothingness.” When taken to this depth you experience sensory deprivation and your integration process looks much less coherent than what is trending and being discovered in even the health and holistic wellness world. Things like Kundalini awakening, or plant medicine trips, or exorcisms, carry a busy energy of a human life trying to survive and progress. There is a frenzied, frenetic, frantic, or even euphoric feel to these processes.
And while they all are wonderful rites in and of themselves they are also in and of themselves mere entries into a life that is pure consciousness, awareness. They can serve as portals to important journeys but they are just that….keyholes through which we get to peer into what’s next….beyond the body and beyond the mind.

As one who speaks from the deep….I’m understanding there is a disabling stillness that overtakes the psyche that forces the soul to switch off to allow our spirit to come online. We depart from understanding the world and the people around us physically because we experience a break, a disconnect from the physical even while we are still in the body and we sojourn into a metaphysical knowingness.

From physical understanding to metaphysical knowing. This is the path of shamans, healers, oracles, prophets, and poets. This is where the pathless path begins. This transition is the junction where we meet other souls who are longing to go deeper but need the guidance of those of us who had no choice but to pioneer the poignancy of what its like to live between worlds.

For years I’ve felt a jealousy, a scornful envy even of those who never seem to venture below the surface. The ease that they experience in their unawareness has seemed so unfair to me. And up until my mother’s death, which has carried a level of complexity that no one should have to experience, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why so many people get to walk around having done little to no inner work, existing in pure ego completely unbothered, and untouchable in spite of the harm that their willful ignorance has caused.

But, now I do. I do get it. I believe there is a subconscious mechanism within each of us that will allow us to go only so far into understanding humanity, emotions, spirit, soul, shadow. It is the “thing” within us that determines when it is our own unique time to learn certain lessons. And until it’s time to learn those lessons….these people act as lessons to those of us who are inwardly turned.

We learn how to deal gently with a collective that isn’t ready. We learn how to meet people where they are….without judging who they are. In the end its all about survival. The survival of the body. The survival of the psyche. The survival of the soul. The survival of our spirits that get so attached to the identity of our physical existence and feel terrified at the thought of the moment it loses the body. Because that will happen for all of us. We are all moving towards that moment of no longer being “the us that we know.” The us that is grouchy when we wake up. The us that looks in the mirror and sees thinning hair, banging bods, stretch marks, chiseled jaw lines, on point brows, and unwanted chin hair.

There is life in the deep. Beyond the body. And, beyond the mind. I’m here. But, I’ll be back. And, when I come back…I’m bringing my soul with me. I’m not politically correct. I’m not religiously correct. I fit in no where but because of this I’m equipped to go everywhere. Spreading boundlessly as threads of my energy finds the energy of other wandering souls like mine.

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The Masculine Man And My Mirage: Foundational Context For Bidirectional Learning And (hopefully) Community. Pt 2 Mushrooms Make Rain.

Long ago I learned that there exists a parable within every moment. And, moments exist in a continuum. Because of that we stand to learn very profound lessons whether they are wrapped up in the mundane or the chaotic.

As a childhood trauma survivor and someone who has had an equally as traumatizing adulthood I have spent the entirety of my days in a state of “trying.” Trying to feel anchored, trying to be centered, trying to be grounded, trying to feel firmly placed in life, trying to identify with my body and feel embodied. I’ve always felt like I exist at the end of a tether. My body and my survival instincts constantly preparing and adjusting with every gust of wind. And for me the winds have only ever oscillated between that of a summer storm or the finger of God. There have been few days of calm where the tether could hang limp, relaxed, or still.

Because of this constant state of “trying” to find things that will help me feel rooted into the fortitude of the earth I’ve found myself consumed in studying and creating my own system of symbology. As wordy as I am it is imagery that helps me get still. It is symbolism that reigns in the racing of my thought life. There is always more than meets the eye and I am always exploring “what the more” is of every symbol that I study.

Without a written or spoken word a symbol can be a fully understood herald that draws and teases out the wise and wonderful tendrils of our intuition.

