SOMETIMES IN BITTERNESS

Get out of my life, Man
Walk out of my door
Here, take your burden of ‘manly’ concerns with you
Also guilt
Out of my door, out of the gate
Watch it! Don’t trip over haste that trails close behind.
Take your obligatory hand away from my shoulder
Preoccupation makes it sit heavy
It weighs a ton
Makes breathing difficult (I stifle a scream of exasperation)

Let the winds fly away with your words
Nonchalant, they don’t reach the place it hurts anyway.
Don’t bother phrasing carefully
your facile reassurance
Hear it ring hollow when most needed?

Don’t try and hide the glance that slips away
To your cellphone, the TV screen, the waiter that hovers, the people who happen to cross your line of vision
Because you couldn’t see the pain in my eyes even if you looked into them
Go away, Man
Take your ‘love’ with you
It does not ring true

Walk out of my door.
Out the gate
Go.

Hmmm

I want to write but can't. I have no words, thoughts fail me. In the cage of my mind there is no opening for them. Everything reverberates inside, reflecting in the small space and bouncing off the inside upon itself till it becomes a dark, murky, swampy, floaty, mushy, soft, hard, dark, full of holes, cheesy, mouldy, rodenty, ferrety, quicksilvery, shiny, glittery, darkly forbidding .......mess

Plastic time

I asked, wished, for a revelation in the midst of one
How did the day come to have so many more hours than usual?
Time stretched while we meditated
Joining and harmonizing, breathing in unison
Alive
Every moment, every movement, in tandem with the universe.

But for you there will be no crying
Though the sun still glints off the sea that moves at the horizon from the terrace
Though the breeze still blows at the railing where we stood together,
and the gentle day still streams in at the door pooling at the chair on the rug where you had a nap in the afternoon

I ask Oh Devi, that you grant me perpetual bliss where there is no transience, no temporariness
Perpetual because I can feel this bliss within myself, call it up by myself
No longing, no missing, no emptiness created by the absence of another.
Grant that I feel the ecstasy in every moment of my life through your grace.
Grant me more...freedom from sadness and emptiness.
And I surrender it all to you.

fading

However deep our experience, however firm we think the moment is imprisoned inside of our soul, however magical the encounter...it fades. And the first memory that fades is the fragrance of the flowers that enveloped the moment.

When and why does it come to this , that one has so little to say? Is it a sign of deepening thought or the opposite?

Kabir

Just like that..without any reason..because my heart yearns for his words and because this is one of my favorites


WITHIN this earthen vessel are bowers and groves,
and within it is the Creator:
Within this vessel are the seven oceans
and the unnumbered stars.
The touchstone and the jewel-appraiser are within;
and within this vessel the Eternal soundeth,
and the spring wells up.
Kabîr says:
"Listen to me, my Friend!
My beloved Lord is within."

Do I care

Do I care if I never become a success?
I care if I fail, because that means I have not applied myself enough
Do I care if I never create anything bigger than myself?
Do I care if people dont know who I am , or dont care about knowing me?
Do I care if I never have enough, clever or memorable to say?
Do I care if no one comes to my funeral?

Have to do what the moment reveals needs to be done

Nothing shows itself clearly at the moment. Life is full of haze and shadows and things that can be or may be. The road covers itself, the goal hidden from my view.
How do I walk this path? To where do I walk this path? For what purpose, to what end, to what reward? What must I feel, think, desire? Nothing is known.
I come to another conclusion now, learned in a murky clarity of elusive thought: I have to walk in this moment the best I can. That is all. Every step taken with honesty and without pushing towards any other end except that (to act with honesty). This will not take me to my goal but may be in fact the only goal.

It is surprising to think this because we are so used to thinking about the end result of what we do. Always thinking what or where our actions will lead us to. Giving up this expectation is difficult because it takes away perspective and expectation and to some extent even hope for a wonderful end.

calling out

Lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost lost......Oh Devi find me, hold my hand and guide me on my journey............

