I have another Form in mind which I can elaborate in the air – in thought – much like the World Tree. It is the form the bird makes in song – the song which maps out a world of instincts, visible to the mind’s eye: the delicate, finely-wrought pattern its singing makes. The important thing here is what’s visible to the mind’s eye, because really it is the heart that grasps it, rather than the mind. And insofar as the heart grasps these invisible forms it re-creates what the Divine accomplished in establishing a world of instincts in the first place.

Ascension

The bird’s song maps a world of instinct in the air -

one so delicate and finely-wrought I hesitate

to send my thoughts out into its living weave.

But I must rise too and learn the thundercloud’s warning

as it visit’s the earth with a scattering of hail;

I must know the instinct that spreads its name in light

and dresses human beings in thoughts which dare to fly:

my spirits may lie low with me – my spirit sings above.

Now here, now there, I approach the higher bird of thought,

then the lower – each one shaped with the form of love

which once grasped it in its hand: this love I rise to.

And at the highest point of all a gleam of light

from which the whole earth hangs suspended, and the globe

of all created things. This physics suits my mind,

which holds a bird in its hand but will not crush,

which knows that ascension proceeds in songs and prayers.

Picture: Ascension by Rembrandt

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

I’m afraid that at this point, in the year 2012, I see the terrible monster of our age lying, all humps and coils, across or around our beautiful earth. And yet, in the spiritual sense, I see the brightest angels spread across the sky above us. What exactly is the monster identified with? Technology? Well, from one point of view consciousness has been technologized to an untold degree. But from another we all use it and live in it and express our humanity through it, if we will. It’s not decisive. The attitude that implants mechanization in our hearts instead of humanity? We can fight it – we can breathe with love and fire and remain ourselves. The striking cold of the mind? This is the one that frightens – it depends on the warmth of the ego to prevent the mind going cold.

But there is a way. We have friends in the future: future selves, future humanity. These people are looking back at us even now. Through our effort of will, through our hope and faith, through our joining with the angels in the sky above us, we create, link by link, a golden chain which reaches into the very hands of the people of the future. And then they will say of us, ‘They stayed, they remained, they believed – and that is why we are here now.’ In a sense there is nothing else to do but endure until the end – until the monster of our age has done his worst. And to hope that God will shorten those days.

This may seem apocalyptic. We tend to forget that the beast is alive and worming his way through human consciousness – through the heart, through the hands, through the mind – and attempting to lay hold of the human ego. If those hands instead hold the golden chain then a future is assured.

Proof

Can I write to the future that I know

you will be filled with faith? – I start it here;

that I can understand how you might grow

from the pains of this past? – I’ll be sincere.

The hurt and despoilation of our age

might force a change but then again I’d choose

to sing my purest song for you: this page

is proof that what I win you’ll never lose.

Thirds

The monster of our age, all humps and coils,

flattens out our earth with its deceit;

I have no truth to combat what it spoils

nor power to spike its heart into defeat.

But like a golden chain I link my words

to reach into your hands, my future friend;

and we may chop the beast in halves and thirds

by staying honest till the bitter end.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Picture: Jacob’s Ladder by William Blake

The golden stairway is a clear and vivid image in my mind. It’s there for me. Through the practise of innumerable meditations, rather fewer good intentions carried out; hopes allowed to grow, faith un-deferred, acts of love appearing above ground like the proverbial groundhogs testing the air for spring; through all these things the golden stairway appears. Does it happen in a moment? No – a lifetime.

But at the foot of every stairway lies.. a well. A stairwell. What depths are in the well! Its inky darkness conceals so much! But first you see the image of the stairway descending in reflection; descending to places your inner being knows just as well as those at the top of the stair. We’ve been there before, in a time of innocence, before we ever gathered up the hopes, the opportunities of faith and acts of love. What lives in the inky darkness? A thousand hurts, a life of things unfair. And every one of them as real as meditations, as good intentions.

The apparent quandary in spiritual growth is how to transcend realities, how to make the higher appear out of the lower. In fact it doesn’t happen this way. I gaze into the well; I muse and fret. Then slowly I see a golden shape appear. I realize that only a being formed of gold can ascend a golden stairway. The stairway is continuous, as it reaches downwards and upwards. The golden shape is myself – the being I create out of everything I try, and dare, and do. This being can live among the hurts as well as the heights. The well is filled with tears but the golden stairway leads both ways.

