There is bad news
Despite all your efforts
Everything is still out of control
And you are falling through eternity
Without knowing how or why you are here
There is good news
It is all ok
It always was, always is and always will be
And the more you can accept
Your lack of control
The more you can bear the bad news
Surrender of personal ego
To the inevitable
Does not diminish one’s sovereignty
In fact it affirms it.
Presence is a portal
Through which we know eternity
There is only one hole in time’s tapestry
And that is NOW
We are born of time
Like all flesh and blood
Like all form
Yet still we can know eternity
When we come to a complete stop
And allow the mind to settle
As the sediment in a bottle settles
After shaking
To intimately know eternity
For one exquisite moment
Brings an ecstatic wave
And an un-reconcilable grief
That our time here is fleeting
And gone so quickly.
My early years were filled with joy and excitement
Anticipation and the love of freedom
My teenage years were the destruction of all that I knew
The joy and excitement changed to foreboding and angst
My twenties were the playing out of denial of pain
Living in a chaos that allowed me to cope
My thirties saw the chronic repercussions
Of the previous decades
The impact of addiction
And relational dysfunction
My forties saw a ‘do or die’ situation,
A point at which I had to meet my demons
Or my demons would eat me alive
That’s when the door opened
My fifties saw the unravelling of my self
All the pain arose, the anger, the hurt and the fear
No stone was left unturned in the journey
That seemed to go on forever
My sixties are where you find me now, here, writing this
Wounded, weary, experienced, amazed, humble and aware
It all seems so strangely right
We are like trees
Everything grows us when we let it
Even the hurt and the pain and the angst
There is no answer that satisfies
So we must just allow the past
To be the fertilizer for the present
Peaceful loving acceptance
Of the whole journey
Is what I have arrived at
Not as an elevated destination
But as an ongoing relationship
That invites me to surrender
Again and again and again.
Some times I just sit back
And consider the infinite sadness of it all
And this very act allows me to consider
The infinite beauty of it all
Between these two wonders
Do I silently sit.
The human condition must be borne by each of us
Both our personal and ancestral tragedies and wounds
And the suffering of the collective
Somehow we have to expand our consciousness to do this
For the historic and habitual tendency we have adopted
To turn away from suffering, to ignore the horrors,
Does not, nor ever has, swept them under the carpet
Or made them disappear
All it ever did was create an enormous collective and individual shadow
That which is denied does not vanish
But lives in the darkness
There is great opportunity in these changing times
For everything to transform
And for humanity to begin living in an inclusive way
But only when each of us starts to transform our own lives
And begins living in an inclusive way
And that means we each must open up and face ourselves
And face the world
Bear the unbearable
Tear down the walls that we have erected around our hearts
Resolve our habitual desire to judge and measure ourselves and others
Purify our own shadow, meet our demons, welcome our suffering
And become clear vessels of the light
Not as superficial new age wishful thinkers
But as authentic, wild, humble, free, carriers of truth
Willing to bear the human condition
Even as our hearts break open
For we know that love pours forth into the world.
The world is increasingly divided
Don’t let that division become you
If peace and wholeness
Are your heart’s longing
You must put down all weapons that divide
Disarming ourselves is the hardest task
For it seems we are conditioned
To wage a small war on anything
That does not fit our own beliefs
And we each carry different beliefs
So there are small wars happening everywhere
To really embrace our truth as love
Those wars, those small yet insidious
Defend and attack wars
That keep the world stuck in division
Must come to an end
Therein lies the work of the warrior of the heart.
Do we cry for ourselves
Or is each tear also
A microcosm of the whole
The grief of humanity
Reflected in each falling
If each grain of sand
Holds the universe
Then each tear drop
Carries the story
Of human heartbreak.
There is a point on the journey
Of awakening
When you realize
It is all alright
It always was alright
It always is alright
And it always will be alright
Despite the suffering, the hardship,
The war, the loss, the grief,
The violence, the terrible things
We do to ourselves and each other
Still…
It is all alright
It always was alright
It always is alright
And it always will be alright
There is no way of explaining this
So the mind that is divided understands
It is not an argument or a belief
And it doesn’t stop the wheel of pain
It just brings great relief
For you have fallen into your god essence
And realized that separation
Is the most beguiling of illusions
But ultimately untrue.
To have a vision that drives you, or pulls you
But to live each day
As though it is an entire life
Fully and without holding anything back
This is the essence of the modern warrior
The birth, the life, and the death
In the microcosm of a day
What more teaching is there.
Friend, why not fly through the clouds
Into the firmament
Up, beyond the pull of gravity,
The gravity that holds us here
But pins us down
Out, through the outer layers
Of whatever field of energy
Allows the multitude of life to exist
On this blue ball of uniqueness
Into the dark and empty fullness of space
The first astronauts who ventured out into the darkness
Developed such a respect and love when they looked at home,
Alone and tiny in the great scheme of things
Vulnerable and miraculous in the eternal wheel
Why do we forget so easily
And become entangled in our pettiness
In our gripes and righteous complaints
In our arguments and wars
Remembering is such sweet humility
We are but flickers of light
That pass through the dark sky
Remember, remember, remember.
