Poetry Chaikhana Sacred Poetry from Around the World

Secular or Eclectic Contemporary	About Dorothy Walters Timeline (1928 - )
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Original Language English	Waiting
Commentary by Ivan M. Granger Themes   Light           Recommended Books Marrow of Flame : Poems of the Spiritual Journey, by Dorothy Walters Unmasking the Rose: A Record of a Kundalini Initiation, by Dorothy Walters	The jeweled cloud sways overhead, waiting. Meanwhile, our cells are turning to air, finer and finer arrangements of light.     -- from Marrow of Flame : Poems of the Spiritual Journey, by Dorothy Walters Amazon.com
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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

In these few brief lines, she seems to be exploring how spiritual transformation is also a physical transformation down to the cellular level. Our bodies become "finer and finer arrangements of light..." What a great line! I imagine the body as a shimmering web of filaments and cells, somehow elevated, made lighter, subtler, and vivified by the infusion of new awareness so the body's network reorganizes itself into ever more artistic patterns of itself.

You'll find intimations of this idea in various sacred traditions. The body of light. The body of bliss. Having a new body in Christ. The Kabbalist's Merkava. The perfected body in alchemy. The shaman's body. The adamantine body in Buddhism. The Taoist's immortal body.

Often these epithets are taken quite literally, even by advanced practitioners. But this 'perfected,' 'immortal' body is not necessarily disease-free and unable to die in the physical sense. What most mystics speak of with these terms is that the body has been recollected into the full awareness: It is whole, complete. The body knows itself and knows it is alive. It is immortal in that sense, that it knows itself to be alive and has no part in death. This is not to say that the body will not grow old and die; rather, this is a way of explaining that the identity no longer imagines itself to be contained in the body, so when the physical body dies, the body of awareness continues to live.

Most importantly, the body becomes a vehicle capable of experiencing the greater wholeness of divine union.

Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2008 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.