Strings in knots, like garden twine
Link us all together, one to the Other.
The Other what? The Other how?
All are linked, the strings of knots binding us all together,
There is no Other.
Strings in knots, like garden twine
Link us all together, one to the Other.
The Other what? The Other how?
All are linked, the strings of knots binding us all together,
There is no Other.
Don’t stop letting the ordinary
Amaze you.
Savor the taste of an apple.
Drink in the sound and sight of a waterfall.
Marvel at the cycle of the seasons and
Rest in their dependability.
Look for confirmation of the miracle of life in
Each and every second of being.
Become one with all that is sacred and holy and
Be astounded at the face of a flower, a new born baby, a summer thunderstorm.
Feel the positive energy and vibration of the universe
That holds you in its arms.
And sleep in the peace of knowing
That morning will always follow the darkness of night.
Enjoy this life you have been blessed with.
To suffer is your choice and yours alone to make.
Move away from the negative.
Reject the downward pull of the unknowing and let your positive light shine.
Share in the bounty of life and choose your own path.
No one can make these choices for you.
Add your positive energy to the world wide awakening,
bask in the glory of love,
And the ordinary will never cease to amaze you.
Light, moving at a speed certain, or at all, is an odd concept. It travels into what and from where?
What is in front of it and what is behind? Does it leave a trail or just disappear as it goes?
When I see a star, I see it as it was light-years ago,
A fact that adds to the illusion of everything.
We, you and me, are so close our light reflection is instant, but what if it wasn’t?
What if it slowed down? What if it took more time for my eyes to see yours?
If sound traveled faster than light, then I would hear you
Before I saw you, before I saw the look in your eyes, and maybe the meaning of your words.
Light moves at a constant speed but can be bent by the pull of gravity.
Is my gravity enough to pull your light off course, to lure you in, to change your path?
If light slowed down would you feel my touch before you saw my hand? And if so, would it matter?
Maybe God travels faster than light, maybe that is why we feel his presence and touch long, long before we can see him, maybe it’s all just a matter of spacetime and not our lack after all.
And at what speed do thoughts travel?
They possess no mass so can they travel faster than light? Can you feel my thoughts before
You see the look in my eyes?
I can feel your touch before I see you. I can smell the scent of your skin before I touch you. Thoughts form my reality of you before you walk in the door.
Your soul-thought and touch travel faster than either light or sound into my heart where they remain even after you have left me behind.
The space we occupy for this human existence is basically an illusion.
A beautiful, magnificent illusion, dependent more on our thoughts and feelings than on the laws of matter and space.
An illusion of God’s making with our permission and participation. I believe that light and love at their very core travel at the same speed, they travel
From my heart to yours and everywhere and everyone in-between – instantly. A concentric circle of waves, emanating from the One, fanning out to the ends of time, through and around us all. A time for all time, a time of love and light for all eternity.
Our place in this physical universe is in a perpetual state of flux and illusion,
But the love and peace, light and grace we feel in the arms of God that underlies all of creation
Are not.
I need to write.
I need to say what I feel.
But I’m afraid,
Afraid of my pen, of my words.
Afraid I will not be able to stop.
Afraid that they will take over my being and
Bring out all my hidden truths and fears,
Even the ones I’m not aware of and I will have nowhere left to hide.
It will be a flood of words,
A torrent of emotions.
Some familiar in their pain, and
Others new in their hope.
Can I be brave and strong enough to hold onto my belief in love
In spite of all those truths and fears?
The wind-chimes on my porch say yes,
The trees, in their silent way, nod in agreement
And in hope the earth turns ever towards the sun
Always believing in and following its light and love.
So I must be brave and follow the earth’s example and
Turn to the Son too with faith and hope and
Never stop believing in love for in this moment, this now,
It is all I have and nothing else matters.
Life’s lessons come softly in the
Darkness before dawn.
Like leaves emerge in silence,
Unfold in trust.
A trust that the world’s love
Is real and the unfolding worth the risk.
Although risk is sometimes all there is,
The risk of loving is pain but the risk of not loving is also pain.
My belief in love, trust and tenderness is strong in my soul.
