Exploring The Mystery

Creatures arise, creatures vanish;
I alone am real, Arjuna,
looking out, amused, from deep
within the eyes of every creature.

I am the Self, Arjuna, seated
in the heart of every living creature.
I am the origin, the middle
and the end that all must come to.

                      -- The Bhagavad Gita

      Here are three recent poems of mine. Each, in its own way, explores the mystery of the soul.


                       ALL OUT

what stammering of mine could express so much
as the rain's palaver this morning on my window
or a gust's hoarse whisper through bare branches?

I guess I'll have to conjure some half-baked excuse
to keep fussing with this poem anyway    admitting
I can never communicate as purely as the weather

maybe I should take my cue from the cawing crows
their gutteral slang's the language of thunderheads
it's sinewed with such rich veins of night and death

wide awake    living all out    precariously balanced
at this bitter    exhilarating razor's edge    how else
can I profoundly know you      tell you who I am?

                              ***


             NOT A STONE OR A STAR

I hang out here between the stones and stars
not cold    shuttered    contained    unreadable
nor hot    outpouring    flagrant    unquenchable
but a sort of funky hodgepotch of this and that

there are times I yearn to grab and kiss you!
or fold you like an origami bird into my heart
at other's though   I don't love anything human
my profile's a headland pounded by breakers

try as I might   I can't pin this weird self down
the longer I scrutinize my soul the less I know
I'm disappearing into a Light that consumes me
not a stone or a star but a mystery fusing both

                             ***


                      HARRIED AWAKE

just as I stepped from the car a flock of starlings
swooped in low right over my head!       at that

split second I stopped being a sullen sleepwalker
stuck on autopilot    humping to the supermarket
mindlessly slipshodding ever faster toward death

at that split second I was harried from my stupor
swept up out of nowhere by one ecstatic breath
snatched into the outrageous freedom of the sky!

which state was the illusion      which the reality?
why are we all still sleeping?   Time To Wake Up!

                               ***


Holy Spirit
giving life to all life,
moving all creatures,
root of all things,
washing them clean,
wiping out their mistakes,
healing their wounds,
you are our true life,
luminous, wonderful,
awakening the heart
from its ancient sleep.

                -- Hildegard of Bingen

What Keeps Me Sane

Hard to find words in poems
                    to carry amazement:
on its ninety-thousand-mile wind,
the huge inner bird is soaring.
O wind, do not stop --

                              -- Qingzhao

     These past many weeks have been tough ones. My brother's been very sick-- hospitalized, then mostly bedridden in a rehab center. Because of his family situation, I had to step into the point position, phoning from Kansas City to New Jersey several times a week; trying, long distance, to serve as his health care advocate. Sometimes I wasn't sure which was the bigger obstacle, his several serious health issues, or the mind-numbingly dysfunctional health care system which is supposed to help him heal. He's home now, thank God, and slowly starting to piece his life back together again, although he still has a long way to go.

      Meanwhile, now I have to piece back together my own focus, energy and commitment as a creative artist. Fact is, by the holidays I just didn't have anything left in the tank, I was totally drained dry. I'd sit in front of my computer, "reporting for duty," then stare numbly at the blank screen--zero inspiration, zero motivation, zero concentration. But as any true writer knows, if you just don't have it, there's no use trying to force it anyway. The result will be dead in the water.

     Yesterday however, my desperation finally trumped my exhaustion. I found myself obsessing on my own mortality, dreading the latest undeniable signs of an aging animal gradually but inexorably slipsliding toward death. I was stuck in a negative thought loop, plunging into depression, flirting with despair. As daunting as the blank computer screen still seemed, I realized anything was better than all that awful brooding!

      Then something amazing happened: as soon as I typed the first groping, imperfect, but authentic line, my sense of dread disappeared! In facing my worst fears head on, writing about them, beginning to transform them into art, I was aligning myself with an inspiring, creating, transforming Spirit which is also the eternal Essence of who I most profoundly am. And that Spirit transcends even death. After several more hours of serious, hard-nosed revising, editing and polishing, the completed poem represented both an artistic expression and a spiritual catharsis:

             ITS HUGE BREATHING

against the sickening dread    which seems

inescapable   this bottomless void gaping

inside   an indisputable proof I'm awake

one living thing watching itself slowly die

what saving talisman will keep me sane?

there is no magic charm    just a choice

nor any graspable rescue either   only Spirit

when Its huge breathing shivers through me

I know a Reality that transcends even death

out tumble these bloody births called poems!

