418: Carved Out

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To read about this image, visit my other blog Belly of a Star.

A spiral of question upon question. Answers seeping out and morphing into more queries. Butterflies that burst, each birthing from a singular, a thousand more flutters; and my mind, this tiny hook to stringed-wing, traveling into a symphony of thoughts.

How I long to be understood. To be held under the stars, in a world, where as hard as I try, I cannot connect. In a world where to be loved fully, is to lose my sense of self in the process.

To live in anguish of ever-present disappointment, pleasure turned agony, and extreme isolation or to give up this sense of self, love the All, and dedicate my life to service.

There appears no middle road.

Abandoned, let down onto myself, and then lifted up above myself. Loving bliss or extreme suffering; while the rest, in form or belief, seem to sleep in a twisted agony of their own.

The one dedicating herself to help the other, when her own self remains in dismal suffering. The one dedicating himself to a cause, when his own ability to feel and be is sacrificed.

If I am not a ‘self,’ then why would I want to be what I am not? And if I am not, then what am I to be?

The souls thinking themselves following or leading; thinking too, the sign shall come. Stepping untied alone into an illusion of nowhere, hoping to find the no one.

To sacrifice my very humanness, the quest dismissed, for universal peace. To circumvent my hollowed out self of sadness and fill it with a layering of illusion undone. Poured into the divine, into God and Goddess form, and perpetually served, sacrificed. All desire dissipated for the All.

Momentarily safe, momentarily comforted, momentarily brought out of self and back through self, and afforded the moments to blend in with the universe. The trees alive. Angel kisses. As walking ghost, carved, in this mystery undone and hidden before the finish.

I am a foreshadowing of future chapters. The ones in which I turn the pages to discover I am back on some island onto myself; victim of nothingness, grander within the nothingness of am, than the world appears in the everything of naught.

Lost in the exact canvas of eternity created through the concept and thoughts of eternity. No self creating no self, until self emerges and claims self again. Spinning in recognition of circle, defined within circle. Parts dismissed and whole returned, and whole dissected into pieces.

Onto my self, I awaken as the dreamer, and then fall asleep twice over, to awaken to the un-free one; cycling through.

Longing for the flesh and flesh alone, the timeless one to fill me complete in his coming. Longing for the one star that can see me.

To bring another one to the one I am not.

Split and made. Two becoming the unified. Split into the two again. The one splattered across the other; neither satisfied and both smothered.

How I long for rescue, as two lay clasped and connected, gasping for the breath of wisdom.

How I long for a hand to be the hand. How I long to know, to no longer be in this me. To hear the whispers behind another soul, a very spirit split open and dispersed and fed to me. No pretty fool. No ugly beast, yet secretly tucked away in between the points of eternity.

To move is to cause the other to shift. To sit is to risk falling, again and again, into the deep of nowhere.

To suffer in this humanness perchance to create the one hand I reach for that is reaching for me.

To suffer in the aftermath of bliss to connect in the river of pain.

Or to bleed out every last sense of me, and become blended in the peace of nothingness.

409: Unconditional and Conditional Love

( I am writing more because a lot is going on with our extended family. I process to find relief. If you don’t see me around for a bit, I might take a break. Hugs and love ~ Sam)

I have had the opportunity to experience a variety of friendships. In so doing, I have learned a lot about myself and love. For the majority of my life I felt a false-love from others and gave out false-love. Even though I felt the false-love, I didn’t recognize the falsehood for what it was. I was an active participant in the illusion. Most of these friendships were based on need. This desire was masked as possible fulfillment and completion. I know now no one can complete me.

I still hold all of these people in love and light. All of my friends continue to be some of my greatest teachers. I don’t choose to see any wrong in where I have traveled, and hold no one in my life responsible, not even my self. I have forgiven me and all. I place no judgment on any of my past or current friends either. I see them as lovely lights and filled with goodness. I don’t see them based on their actions but based on their hearts.

I was a player in the game of false-love, particularly in relation to men. Most of this telling is based on reflecting back to my behavior in pre-marriage years. I think if I had read what I have written below in my twenties, I never would have seen the ‘truth’ of it, and gone on living in denial. Maybe I even would have been spiteful and angry. I think if I had read this prose in my thirties, I would have thought I already loved unconditionally, and this was a waste of my time. I would have thought the person was preaching or trying to teach what I knew. If I read this last month, I would have thought, interesting, but I know this already. But it wasn’t clear to me until recently. Dynamically clear.

