Pilgrimage
We
are all wayfarers here and the best part
is
that our intimates, friends and acquaintances
are
in truth our fellow pilgrims
whose
paths we have stumbled upon
and
are briefly sharing – each of us
moving
in the same direction,
toward
the same destination,
slaves
of the One Master,
the
Maker who fashioned us and our world;
each
pilgrim inwardly guided and directed;
answerable
only to the One Who
knows
us intimately and loves us completely.
O
child of God, it’s a long and wondrous journey
through the hills and
vales of your own heart.
Locked
up
I
want to get thin enough
to
slip through the bars of my cell.
But
I don’t know what good
escape
would do me. I am unable
to
view the surrounding terrain
from
my lone high window on the wall.
The
main thing is, whether here or there,
I
would still be securely locked up
in
the embrace of my Beloved.
The
cell is bare but the prisoner
is
an old ascetic and is well content to be so.
I
speak of some sort of escape
but
where in the world would I go?
I
long for an experience
much
more substantial
than
this careworn world can give.
O
child of God, not just the world is careworn. It’s also
the jaded views of
your most persistent impressions.
The
prison of the apparent
I
imagine myself as one of those early astronauts
leaping
about in black and white film on the gray
surface
of the moon and radioing back to earth
(floating
visibly above me in the backdrop)
that
the moon is frigid, barren and bleak,
without
air to breathe; hostile to human life.
And
through this image I see that the universe is my prison,
the
mind and body are my shackles
and
my escape is imperative. O Meher!
Your
silence speaks to our hearts
because
our mind, eyes and ears
have
failed us, words have failed us,
images
and concepts have failed us
in
our perception of the Truth –
the
Truth of Love, of Oneness; of our
own
divinity; the Truth of You.
O
child, for illusory ages God has been waiting
for humanity to
escape the prison of the apparent.
Water
from a nearby well
A
rambling of words in my notebook
to
which I will weed out the excess
and
spruce up what is left.
That’s
the given task
whispered
in my ear
of
which I have little worry or doubt,
as
if I were being sent out with a bucket
to
fetch water from a nearby well.
No
urgency, no fear;
one
day following the next,
content
in the small comforts afforded me.
I
am yet the master of my tasks,
a
deeply appreciated blessing
surrendered
humbly to my Lord
until
and beyond the moment
when
it shall be taken from me.
O
child of God, when your chores are finished,
it means your duty has
been fulfilled.
Tilt-a-Whirl
The
first step toward attaining Realization
is,
perhaps, to abandon the idea entirely
if
the notion is in your head but not in your heart.
The
mind’s true desire is for rescue
not
for Realization which we have
never
experienced and know nothing about.
We
turn hopefully to God for His counsel
and
the first instruction He gives
is
to become helpless and abandon all hope.
Realization,
we are told, is bestowed
only
by Grace (per Meher)
at
God’s sole discretion
and
the desire for Realization it is said,
is
the greatest obstacle to Realization.
We
are instructed to yearn for God
but
not for paradise, for surrender
rather
than triumph, for humility
instead
of attainment; to yearn
not
for life eternal (which we already possess)
but
for the finality of our one true death.
O
child, you have taken a seat on the Tilt-a-Whirl
and wonder why your
world is spinning out of control.
The
Only One
Meher
Baba, the Beloved One,
the
Ancient One, Silent One,
One
without a second,
One
with infinite attributes . . .
descriptive
names, but not for the Parsi youth
the
old woman kissed on the forehead,
the
upright young man formerly known
as
Merwan Sheriar Irani
Who
merged with Oneness and became Oneness
to
exist no more; to exist no more.
Who
returned to the many
without
parting from the One
and
was given a new name –
Compassionate
Father;
Who
lived among men as the Avatar;
whose
primary attribute,
among
His various descriptions,
is
the One in which He alone exists.
O
child of God, impossible to explain in words
the existence of the Only
One worthy of worship.
A
most holy pledge
I
wish I could be content
with
the repetition of Your name.
My
heart is willing
but
my mind is willful,
fixed
in its old habit of ruling the roost,
of
being the forward scout
making
sure every bridge
I
cross can bear the weight.
My
mind doesn’t easily relinquish its authority
nor
abandon its routine sabotage of my heart.
But
I lose You in the repetition of Your name.
I
lose my place in the monologue it becomes.
And
when You grant me some incongruity,
some
paradox to explore, I am off on an adventure
that
very often ends up in a poem.
