--PIVOT POINT-- Poems/Art/Meditations by Bob Savino

Exploring The Mystery

2012-01-17T10:44:00.000-06:00

Creatures arise, creatures vanish;
I alone am real, Arjuna,
looking out, amused, from deep
within the eyes of every creature.

I am the Self, Arjuna, seated
in the heart of every living creature.
I am the origin, the middle
and the end that all must come to.

                     -- The Bhagavad Gita

      Here are three recent poems of mine. Each, in its own way, explores the mystery of the soul.

                       ALL OUT

what stammering of mine could express so much
as the rain's palaver this morning on my window
or a gust's hoarse whisper through bare branches?

I guess I'll have to conjure some half-baked excuse
to keep fussing with this poem anyway    admitting
I can never communicate as purely as the weather

maybe I should take my cue from the cawing crows
their gutteral slang's the language of thunderheads
it's sinewed with such rich veins of night and death

wide awake   living all out precariously balanced
at this bitter exhilarating razor's edge how else
can I profoundly know you     tell you who I am?

                              ***

             NOT A STONE OR A STAR

I hang out here between the stones and stars
not cold    shuttered    contained    unreadable
nor hot    outpouring    flagrant    unquenchable
but a sort of funky hodgepotch of this and that

there are times I yearn to grab and kiss you!
or fold you like an origami bird into my heart
at other's though I don't love anything human
my profile's a headland pounded by breakers

try as I might   I can't pin this weird self down
the longer I scrutinize my soul the less I know
I'm disappearing into a Light that consumes me
not a stone or a star but a mystery fusing both

                             ***

                      HARRIED AWAKE

just as I stepped from the car a flock of starlings
swooped in low right over my head!       at that

split second I stopped being a sullen sleepwalker
stuck on autopilot   humping to the supermarket
mindlessly slipshodding ever faster toward death

at that split second I was harried from my stupor
swept up out of nowhere by one ecstatic breath
snatched into the outrageous freedom of the sky!

which state was the illusion     which the reality?
why are we all still sleeping? Time To Wake Up!

                             ***

Holy Spirit
giving life to all life,
moving all creatures,
root of all things,
washing them clean,
wiping out their mistakes,
healing their wounds,
you are our true life,
luminous, wonderful,
awakening the heart
from its ancient sleep.

                -- Hildegard of Bingen

What Keeps Me Sane

2012-01-08T09:31:00.001-06:00

Hard to find words in poems
to carry amazement:
on its ninety-thousand-mile wind,
the huge inner bird is soaring.
O wind, do not stop --

-- Qingzhao

These past many weeks have been tough ones. My brother's been very sick-- hospitalized, then mostly bedridden in a rehab center. Because of his family situation, I had to step into the point position, phoning from Kansas City to New Jersey several times a week; trying, long distance, to serve as his health care advocate. Sometimes I wasn't sure which was the bigger obstacle, his several serious health issues, or the mind-numbingly dysfunctional health care system which is supposed to help him heal. He's home now, thank God, and slowly starting to piece his life back together again, although he still has a long way to go.

Meanwhile, now I have to piece back together my own focus, energy and commitment as a creative artist. Fact is, by the holidays I just didn't have anything left in the tank, I was totally drained dry. I'd sit in front of my computer, "reporting for duty," then stare numbly at the blank screen--zero inspiration, zero motivation, zero concentration. But as any true writer knows, if you just don't have it, there's no use trying to force it anyway. The result will be dead in the water.

Yesterday however, my desperation finally trumped my exhaustion. I found myself obsessing on my own mortality, dreading the latest undeniable signs of an aging animal gradually but inexorably slipsliding toward death. I was stuck in a negative thought loop, plunging into depression, flirting with despair. As daunting as the blank computer screen still seemed, I realized anything was better than all that awful brooding!

Then something amazing happened: as soon as I typed the first groping, imperfect, but authentic line, my sense of dread disappeared! In facing my worst fears head on, writing about them, beginning to transform them into art, I was aligning myself with an inspiring, creating, transforming Spirit which is also the eternal Essence of who I most profoundly am. And that Spirit transcends even death. After several more hours of serious, hard-nosed revising, editing and polishing, the completed poem represented both an artistic expression and a spiritual catharsis:

ITS HUGE BREATHING

against the sickening dread which seems

inescapable this bottomless void gaping

inside an indisputable proof I'm awake

one living thing watching itself slowly die

what saving talisman will keep me sane?

there is no magic charm just a choice

nor any graspable rescue either only Spirit

when Its huge breathing shivers through me

I know a Reality that transcends even death

out tumble these bloody births called poems!

***

"just a choice"-- Either I identify with my mortal, limited, creaturely self--the animal ego which, no matter how temporarily robust, famous, rich or powerful, inevitably must die; or I wake up at last and wholeheartedly embrace that invisible but eternal Spirit which is the inspiring, creating and renewing Source of all I am. Whenever I'm able to do so; whenever I commit any act of unqualified creativity, then I myself become a living conduit of "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower." My cringing dread is swallowed up in cosmic praise!

SONG OF THE PROBING SHOOT

Thrusting up and outward, groping toward the Light--

a green shoot, a tunnel quivering between worlds,

a wormhole for elemental forces. Stripped on down

to the bottom line, we are this--the bravest edge

of Spirit, the farthest flung probe of consciousness.

Which means here, where I am now, facing you,

naked, utterly exposed, bare to the innermost bone,

aware of my own terror, aware you're perceiving it,

aware there's no hiding, no bluffing, no disguise,

that beyond the cleverest word games, this is Real!

What will the brain babble next? What can it try,

how get a grip on the Unknown, the Incalculable?

We shiver at these crosshairs of space and time,

one foot planted in the grave, the other in Eternity!

We teeter on a tightrope splicing birth and death.

Our intellect fathoms just a crumb of the Whole.

Our senses grasp the flimsiest shards of Grace.

We've been juked and jived, fried and fricasseed!

No computer chip can ever replace the human soul.

Be a green shoot, a lifeline spanning all worlds!

***

Creativity which expresses the Spirit within us isn't simply a certain type of activity, or even just a life-absorbing commitment. It's a conscious way of being in the world, no matter what we may be doing. It's a freedom, openness and energy which quickens and transforms everything it touches. It's what keeps us green and growing inside. It's our soul's fertile and abundant garden, watered by the fountain of youth!

Move through transformation, out and in.

What is the deepest loss

that you have suffered?

If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

The Sound Of No Shore

2011-12-06T08:48:00.000-06:00

In the ocean are many bright strands
and many dark strands like veins that are seen
when a wing is lifted up.
Your hidden self is blood in those, those veins
that are lute strings that make ocean music,
not the sad edge of surf,
but the sound of no shore.

-- Rumi

We never come home to the essence of who we are until we experience boundlessness--"the sound of no shore." Our creaturely self must submit to limits, the ultimate of which is physical death. No one, as they say, gets out of this life alive. But there's another way to read the truism: it's only when we become precisely "no one" that we consciously unite with our Eternal Source and so transcend mortality. Yet it can be utterly terrifying to lose not only the sight, but even the sound of the shore! To do so I must surrender everything which represents that familiar, reassuring shore to me--.all my assumptions, attachments, addictions. I must painfully peel away every last layer of self-importance, every last shred of bogus identity, until I reach a condition of perfect emptiness. The silence of that inner ocean is the sound of no shore.

ATTRITION

for the ten thousand things

words

for every no-thing else

silence

sooner or later

you're heading to deep ocean

words love to play on the shore

they're happiest there

frisky! at home among

crowded beaches busy docks

people coming and going

all that hustle and bustle

but the farther you swim

alone into uncharted waters

the panickier words become

cold exhausted one by one

they sink beneath the waves

until at last only a handful

struggle on blindly

gasping

like this

At the innermost core of ourselves, where the emptiness shines, we are boundless beings. There, and only there, are we quintessentially free. The sound of no shore is also the music of the spheres, the susurration of the universe. How can we bear our burdens and find our way here, in this Earth Plane labyrinth of cause and effect, trial and error, struggle and death? Only if we maintain an indestructable toehold in Eternity! Don't be blasted and confounded by the storm of time. Rediscover the Sanctuary of the eye at the heart of the hurricane.

SANCTUARY

Three a.m. and the psychic storm was raging--

something around the hugeness of a galaxy but

dead black, twisted inside out, and ravenous.

I was scuttling beneath it, a stupified crab,

lurching this way and that,

scrambling for cover.

So I came at last to the shimmering cliffs.

Not cliffs really, more like the fringes of

some titanic robe, shot through with Radiance;

more like the hem of a garment of Light.

I stopped in my tracks. What would you do?

What would you do if the Inconceivable

swept its scintillant Edge across your soul?

Dazed and punch-drunk I dropped to my knees.

I clothed my quaking terror with nakedness.

I wrapped my anguish in Eternity's Flame.

If I sacrifice my privacy, solitude, introspection and self-emptying through a Faustian bargain with materialism, consumption, and the glittering allure of digital technology, I won't be gaining greater freedom but rather insuring deeper slavery. There's no way I can hear "the sound of no shore" except by leaving behind the cacophony of things, forms, powers, illusions and desires. My irreducible freedom is defined by "not this, not that." The wormhole to Infinity is a bull's-eye beaconing from the center of my soul!