For now when someone claims to love me with a conditional type of love, I don’t feel love from them. I don’t know why, but all falsehoods affect me to a great degree. I don’t even know how I see this false-love, but I do. That’s not to say that people who proclaim to love me don’t love me. I believe they do. I believe a part of them does. But I believe a greater part is in constant battle with an unmasked, unnamed, and unforgiving fear. I believe this fear constantly transforms who I am when interpreted by another. I become what another projects from fear. In rare cases I become the light of love. This, and only this, is when fear is eradicated from its shell of illusion.

There is a struggle for people to find love and claim love, because they haven’t yet found the love inside themselves.

This false-love scares me momentarily, until I dismiss the fear.

It scares me because when another feels the illusion of fear, I feel the separation.

I have those in my life now that love me unconditionally. There is much freedom in this, to be me and be loved for me. I am not loved based on my outcomes or what I do or do not do. But even I, in my relationships with others, slip back into conditional love; this is very evident in my marriage and with my children. I continue to release judgment on self and others, and to learn. I am fortunate to have such experiences available.

When I am loved unconditionally I feel fed and nurtured. When I am loved by someone with conditions, I feel caged and judged. I am learning to not feel caged and judged, and to see this as illusion too, but it is taking some practice.

Lately, I am becoming more of a projection of what another choses to see in me. I can feel this in my depths. I become what another believes he or she sees. I become, in essence what they hold within. I have heard of this happening to other people, as well. So I am not alone in this experience. It is interesting to watch as I transform based on another’s deep level. I do not at this time think I am choosing to still see “fear.” I recognize the beauty and light in all, and see the fear only as illusion, nothing more. I can’t see beyond the beauty into fear, because there is no fear at the foundation.

I know I am still learning and growing.

I no longer choose to buy into another’s pain; especially when their pain is projected onto me, as if I did something or didn’t do something to cause the hurt. I do not have the power to knock down or to build up a person. Only source and a person’s own self can affect the spirit. I do have the power to love, and in this love to bring wholeness to self. Everyone has a choice to accept what he or she thinks I am saying or to reject it. To take in what he or she interprets as my truth or to decline. To say thank you and receive or say thank you, but no thanks. In this way, ultimately it is the receiver’s choice to determine what he or she takes in. I choose to take in all as truth and none as truth. I choose not to pick and choose. Unless someone is speaking from a place of fear, then I typically, when aware, politely decline. I prefer not to take on another’s fear-projection.

I believe there are only two roots: Love or Fear. All truth grows from there. Take a fruit off of the branch and examine it for what the fruit is. Rotten equals Fear. Ripe equals Love. One can tell much from the end product. Take the final outcome and drive backwards to the root. Where there is pain, there was fear to begin with manifested in false-love—illusion. Where there is mutual healing, there is love—the only existence.

Again this is my temporary truth.

My personal interpretation that assists me:

What true friendship is: Unconditional love.

What unconditional love is: Love without want, need, perimeters and/or expectations.

What want and needs are: Self-based, ego-centered desires that one thinks will make him or her happy. Also known as illusions and/or the path to suffering.

What perimeters are: Rigidness and separation; the judge emerging to decide if another has been deemed sufficient in their actions.

What unconditional loving friendship isn’t: All relations not based on unconditional love; in other words, all relations based on conditional, false-love, aka fear.

What unconditional love is not: False-love, also known as fear.

What fear is: An illusion often manifested in various actions and/or emotions that aren’t stemmed from love.

All false-love breeds fear and pain; all true love breeds more love. This true love can lead to spontaneous awakening and healing.

When one does not feel unconditional love, either the giver is loving with false-love or the receiver is misinterpreting the gift of genuine love.

This is not love: Expectations, martyrdom, fear-based desire, giving to receive, condition based giving, imagined selfless-giving, self-projection, owning, self-based desire, deeming one special or above the rest, caring more about self than other or caring more about other than self, blame, self-loathing in the name of love, fearing the future, needs based on outcome.

In love there is no hurt. All pain is self-inflicted.

Indicators of false-love:

Look at what a giving, loving, caring person I am, why can’t you love me like I love you?

I sacrifice for you, why can’t you sacrifice for me?

I am not good enough to be your friend.

You aren’t enough.

You should do this…

You disappointed me.

You won’t/don’t love me.

If you loved me, you would….

If you do this it will all be better.