This
poetry is my remembrance, my meditation,
a
most holy pledge of my faithfulness
until
the moment the two become One.
O
child of God, how overwhelming it is
to picture myself as
a pen held in the Master’s hand.
From
the inside out
God
is a magician with nothing up His sleeve.
Creation
is pulling a rabbit out of a hat
with
no rabbit, no hat and no magician.
Loving
God, apparently,
is
a state of absolute non-attachment;
existence
without perception of it,
annihilation
without unconsciousness;
consciousness
without self.
Oneness
is Love without an object or a recipient,
loving
God from the inside out; from the inside out.
Love
for God is the non-existence of the self;
the
non-existence comprised of everything.
O
child of God, how foolish to attempt
a description of the
Indescribable.
Holy
ground
Ah,
the ephemerality (per Meher) of existence!
At
times a river, a quagmire, a ruse, a nightmare,
far
removed from the Real Existence.
Yet
in our prayers we do not plead for God
to
awaken us from the dream,
but
to make it a better dream,
one
nearer to our fancy, more suitable to our nature –
this
dream ever-shifting, ever drifting downstream,
as
we follow in its wake, no wheel or rudder
in
our grasp and we lose our faith
or
find it eviscerated; abandoning God
for
the dream itself, blaming Him
for
not answering our prayers
when
it is the dream that fails us.
Our
one escape from this ages-old spell
is
to allow the Awakener
to
rouse us from our slumber,
free
us from illusion,
to
establish in us the Reality of God’s love
for
however long forever turns out to be.
O
child of God, gently, gently wend your way
downstream until your
reach Holy ground.
My
fix
Sorting
through the gathered letters
of
my elder years, near the frayed
end
of my rope. Words are my fix.
Death
of self, recommends my Lord.
Family
and friends gathered around, yes!
Until
then, faith is my fix. It will be ‘til
the end.
(Got
to have my fix.)
Abandon
all hope, He said,
ye
who enter here. (Poetry is the balm;
Faith
is my fix.) Helpless and hopeless
before
my Lord. Humility can’t be faked.
(Poetry
is the balm. Words are my fix.)
Sincerity
is the ticket. Got to have my fix.
O
various comrades! Words are my fix.
Faith
is my fix. Until I am safely beyond
all
need for solace. Got to have my fix.
O
child of God, how fortunate you are,
surrounded by heralding
angels in your latter days.
The
Great Enigma
Comparisons
are odious,
say
the Zen Buddhists.
Everything
you say about God,
insisted
Eckhart, is untrue.
God
alone is real, declared Meher Baba.
God’s
aloneness makes Him incomparable.
To
evaluate God is to judge Him
through
illusory perceptions,
depict
Him through illusory descriptions,
His
attributes a list of everything we are not,
telling
us little about Him
and
everything about us.
O
child, my child, God exists as the Great Enigma,
incomparable in His
Oneness.
The
One without a second
In
the beginningless beginning
(before
the dawn of time),
God
woke up, an apparently disoriented newborn,
wondering
for a few timeless moments Who He was;
felt
a whim for exploration, then for light and vision,
creating
the stars and sun to reveal and reflect His glory;
followed
up with a whim to create an other, a witness
to
His glory and began the evolutionary chain
and
there came along numberless others
to
imagine Him, fear and love Him,
worship
or ignore Him, call upon Him
by
a host of names and images
and
to come to know intuitively
that
their separation from Him is illusory
and
that in some timeless future they will come
to
know Him entirely, first as the Beloved
and
then as their very own Self – the Only One,
the
Ancient One, the One without a second.
O
child of God, your connection to Meher
began before the
beginningless beginning.
Ardent
inarticulacy
My
Lord is the ancient, unspoken Word.
I
am infatuated with the common tongue.
All
poems are a description of this earthly realm.
This
realm is naught but a description of Reality.
Meher
Baba is the Truth.
That’s
why He stopped speaking.
Each
night I curl up with my dictionary,
thumb
through its assorted
definitions
and descriptions,
delve
into my trusty thesaurus;
quietly
roam the contours of my extensive vocabulary.
Words
on paper. Words on the screen.
How
can I not be infatuated with words?
They
are the nearest thing I have to His silence
and
I only become silent myself when His Truth
brushes
up against me and I am robbed of speech.
O
child of God, how loquacious you have become
in
your ardent inarticulacy.
(painting
by Joe DiSabatino)
Another
fine mess
Words
never contain the truth –
it
pours right through them
splattering
onto the immaculate page.
