Thursday, October 1, 2015

Time Collapses Into Itself


In the time before this time
when intimate connection with all
was all there was,
embedded in an infinite matrix
of change and transformation,
married eternally to that
and constantly bowing in
love with the passing of seconds
with every light particle
of the mysterious beingness
of one's physicality,
bursting forth unimagined treasures
just to keep up with the downpouring
of divine grace intended to flow
through hands to the world-altar
container of love and oneness
with no beginning or end
condensed into a form
of unconditionally loving femininity
appearing before one's eyes,
….and giving it no mind, only awe


This is how I grew younger
and older, in each moment
filling up with more life-force
the more it was spent
and we sang Mirabai's words
of assurance that no thief
could ever steal this treasure
and we cried at our inability
to adequately describe this love.


And now
time collapses into itself
all memory being present
in every moment
encompassing a lifetime
all joy and ecstasy once lived
shadowed over,
the treasure-house looted,
the young man can't be found,
and the moment of separation
re-creates itself as if
there is no other reality
other than this devastation
of the world 


This 'I' is not alone, separate
sorrowing at the soullessness
of make-believe child's play,
the narcissism of sacred business
in a world we allow to die
We know in our hearts
an immense beauty
is so close we can taste it
and every blade of grass,
every star and galaxy
shines with holy fire
in its desire to witness
our collective remembrance
of the truth of our eternal
and immortal oneness.


I just know there's no way
I can do this
with the feeling of separateness
and aloneness that spreads
through countless moments,
days and months
I could just surrender it up
since she showed me
so clearly, and beautifully
how it's done
This is how it appears
in every fleeting present now
as if there's a choice offered
and everything is at stake

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Crazier Than Hell

John recorded this in 2010, 31 years after his unimaginable loss.
I can't even begin to say how powerfully this has affected me today.
Every single word is perfect. Yeah, THIRTY-ONE YEARS.
For me, there is no poet on Earth like this man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB0IipdYA-E

 
Lyrics (my transcription):

Feeling crazier than hell
Got this time on my hands
I got you on my mind
And nowhere else to go
The fires burn hot and cold
That's some place in between the melt and the freeze
This need for reaching for you
You were all I could be
Now I'm here where I'm alone
We were one, now I'm a ghost
Falling from my place in the Sun
This dizzy is out of control
The world keeps spinning
I heard a vibrating echoing
Sounded they lost one of you
Amongst the truths I sought
You were the one I found
Now I need the remembering
The memories of you holding my hand
Remembrances of laughter, singing
Songing the nights with belonging
Sweetness the shelter of each other
Reality, the reality of safe, peace
With all these times of missing you
I'm not going to love these days without you to hold my hand
Feeling crazier than hell
This crazy just goes on and on
And this confusion of me
Crazy together or crazy apart
When crazy is crazy, it's not always in our heads
Sometimes it's in our hearts

This man knows Love, and always, like now, I never cease crying from
his words. I can barely type these lines..... 
 
 

       

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Kindness

Taken last night by my Beloved's friend on Oregon coast
"Kindness"
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
what you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanking everyone for their kind thoughts  and prayers. These are the only things holding me up in this time. 
Also, as my bro, Sanjay, says - my drum is my life raft. I played for the community on Shivaratri night for 4 hours. Full power and emotion offered. 
O God, please help me. O Goddess, please help me....over and over, all day and night.
Still weeping continuously within and without. 
She only....saw me and knew me to the depth of my soul. She only....loved me unconditionally in this life. Now I am ruined, fully in the realm of, and dependent on, divine grace. 
She is everywhere, but my hand longs for her touch. I can only touch the drum that she too played on. 
How can I make this passage?  

Friday, January 30, 2015

Arunachala Has Always Been Her Home

This is all I can say as the words come to form in their own time. For now, one small instant in this eternal mystery......

