When I lived in Tipperary I used to hike up here to literally see things differently.
As you look down on the small town from The Rock of Thorabh it is abundant and beautiful. Dispelled is the lack, flight or fight of terrestrial life. Cloud shadows chase across the green velvet pastures, while a tractor purrs it’s winding way from field to farm. The birds and breeze volley for attention as the temperature vacillates by 10 degrees c. every time the sun is eclipsed. There is a lot going on, it has the energetic enthusiasm of an early moving picture, all strobe and punch. Vibrant and alive you can’t help but be swept up by it.
This is not a spot of languid reflection but ect for the soul. Wake-up! It startles you into being present. Even the little ledge under what I call the “perspective” tree doesn’t let you get too comfortable. Embedded with rocks, lichen and wild determined growth it demands resolution from you. “Now what?” With this hit of insight pebbled by insistent goat droppings—it orders you to move on—offering only a momentary pause for the tired traveler to regroup, get the point and head in the given direction. Succinct and unequivocal, this seductively subtle look-out, is like a curly-horned ram up the ass. Forget diksha, this is like a 5-minute audience with Krishnamurti—whatever is bothering you, “drop it!”
Stillness is not really a lack of movement as much as a lack of resistance to what is. Here high in the Slievenamuck hills at the foot of the Galtee mountains there is an imediate invitation to transcendence. A gift that stops you begging for a future moment of release. It is total self responsibility. An actual acceptance of all that has been Given. An embrace of the constant power of Presence.
“What, then, remains to be undone for you to realize Their Presence? Only this; you have a differential view of when attack is justified, and when you think it is unfair and not to be allowed. When you perceive it as unfair, you think that a response of anger now is just. And thus you see what is the same as different. Confusion is not limited. If it occurs at all it will be total. And its presence, in whatever form, will hide Their Presence.” A Course in Miracles T-26.X.1.
The Rock of Thorabh, Slievenamuck Hills, Tipperary, Ireland
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