The sadness is comforting.
Thank God it’s back.
Life is empty without it.
I think I need a hard-boiled egg.
More salt for my sheets.
Category: changes
Friday Afternoon Sit
As I sit in darkness, a glimmer of light shines around the dark edges of my closed eyes,
growing until my field of vision is full of blinding white light.
It is here that hope and love float freely on waves of peace and
Krishna’s voice sings along with the song of my heart.
He flushes away the darkness and frees me from the pain it carries.
I feel sorry for the darkness. It lacks the power to forget itself.
Do I have that power?
I continue to sit and wait for an answer.
As I wait, silence pervades the shrine room and my heart.
The others in the room disappear when I close my eyes,
their energy lost in the space between the cushions.
I feel neither their presence nor their absence,
until my eyes open and their collective energy floods over me intruding on my silence and peace.
The bell rings, three times and the session ends.
I must put away thoughts, cut off fear or bliss, end the waiting and
Reluctantly resume a presence in this material world.
A world of light, dark, hope, despair
love, loss, hate, and peace.
Silent sitting can isolate or open my heart.
The choice is mine to make.
A choice that can be good or evil,
warm or cold,
lasting or fleeting but really,
is there a difference?
Here and now or there and then?
The break is over and the sitting resumes.
Odd thoughts and feelings float out of the deep recesses of my mind
in the silence of the shrine room.
There are thoughts that come and go.
Some are gentle and kind,
others judgmental and cruel.
Shadows from the past sneak in disturbing my peace,
rekindling painful times.
I let them stay,
feel their pain and then let them pass.
They are not forgotten or forgiven but allowed to slip by, dismissed from my life.
Do the others I sit with feel my pain or know my thoughts?
Is my pain theirs too?
Are we really all the same?
But what if we believe in different things?
I, in my Lord Krishna,
they in themselves.
Their breath guides their thoughts.
His breath guides mine.
This retreat is a place of silence and peace.
A place to reflect on everything or nothing.
Their nothing is my everything.
My everything is none of their concern because to them, it’s not real.
So, what is real?
My thoughts, their nothingness, my love, their indifference,
My self their no self?
I don’t know…
I’m tired now.
I’ll start over later,
when the bell rings again.
Stunned
He lays silently in the snow
Tiny heart pounding, feathers rumpled,
eyes blinking, waiting for his head to clear.
My existence here, here in my space with its clear reflecting glass sometimes brings pain and suffering to the very creatures I want to help.
But he who lays silently in the snow doesn’t judge me.
He is innocent and unaware of the glass that stunned him.
So I give him space, wait a while and when next I look, my heart cheers to find him gone.
Flown away, back to his world of blue sky and white snow.
His glass-less world of silence and cold.
A world that I, despite my so-called intelligence and desire to help,
Could never recreate.
To Be
There is a thickness to humanity.
A dense and heavy layer.
A disguise, a cover, an excuse.
A veil of mystery waiting to be
Lifted, awakened, removed.
There is so much, so much in each one,
So deep, so vast, so hidden.
But there are those moments,
Moments of clarity, moments of knowing,
Moments of awareness for even the
Most unaware.
The richness that hides beneath
Comes to the surface, unbidden but persistent.
Always there in each of us, waiting behind the scenes, waiting to be noticed,
Waiting to be
To be
To just be
And be done.
Once More
This well isn’t dry,
Not yet.
I feel it stirring,
Waking up.
There is a sense of fullness in my head.
My thoughts are racing, competing, but none are clear.
They are busy working things out on their own,
Hidden from me in a misty veil
Until one, that special one, breaks through
And brings with it a flood of words.
Not from me but through me from
Behind the veil.
I can’t tell the veil when to lift,
It tells me, and after it has had its way,
Has said what it needed to say,
It slips back behind my eyes, rests and is silent.
And the words sleep and are at peace until
The stirring begins again and the veil is lifted,
Once more.
Just When I Thought I was Done…
Its duality is open and alive.
Broken but still alive.
It feels tight around my heart, but runs loose in my soul.
It appears useful at times,
A burden at others.
It has been too long and
I have grown tired of its games,
Its stubbornness,
Its selfishness.
I will send it packing.
I’ll sit on the suitcase top and stuff it all in and
Then I’ll watch it drag itself down the dusty dirt road alone
With bits of colored clothing sticking out through the hinges
Until it is only a cloud of dust fading in the distance.
But when I turn to leave, to finally put it in the past where it belongs, I will see it again,
Coming back at me from the opposite direction.
And just when I thought I was done…
Never Let Go
Seashells and wave echoes
Swirl and laugh in the emptiness behind my eyes.
I have let it go, sent it away,
Opened the lock and set it free.
This open space is vast, quiet and soft.
Wave echoes roll around the edges of my inner space
And blend with the stillness that never stands still.
There is a flow and a wash to this interior space.
A space that holds it all and more.
More me, more us,
All together in the vastness of love and peace, so come,
Kick off your shoes and dance with me.
Listen to the song of the seashells and watch,
Watch the empty space fill with us and more.
Catch the wave echoes when they come around again but
This time, this one last time,
Never let go.
It Will Come…
It will come to me,
It always does.
Not when I expect it to
But in its own time and
By its own rules.
So I wait, and wait
Until the time is right,
The rules are followed and
We turn to each other and say,
“Hello again, I have missed you”.
The Arms of Darkness
The woods are still and quiet tonight.
Exhausted from growing all day,
They rest in the softness of the dark.
No demands, no impatience to grow, produce, or succeed remains.
Nothing moves tonight.
The air is heavy with dew,
Leaves hang limp on relaxed branches,
And grasses lean on each other and sleep.
Dawn will come soon and
Growth will begin again.
The fast and noisy world will awaken and
Life will continue its mission to grow but for now,
For this silent night,
All is peaceful and still,
At rest in the arms of darkness.
My Mind
In the beginning, my beginning, my mind
Was my friend, my ally, my confidant, but no more.
My mind has become my enemy,
One that shares this space inside of me but cares not for my well-being.
Its thoughts turn night into day, lust into love, and want into envy.
It whispers its lies in my ear, distracting me from my truth.
I need to fight back and spend more time sitting and focusing on my
Return to that initial, eternal mind of being.
In time, when the process is complete,
My mind will return to its beginning state as my life navigator and soul companion.
Its taunting will stop, its search for drama will cease,
Its remembering of a hundred hurtful events a day will end,
And once again, as it was in the beginning,
It will be my friend.
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