When trauma has been as unrelenting as it has been for me there is a loss of a sense of human dignity. And the pride of youth and ego no longer exist. There is nothing to hide or cover or compensate for because all parts of you have been exposed. When trauma becomes a frequent experience there is an accumulation that happens that outpaces the ability of our faculties to process and integrate it. This is why it is imperative to invest in your emotional, and mental well-being by taking care of and optimizing your nervous system (This is another post entirely. Learn about and tend to your nervous system.)

Over the last year the symbolism of all things earthy have been a growing interest for me. Which is no surprise since my greatest life’s pursuit has been to feel grounded and nourished from a foundation that feels wide and deep and solid.

One of the most traumatic elements of my life has been the bad behavior of men and the absence of the protective force of a father. With that said I need to add here that due to circumstances that were unmanageable I never got to meet my father until I was 18 years old. My grandfather was my father figure growing up but he was very stoic and emotionally removed from me. We rarely interacted with each other and the majority of interactions we had were me being being cussed and name called for things that are inherently normal to a child’s development. Such as asking too many questions and being annoying, or being on the phone too late at night. I was never terribly mischievous and never got into any major trouble in school. But, he just didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with me and so he was reclusive. Growing from that foundation I went onto being around serious domestic violence against my mother from men who would beat her. One even picked me up by my throat when I was 14 because I told him he couldn’t tell me what to do because he wasn’t my father. Then of course my own experiences with first love, dating, and then marrying at the age of 21. With each relationship I was cheated on in spite of how soft, yielding, and available…and truly good I was. My most recent experience is being cheated on by someone I had agreed to marry. So, I’ve not had the opportunity to have good personal experiences with men in general.

Now, interestingly enough I’m reading a new book by, Sophie Strand titled, “The Flowering Wand, Rewilding the Sacred Masculine.” I have been admiring her and her work from afar for quite some time and when I heard her on a podcast yesterday morning I was so moved I decided to spend the last money I had to buy her book and thankfully found it locally. I bought it because of the earth imagery and because I’ve been so impressed how she through her own suffering and study has found an intersection between myth, mushrooms, and masculinity from which she shares her own unique vision of how we can collectively rewild masculinity by placing its roots into the narratives of soils that are not toxic. Her articulation and use of terms that are not part of normal conversation or entertainment is so powerfully romantic to me that her work is irresistible. Little did I know the magic that would enrapture me from the first few pages.

It is in this space of wonder and awe that I had to share what I learned about how mushrooms make rain. Doesn’t that sound magical?? Truly. And, while this isn’t the author’s intention I think there is a segue here for me into a potentially healing parable and that is the iteration of mushrooms as masculine symbol and rain as a feminine symbol. I feel there is some special tidbit of wisdom that is tucked away in that imagery. I’ll unpack that later though.

For now….check this out.

“Research into cloud formation and rainfall has yielded interesting results. One of the drivers behind rainfall is something very curious indeed: fungal spores. The group of fungi that produce mushrooms, called basidiomycetes, grow through an osmotic inflation process, their hyphae bonding together and filling with water in order to “bloom” above the soil. Once the mushrooms have developed, tiny stalks (basidia) grow underneath the mushroom cap, culminating in tiny spores. A drop of water forms between the gills under a mushroom’s cap. Finally, the water droplet condenses against the spore, jettisoning the spore out of the mushroom. In his book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World, mycologist Paul Stamets estimates that the force with which mushrooms eject spores is ten thousand times the force undergone by astronauts as they exit the gravitational pull of Earth’s orbit. Some land many inches away from the original mushroom. But most are buoyed upward by the wind, into the sky. Every year, around fifty million tons of spores enters into the atmosphere Some of those spores will immediately land in the dirt and begin, hypha by hypha, to root into the underworld. But millions of tons of spores do something else entirely. Some make it fifty miles up into the air and ride the currents for weeks. They follow the wind. And….they generate rain. Sugars on the spores’ surface cause water to condense around them once they have been ejected. Spores become a nucleus of sorts in a floating water molecule. These water-coated spores bump into each other, again and again, millions of times, until they accumulate into rain clouds.”
(Sophie Strand, The Flowering Wand, pages 11 and 12.)