You are the best person in the world.

You are hurting me.

People can have a mutual loving relationship based on unconditional love with moments of neediness and pain; unconditional love can fluctuate just like the seasons. No one is expected to be a perfect anything. Especially not a perfect lover or perfect friend. To suggest so, would be automatic judgment and separation. However healing happens when one starts to recognize his or her actions based on fear. Then self-healing can begin to take place in the one. After the one self has begun the healing process, the other in the friendship, noting the changes in his/her friend, will either continue in a state of fear, fight the change before also seeking self-understanding, or naturally seek out the friendship to heal in a way reflected in the healed or healing friend. In this way conditional love can bring both parties to pure love based on unconditional love.

If both partners are not ready, strong, and compassionate about growth and self-awareness, blame and jealousy quickly arises and the friendship may end. Yet, being this was a friendship based on false-love the illusion is what ends, not the friendship. This enables both to be free. One to go on to further unconditional love and the other to decide to remain in denial, suffering, and repeated pain or to seek out self-love. No one is right or wrong, better or worse; they are where they are.

In some cases someone who has learned self-love will be in a friendship with someone with conditional-based love. In this instant the person who continues to love unconditionally, despite the other’s projections, demands, and needs, can reflect back the ideal form of love and in this way transform the other trapped in a pain cycle.

True love heals when one capable of unconditional love simply is.

Again my temporary truth.

Strong indicators of conditional false-love:

No desire to celebrate a friend’s successes.

Not wanting to share the friendship with anyone else.

Thinking you are the best and/or only person for that person.

Changing actions or making decisions in an attempt to gain attention.

Obsessing about the person.

Thinking you are responsible for a friend’s growth, success, triumph, or accomplishments.

Thinking you are a person’s savior, teacher, protector, or safety.

Giving self-credit for another’s joy.

Thinking you have the answers another seeks and needs.

Thinking you were used, abused, or mistreated.

Jealousy of other people in the friend’s life.

Judging and putting down a friend’s friends.

Evaluating a friend’s choices, behaviors, mannerisms, and way of being.

Feeling the need to set a friend straight, so he can see your way.

Secretly or overtly harboring feelings of hurt and a sense of abandonment about the relationship.

Talking to someone about a friendship using harmful words about the friend.

How friendship appears:

A reflection of the love a person holds about his or her inner self.

What unconditional love-based friendship feels like:
Coming Home

406: Fear, Desire, and Attachment

I wasn’t my ‘full’ self, yesterday; I recognize this and understand the reasons. I am doing much inner processing, and sometimes allow myself to still try to seek perfectionism when none exists. When I do that, I try to seek perfectionism in others. All I say about someone else is a direct reflection of me. So in reviewing yesterday’s post I discover a bit about me. It’s not fun and it’s not not fun. It just is. I do this review of me without judgment. I am human and that is that. I may be a spiritual being having a human experience, but I still have this brain, this body, basic needs, and some lingering desires, and thusly I still project myself upon others. There are a few things going on with me. But even in “seeing” myself clearly, no matter the view, I remain the observer and not the judge.

I was more prone to slipping into moments of brief fear yesterday, because my husband is heading out of town to see his mother who is close to death. Normally, death would stir up multiple loops for me. I would have likely, before, spun on death and illness, worried about my husband being out-of-town, thought about the money the trip was costing, stressed and agonized over the pain of the sufferer, created and recreated future scenarios, guilted myself up for not being good enough while his mother was alive, chased down thoughts like a dog after a cat, had trouble sleeping, and so on. Now with the dismissal of fear, the repeated dismissal—as I still have fear—I don’t get lost in my mind. If I do slip out of the present, it is for clear reasons:

1. Thinking of a desire
2. Thinking of the reason I have the desire
3. Wondering how to detach from the desire
4. Wondering if I am presenting myself authentically and coming from a place of love
5. Wondering if I have said something that misrepresents my true heart
6. Wondering how to help more and love more
7. Analyzing my desire to see if the desire truly erupts from love and no other source
8. Catching and feeling the fear, and gently releasing the fear
9. Reminding myself not to self-judge
10. Checking in with my body about how I feel and how I am responding to my environment
11. Watching myself to see if I am in the present, past, or future
12. Briefly glancing ahead if I have to prep for an appointment or outing. (What to where. How long to tell my son I will be gone. What to bring. Etc.)
13. Checking in with myself to respond in a way that does not teach, dictate, or come across as ‘knowing the answers.’
14. Reminding myself I know nothing and that I am an accumulation of my perception, exposure, and experience.

