For
what it is worth
No
time like the present, they say.
In
fact, per the Mystics,
there
is no time but the present.
The
Eternal Now likened
to
a still frame in the aperture of a projector,
preceded
and followed by
a
continual series of still frames
that
produce the Illusion
of
motion, space and change,
while
answering God’s
whimsical
query, Who am I?
The
answer is thus provided
through
an illusory witness and experiencer
who
escapes (only apparently)
the
timeless inertia and omnipresence of God’s Original
(per
Meher) unconscious state of absolute Oneness.
O
child of God, after so many years, still you seek
to explicate the
Mystery rather than embrace it.
A
plumb dead stop
Call
me Ishmael these days. Cleaving uneasily
to
a coffin lid upon these high, rolling seas.
A
mighty joke, said Meher, is life.
Share
it with me, Lord.
I
could use a good laugh.
These
stage lights have been on for ages
and
I’m yearning now for a darkness
as
I move toward another drowning
which
seems little more than a change of clothes.
Meanwhile,
I plead for annihilation,
but
all I ever get is death.
This
spinning planet appeared first to be fun,
but
then the motion sickness set in.
A
long dose of nothingness, just about now,
would
seem to be what the doctor ordered –
the
pendulum coming to a plumb dead stop.
O
child, you can always depend upon God,
but not to exempt you
from your destiny.
Zero-sum
game
I’m
a born again Christian –
born
again and again and again,
body
to body and moment to moment
so
that no one is ever at home.
Brahma,
Vishnu, Shiva have hold of me
as
my essence flits and flickers
through
the momentary transitions
of
creation, preservation and destruction.
My
body is subject to the physical laws
but
(per Meher) I’m ever as young
as
the moment at hand and ever beyond
the
reach of Life-in-Illusion’s zero-sum game.
O
child of God, you are not the body nor the mind,
not this or that. You
are (per Meher) Truth eternal.
Little
white lies
This
cold, familiar world seems so hardy,
but
don’t you believe it –
it’s
but a fragile, shimmering dream,
liable
to disappear at any moment.
To
grasp the gist of this poem,
read
between the lines
after
the words have petered out.
Their
white bleakness is the message,
the
emptiness that frames our lives,
the
comfort we take in the familiar
as
we chatter casually among ourselves
from
our various foxholes.
Take
care, o child, take care. Let not the world
entangle you in the
web of its little white lies.
My
childhood summers
Another
day marked off on the calendar
as
if it really does have a name and number,
my
life counting down now
in
months and days rather than years.
Death
has always been an abstract to me,
an
absence rather than a occurrence
and
these days I summon up
my
childhood summers
when
time was measured
only
in daylight or darkness
and
I reconstruct as best I can
that
guileless childhood abandon,
moving
untouched through time,
unobservant
of its inexorable passing.
O
child of God, Brian Darnell shall one day die.
You, on the other
hand, will live forever.
Bring
forth the ardor
I
recite a love poem for my Lord –
more
of a plea for love
than
a profession of it –
a
love I hope to one day possess.
He
knows of it already,
before
this thick-tongued,
faint-of-heart
suitor can deliver it.
The
words I choose – in fact, any words at all –
are
not an agency of truth
but
of a wish and a hope and a pledge
to
allow Him as best I might
to
enter every hidden recess of my being,
to
bring forth the ardor dormant there, the depths
of
which I have never had the courage to plumb.
O
child of God, the love you crave (per Meher)
comes from within,
awaiting only its retrieval.
(painting by Mark Hodges)
Waiting
for me
How
patient You are! Waiting for me to
discover
and
uncover my fallacies and misconceptions,
my
inconsistencies and hypocrisies
without
belaboring the point
that
understanding has no meaning.
Waiting
for me to shed my infatuations –
with
myself and others. Ah, indeed!
How
hardy is my foolishness!
And
my mind a galloping steed!
All
these years of Your serenading
and
I have yet to become a rose –
to
flourish and adorn, to acquiesce and allow.
O
child of God, if only you were as enamored of Love
as you are of your persistent,
disputatious inquiries.
