OUR LIFEFORM AND OUR ESSENCE
Our lifeform
Is like a wildflower
Sprouted in rocky ground
Delicate, fragile, resilient
Here to bless the world
For a few days
Then to disappear
Our essence
Is like the sacred ground
From where the wildflower sprouts
Mysterious dark
Latent
Full of life
Full of itself
WHY WE HAD TO MEET
To be utterly quiet and totally open to what we find
This is where we may meet
Intuit why we feel so close
Why we had to meet
Why deep and abiding love for all beings
Is so inherent in the manifesting of this life
My life, your life
That it all makes perfect sense
That to look to the sunrise, the sunset or the ocean
Or into your lover’s eyes
Can elicit such a response?
It is all a mirror
One heart
One life
One consciousness
One Being
Who you Are
Who I am
Beingness Itself
BEINGNESS
Beingness is like the ocean residing in a drop of rain
Like Divine radiance pouring out of me in all directions
Ten thousand lives are dissolved in this instant
There is no other presence but my own
I cannot explain why I would want to speak to my self
In this instant, when you are present here
This heart flows to whomsoever seems to be you
And you are here in me, and me in you
It cannot be otherwise
Our separation is just a little story
And our union is for ever
And that forever is now.
THE OCEAN RECOGNIZING ITSELF
A moment of stillness is its own reward
Takes no effort, only the laying down of all effort
Relaxing from the effort to carry around this idea of me or of you
To be like the wave that notices itself falling
Back into the ocean of itself
With just the awareness of the homecoming in that
Where the terms “my” and “our” fall away
Where only the singular presence and the living of that exists
All that is non essential to that dies in this moment
“My” dies in this moment
You and me die in this moment
There is only the vast “Welcome!” still here
The ocean recognizing itself.
A NONDESCRIPT MORNING
A nondescript morning
Everything is as normal
The birds calling the same
And yet it isn’t the same
A soft rain begins falling as if it’s a blessing
I am in this, fully
My small self and larger Self both here
Includes all that is perceivable
All that appears in the endlessness of now
This moment where I surrender all I have been
Accept who it is I Am
Without fanfare or ecstasy
Just quiet acceptance
Whatever is not needed or not worthy of who I am
I find even that is included, accepted
That Who I Am has no separation
Has no boundaries
Can witness the humanity of the great ones
As well as the seemingly lesser ones
Love does not discriminate,
Loves me and loves you equally,
No matter what we have done,
Or what we have been
All for inclusion and acceptance
Gratitude and the bestowing of gratitude
The Being that you are and that I Am
Can express this Being-ness
In every undertaking, small and large
In this breath and this moment
Call it Love if you like,
Call it the Self or Who I Am
Call it the drop of rain
Or a teardrop running down my face
Amid the endless blessing of this moment
My moment with who I Am
Your moment with who you Are
This moment contains it All
TO TOUCH THE HEM
To touch the hem of who I am
To understand nothing of this
To be speechless
Left with a lingering fragrance
Of that, Presence,
That which exists!
I RING THE GREAT BELL
How to speak of the heart bursting
I pray it may continually be burst asunder
That who I am somehow loves this
Pours itself into itself
Pours itself into that one with your eyes
You drink this deeply and allow me to drink from you
You shouldn’t really be surprised
It’s so freshly felt, is it not?
You always suspected you were not separate
That you somehow included everything,
That every experience was somehow inside you
Experiencing and being experienced by?
I grab the rope, swing the massive block of wood
Hit the great bell
We are both filled with its resonance
Being fully alive in this moment
This is a meeting – our meeting
This is our Satsang!
OCEAN OF ME
Ocean of me
The great encloser and unifier
Allowing all wave forms to express
To take names and labels for a time
And then to fall back into the vastness of themselves
One here and there intensely desires to express the vastness of who they are
Consciously seeks the vastness, ask questions of their oceanic self
Struggles with the vast unexpressed silence of the reply
That silent answerless depth is also who they are
One vast oceanic beingness holds it all
All the expressions, all the turbulence, agitation and storms
All the capricious play at the shoreline
All the tonal songs, the sibilant sounds, expressions of the many moods
Revealing who you are to yourself is such a strange business
There are glimpses with great clarity like waking from a dream
And then there is the return to believing the waking dream
And who you are is almost but not quite supressed
But there it is – subtly but consistently always present
“Come home, remember who you are, Come home…”
Until it becomes the single one reality of your life
The dream disappears, every thought of who you are disappears
Your name disappears
You are That
You notice suddenly and surprisingly that you are happy
The you have given away everything of who you are
And what remains, what was always here
Says that was a very good trade!
“FREE AT LAST!”
I rest in the quietness of who I am
Calmness and serenity attend
Like the calm after the storm
All the striving has gone
I am here with my heart’s longing
Never to be parted again
I recall the moment of stopping
When I saw thoughts, each as a distinct picture
Like still photographs flitting across my mind’s eye
Intriguing as it was to see the sparks and the moving images
I asked them to stop and stop and they did
Leaving me here at home
In the home that had always been here
Here where I speak from
And yet I become strangely speechless
Sitting utterly content in this speechlessness
At peace
“Free at last!” as Doctor King spoke it so well
This freedom is universal
It is not my freedom
Any more than it is your freedom
WORDS FAIL ME
Words fail me
The one with my name fails to express who I am
Here in the midst of failure I sit quietly
Accepting my failure
Undiminished by my failure is what is here
In me and in you equally with the saints
That expression fails is okay
What I can’t say needs not my words
Is not confined to words or feelings or names
Is here, nevertheless
What cleaves open my chest must somehow be useful
Must somehow find its way to you
What it is that binds us is irresistible
Finds you in this moment
Envelops us both
