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.
My
deepest mystery
Don’t
try to understand Me, said my Lord.
Just
as well! After all these years
You
still endure as my deepest mystery
and
thus remain the very source of my faith.
I’ve
never been able to explain You away!
Self-declared
Highest of the High
with
Your love-indentured mandali
and
a worldwide following
bent
upon Your every word and what did You offer?
Forty-four
years of Silence, numerous broken promises,
unkept
appointments and discarded plans.
A
lifetime of teachings (which You insisted
You
hadn’t come for), discourses, formal prayers,
and
the offer of a nothing that might prove
to
be everything. And what did You
in
Your Mastery take upon Yourself?
Servitude,
reclusion, itineracy and pain,
leaving
me to ponder what was Your motive
and
where was Your reward? Whisper
the
answers to me, Lord, at Your leisure
when
my restive mind no longer probes
the
odd, esoteric details of Your Majesty.
O
child of God, seek not explanations
but a wordless
quenching of your every query.
Truth’s
vast remainder
I
share this poem with whomever,
but
be advised – the Truth is too large
to
fit into a poem; to fit inside a human skull,
to
fit within the boundaries of Existence.
Truth
has no opposite, it being spacious
enough
to also house the false
and
this poem, like every other,
is
a watered-down semblance of the Truth,
weak
enough for human consumption.
Whatever teardrop of Reality
a
poem might capture, it must of necessity
exclude
Truth’s vast remainder.
O
child of God, the best any poem might offer
is a novel approach to
Truth’s multifaceted surface.
The
Onlyness of You
I’ve
decided to consciously (and conscientiously)
stop
making decisions, crediting every move instead
to
the Decision Maker. I’ve chosen to stop
choosing,
turning
all that purported hocus pocus
over
to the Reality of my Sole Provider.
In
the meantime, God is kept busy
with
an intricate task – not of liberating me,
but
of revealing the fallacy of all such concepts
and
the error in our cumbrous language
of
such notions as I, me, my and mine,
which
should Realistically be stated
as
We, Us, Ours and Yours
until
We, Us, Ours and Yours become
the
Realization of the Onliness of You.
O
child of God, the wordsmith is having difficulties
with the tools of his
trade.
A
ceaseless interrogation
How
could I ever hope to know the truth of God
when
I don’t know the truth of myself?
My
autobiography is an authentic account
of
a hapless poseur and a pretender.
From
where do these thoughts of mine arise?
Who
peers out from these eyes?
Years
of study and I have learned nothing.
Years
of search and I am unable to locate myself.
I
have naught to show but a lifetime of questions.
All
I’m sure of is that the identity assigned to me
is
not who I am. So who is asking the
questions
and
who is seeking the answers?
O
child of God, your life, or what’s left of it,
has become a
ceaseless interrogation.
Lifetime
costume
I
am foreign to myself; it’s not me –
the
name under which I am registered.
Myself
and I have never been introduced,
as
far as I can remember.
I
stepped onto the wheel
and
it started spinning.
An
old man awakens each morning
and
puts on his lifetime costume.
Quite
a load to carry, heavier each day.
But
I am not the one to bear that weight.
What
am I doing for the rest of my life?
I
never had one. I remember some sort of
dream.
With
no past, how can I have a future?
How
could I have ever existed
if
I will one day cease to exist? Who is it
that
accepts this illusion as Real?
O
child of God, who speaks this way –
inside your head in
the only language you know?
The
Lantern
When
the wick is lowered
and
the flame blown out,
its
glow reappears in the stars above
which
have always been there
but
were eclipsed by the lantern’s glow.
When
the young lad ceased to be Merwan
He
became the Everything
which
is always everywhere
but
is hidden by individuality.
When
He returned as the Chosen One
He
bore the Everything within Himself.
And
when His individuality was again dropped
He
returned to the Everything
and
the Everything returned to Him.
O
child of God, what we have here
is an attempted
description of the Indescribable.
A
passing fancy
Make
yourself scarce,
advised
the Mystics and Masters
before
each moved on,
bequeathing
to the world
their
enigmatic testimonies
and
their inviolable inspiration.
O
to become nothing and no one!
But
its left up to me to accomplish the task;
left
up to me and my karma, of course;
that
is to say, me and my Maker,
me
and the whole Grand Scheme –
to
abandon the past, eschew the future
and
dwell pristinely in between,
becoming
the one who in truth
I
have always been – a momentary figure,
a
flickering image upon the screen
without
substance or Reality and thus
to
free myself from the character in the play
while
remaining an anonymous extra
milling
about in the crowd.
