mindfulness

Where Sanctuary?

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

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

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

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

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

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

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

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

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

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.

Do Not Fear

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

The heart says

Do not fear

Even if the danger seems imminent.

You must act

For the body’s safety

And as the conscience decrees,

Of course and most wisely,

But not from fear,

Not from an idea of future doom.

For the future is unborn,

Made of imaginings

And infinite potential

And all the combined karmas of the world:

And who can know that conundrum?

The now, however, is filled with love

And made of love

And witnessed by love,

And so too are all possible futures

Despite the dark veneers

That might come to pass.

And surely these dark illusions

Will tempt and prod

And precipitate

Any knot of fear held within the body,

Inviting the mind

To follow their bitter prospectuses

To a seemingly pitiful demise.

And perhaps you will be ensnared,

Caught fearful and flapping,

Making up facts

To fit the worry

You’ve whisked into a maelstrom.

Yet, you might pause

When fear offers its seductive hand,

Pause in the precious moment,

A moment with no past

Or combined future,

Just the here

In being and beauty –

A beauty never once touched

By fear’s tarnishing word.

And in this quite,

The heart’s voice

Offers silence

In a hundred multiples of love,

And fills the dawn

And itself in one

As love is unveiled

In its entirety,

Ever unfettered,

Never annulled

And never ever diminished.

Untethered

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

I hold my opinion

As you hold yours:

A collection of ideas

Raised on the twists and turns of our lives:

Individually accrued

And shaped into a weave

That we wear like coat:

A personality,

An identity,

Who we are, perhaps?

–

Can you be loose

With the luggage of the self,

This weightless stuff

Made of weightless thoughts

And thoughts amalgamated into belief?

–

How real it appears

How solid it seems

As if the weightless thoughts

And invisible ideas

Made something tangible,

A thing, actually there in the world.

–

Better to be loose

With opinion.

Better to see it

As merely a point of view

Among eight billion,

No more or less valid

Than the next,

No more or less serious

Or stupid or laughable.

–

Better it drift off in the wind

Better it evaporate under sunshine

Better it be like a friendly shadow

Whom you love

Despite its ignorance.

–

Be free unimportant opinion

Who I held so close,

Be free

Here in me,

For I see you small

And light and fragrant

And harmless,

A nothing who might alight

My indifference

And flit there unworried,

Restful for being wholly untethered.

Love Breathes

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

Love breathes

Its breath

Upon the suffering of man:

A sweat breath

Upon the knots of thought

And tangled emotion;

A fragrant breath

Laced with the ingredients of freedom

And possibilities infinite.

To the prison of locked thought

And tight-chested constriction,

Love melts itself

And all

Into beautiful lubrication,

Absorbs what is not light

Into light’s overwhelming union,

Consumes illusion

And false belief,

Turns mind

To truth,

And flowers in itself

As oneness wholly felt.

The Nectar

~ distilledvoice ~ 1 Comment

Already by 10 AM the sun is merciless

But the birds are twittering

Under the shade of leaves,

Cool in the undergrowth.

Sounds arrive in the garden

Brought by a breeze:

Cars swishing in the distance,

Workers on scaffolding

Laying tiles,

A child cries out

After its mother:

Just everyday happenings

Of a suburb in a town in the summer.

As I sit, hearing the world,

Brought the waft of honeysuckle

And jasmine flowers

Generous and comforting,

I realise

That I am here

And I am now,

And that life is perfect

As the buddlier flowers’

Drooping purple spires

On which the bees drink thirstily,

And butterflies flit,

Their tongues unfurled

Tasting the world,

Sipping at the nectar of it.