
🙏
🙏
Instead the ever outward looking
For love
Turn inside yourself
To that which was always there;
Deepest well of formless infinity,
For there dwells life,
A heart-full of life
In abandonment to love,
Beautiful being of love.
–
There seem to be two options:
A movement into mind
And the stories we tell,
That swirl around
As so much fear.
Or the other way,
In the direction of self,
Detached from the fictions
And free
In the formless realms
So easily overlooked.
–
Instead the ever outward looking
For love
Turn inside yourself
To that which was always there;
Deepest well of formless infinity,
For there dwells life,
A heart-full of life
In abandonment to love,
Beautiful being of love.
All things are drawn
To the crucible of the heart:
None are immune
Or impartial to its force.
And there
The matter of it
Is dissolved,
Brought to equality
And equanimity
By love’s dominance.
All are relieved,
All are forgiven,
For I dwells there
And yet dwells elsewhere
In the same instant,
Covering the whole of it,
Every dimension
And all far reaches.
I, the lover and the loved,
I, the being being,
I, the one and all,
Star-bright and all consuming,
Dematerialising that which it touches.
A breeze strums
The feathers of the Scot’s pine
Towering above my garden,
And a wind chime
Gently interprets
Each gust.
There is a magic in the creak
Of the flexing branch
And the twisting sinews
Of fibrous bark;
An instrument
For the wind’s fulfilment.
Always, a dove coos
When I find the wind-full tree
Of my life
Existing in the silence
Of a tangible happening,
Drawing out the now
From its hiding
Until I am like a finely tuned
Sensing apparatus,
Filled with the sticky movement of sap
And vibrating
With the sweet resonance
Of life’s thrill
Through fronds of waxy needles.
What other life
Could I live
But yours,
The life in you:
Sweetest infinite being.
Is this praise,
To fall into your arms,
To release
Every objectified form
Of its obligation
To fulfil?
For it is surely madness
To look for love
Outside the source of self,
Overlooking the sweetness
For a wearisome search.
Only in you
Is gentle salve,
Only in you
Is satisfaction,
Only in you
Is happiness.
To this, I am devotional
For this great love for you
Is love in me:
There are not two loves,
Not me and not you,
Not two,
For in love
We are one infinite being.
Here in the glistening, twittering light
Of a dewdrop and bird-call morn,
I think back to our meeting
And find I have not left you
Nor feel one increment apart
From the all I found
Inside my heart
And the camaraderie
Of friendship
Couched in being.
To the outside world
Goes the greedy hand
Backed by the greedy mind,
Collecting
Always collecting,
As if
All the stuff of ideas
Would make a person bold
And impervious to time.
–
But how heavy it is,
How imprisoning
This reputation we call ourselves,
How enslaving
To be caged
When the deeper self
Is infinitely free.
–
A thought occurs:
To release the clothes
I thought myself,
To lie back and relax
In nakedness,
For I am not a thing in this world
But that which knows
All myriad happenings.
–
This is my wish for freedom:
A wish that settles like sediment
A wish that diminishes to peace
A wish that quietens to nothing,
Ebbs to wishlessness
And dies like a sunset.
I breathe the life
In fresh air,
Close my eyes
And feel the space inside
As I feel the space without.
–
I smile at nothing
Feeling vibrant space,
Feeling being
Feeling the nothing of my self,
And tasting sweetness.
–
Who am I in this
With every idea cast
And separate from my being?
Who am I
In this?
–
I am space
And fresh air
And sweetness.
I am nothing
But being’s spaciousness.
For a moment,
I am in love
With the world
Dancing before eyes,
The whole and beautiful spectrum.
My heart
Has broken the bounds of my body
Escaped the cage of my chest
And gone free
In the sphere
In the space
In the being.
Oh, how there is warmth in this,
Warmth in it all,
Myself mellow in my finger tips
As it it is mellow in the trees
And distant fields.
How broad is gratitude?
Broader than the flawless sky,
And deeper than seeing,
The yolk of my heart tumbling out
Until there is nothing untouched,
Nothing unglazed by light,
Nothing that isn’t dripping
With love,
As if form
Were some bizarre
And delicious flower,
Pungent and exuberantly expressing
Such divine fecundity.
Chittering wrens
Pick from the larder of cones
Clutched in the pine-brush
And absorb the awakening light.
Beneath, I sit and ponder
On the nature of being.
Some would speak of mankind
Separate from reality,
Somehow living above it all.
Yet, I am moved
Upon the turning of the world
In season’s gentle shift
Of early beginnings
And day pushed into night.
Surely this body,
As all walking free,
Feels the thrust of life
In the burst of the bud,
Unopened but profoundly expectant.
Surely all are moved
By the first warm breeze
Tickling the pine needles above.
Who is really alone
When life thrums
Through the body’s instrument,
When the very moon
Sways the water of our moods
And the constitution of our minds,
And new light shines,
Drawing us out
To sit absorbing
Like the first insect
Roused from hibernation’s
Torpid sleep?