Life flows through me

"And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy."

~ Kahlil Gibran

"Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim fast, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain and overlook the old."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"He lost everything, he said, that could be taken from a prisoner, except one thing; the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

~ Viktor Frankel

"Of what use is it to complain of the stinginess of the ocean if you approach holding only a thimble?"

~ Ramana Maharishi

"What is not love is fear. Anger is one of fear's most potent faces. And it does exactly what fear wants it to do. It keeps us from receiving love at exactly the moment when we need it most."

~ Marianne Williamson

No meaning…
that the little "i" can discern

Life just continues
regardless of the puddles

We stand in
thinking it is the Sea

"Serenity is God's garden. The entrance is through our hearts."

~ author unknown

Storms swirl
in our perceptions

Some people
insist the sky is falling

While others
just tremble and whimper

Funny how on some days
the light doesn't seem to appear

Maybe I just need
to open my eyes

Close my mouth
and dance

"Learn to see through confusion into peace; to see through sickness into health; to see through poverty into success and abundance; to believe in the all-sustaining Good. Learn to trust in God and be at peace."

~ Ernest Holmes

"Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins? Who comes to a spring thirsty, and finds the moon reflected in it? Who, like Jacob, blind with grief and age, smells the shirt of his lost son and can see again? Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies, and opens a door to the other world... But don't be satisfied with poems and stories of how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanations..."

~ Rumi

"Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an Invisible Piper."

- Albert Einstein

Stranger in a High Sierra meadow
reveling in nature's cooperative splendor

Good to know there are others
who find solace in the grandeur

First light brings no warmth

Winter's sun is cold and low

Ice pierces these days

When I think about it, or more accurately "feel" about it, I get the sense that there are three parts of me… ego, body, Soul (higher self).

The body it seems is not afraid. It just keeps working, doing, building, resting, regenerating, healing. A marvelous servant and tool for the captain. Continually performing and doing what is asked while sustaining the experience of life.

The Soul it seems, receives great loving pleasure and satisfaction from the watching and experiencing of what is. Experiencing first hand what it cannot know by simply being in the place of Source where all is simply, miraculously and wonderfully so.

Ah, but this ego of ours! This is a mouse who can't stop squeaking! The one that continually worries and projects a sea of "what if" scenarios. It rants and raves. Is afraid of death and afraid of failure. It talks tough, starting arguments, needing to be in control or plays the victim… "Oh woe is me! Me Me Me!". What a rascal and slippery thing that controls most of our waking days and our outward face to the world.

But once seen for what it is, even for just a moment, we are instantly back to choosing a "who" we want to be and which voice we will claim as we walk in this world.

Ego, body or Soul.

(Note: This poem is based on the prose writing "Wide and Deep" posted on this site 1/6/09)


Let us get out
the most powerful lens

and look closely
at what is at hand

and set aside the assumptions
and patterns of our beliefs

Let us examine
in minute detail

the circumstance
of our being

the miracle of existence
that infuses all things

Let us look
so closely

that the myth of separation
falls away

as we merge
with what is before us

Let us become
the scientists

who reveal and savor
the essence of Life

eclipsing any oration
or ancient sacred text

Seeker? Who isn't… in their own way.

The path is wide and deep. So wide and deep that no one can miss!

Think you are off the Path? Think again! For how could the Path not include the all and the everything?

No matter the job: drunk, druggie or whore. Prophet, monk or star, the Path is there and contains what we do, and forever what we are, no matter our station or belief.

I beg anyone to show me how this is not so!

Let us get out the most powerful lens and look closely at what is at hand and set aside the assumptions and patterns of belief. Let us examine in minute detail the circumstance of our being. Let us look so closely that the world falls away as a myth of our minds. Let us become the scientists who uncover the essence of Life that is beyond any book or lecture!

I am convinced the miracle is at hand… always, and is more than meets the eye, and more than the mind can hold.

And it goes on forever beyond our limited time here on this beautiful blue planet. Life expressing, Life inventing, Life unfolding into the Infinite of eternity.

Right here, everywhere, no matter what.

Imagine that! The never ending miracle… Now let's just open our eyes and truly see the world that the heart knows to be true, and sings about in rhythmic response to the very pulse of Life.

For me the province of poetry is a private ecstasy made public, and the social role of the poet is to display moments of shared universal epiphanies capable of healing our sense of mortal estrangement—from ourselves, from each other, from our source, from our destiny, from The Divine.

~ Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the "universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding.

~ Thich Nhat Hahn

"The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

"Let's do something!"
yells my yabbering mind

Drunk with excitement
and pressing desire

I become hypnotized by the
spinning of this tornado

Unbalanced and wildly confused
I bestow gifts of upheaval

But eventually… thankfully
I deflate and am calmed

Allowing the clarity of
magnificence to sweep in

Finally…
I can see again