Conscious action
Is your ultimate recourse…
It is a power
Vested in you
To stand forever free
From the self-limiting reactions
Of unconscious actions.
To watch yourself in a bind
To fully experience
The turbulence of the mind
To recognize that
It has become too sullied
To reflect reality
Is to come to know
That you’ve been betrayed
By your own imagination.
It’s this knowledge
Powered by conscious watching
That frees you.
Journeys are never
About the beginning
And the end
They are about
Departures…
Leaving behind…
Bitter-sweet experiences…
Meeting and separating…
Unexpected delays and
Arriving…
Sometimes you enter
Long, dark tunnels
And find yourself immersed
In a dense darkness.
They are about
Expectations unmet
And conversations
That began between companions
But that got lost into wonder
In the vast fields of your own thought.
Journeys are not
The means to an end
They are an end in themselves
Reminding us
That we belong
To no one and to nowhere
That our identities
Are not permanent
That our stations
Will not last forever.
We must travel
With the lightest
Emotional baggage
We must come to see
That our companions
Will change
And that our solitude
Will always stand by us
Our journeys must teach us
How to say goodbye.
Journeys are about losing old certainties
Only so that we may
Find new horizons
Journeys are about
Tirelessly covering distances
With the full understanding
That they will accomplish nothing
They will only leave you
With yourself…
Wiser. Kinder. Freer.
Have you at all
Had a spiritual experience?
And were you able to
Recognize it as such?
Scan your memory
For all the moments
When Understanding
Came to the rescue
And calmed all storms within…
Or you had a question
And an answer came your way
It felt as though
You had been in conversation
With Eternity…
Or when you surrendered
Your stake in the ownership
Of a circumstance
With the willingness to accept
Whatever came your way
And you found yourself
Taking charge
With a mysterious grace.
Have you experienced
An expansion of being?
Are you able to witness
Your own becoming?
Are you able to see
The play of your life
Even as you play it?
Have your simplest gestures
Touched someone in profound ways?
Have you been unaffected
By loss… or by gain?
Is your daily experience
One of abundance…
Or one of poverty?
Do you have faith
In eternal goodness?
And lastly…
Have you found the wisdom
To be happy?
The object and the thought
Cannot part ways
They depend on each other
For identity, meaning and existence.
You can’t check to see
If the reflection has left the mirror
It will continue to be
As long as you are
The mind has no purpose
It has only presence
It just is.
And thought is absence
That is meandering in darkness
Trying to make sense of the experienced
Dividing itself into subject and predicate
Unaware
That the two are one
Doomed to be in a perpetual quest
It stands lost and directionless
In its own ever-expanding space.
Time is a wind
It comes and goes
It shuts you out
Then it opens other doors
The breath you take
Is a gift of time
The words you speak
Are its rhythm and rhyme
A thief, a fugitive-
It’s always on the run
Doing its job between every
Rising and setting sun
Don’t be a fool
Don’t make permanent any belief
The life you claim to own
Is a gift from a thief
It provides you
And then it takes away
Nothing that you’ve received
Will forever stay
Harbour not
Any anger or regret
Pay your dues in time
Don’t gather any debt
For if you’re left behind
Because you stayed too long
It will return for you
To take you where you belong
Time will take away
What time brought in
Time cannot stay
Time is a wind.
I was riding
On a train of thought
When a dragon fly
Perched on the grill of my window
Caught my eye…
I abandoned my trip
And let my attention dwell
On its fascinating form…
I wondered
If it would come in
Or for how long it would stay
And would its adventurous spirit
Be its undoing
As if alerted by my thoughts
It let better sense prevail
And flitted away…
I was left dropped
By my own wandering.
Freed from thought;
Nudged of my musings;
Transported from
One moment to the next;
Reminded that intentionality
Is sometimes no match for wonder;
Freed of purpose
And nowhere to get to;
I wrote this poem.
‘I’ don’t matter
But my thoughts do
They become the nature
Of my ‘am-ness’.
It’s not the ‘I’
But the ‘am-ness’ that must grow
From being an identity
To simply being…
To free yourself
From experiences that bind you
Means to change
The direction of your thoughts
To shift your attention
From confining circumstances
To an ever-present vastness
That alone
Is the extent of your freedom…
Moving from ‘I’ to ‘am-ness’.
Must we live
Keeping in mind
The question of
‘Will this matter in the end’?
If life is continuous
And there is no end
What then should the question be?
Evolution seems to be
The purpose of a journey
In this journey from
One day to the next
Release yourself
From patterns that bind you.
Make departures.
Change direction.
Have faith
That all roads will lead you
To your destiny.
Do not be afraid
To change your mind.
Breathe…
Don’t hold on to an event.
Let go…
And
When you let go
Let go of that which holds on to it.
Let go
Of expectation, of need, of want…
Of dead ends.
Inhale
A new air; welcome a new possibility
Allow it to enter
Let it
Lift you up…
Refresh and revitalize you.
Breathing
Is the blessing of your life
In its rhythm, you stand perceived…
Freed
Of all that you held on to
Of all that you thought was important.
Sustained
Through an abundant providence
Of ever-expanding consciousness.
How do we move
From a lower
To a higher freedom?
Is it a question
Of resolution, of strategy?
Or of having faith
In the buoyancy of love?
Or of taking cues
From your own dissatisfaction
And moving away
To seek higher joys?
Life, I’ve come to see
Doesn’t work out like a plan
It doesn’t particularly
Care for accomplishment
It doesn’t need you to arrive
Anywhere in particular
But walk you must…
Its action is an unfolding one
Requiring from us, not anticipation
But the willingness, agility and humility
To simply surrender.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 