Other than these thoughts above generally I am:

1. Listening to the deep self while I write.
2. Listening to the guiding voices that used to seem like angels, but now feel a bit different.
3. In the act of creation, e.g., writing, poetry, painting.
4. Focusing on what another is saying, doing
5. Experiencing a deep depth of knowledge that comes as images, words, and what seem to be lessons.
6. Experiencing the now–the moment–the present

Today, I awoke ‘rawer’ than the last few days; primarily because a change is occurring with my husband leaving town, and also because I feel somewhat unsettled from my post yesterday.

When fears come, they come briefly. Usually only a second or two, sometimes a minute, and very rarely more than an hour. The fears I have looked at this morning come in the form of self-messages, which I recognize as a temporary lie disguised as a truth.

1. People don’t see my heart.
2. I am over-stepping boundaries and speaking too much.
3. I am not good enough to be sharing my journey.
4. I ought shut up.
5. People don’t get me.
6. I am fat.
7. I am not desirable.
8. I am crazy.
9. I was wrong.
10. I am a bitch.
11. I still have impure thoughts.

When I look at the fears, they dissipate. One or two might linger and try to keep popping up but when they do I have disciplined techniques. One such technique is to ask myself if I am in the past or present. Whenever there is fear, I am in one or the other.

Another is to remind myself no one’s opinion of me is a truth, not even my own.

I also tell myself I am light and love and in that I am exactly enough.

If one of the fear messages is about a desire, such as to be a perfect body shape and/or size, to look pretty, to sound smart, to appear sweet, to be rid of unclean thoughts, etc. I look at the desire two ways. First I recognize it is a desire and in doing so this frees me of an obligation. Desires feel like contracts with fear to me. So, I simply wave goodbye to the desire and decide I don’t wish to desire. The bliss of the moment and the absence of fear beats any and all longing for desire. In this way I substitute in my mind the desire for desire with the peace of the present moment and the state of love.

The second thing I do is look at the desire and recognize what the attachment is beneath the desire, e.g., to be loved, to be seen, to be accepted, to be right, to be perfect, to be a good example, to achieve the state of enlightenment. When I can pinpoint my desires to exact attachments, I am able to slip the weight of longing off of me, and free up more energy for love. I have to, at this point, continually remained disciplined. Even thoughts of being too disciplined or too focused on awareness pop up. I then remind myself that is okay. It’s where I am at. And see this as an attachment I cannot yet remove, but will someday.

Even all of this I see as slipping out of the present, and recognize in over-analyzing my ‘path’ I seek refuge in the fear of the future and past. I see this all at such a depth that the observer in me tires, my body pigs out (for body fears being disowned and no longer in power), and my emotions become more evident. I feel more vulnerable and behave in a more attached way.

It is a fascinating cycle to watch. Overall, my mind is 95% calmer and lighter than a month ago. Even with these thoughts of analysis and discipline spinning round, I am able to step back and stop. To breathe and be witness to the moment. I am learning to do things repeatedly without effort or want of outcome, including my thoughts about no thoughts and thoughts of the way I focus on the now. The best moments are when I am in the now without want to be in the now. That is tricky, and something that can hurt my brain, if I think too hard on it. The layers of desire fascinate me, as does the fact that I am much more an audience to my life than an actual player.

With all that said, I had a spike of fear from reading a recent comment. I thought to myself: “Well, yes, I know that. Why do you have to point that out? Why are you focusing on that?”

I felt a huge rush of feelings; all this fear at a masquerade ball dressed as emotions.

1. Inadequacy
2. Defense
3. Failure
4. Imperfection
5. Righteousness
6. Self-centered
7. Panic
8. Not enough
9. Unseen
10. Unloved

One simple comment, and boom, I was swimming in fear. The key for me now is I feel the fear so instantly, it doesn’t really have a chance. And I feel it at such depth, it has even less of a chance of remaining. Plus I show it to the light which is you, another person, and/or myself, and that light exposes the fear for mere shadow. It has become a kind of hide-and-go-seek game. Except fear has so many guises, sometimes he switches gears in the middle of the game.

From reading my post yesterday, I recognize in myself that I am still struggling with the desire for:

1. Fun
2. Understanding my interests
3. Being heard
4. Wanting to relieve others blindfolds
5. Self-fulfillment in the form of enlightenment

It truly is interesting, because now whenever I share my thoughts, I see a whole underlying event occurring, like an undertow, or the molten lava beneath the surface, or the paint beneath the paint beneath the paint. There are so many vast layers of illusion. I am learning to make fun out of the illusion itself.

Now to spend some quality time in the moment with my coffee. The liquid amber golden swirls. The richness…the depth…..

Until the next time my brain opens and releases. Much love and light to you my fine lovely friend.

405: The Blue Bird’s Song

The Blue Bird’s Song

I remember one Easter celebration when my aunt and uncle had illegal satellite reception, and my grandmother accidentally turned the television to the adult channel—I recall on the screen there were two women and whip cream. And I recall, that on this particular Easter, we all sat together gathered in the living room and analyzed the film. I miss my extended family. I miss them much. I couldn’t readily appreciate my relatives when I was younger. I was too concerned with being normal and right, and enough. Too concerned with being loved.

Now I am changed. I recognize there is no normal, no right, no enough. I no longer hanker to be loved. I no longer long to be extraordinary. I am fine with being ordinary. I like how OSHO in The Buddha Said talks about one being capable of extraordinary measures in the plight to be plain ordinary. I mean if everyone else is trying to be special, or secretly thinking she is, then I like the idea of going against the grain, and striving for the rare ordinary. Beyond that nothing and invisible seems pleasing, too.

I was always the cheerleader for the striving underdog. Still am. There is something about the eyes of someone who has truly suffered. In comparison to a silver-spoon feed mamma’s boy, the sufferer, well he just seems like he has a soul I can climb into and rest. I’d like to do that—just spend a day climbing into people’s eyes.

I think I am weird in some ways—in my extreme need to connect. I mean when I read about the path of a particular type of Buddha, the one who wants to stick around and endure the earth so he can bring others to enlightenment, instead of just to himself, that makes perfect sense. It’s a no-brainer. Why would I want to gain complete enlightenment, if others were still suffering? I don’t get it. I don’t get how some things that are supposed to be the harder path, seem like the only path to me.

Today, I got a little bit sad. I wanted to be normal, just for a stretch of time—that freedom of oblivion. To have a brain that truly thinks shopping and fine dining is fun. To have a mind that believes animated comedy is hilarious. To take refuge in the ordinary and obvious. To just be like the crowd.

Many people have fixations and special interests. They might like sports cars or collect dolls, or perhaps fancy a sport. Me, on the other hand, my passions have always been eccentric and deep. Too deep, really. For example, my current fixation is in finding the meaning of existence and in the understanding of the Buddha’s path. I just am not simple. There is no part about me that is simple. I find peace in intelligent endeavors with deep complexities and the plausibility of opportunities leading to the scaffolding off of the old and sometimes new to form brilliant conclusions. I love the mind and all its parts. I love how my imagination explodes and abounds; how I can tap into the collective unconscious and spout out abundance meanderings that actually make sense.

Still, I grow sad at moments that I am the one seeking deep pleasure in intellect instead of what have you. There is a definite separation that occurs between me and others; even in my immediate family. I am sad at moments because, as silly as it sounds, I cannot understand how others aren’t like me. Not in a selfish, prideful way, just in I-don’t-understand-any-other-way-to-be way. I cannot comprehend another type of wanting and yearning, is all.

I got over my guilt about myself and the way I am in this world months ago. All in all, for the most part, I like what I do. I like the love I represent. And I think if I was a spokesperson for the product of inner me, I’d be authentically representing myself enough to please my client—perhaps even pull in a whole new account based on my dedication.

As I am the way I am, I like to learn. I don’t like to learn to prove anything to anyone, or to build platforms and ammunition for debate, and I am long past the want or desire to write a paper citing sources. I like to read only for me. I like to be enlightened and filled with new information, or the same information read by a me on a different time line, someone more matured and learned; I like to see how my own perspective has changed, how I have grown, how I have transitioned. When I am reading non-fiction, particularly spiritual texts, I dive deep. I dive into the dynamics of the language used, the heart of the author, the rhythm of the words, the meaning behind the meaning, and the hypothesis rendered. I inch my way into what the mind of the worker might have been, and into his heart, if feasible, and if kind it be. I like to sit there, inside the other, and imagine his world as he wrote—his fear, his misgivings, his intention. I like when the intention feels authentic and pure, without want or need of recognition. I love nibbling on the words of humility; I particularly love the nutty flavor of confession and humor pointed at self. I love the display of frailty, confusion, contradiction, and savor the omission of dogma and opinionated banter.

