I look at the darkness without
From a lit room within
Reflections appear before me
Creating interesting collages…
The world isn’t reality
It’s yet another layer…
Outside, the wind seduces the trees
The rain quenches their thirst
And the trees dance in ecstasy.
I’m riveted to my window.
I’m the spectator, the enjoyer
I’m the one watching.
There is a perpetual war within…
A war between
Hopes and circumstances
Between confinement
And the beckoning of freedom
Between the lower
And the higher
Between what is
And what could be.
I saunter into the kitchen
Look at all the jars lined up
Standing as if under a command.
Inanimate, still ready to serve
Like soldiers in a rank
Also in a war?
Contained, silent, closed…
Human civility demands
That we fight our battles in silence.
The biggest failing
Is the inability
To see things as they are
To understand them
For how they are
To accept them
The way they are
And to appreciate them
For what they are.
Can you see that ideas
Make up our world?
Can you see that you have
The power to reject ideas…
To give them no attention?
Can you see that you can
Offer your own for every idea
That feels wrong, unjust and diminishing?
Give your ideas a voice,
Give them a shape, a form…
Give them expression.
Prepare them for the stage
That is life…
Create your own setting
Tell your own story…
But first live life well
Live fully. Expose yourself to
The world’s ideas
But neither borrow nor steal
You are the sovereign of your world
The centre around which
Your world revolves.
To educate is to open up
The expanse of the mind
So that for all our assumptions
The right questions we may find.
An education must make you
A seeker not a knower
You must be able to
Over your ignorance cross over.
Pride and foolishness
Often walk hand-in-hand
A true seeker knows
The grounds on which he stands.
That we know nothing
A good education must show
That what needs to be known
Lies beyond what we know.
Not just a fast-track
To worldly success
In the worst of times
It prepares you to be your best.
Education is design
Education is art
It’s the architecture of the mind
Built with inroads to the heart
We are the earth-
72% water
28% mineral
Fire and wind
And ether too, we are.
Which is why we have the power
To make, to move, to listen
And to digest.
Why then
Is there hopelessness…
Why are there mental breakdowns?
Why does the mind
Turn against the being?
Why must man be in
A relationship of torment
With his own mind?
To be conscious is to think.
To think is to supply
The energy to make real.
The mind makes real
What it is conscious of
Be aware…listen
The wind moves and
In and through hollow steel tubes it chimes.
Over time,
Success gets dusted off…
It is not rooted in the real
Power & Wealth
Beauty & influence
Disappear like they appeared.
It can take a lifetime
To see that money
Is but of notional value
Power rides on the back of fear
And influence and beauty
Do not last.
So then,
What is worth having?
What is a worthy pursuit?
What will validate me?
What will make my efforts
Valuable, fruitful and meaningful?
Imagine yourself as being
Other than what you own
And what you seek
Success cannot liberate you
It’s circle of influence can only
reach up to the edge of low reason.
The false entices because
We don’t know the truth
The false is ever-changing
Ever-growing and ever-progressing
The true remains unaffected,
Unchanged and eternal.
So look at what you don’t see
And listen to what you don’t hear
The truth doesn’t speak
She’s not spectacular or grand
She just is. Free from failure
Because she’s disinterested in success.
Where there is immense rage
Intense, overwhelming emotion
And pain that cries
For relief and release,
There is a storm.
The storm knows nothing
Apart from its own surge
It can neither see, nor does it care
About the signs you had painted
For right and wrong.
The storm thunders-
An artistic expression
Of deafening silence.
It brings in powerful gusts of wind
And its tears wet all of earth.
In protest
It breaks down windows
And tears down the walls
That guard our fears.
Our facades can no longer protect us.
Storms are great levellers.
They drown out the sounds of normalcy,
Flatten the structures
That order and separate us
And compel us to rebuild our world.
The time has come
To break away from habit.
Habits of thinking
And being and doing.
Our way of life
Was a roadmap of diversions;
We never really arrived anywhere
Except to where we began.
The search for validation
Was misconstrued as the search for self.
We have lived as partial beings
Unable to embrace a world of our making.
We speak, but don’t listen
We hurry, but to no specific destination.
Activity is valued as action
And in its chaos we seek our purpose.
How do we see our truth?
How do we integrate our being?
How do we come to see
That to be we must be free?
Our exchanges must be directed
To let go of a lesser value for a higher one.
Poverty does not belong to outer circumstances
But to an inner blindness that doesn’t let us see
That our wealth is as unreal
As our imagined poverty
Gain and loss are the way of life
It’s the alternating of breath that sustains life.
Freedom cannot be won in a world of perceptions.
We must stay silent, watchful and locked in.
Examine deeply
Your notions of the true.
The froth of the ocean
Is as true as its depth.
Ranking and evaluating and judging
Are intellectual pastimes.
They may or may not
Yield you the wisdom to see.
That when you organize things
From the truest to the less true
The world stands disintegrated
And broken in two.
A true seeing of the true
Will harmonize differences
And create parities
Where none seem to be.
The true may sometimes
Seem false, often inconsistent
And in disagreement with your view
On how things should be
But ultimately the true
Keeps its own promise to be;
Answerable to no one, it remains
In perfect sync with its own potentiality.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 