The One Who never leaves

The One Who never leaves                                                                    

O pilgrim!  We come into this world,

grow up, grow old and depart, or so it seems.

This existence into which we are tossed

stays and we move on, or so it seems.

But a few have come over the ages to say:

I am the One Who never leaves!  

I am the One Who never leaves! 

They come to say: I am with you always

and you and I are One. O pilgrim,

we are the One Who never leaves!

Pilgrim is a misnomer – We are the One

Who never goes anywhere.  Never fades away. 

We are the still river the bridge flows through.

Ceaselessly around Us, the stationary One,

illusion arises, flourishes, then is destroyed –

again and again, ephemeral, temporal,

defined by duality, by space and time; ceaselessly

it flows around the One eternal existence which is Us.

Illusion comes and goes, comes and goes –

around the Creator, the Observer,

the pure Consciousness,

the One Who never leaves.

O child of God, maya is the apparently erroneous

notion that you are born, you live and you die. 

Perfect servitude

Perfect servitude                                                                                                

Mastery in servitude, Meher said. 

Liberation attained by becoming

the perfect slave – sitting raptly

at the feet of the Master,

the slave’s whole being ever attuned

and attentive to the Lord’s whim;

personal concerns and desires

revealed to be indulgences and distractions

to be shooed away like bothersome flies.

To sit in meditation is simply

to sit at the Master’s feet,

nothing to achieve but emptiness,

perfect servitude, the relinquishment

of a personal will.  Daily loss upon loss.

To meditate is to surrender the false

to the true, the fragment to the whole –

to surrender our misshapen, fraudulent identities

which underwrite all the calamities of the world.

O child of God, maya is the ignorance

of Who you really are.

The shelter

The shelter         

There’s a shelter, rain on the roof,

wind in the trees, the only sound.

And your own breath.

Leave behind the raging storm.

Hard to find and keep,

a hidden niche in a valley

deep with loneliness, habit and fear;

false assurances, reckless promises;

the urge for artificial light.

This is where the new life begins,

a different journey, the outward,

the known discarded, trusting someone,

something other than yourself,

shrugging off the weight of the world

and reaching out a hand

to be led wherever truth may take you;

the small room where you trust

because you no longer care

and give yourself over to the steadfast shelter

of the only permanence you have ever met.

O child of God, Meher Baba said,

take your stand on the truth within.

Paper tiger

Paper tiger                                                                                               

At some point, the path becomes self-verifying,

its own guide; with easily discernible boundaries.

At some turn in the road, annihilation

portends freedom, the right thing to do;

the only treasure to give.  Every self-assertion

becomes transparent and repugnant;

every question identified as the dodge,

deflection that it is; every guile pathetic,

the crumbling castle, feet of clay;

the paper tiger insufficient in its roar. 

At some point, the arrows fail to penetrate

and the clamor of the crowd, the invalidation

of the enchanted, the drunken and oblivious

become palm leaves under donkey hooves,

aiding the pilgrim to wend his the way. 

At some arrival, you swing through a door

and though you weave in and out for a time thereafter,

losing your grip and footing, there’s no turning back,

no way to remain that which you no longer

seem to be and have lifelong been.

O child of God, the path never gets easier

but dedication brings surety and daring. 

A trick of light

A trick of light                                                                                           

Through the gate the threaded film,

frame by frame, rolls and unrolls. 

We’re made of the same mere trick of light,

not existing beyond the whole,

defined and determined by the Source

and by everything around us.

So our task, it seems, in mid-performance,

is to espy the truth of our falsity,

non-separation, non-superiority, and comply. 

To live falsely is suffering’s cause.

To live truthfully brings peace, and ultimate

liberation – to ourselves and others.

Various methods, the Masters use

to instruct us in this conscious dissolution,

this intentional yielding – ways

of controlled, provisional self-effacement,

beneficial in themselves but destined

to be eventually gone beyond and laid aside.

O child of God, Meher proclaimed continuously

in His silence – we are not we but One.

One brushstroke

One brushstroke                                                                                               

He Who gifted the most gifted –

every saint, genius and artist who ever lived –

is painting every momenta meticulous portrait
of existence while nearby I stand,

standard issue brush and palette in hand.

What new theme or rectification,

what shade and stroke dare I contribute

to His underlying expertise –

even to my own small portrait and portion

of the vast canvas – when anything at all

is a presumption beyond my ability and limited view?

Surely, my judgment and opinion will only add

to the chaos and conflict of all the other countless
contributions, perspectives, advocacies and interdictions.

Surely, the less the infinitely better –

a humble acknowledgement and yielding

to the autonomy, authority, the vision,

the omniscient artistry of the Master.

O child of God, forgo the temptation to add

even one brushstroke to God’s creation.