The great assumption

The great assumption                                                                              

We are the lie no one ever told

who readily becomes the lie

we tell ourselves and others.

We are the great assumption

that never proves true and yet

we can never quite disbelieve,

escape our own lies and the lies of others.

The whole of humanity is whispering lies,

the smartest people in the world, in history,

insisting upon our collective view of truth.

So it all begins with faith and ends in realization,

if it turns out that you and I and the world

and our assumptions about it

are lies to ourselves and others

and Truth is after all what the mystics

have always asserted it to be.

O child of God, you are the living lie,

Meher said, of the truth that is you.

My old friend fear

My old friend fear                                                                                    

I didn’t start out searching for God.

My quest(ion) was – is it possible

to live without fear?  Yes,

though apparently only through

the almost impossible task of surrender. 

Now my fear has stepped into a better light,

an aura of beauty surrounding its dark shape.

Wasn’t it fear that began my search for God?

My old friend fear that has kept me on task,

shooing me relentlessly from each bleak shelter,

chasing me down the path towards the light,

the peace and bliss which is my promised destiny?

O child of God, everything in illusion

is an integral part of your unfolding.

The preliminary beauty

The preliminary beauty                                                                                    

Aren’t we beautiful?  Aren't we brave?

We try so hard

to please our Lord, to serve Him,

to give of ourselves, to connect with others.

We are not very good at it

but that doesn't weaken our resolve.

My very young granddaughter

is just learning to use her fingers.

Grasping clumsily at objects.

She’s not very good at it,

but it’s the beauty of her efforts,

the concentration, determination

and my already knowing she will one day

use her hands with such perfect grace

to express her love, to give and receive,

to serve and please her Lord.

O child of God, the more you see the preliminary beauty,

the nearer you are to the viewpoint of God.  

Journey to nowhere

Journey to nowhere                                                                                  

I’m no longer on a spiritual quest

nor in a battle for that matter,

though my low desires continue to manifest. 

My sole endeavor these days is to walk on water.

Not the ocean but a flat wide river.

Midway between the banks, I stroll

facing upstream with a pace only brisk enough

to keep my position fixed.  It’s not a trial

of faith. Often I fall, get sucked under,

find myself swept farther downstream.  No matter. 

With long-suffering effort, I shake it off,

climb to my feet, resume the balancing act

that defies the laws of the natural world.

I don’t look to get anywhere . . .

or not get anywhere.  I just aim

to maintain my place above the river’s flow –

a journey of constant failures; a journey to nowhere,

until the One who brought me here safely leads me home.

O child of God, your strategy makes no sense,

which is one point in its favor.

They also serve

They also serve                                                                                        

They also serve who only stand and wait,

Milton wrote, comforting himself in his blindness.

Stand and wait, stand and wait.

These days I have lain aside,

for the most part my quest

and comfort myself that somehow

this will serve Him best.

To stand aside and wait for my Lord

to enter and restructure this dark interior

according to His whim and authority,

my former strivings an apparently necessary effort,

the required creation for the impending removal

of this provisional structure and by His hands

its destined replacement, inhabitance and completion.

O child of God, surrender requires patience

and a certain passivity – a strong yielding to His will.

Naked to ourselves

Naked to ourselves                                                                                             

My Lord often stressed honesty,

not just with others but as an interior peeling down –

as naked to ourselves as we are to God. 

We can’t be perfect in this life, but maybe

we can achieve some honesty,

accepting our imperfection

as an essential part of who we are,

the human part, the necessary false

and transitory part which leads inexorably

to our transcendence and ultimate unveiling.

O child of God, the perfection open to you

in this mortal form is not purity but honesty.

The silent parlance

The silent parlance                                                                                  

There seems to be something sacred

in turning my ears around

long before my approach to the inner Path,

listening to the wind

upon the knolls and hollows

of my own interior landscape.

In all humility not traipsing about

learning from others how to live,

answering to others’ advice,

but heeding only and putting my sole faith

in that seemingly desultory inner voice,

the faint, unintelligible hints and suggestions

that come wafting across the moor,

often making little sense in the worldly scheme.

Having the great faith that You and I

shall one day converse until time’s end,

once I capture and master anew

the lost, silent parlance of my soul.

O child of God, to elude the self,

trek deeper and deeper into the interior.

The probe for truth

The probe for truth                                                                                           

I’ve reached the point where true

is not the opposite of false

or even the absence of false.  Truth

has shouldered itself beyond its borders. 