A secret turning in us

makes the universe turn.

Head unaware of feet,

and feet head. Neither cares.

They keep turning.

-- Rumi

Where Freedom Begins

2011-11-19T10:39:00.000-06:00

Freedom is really a spiritual state, although it can be reflected at lesser levels. And it is only in freedom in the deepest sense that the riches of the Spirit can manifest themselves.

-- Sri Ram

No nation has ever made a louder hullabaloo about "Freedom" than The United States. It's our justification for military intervention around the globe; our troops are lauded as "heroes defending our freedom," no matter in what fractious, oppressed, poverty-stricken corner of the Third World they're deployed. Freedom of expression provides the legal rationale through which the pornography of violence and the violence of pornography inundate our media and infect our consciousness. Unregulated freedom from all constraint or control is the unrelenting rallying cry of ruthless, uber-competitive corporate capitalism. And yet, by the profoundest definition of freedom, in reality most of us are abject slaves.

If my spirit is in chains, what does it matter if I have license to exercise all these other so-called "freedoms" and a hundred more? As Kabir said "...you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death." Where does true freedom begin? Paradoxically, only with complete surrender. One of the numberless names of the God I encounter at the innermost core of my being is FREEDOM! Unless I achieve unity with this Radiant Source; orient my fundamental indentity to this Universal Truth, I will always remain a slave, a craven addict of soul-devouring idols. True freedom can never be won by any political means if it's not first awakened in the liberated soul.

There is only one way to be truly Free--become supremely empty. As long as the little, deluded, superficial "I" of worldly self-importance runs the show--projecting its fears, promoting its desires, defending its image--you remain a slave, whatever seeming power and prestige you possess.

Real Freedom means utter surrender to That which alone is utterly Free--the Eternal Spirit streaming invisibly through all created things. Here is the Source and Center of your deepest Self, the Cosmic Breath that fills your whole being, until it stretches out tautly like a great sail billowing in the wind!

-- from my book As The Spirit Moves: Teachings of the Angels, 1999.

Consumer society materialism is one of the greatest obstacles to real spiritual freedom. Let's say I'm standing in front of the toothpaste section at my local supermarket. Look at all the different brands, sizes, prices, flavors, special features, so many possible choices--what freedom! No, only the delusion of freedom--like those "painted cakes" which can never satisfy hunger. Meanwhile, as ever, my attention is seduced and focused outside myself--momentarily possessed by but one of ten thousand ersatz epiphanies in this All-American "scrimmage of appetite" we call "the pursuit of happiness." But the American modernist poet Marianne Moore wrote this:

"The very bird,

grown taller as he sings, steels

his form straight up. Though he is captive,

his mighty singing

says, satisfaction is a lowly

thing, how pure a thing is joy.

This is mortality,

this is eternity."

How pure a thing is joy! Here's how I know that at last I'm truly free--I'm infused with sheer Joy! Such Joy is never secondary and contingent--dependent on anyone or anything in the world outside me. On the contrary, it is always primary and unconditional, beaming forth from the Divine Beacon at the secret epicenter of my soul. Once we've tasted this ultimate Freedom, anything less which masquerades by the same name will be exposed as what it always was--just another glitzy disguise for slavery.

Joy gave birth to the galaxies. It is the Source of every atom of your being. All creation exists because of Joy. Joy is where you come from. Joy is where you are going. Joy is the triumphal hymn of the universe! Your deepest agony is the distance you have traveled from Joy. Your highest hope is the promise of return.

You have heard the sparrow. It sings for Joy! Joy curls in the wave breaking, and Joy is the glistening of the shore. Sunlight blazes down for Joy, and with Joy the earth receives it. The eagle soars, the mole burrows, the deer leaps, the fish swims, the grass grows, the bud opens, the seed begins--for Joy, Joy uncontainable, eternal Joy!

-- from As The Spirit Moves.

Keeping Hope Alive

2011-11-01T13:22:00.001-05:00

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
Death's great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?

-- Anna Akhmatova

Why then, indeed? Right now I'm facing into the abyss of my brother's possibly fatal illness. It's part of a Perfect Storm which also threatens the loss of his job and foreclosure on his house. Even if he eventually makes it out of the hospital, he might not have a home to come home to. And all this is just the tip of the iceberg! Here I am, half a continent away, struggling to do whatever I can to help, but I feel like I'm trying to siphon an ocean of trouble with a flimsy straw. Lying in bed sleepless again last night, staring at the ceiling, it seemed to me his situation was hopeless, and that I was helpless to change that. Finally, I did manage to drift off to sleep; and when I awoke this morning I realized there's yet one more thing I can do; one more reason not to give up hope. I'd looked into the gaping maw of the abyss, but something inside me still cried "Nevertheless!"

                     THE PASSWORD

"Nevertheless" is what I meant to say
                           when the worst came down,
after the Scud Missile of pain
                      struck its target zero in your soul.
"Nevertheless"--a defiant quip
just as the firing squad raises its guns.
It's that storm-battered tree
                                 far above the timberline,
the grin on the face of the homeless outcast,
the salmon's leap against the thundering falls.

"Nevertheless" is the cry I meant to praise
          no matter how many haters curse you out,
                  how many hammers bruise your bones.
It's a death row reprieve at the final hour,
the worm that turns, the impossible comeback,
                                  the incurable healed.
"Nevertheless" befuddles logic, hornswoggles fate.
It's the heroic password I meant to teach you.
            The Spirit's anthem.
                                   Destiny sealed.

                                  ***

One of the hardest lessons to learn is that no matter how dire the circumstances, how daunting the odds, my ultimate power doesn't depend on any outer vicissitudes. The source of my true power to transcend, and therefore of my unquenchable hope, resides within me. The human spirit is indomitable!

RALLYING CRY

Begin now, begin in the teeth of the worst loss

you've suffered, begin to praise. Begin now, begin

anew, no matter what. Take the first, hard step

and then take another, and still another, until

the Spirit chimes within your bones, indomitable.

Start over, from the bitterest taste of ashes

burning your tongue. Start over, though clearly

everything you've hoped, prayed, yearned for,

lies crushed. Start over, grope without a clue,

buoyed by what disdains surrender, indomitable.

Keep growing, when nothing left seems alive,

not even your heart. Keep growing, break free

from that old, petrified shell, the dead past

clogged by phantoms and shadows. Keep growing--

beyond whoever you dreamed you were, indomitable.

Love again, despite the grief gutting your soul.

Quarry it out, rage after rage, tear after tear.

Love again, love unflinchingly, till you reach

a place where love consumes your cruellest fear.

Love again, and you will rise again, indomitable.

***

I don't know if my brother's going to make it. I don't know how much I can do for him, how much is even humanly possible. But I do know now that, nevertheless, I will never stop trying. Am I not my brother's keeper? Aren't we all?

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

-- Jesus (Matt. 25:36)

Following The Tao

2011-10-18T10:40:00.001-05:00

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

-- Lao-Tzu

Everything's complicated for me until I return to The Source of my being. But I cannot find my way back there until, layer by accreted layer, I peel off those addictive complications--which always represent polarized aspects of my own psyche--to recover a unitive state of innocence, openness and simplicity. This is a very scary process however, because it also means I must surrender all control--and without that control I feel naked, exposed, defenseless, vulnerable. Yet once more in harmony with The Tao, there is no egoistic "I" to feel those things. Fear, grief, anger, desire, despair--these all vanish. What remains is nobody, doing nothing, going nowhere, heart at peace, filled with joy.

                 THE INCOMPARABLE SECRET

The intoxicating, all-pervasive buzz is always there
like those cosmic rays still left over from the Big Bang.

And some days I just lean back, let myself go, and
                                               float blissfully along,
savoring each sweet or bitter swallow of existence,
careening rapturously around my own stunned soul,
                                                   plastered with joy.

I can't fathom how I manage to stumble into paradise,
     or why I perpetually seem to get banished from it.

But when, by chance, I do recover my witless way --
    Astonishment! Gratitude! Freedom! Homecoming!

Wonderingly, I drink once more from the
                                          Incomparable Secret --
          that purest, rarest, Holiest Fountain,
                the deathless Source of all I know, all
                                                            I love, all
                                                                       I am.

                              ***

Lao-Tzu's second teaching is patience. This might be the hardest one of all for me to learn. Wherever I go, I always seem to arrive too early. A characteristic saying from my time spent in the army comes to mind: "Hurry up and wait." Whatever I want, I always want it now. But there's a greater pattern, a timeless flow, an elemental cycling, and my individual life and needs are merely a tiny part of that infinitude. Aligning my will with the breath of the cosmos, I "accord with the way things are." As Lao-Tzu also said:

Do you have the patience to wait

till your mind settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving

till the right action arises by itself?

Finally, Lao-Tzu emphasizes the great wisdom of compassion--but he also has the insight to realize that compassion toward others must start with compassion toward oneself. In effect, this provides the complimentary reversal to Christ's teaching: "Love they neighbor as thyself." Both are true. But how much damage has been done by "do-gooders" because they try to impose charity on others, although inside they have never forgiven or accepted themselves? Another ancient saying: "If you would change the world, start with a small garden." That small garden is my own soul. Let me be unconditionally compassionate first there; then I will know how to healingly offer compassion to others.

COMPASSIONATE EYES

I see one being--the Earth--who

is broken like bread into many

pieces. I see a billion faces

that are your face, and mine.