I no longer choose sides on topics or subjects, or anything presented to me in written or spoken form. I have no ability and no need to do so.

I see now. I see through the veil and through the predicaments. I see straight to the core of people’s fear. So much fear everywhere. It is troubling and it is freeing. I like that fear is out in the open, exposed and no longer hidden, but right there—pliable so I can almost touch and reshape it. Almost make fear disappear. Fear is so evident. I hear it in people’s voices; I see it in their eyes; I watch them unravel the fear as they complain about this or that, or about someone they supposedly love.

Along with the fear I see the falsehoods. I see the false-love. I understand all that is not love. It is a wonder that not everyone can see the world in regards to the falsehoods and false love. I know I couldn’t just a month ago, but still it seems I always could somehow, somewhere, to some degree.

I guess if I find anything hard anymore in regards to fear, it is in the wanting to fit in; the wanting to be like the rest and commiserate in misery—to complain, to whine, to panic, to anticipate, to get worked up, to put others down, to fret, to over-plan, to rush, to let thoughts consume me. Truthfully, I don’t really want any of that; frankly I had more than my share. But I want the avenue the fear provides for feasible connection. Just the avenue, not what travels through.

Now that I have stepped out of fear, the state of fear doesn’t entice me—whether in my own self or witnessed through another. And in this way I am sad; mostly, because I am standing here with this abundant plate of love and I know not how to serve it and whom to serve it to, when others’ plates are already filled with fear they want to spill upon me and then quickly reload with more fear. I want to hold a hand. I want to cuddle and snuggle. I want to have a slumber party with my dear-hearted ones; I just don’t want to connect through the fear. It doesn’t fill me now. It never did. Only seemed like it did. It was a commonality. An illusion that served.

I always wondered why people seemed to connect more through misery than joy. I understand now. It’s impossible to feel connected to someone’s joy unless you love your own self. Otherwise jealousy or greed or many a number of fear’s brethren slither in. People might pretend—but they don’t really feel love for the one celebrating. But they feel for the pained one, for the panged, for the suffering. They know suffering. They walk and breathe and live it. That’s all there is when the light is dim. When the walking flame has forgotten his very fire.

Ironically, though I am much changed I am still unsure about how to respond in typical conversation. I don’t worry about the communication skills anymore, or how to act, or what to say, or what people think of me. Now in conversation it is the fear that gets in the way. Not mine, the others’ fear. And the intention behind the words that comes forward in a blatant way. So much is spun from the core of fear: want, need, expectation, demand, etc. It hurts to listen sometimes. To know what I hear is entirely birthed from illusion. “Love me, I am not enough.” “Show me you love me, so I can feel enough.” “Tell me I am special, that I am wonderful.” “Validate me.” That is usually what I hear. I hear the truths. I hear the pain of not knowing love. I hear the pain of fear.

I want to say to another, “Look, this is fear. If it isn’t love, it’s fear. That’s all it is. The illusion of fear.” But who am I to say? And I know enough to know that no one can hear me, anyhow. The only thing anyone can here is her own self, and that through the filter of defense, question, heightened alertness, and possible judgment—well most of it is judgment, I suppose.

I feel very much a little blue bird on a perch outside a window. There is a bright candle inside, and I am looking in. The person comes to the window carrying the burning flame. And I am happy to be there, happy to be a part of this glimpse into the world. But then the person starts dripping hot wax on his arms or sticking his finger in the flame, and I want to gently say, “Stop; don’t do that; stop hurting yourself; that’s not how to use your light—that’s not how to carry your fire.” But I can’t. If I dare speak I sound like a chirping animal. And it hurts. It’s not the fact that I am unheard that hurts. It is the fact that I can do nothing but watch.

I can’t be blamed that the blindfold is off of me and therefore I can see where to pin the tail on the proverbial donkey. I can’t be blamed, but I am. Not by you, not by another, but by self. I play this game in my head that I ought not know, that I ought to find my way back to where the illusion didn’t make sense but still kept me blinded.

I want to know all about the light. But I really don’t want to know about the pain anymore. I don’t want to hear about the quibbles and the struggles with other people. I don’t want to see the anger, the blame, the righteousness, the dogma, the blindness.