But
I am not yet comfortable with silence
which
feels too much like
the
loneliness leading up to death.
You
were silent in Your Onlyness.
I
have only words to offer.
You
were silent in Your Wholeness.
I
am not silent because I am not whole,
habitually
voicing my words
of
praise and complaint
for
yet another fine mess
You
seem to have gotten us into.
O
child of God, another collection of words from you.
When
will you be struck dumb by your own presumption?
(drawing
by Rich Panico)
Mainstay
Daily
I recite the Prayer of Repentance,
asking
God’s forgiveness for my sins
though
I long ago became convinced
that
God’s pardon has always been there,
our
trespasses being indelibly woven
into
the fabric of our fate and being.
So
why were we assigned this prayer?
Perhaps,
for the blessing inherent
in
reciting a prayer composed
by
the Avatar of the age; perhaps,
to
be blessed by the intimacy of communion;
to
be blessed for our daring attempts
to
align our souls with our Maker
rather
than with our selves;
to
be blessed by our efforts to regain
sure
footing through a contrite heart.
O
child of God, sin (and its forgiveness)
is a mainstay of
God’s interplay with His creation.
When
You pray
The
hope of heaven and the fear of hell –
a
carrot-and-stick approach
to
our trek from darkness to Light,
the
great Mystery luring us nearer
to
the Truth than our mind and senses
can
take us in their fixation
upon
this outward, illusory realm.
Our
past impressions (per Meher),
are
the present obstacles
barring
our way from the surrender
of
a one-pointed reliance
wholly
and solely upon God.
And
with true surrender
comes
the Real knowledge
that
our most egregious blasphemy
is
the one great Truth –
that
neither God, nor anything other
than
God, exists outside of Who we are.
O
child, when you pray to God,
you are praying to your
Self.
A
significant dream
Who
is God hiding from in this masquerade?
From
us, but who are we? We seem to be
God
on the roam, detached from the Source.
It’s
all a pretense, a puppet show,
a
storybook read to drum up romance
and
valor, heartache and grief;
playthings
to imitate the Real;
to
stir up a child’s wonder.
O
child of God! Christ the King,
the
Avatars and Saints,
Sadgurus
and Perfect Ones –
their
stories, parables, examples and games
hint
at and further hide the wordless Truth.
Throughout
the green countryside
the
white horse roams in the illusion
and
exhilaration of freedom
but
then dutifully returns each evening
to
the quiet, settled comfort of His stable.
O
child of God, existence (said Meher)
is a significant dream
pointing to the One Reality.
A
matter of actuality
Each
drop soul treads its particular path;
impossible
for each to judge fairly
their
fellow wayfarer’s
choice
of pace and direction.
Divorced
from God’s perspective,
the
drop soul sees only
diversity
and multiplicity
and
is veiled from the Oneness.
The
Creator, by contrast, sees only Truth
and
recognizes the perfection
in
every atom of His Creation
with
no existent comparison available –
everything
in every moment being perfect
just
the way it is, just the way it is.
O
child of God, Truth is not a matter of comparison
but of actuality, clarity
and insight.
(painting by Mark Hodges)
Soak
yourself
After
You returned to this world
from
where Babajan’s kiss had taken you
(where
You realized forever
You
were the One without a second)
You
spent a great deal of time in seclusion –
in
various caves, cabins, hilltops and crypts.
My
life is now finishing up
in
a karmically constructed
seclusion
of sorts; it reveals to me
that
I have spent the entirety of my days
in
a seclusion within my skull, behind my eyes,
a
refuge and prison of flesh, fear and falsity;
a
lifetime of solitude
without
ever having been alone –
You
having been always with me, awaiting
the
destined moment of our inevitable reunion.
O
child of God, cease trying to solve the Mystery.
Instead soak yourself
in it head to foot.
Rough
on yourself
I
was rough on God in my youth,
proud
and brittle, unforgiving.
A
God who dared to reign imperially
over
this sad, chaotic world
(into
which I was dropped without my consent).
A
world of consequences –
fear,
pain, struggle and grief.
Now
my Lord is telling me (in His silence)
to
live these latter days in childlike abandon;
each
shimmering morning open myself up
to
go where God and the day will take me.
My
days are dimming now, numbered and subdued.
He’s
urging me to take
just
what I am given, what I am due,
to
yield and accept, to receive and not invent –
without
judgment, analysis or desire.
O
child of God, don’t be so rough on yourself.
You are His ever-holy
creature and creation.
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