Light on the Page

To The Other Side

Landar — Sat, 19 May 2012 09:41:37 +0000

19th May

To Cross The River

To cross the river only take my hand,

and we will find the bridge of no making,

where the sunlit water laps at our feet,

and the way we have journeyed starts to shine.

Take my hand and we’re ready to step now,

though we’ve never once stolen a moment

to say how we know that once we’re across

the long days of parting will be over.

Only take my hand – our names will be one,

and the bright lamp of love will go before.

Past the river the ground will know our feet,

with the cool water’s breath all around us.

The truth I speak there will shine in your eyes

and the stars will bear witness to our faith:

no one comes to this bridge except the lost,

who will find the hand to take them across.

Take me with you across the river’s glass,

over the bridge spun out of our clear hearts.

The arch is steep and sheer, the columns deep

and the ascent as narrow as life’s way.

For the stone at the apex, a diamond,

to shelter us with its rest and wisdom.

Take me with you, as I take you with me,

our four hands linked to cross without an end.

Landar

To Cross The River

Landar — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:40:56 +0000

As I seek to cross the bridge of no making I know that I cannot go alone. For on the other side I will be One, and that is impossible unless there is unity. The arch is steep and sheer, the columns deep and the ascent as narrow as life’s way. The apex-stone is a diamond, holding both sides. But what lets me cross is the fact that our hands are linked – two with two, crossing in the middle, to form an unbreakable figure of eternity.

Do I know who I will cross with? Whoever it is has gone along life’s way with me. He or she is my making, my completion. The road shines behind us, the cool water’s breath rises up. Who do I seek union with? My self, my eternal partner, my lover? On the other bank of the river the ground will welcome our feet, its green light deep and untroubled.

Take my hand and we will cross, our human stories twined in fairytale. There has been loss and distress, parting and sorrow. There has been the magical light of a faraway flower which holds our image. Who will I cross with? Who am I alone for? The crossing of the bridge is one part of the union. The far shore is another. What is un-separateness? Do we have a right to seek the unified? Must we not place hands on that diamond, cross and link arms together, understand that the bridge only comes from our own being?

Best wishes, today,

Landar

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Author: Jay Landar

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The Poetry of The Soul

Landar — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:13:06 +0000

You will never grow tired of the birds. My soul is also in the nest, conquering heights by instinct before the wings are even formed. How is this possible? Because instinct in the human being is constantly evolving out of one thing and into another. It is accompanied on the one hand by memory and on the other by aspiration. One contains depths, the other heights. This is the poetry of the soul – the spirit sings in a deep past and a high future. Instinct swells, joyously, rebelliously, in the nest of the present.

I ask myself, how do I know this? Well, it’s visible when I stop looking. The energy and expenditure of life bring to the surface things which are apparent only when you are still. Thus youth and age both have their virtues. The one climbs mountains of aspiration before they are there, the other draws on deep reservoirs of memory. Instinct nourishes them both. But how can instinct elaborate these two things – as a bird elaborates its flight in the air – unless they are really there, unless they allude to realities? The deep glow of the past dawns on us in age because its truth grows closer – tipping us at last into the deepest reserve of memory, the spiritual light we emerged from at birth. Youth climbs in aspiration because it knows that the goal of flight is a real one – its very muscles tell it so.

Therefore, when I am still, the light of things past and things to be confirms itself in me. There is reassurance in this: in days of dullness and cloud the bird does not completely forget to sing. My friend the blackbird flies to the gable-end of the building opposite and pours out his heart – and mine – into the air. I know his meaning.

My heart itself is in the nest and waits to fly,

when I have mastered every instinct given me.

Cloud and rainfall bury me in thought. Impatient

for the sky, my life will not release the power to rise.

Yet everything is there that’s needed, save the light

to draw me up – I have it in conception, in

the memory of flight, which is instinct’s other name:

never to be forgotten, the heart’s ascent.

And though I neither fly nor fall I understand

the golden heights: they are born in me and I climb

back to them with each passing minute of my life.

Thus age brings only remembrance, and active age

remembers what was never known in time’s embrace.

I move without moving, come down without climbing

and fly by faith alone before the wings are fledged.

Do I envy the bird in the nest? – his soul is mine.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

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Author: Jay Landar

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The Physics of the Heart

Landar — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:59:59 +0000

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.