                            ***

     "just a choice"--  Either I identify with my mortal, limited, creaturely self--the animal ego which, no matter how temporarily robust, famous, rich or powerful, inevitably must die; or I wake up at last and wholeheartedly embrace that invisible but eternal Spirit which is the inspiring, creating and renewing Source of all I am. Whenever I'm able to do so; whenever I commit any act of unqualified creativity, then I myself become a living conduit of "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower." My cringing dread is swallowed up in cosmic praise!

             SONG OF THE PROBING SHOOT

Thrusting up and outward, groping toward the Light--

a green shoot, a tunnel quivering between worlds,

a wormhole for elemental forces. Stripped on down

to the bottom line, we are this--the bravest edge

of Spirit, the farthest flung probe of consciousness.

Which means here, where I am now, facing you,

naked, utterly exposed, bare to the innermost bone,

aware of my own terror, aware you're perceiving it,

aware there's no hiding, no bluffing, no disguise,

that beyond the cleverest word games, this is Real!

What will the brain babble next? What can it try,

how get a grip on the Unknown, the Incalculable?

We shiver at these crosshairs of space and time,

one foot planted in the grave, the other in Eternity!

We teeter on a tightrope splicing birth and death.

Our intellect fathoms just a crumb of the Whole.

Our senses grasp the flimsiest shards of Grace.

We've been juked and jived, fried and fricasseed!

No computer chip can ever replace the human soul.

Be a green shoot, a lifeline spanning all worlds!

                              ***


     Creativity which expresses the Spirit within us isn't simply a certain type of activity, or even just a life-absorbing commitment. It's a conscious way of being in the world, no matter what we may be doing. It's a freedom, openness and energy which quickens and transforms everything it touches. It's what keeps us green and growing inside. It's our soul's fertile and abundant garden, watered by the fountain of youth!

Move through transformation, out and in.

What is the deepest loss

                                that you have suffered?

If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.

                               -- Rainer Maria Rilke    

The Sound Of No Shore

In the ocean are many bright strands
and many dark strands like veins that are seen
when a wing is lifted up.
Your hidden self is blood in those, those veins
that are lute strings that make ocean music,
not the sad edge of surf,
                            but the sound of no shore.

                                           -- Rumi

     We never come home to the essence of who we are until we experience boundlessness--"the sound of no shore." Our creaturely self must submit to limits, the ultimate of which is physical death. No one, as they say, gets out of this life alive. But there's another way to read the truism: it's only when we become precisely "no one" that we consciously unite with our Eternal Source and so transcend mortality. Yet it can be utterly terrifying to lose not only the sight, but even the sound of the shore! To do so I must surrender everything which represents that familiar, reassuring shore to me--.all my assumptions, attachments, addictions. I must painfully peel away every last layer of self-importance, every last shred of bogus identity, until I reach a condition of perfect emptiness. The silence of that inner ocean is the sound of no shore.

           ATTRITION

for the ten thousand things

words

for every no-thing else

silence

sooner or later

you're heading to deep ocean

words love to play on the shore

they're happiest there

frisky!     at home among

crowded beaches    busy docks

people coming and going

all that hustle and bustle

but the farther you swim

alone into uncharted waters

the panickier words become

cold   exhausted   one by one

they sink beneath the waves

until at last only a handful

struggle on blindly

gasping

like this

*

     At the innermost core of ourselves, where the emptiness shines, we are boundless beings. There, and only there, are we quintessentially free. The sound of no shore is also the music of the spheres, the susurration of the universe. How can we bear our burdens and find our way here, in this Earth Plane labyrinth of cause and effect, trial and error, struggle and death? Only if we maintain an indestructable toehold in Eternity! Don't be blasted and confounded by the storm of time. Rediscover the Sanctuary of the eye at the heart of the hurricane.

