Annual Purple Heart Day, August 7th
Carrying our Heart to this World like a Life-giving sun
Here’s the poem by Hafiz from the book The Gift, Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master, translations by Daniel Ladinsky that inspired the song below.
LIKE A LIFE GIVING SUN You could become a great horseman And help to free yourself from this world Though only if you and prayer become sweet Lovers. It is a naive man who thinks we are not Engaged in a fierce battle, For I see and hear brave foot soldiers All around me going mad, Falling on the ground in excruciating pain. You could become a victorious horseman And carry your heart through this world Like a life-giving sun Though only if you and prayer become sweet Lovers!
This song by The Levens “Like a Life-giving Sun” is based on the above poem by Hafiz. It is a kind of anthem for me. It’s from their album My Friend Hafiz which is well worth the listen. Enjoy.
What is the Real Good News about purple hearted majesty?
The imagery of the battle is not one I like to use. It’s typically understood as between the forces of good vs. evil here in the land of duality, and the judgements thereof. It’s time we got over that.
The true warrior would rather die than give in to that! That is part of the path.
The place that’s broken open is where the light comes through.
All of we humans bear some kind of wounds from being born into this world. We bear them, meet them as adults and companion one another through to a released and peaceful end. We’re still learning ever more adept skillful means, and we have never been better able to do so than we are now.
We are supported from within our deepest reaches as well as from without.
These are not two.
I have been honored to work with active duty military and with veterans. I have also marched for Peace. I learned lots from both. Working with them gave me a compassionate understanding of what active duty military people go through. It also opened my eyes to what kind of recovery is needed for those returning from the horrors of war. Many carry inner wounds that don’t show, except in behavior when the “excruciating pain” takes over. That our veterans are killing themselves at record rates is an all too real problem.
Yet, we are here to bring forth the Real world. Most everyone I know well are wounded. They are battle worn. They are fighting to their utmost for Love to win, for Peace to prevail, for Truth to come out.
This morning I was inspired to directly offer a purple heart to one of them.
My meditation today became, in part, awarding purple hearts to the lovers of the Belovèd. That includes those warriors who’ve come before us, those undertaking the work now, and those now born into this world who’ve come to transform it, those who will come in the next generation. It’s for all of those who take on the burdens of this crazy world to transform them.
Would you like to accept yours? Would you like to give them out?
Here’s the Purple Heart Meditation for the Peaceful Warrior:
For those who enjoy astrology, we are in a time period in which Chiron, the Wounded Healer who looks like a Centaur (wild horseman) is traveling through Aries, the sign of the God of War. Thus we are dealing with the healing of our wounded warrior. It’s an archetypal presence we all have. Have you met yours?
To heal means to regenerate, be sound and healthy, made whole. It’s this dynamic creative all-powerful Presence of Love that does it best. It returns all that is exiled or wandered astray, been distorted, or maimed hOMe. It includes all the parts of us that have broken off contact and reunites them, makes us whole. Love is a unifying force and our saving grace.
It is a collective process, we are not the sole sufferers of our calamities, contrary to the medical treatment model. It involves the bloody stained earth drenched in the blood, sweat and tears of generations of warring people and their victims all over the planet.
We honor, with respectful recognition, all those who embarked on the mission sincerely for Good Reason whatever the cost. How we do that, given the machinations of the ubiquitous military industrial complex, remains to be seen, doesn’t it? But it’s time we stood for them and for Real Life, past and present, giving our younger generations a better shot at life.
They’d all like a legacy of peace for their sacrifices, right?
The eco-Logos (the open living system of conscious dynamic alive Reason) is working through us and through all life. Love’s will is to bring an end to our suffering, to bring Peace to this troubled world. So the Way of the Peaceful Warrior as Daniel Millman put it involves inner transformation. The soul transforms based on what input it’s given, whether essential or of this world.
It’s no easy matter to live true to the values and virtues we realize as we engage with our inner environment. Old bones rise up and haunt us: the ones that we project outward on the world. We can feel we are in a battle with inner forces that want out, want expression and action, want to be released in some manner that we hope lets us rest — while at the same time, we don’t really want to cause harm. We want peace and harmony, comfort and joy.
What can happen is that the two polarities in opposition can be held and can parlay: transform into something greater. It takes a third force for the reconciling law of three to operate. Most of us don’t know that, what it is, or notice it operating. The law of three gives rise to a fourth in a new dimension. It is evolutionary, appeases and reunites. That is real good news for those of us caught in conflicts, inner and outer.
It works like this: the two opposites sit down together. Each has their say about what they want, what is needed, what isn’t working out, and the impact of these experiences. Much can be learned in listening, and getting inside, grokking each side. Already that is an aware open environment which offers a third energy to the dynamic polarities. Energy begins to flow.