It is the tenderness that lingers in the last kiss goodnight,
In the full moon’s sliver puddles on the bed sheets at midnight,
In the early morning’s sweet touching and
In the smile that wears the knowing of that early morning touch
All day long.
I have come to know and understand that life’s lessons are love’s lessons,
Sometimes harsh in their honesty but always right in their truth.
The past and future are thoughts, just thoughts
All of them just thoughts.
They are not my reality
Maybe they were based on reality in the beginning
But they are not it.
Now is it.
Now is his eyes,
Now is his hands, his smile.
Now is all there is
There are no thoughts to debate
No thoughts to mar this reality
No shoulds or shouldn’ts
Just him and me are all that exist,
Just now.
The 12-Step, codependent no more approach and the psychological analyzing and labeling are not for me. While fostered by caring individuals with only the best of intentions, both approaches are run by the mind with way too much thinking involved, too many judgments, stereotyping, etc. I am aware that both processes are based on research and the due diligence of learned people, but the basis for dealing with everything in this life came with us from birth and it is precisely all this “mind’ activity that blocks our natural coping processes from being available for our use making our collective ego think the learned professionals are the only way to go. I disagree.
These approaches no longer work for me. So why do I keep drifting from the one that does? Maybe it seems too simple, this recovery has to be more complicate than Eckhart’s simplicity, but his ideas are simplicity; profound in their power.
A power to make the name calling, the judgments, the classifications of another drop away as too much mind and leave behind only what is the observer in me behind my ego, looking beyond the ego of him to the observer within him. This observation does not nullify or cancel the effects of his or my negative behavior but instead creates an internal understanding of the difference between my ego and my being, his ego and his being, and an understanding of the workings of the “pain-body” and the power of this moment within us both.
From reading Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” and Mooji’s “Before I Am” I have experienced a deep and restful peace, a peace which has nothing to do with what he might say or what I might think. All of those things have no bearing on my inner peace. This is a state I have tried to achieve for years but it wasn’t until last night when I read the following quote from Mooji’s book that true peace became a recognized aspect of me. I know it has always been there as the I am behind the me and my ego but my striving and grasping for it has kept it at bay. “Truth is not some bundle of concepts that you have to believe in. Truth is not a concept, it is where all concepts end” says Mooji.
This peace, I hate to call it a realization because that implies that my “mind” recognized it, came over me unbidden, un-thought of, and at first, unnoticed. It crept in as I read Mooji’s words and sat in my bed with tea cup in hand. My body recognized it first and reacted in spite of my busy mind. I became suddenly aware of the physical symptoms of peace, slower deeper breath, normal regular heart beat and lack of thoughts. Not a blank mind but a mind full of just being with no room for thought.
A knowing came upon me and the thoughts that were weighing me down lost their power. It no longer mattered how it would turn out because I became aware that this being of I am, behind my ego, and this sense of peace that it provided would not be and could not be changed.
Knowing this fact and not just believing it have given me a freedom I never felt before. This morning the sky is bluer, the little birds coming and going from my bird-feeders seem to pause and look at me with an internal knowing. The contrast of the still leafless trees against the cloudless sky is defined like the 3D effects in the movies. Birdsong drifts to me from every angle of the woods and wind-chimes give a voice to the invisible wind.
The prayer flags gracing the front of my house flutter their prayers to the heavens with my every breath and the world stands once again as witness to another being’s awakening and says “welcome home”.
I will write it, I know I will, but
The thoughts are not yet ripe.
It takes time.
I can feel them building.
They linger always in the back of my mind.
I can feel their presence,
Taste their flavor,
Experience their glory in my soul.
The words to express the thoughts have not yet formed, but
They are getting closer and stronger.
I am almost afraid of them
Because I know when they are ready,
The flood will overwhelm me and
There will be no stopping the tide.
The words will come through me, they are not of my making alone.
They are thoughts and ideas that have a need to be born into this world
And I am only the wielder of the writing,
A keeper of the words.
Stars swirl in a midnight sky and
The forest tiptoes through darkness,
Aware only of itself.
The owls have come back.
Owl voices in chorus give life to the darkness and
A fox barks back in welcome,
His winter loneliness forgotten.
There is a thickness to life, a depth and a knowing, an observer and an observed. I feel the depth deepening. I see the” I” as ego and separate from the observer, when this separation is complete, bliss will remain and be all pervasive. I feel it coming; a flood of knowing is approaching. Glimpses of becoming, I see the 3D effect, the truth in believing without the believing, or the truth. To dis-identify with the body is to watch it change and grow, watch it become and not, watch it be and not and know there is no death to the being that is observing. The bliss’s will follow, don’t grab at it, just let it be.
It really no longer matters if he loved me or not, it really doesn’t – that is just ego. I say to him in my head, “you have no power over me” and the glass breaks, the mirror shatters and that which is identified with is gone, leaving only the essence of being, of eternal being, not dependent on anything or anyone external. A freeing of non-self but all self, without ego, a smiling face beyond thought, above resistance to what is, in spite of “myself” recognizing and seeing it in everything and everyone, even the many who don’t see, who don’t know there is anything to see or know.
My body changes, it needs food, water and rest. It doesn’t ask for it, it demands it and takes it. It is its due as a vessel of importance. It holds my humanness but is not who I am. The universal consciousness powers my physical being. It makes me breathe in my sleep, it lights my inner darkness with a promise of the eternal. It whispers “no fear, no death, no end to being” to my soul and shows me the way to peace. Its peace, like a warm blanket, descends to wrap my soul and quiet its longings. It holds and comforts until the longing stops, and then it holds some more.
To be given this gift of life for however long the body lasts, is the ultimate blessing. It provides a benchmark of sorts; a non-being to give being its meaning. It provides a sense of the temporary to illustrate the permanent, the enlessness of being. It provides the physical to complete the picture and therein comes the depth and texture of existence, eternal existence.
This little body, this perfect creation is lovely. I feel its aliveness; I watch in awe how in spite of me, and my abuse of it, it continues on. I see how I think of it, when I honor it with truth and love, it glows, it reacts as a whole with a flushing of the skin, it is telling me it knows, it hears me. But it is ageing, only doing what it is meant to do and I have been privileged to be able to watch as the un-manifested became manifested, how it learned and experienced and how now it is fading back to the formless again but richer and aware of being aware, it is all what we choose it to be, but only if we know.
Just be still and let it come, whatever “it” is, no concept, no thought, all freedom, stop labeling, feel and not, see and not, know and don’t, be without being. I can’t help but think in words, but try to stop thinking and be, be as the fresh night air that is flowing through my bedroom window. Sharing itself with my being, the fragrance of the moist early spring earth just is and buy its just being it imbibes my being with a wonder and joy. I experience it without thought as to the why or how of it, my being knowing its being.
When we can truly embrace this knowing, when we can truly embrace this mess that is our human condition, when we can finally stop pointing and touching with the broken finger only then can we experience the eternal hallelujah. As L. Cohen wrote, “It is a cold and broke hallelujah”. But thank goodness for the pain, for the depth, for the experience, for all of it. But to hold that being, to maintain that presence, to accept and believe in its fleeting nature is sometimes so far out of reach because of my ego, and when that unreachable feeling comes over me, then it is time to sit, to be silent, to let the being take hold in silence.
In my sitting, there are bursts of joy, bliss and understanding of being, felt not thought, a spontaneous smile but then I try to grab it, to hold on to the majic and by doing so I chase it back into the silence from where it came. By being silent and just sitting and being, I invite it back. It acts like a timid bird, wanting to be close but afraid of me and my ego. It shows itself and thereby makes the lack if it, or the absense of it when I have chased it away, so empty and flat, uncomfortable and shallow, dark and cold, I don’t’ like it. It is not reality, or more accurately it is reality without the knowing and I don’t want to stay there. But when I try to rise above it the effort seems too great. It is only when I don’t try that it is effortless. I need to stop getting in my own way, stop getting in my beings way.
The sights, smells, senses of life are wonderful. We and all the beings on this earth share our presence here together. We enrich each other’s physical experience; and by doing so we make that cold and broken hallelujah no so cold or broken after all.