                       SANCTUARY

Three a.m. and the psychic storm was raging--

something around the hugeness of a galaxy but

dead black, twisted inside out, and ravenous.

I was scuttling beneath it, a stupified crab,

lurching this way and that,

                                     scrambling for cover.

So I came at last to the shimmering cliffs.

Not cliffs really, more like the fringes of

some titanic robe, shot through with Radiance;

more like the hem of a garment of Light.

I stopped in my tracks. What would you do?

What would you do if the Inconceivable

swept its scintillant Edge across your soul?

Dazed and punch-drunk I dropped to my knees.

I clothed my quaking terror with nakedness.

I wrapped my anguish in Eternity's Flame.

                               *

        

    If I sacrifice my privacy, solitude, introspection and self-emptying through a Faustian bargain with materialism, consumption, and the glittering allure of digital technology, I won't be gaining greater freedom but rather insuring deeper slavery. There's no way I can hear "the sound of no shore" except by leaving behind the cacophony of things, forms, powers, illusions and desires. My irreducible freedom is defined by "not this, not that." The wormhole to Infinity is a bull's-eye beaconing from the center of my soul!

A secret turning in us

makes the universe turn.

Head unaware of feet,

and feet head. Neither cares.

They keep turning.

                         -- Rumi

   

         

Where Freedom Begins

                                                                                                                                      Freedom is really a spiritual state, although it can be reflected at lesser levels. And it is only in freedom in the deepest sense that the riches of the Spirit can manifest themselves.

                                           -- Sri Ram

     No nation has ever made a louder hullabaloo about "Freedom" than The United States. It's our justification for military intervention around the globe; our troops are lauded as "heroes defending our freedom," no matter in what fractious, oppressed, poverty-stricken corner of the Third World they're deployed. Freedom of expression provides the legal rationale through which the pornography of violence and the violence of pornography inundate our media and infect our consciousness. Unregulated freedom from all constraint or control is the unrelenting rallying cry of ruthless, uber-competitive corporate capitalism. And yet, by the profoundest definition of freedom, in reality most of us are abject slaves.

     If my spirit is in chains, what does it matter if I have license to exercise all these other so-called "freedoms" and a hundred more? As Kabir said "...you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death." Where does true freedom begin? Paradoxically, only with complete surrender. One of the numberless names of the God I encounter at the innermost core of my being is FREEDOM! Unless I achieve unity with this Radiant Source; orient my fundamental indentity to this Universal Truth, I will always remain a slave, a craven addict of soul-devouring idols. True freedom can never be won by any political means if it's not first awakened  in the liberated soul.

      There is only one way to be truly Free--become supremely empty. As long as the little, deluded, superficial "I" of worldly self-importance runs the show--projecting its fears, promoting its desires, defending its image--you remain a slave, whatever seeming power and prestige you possess.

      Real Freedom means utter surrender to That which alone is utterly Free--the Eternal Spirit streaming invisibly through all created things. Here is the Source and Center of your deepest Self, the Cosmic Breath that fills your whole being, until it stretches out tautly like a great sail billowing in the wind!

        -- from my book As The Spirit Moves: Teachings of the Angels, 1999.

     Consumer society materialism is one of the greatest obstacles to real spiritual freedom. Let's say I'm standing in front of the toothpaste section at my local supermarket. Look at all the different brands, sizes, prices, flavors, special features, so many possible choices--what freedom! No, only the delusion of freedom--like those "painted cakes" which can never satisfy hunger. Meanwhile, as ever, my attention is seduced and focused outside myself--momentarily possessed by but one of ten thousand ersatz epiphanies in this All-American "scrimmage of appetite" we call "the pursuit of happiness." But the American modernist poet Marianne Moore wrote this:

       "The very bird,

   grown taller as he sings, steels

his form straight up. Though he is captive,

his mighty singing

says, satisfaction is a lowly

thing, how pure a thing is joy.

        This is mortality,

        this is eternity."