 
I thought my work was to come here to try to find her,
and then to love her,
and that that love would
be strong enough to overcome the forces that sought to deny the world of
her divine gifts and her divine presence

I feel as though I've fallen into a hallucinatory dimension of one's worst
imaginable nightmares. It doesn't feel like reality any more. I'm not in the same
creation. Thinking I was not disciplined enough, not remembering enough, not
impeccable. Although the words ring in my mind - her saying I "was perfect",
just before she turned irrevocably inward, not to re-emerge, despite my desperate
pleading with the angels and all divine beings

In the first days of our being together our love went nova.
In wonder and awe, we shared/felt/whispered our remembrance.
We have waited eons and yugas, but never forgot
and, we are finally here, together
to hold and cherish and maintain this sacred love
to heal, to create ever more exquisite beauty
in the world.
There was never any question of what we were serving.
With her natural Virgo nature and power, she surrendered wholly
to this holy service,
and worked, sometimes silently, sometimes roaring
to share this highest calling with all those around her.

Maybe I failed to remind her enough, of her divine goddess nature,
and she often was reluctant to accept the fullness
of what I could unquestioningly see with my own eyes.
I never felt like being insistent, since I knew she was coming and would come to know
in herself her own true nature, as one can only do.
So now she knows,
and I am on this side of the veil, a mad-man,
like Shiva dancing the tandava dance.

What do the angels want me to know?


Shivo hum Parvo hum  

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

OneLove Healing Prayers for Our World


When the sun within speaks, 
when love reaches out its hand
and places it upon another,

any power the stars and planets
might have upon us,

any fears you can muster can
become so rightfully insignificant.

What one heart can do for
another heart, is there any beauty
in the world that can match this?

- Hafiz (1320-1389)

Gregory Colbert - "Ashes and Snow"













As reported on Winter Solstice, an Argentine appeals court ruled the 29-year-old Sumatran orangutan, Sandra, to be a "non-human person unlawfully deprived of it's her freedom", with legal rights, specifically to not be subjected to imprisonment in the zoo where she has been held for 20 years. A sanctuary is ready to receive her. Need we say more? Didn't think so.






Our friend from the resident free rabbit tribe greeted us on New Year's Eve - so handsome with his/her winter coat:


























And, after 6+ months, our hibiscus flowered on New Year's Day! 
We took that as an auspicious omen of Ma Kali's/Kwan Yin's divine grace.
And, bringin' it all back home..Situation here on the home front had recently gotten pretty emotionally intense. Some good and powerful angelic messages closely followed by a sudden symptomatic crisis found my beloved at 3am (with me) in the ER between the holidays.

I guess in the grand scheme of things, what we're dealing with is probably not so different from what a lot of the Love Tribe of true human beings around the planet are facing.  Life and death issues.
I have this friend/partner/spirit-companion who, previously unbeknownst to me, happens to be one of the most astonishing hidden contemporary mystic bhakti poet/writers I have ever read, seen, or heard. A year and a half after meeting, I became the first person ever to whom was shown her work. Hell, I thought she was just a super present, intelligent, spiritual young lady, who by some crazy stroke of luck I had the privilege to be with for a moment. Her talents are numerous, and still awakening. We inhabit a world of continuously expanding mutual respect, love, and shared re-membering, which I can't even begin to describe. Each new day is an absolute blessing and miracle. 
We have been managing (for last 14 months) a situation that requires utmost attention to diet, pure medicine, energy, spiritual practice, and other considerations in order to continue to stay alive here in this crucial time of the current Yuga. Neither are we fearful of the inevitable event of our transitioning, whenever that time might come. But that appears not to be our determination as to "when". 

So the medical-industrial-complex white-coated 'experts', seriously, sadly, with long faces, inform us that if she declines to take their chemo-rad poison (which 10-years previously precipitated the situation), they will now refer us to the hospice org. so that they can begin to "manage" the surely impending death with their morphine and all, and "help" us with necessary paper-work and preparations. So "go on home and die". Get the picture?
[Fortunately, she's not 17, like the girl who recently got tied down and forcibly given chemo by the 'child-protective' legal system.]

Changes have been made in our protocols in last couple weeks, and we are seeing positive results. We have also felt the outpouring of prayers and spiritual support being directed our way, and are immensely grateful. 
Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers, as you are able.

This healing is no different from the healing which we all need to engage in, for all the sufferers and holy beings desiring to free our world from the depredations of the parasites and predators who have ravaged our bodies and the Earth simultaneously. 

A healing peace prayer by an extraordinary Nepali woman Buddhist nun:

 
Her awesome life story is briefly described in this review of her new autobiographical book, Singing for Freedom.