Not one crumb

Not one crumb                                                                      

Words fail me.

I’m tempted to wipe this page clean

like clearing tiles from a board game.

Not one thing do I know

of the great secrets and mysteries.

Not one crumb.  Meanwhile I continue

allowing myself  to be methodically stripped of fear

in a process far beyond my understanding and abilities.

‘Allowing’ a presumption, perhaps, an illusion –

in reality an ungovernable aspect of my awakening.

My choice (if I have one) is between love and fear

(fear is the culprit!) a conflict within my heart and head –

to battle strident and self-glorious my illusory enemies

or to fall silently on my Lord’s terrible outstretched sword.

O child of God, words fail you because you

speak of things you know so little about.

The world's damaan

The world’s damaan                                                                                  

I entered the Samadhi perfectly sane,

though frightened and weary,

emerging mad and drunken,

stumbling downhill to meet

the world which no longer knew me.

My agenda and the agenda of my Lord

are universes apart, yet hidden somehow

beneath the folds of what I deem

myself and existence to be, with His law

(the only Reality) taking precedent.

Coming around again now near the end,

my world from rough handling

shattered in my hands and no glue

nor strategy to piece it back.

Trying to hold the wheel and Meher

asking again and again what is your heading?

What is your heading, your harbor and why not

let the sea take you where it will?

O child of God, truth wrenches and tugs

and still you clutch tightly the world’s damaan.

Such dark solace

Such dark solace                                

The Prayer of Repentance we are assigned

to be scrubbed clean not only of our sins,

like the blood-washed lovers of Jesus,

but perhaps also of our guilt.

Guilt, the mystics say, being a fear of the past. 

Repentance and forgiveness –

that we might not worry and be happy. 

That we might be reminded of gently

and acknowledge our bindings, ignorance

and frailties, the various enigmatic directions

our lives bend and break toward in God’s great scheme.

That we might seek and accept entirely

the truth of our own immaculate being.  

Blasphemous to cling to guilt, a self-indulgence,

the ego’s attempt to chastise itself into purity   

and thus face not karma’s dogged law.

Such dark solace, they say, is almost impossible to forego,

the clandestine punishment, the cloak and comfort

of our culpability, and stand before God joyously naked,

utterly trusting, free of any separative stain. 

O child of God, Meher said there is nothing to forgive,

yet He grants forgiveness and authors the Prayer.

On being a human being

On being a human being                                                                    

When the prospect hits you,

in theory if not in practice,

that no one is responsible for anything

they think, say or do, you grow silent. 

Immobile.  A preposterous idea at odds with

being a human being, life on the planet earth,

societal structures, religion and morality,

relationships of every stripe.  Silent because

it’s a notion inexplicable and indefensible. 

And wondrous – how human existence

might have evolved from scratch

on precepts that are simply not true,

information incomplete about who

and what we are, every supposition

negated by our fundamental ignorance.

Start off on the wrong foot and whatever

territory you tread will be hostile,

foreign, fearsome and strange.

O child of God, a mystery within a mystery,

approach it with humility and faith.