I see the stray dog gassed, and

a chainsaw rip at the willow's

heart. I see children starving,

bloated bellies, skin and bone.

I see this carnival flicker of

the sun; how it gleams fitfully

for a second, or an hour, then

vanishes. I see terror, and joy.

I see a smile or touch, a look

that stuns my soul--an instant

when time and space fall away,

the silence blazing like a star.

I see your hunger in my blood,

your waking in my death. I see

those eyes you turn to me now--

my eyes; their longing--my own.

***

Like the great mystical teachings from all traditions, The Tao Te Ching implicitly and explicitly points to Oneness -- the Reality that beyond the extravagant variety and diversity of life, the undeniable uniqueness of each individual, we are in essence all One. Here is the root of compassion: truly, what happens to you, happens to me. We're part of one Soul, one Spirit, one Source, one Eternity.

"Maybe a fella ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big soul--

the one big soul that belongs to ever'body."

-- John Steinbeck

The Inner Life

2011-10-12T08:47:00.001-05:00

There is a force within that gives you life--
                      seek that.
In your body there lies a priceless jewel--
                      seek that.
Oh, wandering Sufi,
if you are in search of the greatest treasure,
                      don't look outside,
Look within, and seek that.

                                            -- Rumi

The wisdom teachings of all the great spiritual paths stress the vital importance of the inner life. We're not just a body with senses, appetites, desires; nor simply a mind calculating how to satisfy them. We're also soul, heart, imagination, conscience and reason. These qualities aren't optional aspects of our humanity, they're the essence of what it means to be fully human. Yet almost anyone growing up today is automatically drafted into the "wired" generation--Face Book, Twitter, I-Pods, cell phones, texting, video games, etc. Statistics reveal most teenagers multi-task on the average many hours every day, totally wired to The Information Superhighway. Unquestionably, a number of amazing benefits accrue--but what about the alarming cost to their inner life? What happens to solitude, privacy, introspection, "soul searching"--in short, to that sometimes disturbing but also indispensable aloneness, without which no transformative inner life is even possible? At what point does our obsession with technology become a Faustian bargain made at the price of our souls?

SOLITUDE

A friend says he doesn't like the word "solitude"

that's cropped up recently in one of my poems.

"Tough shit!" I shoot back, and sulk grouchily.

What's the big deal? Somehow, this goes beyond

my usual overblown poet's vanity. It strikes

a nerve, it pierces to the core of what I love.

Solitude! Not loneliness. Not isolation, paranoia,

aloofness or despair. Not escape from this world,

but crossing the threshold of another, a dimension

so vast the soul shudders with awe to conceive it.

Our greatest alienation is to drown in humankind,

to be severed from the angels and the archetypes.

Solitude! So crowded with their unseen presences!

Never have I felt less alone! A pure cosmic wind

whistles from the wide open portal to eternity,

scouring me clean, stripping my life to the bone!

The treasure I hoard in my poet's bag of tricks?

Just this! A universe cascading from solitude!

***

What most enriches us as human beings flows from the inner life of the Spirit. If we abandon this profound part of ourselves we'll ultimately experience a poverty of meaning which will make a poverty of possessions seem trivial by comparison. What does it matter if we can communicate with every corner of the planet if we have nothing original or compelling to say? There are truths we know, believe, understand, decide and express which can never be learned through the senses or from others. Intuition, compassion, imagination, moral vision, creative inspiration--none of these can really be bought or sold on E-Bay. We can only discover them by exploring alone through the uncharted dimensions of that infinite universe within.

THE INFINITE WINGS

Poised on the razor's edge,

beyond every safe battlement,

I stood alone beneath the sky,

unfurled vast, impossible wings

and rose upon the whirling air,

arrowed straight for the heart

of the sun. My one purpose

was set--to vanish into God.

How can I describe the terror

of that flight, or its ecstasy?

Whom I worshipped, I became.

What I dreamed, enveloped me.

Like a leaf swept on the wind

I tumbled down the atmosphere,

stunned to the core with Light,

stripped of all dread, amazed.

But such is unspeakable. Words

stutter and fail. Only...I

have breathed the Infinite,

and my soul is soaring there.

***

I cherish those times when I'm alone, but never lonely. At such moments, I am indeed "wired"--but not to our hectic, noisy, distracting, addicting Information Superhighway. Instead, I'm cabled to the cosmos, attuned to a rich, vibrant inner life where I can explore the mystery of who I truly am and what my life is really all about. This isn't a clever new option I can take or leave like an I-Pod Ap. This is how I align my consciousness with the soul of the universe.

...everything is part of that diverse

and mirroring memory, the universe;

there is no end to its exigent corridors

and the doors that close behind you as you go;

only the far side of the sunset's glow

will show you at last the Archetypes

and Splendors.

-- Jorges Borges

Breath Of The Eternal

2011-10-06T11:26:00.001-05:00

Thou art the dark butterfly,
Thou are the green parrot with red eyes,
Thou art the thunder cloud,
the seasons, the seas.
Without beginning art thou,
Beyond time, beyond space...

-- The Upanishads

Here is ancient wisdom, from among the oldest of the world's sacred texts. This ancient wisdom will never die. Do we know this, or don't we? Everything hinges on that question. There is a Seed of Singing Light; a deathless, Holy Source; a Fount of Joy, Grace, Wisdom and Truth, which streams forth eternally from the soul of every created thing--butterflies and parrots, thunderclouds, seasons and seas, as well as from you and from me. The sages who wrote The Upanishads named this divine essence The Self--not the little self of the ego, but the Higher Self transcending all differences, all separation. Once we experience our Oneness with this Higher Self, once we realize I Am That! -- only then can we evolve beyond fear, grief, anger and despair. This is the only path of ultimate liberation.

THE LIGHT OF

ANCIENT WISDOM

Cannot die. Perched on

a phone wire, the wren

trills it. Truth flares

in the quick flex of

the cat's claw, or from

a sheen of raindrops

on the white iris, their

cool fragrance, beckoning...

Listen. The whole Earth is

breathing, in and out;

night flows through us

like the flag of some

unknowable world. Who

have the winds come for?

What is the secret name

that all things cry?

Open yourself to the far

whirling of the universe.

We begin from a seed

but our home is Everywhere.

The wren, the cat, the iris--

each are different faces

of our love. The Light of

Ancient Wisdom cannot die.

***

Don't be distracted, confused and deluded by the ten thousand things--or even the ten billion things of our intrusive, competitive, materialistic, consumer society. You'll never find an answer out there. You'll never find true joy, peace, wholeness or fulfillment out there. Your innermost identity is not defined by this transitory world; it's part of an unconditional, primal, Eternal Spirit existing before, beyond and after this world. That's where we start from. We don't extract Joy from people, events, activities, possessions, achievements. We bring that Joy with us and infuse it into them. That Joy is our birthright--not contingent but original. Its source is our Higher Self--The Breath Of The Eternal--inspiring all things.

SHEER JOY

Watching a lone bluejay

suddenly launch out, free,

into immense bright air,

I felt cleansed and reborn.

All life I sensed bursting

with Spirit, invincible!

At our innermost core

the primal Source of Being

fountains upward, flooding

through matter's opacity,

streaming pure bliss

from another world.

Here is the Hidden One

I adore--matchless,

indomitable--a Mystery

beyond imagining, nearer

than bone, sweeter even

than love's caress.

What opposes sheer Joy

perishes...Learning this

we blaze like suns, illumed

by Heaven's Holy Light.

An unquenchable child

dances in the soul of God!

***

What are the keys to Original Joy, to union with this Higher Self? Simplicity, humility, openness, silence, solitude, self-discipline, inner surrender, pure intention, unwavering devotion, impeccable alertness, childlike wonder and yes, sometimes even sheer desperation. When we discover that every idol, obsession, addiction and presumption inevitably fails us and leads us only further astray, then, finally, we might turn to the one answer which never fails us, never leads us astray--the hidden, primal, holy, invisible Light shining eternally at the center of our souls...

Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud

Enveloping the Earth--

And from the soul itself must there be sent

A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Holy Fool

2011-09-27T13:48:00.003-05:00

When it's cold and raining
You are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me
even closer to Your lips.

The Inner Secret,
that which was never born,

You are That Freshness,
and I am with You now.

I can't explain the goings
or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again,
Inside the Majesty.

-- Rumi

Last night I found myself once again "Inside the Majesty." I had been far outside it for a long time. Rejection by a close friend had wounded me deeply. Then I believed my job was being threatened because of unjust criticism and accusation. I felt old, hurting, angry and afraid, and could not stop obsessing about mistakes and wrongs of the past, dangers and difficulties of the future. I was lurching all over the psychological map--everywhere except here, now, in the Reality of the immediate present, the Eternal Presence.

Yet from past experience I know that that Reality is always here, now, unchanging, incorruptible, a Beacon of Singing Light at the innermost core of my being, of all being. When Rumi writes "I can't explain the goings, / or the comings..." I don't take that to mean the goings or the comings of God, or Grace. Those goings and comings are my own; they expose how I chronically become obsessed by, then addicted to, my hurt, fear, anger, desire or despair. These delusions are the "goings"--my willful or clueless estrangement and alienation from my Higher Self. That's where I found myself last night--lying awake, staring into the dark, beseiged by my demons.

MONSTERS ON PARADE

the ferocious piranhas of raw dread are tearing

bite-sized chunks right from my mind a chair

is now the ridiculous pawn in a power struggle

the Nextel keeps shutting down in my pocket

DeWayne's pissed off because I've blamed him

I'm worried viral gossip could cost me my job

you'd think after so many years I'd have won it--

this endless pitched battle with chronic demons

you'd think a terrified little boy would grow up

stop cringing at those monsters under the bed

you'd think enough time was wasted enough

chances blown then you'd have to think again

you can't look at a life and judge: success/failure

not until you've suffered the same bitter wounds

wrestled with the same nightmarish obsessions

tasted the same bile of horror coating the tongue

but after that all judgement goes out the window

what's left is a naked mirror reflecting your soul

***

After going round and round in my head, harried with insomnia, I became transfixed by that naked mirror reflecting my soul. Staring into it intently I understood that I have a choice, I always have a choice. I could continue to gaze--obsessed, addicted, spellbound--at the endlessly seductive or obscenely horrifying contortions of my demons, riddled with cosmic dread. Or by a drastic, purging, unconditional surrender; a profound, wholehearted metanoia penetrating right down to the naked core of my being, I could radically Focus Elsewhere. But not just any "Elsewhere." I could, and I did, uncompromisingly re-orient my soul's single-pointed attention to the radiant, joyous, serene, eternal, transcendent Light, the illuminating Presence which is always there and which never changes, falters or fails.

PIVOT POINT

the journey from one edge of an eyelash to another

how infinitely far!

and the time it takes--that microsecond's an eternity

but ride the next express between heaven and hell

either direction now there's hair-raising speed!

you'll arrive even before you depart

I know a breath inside a breath inside the breath

I know the pivot point for swirling clouds of worlds

tell me are you awake yet see what you can't see

hear what you can't hear feel what you can't feel

there's a pure cold stream that's always flowing

if you find it don't hesitate kneel kneel and drink

***

Paul wrote: "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men..." (1Co 1.25). The choice I made last night to "focus elsewhere" felt at the time like a foolish thing to do. The issues I'm struggling with are real, damaging, serious. There are no easy fixes. Don't I need to focus exclusively on them, worry incessantly about them, constantly be humping to troubleshoot them? Yet when I'm caught in a hurricane, it's impossible to cope effectively while I'm being blasted by 100-mile-an-hour winds! Only from the safety of the calm, clear, luminous eye of the storm can I get my spiritual bearings, find my essential balance, and discern the means of wise action. Coming back Home to my Higher Self was a choice to seek refuge in the Divine Eye of the profane storm. There's a difference between a blind fool and a Holy Fool. The blind fool sticks his head in the sand. The Holy Fool wraps her soul in the Light.

The Inner Light is beyond both praise and blame, like unto space it knows no boundaries; yet it is right here with us, ever returning to serenity and fullness...You remain silent and it speaks; you speak and it is silent. The Gate of Heaven is wide open, with not a single obstruction before it.

-- Yung Chia

The Unseen

2011-09-20T10:01:00.000-05:00

This world is but a bridge, cross it, but build no home upon it. The world endures but for an hour. Spend it in devotion. The rest is unseen.

-- Akbar the Great

I spent a good part of my life longing, even lusting, for fame. I would become a Great Poet, lionized by millions! Even a great Spiritual Teacher! My self-worth was dependent on my becoming widely recognized and applauded, a Major Player in the only Game that really counted--this Earth Plane ego dance; this shimmy-shake of vainglory and public spectacle; this endless, shadowy hall of glittering funhouse mirrors.

But simultaneously, a higher, wiser Spirit was pulling me in exactly the opposite direction--toward deeper interiority, painfully acquired humility, purging emptiness. I began to realize that what's truly important is invisible, a transcendent sphere of being not directly detectable by the senses, and therefore mostly ignored by our overwhelmingly materialistic civilization. I fell in love with silence, solitude, mystery, the Unknown. I learned that to be a real "Player in the Game" meant I had to wean myself from my addiction to the chimera of worldly success, the mirage of ephemeral fame.

A STRANGE WIND

The face turned away from the feast --

learn that, be

that one.

A strange wind is blowing

through the black rectangle

of the open doorway,

beyond which, night

smells of unappeasable distance,

and the narrow steps

lead down to no street

you can remember...

The heart weaned away from the world --

earn that, free

that one.

Let desire expand

until it transcends

all objects.

Possessing nothing,

possessed by nothing,

in the perfection

of such emptiness

make your Home.

***

My ultimate Home is in the no-time and no-place of an infinite and eternal consciousness where "I" cease to exist. My own consciousness is only fully awake there for the first time; and what it's awake to is a Oneness beyond all separation. That is Reality. Beside it the tawdry child's play of worldly fame and glory is exposed as ludicrous and absurd.

THE WAY IN

Whoever you are: some evening take a step

out of your house, which you know so well.

Enormous space is near, your house lies

where it begins, whoever you are.

Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves

from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes

slowly, slowly, lift one black tree

up, so it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.

With that you have made the world...

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

My greatest challenge is to take that crucial step out of the familiar house of my ego, which I know so well. "Enormous space is near." That's where the deepest meaning of my life suddenly breaks open. Dumbstruck, I experience my soul illuminated at last against the scale of the stars...

Out beyond ideas of

wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

-- Rumi

Soul Wounds

2011-09-13T11:31:00.000-05:00

There are some blows in life so hard...
                            I don't know!
Blows that seem to come from God's hatred;
                            as if before them,
the backwash of all suffering
were welling up in my soul...I don't know!

                            -- Cesar Vallejo

If I love with radical openness from my soul, sometimes I will radically suffer. There's no way to avoid this. At least I've not found one. If the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is to attain a pure and constant state of utterly blissful detachment, exempt from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," then I still have many lifetimes of learning to go.

Yesterday I lost a beloved friend--suddenly, shockingly, irretrievably. And today I'm a walking wound. How can I escape from this terrible grief, which after all is only the opposite face of that once joyous love? It's the risk I had to take for opening my soul unconditionally to the beloved; it's the price I must pay now, now that that love has shattered beyond all mending.

CRIMES

There are crimes so bad

I can't find words,

wrongs too obscene to bear.

If you think I'm lying

we've got nothing to talk about--

you inhabit

a different universe.

There's an inferno of hate

the human mind

can't encompass--

like a flame thrower

incinerating a rose.

Nothing's left

but ashes that scream.

At such times

all love can do

seems less than zero.

We gaze dumbstruck

on Medusa's face,

despair

scorching us to stone...

***

Do you know what I mean? How can you not know--here and now in 2011--either by direct experience, or from what you've seen and heard about the suffering of others? What I understand of "enlightenment" is the choice, every single moment, to keep my soul wide open and profoundly awake to the incalculable winds of the whole universe. The corrolary must be immense courage--for I can never predict or control what those winds will bring. So my soul is also a cosmic window, and to remain alive and growing there, in my naked soul, means to accept that absolutely anything may potentially enter and profoundly transform the innermost sanctum of my being.

WHAT THE WIND SAID

We agreed to meet this hour so I'm here

wind, faithful to the promise. As are you,

gusting with biting urgency on my face.

Then let our palaver begin. But mostly I'll

listen, hoping to grasp what you're trying

to say. Thus far, this is what I understand:

Don't clutch at even the barest "certainty."

It blows away like shingles in a hurricane.

Everything's provisional, forever changing.

That's all. The rest is theme and variation.

Which still leaves me alone with my heart--

its loves and fears, its longing not to die.

Wind, I concede; you're older and wiser.

You prowled before the icecaps formed!

Spellbound shamans conjured your voice.

But I'm so small. The dark's so immense.

Isn't there an axiom I can hold and save,

some truth that doesn't always confound?

I'm the free quintessence of who you are--

the Spirit's breath transforming all things!

Surrender your crutches. Fly home to me.

***

What I hear that Spirit's breath telling my soul is not "don't let everything in," but rather "don't try to hold on to one bit of it," because that's impossible anyway. As Heraclitus wrote: "Nothing is permanent in the world, except change." There are so many priceless moments my friend and I shared. They're enshrined in my heart forever. But I can't bring them back, because I can't bring her back. I can't even hold on to our love as a living, breathing, astonishing and immediate experience. All I can do is to be wholeheartedly grateful for what we once had, and to know that it's a part of me now, and has changed my life forever.

We see clearly...that there is suffering in life, that the suffering is inherent in it, that the cause of it for us is our grasping or our identification. When we learn to be free in that way, nothing can touch us. We discover that there is a real liberation that is possible for every human being. We come to understand the teachings of the heart, and see that it is possible for the heart to open and to contain the entire universe.

--- Jack Kornfield

The Still Small Voice

2011-09-06T11:04:00.001-05:00

Great ideas come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope.

-- Albert Camus

Are we listening attentively? Unless we are, we'll miss the summoning, the wake-up call, the beaconing voice of a New Consciousness which is struggling to birth right now, right here, at any moment of our lives. But what could be harder, while careening along on our globalized, digitalized, information superhighway, than to take the next exit and pull over; to simply stop and truly listen? And listen for what? For nothing out there, "amid the uproar of empires and nations." But rather--for a still, small voice like the faintest fluttering of wings--whispering from the innermost depths of our souls.