Fly

A spirit being on a spiritual stair -

what words, to speak presumption, or attest

the living truth: the reader should beware

of phrases never climbed and goals just guessed.

But tested thoughts and words themselves ascend,

each one a golden step to higher mind:

I won’t presume to speak what I can’t mend,

the fallen heart whose truth I’ll fly to find.

Climber

But at the foot of any golden stair,

a well, and in its inky darkness lies

a thousand hurts, a life of things unfair -

and only he can climb whose sorrow flies.

I sit before this well to muse and fret

and sometimes in its waters I can see

a shape of gold whose light alone will let

the climber in me climb – the shape is me.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Naked trees

smile

in their sleep;

the birds

bring meat and drink

to their table.

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

As many raindrops as notes of birdsong;

my ears are tumbling with sky.

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

So let me come back to you, the stones

in my pockets, the vast width of flowering life

shining in my eyes, the coughing, shambling

animals arriving in my gait.

Let me come with the human being

rising out of my limbs, ascending

to the prayerful spaces. Let me come

and welcoming be welcomed in my turn.

A very happy Christmas,

from Light on the Page.

Walls

And I am lost unless I give my being

as a path to those who must walk this way;

my humanity an empty nothing

unless it leads up to that simple door.

There is no entrance except I open it;

I am the light inside, the humble straw.

And I will be the sheltering stable walls

whose wood and stone remain throughout all time.

Road

No largesse do I have to offer,

no gift of plenty; accommodation;

room and board. But I have in my head

a cave, in my heart a stable.

These are yours. Your pains

are overdue; I have nothing

but what I am – too little

while the road cuts your feet and the night

deepens. But if you will have me

I will be the straw beneath your back,

and the light will go on down

a curving, winding road

far, far, far into the future.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

Picture: Adoration of the Shepherds by Gerard van Honthorst

The house of art is built with many grants – and there are those who value their new extensions more than the art itself. Therefore I must ask where does the value really come from? Am I alone in thinking that the artist is the higher mind which is housed in no facility at all except its sphere of truth? I approach this artist with trepidation because he is really myself and yet I cannot claim his glories as my own. This is because the higher mind – the artist within – defies classification; his name cannot be put on an application form. He belongs to the pure realm of ideas which no one can identify except in a conscious dream, a higher transport of creativity. It causes a kind of pain, like a dazzling by a brilliant light, to hold that crystal sphere in your hands – even if such a thing were possible. Therefore an artist will stop talking and create.

And yet it becomes necessary at a certain point to say ‘I am that’ – I can’t deny authorship any more than I can say authority is given to me. No true writer will derive his or her credibility from grants or publications. You know if you are what you have been given – given in a higher sense, as the angels give their light. I know the angels are there – they border on the area where the true self lives. They will find their way into earthly creativity because they are a first power, a potent force. They don’t need to be acknowledged except in the artist’s originality and truthfulness. But they would like us to come to the point of saying ‘I am that’ – I am one of you: a being among beings who derive their shining from the realm of the eternal and from their own efforts to get there.

Yes, we live in a world of grants and tenureship and publication – and there are many who would like to throw me and people like me out of their extensions. Those are the ones who would populate the world with stylistic abstractions. They admire and acclaim each other; they review each other’s books. But their efforts are not works of the flawless deep; they are jewels of the human mind as it exists purely on earth – not in the higher sphere.

Inevitably one looks foolish saying this. I might be accused of being jealous of the glittering prizes. But in the end the glittering prizes amount to nothing more than a sack of earth – and I will not flout my talents for that. Have I earned the right to speak? The only judge of that is one born blind who sees with sightless eyes what’s bought and sold.

Judge

And tile by tile I would mosaic my life

until that sense of splendor will show through

which lives in me despite the teeming strife

of life itself which lacks the tiler’s glue.

So is my pattern some pretence of mind

or have I paid for it with coin of gold?

The only judge of that is one born blind

who sees with sightless eyes what’s bought and sold.

Talents

For those who buy pretence the truth comes cheap -

they see alone the gaudy jewel’s price

and find no value in the flawless deep

where currencies are settled in a trice.

And from their house of gold they will cast out

whatever has not traded for its worth -

therefore I walk alone and will not flout

my talents for a paltry sack of earth.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

©landar 2011. All rights reserved

Image: Angel from Madonna of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci