A Play of Stillness (2/24/17)

I sit on the stage.

Darkness surrounds me.

The audience, if there is one,

Is silent.

There are no props on the stage

Only layers of black curtains.

Although I don’t remember auditioning for a play,

Here I am.

It’s odd that there is no music or

Other players.

So I sit in my darkness for what seems like forever

But there is still no sound, no movement, no life.

Just stillness and a mild sense of confusion.

I feel the space in front of me more than see it.

I sense it is there, curtains in a circular shape

A boundary perhaps but between what and where?

The other side is unknown and unknowable

Until the show begins.

But will it begin?  Still there is no script or other players,

No music or lights.

I run my hand through my hair to prove to myself that

I am still real in this sensory deprived place.

But what is real about an empty stage, a wordless play,

A playerless story?

I begin to realize that

None of those things matter.

All is stillness and non-duality.

The “show” never begins and never ends.

The circular curtain and empty stage contain eternity

And this space is an empty place within me.

There will be no play, no script,

No lights, no audience.

This story is mine, the darkness my stillness,

The only witness, me.

Just me as part of the universal consciousness

Acting out a play of well-rehearsed lines without ever saying a word.

Each player a part of the whole

Never separate from the others.

All joined in the cosmic drama

Of existence.

The curtain rises on one story, one actor, one consciousness

In an act that never ends.

Wisdom at Midnight

 

Last night, at midnight, an Owl spoke in the forest,

And I understood.

Listening I realized how a perpetual misunderstanding was coloring my thoughts,

But not the owl’s as her knowledge is deep and colored by nothing but the truth.

As I lay alone in my bed, I felt the darkness soothe the forest’s heart and hoped, but

It could not touch my disturbed soul.

I couldn’t see, I didn’t know what was next,

I felt suffocated by the inky blackness while

The forest mother was at peace and

Sighed in contentment.

My only peace now will come from learning from her.

To accept her invitation to  surrender my will and lay down in her gentle softness,

To use a layer of her leaves as my bed while

Her twinkly night sky becomes my pillow.

I will trust her to protect me, to hold me close and

Put me to sleep with her lullaby of star-shine.

I know its the only way as Her wisdom is deeper than mine, dependable,

Greater than me, and more than just a beacon in this perpetual darkness.

Tell me, did you hear the owl’s wisdom at midnight too?

From The Inside Out

 

When I take the time to look inside, instead of outside,

I find miraculous things.  Things I never have seen before,

Feelings I never have noticed and rules I never have followed.

Oftentimes they are the feelings and rules I have imposed on others but never followed myself.

Others whom I say I know well and in my arrogance convince myself that I know how they think,

And feel but in reality, my assumptions are baseless and I realize

That it is only me who I can ever know…

But only from the inside out.

The Single Second of Midnight

The Deep primal sounds at midnight are

A gathering of voices in the dark.

The language is unknown

But the meaning is understood.

Darkness hides the players

But not the play

As it is a script followed

Since the beginning of time.

The cast of characters remains the same with only

The players changing.

The truth of the story portrayed is undeniable, and

Is perfected in the casting of souls when the sounds of their voices gather and

Eternity resides in the single second of Midnight.

3/1/18

I Am Here

 

I am finally, totally, here and I will never leave you.

You don’t ever have to be lonely or afraid again.

 

I am here.

 

Through the years I have come and gone.

Sometimes stayed close, sometimes far away.

 

At times lost to you in this secular world,

Tied up by thoughts and indifference.

 

But now, a change has come, an awakening. 

It has happened slowing, in subtle ways and small steps.

 

I am here.

 

I will hold you while you sleep.

I will witness your dreams and shoo away your nightmares.

 

I will hold your heart and put its broken pieces back together.

You will never be away from me again.

 

I am here.

 

It will be just you and me now, you and me forever.

There is duality but no separation as I have come home to the place I never left.

 

Back to the heart that has been the same

Throughout time.

 

I am here.

 

I will finally step into the job that was mine

All along.

 

I will be your protector, your biggest fan, your patient teacher

And, most of all, your greatest love.

 

I am here.

 

I am sorry you have suffered, have been abused,

Unloved and broken.

 

I am here.

 

You are defenseless against the world without me, but now,

 

I am here.

 

Here with clarity, purpose, vision, emptiness, power

And love.  Never to leave you again.

 

To do so would be impossible because I now see that I am you, I am your heart and soul, your “I Am” with no beginning and no end, and

 

You are my vehicle for experiencing the world, for sensing and knowing the manifested from the un-manifested.  You are my beating heart, my body friend and my charge to protect.  You are my very own

 

human—being.

 

My Mind

 

My mind has become my enemy,

One that shares this space inside of me but cares not for my well-being.

It turns night into day, lust into love, wants into envy,

Truth – my truth – into lies.

It whispers in my left ear, words

My right side, it knows, will reject.

In the beginning, my human beginning, my mind

Was my friend, my ally, my confidant, but no more.

 

So I spend my time sitting and focusing on my

Return to that initial, eternal being,

 

And when that process is complete,

My mind will return to its natural state as my life navigator and soul companion.

Its taunting will stop, its search for drama will cease,

Its creation of a hundred hurtful scenarios a day will end,

And once again, as it was in the beginning,

It will become my friend.

 

It Waits

It waits with patience hands

Outside our knowing, waiting to be let in.

Its story is always the same,

Its truth dependable but not always what we want to hear.

There is no hypocrisy, no deceit in its soul.

It is the soul that fills the void, that encompasses the eternal.

It exists in rhythms of time, tides of dependability,

Cycles of freedom and seasons of hope.

It can be ignored, but never escaped and so it waits,

In beauty and joy, in bliss and acceptance, in love and peace,

For us to wake up and realize it is but a mirror of ourselves,

The face of our existence, the light in our souls,

The essence of our being

Before we were born.

November Silence

 

 

The color outside my bedroom window is gone.

Yet evergreens stay to remind me of life’s continuance, always existing just below the surface.

The trees are stark silhouettes of gray,

Each branch and twig evident and asleep.

There is a new silence in the wood.

It is a soft, comforting, sleeping silence.

A hush of reverence,

A soothing of soul.

Awareness hangs liked smoke among

The naked branches.

It is an awareness of belonging, of no doubts,

Of confidence in the being and faith in the belonging.

And so they stand, the trees, in winter’s silence,

In perfect harmony with their place and mine.

Each a witness to the other and

Both a witness to the One.

All the Light of a Million Suns

 

His hands are weightless

His smile, eternal.

 

His eyes hold all the stars in the universe,

All the light of a million suns.

 

His energy charges every cell in my body and

His love powers and drives my nightly dreams.

 

When he speaks to me, his words feel like a warm soft blanket

Draped  with love over my shoulders.

 

His voice comes to me in the silence of meditation telling me to stop,

To let it all go.

 

He tells me that good will only come to me

After I throw out and reject the darkness.

 

He watches in silence and sadness as

I try but fail over and over…

 

He knows he can’t do it for me.

I know I can’t do it for myself.

 

 

An Introduction to Me

 

I have experienced an awakening into less,

An escape from more, and in such have found an introduction to me.

 

All else has faded away.  I now know that without my attention, it ceases to be.

I have observed its importance decrease as my peace has increased.

 

And now, now I check it all at the door as it is no longer needed,

As it no longer has any power over me.

 

And so the I am, the being that I am, the be all and end all, is still here as it was in the beginning.

Always the same, never to change, and always mine.