NAMELESS

Not the barest swaying of a small branch

in the breeze this morning, not that. Not

a starling stretching out one wing, pecking

at its feathers. Not the thought of you

with both hands cradled around your

first cup of coffee. Not even the silence.
No, none of these...Not a single ant

crawling across the tabletop. And not

the farthest galaxy wildly cartwheeling

from the Big Bang! Not any kiss. Not

every tear. It can't be named by these...

***

Another name we might use for this mysterious voice, however, is "intuition" -- a knowing which transcends emotion, imagination, conscience, intellect, will, senses, desire, instinct and experience, yet somehow encompasses all of them. There's only a single, interior "bull's-eye" where the contradictory priorities of each of these many different poles of our beings can ever finally be integrated and reconciled--the human soul. Here alone the Timeless intersects time, the Infinite overarches space. Yet in a supremely materialistic age such as ours, in which the soul itself has been virtually rationalized out of existence, our task of radical rediscovery can scarcely be more difficult, or more essential.

At the still point of the turning world.

Neither flesh nor fleshness;

Neither from nor towards:

At the still point, there the dance is.

But neither arrest nor movement.

And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered.

-- T. S. Eliot

It's from Eliot's "still point of the turning world," where the dance is, that the still small voice of our intuition addresses us. And just as only a condition of completely open and attentive stillness may enable us at last to participate in that intuitive dance, so a comparable state of completely open and attentive silence is necessary before we can truly hear and respond to that intuitive inner voice.

LODESTAR

What we have no words for, never

stops speaking to us strangely inside,

although its voice is so terribly small,

so easily drowned out by the clamor

of pain, desire, or even some brief,

minor irritation, like a fly in the soup.

But there comes a moment when,

despite ourselves, awe spills across

every barricade we erect to repel it.

The ecstatic murmur of the universe

swells subversively, waking our souls,

and we shudder, flooded by grace!

Here's the huge, scandalous secret

we sleepwalkers still carry around.

Bit by bit, an incomparable lodestar--

our luminous wisdom, a holy gift!--

got shunted aside. Now we worship

things, money, power, status, self.

Ever since I realized this, I began to

die, over and over. And each time

I'm changed, reborn! The only way
I could recover the treasure I'd lost

was to break free from possession--

that suffocating armor of my fears.

***

Nothing drowns out that still, small voice more drastically than fear. As long as I'm mesmerized and obsessed by my own particular demons of terror--or repressing them such that they control my life from the shadows--I can never hear the gentle, wise, intimate, redemptive, divine voice of my soul. So part of the unavoidable spiritual spade work I must do, is first to honestly face and then to courageously come to grips with, my worst, most crippling and addictive fears. As Carl Jung wrote: "There is no coming to consciousness without pain." But this also is true:

The pain was great when the strings

were being tuned, my Master!

Begin your music, and let me forget

the pain, let me feel in beauty

what you had in your mind

through those pitiless days.

--Rabindranath Tagore

What Brings Us To God

2011-08-30T12:24:00.000-05:00

The heat of midnight tears
will bring you to God.

-- Mirabai

The personal pathways to God are unique, individual, countless, but in each there's a Turning Point--the Ancient Greeks called this Metanoia. Sometimes we recognize it instantly; or the discovery may only dawn in retrospect, after a lifetime of experience and reflection. For me, the revelation was

instantaneous, mind-boggling, overwhelming! And as Mirabai understood so many centuries ago, it was "the heat of midnight tears" which brought me to God.

In my early thirties I found myself "lost in a dark wood"--more specifically, I was

hunched up on a closed toilet lid one night wailing my guts out. All the unfinished deaths in my life up till then had finally coalesced into a monstrous abyss of anguish inside me which seemed bottomless. My sister's death, my father's death, and now the death of my marriage--there weren't enough tears to grieve them all at once, not after shutting out their reality for so long. I was stripped bare to the emotional bone, helpless, hopeless, bereft.

One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.

-- Joseph Campbell

These words describe what happened then. In my aching despair I prayed for the first time in my adult life. But since I'd long abandoned any belief in God, all I could conceive to pray to were the sentient atoms of my own dead father, which I envisioned still floating around somewhere far out in the interstellar void. What happened then still staggers my being. Instaneously, I was catapulted from agony to ecstasy--as if my soul were a pebble pulled all the way down to the depths in a Cosmic Slingshot, then abruptly released and sent soaring into the Heavens! I was transfixed by a laser beam of invisible Light; embraced in a profoundly compassionate, transcendent Presence, and irradiated with an irrepressible, all-encompassing Joy! Mere words simply cannot express it. I had encountered an unfathomable Reality beyond any I'd ever known--ever imagined even existed!--and I knew at once that my life was changed forever.

KANSAS CITY RENGA

April still conjures blossoms but the house is long gone

where I prayed to the far-flung atoms of my dead father

glittering like a sentient constellation at the galaxy's core

instantaneously from hair tips to heel ends I was split

wide open riddled by a blinding strobe of cosmic Light

that yanked me inside out catapulting grief to ecstasy

I was sitting on the toilet lid weeping in a rickety house

while my hollow marriage collapsed around me when

all heaven suddenly broke loose and everything changed

one timeless night at 47th and Jarboe in Kansas City

***

I wrote this poem earlier this year as my 10-line contribution to a 30-poet Renga titled Ghosts Over Water; and the Renga in turn was one facet of the AMERICA NOW AND HERE national celebration of all the arts which kicked off here in Kansas City. The unifying thematic thread for the Renga was Kansas City itself. But while most poets wrote more or less evocatively atmospheric urban slice of life pieces, I decided to go for broke and spectacularly fail by trying to compress into 10 lines--in a chain of 29 other 10-line links--the most overwhelming spiritual turning point and soul-transformative experience of my life. Impossible of course, but once the inspiration seized me, I felt I had no choice but to go for it.

Since that astounding night so long ago I've amassed a whole collection of spectacular failures--poems which attempt to square the circle by presuming to put into words something that's truly unspeakable. Nevertheless, isn't it time we begin to risk more courageously the scandalous absurdity of such heroic failures by opening out our personal and literary dialogues to encompass the invisible, ecstatic, transcendent dimensions of our lives? We're so glutted with suffocating information, but so poverty-stricken for insight, wisdom, revelation! As Emerson wrote: "We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that Divine Idea which each of us represents."

SONG OF THE SUPERNOVA

FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME I TRY TO STAMMER THE INEXPRESSIBLE--

THE GREAT SUPERNOVA THAT BLOWS MY MIND, INUNDATES MY HEART,

CAPSIZES MY SOUL. NEVER HAVE I FELT SO UTTERLY INADEQUATE!

ALL I CAN DO IS BOW LOW--BLIND, CLUELESS, GROPING FOR GRACE.

I REALIZE I'VE FAILED. BUT I HOPE AT LEAST THEY'LL SAY THIS:

HE NEVER TURNED BACK. HE FACED WONDERINGLY INTO THE LIGHT

AND KEPT ON STUMBLING FORWARD, CONSUMED BY A TRANSCENDENCE

WHICH OVERMASTERED HIM, STRIPPING HIM DOWN TO THE NAKED CORE.

YOU CAN HAVE YOUR PRESTIGIOUS PRIZES AND GLITTERING AWARDS.

I JUST WANT TO FALL IN LOVE, OVER AND OVER, WITH THE MYSTERY.

SO WHAT IF I'VE HARDLY HAD A DIME, OR EVEN A POT TO PISS IN.

THE EMPTIER I BECOME, THE VASTER THE UNIVERSE THAT FILLS ME!

STROKE YOURSELF, EVERYWHERE. KISS YOUR SHADOW TILL IT SHINES!

DON'T YOU KNOW? HAVEN'T YOU GUESSED YET? YOU ARE THE GLORY!

I AM THE SPLENDOR! WE ARE THOSE PRECIOUS PEARLS BEYOND PRICE!

ONCE THIS CAT GETS OUT OF THE BAG, ALL HEAVEN BREAKS LOOSE!

IF YOU SCRUTINIZE ANY ACT OF HATRED, OPPRESSION OR ABUSE,

YOU'LL DISCOVER IT ALWAYS SCREAMS "DENY YOUR OWN DIVINITY!"

DON'T. STAND FAST, WHATEVER THE COST. BELIEVE IN YOUR SOUL.

THAT STAR THAT EXPLODED? IT DECIDED TO BE REBORN--AS YOU.

***

Let's be talking more about this-- both the depths and the heights, and about how one can be threshold to the other. Let's break out of the toxic, soul-deadening trance to which our materialistic, post-modern dystopia addicts us. Let's swing the doors of our beings wide open once again to rediscover the vaster dimensions stretching beyond, around and within us.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across

the doorsill where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

-- Rumi

Blessing The Tiger

2011-08-23T14:55:00.000-05:00

From the tireless labyrinth of dreams I returned as if to my home, to the harsh prison. I blessed its dampness, I blessed its tiger, I blessed the crevice of light, I blessed my old, suffering body, I blessed the darkness and stone. There then occurred what I cannot forget nor communicate. There occurred the union with the divinity, with the universe.

-- Jorge Luis Borges

What does it mean to bless the tiger? It means to hold in precarious but impeccable balance my eternity and my mortality; my soul's transcendent Light and my blood's elemental Shadow, and to integrate these polarities into yet a greater, more empowered and enduring synthesis.