O
child of God, you will be nearer to the goal
when you fulfill your
role as a passing fancy.
Stand
in the same silence
I
am a crooked man who lives in a crooked house
built
upon the shifting sands of this old tidewater town.
When
my neighbors gather, ask me to explain myself,
I’m
at a loss – there’s not a single motive left
to
pull from my bag of tricks; no excuses,
except
maybe, God made me do it.
But
many of them don’t believe in God
and
the ones who do, don’t believe in God the way I do.
They
picture Him somewhere
on
the other side of the galaxy
rather
than moving amongst them
on
my unkempt lawn.
I
no longer offer explanations –
none
of them speak my language.
And
when they leave me to myself, only I believe
that
it is God who lifts my hand to wave goodbye.
O
child of God, stand in the same silence
Your Saviour employed
to awaken the world.
Poetry
and prayers
I
pray for a chapbook of the heart
with
a cache of prayers hidden in its folds.
I
pray for poetry and prayers
free
of words – silent as my Beloved;
poetry
and prayers without a forethought
or
strategy, requests or praise;
without
beginning or end;
poetry
and prayers
that
reach the eyes and ears
of
others only as an afterthought.
I
pray to become a poem myself –
upright
and earnest, an inspiration,
a
living prayer that breaks its silence
only
by repeating Your name.
O
child of God, pray your poems are received
as prayers by your
readers and by your Lord.
Evocative
verse
You
may have noticed this poetry
is
often comparable to scat syllables
or
the mumbles of a drunk;
the
babbling of a baby
or
the tra-la-la of a nursery rhyme.
This
poetry is what is stated when the poet
has
run out of metaphors and resorts to incoherence.
The
most such a poet can offer is to target those readers
who
also have run out of words,
hoping
they agree that intent
and
context are more important than meaning
and
like everything else in this phantasmal world,
human
comprehension and God’s perfection
remain
an inexpressibly vast ocean apart.
O
child of God, the wordsmith shapes evocative verse
from the hesitations
and inconsistencies of his own vocabulary.
The
Original Whim
After
a perfect sweeping and raking
of
the ornamental garden the old Zen monk
shakes
the limb of a slender maple tree until
a
few of its scarlet leaves fall upon the sand.
I
scroll across a video ad of two beautiful couples
in
an outdoor setting sharing a laugh together
and
sipping dark red wine. The video is AI –
perfect,
pristine and phony.
We
want our lives to be perfect,
often
to a point approaching farce.
That
sort of perfection is not for us mere mortals.
Life
is change, growth, discomfort and decay.
Perfection
is static. Perhaps the Original Whim
was
for God to free Himself
from
His own eternal Perfection;
to
shake Himself out of His habitual Exactitude,
to
know and witness Himself bit by bit
in
all His infinite aspects and permutations.
O
child of God, life is not a pond, it’s a river.
And God is the
infinite Ocean of Existence.
Abiding
innocence
I
know now that I loved Jesus
before
I heard His name
which
came to me as a recognition
rather
than an introduction.
Innocence
is a state of unconscious surrender.
It’s
the opposite of ignorance – a deeper understanding.
The
mind over a lifetime tends to become hardened
and
haunted while the heart remains unaffected.
Its
purity prompts the shaming of the mind.
I
loved Jesus as a child and Meher as a man
and
I know intimately now the illusion of time
and
the reality of abiding innocence.
O
child of God, embrace your true self
and return to the
purity of your birth.
My
gravestone
I
don’t mind being old.
It
makes me feel nearer to God,
although
death may come to anyone at any time.
The
door to the afterlife is always open
and
leads to a roundabout just off the cosmic highway.
I’ll
be back! You could put that on my
gravestone
but
I plan not to have one.
A
gravestone is too confining.
Not
just to one plot but to who I was
and
what I am not – an pile of old bones.
A
gravestone is much too small a tablet
to
carry the details of my long, odd life.
So
put me through the fire, collect
and
scatter my ashes anywhere you like.
Everywhere
and nowhere is home
and
I’ll be back . . . until I won’t be any
more.
O
child of God, escape the wheel of birth and death
and return to your one
and only true conception.
%20AMBPPCT.-1.JPG)