Its definition has been ripped from my dictionary.

Or maybe it was always like that.

In fact, the whole of my dictionary 

is an inadequate definition of truth . . . 

or what I suppose truth to be,

far beyond the grasping mind.

Such a great part of human suffering

is human beings clinging to a truth

that’s just not large enough to hold its meaning.

Not large enough to include everyone and everything.

O child of God, if you are sure of anything

be sure it is not the truth.

Face the music

Face the music                                                                                    

I never know the truth or always know the truth

(either one) and it is only my particular thumb

on the scales that bears false witness;

false also because of what it takes lightly. 

My thumb an adoption, an adaptation

according to my individual predominant fears.

The last neti-neti ends in nothing . . . or everything

but, perhaps it doesn’t matter what the truth is

out there but what it is in here

when only silence is left, vastness,

stillness and darkness, the guttering flame

at last having gone irrevocably out.

O child of God, dance ‘round and ‘round

‘til you’re ready to stop and face the music.

Ink-stained fingers

Ink-stained fingers                                                                                            

There’s no puzzle to solve. 

The crossword has been filled in from the first

(very faintly, with a soft lead pencil) –

an answer for every clue. 

We interpret it, in our mad dash

down and across, as a set of instructions

and with ink-stained fingers

put meaning to it, ignoring the inconsistencies,

the strange syntax, those troubling black gaps,

reading it according to our particular karma –

add the missing, leave out the intolerable.

There’s no puzzle to solve.  (Thank God!) 

We haven’t the equipment for it.

And in our blustering headlong interference

we ignore the original clues, miss the underlying solution,

cling to our dark, heavily-edited versions

rather than find the faith to live

without a solution, without answers, without a clue.

O child of God, begin to grasp the truth

by realizing your own profound ignorance.

One minus one

One minus one                                                                                         

The opposite of something is not nothing. 

The opposite of something is everything. 

(According to the mystics.) 

Roulette is a losing game,

round and round, round and round,

odds stacked heavily in the house’s favor.

The only way to win is to walk away,

a feat that has proven near impossible

what with the lure of the jackpot,

the mere exhilaration of the game

and the belief etched in the depths

of every mind that this elaborately staged table

surrounded by its fanatical players

is the only game in town.

O child of God, one minus one, say the mystics,

is not zero.  One minus one is God.

The word true

The word true                                                                                          

Nothing is true but God, said Meher.

That is – nothing to do with us is true. 

True? – such a flimsy word

dependent upon the false for substantiality.

As vague and elusive a concept

as heaven or Union or bliss

all of which become meaningless

beyond the purlieus of this and that.

What is true in the midst of a dream?

Which mist-veiled path leads up the mountain

to a realm of clarity, an awakened state

where truth is no longer claimed or spoken?

Once life and death are put aside

the goal disappears, is vanquished.

The word true becomes no longer utterable –

absorbed, let us imagine, in His great silence.

O child of God, you long ago stopped believing in words.

Now you are losing faith in truth itself.

Clouds of glory

Clouds of glory                                                                                           

Baba means father but also babe.

Your sweat-soaked sadra

before being washed was passed around,

the women mandali burying their noses in it  

to get a whiff of Your purity. 

Someone new to Baba once

picked up the same scent at Meher Abode

on Your bedspread under her bowed head.

Vernix caseosa and roses, she said. 

Vernix caseosa and roses.

A dewy new pale pink rose

born into this dusty old world

 

has put me again onto Your scent,

a newborn granddaughter

trailing perhaps clouds of glory

as You did Your whole long life, every step –

the fragrance of an ancient, inviolable purity,

the wafting, wondrous clouds of an unearthly glory.

O child of God, an old soul in a new body!

By dying and rebirth become yourself a child again.

The platypus

The platypus                                                                                             

I have evolved, similar to the platypus,

according to certain aquatic necessities

in spite of my sedentary, faintly terrene attributes.

It’s left me a rather misshapen hodgepodge

wondering at my true nature – if ever I was

or ever should have considered myself a river creature.

This late in the game, I hope to construct

a reed hut somewhere on the bank;

sit and watch the river flow where it will

and be not tempted to dip my hands, wet my feet;

no thought to follow where the river might lead;

no attempt to seek nourishment there, to seek a life.

O child of God, you are not the body or mind (per Meher)

of that illusion-soaked and oddly shaped creature.