Every life-shattering event
Liberates you from the unreal;
From your world of thoughts
And ideas and opinions;
From your pointless plans;
From your trivial pastimes
And your petty anxieties.
We must be grateful
For destruction, for loss.
For they are an opportunity
To access a higher truth
And a greater life…
To leave behind the imagined
So that we can abide in the unknown.
To gain knowledge
One must seek it
Beyond the known.
To gain knowledge
One must learn to wait
Rather than rush to arrive.
To gain knowledge
One must learn how to be
Free of the striving to become.
To gain knowledge
One must be willing
To let go of their assumptions.
To gain knowledge
One must be prepared to get rid of
That which thinks it knows.
To gain knowledge
One must create the space
For the new…for transformation.
To gain knowledge
One must learn to remain silent
When feeling compelled to speak.
I wish that I could arrive
To that place where I no longer
Feel the need to do anything for anyone…
From where the world is perfect…
Where each moment, each event, each person
Is perfect…exactly as they are
Where it’s clear that nothing needs to change.
Unfortunately, for now, the world’s sorrows
Weigh upon me. Who can tell
Who affects whom? We like to think
We must be the heroes of this world
That we find ourselves in;
That solutions are needed because problems exist
And that we are doomed to live partially fulfilled lives.
But is there a fault in my seeing?
The world has infinite roads and many mountains
To seek, one must set foot outside and climb
The world, we assume, expects our help
It must be saved with heroism, intelligence, sacrifice.
For the sake of it and our own salvation
We feel that we must do something.
But having reached the pinnacle of strife
One comes to see
Why it’s important not just to set foot
on a journey but also to return…
Because when you stand atop the pinnacle
Everything is clear; it is perfect as is…
Nothing needs to change.
Did our separation hurt
Because we weren’t able to go beyond
Seeing ourselves as separate in the first place?
I saw you as ‘You’.
I saw me as ‘Me’.
Our coming together was designed
To thrill, to excite, to give pleasure…
But lurking in the shadows
Was always the threat of betrayal,
Of disappointment, of emotional pain…
Of love being a shallow lie.
We never reached the state of Oneness
We didn’t know how to
We thought an enduring love
Was about commitment;
And commitment was about
Arriving at intermittent compromises
So each could have their way in turns.
But a relationship is not built
On a scorecard.
It involves embracing, absorbing
Giving of your presence.
It’s about arriving to a harmony.
It’s about arriving at an understanding
That you are in essence,
A complement to another.
You are a fraction of a whole.
To be one
Is to give up insisting
On a separate existence
So that you can come to see
That in the presence of the other
You are adequate. You are enough.
You are one.
I talked with you
I was collected and calm
While you were visibly shattered.
You could barely talk through
Your quivering lips and shaky voice
Your words had lost their stability
Your tears had wiped off
The ground beneath their feet.
I wondered after you had left
Why had your tears not flooded my heart;
And poured out through my eyes?
Has my heart toughened over the years?
Have I lost my ability to feel?
Does another’s grief no longer touch me?
Or, is it just intelligent design that each
Should only shoulder their share of grief?
Perhaps your grief does enter me…
However, it wears a different face.
Your tears live in me as a perpetual restlessness.
Your shaking voice lives in me
As unresolved anger…
Your words become a filter in my mind
Like a cloud of worry that follows me
No matter what the season.
Oh yes… I see it now
I do feel your grief…
In fact, I wear it on me…invisibly
Even as I dress and undress…
I know I too will get my chance to heal
And be relieved of this shroud of normalcy I wear
The catalyst of a personal loss
Will free me to feel all that you feel.
I see around me a desperation
A rush to reach somewhere…
To arrive…
Where? Anywhere…
Something, somewhere may hold the key
To guaranteed ecstasy…
And then some peace and happiness…
I see people scrambling like paupers
For a taste of life…
Not knowing what a great life should taste like…
Whiskey? Butter chicken?
What should a great life smell like?
Chanel no 9? Cigarettes? Sex?
No one knows…
But we all desire…
I hear it often said
That it’s wise to live it up
That we have but one life.
But think about how absurd it is
To have life but to know nothing of it
To educate yourself over hours, days and years
To learn about a world
That is essentially all myth.
For all its attractions, it is
At the end of it all, a black mirror.
Ready to be whatever you conceive of it.
To know life, it’s enough to simply live
Neither chasing nor being chased
By ideas, by demons, by desire…
To come to see that a life well-lived
Has required nothing more
Than simple presence.
It’s confusing
When there are many possibilities;
When you have before you
Choices to make
When there is so much happening
That needs your attention.
You don’t know what to do;
You don’t know how you’ll do it.
It’s easy
When you recentre;
Stand where you are
And know that in a world of possibilities
And tough choices
And to that which needs your attention
You will be conveyed.
You will come to know
That which you have always known.
All you have to do
Is be willing to do
nothing;
So that what needs to be done
Gets done.
Circumstances do have a hold on us.
They can restrain us.
One may not be able to
Walk away from a circumstance.
Freedom within a circumstance
Is of a different kind.
It exists in loosening your grip
Over that which is gripping you.
To have found this freedom
Is to have understood
What freedom really means.
Life is not a burden
to be borne
But a gift to be cherished…
To be appreciated…
To be fathomed.
It’s not a maze of dead-ends
But a heartscape of possibilities.
Live not small and afraid
Thinking of life as your destiny written
For then, having barely lived, you die in vain.
Live not in cemented sorrow
Or merely, in intervals of hope
between perpetual disappointments.
Know the truth- your life is not permanent;
But as ever-transforming existence, you’re eternal.
Do you ever wonder…
In creating conveniences and
Products and services and
Industries and technologies to cater
To all our imaginable needs and wants,
Have we simultaneously created a culture of inadequacy
And an eternally doomed-to-fall-short-of-success work life
Along with a looming feeling of failing in your personal life
Always under pressure for never being ‘enough’?
Our consumption is not natural
Because our needs and wants
Are manufactured before they are catered to
Our consumption supports our collective human need
To create and build things that compete to surpass and exceed
Prior creations that we now deem ‘not good enough.’
We stand informed by our culture that our creativity is
rooted in dissatisfaction; in believing that we need to be better
That we somehow are ‘never enough’.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 