The
melody of a flute
Last
night I lay in bed
listening
to my heartbeat.
I
heard the sound of one hand clapping.
Above
my roof, a roll of thunder.
Or
was it my stomach rumbling?
Do
I want to live in the body God gave me,
or
continue to roam
the
phantasmagoric realm of my mind?
My
Lord’s hand upon the pen,
my
every poem emerges
from
His Word and His silence,
a
psalm of praise
from
me to Him
and
from Him to me.
O
child of God, obsessively you wander the wilds,
pursuing the windswept
melody of a flute.
A
childhood scar
A
childhood scar on my left hand,
like
a testament and lifetime friend,
is
no longer visible
among
the intricate creases of old age.
This
poetry is a lightning bolt,
piercing
the dutiful gray.
I
am a part time stenographer
with
nothing of my own to add.
I
need to be quiet now. Everything
belongs
to Him, is Him.
As
you read these words,
read
the silence between them
and
ask yourself, o child – if God is the Sole Doer,
what is your function
and purpose?
Twigs
and mud
They
gave me a name at birth
and
I’ve answered to it ever since.
Sometimes
when called upon I wonder –
who
is that masked man anyway?
Maybe
I’m one of God’s sparrows
settled
into a nest of twigs and mud.
The
truth is I’ve never learned
who
I am; only my habits.
As
I meticulously strive to make certain
I
am never a surprise to myself.
At
my birth they wrote down who I am.
I’ve
lived a long life under that name
and
yet, still, a mystery I remain,
unto
myself and every other.
O
child of God, direct your gaze inward
and confront the riddle
of who you are.
The
miracle realm
At
the keyboard again and who’s peering
over
my shoulder, revising my text as I write?
To
believe in the Muse of poetry
opens
the door to other spirits –
archangels,
cherubs, seraphs . . . and God.
Daily
we truck in goods of the apparent,
rarely
touching upon the Mystery.
Yet,
we are offered but one illusory choice –
to
cling to our known world
or
to enter by faith the miracle realm
of
holy men, masts, Masters and Avatars.
No
one, my Lord advises,
steps
into that Holiness
with
one foot yet planted in the profane.
O
child of God, you have no choice – so foreign
is this transient world
to your eternal soul.
After
the Flood
I
was there when the world ended,
ancient
landmarks washed away;
the
rains letting up and my Lord appeared –
first
as Polaris guiding me upon the flood,
then
as Noah at the wheel, sharing the journey.
I’m
on night duty these days,
insubstantial
as a moon shadow,
just
present enough to tend to my chores
while
Noah guides the ship
upon
the boundless main,
beneath
the moonglow
and
the North Star,
awaiting
a new adventure
once
the waters recede.
O
child of God, for the New Life to begin,
the old life must be swept
away.
Nearer
my God to Thee
In
the Pentecostal pews of my childhood, we sang,
(as
they did when the Titanic went down)
nearer,
nearer, my God, to Thee.
Years
later, I was told by Meher
that
God is nearer than my breath,
thus
unsettling my resolve to inch ever closer –
God
being always at hand,
yet
beyond my ability
to
know and feel His presence.
Having
wondered for a lifetime if God exists,
my
Lord suggested that I should instead question
whether
or not I exist. And the answer to
that
might
relieve me of every burden
accumulated
over a lifetime of search.
O
child, get nearer to God (per Meher), by moving
further and further
from I, me and mine.
Rock
of ages
I
am being swept downstream,
wherever
the river takes me.
Ever
since I can remember,
perpetual
change and shift,
illusive
options, good and bad adventures.
Then,
in midstream I grabbed hold
and
climbed aboard a jutting rock.
And
I was overcome by the sudden stillness
after
a lifetime of flux and flow.
And
the clarity – from a view point
that
does not shift with the current.
Stillness
upon a rock in the mid-river’s roar,
without
past or future,
anticipation
or memory,
without
guilt or fear, only the quiet
solidity
beneath my feet.
O
child of God, as Bodhidharma proposed –
settle down where
there is no settling down.