Amazing right?? Mushrooms make rain. I will likely have a poetic response for this at some point.

I will unpack this in my next post of my series, “The Masculine Man And My Mirage: Foundational Context For Bidirectional Learning And (hopefully) Community.”

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The Masculine Man And My Mirage: Foundational Context For Bidirectional Learning And (hopefully) Community (Pt 1)

Man. Masculine. Mirage.

If you follow me closely enough you will be acquainted with my contemplations about life & how trauma has intricately shaped my evolution. Truly, as I write this I understand that no one can really understand…unless they can go tit for tat on the count of traumatic events that happened over the course of my life. But, what I’m writing here isn’t a peeing contest. It is however my first public post and write out loud sessions of how I will be processing a segment of my life that I wish to have a happy conclusion on before I die. An integration that leaves me satisfied.

At 44, in what is my mid-life, I realize we never stop learning of course. And, one of the things I admire about myself is that I’m adaptable. Life has taught me there is literally nothing that is set in stone. To live life with an inflexibility and disdain towards new or divergent views or information is to willfully agree to devolve, desist, subsist, and invite nothing but contrast and frustration. It is to live small and to exist within a very narrow scope. I don’t know about you but for me the thought of this makes me feel claustrophobic.

My intelligence is emotional. It is circumspect. It is agile.

From the age of 4 the big question of life has been at the forefront of my conscious awareness, “WHY?” As a trauma survivor and someone who has very unique & unusual lived experiences I’ve always wanted to know, “why?”

When it comes to God, truth, and faith I’ve been able to distill perspectives from quantum physics and cosmology to feel absolutely satisfied in my understanding about their origin (or lack thereof), nature, mechanism, purpose, and of course relativity.

Having these “figured out” now affords me the mental space to try to sift through my lived experience with men to try to understand them in spite of my negative lived experience with them and because of them. From my lived experience and my “hope springs eternal” approach to exploring what is my inescapable counter part it cannot be said that I’m not courageous. And, as a heterosexual and heteromantic woman the issue of romantic love is inseparable from my deep desire to understand the masculine amongst us. One day perhaps I will stop touching the hot, glowing, red eye of the stove. But, that day is not now.

The journey to understanding anyone or anything will always involve looking at the symbology surrounding and characterizing what or who you seek to understand as a first step onto the path. The symbology of a person, place, or thing is what comes before any verbiage is ascribed. Humans existed before language and it is because of symbolism that we gather our first bits of information to inform our instincts about what we’re learning about. Whether something is large, or small, quiet or loud, sharp or soft helps us determine how to approach our subject.

If a willing harmony and oneness can be achieved there is no doubt in my mind that the careful exploration of our symbolism is the genesis of that state.

It is at this point of genesis that I begin my personal journey in exploring, understanding, and relating to men. And, as I process, integrate, summate, and find my own conclusions I wish to make a promise to all men. My promise to you as a man, if you’re reading this, is that I will not be satisfied or tricked into holding a narrow, media swayed, post modern opinion of you. You are as ancient as I. And, I long to understand you from the beginning of time not from the middle of the feminist era. I am here to see and help you see your timeless qualities that are without reproach. I promise to be a safe place of feminine softness that is conducive and receptive and ever curious about the multi-faceted masculine that is you. Sans toxicity. I wish to separate you and perhaps take you on this journey with me to reexamine the symbolism that has been assigned to you. Maybe you can tell me at which points the symbols feel fitting or ill-fitting. Then this blog post will become a living bi-directional, learning adventure. And, who knows maybe in this way to I can create a community! The thought of this makes my heart feel full as I’m about to embark on what could be a journey of a million miles. Are you with me?

With bare feet I walk upon a new canvas and I leave behind narrative paths that do not serve our collectives

My souls and toes so sensitive to the vibration of the earth and my feminine arches serving as etheric connectives

When I meet the collective him my eager and keen intuition will open for unbound observation

The shoes I could have worn to get here would have been familiar and comfortable but would have perpetuated his obfuscation

And, I’m not interested in self-sabotage or treachery.

