Solitude

What’s the Difference (Audio)

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Image result for image pebble falling through water

Good morning my Soul, my Beloved

I have a question for you
It was put to me, now I lay it at Your beautiful feet
In quiet expectation and trust I await Your response

From my lips to Your heart I cast it
“What is the difference?”
Does it matter
What does it mean
And like a pebble it breaks the surface of the Deep
Fluttering, slowly sinking, falling into the silent Unknown

Quiet, unmoving I remain
The surface of the water now still, a mirror
I gaze un-blinking into Her eyes
Green, brown, and golden windows
Falling like the pebble I sink into the Unknowing
Silence . . . Senses forsaken

“Nothing . . . and Everything,” She says
You have given all and you have also received back
Yet I needed not
You have scaled the heights of the exquisite and ridden on its golden light
And you have been flayed and spilled out by grief too terrible for words
But I am here
You have sought Me in exotic far off places and the adventure it brought
Even in the familiar paths within your reach your steps sought Me out
I never moved
You have dreamed, and built, and created magical things
And you have seen it all laid low in the dust
Yet I remain
You have chased the ancient knowledge, gathering together secrets of the Ages
But in the end only learned of your ignorance
I have watched it all

You ask what is the difference
I tell you there is none
The meaning you seek is fleeting like the Spring flowers
What matters is still beyond your comprehension
You ask what is the difference
I tell you all is changed
You have come to Me
You now sit by My still waters
You know the I Am
We are and shall ever be – One

So go my Love, seek, climb, create, and learn
Explore the world of the senses, the playground of the body and the mind
Thrill yourself with new adventure, people, and places
Walk the barren paths of solitude and grief
Exult in your victories and feel the pain of your failure

Fear not, cast it away from you
You are mine and I am Yours
My Love for you is all that has ever really mattered

The Kingdom of Both – The Red Book

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Image result for pathway razors edge

Two countries I knew
Two roads I walked
Both were exquisite and fine like the edge of a razor. Exquisite was the joy. Exquisite was the pain
Both flayed me, opened my soul to heights and to depths for which there are no words
One was ruled by the Sun
One was ruled by the Moon
One was filled with light, and joy, and the thrill of growing things
It is hard to breathe there, the air is thin and the light hurts your eyes
One was dark with a sweet, saturating, sadness heavy as the earth
It’s hard to breathe there under that weight, in the stillness, in the dark
One Kingdom promised the answer to dreams and desires of the heart
One Kingdom answered the dread of my deepest fears

Back and forth, back and forth, long I journeyed the bi-polar pathway
As high as I soared, even touching the sun, that far I fell, down, down, down
Longing’s ache, movement, hope’s teasing tug pulled me into the glorious fire, my wax melted and I fell
Great was the fall, epic was the ruin, dry, dusty, darkness, solitude, empty hollow ache
Long I lay there, time’s ticking warped, stretched into intervals that only the shifting Earth can reckon
As the mountains grew and continents shifted, dust settled over me, nothing grew but the rocks
Only silence and solitude and stillness were my companions, grief my nourishment
Then something stirred in me, a movement, an energy, a foreign force that frightened yet awakened me
I rose from the dark earth and made my way into the place between places, that space between light and dark
A region rarely traversed. The powerful pull of the poles seeking to claim me for the left or the right, the good or the bad, for gods or the devils
But I refused, something had changed, I rebelled against them both and was reborn on the utterance of the word No
Neither was my mortal home, neither was the land of my true habitation

The new way was neither/nor, but Both at once
The path, at first unstable, unfathomable, impossible like a drunk man on a tightrope
I learned to let go my clinging, my addiction to knowing, to allow the currents of emotion to wash over me
Stillness, the only way to move in that place between the paradox
And as I surrendered movement I was moved by forces larger than I, changed and rearranged
My pattern resonating with that which has called to me from forever
The lie of the either/or is tenacious and It’s powerful spell can only be starved slowly, never broken
The black sorcery practiced by the ancients continues still, hidden in view
The promise, the lure of distraction, life lived falsely, divided, unaware, asleep on the square, a bird in a cage
The Kingdom of Both is among us, can you not perceive it? Awaken to reality’s dream
Come walk with me here. I need a companion. We need companions to help us balance along the razors edge
Come and lay down your striving, lose all, and find everything here in the Kingdom of Both

Talking to the Wind (Audio)

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This is an older song lyric and came out of a period of solitude.  The theme of wind and Soul reminded me of it.  So I dug it out.

