We are each called to discover our own true authority
Thus we must eventually walk alone into the mystery
The teacher, the guide, the book, the way shower
Can point and advise only so far
And then, at some point, they all must be left,
And we must go utterly alone into the forest
Only there will we discover our wisdom
It cannot be given
It can only be discovered.
Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay
My friend, let us shelter here
Where it is quiet and dry
There is a storm approaching
And I fear a tumult and a tempest
But here in our shelter, let us not be distracted,
Instead may we dive into our tender hearts
And learn to love again in freedom and trust
We are like seeds, you and I,
And even if the storm destroys much of what we know
And we will be left in grief and despair
Still these seeds will inevitably grow again
Love, the love that is true, cannot die
It can only be occluded by shadows
And eventually those shadows
Will be exposed to the light.
– Image by 경복 김 from Pixabay
Let everything around you
Be transformed through
Your calmness and depth
Let the outside world
Fall into your inner space
And be reborn each moment
As the love it truly is
Behind the veil of illusion.
– Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
We stand on uncertain ground
We always did
We had just not noticed before
We search for certainty
In all the wrong places
In the ephemeral stuff of life
And all it gives
Is a false sense of security
Underneath which,
Left unexamined,
Is a core of anxiety
To make good friends
With our uncertain ground
Brings an end to that anxiety
And replaces it with a
Warrior like nature
He, or she, who’s stands on nothing.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
I am not quite sure yet as I have been very fond of WordPress over the years, and I appreciate everyone who likes and has liked my poetry.
But I am considering leaving WordPress and consolidating my focus and outpouring on substack.
I already have a presence there, and it works very well for me. I like the style and simplicity very much, and I cannot go on spreading myself out too thin and doubling up where I post. I am less and less on facebook as I actually dislike it intensely and they control who sees what poems depending on how much I pay, and I refuse to play that game. There is, as yet, no money in this poetry at all. I do it because I do it and it works and people get something from it. That’s it.
If I could be rewarded for what I do that would be wonderful, but I have tried Patreon in the past as a musician and it didn’t work. There is an option to be supported on substack but I’m not really looking to that…as yet (maybe in the future who knows, but I will always do most of my stuff for free).
So, I want to know what you think about all this, both for me and for you and generally. Do you have any thoughts? Feel free to tell me, or tell everyone, what you reckon?
Thanks for reading, and DO feel free to sign up and join me on substack.
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
Even in these darkest times
When things seem useless
And the predatory beasts
Appear to hover around us
Feeding on fear and anxiety
Know this my dear and tender friend
Everything resolves into love eventually
When the mind tires of its incessant struggle
The heart awakens
When there seems as though no solution is coming
And we are adrift on the existential ocean
Know this dear heart
Everything resolves into love
There is only love, no matter what appearance fear may have
No matter how despicable and manipulative
How persuasive and confident it may look
Do not yield the deepest part of yourself to it
Save that tiniest little bit in your deepest being
And know it, and yourself, and existence,
As love
There is such power when the veil is torn off
And we stand, naked and free, innocent and wise
In the authority of love
Don’t desert the truth any longer
It is this that unites us in our collective body
Brave the storm and know the love that is your birthright
Once forgotten now remembered.
Image by PIRO4D 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
Even if the world torments you
And confounds you
Even if it disturbs you
And distresses you
If it enrages you
And especially if it frightens you
If it derides you
And judges you
If it misunderstands you
And causes you to suffer
When it leaves you speechless
And heart broken
Love it anyway
Love it with enough forgiveness
And compassion
That you are set free
And not ruled by it
And then you can do what you must
In the world and for the world
But you are not driven by righteousness
Or cynicism or fear
And you no longer add your own suffering
To an already suffering world
This is how healing happens
By setting the world free.
Image by Ahmed AbdulMoniem from Pixabay
