Love’s Lessons

 

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.

Just Now

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.

Welcome Home

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”.

A New Peace

When the anger leaves, the disbelief fades

And my heart takes a deep breath and feels a new peace.

Inside I feel different, very different.

The shift in consciousness that I have longed for has finally taken hold.

I have learned through experience that I won’t die…

That this is not what will kill me and as a consequence I know 

I don’t have to be afraid, and I can accept that it will be what

It will be, or maybe not be at all… and that is ok.

Because it is so easy, so natural, so familiar

The anger has left, the disbelief has faded and unexpectedly

The peace has returned.

For this I am grateful. 

Other Things Die Harder

I like to think that it is settling down now, fading away, but maybe not.

It is done and yet…

Some things die hard, and

Other things die harder.

The light has gone out so

There is nothing more to see,

Nothing to look forward to, nothing and no one to hold and

Although the disconnect is intentional,

The physical reality has not changed, it has

Not gone away because, after all, I still remain.

My perception of the circumstances has shifted, slightly.

It is based more on the truth now but the intentional disconnect remains the reality.

Is it the same for the other? I think not. 

He has no reason and no meaning to his thinking as it is all based on deception.

He deceived me

And himself and

A life based on lies can hold

No meaning.

Some things die hard, and

Other things die harder.

It Waits

It waits with patient 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.

The Witching Hour

The witching hour,

A time of infinite possibilities.

Midnight is what I want it to be,

Sometimes magical, other times evil.

But the times of evilness are of my own making,

Mine alone.

It is my free choice, I can drift and float in the essence of magical wonder or

Chain myself in the darkness of a black soul.

Both exist in abundance

In the witching hour and I decide which to feed.

The ability and freedom to choose is a grave responsibility,

Frightening in its implications.

There is no one else here,

But they are all watching

Which choice will I make?

Witch choice will make me?

Monday Morning Thoughts on “Being”

 

             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.

Night Shadows

 

Sheets of white surround me in

A blanket of feathered softness as dreams of him linger

 on the edge of sleep, my being cloaked in night’s darkness.

Through my darkness, I watch the night shadows drift past the windows,

They have lives of their own, the darkness becomes them.

The textured blackness of night can be comforting in its sameness.

A sameness that frees me from the eyes of judgment.

And as I lie back and watch his image leave the edge of sleep

I feel him join with me in whispered prayers the essence of which lingers on when sleep has fled.

But they are short lived prayers and are consumed by the night shadows to hide in the sameness of the textured blackness

Unanswered, dissolving and alone

Forever.