Many questions are building in my mind. I wonder what the image of him will make clear in me. All this before words.

In exploring your imagery throughout the history of humanity we cannot evade the primal iconography of your phallus. It has come to be defined (with words) as a symbol of power. However, it is also the regenerative part of you. It is a procreative part of you that delivers a bodily elixir of life. Without you, there would be no us. Since you are both how do you feel that the only characteristic concerning your penis that gets mentioned is “power” and not also regeneration and procreation? This reduces men to a narrow scope I believe.

Divine Masculine tell me your thoughts on the words below by Sophie Strand:

“Do we want to hand the masculine a sword of a flowering wand? The sword slices, divides, and subdues. Its tip drags imaginary borders across ecosystems. The sword does not embrace. It does not connect. It does not ask questions. It is not an instrument of intimacy. It either attacks or defends, affirming that every interaction is conflict, and every story is about domination. The sword, perfected by the Romans as the “spatha” (or short sword) for the specific task of maiming and executing prisoners, quite literally cuts the mind off from the body. The sword proposes that we can wield our intellect without our somatic intuition and without our rooted existence in ecosystems. The sword encapsulate the material reductionist idea that we can “cut” something up into discrete parts and thus understand it as a whole- that we must kill the animal to study the animal; that if we dissect enough brains, we might find the secrets of consciousness. The want on the other hand creates connections.

Some of the earliest examples of wands are the apotropaic hippopotamus tusk wands or “birth tusks” used in Middle Kingdom Egypt (1900 BCE), which were carved with lions, snakes, and frogs and used to magically protect pregnant women and children. They are thought by some to have been used specifically, to draw a circle of safety around a woman in labor. Inscriptions on these ancient wands tell us they are “the protector of night” and “the protector of day,” which may indicate a belief that they helped establish temporal order. We also have the snake staffs of Aaron and Moses in the Hebrew Bible, which were used in spiritual debate, to part the waters of the Red Sea, and to draw water from a stone. These magical staffs that flicker between the solid and the serpentine flow into the healing caduceus of Hermes, a winged wand encircled by two snakes. Rhabdomancy, or dowsing, once used forked wooden wands to magically survey the land for water, a practice that may date back nearly 8,000 years, as evidenced by art in the Saharan Tassili caves. Homer makes numerous references to magical wands in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, putting them in the hands of Circe, Athena, and Hermes. Celtic mythology also features many wands, rods, and staffs; for example, in the famous legend of Fionn MacCumhaill, the hero uses hazel wands to transform people into animals, as a divination device, and to defend himself from harm.

The wand encircles us with protection during biological rites of passage from birth to marriage to death. It draws us to water. It enchants us into closer kinship with animals and plants and landscapes by literally transforming us into them. It mends broken bodies, knits wounds, and softens minds hardened by anthropocentrism (human centric existence of all things). While swords are made only by human hands, wands, it may be argued, predate human beings themselves. All it takes is a woody shoot bursting into blossom. A cedar branch. A sprig of hawthorn. A tree erupting in lichens. For that very reason, perhaps, wands have been central to magical and ritual practices since before human history began to be recorded.” (The Flowering Wand, by Sophie Strand).

My question here is what resonates most with the masculine? The sword or the wand? The answer to that is very revealing and is worthy of sitting around a fire with.

Lots of love,

Cozett Dunn

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Alchemizing Our Loads: A Dedication To The Women In My Circle

I am a tree of life but my branches are breaking

And the thought of enforcing boundaries leaves me shaking

I knew this day would come. The catalyst has arrived.

