Welcome to the January edition of Connect, the Waking Down Teachers Association's (WDTA) publication.

This month's edition features a poem from Fax Gilbert. Enjoy!

With blessings on your journey,
The WDTA

Up and Down By Fax Gilbert
	Introduction: At the start of the new year I decided to put into writing two seminal identity shifts that occurred for me during this past decade. After trying to write about them this poem emerged. The first shift, at the beginning of the decade, was a recognition of myself as consciousness and the second, four years later, was a reconciliation in my heart of this identity with who I am in the world. This second came about through an immersion in the Waking Down work and led to my desire to become a teacher of this work.
Up and Down Up Releasing the branches of illusion I fall into the Unknowing My old friend finally naked Recognized for the first time without ornament The laughing fool prostrates for no reason And for nobody Tears of gratitude merge with an ocean of indifference I am alone My presence the mother of time My silence the father of space I am the palette before all points Beyond language and syntax This Truth is its own arbiter From here there is no mountain From here there is no there Down The Madonna’s gaze magnetizes my heart And turns me inside out She stares at me now from a thousand faces At once foreign and familiar Her love running down our cheeks Catalyzing all in its path With wonder, innocence and vulnerability The immediacy of this divine Overwhelming distance and division Penetrates our cells and graces our souls This Love is its own emancipation From here I exult in the mountain From here I am seamlessly there.

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