Jesus said: "Be wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove." That "and" is the crux of revelatory paradox. Through many years of trial and error, I've had to learn that neither an ecstatic mysticism, nor a nuts-and-bolts pragmatism, is sufficient unto itself. I need to fuse both intuition and instinct to become healed and whole.

Another way to view this: a key global challenge for the 21st Century must be for us to integrate the genius of Eastern religion with the genius of Western science. Each has its indispensable wisdom to offer; neither is complete or fulfilled without the other. To achieve the next transcending synthesis, let Einstein dance with The Buddha, and Lao-Tzu cavort with Jung!

THE GOLDEN MEAN

We can't breathe for long the stratosphere

of angels. It makes us giddy with height.

Feet floating too far above solid ground,

we lose our marbles. Fierce facts close in,

drag us down by our extravagant wings.

We can't survive for long the netherworld

of phantoms. Souls shrivel without light.

Heads buried too far beneath open sky,

we abdicate eternity. Despair stalks near,

eats us alive, sick dream by dying dream.

I have heard, though, about a third place

fit for humans--not all black, not all white.

Scintillating colors dance and play instead,

quickened at the hearth of a glorious sun!

There love laughs, blossoming like the rose.

***

There is a third place, a Golden Mean Pivot Point between the purely spiritual or totally animal sides of us. It is solar, adult, balanced, responsible, empowered, expressive, dynamic and loving. Some would call this the Inner Christ. It faces both inward toward the soul, and outward toward the world. The unique, focused, inspiring nature of this Divine Energy in our time manifests as a profound Call to Vocation. By recognizing and answering that Call, I accomplish the essential spiritual work I was born for, while simultaneously contributing the maximum possible loving service to the world.

Here's a drawing I did a few years ago titled "The Sentinel." Truly this is an elemental warrior spirit with a Call to Vocation! What he guards is nothing less than a supernatural gateway, a threshold to the eternal country of the soul. The gateway itself is not only an ancient dolmen, but also the symbol for Pi--the formula for the radius of a circle, and thus for the axis of the Earth as well. Here both the eternal and the temporal are integrated, yet this synthesis is achieved by the creative power of a third place within me--that Golden Mean Pivot Point of creative energy through which I express my Divinely inspired Call to Vocation.

SONG OF THE SECRET TUNNEL

I have been traveling down it for all

my life--this strange, twisting tunnel

that draws me beyond, groping toward...

what? Something I can never grasp,

mysterious, pulsating like a seed

buried in the ripening fruit of death.

Now I think I am caught by a maze,

labyrinthine, coiling and looping

upon itself--a great, restless snake

carrying me headlong in its mouth;

and my one chance is to balance here,

poised precariously between worlds,

neither swallowed up nor tossed aside,

but finding my grace, dancing purely

within these famished jaws, burned

and blessed by the journey, terrified

yet perfectly at peace, my whole being

cleansed in the white fires of praise!

We must learn anew to love danger;

to laugh serenely on the razor's edge,

transmuting all our anguish into joy...

***

Here's a way Dante expressed it in the last lines of his Divine Comedy:

...already I could feel my being turned--

instinct and intellect balanced equally

as on a wheel whose motion nothing jars--

by the Love that moves the sun

and the other stars.

Sophia -- Holy Wisdom

2011-08-16T10:24:00.000-05:00

Happy is the man who finds wisdom,
   and the man who gets understanding,
for the gain from it is better
    than gain from silver
    and its profit better than gold.
She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire
   can compare with her...
She is a tree of life to those
   who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy.

-- Prov. : 13-15, 18

There are many feminine aspects of the Divine, from Gaia to Kali, and all in between. Each at one time or another has changed my life. The evocation I want to focus on now is Sophia--Holy Wisdom. She's returning to us now--or more accurately, we're returning to Her. Sophia is the beacon of joy shining at the awakening center of a new paradigm.

How do I experience Sophia? How has she changed my life? I encounter her as that still, small voice of intuition, a singing silence, a secret knowing who's guidance brushes lighter than a feather across my soul. And I encounter her as the ecstatic joy irradiating my entire conscousness on the heights of mystical rapture. She's the exquisite teacher of pure being, the eternal woman-child, the quintessence of rebirth. Her freedom is radical, her spirit universal, her delight serene, playful, innocent, inspiring, transformative, profound.

HOMAGE

to be mute at this altar where words

impeccably chosen even the simplest

only obscure the Reality they struggle

so vainly to express yes to be mute

truly that would be best but if words

must be used although they will fail

fail miserably to utter the unspeakable

let me offer these stammerings to you

Sophia rarest Light of holy wisdom

exquisite teacher of unquenchable joy

still small voice who guides my being

peeling off its all-consuming shadows

surely you are the One instructing me

from the soul of every woman friend

***

In sexual relations with women I've expressed an initiating, penetrating, inseminating male energy rooted in instinct--one indispensable polarity. But at the opposite, complimentary polarity of transparent soul friendship, it's I who receive an initiating, penetrating, inseminating energy, except this intimate communion is a transforming infusion of Light, joy, freedom, understanding, unconditional acceptance and inspiring affirmation. This is the spirit of Sophia, Holy Wisdom. The genius of the Divine Feminine teaches me that there is no separation. We are all One.

There are diverse ways to interpret this drawing I made several years ago, all valid. The one which strikes home to me now: two images of Sophia. Shown on the left is the tragic eclipse of her Light during the old patriarchal paradigm, when the female role was mostly rigidly defined by subordinate, essentially biological terms of male sexuality, domination and control. Shown on the right is Sophia's ecstatic rebirth and liberation, which is happening right now, wherever her joy, freedom, wisdom, openness and transparency shine forth anew from the feminine soul to illuminate a transforming communion between true friends.

Here is the voice of Sophia, speaking through Lalla, a 14th Century woman mystic and disciple of Shiva:

The soul, like the moon

is new, and always new again.

And I have seen the ocean

continuously creating.

Since I scoured my mind

and my body, I too, Lalla,

am new, each moment new.

My teacher told me one thing,

"Live in the soul."

When that was so,

I began to go naked,

and dance.

The Clear Mirror

2011-08-09T10:50:00.000-05:00

You who want
knowledge
seek the Oneness
within.

There you
will find
the clear mirror
already waiting.

-- Hadewijch of Antwerp
13th Century woman, Flemish Beguine and Mystic

The hard thing is to try to use words to talk about an experience beyond words. Hadewijch did about as well as one can do. But always, when we try to describe the indescribable, the words become fewer, simpler, more mysterious, groping and paradoxical. I call it peeling the Infinite Onion. Each deeper peeling takes me closer to a Silence which is both the source of all speech, and its transcendence. In that Silence dwells the highest wisdom. As Robert Frost wrote: "We dance around in a circle and suppose./The Secret sits in the middle and knows."

I wish I could say I'm always centered there, in the Secret which simply knows. Far from it. Most of the time I'm dancing around in that circle and supposing--supposing this desired outcome might happen, or fearing

that undesired result. But then somehow I manage to find my way Home again--to the Center, the Source, the Oneness within, where I find "the clear mirror/already waiting."

I've written many, many poems which I consider my lovable failures. Each is a hopeless attempt to square the circle--i.e., to use words to express a deep knowing which is also pure being, the returm to a primal communion of unity, wholeness, Light and Joy which was, is, and will always be--before the first word was ever uttered, and after the last word will ultimately be spoken. Here's one such poem:

SANCTUARY

I crossed into the hidden sanctuary of Light

only one short step was needed a turning

a choice with my whole being to break free

but that single step encompassed a lifetime

behind those shimmering transparent walls

my dread sloughed off like outworn skin

I knelt at the center in the cyclone's eye

where phantoms could never assail me

these are mere words they can't explain

my knowing ascended to a higher sphere

beyond all speech here's our true Home

no horror in the world can destroy it

***

I could attempt to explicate this poem, but what's the point? For me, the language of poetry is as close as my words can come to the Silence at the core of my soul. Any additional words after that only wander further and further away. Here's one more "lovable failure." I wrote it for a close friend who recently went through a painful personal trial:

SPIRIT'S SONG

rising above soaring beyond whatever horror

crushes you now eats your lunch makes you

lose heart doubt your sanity almost despair

one pure trumpet note resounds you cannot bear

unless you answer to nothing but its clarion call

I realize this must seem like the sheerest claptrap

especially when all hell breaks loose and you run

screaming terrified shuddering to your bones

believe me I've been there pursued by demons

caught in my worst nightmare dreading breath

then something indomitable cuts through all that

what is it what do I hear or sense or encounter

breaking free with no fear unshakable serene

transcending even my own cringing helplessness

inspiring me to go on lifting me to struggle on

invisible yet the radiant source of all our vision

inaudible yet invincible music flows from there

untouchable yet its wisdom embraces us forever

immeasurable yet so intimately loving and near

we are this! incomparable! greater than death!

***

These are just two examples of how language stammers its witness to a Divine Mystery which dwells in the Singing Silence beyond any speaking. But even though all such attempts are fated to be, at best, lovable failures, we keep trying nevertheless. Therein lies our true nobility and our highest hope.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are a hundred ways to kneel

and kiss the ground.

