His silence

His silence                                                                                                

Leather on the soles of my tender feet

protecting me from the sharpness of the path

must be abandoned before entering the Samadhi –

for the sake of reverence and humility

and simply because protection is no longer required.

Removed to get me into the right posture and mode

to accept what blessings (by His grace) might flow.

Years later, I stand at the threshold of His Silence.

My desperate yearning to understand must also

be abandoned, its protection no longer valid,

so that I might in reverence and humility

embrace the mystery, utterly at His mercy;

the right posture and mode to receive (by His grace)

whatever blessings He might choose to bestow.

O child of God, rejoice!  His silence

is the answer to all your questions.

The everywhere ocean

The everywhere ocean       

                                                       

O how I have paced the quay

longing to leave the shore! 

Throw myself into the ocean of Love

to drown there – a returning (I am told)

to my lost, original existence. 

But, only lately have I begun to suspect

that I am now (and forever have been)

continuously sunk, fathomlessly deep,

utterly drenched in Love’s boundless ocean.

God is Love, said Meher. And God is everywhere.

I swim about daily in the ocean of God

clinging to the thin veil that estranges me,

prevents my experiencing down to the marrow

my original and continuous existence

as a immeasurable drop

in the everywhere ocean of Love.

O child of God, there is no point of departure

for anywhere you might think you need to be.

The perfect me

The perfect me                                                                                         

Forgive me, humanity, I have not been

the human being – the father, son, brother,

husband, partner, friend – I had hoped to be.

Nowhere near, not within a country mile.

What I am and have been –

to complete perfection – is the perfect me.

No one could ever come close

to being as perfect a me as me.

Soon enough I’ll meet the perfect death,

this version of self ceasing forever to exist

and move on to what is next.

I don’t ask forgiveness from God.

I thank God for sharing with me

the opportunity of serving Him 

(fitting so aptly into His plan)

by being the unique, imperfect perfect me;

expressing precisely all He wished to be expressed,

attaining all that was required by my particular incarnation.

O child of God, don’t worry.  Be happy.

Perfection is in the eye of the Beholder.

Of stars and stones

Of stars and stones                                                                                 

When they plant my stone on the green hillside

nothing earth-shattering will occur –

the ocean and the stars will function as ever before

once my little boat slips under the waves.

Often I listen to the world now as if I’m in a casket.

Listen to my thoughts as if they were wind in the trees.

Listen beyond the palpable noises,

beyond the stream of my thoughts

to the silence underlying every sound, inside and out.

The silence of stars and stones.  The silence of the blue sky

behind the clouds.  The silence of death.

I listen to – whether real or imagined –

the silence my Lord saved up for a lifetime

and left for me and others to listen to in our loneliness.

O child of God, why not, asked Meher,

consider yourself already dead?

Wondrous to consider

Wondrous to consider                                                                               

It’s wondrous to consider

I might consciously be God right now

if I didn’t take so much delight in being

my vain, silly scoundrel of a self.

All the evidence is now in

indicating that to reach Paradise

I will have to leave my front porch.

Routinely, I sift through my verifications

calling it prayer, meditation, study and praise.

It’s much safer and easier than to risk the task

of true effacement.  Easier to sit tight

in this familiar old rocking chair

than trekking out into that lonely, austere terrain.

Repeatedly, I lament my predicament

and yet time and again – still –

I choose myself over God.

O child, impossibly difficult, Meher Baba said,

to become what you already are.

God-sent

God-sent                                                                                                   

If my virtue requires a villain

I can be sure that I’m duping myself,

dabbling in duality with a quality

that belongs to another realm.

True virtue is God-sent, borne

of benevolence, humility and equanimity. 

It breaks us down – nearer to dust and ashes.

Virtue that lifts us above others

is a subtle self promotion, an empty grand gesture

that for whatever good it does,

adds to the darkness, the ignorance

and hypocrisy of ourselves and the world.

O child of God, in the depths of a ruse

nothing is ever completely what it seems.

The great keys

The great keys                                                                                          

Late in the fight, I have stepped back

a few paces, employing the ropes

and corners, the quiet areas of the ring.

I have retreated from the immediate fray

(let my opponent bring the fight to me)

but not from the contest,

adjusting my efforts toward

the whispered strategies of the one

who remains ever in my corner,

grooming me for an eventual triumph.

O child of God, in the battle of the spirit

attentiveness is one of the great keys to victory.

Bark and bite

Bark and bite                                                                                           

The doorbell rings and in a pavlovian reaction

the sleeping dog leaps to the threshold

barking, snarling, poised for combat,

warily assessing the danger of the intrusion. 

The ego is an indefatigable usurper

who considers its proper (God-given) role

to be the judge and protector of every approach,

threatening or benevolent.

Whenever the householder’s particular sanctuary

is even mildly challenged, a button is pushed,

the alarm sounds, the watchdog leaps into action,

protecting its home and master. 

Few, if any, can train their faithful dog

to ignore and betray its natural instincts.

The best that might be negotiated

is the point at which the command

is firmly assumed and established

by the master of both house and dog.

O child of God, humility is the eventual

quelling of the watchdog’s bark and bite.

Five

Five                                                                                                            

I have not been a lover in this lifetime

but an analyst and a calculator.

Evaluate – accept or reject.

What adds up must be true;

what doesn’t add up must not be true.

