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 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.
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.
My best friend questioned me
About my preferred mode
For staying in touch…
“Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram?”
“No… not really,” I replied
“Those are great for sharing your views
Or snippets from your day
Or some creative work that you’re doing…
I still like meeting one-on-one,” I replied
Well aware that it had been years
Since we had met and sat down and spoken.
I was suddenly acutely aware of the difference.
When you meet in person with someone
It’s about showing an interest in them.
When you’re on social media
The spotlight is only on you.
It’s about self-promotion, not connection.
It’s quite a travesty
How the design of modern life
With its work-for-survival culture
And its flawed rationale
That connectivity will strengthen connection
And its love for speed
(which it has renamed as ‘efficiency’)
Has robbed us of slowness and leisure
And has instead handed to us varnish and gloss
-Cosmeticised appearances of joy, beauty and success.
I miss the simplicity of the everyday
(Before it was conceived as a function
In the production of an ‘even better’ tomorrow)
It used to be content and self-fulfilled.
I’ve lost the ability to do nothing
I can’t recall the last time I allowed myself to daydream
Without feeling guilty for doing so.
In trying to be connected to everyone everywhere
I’m never truly with anyone, anywhere.
However, few things keep me grounded
Such as the memory of a slower time
When we stopped by or got together
For a one-on-one conversation
About nothing in particular.
A set architecture with walled spaces
Stairways and elevations, and paved pathways
With names and arrows for direction-
May serve as a design for order and ease;
But the human is a dreamer…and a seeker
And conveniences cannot take him to where he needs to be.
His heart soars when he’s inspired.
In the intensity of the present moment
Even time releases him- so that the fire in him
Can set aflame the fuel that lays silent, muted and wasted
All can be re-ignited, all can have their power restored
And the atmosphere can be uplifted from dreariness.
The human creates not because he can trade his creations
But simply because he CAN create…
And to do so Is to discover the divine impulse
By which one can recreate a world
Of possibilities and infinite directions
So that all paths can take you to the self you’re seeking.
Wanting to do something…
A search for meaning
And purpose and fulfilment
Or simply the desire for thrill and excitement
– Can all be traced to boredom.
Our being seeks purpose in doing.
When all of our doing
Progressively reveals to us
The utter futility of all our endeavours
Where things remain… not better, not worse…
We begin to look at life more inquiringly.
Life is the fount of eternal youth.
Each moment is a fresh possibility
In between your memory and desire
There is a silent and divine space
You’ve often sought this space
Like you do a shrine…
For quiet and peaceful reflection.
Your boredom was blindness
You could not see the necessity of nothingness.
Your boredom was ignorance
As your awareness was in a state of deep sleep
Your boredom was also the inertia
By which you moved towards your north star
Your boredom is your home
The sanctuary that you return to
When you’re exhausted chasing your dreams
Your boredom is what allows you
To keep things real.
What you were escaping from, is what you’ll end up escaping to.
When do our lives end?
Never.
They continue.
Death is not an end to life.
Death is the end of a form…
An entity… an identity…
Life is eternal.
It does not cease to be.
It ever renews.
An end only marks a new beginning
A new cycle of angst and small escapisms
Death is not a freedom
From sorrow… from misery… from conflict.
Freedom belongs to the realm of life.
It must be sought here and now
Not merely by way of vote, revolt or a bloody war
But through a life of surrender and devotion
To the altar of a higher realization.
This realization is an internal independence
From all that is external to us.
And is a firm awareness
Of what is intrinsic to ourselves.
The intrinsic is life.
The extrinsic is manifestation.
Freedom is not the end of undesirable circumstances.
Freedom is liberation from the very desire to be free.
The true end is that which is free of a new beginning.
To grow one must courageously set foot
In ‘the higher’… ‘the freer’… ‘the truer’…
But these need not be assumed
To be ‘more than’
Or ‘greater than’
Our present state.
‘Higher’ could be ‘smaller’.
‘Freer’ could be ‘lesser’.
‘Truer’ could be ‘wiser’.
In other words, growth is not merely
In the mindless annexure of more.
It’s in the understanding of intrinsic worth.
To grow is to question the assumption of inadequacy
It is to reconcile the conflict
Between who we are and
Who we imagine ourselves to be;
Between what we don’t know
And what we refuse to learn.
Thought, it thinks that it knows
And that it is clever…
And creative and intelligent…
And two steps ahead of action
And can easily hoodwink it.
And so, it has become ordinary
To say one thing
And do quite the opposite.
Our thoughts and actions
Have come to live separate lives.
Our thoughts are no longer
Loving or respectful…
Because they no longer feel the need
To descend to action
And foster a real relationship with life.
While thought is energy that inspires action
It can only do so when it has the heart
To be subsumed by the action of surrender;
Its claim to authority being true
On the condition it is willing to surrender it.
After all, one can’t think one’s way
Out of the morass of existence
It must be walked through
Its difficulties must be experienced
At all dimensions of our being.
If not committed to taking a form through action
Thought quickly becomes a shroud
Covering all that has died within us
Our truth, Our Morality, Our agency
Our awareness of who we truly are.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 