As I ran in the silence of the early dawn
Held by the emptiness of mournful piano
An infinite sorrow came upon me
Causeless and peaceful
It was without limit
Soft and almost imperceptible
And inside it
Was a kind of exquisite ecstasy
None of this needed any explanation or inquiry
No holding on to it
As though it were life itself
The air, consciousness, love
I was there, in eternity,
As eternity, a moment in time
A witness and a drop in the ocean
I may never recover
Neither would I want to.
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.
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.
I wanted to post a new poem here today and discovered the new wordpress block editor format. I used it and I loathed it. I was like a monkey bashing around on a computer.
This afternoon I discovered the ‘classic editor,’ and I hope they continue to offer the choice. If I am forced to use the new block editor for my poetry I am gone.
What about you, have you gotten used to it? Maybe you are stuck in the classic mode as well.
This is how I feel about it.
We cannot change the world by fighting it
Even in these tyrannous times
Only a radical shift in our consciousness
Will bring the peace and creative alliance we seek
Our task is to embrace our hero’s journey within
To see and resolve all inner demons
To slay the dragons of ignorance we have invested in
And transform our own world from divided to whole
And then spread that unity far and wide
Through our vibration, our speech and our action
Then the world we sought to change through our righteousness
Will begin to change through our love
It doesn’t have to take forever….
I don’t want to offer you
False hope
Or magical thinking
I am not a ‘lets send prayers’
Kind of guy
I want to invite you
Into the deepest experience
To see clearly
How far we have fallen
Into an existential mire
And how only
A revolution of consciousness
And an evolution of relationship
With ourselves, each other
And all life on earth
Will fundamentally change things
This is not a band aid time
This is us laid bare
We get to see our good
And our bad
Our attention and our avoidance
We have set up fantastic systems
That are in danger
Of consuming our very souls
We neglect the earth beneath our feet
And our own emotional wounds
Little realizing they are connected
I don’t believe in false hope
I have discovered the only way
To transform is to embrace
And to embrace
We must be on our knees
Not in prayer but in humility
Today I sit,
Head hung down,
Tears falling
Heart heavy
Feeling the weight
Of the human experience
No medicine to cure it
No trying to avoid it
Just the pain of this grief
That comes with acceptance
I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love you.
The cost of not loving
Is too high to bear
We pay with everything
Everything we hold dearNo, the cost of not loving
Is too high to bear
And I am not prepared
To pay that kind of price.
I cannot contain my life within my life
All sense of myself
As a separate person has gone
And I have become everyone
And all things of creation
I am you, him, her, child and dying person
I am the sun and moon, the stars and heavens
Fish, dog and ant
I see the beetle scurrying across my path
And I am that beetle scurrying to the other side
I am all feelings and no feelings
Nothing seems to be mine
And everything is borrowed
I am dreamer dreaming
And the dream
All life appears to emanate from me
Yet I have gone
Nothing separate to call myself
A love, yes
A kind of reverie of love
A tasting of time’s fleeting moments
Everything here and then vanished
Only presence remains
In silence everything manifests
In silence everything dissolves
What, then, is real.
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
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.
