Life is a story of hardship,
of great challenge.
To find consciousness in a world of noise, competition and bloody history.
We struggle to remember this process,
repeated thousands of times,
in total amnesia,
to cling and release,
to love and to lose.
We bath in stories of constant struggle and tragedy.
Denial of the inevitable, our dwelling place, deep fear the price we pay for this Naïveté.
Worst case scenarios, a station we can not tune out.
A tired tale of endless irony,
fatalism and fantasy,
followed without end or question.
Our story has yet to be written,
despite it haunting familiarity.
If only we could only remember!
Life a gift of unimaginable wonder,
given only to be taken,
a heart beating with a fiery joy,
will cease into quiet cold stillness.
Trauma,
Aging,
Disease,
Death,
Gifts never to be given.
Harsh lessens told over and over through thousands and thousands of years,
Transporters of truth,
Carriers of silver linings,
Envoys of enlightenment,
Teachers of equanimity,
Preachers of peace,
Guides of acceptance,
Gifts beyond compare.
Often found only in tragedy and crisis,
why do these teachers have to be so harsh, relentless, and severe?
Filled only with anguish?
Consumed only with sadness?
Masters of misery.
How else will we see truth and put down this jeweled cup?
How else will we forsake the telescope and pictures of the past?
How else will we face impermanence?
Why would we look inward,
towards our sorrow,
when the flowers are still in bloom?
Why would we choose to look there on this beautiful day?
Why would we let go of this pleasure, before it is called back to truth?
Is growth not a product of discomfort?
Why would we trade these illusions for pain?
Mistaking pleasure for happiness,
comfort is the birth place of our apathy.
Yes, yes the Golden treasure is hidden behind our well constructed tower of illusion,
the castle of I and Me is well guarded,
defended by desire,
guarded by pain,
secured by aversion,
hidden by loss,
jailed by the delusion,
camouflaged with expectation,
isolated by ignorance,
imprisoned by pleasure,
sentinels possessing endless vigilance,
fueled by constant attachment.
Insight, acceptance, equanimity the only safe way through.
This golden path, illusive,
malleable and moving
Requiring continual navigation,
path finding,
silver linings are hard to find,
difficult to see.
When we collide with suffering,
the treasure is often missed as we wallow in disappointment and the endless injustice.
This is not fair! We scream into the emptiness of the night!
We fail time and time again to accept,
to really accept!
that these lives are not ours to keep,
our plan not always our path,
That the pain we feel we are active in creating!
There is no redemption,
only acceptance, renewal, and grace.
The scars and stains cannot wash be washed away,
only transformed into insight, growth and light.
We will crash into suffering at some point in life or over the coarse of generations of lives.
This cold reality has the capacity to awaken,
to clear cluttered shackles of the mind.
Fog of ignorance vanishing,
colliding into the chasm of truth.
Suffering in the end is the gift itself,
leading the way to truth and to freedom.
Only a joy embedded with sorrow is everlasting.
The gift you would never give.
Step out of the nosies, the competition and bloody history,
let pass the mechanism of oppression,
the ingrained self sabotage,
the doubts that holds back the heart,
the denial of fear,
insecurity, as individual trait, failing to see its universal origin,
the illusion of our “separation”,
leaving us exposed.
electromagnetically bonded,
consciously connected,
the line between me and the world, imaginary.
See it for what it is!
Oh! this suffering is the gift!
Sit with it.
Be with it.
It is you!
Sooner or later we must all pass over this divide,
diving into the unknown,
into humility of our perpetual ignorance,
layer after layer,
lesson repeated,
repeated,
repeated,
repeated,
smilingly infinity!
Oh the endless lessons,
Lessons endless!
The gifts you would never give.
The treasure is growth,
Growth of awareness,
Growth of acceptance,
Growth of consciousness.
To feel powerful feelings and not react,
to feel disappointment without despair,
to melt stagnancy of opinions and beliefs,
to break with habit and routine,
to dissolve expectation through acceptance,
to love completely, accepting loss,
to experience connection and disconnection as the same moment,
to see that death is essential to life,
arising and passing,
in slow rhythmic metronome,
Singularity.
To live life with death!
Can you imagine?
To discover,
the autobiographer of this suffering,
the note taker of scars,
the annotators of accomplishment,
the machinery of self-imprisonment.
To vanquish,
the hungry ghost of addiction and habit,
to harness the mind, the wild beast,
perpetually thrashing in the past and the present.
Oh! To be free of time!
To understanding the meaning of MY Life is not the goal,
but to understand life,
the way of nature,
the ebb and flow.
To finally learn,
that this is not all about me!
Gifts were not given to be hoarded,
given so we may serve,
care, understand, comfort, guide,
HERE IS THE WATER!!!
Liberate entangled energy,
unify, two blending back into one.
Origin.
The evolution of humanity,
Spirit over flesh,
Connecting to the energy that is the source of life and death,
over and over and over again,
The Breathing Force,
inhale exhale,
life death,
inhale exhale,
life death
arising passing,
arising passing
on the very same scale,
perspective solely responsible for the divide,
expansion, contraction
vibration.
To think this is all a prescription of meaningless cruelty is only despair.
To think we can posses the mystery is only fantasy.
All we can do is pay attention to the movement,
the sensation of experience,
free of judgement,
free of reaction,
fastened to the fluctuation,
changeless change,
one with life,
one with death,
A simple river flowing forward.
We can really live a life of freedom.
instantaneously!
without seeking!
without striving!
Quiet,
Equanimous,
Observation,
Here we are.
We can not create the rules, we can only learn to find the way.
There is no right way,
there is no wrong way,
there is only the way.
This, the gift you would never give.