No matter how the world evolves,
Whether true to life
Or spiralling in madness,
The life principle
Remains pure and untouched.
–
Invest your life
In its sweetness
And disregard the rest,
However seductive and convincing,
For only in love
–
Is sweetness manifest.
And if the world descends
Wholly into madness,
Still, life’s truth
Holds fast.
–
And if all obey the call to anger,
But your mind left last
And abiding in love,
It will not matter
And will surely be enough.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Never too late to acknowledge love:
The love that beats in every heart,
Sustains every self,
Brims ever full
And ever beautiful:
There in ignorance
Or in knowing,
Binding us to the world,
Bringing us the world,
Allowing us to be
As we are,
Free in the conundrum
And wonder of it all.
Cooling
When you are hot blooded
And wanting to the burn the night,
Love brings the flood.
–
Warming
When you are chilled
And lonely and dark,
Love brings you inside of itself.
Your heart is love,
Both the loved
And the one who loves,
Both transmitter
And receiver too,
A whole organ
Resonating
At the frequency
Of the universe
In whose word
It speaks
And hears
At the same time,
It is the great
And the small I am
Beating as one.
Sometimes I’m lost in thought
Whisked away to darkness
And imaginings
Fraught and perilous,
But always I find my way back
To the sun, my heart
And the light of love inside.
–
And so
I too and fro,
Losing myself
And then re-finding
What cannot be lost,
Ever the sun, my heart
Ever is it shining.
distilledvoice 