But her appearance is nothing I could have surmised

The cool soil beneath the souls of my feet

This well-worn path formed by my heart beat

Everything! Everything is important to me. My heart wants to hold it all

My wise woman’s words telling me I can’t carry it all or I’ll fall

From an ancient wild forest she emerged from a bank of dew-laden moss

And she says to me “no, my child some of what you’re carrying is dross”

Statuesque with a tall basket upon her own head

She pulls from my load things that I dread

Complex emotions and situations from my past

I hadn’t realized so much had amassed

Ancestral traumas and narratives that defeat

She placed her hands on my own and laid these at my feet

We’re going to the stream she said…there’s cleansing work that needs to be done

We’re going to alchemize your load until your battle is won

Wading out into an emerald green pool

The water so refreshingly cool

Together we reached a briskly swirling eddy

She looked deep into my eyes and asked, “are you ready?’

“Lay your burdens down in the stream and watch them flow away

I’m teaching you how to release through the magic of play”

As I laid my burdens down into the bubbling flow

I felt a rush of tickles on my legs as I watched them go

My consternation gave way to a relieved smile

I looked at the creek bank where there was waiting for me a tiny pile

The wild wise woman began splashing her way back to the shore

I danced in her wake and reveled in her lore

Through her parabolic ways I learned how to discern piece by piece

What to carry close to my heart and what to release

As we stood together on solid ground I gathered to my chest

My lighter load that resembled a nest

Suddenly I noticed I had grown wings

And that they were made up of broken things

This leg of my journey now felt so complete

My energy and joy had become replete

It truly did all work together for my good

The profundity of my strength was being understood

As she walked away the wise woman gazed up to a clear bright sky

As she uttered the words, “and now you know why”

© Cozett Dunn July 25th, 2023

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Naked In The Wake Of The Reaper: Reflection On The Emotions Of Moving Forward While Mourning

Navigating forward through grief to get back into daily routine feels like crawling through a briar patch. Trying to present yourself to the world as grounded as one possibly can be 35 days from something that was so dark and complicated and even macabre can feel unfair. inauthentic. I’m calm, kind, productive, caring, sensitive, and…trying. But, there is an inherent awkwardness in this space. It’s like being in public naked but trying not to “feel” like you’re naked. Being naked but trying to obscure the more offensive parts of yourself so that you don’t end up incurring the misunderstanding or discomfort of others. As a trauma survivor and an empath who is doubly sensitized from trauma the discomfort of others….feels dehumanizing to me.

I never could have anticipated the tangled mess of absolutely contrasting emotions that would arise from my mother’s death. And this bothers me because I’ve always been able to anticipate my own emotions. It’s kept me safe since the age of 4.

35 days….and I feel as vulnerable as a 35 days old human. There is a strange rebirth of me that has happened since she died. A new me that is washing in piece by piece with the tides of this new chapter.

This part of my life has started but I never got to have an intermission. There is a scene change that I never got to get dressed for. I’m a new character who didn’t get to see the script before it was show time. Yet, now is not the time to improvise. Now is the time to acknowledge that my own curtain call is coming. What happens between then & now is critically important if I’m to leave the world stage with a standing “O” rather than have rotten tomatoes thrown at my funeral.

I’m still covered in the dew of death. Naked in the wake of the reaper. As I watch him go all I hear are the words, “break a leg.”

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Grief And Poetry

Grief is one emotion that I’m finding doesn’t play fair with me.

As a childhood trauma survivor I learned so early how to anticipate what emotions I might feel as I was constantly being wounded. Being able to anticipate the emotions I was able to brace and steady myself before they hit me and so I could anchor myself for the myriad of storms.

I’m the kind of person (like many of you) who has mastered the art of a calm exterior while unspeakable things rage inside me that no one ever picks up on.

But, with grief…..and mourning it hits me before I can feel it coming. When this happens I feel instantly disoriented because I’m struggling to behave appropriate to my setting. I feel disappointed because I “should” have been prepared before the tears started falling. It makes me feel like I’m losing control of my general state of poise and that scares me because it makes me feel like I myself am closer to death.

This inability to perceive the approaching waves of grief feels like it underscores one of the painful features of mid-life and that is that we don’t live forever and we are half way over even if our legacy lives on.

There is an inherent weakness against the battery of grief emotions and that makes me feel easily surmountable and dangerously exposed to emotional elements I’ve been able to protect myself from since I was a child. It forces me to see that I am aging.