Kabir calling to evolve consciously

Having crossed the river,
where will you go, O friend ?

There’s no road to tread,
No traveler ahead,
Neither a beginning, nor an end.

There’s no water, no boat, no boatman, no cord;
No earth is there, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford.

You have forgotten the Self within,
Your search in the void will be in vain;
In a moment the life will ebb
And in this body you won’t remain.

Be ever conscious of this, O friend,
You’ve to immerse within your Self;
Kabir says, salvation you won’t then need,
For what you are, you would be indeed.

Silence* By Pico Iyer

Beautiful essay.

Every one of us knows the sensation of going up, on retreat, to a high
place, and feeling ourselves so lifted up that we can hardly imagine the
circumstances of our usual lives, or all the things that make us fret. In
such a place, in such a state, we start to recite the standard litany: that
silence is sunshine, where company is clouds; that silence is rapture, where
company is doubt; that silence is golden, where company is brass.

But silence is not so easily won. And before we race off to go prospecting
in those hills, we might usefully recall that fool's gold is much more
common, and that gold has to be panned for, dug out from other substances.
"All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by
Silence," wrote Herman Melville, one of the loftiest and most eloquent of
souls.

We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but
a presence; not emptiness but repletion. Silence is something more than just
a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is
stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear
ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear
ourselves not think, and so sink below our selves into a place far deeper
than mere thought allows. In silence, we might better say, we can hear
someone else think.

Or simply breathe. For silence is responsiveness, and in silence we can
listen to something behind the clamour of the world.

A "moment of silence" is the highest honour we can pay someone; it is the
point at which the mind stops, and something else takes over (words run out
when feelings rush in).

There is -- of course -- a place for noise, as there is for daily lives.
There is a place for roaring, for the shouting exultation of a baseball
game, for hymns and cries of pleasure. The great charm of noise, however, is
when it ceases.

Silence, then, could be said to be the ultimate province of trust: it is the
place where we trust ourselves to be alone; where we trust others to
understand the things we do not say; where we trust a higher harmony to
assert itself. We all know how treacherous are words, and how often we use
them to paper over embarrassment, or emptiness, or fear of the larger spaces
that silence brings. "Words, words, words" commit us to positions we do not
really hold, the imperatives of chatter; words are what we use for lies,
false promises, and gossip. We babble with strangers; with intimates we can
be silent. We "make conversation" when we are at a loss; we unmake it when
we are alone, or with those so close to us that we can afford to be alone
with them.
In love, we are speechless; in awe, we say, words fail us.

(1992)

*From Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions*
* *

Now suddenly

The flow of the universe has caught me up in its masterful current.
Picked up from the side where I had stayed trapped in an eddy i am part of the meaningful journey again. Silence again has meaning beyond the superfluity of words. In silence I feel the moment, know your thoughts. For this brief moment in time I feel as if the gates of existence have swung open for me. I can see in.

There is an experience, a state of being that feels akin to merging.
When the air and heat, distant sounds, breath, thoughts and tactile experiences are all woven together as if in one fluid, living cocoon.
Where every movement is synergy.
Have you felt it?
As I participate in the moment with love the connection doesn't seek the transcendental but the deeply emotional
These are your eyes and I let you in, let me out.
I can feel who I am expand, I grow
The gates of existence swing open to include me. I am walking in.

Meditation: Just so with the universe

There is an experience, a state of being that feels akin to floating.
When the air and heat, distant sounds, breath, thoughts and tactile experiences are all woven together as if in one fluid, living cocoon.
Where every movement is synergy with the cosmic, everything is right and light.
Have you felt it?
As I participate in the moment with authenticity, letting go...leaving it to something else
I can feel who I am wither
and a new, unseen version of me emerges

Ah So

Love left us
Left me
And I come back for it in circles, spirals...seeking what I never had
Looking for it in unlikely places
All Fleeting connections: never enough, never right

Devastation

When the spirit is strong: Silence is powerful.
When the spirit is shaky the silence: Devastating