I think this is clearly related to the spiritual concept of Ascension which lies close to us at this time of year – the month of May. The work of the birds is largely accomplished – the nests are built, the young are incubating or hatching – and to a large degree the trees have succeeded in raising sap to their topmost branches. The song that spills out now has fulfillment in it and the leisure to reach up to the creator spirit.

The human heart does this consciously. The physics of the heart understands that each thought is a creative form which rises in a very finely-wrought, delicate pattern – just as the bird’s song rises – to the hand that made it. We don’t own thoughts and neither do we have the right to abandon them to the forces of the world. The physics of the heart is the one which can hold the bird in its hand without crushing it, which knows that ascension proceeds in songs and prayers.

And finally I see – in the mind’s eye – a gleam of light at the highest point. From this point the entire earth is suspended – and all created things.

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

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Review and Development Service

Landar — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:12:47 +0000

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The World Tree

Landar — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:37:37 +0000

Something you create from the pale, invisible template of imagination but which holds the entire earth in its frame: such is the World Tree. It’s important to conceive it, even as the Norsemen did – the realm of human beings in the middle, the shining palaces of the gods above, and far down below, at the very end of its roots, the shadowy kingdom of mystery you must dare to enter in your search for wisdom.

But follow your chosen root to its tip and you still won’t find life itself. Only dull earth. You have to search deeper still to reach the well of wisdom, with its rich nutrients of truth, pity and faith. Then what you bring up must remain, in a sense, invisible. Great Odin was enjoined to pluck out his own eye in order to receive wisdom. What he gained remained within him but his eye stayed sightless. The truth and power of wisdom is recreated in the spread of imagination and understanding across the world – like boughs and sprays of foliage re-imagined from the deepest source.

Yet human beings today are far removed from the vigor and power of imagining of the Norsemen. Our intellects are coated in shade. Instead of discerning the bright green foliage above we see only the shadows the leaves create. Each thought that reaches through to light makes visible again a leaf on the great Tree – and the middle branches are where human life exists. The squirrel and the harts of legend jump and play here. Does the Tree slowly become more visible again?

At last the whole World Tree stands clear, coaxed from thought, conjured from aspiration, as if from the mind of a half-blind seeker. It is no lost myth or figment from humanity’s childhood. But it is the residence of humanity, our conception of the gods, our guardianship of life and knowledge. It is not there except that we imagine it into wholeness and completion.

The World Tree

In my search for wisdom I travel

to the very tip of the deepest root

of the World Tree and wait for life.

But where does life come from that nourishes

those squirrels and harts which play in the branches?

Hand by hand in the dark I find only earth.

Rich water lies further down, suffused

with the minerals of truth, pity and faith.

I may not drink – but carry the sight alone

to the topmost branches and spread it there

like a crown of leaves, succulent and unseen.

And I journey now along the outer branches,

a paradise of long-forgotten leaves.

Why so? People have taken the shade for truth

and made it the measure of their dreams.

Each thought that lives in light returns the sight

of one green leaf until a canopy unfolds

of sprays and boughs original to mind -

and there my friends the squirrel and the deer can play.

A fine invention, this World Tree,

coaxed from thought, conjured from aspiration,

till it stands complete, the palest figment

of imagining. Can I say better than this,

that what I make from the heart’s own power of truth

supports the human ground of earth, what lies

beneath, and every countless dream that scrapes

the air? Imagine this, it’s there: the Tree.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

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Author: Jay Landar

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The Court of Life

Landar — Tue, 01 May 2012 13:47:10 +0000

Can you hear that blackbird singing in the pouring rain? There – he’s risen to a rooftop and is romancing the sun from its hiding-place. The bird is scaling the grey walls between resurrection and ascension. Its song curves beneath the rain. Now I see it – this song is my consciousness.

Wherever we find customs, conventions, codes we should hear the music of human life. And within that music we should discern the graceful, rooftop serenade of individual consciousness. But never for its own sake – rather because it knows what has been raised to life and what will, one day, ascend to its heavenly home. This song curves through all society and argues its case before the very court of life.

Music

No history, no society, no law,

only music, which is the form

of human life in civilization.

Consciousness is a tone within that -

now stronger, now weaker – and the hard earth

dissolves around my ears, leaving life’s chords

and urgent resonance, where once

there were streets and trees and offices of law.

Court

I listen to that single blackbird sing,

its notes curving beneath the rain,

its message for me alone but not,

and the consciousness in me sings back.

Who will hear, who will say this message

was for them alone on their day of rain?

The curve of song itself is what counts

travelling through customs, conventions,

to argue at the very court of life.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

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.