I am not my surest fortress for the first time and that scares the hell out of me.

My place of refuge these days has been the tender & patient presence of my friends and family. Their unrelenting patience & presence to me is deeply humbling. And even that forces me deeper into my shadow and causes me to review whether I have been as available and as present. It’s hard to admit dependence on another human for sustenance (here in American culture anyway). There is an element of shame that comes with it. And shame is something that can get you disenfranchised quick. When you’re already struggling to stay established it makes it all the more horrifying.

These emotions run deep & I have no choice but to be committed to the process of tending a wound that will never go away I think. It’s going to weep for a long, long time. And like all wounds it will be subject to infection should I sustain more losses in the near future. The energy it will take just to manage it so it doesn’t get worse is more than I have.

Because of this I find myself in succumb. I have no brute strength of will to stave off any more pain or difficulty.

I feel like a lone wounded animal on an open Sahara. At some point the pack or the herd will have to move on and I’ll have to hold on to the moments of gratitude for how long they stayed until their own survival needs moved them on from me.

Poetry I suppose will be my last stand.

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Culture Cocoon: Metamorphical Grief

I want to be in #turkiye, #india, or #dubai right now. Curled up in a hotel bed while the sounds of mosques and temples whirl around in the air outside my window as I write poetry. That’s all. That’s all I’m asking.

I am longing for the other side of the planet 🥺

Tomorrow will be 30 days since my mother passed and I still don’t feel like myself. I just want the space and the distance and the cradle of a new culture to comfort me as I immerse myself into an abysmal depth of poetry writing, shadow work, reflection, and introspection. The cocoon is of course an unfamiliar place to the caterpillar. It is foreign. And just as the caterpillar emerges from the alien place of cocoon so I want to melt inside some foreign landscape until my transformation is complete and I’m ready for a new journey with a new physicality. I want so desperately to go from crawling to flying.

Sadness is a universal language. It is understood with the eyes & felt with the heart. Whether the language is Turkce, Punjab, or Arabic a great deal of communication & connection can take place without ever speaking the first word when it comes to this common rite of passage of all humanity.

My mother….she is now….away. And, I want to be as well.

I want away….from here. I need….to be there. Not here. And, I suspect even this simple need is yet another mirror…..

Love, Cozett

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No Water For The Wolves

Lying in the silence. All is black around me save my phone and wifi light. And all I can think about is how my mother’s death is stirring in me an even greater fire and resolve to be living light. I want my light to shine into the cosmos and to be a home to every human without exception.

I want to be….wide, long, deep, tall, ever expanding light, warmth, and peace and safety.

I want my table to extend into the nations.

Where there is light people feel seen, where there is light there is clarity, there is life, there is strength, and hope.

In a world filled with humans who despise what they don’t get, fear what they can’t understand, and murder either with their thoughts or hands those who are divergent…..I want to be different.

Love is beautiful anarchy

Light is the epitome of rebellion against darkened understanding

Brilliant bright light so the world can see
Recklessly loving us all into anarchy

While the planet is threshed wheat from tare
I’ll gather and glean to me those in despair

It is enough for those standing accepted in the sun
To carry the status of a chosen one

I’ll cast my lot with the vagabond parade
I vomit at the charity of pretentious charade

Babylon, Babylon, can’t you see she’s imploding?
Or are your ears deafened from your own gloating?

Superiority, elitism, white washed graves
Their throats lie open like wilderness caves

But they won’t catch me or mine
Unbeknownst to them we are made of brine

And, I refuse to give them water…

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The Surest Compass: A Mourner’s Song

Through the canopy of humidity and trees
The sunlight shines and seems to beckon me

From the moss covered wooden bench I lifted my gaze
Unsure how long I’d sat in a heated daze

A hawk crossed the opening as I looked to the sky
A helios portal just wide enough I could see her fly

My eyes burned from my briny forehead drip
As sweat beaded upon my upper lip

My heart beat slow but hard within my chest
As I wondered was it the hawk or me who arrived as a guest
On my journey I grew overwhelmed and had to pause to be seated on the path below
And From her flight path she saw my summer-flushed face aglow

It occurred to me in this moment we had arrived at the same place and the same time
There was a lesson for us both revealed in this rhyme

A profound revelation bubbled up from the spring of my root
The point had emerged from cocoon and was no longer moot

A matter became a lesson birthed from synchronicity
Progress on one’s path requires complicity

Comply with soul lest it leave you be
And follow your knowing like the wise growth of a tree

Rage against the dying of the pure light of innocence
Turn to mother nature with organic penitence. 

