An Exploration of Human and Divine
Sometimes just take a moment
And try and view the harshness of life
As a doorway through which
You can see the divine
It might be almost impossible to do this
Through the rigid beliefs
And the broken heart
But even the trying itself,
When done with sincerity,
Is the grace you seek
It is not outside us
It IS us
Stop imagining you are separate
From everything.
Although I cannot always promise hope
Or dangle any carrots of enlightenment
In front of your nose
And maybe sometimes we go to the bottom
And court the darkness together
Still there is always a loving tenderness
Always there is this compassion
For the human experience
I see your beauty
Your buddha nature
I see the love that you cannot see
A bitter sweet majesty
In all this suffering
The awakened heart sees all this
And through the tears there is joy
In the wreckage there is still dancing
There is no attempt here
To cover up pain or sorrow
No
Everything is laid bare to be seen
And in that seeing everything is embraced
And in that embracing is the peace we seek
Nothing is found through denial
Denial is the path of the ego
Embracement is the path of love
This is the path of love.
I wasn’t ready for love
When it arrived
It shook me to the core
And in that shaking
Everything fell out
I fell so deep into love’s ocean
I drowned
But in drowning
Something new was born
The I that had struggled so hard
The one that fought the world
And battled for survival
Was no longer in control
Had become but a tiny whisper
Instead there was devotion to truth
An openness and a service to love itself
A warrior arose
Someone real
Who had no need for defenses
No need to attack
This new one wore no mask
Played no games
Yet was not weak
But strangely powerful
There is only one force
That can change this world
And that is love
But it requires a kind of death
Of the one who is defended.
We must look at the impact of our conditioning
If we are too untether ourselves from it
To find what is there prior to conditioning
And what is more real than conditioning
Is a deep and often painful inquiry
Because we start to realize who we are not
And we see clearly where we give ourselves away
And where we lost our innocence
We see all the beliefs and voices we have inherited
That are not ours
This inquiry may break our hearts wide open
But don’t worry, from this heartbreak
Will pour a river of love
That will nourish new growth in ways
Previously impossible to imagine
There is so much more to the human experience
Than is offered by conditioning
But first we must first loosen its steely grip.
The world we live in is so very human
Messy, uncontrollable, fragile, delicate
Impermanent, emotional
And equally joyous, loving, enduring,
Creative and inventive
The divine within us
Cannot solve the mess
Of the human condition
Neither must it be denied
But it can be held in palm of the hand
As you would hold a beautiful butterfly
Not with tight and clenched fist
But with palm open and soft
To forget our divine nature
Is to be plunged into a world
That is merciless in its push and pull
To have no awareness of our divinity
Is to be cut off from that
Which feeds us and holds us in its arms
Divinity gives this human life its context
It is the water we swim in, the air we breathe
Our divinity is not a belief
In some God
It is the truth of our nature
We are human AND divine
Always, all the time
And when we forget or slip into one or the other
We become detached and aloof
Or lost and crazy
Divinity AND humanity
Is who we are
Our forgetting is the problem
Our forgetting is the cause of war
And fighting
The cause of fear and hatred
And the cause of attachment and suffering
All this stems from our forgetting our divine nature
And remembering our divine nature
Reminds us that we are one consciousness
Manifesting as separate individuations
And everyone and everything is equal
And everyone and everything is worthy of the same love
And it is our human duty to look after and care for each other,
The world we find ourselves in, and all life that exists around us
Remembering our true nature restores us to wholeness
And when we are restored to wholeness
The world around us begins to return to wholeness.
we spend our days
pulling our old wounded self around
like an old bag of stuff
trying to run away into the future
but, like a dark shadow,
no matter how fast we run,
there it is, always with us…
turn, i say, turn and meet whatever is there
whoever they are, whatever they want,
it’s always love calling you
stop running away
and turn, softly, with open hands
and welcome your own darkness
no fixing, no story, no reason, no blame
just the open hands of acceptance
welcome whatever comes
whatever the old pain
let it scream and wail and rage against life
just stay with hands open
by and by, sooner or later
you may begin to notice
nothing behind you,
the bags will be gone
you will be traveling free and easy
untethered by what was
and now fully available to meet life
with no agenda or expectations
freedom is presence
presence has let go of the bags
and walks with hands and heart open.
Life is a tapestry woven by God
Everyone and everything is in it
Nothing is forgotten or left out
The shapes and patterns
Are exquisite and beautiful
Sometimes brief and dramatic
Painful and heartbreaking
Yet all of it has value
And is included
In the vastness.
When you draw back your eye
Beyond the you-ness you always feel
And see it from awareness
You will be shocked by its Majesty
It may even stop you from thinking you know
What is good or bad
Or right or wrong.
