For Him also

For Him also                                                                                           

Time apparently non-existent before God

premiered His kaleidoscopic Creation,

breaking Himself into pieces – near and far,

large and small, lover and Beloved;

space emerging with time like conjoined twins;

color not existing until He broke

the Light of Himself over His own knee;

movement not existing until the fragments

swam to each other, embraced and kissed. 

Separating Himself; leaving us

to make our own sense of His strewn

bits, textures, shapes and colors. 

For us all apparently to exist and know ourselves

but for Him also, in relation to us,

for how could Love ever Be without a lover

and how could God ever exist without a witness?  

O child of God, the One became two, 

says the old man, then three, then ten thousand.

Pay attention

Pay attention         

I’m so broke I can’t pay attention

goes the old joke, a metaphor

for the human condition –

we are incapable of living fully

in the present moment and therein lies

our predicament, our betrayal and exclusion –

the inability to understand our true place

in this ever arising phenomenon

which is all we are and know. There’s no truth

outside of it, yet our minds wander away –

a karmically entangling rejection

of God and his gift ever before us

and a refusal to explore the mystery

within that gift – to pay attention

to how and why we got so broken and insufficient,

the one apparent schism in the non-dual Whole.

O child of God, Meher said life is a mighty joke

to those who find their place within the eternal now.

The existence of Existence

The existence of Existence                                                                  

Destined are we everyone

someday to be awed and enamored

in our lives at last solely

by the existence of Existence,

crushing and outshining all other

colorful, binding seductions

of this natural spectacle – the frailty

and fraud of our being the human creature.

Returned to that long-veiled, orignal,

invulnerable point of view,

continuously and only,

shall we marvel then in everything

we do and sense – each moment

face to face, toe to toe with the Creator –

marvel at the existence of Existence,

our lives at once profound and ordinary,

meaningless and sublime;  

empty, artless and full to the brim.

                                                                             

O child of God, snap your pen in two;

let the ink flow like blood.

By blood and flesh

By blood and flesh                                                                                 

By blood and flesh, our Liberator

was bound every step,

His superbly draped coat thrown

over delicate heartbeat and fragile bones

yet also by invisible fetters,

inviolate parameters

of His task and duty,

His sacred function and mission

from which He could not stray an inch.

A casual moment, a whimsical gesture,

not a frolic, a whit, a whirl,

but every move ordained

and subservient to the purpose

for which He entered the fray.

O child of God, the great freedom comes

with surrendering to Who you really are. 

Six foot grave

Six foot grave                                                                                           

Spiritual conversations should be

constructed of the negative –

neti, neti – until silence triumphs,

reigns deeper than a six foot grave.

Judgments, opinions, philosophies

have nothing to do with Reality,

evolution no truer than

the garden of Eden.

Nothing enters our heads  

without ignorance attached to it –

ever fishing in the wrong stream.

This poem, like all the others, has one message –

not this, not this – simply because

I have yet to stumble upon anything that is.

O child of God, the tool you use

to apprehend Reality must be abandoned. 

The answer

The answer                                                                                              

When we suffer, various sutras suggest,

God wants us to suffer or God through us

must suffer to know the shadow of Himself,

the painful Truth  being that God Infinite

is made of terrible variations of Love

and in the limited, pinched edition

of Who He is through us, the entire

sometimes harrowing gamut

is existentially inevitable.  Who am I?

God asked and we now are

routinely blessed, tortured, intrigued,

bewildered and beleaguered by the answer.

O child of God, to know Infinite God is to run

through every card in the deck. 

Cul-de-sac

Cul-de-sac                                                                            

Easier these latter years to be content

with everyday chores, knowing

the mind’s once distracting visions

come to naught at best, heartache more;

that flailing away at ourselves redeems not

the future, serving only to entrench

even deeper the recalcitrant self. 

All life’s conflicts are resolved here –

in the sparrow’s wing, the hand on the plow,

the hammer of the bell, the eternally shifting now.

Consuming a simple breakfast,

strolling the April garden, a tune

sung in the quiet dusk – a cul-de-sac,

not a crossroads of judgments, decisions;

regrets and desires, realized or thwarted.

No running out of time here.

Thoroughly encountering the mundane,

the mundane becomes unworldly,

extraordinary, no sacrifice –

enough, enough, more than enough.

O child of God, whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,

rest assured, it has just left the fingertips of God.

Yonder

Yonder

You might have to leave your home

and go yonder; leave your loved ones,

the land of your birth and go yonder;

for the sake of family and friends,

go yonder, yonder, alone,

across the wide meadow;

nothing romantic or remarkable,

just the quiet unfolding of fate

and the winding of the path into the hills

from whence comes your strength.

O beloved Lord, you might ask,

or silently require of the impersonal Way –

open Your gate – for nothing else matters

because everything else matters;

because ephemeral beauty, truth and virtue

are beautiful and virtuous and true;

because Love is majestic and Its own validation.

You might have to leave home and go yonder,

yonder, yonder on a singular path

until God and It, the Life and the Way,

are no longer out of grasp

but in your hands and under your feet at last.

O child of God, lonely is the path of Love

and impersonal the Buddha’s Way. 

Empty threats and promises

Empty threats and promises    

  

On a perch overlooking the ocean,

I sit in folded meditation. 

Between gusts of wind plaintively

whispering, stroking my skin –

the sounds of the crashing waves below.

Thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears

arise, wash over me and recede.

Though intimate and particular,

they are no more substantial and crucial,

no more belonging to me

than the wind’s caress and the surf’s roar.

No need to take seriously the fleeting touch

of the ineffectual, capricious wind,

the surf’s cacophony which is outside

myself and beyond control.  No need to follow

their empty threats and promises 

down the winding trail that leads

away from the Source; from the sea’s edge;

away from my body perched and folded

on the precipice above the breakers’ roar.

O child of God, from where arises this stranger

who you consider to be yourself?