Lotus Mountain by Rod Hemsell

Lotus Mountain

While assembling this “next” collection of poems, written during the past ten years, it was gratifying to realize that there has been a development in both the forms and the meanings that are expressed in these poems. Some of the heights that were aspired to or glimpsed in the earlier poems and under other circumstances, have actually been grasped, experienced, perhaps even adequately transmitted through these later efforts. Of course it is still “me” and my experience, my language, my energies; and everything I experience is conditioned by my particular range of exposures, my limitations, my aspirations, my receptivity or lack, and so on. But, as I have said before, these poems are the product of an effort to allow nature and consciousness to come into resonance and to express the product of their interaction through an inspired flow of words, as far as it is possible. As we have been taught by the Master, the less we impose our personal mental predispositions on the process the better the product will be. This is a method that I have practiced for 50 years, and at least I can say that I have kept the faith, and this modest product is the outcome. It is also the product of the natural environments in which I have found myself and which have often inspired me; the qualities of nature seem to sometimes  reveal themselves to me in ways that stimulate a flow of words that captures and embodies her beauty and power, her wickedness and weakness, her infinity of creativity and meaning that I find irresistible. For that I am deeply grateful, and I consider it a blessing of the Mother of all forms and meanings who has enriched my life from time to time with a particle of her Infinite Grace.

Rod Hemsell
February, 2020

Book Details

Author: Rod Hemsell
Print Length: 104
Publisher: Auro e-Books
Contributor: Edith Stadig, Krishna
Book format: Pdf
Language: English

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Contents

1. RECAPITULATIONS

• The Paper Cosmonauts
• Jai Hind
• Dancers in the city
• Our divine contradiction
• Satsanga
• Child of the Dawn
• To angele mason
• Ideas
• The Music of Life
• Union
• Rebirth
• The blue gaze
• The visitor
• Our True Identity
• Evening
• Footfalls
• In the Silence
• Waking dreams
• Mystic mountain
• Flaming Apparition
• The Planes
• A Dervish Sensation
• … from Crestone
• The Concealment
• Bamboo
• Lotus Mountain

2. EARTH AND HEAVEN

• Pluto and the Moon in Transition the darkness dissolves
• At last
• Leaves
• The Lightspace upholds you
• Dis-appearance
• Love and laughter
• Release
• A summer sun, summer moon sonnet
• Clouds
• The Fires
• Travel Log (1)
• Travel Log (2)
• Lessons
• Perfect stillness
• The mountain
• Crescendo on Channel 7
• Inventory of offerings
• Hokku style poem
• The absolute moment
• Love
• A California Quartet
• In the Redwoods

3. POEMS AND ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST 2018-2020

• The Lake Goddess
• Rebirth
• Agent of Light
• Looking for the One
• Silence
• Listen to the Darshan Flowers Sing
• Weaving the Tapestry
• Buddha-snow
• Spring Lake Poems
• The Goddess’s Gift (1)
• The Goddess’s Gift (2)
• The Wisdom of the Goddess
• Quantum physics and Yoga
• The Garden
• The Cycles of Time
• Shakti’s Dance

Sample

Lotus Mountain

The Cycles of Time

Motion creates resistance,
as all experience knows, and its overcoming
may require great stillness;

All qualities are the expression
of an Infinite Truth, subjected
by existence to the cycles of difference;

Humanity is still on its way to its goal,
as the Masters of Wisdom all say,
but its calculating mind has intervened;
Its gardens of peace are only a sign:
beyond their walls there is heartless destruction
and peace and joy are lost in the night,
The struggle for mastery, beseiged
and fragmented by the cycles of delusion,
must return renewed on the tides of creation,
And the few who have seen
recover the light, rise above the mind,
reunite the poles of truth and illusion:
Knowing the Source of all forces and forms,
recover the vision of oneness now lost
and embrace all beings with love and compassion.

Then the battle of knowledge and ignorance,
of goodness and evil, war and peace will be won:
the power of oneness shall end division’s reign.

Shakti’s Dance

Dancer in the cycles of the Sun
Dancer in the cycles of the Moon
Dancer in the ring of Shiva’s Fire
Dancer in the heart of Love’s Delight

Dancer of the rays illumining darkest Night
Your light always shines like a bright celestial Star
Filling to overflowing the cup of heaven’s Desire
Overcoming evil forces with your rhythmic feet Divine

Holding high above your head the drum of Time
Winding round your waist the serpent Life
Flinging from your hair the rivers of the Earth
Empowering every soul to embody godhead’s Birth.

Sometimes you find a way to reveal your power and grace
And then you fill a human body and wear a human face.

…