This is just the simplicity
Of coming back to honesty
Openness, kindness
And the tender way
Over and over and over
It’s not complex or tough to work out
It’s simple and requires only willingness
We walk, each of us at our own pace,
We stumble, we fall, we rise, we move on
We recognize that journey
In each other’s eyes and words
And it triggers compassion
But no lecturing about truth
What’s to teach?
No, we are simply walking the same way
Honestly
Openly
Kindly
Tenderly
Nothing more.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Category: poetry
Go Beyond All Definition
Don’t fit so neatly into any definition
You are not your role
Not your name
Not your job
Not woman or man
You are not your age
Your style or your character
You are not your family
Not your history
Not your wounds or your traumas
Not your successes or failures
You are not your net worth
Or your house
Your stuff or what you have lost
You are not your loves
Your desires or addictions
You are not what you eat
Not your spiritual practice
Not your tribe or your isolation
You are not your identity
Your clothes
Or your culture
Your skin color
Or your nationality
Not even human
All these things arrive
On top of the truth of you
You are beyond the beyond
The beautiful nothingness
The full emptiness
Prior to any name or identity
Go beyond any definition
To your innate beingness
And live from that splendor
This is freedom.
Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash
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Softening Into Life
I saw the great movement
The rising and falling
The coming and going
The eternal wave
As it rolled along
And I realized
I would never stop it
No matter how powerful
No matter how angry
Or how right I was
Or how wrong
Everything and everyone else was
So I stopped struggling
Against life
I just stopped struggling
And said ok
Here you are
I surrender
At first it was tough
I kept forgetting
But it became a practice
A mantra
Every time I argued with life
Each time I withdrew and contracted
Or reared up in righteous indignation
I quietly whispered
And this too
And this too
And this too
Slowly slowly a new relaxation came upon me
I softened into life
And life softened into me
A harmony arose
Within and without
And I moved easier in the world
What great change we are capable of
When we just stop fighting life.
Photo by Paolo Nicolello on Unsplash
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Trust Only Silence
Trust only the silence
Out of which everything arises
All this talk about the fire
Does nothing to keep us warm
Only the fire itself can do that
We can talk and talk
About awakening
We can understand the world
And ourselves
Intellectually and philosophically
But only when we fall into the deepest silence
Will we know what anything really is
Let the talking stop now
Aren’t you tired of all the words.
Photo by Niklas Wersinger on Unsplash
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Silence Within
When you listen from silence
You are naturally present
No effort, no trying
Just being
But you must find the deepest silence
And that means going to the core
Down into the darkness
To the emptiness within
From which everything arises
That is the warrior’s journey.
Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
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The Garden Within
There is a garden within each of us
Left unattended and neglected
It will wither and perish
Over time it will be overrun by weeds
And slowly it will decay and diminish
We fed this garden naturally
When we were children
We were the garden
And the garden was us
There was no separation
And then life happened
And the garden became neglected
It was forgotten or deemed unimportant
But when the garden is neglected
Joy dies, laughter turns serious
And the innocent celebration of life
Has no place
Feed this garden,
Shower it with attention
Love it, offer it beauty,
Clear out the weeds
Let it breathe again
Do whatever it takes
And, with loving patience,
It will spring back to life
And sweet innocent joy
Will return.
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Love Served One Cup at a Time
Love is always here, in great abundance,
A never ending supply, the very fabric of reality
But the water of love must be served
One cup at a time, one person at a time,
One action at a time
Consciously, in small or great ways
Who will say they serve love?
Will you say you put love above all things
Will you say you serve it with all your heart
Not in some religious or pious
Not in a way that looks down on others
But in a way that looks across at itself
Can you say that love is serving itself
Seeing it in others, being it,
Offering it up one cup at a time
That’s what the world needs
From each of us
No more messing about
No more hiding from the glare
No more waiting for the right time
Or the right you, or the right alignment
But simply, through word, deed, and gesture
Through the ordinariness of life
In the heart of the marketplace
In the smallest of interactions
To serve the cup of love
It doesn’t have to be grandiose
It just has to be genuine.
