Close your eyes
And go naked to the love
Free in the centre of you.
–
This love
Knows nothing
But being alive
–
And the one nakedness
From which all things are.
Be in being
–
Where all duality
Is dissolved,
Where all that is fragmentary
–
Slips loose,
And even the one who might hold
Is dissolved.
–
Close your eyes
And go naked to the love,
The free being inside.
🙏
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.
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.
Stillness settled with the night
And did not leave,
And now a windless, blue sky
Brims with spaciousness.
Birds, twittering in the skeletal trees
Dissect the quiet, but not the stillness,
Their tongue’s music
Is the sharp edge
Of reality.
I lean against a wall
Bathed in fresh light.
Things happen in the stillness:
A car passes,
A faraway motorbike on a faraway road,
Blunter than the birds,
A squeal of a refuse truck, ever hungry.
But the stillness remains,
Deeper and more broad
Than the mind can conceive,
Deeper and more broad,
And deeper still.
The tree, standing elegantly tall
Knows the stillness intimately.
It stands beside me, thrumming
With a soundless resonance.
In the patch of sunlight
I lean against the wall,
Listening to the birds,
Knowing that stillness.
Sometimes the storm
Is turbulent
But when the gusts calm,
When the fearful thoughts
Settle down,
The love we find is serene,
Bright-eyed and beautiful.
All that was tumultuous
And all that raged
Was but a movement
In love’s dream,
A squall playing on the surface,
A temporary disturbance
On the facade of our lives,
Fleeting and momentary
But unable to touch the depth of us.
What does love say
To the mind’s swirling creations,
To its entrenched angst
And to all that ails
And seems intractable?
Love says nothing,
But like a tide of warm indulgence,
Love flows as the body of the boundless self,
Flows unstoppable to bitter ills
Dissolving all but itself
And freeing that self
From the illusions
That seem to bind it.
I look into your eyes
And find my joy brimming,
For I could fall inside
The clarity of your seeing
And swim free
In nothing,
Buoyant in the being we share.
You told me of a Tuscan life
Picking olives,
A world where obstacles
Had dissolved
And all that evolved
Was the beautifully self
Looking at the same time
Both inward and out.
I tasted the olive of happiness
And lived your life
As my life
Dwelling in kinship
With you,
Where you were nothing but myself
Looking kindly from another perspective.
Last night
Brought a frost,
A coating of crystalline white
Drying the air, stiffening every leaf,
Crisping every damp thing,
Stilling all life
But for the sparrows.
Into this
Plooms my breath,
Brought momentarily
From the invisible;
I feel wonder at the breadth
And reach
Of the ether if my being.
I select a log,
Choosing one with flawless grain,
Straight lines, unknotted,
Placing it upright.
I lift the axe, aim
Half heft and half let it fall.
If it is true
My kindling spilts with a snap
Akin to the most beautiful synchronicity,
The grain parting
As if only a thought’s worth
Cleaved it separate
And clean.
I cut more,
And while I swing my axe
And watch my basket fill
With rough cut pieces,
I listen to the sparrows
And the stillness,
Enjoying my breath
Realising wintery all about me.
The moment is fresh
As dew-lubricated leaves
New from the womb of the world.
Oh, this sweet, empty moment,
Virgin as the first born thing,
How can I describe your unresistance
With but the clumsy word?
For you are nothing:
An endless, friendly nothing
Holding me in your arms,
Tender as the loving heart
Welcoming all that is.
You, who is no you,
You, who is everything
Seen and unseen,
Everything unformed or dwelling unchanging
In that which is not yet made.
–
The moment is fresh
And alive with infinite spirit,
And while the dogged mists and moods
Of false thoughts,
So seemingly bonded and glued,
Drift upon me from time to time,
Obscuring your brilliance,
They too, are born in you,
They too, arise in the light
Of awareness’s presence,
Taking their life
From the very light that you are.
distilledvoice 