Empty nature whispers its secrets more clearly, uninhibited by our inhibitions.
Empty of paper, we free trees, and grow with them.
Empty of water, we die. Water is sacred and must be cherished.
Empty of land we fly, light as air.
Empty of air we suffocate. Breathe with respect for air also breathes us.
Empty of fire, our hearts grow cold, unable to burn love.
Empty of mind, we know everything.
Category Archives: Healing
Love’s Font
Here is a wonderful, spiritual post from Meredith at Graceful Presence. This is beautifully honest and heartfelt musing inspired by yogic philosophy. Later she quotes the New Testament, capturing the true presence of the spirit of Jesus, in the colors and mood I think he intended his teachings. It’s worth reading the whole thing. I love how she gently explores the different layers of inner spaciousness, starting with time, then breath, then emotions, and through compassion to infinite love.
When I meditate, which unfortunately is only occasionally, I find the first thing I need to do is relax the tension in my chest, around my sternum and heart. Almost instantly, I feel a warmth spread through my limbs. It’s almost as if a space is literally created around my heart to allow it to feel what it always yearns to feel: unbounded love and forgiveness.
Presence: In quiet moments of solitude, I have been turning to the spaciousness of the present moment. I have been allowing this feeling of spaciousness within me expand, just to see how far it can go, and observing what the experience of it is for me. The intensity of this experience is subtle. In the simplicity of observing the present moment, noting what thoughts come and go, hearing the flies buzzing by and the soft clucking of the chickens, feeling the warm breezes on my skin, and observing my own breath… there is a prevailing fresh quality of resting in Presence. I still don’t know the answer to that question or how far this can go yet, because there is no end to the in-the-moment experience of this. In other words, each moment of feeling spaciousness is a new moment – I feel it expansively and freshly. The experience of this for me is of open possibility, and a quiet peaceful serenity. Though occasionally disturbing thoughts surface in the present moment of observing, I am becoming practiced in just allowing these troubling thoughts dissolve. When I realize turmoil, and then become less absorbed within it, I feel a humbling compassion toward myself. This is fertile ground for love.
Let
Ineffable Present
careening, seething,
(gelatinous collision of
past and future)
Universe breathing.
Mute Mother
(whispering) (yes),
perilous fusion
resonating us.
There is no choice
but to give in
to terrifying
Bliss (consciousness).
Honor the seed, the flower,
the book, the hour
(and the subtle, singing space between)
Forgive as you go.
Let rest
all this.
This is another “everything” poem. I seem to yearn for the big picture, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, I’ll be away a few weeks, driving East in my new (’01) Volvo S60 T5, floating along the highway with Mahler or Sedaris or Steve Reich blasting. I’ll hike in the Adirondacks, then see a friend’s family in Vermont, then visit my father on the Cape, then attend and play at my second cousins wedding, then visit with my mother a week, then back here. Let’s just hope I really like my car after nearly 2000 miles in two weeks!
Somehow
Sallow fruit of doubt (guilty, rotting holes,
smashed hope, mute possibility, pause for complacency),
whose lazy seeds spawn
contorted fragments of forget;
tattered, moot sentences,
hesitations,
echoes of fear,
following fear of fear.
Craning, one can hear
their long lost sorrows attached
to our own, thumping heart.
Mind’s hoary soliloquy
flaps frantically,
fitfully free; while
quintessential doors of perception
(five of them)
filter cosmic, white heat
through prisms of colors-
lapis, ochre, sienna
rainbow’s light,
dark unraveling.
Decoding time into days,
we clutch at pebbles in the stream
dreaming the gurgling flow
into pomegranate’s passion,
guzzling its nectar, pits and all.
Vignettes, billions, (perpetual unfolding)
trembling plays with no set-
Characters (you and me) act
on shifting grains of
windswept dunes in
Sahara’s raw dance.
Yet, selfish insistence,
pearly data of birth
assembles uncannily-
mapping gravity’s clout.
Dikes of persistence
shape tomorrow’s fortunes
from today’s regrets.
Torrential rivers
of love and pain, joy and betrayal
flow past eroding banks,
through unequal silences of
sorrow and shame.
Pandora’s plethora of tarnished ennui
sinks overloaded barges-
good intentions, weighed down
with neglect.
Compost condensed beneath timeless
yearning, crushed into syrupy coal,
morphs
to become diamonds.
After all is said, all is done,
After Time spins out
when doubt is spent, words gone-
Somehow, Silent
from amongst this clutter
callow wings unfurl, revealing a Pearl.
Salubrious jewel.
Tabula rasa.
Memories
Memories give us amnesia
about what we could know:
spooks telling truths
in cunningly coy
closed, secret sessions.
They wrap us in myths,
conjuring dreamy, alluring
vapid mirages
which may guide us-
beguiling as
stars in the distance
while receding further, further
as we approach.
Memories shatter moments
of fragile truth, (unwillingly)
drawing us
irresistibly, to their
tinseled cocoons.
They corrode love’s
fresh childish rapture with
sugar and rust
syrup and dust.
Memories lock us in
windowless rooms
as we stare longingly at
faded, curling photographs
of the way
we once wished
we once dreamed
we might have been,
but may never know-
for haunted oldness coats
new moments like thick, black grease.
Now forget all this
and peel open your heart.
I wasn’t too happy when I wrote this. I had been rejected by a long term lover. But it has a certain bitter truth to it about clinging to the past.