-- Rumi

The Divine Light of the Soul

2011-08-03T17:59:00.000-05:00

We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. From within or from behind a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

From here on this will be the theme of my blog--the soul, and the Divine Light which shines out from that secret Source deep within us and within all Creation. Nothing is more important now than our reawakening to this Mystery, which has been at the core of ancient spiritual wisdom throughout the ages.

Our world is in a shambles. We've lost our bearings and we're heading for disaster. The causes seem infinitely complex and dauntingly intractable. But the roots of all the reasons lead back down to one essential truth--our secular, materialistic, uber-competitive, ultra-comsuming, hyper-individualistic, technology-obsessed, drastically atomized society has lost its soul. The oneness, community, compassion, cooperation, dialogue, understanding and commitment which only a communion of souls can create, increasingly are shunted aside by the division, selfishness, indifference, alienation, conflict, ignorance and irresponsibility which inevitably result when that soul connection is destroyed.

But I don't want to harp on the negative. Unless you're sleepwalking through each day, you need no further reminders. What we all need desperately to be reminded of however, is the alternative--that Divine Light of the Soul which suffers such chronic eclipse because virtually all the energies and influences to which we're exposed every hour drag us away from our own spiritual center and addict us instead to smoke and mirrors, fears and illusions, desires and possessions. To counteract such deadly hypnosis, this blog now offers an oasis of light, a beacon of soul.

At least once a week, usually on Tuesday, I'll be posting an inspiring quotation; a prose commentary based on it; one or two of my own spiritual poems; maybe a poem I admire by someone else, and occasionally an artwork as well. With all the creative power I have, I want to stand up and speak out for the Universal Soul, the Divine Light, the Holy Source of all I am, all you are, all that is.

HOLY COMMUNION

all at once I was there the Presence

a torrent of ecstasy seamlessly pitched

beyond our range of hearing a Light

too blindingly pure--unseeable by eyes

I don't know why it descended on me

abruptly out of nowhere everywhere

splitting me open like a milkweed pod

piercing straight to my defenseless soul

snowy seeds of awe and pain rapture

and longing spilled into the drastic air

they're numberless the names of God

who can say one's right one's wrong?

each is born from ravished awakening!

the name that now unerringly struck

transfixing me, was this: Infinity Holy

I felt this loved this died this knew this

This is what I am you are everything

no matter how outrageously we forget

I wept at human folly the difference

between how we live and what we are

***

Lo, "I am with you always,"

means when you look for God,

God is in the look of your eyes,

in the thought of looking,

nearer to you than yourself,

or things that have happened to you.

There is no need to go outside.

Be melting snow.

Wash yourself with yourself.

-- Rumi

Taking A Break

2010-11-30T14:45:00.000-06:00

I've decided to step away from this blog for a while and take a rest--at least until I'm once more motivated by writing and/or art I feel compelled to share. Thanks for your interest, and responses. I'll let you know when I start posting again.
-- Bob

Ancient Wisdom

2010-11-23T13:17:00.000-06:00

     Here's a third set of poem/drawing companion pieces from The Sacred Well: Songs From The Waters Of Life:

                      OLD STONES

When we walk near old stones--say in a wall
that once bounded or divided things, but now
lies weathered, crumbling, mostly overgrown
with creepers and vines--sometimes they speak,
chanting spells from the subterranean world,
muttering in a tongue we can almost hear.

Listen. What are they saying? Can you tell?
I sense myself becoming heavier, dissolving,
my soul groping down through layers of soil,
jostled by stumps, fossils, artifacts, bones.
It is good to come to rest there, deep below,
where all the beginnings and endings are one.

Far inside me a primeval being is achored
by great, gnarled roots to a time before time,
to stark landscapes where no footfall echoes,
no voices cry. And what it knows, it knows
as death knows life; as the stone's shadow
knows what burns in the heart of the stone.

                              *

No more words.

In the name of this place

we drink in with our breathing,

stay quiet like a flower

so the nightbirds will start singing.

-- Rumi --

Roots And Stars

2010-11-16T15:18:00.000-06:00

Here's another poem/drawing combo from my book The Sacred Well: Songs From The Waters Of Life.

THE UNKNOWABLE WORD

We don't know a word to say certain things.
They're too far inside. Silence attends them.
Every effort at speech fritters out and away.
This is how it is when you capsize my soul.
Our talk confounds us. For behind the voices
there's a Being who does not speak at all.

We don't know a word to say certain things.
The true name for that One is Namelessness,
our glances seeking an inconceivable Face.
I have felt the eyes and sensed the smile.
The clean light of each morning reveals it.
When night gropes up from roots, it shines.

We don't know a word to say certain things.
But because we stammer, there's hope for us.
As long as Mystery survives, and Magnitude,
I'll encounter you with growing awe, amazed
at what forever eludes me; yet grateful, too,
that beauty has a Source beyond this world.

*

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss;

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.

-- Pablo Neruda --

Ending And Beginning

2010-11-09T10:54:00.000-06:00

   Last week's posting marked the final entry of a 35-week series, during which I wrote prose meditations that were each inspired by a line from a poem I'd previously written--either in 2009 or early 2010. It was challenging but rewarding to explore, in a more philosophical spirit, some of the wider implications of the poems' allusive utterances, and then to combine both with related original artwork and selected quotations. I had fun and learned a lot. I hope you did too.

      I've created many other poems and drawings however--some very recently, others across the years. So I'm going to make selections from among these and post them each week, as the Spirit moves, adding any comments which may seem relevant and helpful. Along those lines, here's a poem I wrote in May about spiritual balance:

                      TRUE LINE

landing at the perfect angle of approach
       you can hold onto your sanity without
         exploding in a spectacular fireball

impeccable balance is everything
one fear to the left    one rage to the right
                      you're cooked

finding the true line       a pure trajectory
that's the ticket!
        what can derange you then?

I spent many lifetimes figuring this out
crashing   burning   crashing   burning
                over and over

but now I've got it
    heart light       mind clear
          hands barely touching the controls

                            *

     The following drawing and poem are companion pieces, both part of a book I wrote in 1996-97 titled The Sacred Well: Songs From The Waters Of Life. Although usually a poem is inspired by an artwork (a literary practice called "ekphrasis"), in this instance the reverse is true--the poem came first, then the artistic vision inspired by it.

THE LABYRINTH

Amazing, isn't it? To be a woman, a man.

What does it mean? I'm born to love

what dies; born to die myself; born

all hunched up like a question mark.

But who inside me keeps asking? Who

cannot rest? Don't you sense it? Beyond

this dying animal, a deeper life begins!

Listen, I'm blundering around, same as you.

Every day I start off into the Labyrinth,

always a novice, groping this way and that,

straining to grasp the riddle of my soul.

And each night, wearily, I crawl into bed,

slanting downward through the Great Dark,

small as a raindrop, immense as a storm.

Receiving The Angel

2010-11-02T16:46:00.000-05:00

            THE MESSENGER

tire tracks crisscross in the slushy snow
there's half a foot more still on the way
spring's too far off even to think about

yet for the first time this stormy winter
somewhere close among bare branches
the mourning dove like a muted oracle
calls out over and over through sullen air

don't roll over and burrow back to sleep
or lay awake    haunted by aimless fear

the angel of a thousand guises has spoken

it doesn't care if you're tired of struggling
it doesn't believe in loneliness or self-pity

only that today is new clean open free!

so don't turn over and cringe back to sleep
or lay awake  brooding on ancient wounds

you've been summoned by a primal voice
which cannot lie   stand up   breathe deep

take another shaky step into the unknown

                               *

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across

the doorsill where two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

-- Rumi --

THE ANGEL OF A THOUSAND GUISES

All are interconnected. Everything's charged with meaning. "Coincidence" is just a word for significance we don't understand yet--or once did but have forgotten. the ancients knew this: and the scattering of vanishing tribal peoples who remain still do.

Which means unheralded messengers enter our lives each day, although mostly we don't even recognize them, never mind grasp what they're trying to tell us. Not to imply that such understanding is easy. Intuitive sensitivity and careful discernment are essential. We must be open, alert, balanced, receptive, humble.

The message's meaning is identical to the messenger. In other words, there's no separation between inner and outer, self and other, knower and known. Psychological awareness fuses with sensory perception to dissolve the illusion of duality into one seamless whole.

Every message, each messenger, is utterly unique, symbolizing a single, unrepeatable convergence of giver and receiver in space and time. Simultaneously, every message, each messenger, is forever the same, calling us back home to the infinite and eternal mystery of our own souls.

By definition then, the language a messenger speaks is always paradox--this is an intrinsic part of the message itself. Every messenger transcends boundaries and demolishes categories. Our intellect's determination to compartmentalize reality into either/or dichotomies is flummoxed and derailed.

We've been brainwashed by an onslaught of disenchanters, but we live in an enchanted universe nevertheless. Angels of wisdom, justice, mercy and freedom--Divine Messengers wearing a thousand guises--arrive daily at the portals of our consciousness. All we need do is recognize them and invite them in.

Death And Rebirth

2010-10-26T09:02:00.000-05:00

                       MOLTING

I think I'll start all over again    and I do
but then almost choke on a gulp of coffee

so begins another day    the angel is mute
there are various achings in different places
many paths branch off   which should I take?

not to be too cavalier about such things
each heartbeat subtracts me toward--what?
heaven   hell   oblivion   dark energy waking?

