The freedom you seek
Is right here inside everything
Now and always,
But you are not
You are lost in a dream of yourself
Allegiance given to the imaginary one
Who claims ownership of all that is
Let go of the ropes
And see that imagined one
Fly off into space
And know that which remains
Is the freedom being sought.
Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay
It is simple
Each of us is a moth
The flame we circle
Carries within it
The freedom we seek
But we must fly around
And around and around
In an ecstatic dance
Of courtship
Before the moment,
When the dance is at its wildest,
We yield to the inevitable
Pull of that burning
God is us, the flame, the freedom
And the dance of courtship.
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.
There is no garden outside of us
It is a metaphor that speaks to our deepest
Eden is our innocence, our inner sense
A place that dwells in the heart of each of us
Our wholeness and truth
We fell out of that place
And we continue to fall out of that place
Each time we lunge into judgement and projection
Each time we see and feel separation
And of course all the time we are in fear
For fear is the vibration upon which
The illusory world is built
To return to our inner eden
That place of innocence and truth
We must meet fear and find out if it is real
We must transcend our judgement and projection
Without bypassing it
We must dissolve this illusion of separation
And upon our titanic meeting with fear itself
We must look it in the eye, stand firm and still
And say ‘no, no more tyranny, I am no longer available for you.’
Upon those words, if said with profound conviction,
The world of form, the world of the separate self
The whole thing
Will dissolve before our very eyes
And it will be as though nothing ever happened
For we will be returned to an innocent state
Of natural intelligence and wisdom
At one with the cosmos and each other and ourselves
This is the time of the healing
That allows us to return home to that eden.
Image by Anh Dang from Pixabay
There can be joy
Even in the midst of misery and grief
The flower will grow anywhere it can
And the sun will peek through
Even the darkest of clouds
If there is joy, celebrate it, allow it
Feel no shame or guilt
It is nature showing its face.
Image by Dimitri Houtteman from Pixabay
The deeper you dive
Into the darkness and mud
The more exquisite will be
The jewels you discover
You may have to sift
Through much sediment
And endless dirt
Seemingly without end
But, by and by,
You will stumble upon
Such wonders
And magnificent treasures
You will be in awe
We are searchers by nature
And when our searching
Is turned inwards
Something incredible happens
And the secrets of the universe
Are revealed.
Image by Tú Anh from Pixabay
Yesterday I wept for my brokenness
For the wounds I carried through life
For the fear of abandonment
That drove me for so many years
To seek shelter in another’s arms
My how the tears burned and hurt
Today I am cleansed and softened
Those same wounds have become blessings
And all fear and vulnerability
Has transformed to tenderness
Today the past is a beautiful and sad story
For the heart welcomes everything home
I had forgotten the sweet joy
That follows the rain.
– Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay
This falling and rising
This joy and this despair
All this openness
And then some closure
Around experience
Some contraction
Carried from the past
Or even an ancient primal mechanism
That unwanted trigger
That surges through the body
Clouding the mind
Obscuring our presence
All the waves of being human
The endless stream of thoughts
Sometimes owned
Sometimes disowned
Sometimes wanted
Often unwanted
All the utter discomfort
And the resistance to what happens
The argument with life
And the constant seeking of solutions
And then the laughter, the pleasure
The relaxation, the connectedness
An appreciation of what we have
And a sense of goodness that flows through us
All this, all this and so much more
Seen and known by awareness
Held in consciousness
As the sky holds the clouds, the rain, the lightning
The birds, the butterflies and the mosquito
Yet interferes with none of them
What would we exclude if we had our way?
The discomfort? The contraction?
The sky doesn’t exclude the mosquito
Although it irritates all it touches
We must be cautious about our constant seeking
We may be hoping for a life free of discomfort
But that is a futile search
Best to open and become our sky nature
And hold it all lightly, like a feather
In the palm of our hand.
– Image by Michael Schwarzenberger from Pixabay
How many masks will we wear
Before we realize
We were already wearing masks
Because shame is at the root
Of unconsciousness
And we live in a world
Where people hide their vulnerability
And hide their grief
Afraid of revealing themselves
This new mask syndrome is convenient
But, on the existential level,
Doomed to failure
We are born for contact, for connection
We are trained to watch each other’s every detail
We stare into the eyes and face of our mother
Reading with wonder every twitch, smile and frown
And now all we see are the eyes of strangers
Some hostile, some benevolent, many scared
Reaching out across space and time
Like stars blinking in a dark universe
We were already masked up
Hiding how we feel
This current masking brings us to our grief
The height of our apparent separation from each other
Secretly, on the shadow side,
I think many actually want to wear masks
We are at our grief point my friend
Breakdown or breakthrough, who knows which
I am sorry, please forgive me, I love you.
– Kaviji
Image by Poli from Pixabay
These coats we wear
Bought in childhood
Bright and shiny in youth
Slightly ill fitting in middle age
Worn out and frayed in maturity
Why not just throw them off
And go naked and free
Because when we try to take them off
We find they are stuck to us
And we are strangely attached to them
We want to be free
But the coat is familiar and safe
We want to be naked and open
But the coat hides our shame
It covers us in our vulnerability
And we don’t have to face the world
The coat is our investment
And we are reluctant to give that up
Eventually we may come to a great palace
Where to enter is our greatest longing
A longing beyond all other earthly longings
At the entrance we are met by a doorman
Who says ‘May I have your coat please?’
Photo by Velizar Ivanov on Unsplash