A
prompting of the heart
I
come to the end of the highway
and
strike out across the rough terrain;
no
welcoming arms out this far,
nor
friendly company
and
no turning back. This is my path
and
always has been –
solitude
being a lifelong companion.
Only
the periphery changes.
No
hard proof of anything yet –
just
a few scattered clues
and
a prompting of the heart.
A
settling in to the notion
that
nothing much matters.
It’s
either grace or nothing.
Coming
to the truth of either
is
my only succor –
to
find out or die trying. Alone as always
except,
perhaps, for my Beloved.
I
can let go now His promises
since
there is no turning back,
no
turning aside from whatever
the
Truth might be.
O
child of God, examine yourself in a last attempt
to embrace your one
true Friend.
Heart
condition
Remember
Me, said my Lord,
and
forget all else.
Not,
perhaps, by thinking of Him,
nor
repetition of His name.
Remember
Him with that
which
is referred to as the heart –
a
warmth in the chest you might feel
if
you were in His physical presence;
a
soul memory from the Original Oneness.
You
are drawn to Him now from so far away,
so
foreign a shore, because
of
your recognition of Him
as
your one true Self.
O
devotee, honor this recognition;
let
it consume you.
Smolder
in its flame.
O
child of God, you have a delicate heart condition;
apply liberally the balm
of remembrance.
This
is God
Consciousness
brings to mind daily
innumerable
questions but gives only one reply –
whimsically
called God. At every turning,
again
and again, innumerable questions
and
the answer is always God –
a
short, neatly-wrapped, throw-away answer,
a
meaningless answer, no answer at all,
merely
the question itself reiterated and rephrased.
God
asked Himself once (per Meher)
(and
is still asking) the Self-same question,
Who
am I?
and consciousness arose
(and
still yet arises)
with
one silent, ineffable, at least partial
answer
– This. This. This is God.
O
child, so many questions you ask,
as if your mind could
ever contain the Truth.
Perfectly
apt
Everything
is perfectly apt, apparently.
Unparalleled
and perfectly apt.
Everything,
everything.
We
may disapprove, protest,
denounce
and abhor aspects of it
from
our precarious perches
on
the sleek, sheer surface of time and space,
but
everything is God (Meher assures us)
and
in His Singularity
and
from His solitary, all-knowing perspective,
everything
is suitable and fitting
and
perfectly apropos.
O
child, would you dare take on the weight
of altering even the
least bit of God’s handiwork?
The
same fire
Become
a dust mote, the Mystics suggest,
or
a flake of ash stirred up
in
the wake of the Beloved’s stride,
just
as the universe is ashes and dust
stirred
up in God’s wake
as
He moves through the Void.
God
is both inside and outside
this
briefly-lighted cinder known as me,
parted
by a thin partition of illusion,
continuously
attempting from both sides
to
reunite and shatter beyond resurrection
the
charlatan between.
O
child of God, you and the stars,
declare the Mystics,
are made of the same fire.
The
real work
For
a number of years, I have been engaged
in
the solving of a large jigsaw puzzle.
When
completed it will contain
no
enduring image, merely
an
empty surface of pure reflection.
My
captivation with this puzzle’s
construction
and solution
lies
not in its ultimate completion
but
in the certitude
that
this is a holy assignment
granted
after a lifetime
of
aimless cross-purposes –
an
ordained inducement to explore
(in
full faith) the underlying truth
and
the hidden-in-plain-sight revelations
of
this puzzle’s mirroring, enigmatic surface.
O
child of God, the real work begins when you
see the futility of
every other move.
God,
God, God, God
Words
of elucidation on one level
tend
to obfuscate meanings on another.
To
say, I love You, God, for example,
might
be translated in a deeper realm
(word
for word) as, God, God, God, God.
O
pilgrim! One day (we are promised),
We
shall ardently, truthfully say,
I
love You, God,
and
know then the truth full well –
that
there is no I and no You.
And
Love is God.
And
God is Love.
O
child, make your every verse
a
psalm to the ancient, holy One.