Only recently have I learned

there are innumerable dimensions

to every simple equation

and innumerable equations

yet to be proven.

A lifetime of effort with nothing to show

but ignorance, ambiguity, partiality and error.

The infinite spaces of all the data

I am not privy to means nothing will ever add up

until I accept the notion that somewhere

beyond me, at every moment, two and two make five.

O child of God, Meher said all existence

amounts to one big zero.

The milkman

The milkman                                                                                                

Realization at dawn on the morrow,

the Master promised his impatient disciple.

After an excited and restless night,

the disciple overslept.  Arrived at the Master’s door

to find the milkman was now a Jivanmukta.

You might think this venerable story

points to the patience and constant vigilance

required of the devotee,

earned and achieved through ardent preparation  

(obedience, renunciation, prayers and penances).

But, no.  That’s not it.

The milkman owned none of these virtues

and yet was granted Realization on the spot.

It’s all according to the Whim, Meher said.

The Whim knows everything from the beginning

and knows always where it should flow.

O child of God, always one

with the Whim is the Perfect One.

That bright red apple

That bright red apple                                                                               

The great sin in the garden

was not disobedience but doubt –

a lack of faith in the perfection

and benevolence of God.

Sparked by a mortal fear

swiftly it flared into pride

and from there broadened

into resentment, envy, greed . . .

until, in head-swimming fashion,

the hapless couple found themselves

outside the fastened gate,

having to wander the earth

under the burden of their own

willful, intrinsic, self-perpetuating sins.

O child of God!  Still you forsake Eden

for the lure that bright red apple.

Soft words

Soft words  
                                                      

I have come not to teach,

said my Lord, but to awaken.

He began then using a voice

too soft for the human ear.

Speaking not, apparently, to our human selves   

but to our God selves, laying down the soft words

which would never harden into law,

scriptures, tenets and dogma;

reaching not our immediate ears

but engaging directly in the timeless,

immaculate soul and Self we always are

but who have not yet heard

the soft-spoken truth of the Christ

above the roaring of this world.

O child of God, shun the spoken word.

Become intimate with silent communion.

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude                                                                                            

Similes, metaphors, homonyms,

various other poetic devices resonating

with two, three simultaneous meanings

the more intricately nuanced the merrier,

 

expressing the ambiguity not only of words

but of life itself and pointing to, paradoxically,

the ultimate Oneness of Truth.

If a poem’s every word were to wear

a thousand shades of meaning, the poet would then
only be approaching a sufficient description,

depiction of the whole cloth Truth

(which readers, by the way, could only grasp

through the seine of their own private translations), 

that unimaginable poem ending up

an enigmatic everything and nothing,

having achieved the verisimilitude of Truth.

O child of God, lament not your fated obsession –

trying to squeeze blood from stone.

Not one thing

Not one thing                                                                                           

Remove thyself, said Hafiz,

for thou art the veil.  Speaking of himself

but telling me also the solution to my dilemma.

Or perhaps telling me there is no solution –

I am my own dilemma, dilemmas not

allowed into the kingdom of heaven.

You can’t jump over your own head, Baba said.  

No matter how small and low you get

or how high you leap, it’s impossible

for you to rise above the mire of yourself. 

Not one thing can ever become everything.

And the grievous truth about death (He said)

is that you don’t die, but escape

to become yet another barrier to freedom.

O child of God, as a poet you know well enough

the inadequacy of words outside the dream.

Ropes and rules

Ropes and rules                                                                                      

A colorful fleck in a kaleidoscope

floating this way and that, eternally

turned in the hands of a child,

uneasily, I examine my position –

explore every fluid arrangement,

jockey for situations deemed favorable;

fancying myself a player successfully

riding the waves, if not holding sway.

Having no power over the child,

I seek now desperately to know somehow

with an accumulated wisdom 

the granted ropes and rules of this realm

for the protection of my little fleck and brood,

no power to leave and trust

the turning of the mechanism

to the delight and whim

of that deeply mysterious, omnipotent,

uncontrollable and mischievous child.

O child of God, your autonomy thwarted at every turn,

still you believe your surrender depends upon you.

A kiss

A kiss                                                                                                         

You came to awaken but then held Your tongue,

pursing Your lips instead for a kiss.

Asking first that we clear the heart-room

for such an intimacy and our waking-up,

long love-look into Your eyes.

You came to awaken us, then roughly turned the tables,

asking to be roused from Your ages-old habit

of sleeping on a park bench

under the umbrage of our human, inhospitable hearts.

You came to awaken and what teachings,

what tongue, what tones are required

for a slumberer to awaken Himself?

O child of God, the God you seek resides

in the fleshy chambers of the human heart.

The kiss of the Prince

The kiss of the Prince                                                                              

Every Avatar could be called the Awakener

none having come to teach, words ineffectual

except perhaps as a backdrop.

And all instructions coming down to this: 

You can’t get there from here

by any will or effort of your own.

Dormant souls require the kiss of the Prince.

Can’t bear otherwise to leave their beds;

tear themselves away from the latest

exploits of their fantastical selves.

Only a perfect surrender bestowed from Perfection

(by perfect grace) can pierce the ancient spell

to awaken from its repose

the latent, dreaming soul.

O child of God, all words and ideas

are mere explorations of the dream.