The Great Enigma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 yourelf

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

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.    

Bend to the work

Bend to the work
 
I have become an enigma to my intimates,
taking a few moments out
 
from their eventful lives
to worry for me, wonder and worry
 
that I am alone so often with You. 
(A precursor, perhaps, to the next phase of the journey.) 
 
3 am and I am awakened again from a light sleep.
I switch on the bedside lamp and scribble down
 
the rudiments of, by Your grace, the next poem
as the world outside moves over and onward,
 
elbows its way into the illusion of a new tomorrow.
O but I am content in my solitude
 
which is not a solitude at all
but a communion and intimacy with You. 
 
O child of God, seal your lips and bend to the work
your Beloved has so graciously granted you.        

    

The Giver of all

The Giver of all
 
He gives me the images and their descriptions.
This is why I’m still here, I suppose, so late in life
 
though the poetry is riddled with my ignorance,
at times belabored and imperfect,
 
yet its construction is the task
set before me and I treasure it. 
 
It is my communion.  I’ve learned, by the way,
that ignorance veils the mind,
 
but leaves the heart untouched.  These words,
of utmost importance, are light as a feather,
 
brief as a sigh, like ink soaking into paper,
like the fleeting import of a cricket’s twitter.
 
He gives me the images and the words
and lets me use this intimacy
 
to feel His presence, His warmth,
to burrow a little deeper into the Mystery.
 
O child of God, is there anything as precious
as an undeserved gift from the Giver of all? 

  

Take me over

Take me over
 
Take me over, comforting warmth, 
as the hours grow short, tomorrows dwindle
 
and the nights are ripe with His presence.
The candle has begun to gutter
 
and the world is reduced to two
before the two become One.
 
The old torch in the chest sizzles and glows,
carried here from a distant fire –
 
a Tomb on a hill eight thousand miles away
and thirty years later and I am alone
 
with a peace beyond my circumstances.
Take me over in this delicious solitude
 
that confirms my faith and foretells of union
not to come later but now – the ever-present, eternal now.
 
Take me over and we shall share
these wordless moments before I am no longer me –
 
I, who never was and never has been
and never will be apart from You.
 
O child of God, burn in the glow,
the silence and warmth of His Presence.   

(painting by Joe DiSabatino)

My God, my God

My God, my God
 
There comes a stretch of the path
where the conversation dies down to a whisper
 
then further dissipates into a comfortable silence.
You are a child again, holding the hand of your Father,
 
(perhaps a father you never had),
trying to match His strides,
 
maintaining a delicious intimacy,
a silent communion with the Silent One. 
 
Your lips are sealed, tongue stolen.
Praise is superfluous, any request an affront.
 
You know there will come again a time
when life will crush a plea from you,
 
perhaps a query – (in good company) 
My God, My God why hath Thou forsaken me?
 
but for a brief spell you possess the aplomb,
the humbling insight that life is too much for you,
 
that the truth of it cannot be contained in words
nor in the bone-encased structure
 
of your understanding.  So you forfeit,
in that fleeting quietude, as much resistance
 
as you can afford with the wish
that one day your surrender
 
will be entire, regardless of any past or future
hardship or loss God has ordained for you.
 
O child of God, savor the sweetness, endure the pain
and hold tightly to the hand of your Father.

(drawing by Rich Panico)

         

God being God

 God being God
 
A dog chasing its tail –
such is our search for God.
 
How tenacious is the ignorance
that cloaks the human mind!
 
I was briefly allowed the illusion of liberty,
the illusion of wandering a bit,
 
but in Reality I’ve never left
God’s fenced-in backyard – 
 
never a moment without His eye upon me;
His hand upon my shoulder.
 
He has allowed me a lifespan of explorations –
of my world and my humanity, 
 
of my loneliness, longing and revelations,
of my fragile attachments and fleeting delights,
 
all seemingly essential components of my adventure.
I might guess in my old age the whys and wherefores
 
but in the end it is God’s secret and all I can
insipidly suggest is that it’s merely God being God.
 
O child, cease barking up the wrong tree.
Grow mute enough to hear the voice within.   

The dance of the seven veils

 The dance of the seven veils
 
God awoke after a timeless nap,
stretched Himself and (per Meher) asked
 
Who am I? and thus began
our adventure in corporality.
 
But surely the All-knowing One
knew the answer beforehand!
 
Perhaps, existence is merely God’s
thumbing through an old diary
 
reading it through our mortal eyes, ears,
mouth, nose and skin to revive the narrative.   
 
There may be nothing new under the sun,
but there is also nothing new
 
in the darkness of the Void.  God woke up
to shine a light upon Himself
 
with Maya being central to the plot –
its revelation, conflict and resolution.
 
O child, corporality is the dance of the seven veils.
Be not enchanted by the performance.     

                       

Returned to the Ocean

Returned to the Ocean
 
I live alone but seldom feel lonely.
When I do, I allow my solitude
 
to remind me of the eternal aloneness
and infinite loneliness of God
 
Who created me as His companion.
I haven’t changed much in the last few years.
 
I’ve only become more myself, believing,
at long last, that I am and always have been
 
precisely the way God has ordained me to be –
a curiously structured, affectionally ragtag
 
element of His great scheme of things.
Feeling more and more His hand upon me,
 
His existence within me, my only comfort
in the otherwise absolute emptiness of the Void.
 
O child of God, existence is a river and unremittingly
you are being returned to the Ocean from which you came.  

Snapshots

Snapshots
 
I have a photograph tacked
to a corkboard in my office
 
of a nearby river – a paper image
silent, small and dry;
 
capturing a moment, freezing the flow.
Our perceptions of this world 
 
are but a string of fixed moments
wherein we might imagine
 
a continuity of sorts
but our interpretation of such images  
 
is always, always, always
partial, limited, fleeting and false.
 
O child of God, even our brief, separative lives
can be viewed as snapshots in the eternal flow of time.     

                

The original Silence

The original Silence

It’s an eternal tale recounted
up until this very moment.
 
It’s hard to put into words
when every word 
 
has a thousand meanings
depending upon the arrangement
 
of the various letters within it.
When every utterance is a fragment
 
of the original Word God spoke
and then cupped His ear
 
to hear His own reply.
And later in His eternality
 
He dropped in on the consequences
of His own query and chose to remain silent –
 
to listen and live consciously
within the Truth of His own reply.
 
O child of God, deep within the original Silence,
the Word was, is and ever shall be.      

           

Perfect imperfection

Perfect imperfection
              
I once fancied this poetry as a collaboration
between the human and the Divine –
 
my Lord giving me the insights
(which I humbly and eagerly receive)
 
and then I writing my imperfect verse.
But I see now that is a false view –
 
a distancing of myself from my Muse.
O my true Self!  You supply the insights
 
and You write the poems. 
Within this realm of duplicity
 
my poetry is quite limited, thoroughly human, 
but within Your Oneness, its eternal status
 
is ever perfect and sublime.
The art and solace anyone derives from it
 
is Your well-timed, ever-vigilant gift,
an intrinsic part of Your infinite Perfection.
 
O child of God, read and write these poems
as a metaphor for your own perfect imperfection.