(Jazz – Blues – Country – some anger/strength which builds to the end. Mayer or Clapton or Marvin Gaye)

(Start fairly soft and pointed)
(Could be spoken over instruments the first time through)

(R) I’ve been gone.
There are just some things a man must do alone.
So if they ask you where I’ve been just look at them and grin
And tell them – He’s been talking to the wind.

(1)I’ve been talking to the wind
Telling her the paces that I’ve been
And though she don’t have much to say
I think I like it best that way
And I can feel her tender touch upon my skin

(R) I’ve been gone.
There are just some things a man must do alone.
So if they ask you where I’ve been just look at them and grin
And tell them – He’s been talking to the wind.

(2)I’ve been singing to the breeze
Songs that have put me on my knees
And while she has yet to sing along
I know she understands my songs
And she fills me when it seems too hard to breathe

(Skip chorus – build to end)

(3)I’ve been raging at the storm
Standing at the place where hearts are torn
I look unblinking in her eyes
And I can feel the anger rise
I remember strength. And in the fire I am reborn.

(Finish big and hard with chorus and guitar/drum back to soft finish)

Guilt – The Human Stain (Audio)

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I have been going back through some of the writing I have done over the last several years.  I guess I am attempting to make some sense of what it has been about.  Methinks it can be understood, at least in part, as an example of an awakening process of this particular soul.  Perhaps it is the fleshing out of the spiritual paradox of dying in order to live.  There is a great deal of talk about some awakening that is taking place in our world.  Perhaps it is.  All I know is that I am different than I was.  My values, beliefs, and attention have been shaken.  Attachment to my older ego identity is much loosened as well as my tendency to measure meaning and purpose against the values of culture and other people.  This older program is full of formulas whose equations required an outward focus in order to balance them.  I have come to understand that I had been programmed in a way which directed my energy away from the source of my disquiet.  As if I could find, go, fix, figure out, accomplish, and/or become, enough of something that finally I could rest.  But at the end of all things external was emptiness.  Ego’s domination was tyrannical and it only released control bit by excruciating bit. Perhaps a wiser person might accomplish this in an easier, less troublesome manner.  But it seems I required the harder way.  Solitude and death I think, preceded the birth of an awareness that I am much more than my ego and linear history here in time.  I am some distance now from much of the darker aspects of this process and can testify that all pain and grief is not evil.  And perhaps it is our avoidance of the darker aspects of ourselves that is evil and is the source of individual and societal lostness.

I have been talking to the wind

She is some comfort in that there is no judgement

I cannot bear that

Not that I do not deserve it but

Judgement has been rendered since the foundations

It permeates my being

Flows in my blood

I am guilty

But guilty does not clarify

One would think that the verdict would

Prod me in one direction or the other

But it only sits on me

Like wet burlap filled with shit

So I talk to the wind

She listens – No response

She touches me – Never wavers

She is always there

I feel her but there is no response

No positive – No negative

She is herself and moves where she wills

But I can

Say anything

Feel anything

Think anything

Want anything

It matters not to her, She is the wind

She is elemental, from the foundations

She was before me and will be after I am gone

She has seen my little story played out a thousand times

She is not troubled by my talk

She has heard it all before

I know that she knows

Yet I talk to Her and the moon and the stars and the sky

No response

I used to talk to God

It was similar

No response

But, I can feel the wind