     How pure a thing is joy! Here's how I know that at last I'm truly free--I'm infused with sheer Joy! Such Joy is never secondary and contingent--dependent on anyone or anything in the world outside me. On the contrary, it is always primary and unconditional, beaming forth from the Divine Beacon at the secret epicenter of my soul. Once we've tasted this ultimate Freedom, anything less which masquerades by the same name will be exposed as what it always was--just another glitzy disguise for slavery.

     Joy gave birth to the galaxies. It is the Source of every atom of your being. All creation exists because of Joy. Joy is where you come from. Joy is where you are going. Joy is the triumphal hymn of the universe! Your deepest agony is the distance you have traveled from Joy. Your highest hope is the promise of return.

     You have heard the sparrow. It sings for Joy! Joy curls in the wave breaking, and Joy is the glistening of the shore. Sunlight blazes down for Joy, and with Joy the earth receives it. The eagle soars, the mole burrows, the deer leaps, the fish swims, the grass grows, the bud opens, the seed begins--for Joy, Joy uncontainable, eternal Joy!

                           -- from As The Spirit Moves.

    

           

Keeping Hope Alive

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
Death's great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?

                               -- Anna Akhmatova

       

     Why then, indeed? Right now I'm facing into the abyss of my brother's possibly fatal illness. It's part of a Perfect Storm which also threatens the loss of his job and foreclosure on his house. Even if he eventually makes it out of the hospital, he might not have a home to come home to. And all this is just the tip of the iceberg! Here I am, half a continent away, struggling to do whatever I can to help, but I feel like I'm trying to siphon an ocean of trouble with a flimsy straw. Lying in bed sleepless again last night, staring at the ceiling, it seemed to me his situation was hopeless, and that I was helpless to change that. Finally, I did manage to drift off to sleep; and when I awoke this morning I realized there's yet one more thing I can do; one more reason not to give up hope. I'd looked into the gaping maw of the abyss, but something inside me still cried "Nevertheless!"

                     THE PASSWORD

"Nevertheless" is what I meant to say
                           when the worst came down,
after the Scud Missile of pain
                      struck its target zero in your soul.
"Nevertheless"--a defiant quip
just as the firing squad raises its guns.
It's that storm-battered tree
                                 far above the timberline,
the grin on the face of the homeless outcast,
the salmon's leap against the thundering falls.

"Nevertheless" is the cry I meant to praise
          no matter how many haters curse you out,
                  how many hammers bruise your bones.
It's a death row reprieve at the final hour,
the worm that turns, the impossible comeback,
                                  the incurable healed.
"Nevertheless" befuddles logic, hornswoggles fate.
It's the heroic password I meant to teach you.
            The Spirit's anthem.
                                   Destiny sealed.

                                  ***

     One of the hardest lessons to learn is that no matter how dire the circumstances, how daunting the odds, my ultimate power doesn't depend on any outer vicissitudes. The source of my true power to transcend, and therefore of my unquenchable hope, resides within me. The human spirit is indomitable!

                     RALLYING CRY

Begin now, begin in the teeth of the worst loss

you've suffered, begin to praise. Begin now, begin

anew, no matter what. Take the first, hard step

and then take another, and still another, until

the Spirit chimes within your bones, indomitable.

Start over, from the bitterest taste of ashes

burning your tongue. Start over, though clearly

everything you've hoped, prayed, yearned for,

lies crushed. Start over, grope without a clue,

buoyed by what disdains surrender, indomitable.

Keep growing, when nothing left seems alive,

not even your heart. Keep growing, break free

from that old, petrified shell, the dead past

clogged by phantoms and shadows. Keep growing--

beyond whoever you dreamed you were, indomitable.

Love again, despite the grief gutting your soul.

Quarry it out, rage after rage, tear after tear.

Love again, love unflinchingly, till you reach

a place where love consumes your cruellest fear.

Love again, and you will rise again, indomitable.

                                ***

     I don't know if my brother's going to make it. I don't know how much I can do for him, how much is even humanly possible. But I do know now that, nevertheless, I will never stop trying. Am I not my brother's keeper? Aren't we all?

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

                                 -- Jesus  (Matt. 25:36)