She will open portals amongst interwoven branches and limbs
Her winged messengers timing aren’t based on whims

The whole of the wild is a natural mirror
And immersed in its bramble we learn to see clearer

The irony of the ironic
Is the best medicine I’ve swallowed

It’s an antivenom kind of tonic
That breaks us free from what we’ve wrongly followed

The lesson wrapped rhyme is as simple as this
No matter your path the surest compass is bliss.

© Cozett Dunn July 10th, 2023

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My Great Alchemical Romance

Make no mistake. There is a great romance going on here.

But, it’s not with the man of my dreams.

It’s with the sound of the train passing outside the window of my hotel room.

The clickety clack of metal on metal while it rushes toward some destination I’m unaware of

The mystery of that unknown destination intrigues me.

It has always intrigued me. Paths that have no end. I dream of them all the time.

The haunting nature of a destiny I may or may not reach is more than I can take sometimes.

Isn’t that what great romance is all about?

A dance between what is and what could be

A push and pull between certainty and seduction

The liminal space that sits squarely between pleasure and pain

Knowing and not knowing at the same time is deliciously sweet

My romance has never taken the form of a dedicated lover who whispers into my ear their devotion to me

My romance has been quieter, subtler

I’ve laid on a freshly made bed of all white linens all day

The sun shining into my hotel window made the whiteness glow and feel…holy

It’s a Monday and the hotel is silent

I breathe deep as my eyes trace the blue sky outside my window and I wonder

I wonder why I’ve been given the path that I’m on

I wonder why I’ve had to do it alone

I suspect I will always do it alone

I suspect this is something the universe wants me to embrace

After I’ve worn myself out from wondering I realize the only thing I ever really understand is the moment I’m in

As the legendary poet Antonio Machado said, “Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road– Only wakes upon the sea.”

I don’t truly know where my path is leading I only know I’m too intoxicated by the intrigue of that to not follow it

My footsteps are the road

The curvature of the arch of my feet like delicate bridges from the heaven that is me to the earth that calls to me

My toes wiggling in the Mediterranean

My brown eyes beholding the Bosphorous

Ahhhh. Make no mistake there is a great romance going on here

But, its sensuality hasn’t take the form of the man of my dreams

Its sensuality has been expressed in the moments of feeling the immense pleasure of a plane lifting off carrying me to foreign lands

The sweetness of it found in the melting morsels of alien gastronomy

Its savory flavor flirts with me in the spice bazaars as the scent of the herbs hint at the mouth watering delights to come

This is my romance

Being a perpetual stranger longing for place is a bittersweet torment all its own

Who am I? I am the epitome of romance. The conundrum of contrast. The settled wild woman.

This great romance has my soul sliding across entire continents as though they’re made of satin sheets

I feel deeply and that is romantic whether I feel with someone or alone

I have a romantic life even if it isn’t one that is shared or witnessed

It’s an unconventional romance but romantic nonetheless…

I find my exhilaration at the moment of lift off

Like a bird set free I stretch my wings until I’m exhausted and sore

My body spent from flying I snuggle against the warmth offered in unfamiliar settings once I land

I am in love with the earth and all the life forms that teem therein.

I am in love with the sound of hundreds of languages and accents

I weep in ecstatic, heart-pounding joy that makes the entirety of my body and being shake at the sight of humanity celebrating their festivals and feasts.

I am in love with humanity. I am in love with all the emotional and soulful intricacies that are you and your expression of life.

This is my great romance. You who are reading this post….it is you because humanity is…you.

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