And so I come across, I suppose, to some people as living in a dream world, or being aloof, or being changed, or being cold, or perhaps disinterested, or not loving. But the truth is I have never felt real love until now. I never knew love. Today I can love for no other reason but to love. I want nothing in return. Absolutely nothing. No attention, no reward, no karma, no benefit, no accumulation. All profit seems imaginary to me. Like play money, if even that. Something a kid fancies for a short while before it is forgotten, out grown, or lost. If anything I want more capacity to love. That is all I want. I want to be dug deeper through my own suffering, so I can be filled with more love. I want to give of my whole self to be that which is love. I know love now. I know it so dearly and so truly.

I guess temporarily I am lonely. All words feel the same. Whether praise or hate—it feels very much the same illusion. I can hear real love—love that is from the depth of a soul who knows nothing but love. Someone who too walks with blinders lifted; another dreamer awakened. I can hear him when he speaks; I can even hear him in his silence. I recognize the bird outside my window clearly. I see him and adore his song. But all the rest, the sounds of fear roar like thunder, calling out in warning that the fire has arrived still trapped in the darkest of clouds.

400: Entered

Where you stand, I enter. My sunlight opened in the ray of you. Where you are, I be, nestled between the edges of your making. I am the sugar sprinkled cross the sunrise desert, the frosting dipped beneath and within, yellow-dancing in the outskirts of my thoughts. Where I travel, you are, carried upon my shoulders, the lightest of feathers, blanketing me, my shield of angels splendor. I spin, come round each wake, reborn in your giving and eternal goodness. I rise; the angelic force instilled gently like the wind through the meadow spring. I bubble and wrap in the bluest-blue, the stillness awoken in your cleansing waters.

Where you stand, I enter. My darling lover of the fallen night, the darkness dripped away as canvas cleansed with the brushes wet; each color washed over with newness and new day. A caravan of awakening upon awakening, surprises always there but never seen. You move, and I follow, the drapery of your kindness a trail of delight, smoothing past the garden’s gaiety as candle wax of brevity. I drip, you drip. I bleed, you bleed. Connected we are in the tumbling of my being. Unspun and rewoven into the kaleidoscope of me within me, the light swollen as the woman with child, birthing and rebirthing the newfound hope.

Where you stand, I enter. I glide, the child on your coattail, following a form I neither see nor want, but desire, my rain to the petal wept, my seed to the fallen bird. I soar, the embers of my mind cascading down to the soil of naught, and slipping into the oceans that be, sailing once and then again, into the mystery of time. Sprouting in the eternalness of river led to mouth, and mouth led to sky. I am this. I am this drumbeat of the earth, the willow tree that touches down in gratitude and meets the tender grasses with her open hands. I am this. The weathered-breast of soldier fought, bowing down in remission and remembrance to echoes of the battlefield. I have retreated to the highest ground that leads to nowhere but to thy very self. And here, in the chambers still, I watch, my eyes as falcon born, dreaming of the ways I traveled. For I am dreamer yet, trapped in the window of my memory.

Where you stand, I enter. I hear you as I hear my very voice. The rhythm feeds my withered bones, the dauntless eyes erased, the gauntlets tossed empty. Here is where I sparkle, my soul leaped forward from the place of behind to the place of entrance. Here where I stand, you enter, taking my tethered thoughts and bleeding them out to the world. My sacrifice, your sacrifice. My heart, your heart. My enemy made clear in the taking of circumstance of my liking, when bitter liking it be. And thusly, I am sweetened, made as bread to the master, ripened in the cream and butter nut of goodness. So that when I look upon the thoughts that were, I see the emptiness of cause, the fawning ways in which I walked. How with danger I froze, the deer-dove I was, with wings of no service in the state of fear.

Where you stand, I enter. I know not what I do or what I do, who I am or what I be. I know nothing of your kindness or your glory. I know not face or name of maker. I know not if exist exists. And in this I know not if my voice is but rising to thy very own chambers of light and there made feed for the mass of me. None other but I, listening to the merry voice of reason lost. No more than this, my empty vessels feeding upon the nibbles of hope. Yet, here I rest, in the serenity of uncertainty. For no matter the form, or shape, or even the distance from the dwelling to the home of home, if I be not home already, then the waiting is of peace. The waiting is of necessity lost and freedom found. I care not what you be or how you be, or what layman’s ways I set upon your threshold, for it matters not to me the way in which you came, only that you entered so.