Author: distilledvoice

The Artist’s Way

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Immersed in the landscape

Or fixated on an object,

This artist does not paint

What his eyes see,

Rather, he absorbs the sight,

Places it

In the cauldron of his being

Where life seeps

As the language of the soul.

It is this he paints,

This aliveness

Mirroring landscape or thing:

His spirit

And God’s spirit

Dancing as one

Infinite being,

And reaching out

To his poised fingers,

To transform the inanimate

And deliver magic on the canvas,

Every stroke of his brush imbued

With the inward spirit he feels.

When The Noise Stops

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When the noise stops,

When the machine of thinking thoughts

Slows to a lull

Or is brought silent

In a moment of

Concentration.

When the worker sets down his tools,

Rests a while,

Leaves his ideas alone,

Then,

In this pause,

This relaxation,

The love that was always there

Is seemingly exposed,

And Life,

Beautiful and whole

Is known in fullness.

All Things Dissolve

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In love

All things dissolve,

Coming to rest

In the primary nature

Of being.

–

All that is apparent:

The forms in the world

Are melted

In love’s crucible,

Love’s home-bound heart.

–

There is nothing insoluble,

No behaviour

Or state of mind

That can stand

The yolk of the sun.

–

Love is indomitable

Yet gentle as warmth

Passed from father to son.

It encompasses all,

Leaves nothing

–

But tenderness, acceptance

And a wealth of connectedness.

It is the foundation we share,

All of us equally beneficent

And wholly unified.

The Morning Is Crisp

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On the first crisp autumn day

Dazzling light from the low sun

Guilds the forest,

Burnishing every leaf.

In hollows

There is the shadow of frost,

Grasses jacketed stiff,

But in the open

The sky is clean

And the distant rolling hills

Seem magnified.

After coffee sipped

With the sun’s hand on my back,

I amble through the farm shop

Selecting delicious items,

And while paying for my goods

A conversation spontaneously happens.

Like two old friends

Exchanging intimacies,

The shop assistant speaks

And I listen.

We share our truth

And as I look into their eyes

I see wisdom

Deep in their seeing,

As if the autumn light

Came from understanding

As much as from the sun outside,

And I am warmed

And touched by the moment

And brought wholly into the now,

An openness without resistance.

Picture

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In the floor to ceiling window

Opens the picture:

The river

Glassy with the sky,

Smudged with autumn morning,

A pale blue glaze

In which mists cling

And spiral,

Calling back

The chill night

That stilled the dew drops

To a crust

And freed the tattered leaves

To mulch beneath the trees,

Sending out

A sweet and heady breath

Of spores

As life withdraws,

Releasing jealousies,

Indifferent now

To the russet matter

Discarded.

Where Sanctuary?

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Where sanctuary?

In thought’s fickle materialisation?

In the world of passing things,

Ever dematerialising,

Always dying and slinking away?

In emotion’s slavery

To the fickle thought?

–

Where else is there?

–

Where else

But the nothing,

The dimensionless no-thing,

The substance-less non-realm

Of the self.

Where else but the self’s

Void-less void,

Thing-less thing,

The self’s changeless being,

Un-conceived

And un-manifest.

–

Where sanctuary?

–

Only in nothing:

Foundation found

Only in the

Self’s foundationlessness.

From The Ashes

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From the ashes of my beliefs

Awakes the child of myself,

Born into the moment.

–

Can he remain true

To the idealess

Realm of his beginnings

–

Or must he age

In the world,

Heavier with each moment,

–

Each new belief?

Is the ageing process

And stiffening up

–

An illusion

In which we dwell

Stiffer and more unwell

–

In the hardening carapace

Of personality’s

Hard work and upkeep?

–

Or is the child unblemished,

Cocooned in the now,

Eternally fresh,

–

Ideas burned to ash

Under his gaze,

Illusions

–

Nothing but ciders

In the presence

Of his presence?

The Blazing Heart

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Perhaps you forgot

The searing light,

Buried it

In low-mood thoughts

And reason

As heavy as chains.

–

Oh, yes, you say,

Give me the nicotine of thought

And worldly misadventure.

Let me overlook my overlooking,

Let me ignore my ignorance

And dwell outside myself

In a swirl of worries,

While the light is left unacknowledged.

–

Instead,

Remember, not the cold intellectual light

And the optics of the brain,

But the warm body of love

Inside yourself.

–

Remember the needless state

Where the heart floats

On ethers,

And worries are nothings,

Neither fears, nor even yours.

–

Remember the you

Before the you

Who carried the weight of living,

The unfettered you

Buoyant and watching,

Alive in the now

From which all springs forth.

–

Remember the sun of love

Blazing in your heart,

Remember remembering,

And the knowing

That the heart has always, always burned,

Is never dulled

And will never ever grow dark.

The Looking Of You

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There is a looking,

A looking into yourself

Where the eyes

Become ever wide.

Ever and ever wider

Grows seeing

As though astonishment

Were limitless,

And what the self is

Is no less

Than all.

And yet there is greater seeing

And wider eyes,

As astonishment

Is refreshed with each

Step into yourself,

Each looking wider still,

Seeing drawn into

An infinite expansion

Into seeing itself.

Ever wider sees the I

Behind the eyes,

Ever wider

Becomes the I.

Like The Clock

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Like the clock

Whose ticking

You no longer hear,

And like the picture

You pass every day

That’s almost disappeared,

And like the wedding band

On your finger,

Now part of you,

And like the beautiful view

These days seldom seen:

Like these

Being is present

As it’s always been,

There, at the centre of you,

The background of you,

The you of you:

Knowable only in its knowing,

Realised only in realisation,

Noticed only when you notice

You are.