I don't want to slide from my old dead skin

I don't want to feel utterly bare and new
defenseless at dawn    exposed to noon
shrouded by the cold shadows of dusk

I don't want to grow change   die   be born
still    it happens    I surrender   then bow

the fist of my wound hasn't unclenched yet
I still brandish it before me like a shield

but     little by little     fingers break open

as petals packed inside a bursting bud
unfurl to drink the golden light

                          *

There is no death. Only

a change of worlds.

-- Chief Seattle --

SHUCKING OFF MY OLD DEAD SKIN

No indeed, I don't want to shuck off my old dead skin. It may be worn out and useless now, even an impediment. But at least it's familiar. Once it served and protected me. I could not have survived without it. When I emerge completely and abandon this threadbare husk, I'll feel naked, exposed, vulnerable. Why can't I just stay here, hunker down, and somehow still get by?

Well, for starters, because I won't "somehow still get by." If I don't grow forward, then inexorably I'll slide back. The status quo is no longer an option--if it ever was. To be alive is to be changing. My freedom is a choice: continue to evolve, facing courageously toward the unknown; or retreat into a suffocatingly decaying shell which ultimately will become my spirit's shroud.

There's no going back to how things were. I've burned my bridges behind me. I must commit wholeheartedly, keep exploring. What I seek to discover is nothing less than a new, integrated, more authentic self--not totally altered, not utterly unfamiliar; yet transformed, balanced, whole, in a way I've never known before.

This sounds like a grim struggle, and there's no question at times it's just that. Fear is a powerful false god. I hold on fiercely, let go painfully, grope onward grudgingly. Often it seems I only break out--break through--when I'm forced to, because staying where I am deteriorates into a living nightmare.

But if that's all there is--desperately trying to escape more suffering--I realize it simply isn't enough. As Thomas Hobbes contended, my existence would be little more than "...nasty, brutish and short." Temporarily avoiding more agony is no sufficient prescription for curing my deepest wound. It reads more like a motto etched with acid over the gates of hell.

The greatest incentive for embracing growth and change doesn't drive me on, it draws me on. Not desperation, but inspiration, is my overriding motive. I've caught the scent of something miraculous--a healed soul, a redeemed love, a renewed life. Now, nothing less will ever satisfy.

Here at this pivot point, with these words, I choose life, not death; change, not stagnation; the future, not the past. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow I must make the same fateful choice again and again and again. This is my stringent trial, my divine right, my sacred gift. This is the decisive crossroad of my human freedom.

Never Surrender/Always Surrender

2010-10-19T09:16:00.000-05:00

                REPORTING FOR DUTY

ticktock says the clock   click-clack the brain
daylight scuttles in   mincing on naked rat feet
right behind it humps   this hungry world this
earth-plane shimmy-shake   old slug with teeth

got the heart for it once more   scribbler man--
spewing gouts of incandescent blood at dawn?
nobody knows the password    upside is down
so start over again   like always  scratch claw

scramble  find a way bust out   break through
the demon   the angel   they wait in the cracks
zigzagging crazily from Ground Zero just take
that first wound on the left    you can't miss it

                                *

And the miraculous comes so close

to the ruined, dirty houses--

something not known to anyone at all,

but wild in our breast for centuries.

-- Anna Akhmatova --

THIS EARTH-PLANE SHIMMY-SHAKE

There are times, like now, when just trying to cope with what this world throws down seems more than I can bear. Stuff keeps on coming, from every angle, and each hit feels like a bull's-eye. Multiply this across so many decades, and you could say my resistance has worn pretty thin. It doesn't take much anymore to stick it in and twist it, right to the bone.

I'm still juking here, jibing there, doing my best, straining to juggle all these rusty knives. But I'm getting terribly tired; my will falters; my concentration slips. Sooner or later I fear, I'm going to miss one, badly, and it'll wind up quivering blade-deep in my own chest.

Whatever this particular combination of personal karma, deliberate abuse, or the way life often just happens, there are limits to my endurance, to my will to keep on despite every adversity. After I exceed those limits, I simply can't take any more. I want to give up. And yet...I don't. I go on anyway--without much hope, against all odds, no matter what the cost. How can that be?

The best answer I've been able to come up with is pure paradox: "Never Surrender/Always Surrender." Unless I consciously live both sides of this paradox--and in exacting priority and relationship--I'm cooked. But if I can somehow penetrate the conundrum, solve the riddle, and achieve the transcending synthesis, then there's no obstacle I can't overcome.

The key: know what never to surrender to, and what always to surrender to; and also understand that these two crucial choices must occur simultaneously--they're each just halves of a far greater whole. I can only have the courage to never surrender, if at the same time I have the humility to always surrender. Without practicing both realities, I'll never make it.

What is it to which I must never surrender? Every soulless, fractured, cruel, negative, ignorant, violating, hateful, selfish, greedy, terrifying, brutal, dehumanizing energy--both inner and outer--which threatens to crush and consume me. No matter how overwhelmed I feel, how battered and beaten, against these I must stand bravely and hold my ground.

Which seems of course an impossible demand, and surely is, unless...unless it's coupled inseparably with the second part of the paradox--always surrender. But always surrender to what? To the infinite and eternal Essence which inspires my beleaguered heart, instructs my fallible mind and animates my mortal flesh; to my deepest Source and highest Self; to the Divine Presence which is always there, nearer than my own breath, hidden within me.

Where my ego's limited self ends, my spirit's Greater Self takes over. When my mind's finite capacity maxes out, my soul's boundless intuition begins to play. As my heart's waves of passion and courage subside, something much older and wiser inside sinks down roots and grips hard, thrusting below time, grief, suffering, even death.

All are facets of the Holy Mystery I discover at the innermost core of my being; and it's to that Holy Mystery alone I must always surrender. Only then can I find peace at last, whatever assails me, and no longer be afraid.

Never Surrender/Always Surrender: these are two declensions of a single reality. We are transient flesh--inspired by Immortal Spirit!

Healing And Serving

2010-10-12T08:47:00.000-05:00

              HONORABLE DISCHARGE

sit in silence now    let your heart come to rest
you've ridden the passionate wave long enough
words jetting forth   gouts of blood on the page

such was the sacrifice you were called to make
and you poured it out to the last agonized drop
the syntax of horror     transmuted into ecstasy

your choice was neither sublime nor ridiculous
only the needful work of service in this world
if or how it made a difference--not your concern

but you were changed by it   purged through it
what was blinding wound     now teaching scar
the giving brought the healing   it set you free

                                  *

My busy heart who shudders as she talks

Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

-- Dylan Thomas --

THE GIVING BROUGHT THE HEALING

From the wound came the word. The word was the spoken blood which kept on pouring--dark and clotted or bright and burning. Poetry began as the blind, groping voice of my anguished soul.

I didn't know this then, as a teenager. Or, if I did, I wasn't aware of knowing. I just wrenched open an inner spigot and out it came. Nor did I realize how crude and clumsy those first fumbling literary efforts were. Yet they were the only way I could express a reality I didn't even understand. Something enormous, horrifying, implacable, had smashed into my world and splintered my being. Writing those earliest poems was my desperate, brave, lonely, impossible attempt to impose some kind of meaning and order on what seemed utterly meaningless, totally obliterating.

So began what turned out to be the creative challenge of a lifetime. Gradually however, over the years, writing poetry came to stand for more than just an indispensable cathartic outpouring of emotions; more even than my imagination's keen delight in discovery, or my mind's growing mastery at crafting those inner visions into finished works of art.

During a later period of raw personal upheaval, poetry emerged as a spiritual vocation. I was called to surrender my ego; to open my consciousness as a conduit for a higher Creative Energy, to offer myself as a vessel of loving service. The cost of making this choice cannot be exaggerated--other than to say "everything." I lost my life as it had been, as I wanted and expected it should be. In exchange, I was given the chance to experience a Greater Life--the Life of "We" rather than "Me"--the Life of the healed, boundless and liberated soul.

But the only way to this new, Greater Life led through an ever deeper plumbing of the depths of my shattered psyche. That speaking blood still had to stream forth, whether in agony, ecstasy, or from somewhere--everywhere--in between. The long, slow, difficult struggle for psychological healing, and the equally long, slow, exacting labor of creative offering merged, became one.

There's no redemptive climax to this arduous inner journey if the blood simply flows on forever, the vital healing never happens. Explore a primal wound profoundly enough though, and eventually--blessedly!--you pierce right through to the other side; to the soul's original, pristine wholeness, before all violation or betrayal, any stain of grief and loss.

The core breakage doesn't go away. Damage was done which can't be undone. It changed me, permanently. But now I've reached beyond it to a purer, clearer, transcendent dimension of my being. Coming home to this Eternal Reality inside; living wholeheartedly from this Universal Consciousness, I experience my childhood trauma and its aftermath not as a blinding wound, but as a teaching scar.

Poetry--the speaking blood, the unhealed wound's witness--is finally draining dry. There's only a little left at the bottom of the well. But I can understand and accept this now. It's not a symptom of writer's block or creative burnout, but rather a sign I've stayed the harrowing course, sounded the terrifying abyss, and so at last become truly healed, down deep in my soul.

At the same time, inseparable from the essential task of personal healing, I've sought to express the fullest measure of loving service, from the Highest Source within me, through every spiritual gift in my power. The giving brought the healing. It set me free.