Different energies, like a life-giving sun, can come in, shedding light upon the matter, offering many of the qualities and dimensions available to the parties involved parlaying.
The third energy could be bold and daring, courage and a very real resilient strength that allows a vulnerable revelation. Our pain then is being contacted in an empathic connected way. Tension reduces between the poles that are less oppositional now. Usually when we hear someone’s genuine expression of pain, we respond with compassion.
The great gift of Ramana was Atma Vichar, which is the deep look within to find the arising of the “arguer.” When it is discovered that no such entity has real existence, silence and peace prevail.
More lyrics from The Levens’ song:
don't sit grieving go where you're needed carry your heart to this world like a life-giving sun. Carry your heart to this world free yourself from this world carry your heart to this world like a life-giving sun. What if you and love became one? what if you and love...
What if we and Love get it done?
There is this life-giving LightHearted Being of Love that carries us into and through this world, frees us from it — not from the pain that occurs, but from the conditioned state of this world in which most of us have agonizingly forgotten it’s nature.
We are awakening from that nightmare and standing free in the world knowing both the depths of pain, the dire wounds everyone carries, and that the remedy is right within us. When we are unable to access it on our own, we can call in our gathering counsel as
calls it. Here from her essay “The Body is Ecotone:”We live in a culture that prizes the atomized self, inappropriately foisting healing onto individuals when disease and discomfort are the multi-causal snares of systems of oppression within which we are stuck like flies in a spider’s web. We think we must heal individually and succeed individually. We are taught, also, that we feel and sense individually, keyed only to direct contact with our skin-delineated corporality. This phenomenon is known as “healthism” and is defined as the preoccupation with personal health and personal responsibility for health as primary often at the detriment of understanding that the health of one person is intimately tied to and representative of a whole population. Illness, trauma, and pain do not belong to an individual. They are a web that includes someone.
Our gathering counsel includes a web of Life all around us, part of our ecosystem, and in my world, includes interdimensional emanations of our true nature. Everything is Love, and loves to support all in fulfillment of potential, even at the sacrifice of themselves. It’s no sacrifice, it’s fulfillment. It all lives in harmonious balance.
Many of us have died many times in this exploration, this journey Home Here. There are many deaths that occur along the way, many ways that the purple hearted majesty has uptaken our lives as we give them over, time and time and time again. St. Paul said, “I die daily.” Let’s give him some purple hearts!
Dying is an initiatory gateway to what does not and cannot die. Its realization is sometimes expressed by the words “eternal life.” We find we are born again, resurrection of sorts happens. But what is alive now isn’t the same as the one who transformed, who transitioned from one state to another, and currently is living into that realization until it’s established throughout the ecosystem. This new life, renewed vibration resonates out throughout the web of life, through to all our intra-connected Being. Reality changes.
Once we make contact, get connected with Withinness, with One another, with our beautiful planet, we learn to commune, be and live in the natural unified state. We are not what we thought we were. That melts away to be rejoined with the pure pristine source. It’s a potential we all can fulfill in our own unique way — real good news, yes?
Unity expands in our experience to include all the infinite diversity of life, even in conflict, and This Love we essentially are welcomes it all to its hearth and heart, its purple hearted majesty. Reality isn’t what we were taught it was, either. It all shifts.
This Love transforms what seemed to be unlike itself. Its alchemical fires melt and dissolve away the old, refine the residuals, and through the open transparency of our souls and hearts comes the living daylight! The life-giving sun shines right through the very heart of us to brighten up and illuminate our world.
Dear brave one, dear LightHearted Rainbow Warrior of Peace, stay with yourself, with your impossible mission only This Love can complete. Here’s your purple heart 💜 to acknowledge your steadfast, even if wavering sometimes, commitment to a better ‘I that Is We’ in this world, but free from being of it. You are essential to the task This Love we are undergoes via manifesting and incarnating.
Your dedication: that you keep meeting the weaknesses and apparent lack, the sense of inadequacy that are all overlaying the essential aspects waiting to arise is marvelous! Thank you! There is nothing amiss.
What is This Love and Peace getting up to with you now? Even when caught in fear, loss, and conflict, that’s still getting up to something though we are often blinded to it. We need One another to mirror back our essences at these times, those who do not lose the HeartSight that clearly sees Who/What we are.
Please use the chat to share if you care to and we can hold and lift One another up. We can share the elucidations that have emerged from our victorious horseman adventures carrying our hearts to world like a life-giving sun. We can be with one another as we carry on, and are carried, held and supported in our lives by This Life of Love through One another and all the wild wonders of our world.
Perhaps someone you care about is deserving of a purple heart.