You need not love the self
For the self loves you.
Relax, forget about the work
Of loving, it’s not yours to do,
For the self loves
Your every limitation.
Stop attempting the impossible:
You cannot conjure love
Through will and the toil of thinking,
Just chill
For you are loved already,
Wholly and infinitely,
No part of you left out.
See you are bathed in love,
See that, only see,
Then sit back
And do absolutely nothing.
The garden is ripe with being
For sunlight
Diffuse through haze
Illuminates
And encourages
All green things
To be
Ever more themselves.
And like the plants
I expose my skin
And open my pores
And breath in
That light,
Absorb
The sweetness offered
Unconditionally,
And drink in life
Knowing, as it is mine
So it belongs to all
Whose hearts beat
And in whose veins sap rises,
And in even the static selves
Of soil and stones
And things thought inanimate,
Nevertheless
A pulse of being still thrills.
We wear our race like a heavy cloak
Painting our skins with uncomfortable ideas.
We wear our gender like lead boots,
Stumbling in discomfort proclaimed as ease.
We wear our sexuality like a brightly
Coloured mask.
Our religion and politics
We wear as indomitable rightness.
Our point of view
Is an impenetrable stone castle
Fortified until the last soldier is killed.
Our countries are emblems
For which many will die.
So many are the dividing lines,
The fractious ideas,
For we are tribes
Of a broken mind,
Switching allegiances
Like a fickle tide forgetting the moon,
Changing our image to suit,
Gritting our teeth
In gripped identity
Held as a fist
Shaken at the world.
Are you for or against?
⁃ the what does not matter
In this politics of imagery.
Is it possible we are mistaken
In our hell-bent
Desperation to be somebody?
Could we be
Loose in all the periphery
Of our difference?
Could we see that we one in our being
And the rest is but a jumble of ideas
To wear, not for the war of it
But for the fun of it.
Where is even rightness in this?
Perhaps nowhere
But within the expanse of our boundless self
Containing nothing but the infinite.
Under soft February light
Where warming ethers
Carry earthy scents,
I remember my spring self
Among crocuses.
And yet again my heart is lifted
By the tide turn
Of day-length stretched,
Being motivated
To peep as a myriad
First shoots.
And yet again
The soft spell
Light upon my heart
Shimmers hazy
As sunbeams diffuse
In the mellow heavens,
And I can’t quite tell
If this space myself
Is me or the world
Or just spring’s fluid
Billowing out from itself.
Under winter sun
And mist
We leaned close
And kissed,
Remembering each other’s lips
And the fit
Of our embracing bodies.
And for a moment
We shared
The soft movement
Of our hearts combining
As all but our love dissolved.
Always, and first-off, I reach for mind,
Spewing story forward
Or back in time.
Invariably Imaginative,
I dwell in the colourful imagery
Of that dull and flat land,
Wishing for more,
Ever, ever more.
Later, I speak the words: “I am”
And feel the colourful future
Withdraw from absent lands,
While the past retreats into me,
Coalesces where I be,
Ever and always myself.
And here, the colour is love
Where fictions are impotent
And the warm smile of being
Dissolves all but itself.
No one can obscure
The ever present sun
Or its infinite
Lovingness.
Only we can shroud ourselves
From ourselves,
In storms of ideas
And emotion’s maelstrom.
When the turbulence clears
Our hearts
Are the love
We were never parted from.
In the ever present now
We find ourselves
Expanding
In knowing –
That we are infinite being
At the crisp edge
Of happening:
Becoming ourselves
In the unfolding of the universe.
And sometimes we forget,
Dawdle lazy
On the road
Of our making:
Obstacles scattered
By our own hand
That make the journey
Seem tiresome and long
And effortful.
And sometimes we remember
The ever present now,
And step inside ourselves
And the universe,
And the being
That we always were,
And see
We too are always infinite,
And the road
And its obstacles
Are but illusions
On an illusionary path.
Only our thoughts
Deny the lifting spirit
Holding us buoyant
In the being alive.
Only our thoughts
Cage our minds,
Eclipsing
The wealth
Filling us
Until brimming,
Until our hearts
Are overflowed.
Only our thoughts
Obscure the love
Streaming out
Through ever cell,
Streaming out
Irrepressible:
Infinitely giving,
Infinitely wise.
Only our thoughts,
Our harmless thoughts,
Our transient
Substance-less thoughts
Believed to be strong,
Believed to hold
Power over us,
Believed for so long.
Only our thoughts
Are burnt
Under love’s internal sun,
And brought to nothing,
Our bonds loosened
As thoughts are seen
In freedom,
Seen for what they are:
Just fleeting thoughts,
Not owned,
But passing through
Unhindered, unclaimed, unchained
From who we are.
Not one of us
Upon the earth
Is anything less
Than the whole sun
Shining in being,
Illuminated in the endless wealth
Emerging from the formless realm,
The nothing and the nameless,
Our infinite self
Ever at our finger tips,
Infinitely Infinite and infinitely free.
–
It is only our crowded thoughts,
Straight-jacketing us rigid.
Gripping us to an idea
Of a drought-ridden self,
Stiff within our skin
And so hopelessly lonely,
That thinks us
Thought-severed from the Source,
And made bleak as a separate entity.
–
And yet, those thoughts separating
Are but tenacious thoughts,
Combined, conjoined, layered,
Believed, stiffened, judged
And felt solid enough to be real,
Each one hiding us from the truth:
–
That universal love
Is the absolute fundament of our nature:
The life force propelling,
Filling us up,
Upholding the fleeting entities
We call our selves,
Buoying us
Even when we deny we out buoyed.
–
Not one of us
Is anything less
Than the soul
That is all,
The one,
The only one,
The love emanating from Source
Becoming something,
Ever unfolding as the form-ful manifest.
distilledvoice 