Be Happy

It’s trite 
But truer
Than we think.

Be happy!

But… says the mind
And lists
A barrowload of objections.

I can’t be happy because……

Be happy is the mantra
Without sound or words

It is the silence
From which the mind
Finds its subtle ground
And supposedly rises.

Happiness is that
On which
The mind
Leans
And borrows
For its list of grievances.

Be happy…

It’s trite
But truer
Then we think.

Child of the Universe

Like a child of the universe 
My heart drinks
The love
That comes
In a flow
Of warmth
Like the breath
Of my beloved.

At base level
The heart is a pump
An organ of flesh

Higher
It is organ of feeling
Floating on an emotive sea

And yet higher still
It is receiver
Of higher dimension

And the portal
Through which
The universe
Feeds its children

An opening through which
Love pours
Into self
Ignites the body to living
And lifts
Everything it touches
With light
Owned
By none
But God.

Dearest

Dearest, 
For one moment
Rest
The machine in your head.

Sometimes it seems
So overwhelming, I know -
Those thoughts thinking
Way too fast,
Exploring all sorts
Of dark passageways.

And sometimes
You think those passageways
Are the vesicles
Of your heart,
And at the depth of you
Is a crypt
Where there is something
On which
You should never ever look.

No, no, no,
Hear me now child of love,
This is not your heart
But cobwebs
Made to look
Like fearful things.

Your heart is beside you now
Beautiful child,
She stands with you
In the space of always.
And if there are cobwebs
She loves them.
And if there are fearful things
She holds them in her arms
And loves them too.

Dearest,
Do not believe the world
That says you’re lost
To She
Who loves you always.
Do not believe that world
High on separate thought.
Feel instead
The warmth
That stands beside you always.

Dearest,
You are loved by She

And truly,
It can be
No other way.

What If

What if 
Words became tears
And logic
Became a lozenge
Dissolving on the tongue
And we dispensed
With the dry bones
Of loveless ideas
And gazed instead
Into the eyes
Of someone we love

Finding there
The letters of our name
Disentangled
From their sentence form
And washed down our cheeks
Like pebbles in a stream
Banked
Upon the slow curve
Of the river’s turn.

What was once
In thought
Is disassembled
And then reconfigured
In the writing works
And calligraphies
Of nature’s hand
Upon land and water.

What was once made
From man’s disembodiment
Is remade by God.
Like the world now
Man is
Written as the poem
In flow,
No less beautiful
Than the fine grains
Of graded sand
Made into the shapes
Of rounds
And eclipses
As if the loving moon too
Was caught in that spell
And no less
Intricately connected.

Before All Else

To share
The sunshine of the heart
Is to find
The sun upon your face
And bliss
In basking
In its beauty.

For around each corner
Is a smiling face
Reflecting joy,
Both playful and loving,
And each new corner
Yields still more of the same
Infinite quality.

Can you imagine
A world
In which the heart
Is worn naked
And transparent
In the body,

And everywhere
There are flowers
Glowing
In adoration of the sun?

Well, this IS the world
In which the heart
Finds its place in plenty
And where the mind
Has settled down.

This IS the world
Into which we are born
Through the tool of the body,
Knowing the grit and dank
Of the soil
And yet also
The ineffable reality
From whence we all come.

How could we not share
This truth
Made of light and love,
Beyond the bounds of space
And time
And all we deem heavy?

How could we not share
This warm and tender truth
Of happiness
God-given to us all
As life
Found effortless

Just like the sun
And the flowers -
And really
All forms under
The light loved down.

How could we not share
The sharing
That brought us to ourselves
And to the boundless

And to the truth
That we are love
First

Love first
Before all else.

Equals In Seeing


You cannot really share the light.

It does not travel
from here to there
from you to me
or me to you
as if there was
some sort of ownership
and transference.

But you can rise to it -

find the frequency
of yourself
attune to the light
in another
which is only
the light of yourself

and be
the light you are.

For all
are equals in seeing
equals in light
equals in being
and there are none among us
without this divine capacity
to be
and live
and love
in truth.

http://bentruesdale.substack.com

Come find me at Substack

The Precipice

Could it be

That the great precipice,

That peril conceived,

The fall from form feared

Is but an invitation

From fear itself

To ward you from the truth

That the cliff is no cliff

From which you must jump,

But instead

Is the gentlest slope

Like the soft sand

Of a gorgeous beach

Where a warm sea

Reaches to meet your feet

And invite you in

To something so vast

That all your worries

Would dissolve

Into the whole loving truth

That what is you,

What is real and true,

Recognises itself.

Copyright distilledvoice 2025

The Thoughts Of Us

When the heart swells

And thoughts are glossed in wonder,

Coming to the world

Wet with love

As if they had drunk deep

Upon the source

And imbibed

A draft’s worth

Of that subtle, unformed substance,

It matters not

What these thoughts are

For all are equal

Under love’s law,

All are painted in love’s sheen,

All are born of love’s significance,

And none are higher or lower,

Weighted bigger or smaller,

Nor judged to be greater

Or deemed to be less than any another.

Like us,

They are materialised

And glossed in wonder,

Coming to the world

Wet with love

As if they had drunk deep

Upon the source

And imbibed

A draft’s worth

Of that subtle, unformed substance.

Like us

They come to life

Imbued with light,

To dance

For the fleeting moment

Of their being.

Myself

Dearest and closest

Most intimate friend,

You are made of nothing

But being.

When I acknowledge you,

When I fall back into you,

I return molten with love

As if you had dissolved

All but the essence of me,

Dissolved all

But that which you are,

Dissolved all

To which I was bound

In mind, body and thought.

And for a moment

And maybe moments after

Or even when moments stretch to hours

And perhaps really

In the truth of timeless always now,

I am free,

Free in being

And free in love,

Free to be myself.

Old Lives

Sometime the old lives rise

From where they lie,

Undisturbed

But fully functional:

Scripts we once called ourself

And followed unconsciously,

Ideas we believed

But forgot we believed,

Whose presence

Steers us

On courses

Now obsolete and irrelevant,

The machine trundling on

In a groove set

Years ago,

Thoughts we ceased to see

Guiding us

In the robotic program

Of our walking sleep.