You don’t need money to help out.
Author: Tom (Page 47 of 71)
Tom is a stroke survivor, a seeker, a meditator, a veteran firefighter and rescue tech, a motivational speaker, a poet, and a blogger (new site) & author. He is also the father of three and as their student and teacher, has found applying spiritual practices to all aspects of life provides a vast amount of possibility and abundance. Tom has discovered that true forgiveness is the key to a pure heart, and a pure heart can lead us to wondrous experiences.
You can also connect with tom on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tomgwriter55/".
“Why are you a writer?” he asked across the table.
“I needed to find my lover,” came the reply.
“How?”
A sigh, a moment, and then the letting go.
She came to me in words, in the music that flowed from somewhere out there, into me, and out through my fingers. She’d whisper to me in songs that set my mind to dancing, and in music that set my body into motions I have never known. She’d wake me from my sleep with rays of light peeking above my life’s horizon.
She blinded me with love so that I would always, always, see. I write to paint the pictures of her that my open eyes now see. I use words to beat a path through the underbrush, a path that leads to me. I share bits of me that I leave laying on the ground, hoping she’ll follow that trail into my open arms.
She came to me a million moments before I met her, and I’ve loved her from the first. There is no rhyme or reason, or words set to page that can tell you how I really feel. Yet my words are not for you, they’re for her. She knows, and one day she will be, and my story will be complete.
“Wow,” said he, “that’s amazing. How do you know she’ll come?”
Because she has to. She can’t help herself. Be it in this life or some other, she will come. Until then, I set my pen to page, my heart to beating, my soul to searching, and I love her just the same.
I’ll never need to let her go because I will never have ever trapped her. She is, as we speak, flying freely and bathing in the choices of her design. When she comes, we’ll be ready. Until then, there is a life to live and a space that needs preparing. Love is, or should be, like that. We don’t find each other suddenly, we’re in each other all along.
“I wish you well,” said he. “Sounds like a fairy tale to me.”
Perhaps it is. One that ends, “and they lived happily ever after.” We all live in stories, I wish mine to end like that.
“Me too,” said he. “I never thought of it like that. Thank you. I don’t feel so bad about being single.”
We laughed, we toasted, and set to waiting once again.
He felt it, around, in everything, in everywhere. In the sounds of a passing airplane making waves in the blue, spring sky. In the songs of birds enjoying a respite from the cold, harsh winter.
He felt it. Everywhere. He felt her.
He doubted she thought much of him, yet he didn’t care. The sparkle in her eyes set his mind ablaze, and the coolness of her thoughts rose his heart to joy. There was little in the flames of this passion that burned him, and there was little in the space between them that offered him much comfort.
There, the loner felt his aloneness, and the thinker felt the weight of his very soul.
There was little he could say about the youthful golden locks that brightened up his day. There was little he could offer in prayer to the green pools of beauty that saw things he wished he could see. There was nothing of her form he could touch, and he simply sighed his way to the gaps between them, the space between their stars.
The thinker sighed, the lover lamented, the man resigned himself to folly.
Somewhere, outside the vestiges of thought, lied the man about his life. He could not offer himself up to such a sacrifice, where love’s torment is met by utter silence. He could not spread his wings in the vacuum between those heartbeats. How could such an angel be left with nothing to raise him up to heaven’s gate, when love’s sails have no wind to give him flight?
Sometimes, that bird is left safely on its perch. Sometimes, feet planted firmly on the ground provide the only clouds a hapless man could ever hope to feel.
So play the tune And watch me go, Forever lost, I shall not know. Yet truth be told, I'm happy still, Where this compass points, Is where I will.
He’d hum his mantra when he felt her. He’d whistle at the very sight of her, imagining her voice whispering to him as the Sun set, her body nestled nicely upon his lap. He’d brush her hair aside, casually tasting her skin even when there was nothing casual about it. He’d show her love. Pure. Unapologetic. Love.
He could only dream. This dream. Countless nights torn between the song he sang and the music coursing through his soul. Maybe one day he’d get lucky, and his muse would set their world on edge with a simple, enduring harmony. Maybe, one day, she’d know him beyond the mere boundaries of mind, of body, of things that never were before.
Maybe.
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” ~Rumi
♥
I think I fell in love with you, he said.
When? came her reply.
Before I met you. I was staring into space, with nothing going on around me, and I smiled. It was then that I fell in love with you.
You knew me?
Yes, in the subtle ways the breeze comforted my sweaty brow. In the Sun’s rays as they woke me through my bedroom window. In the way I knew that one day you’d fill the empty space beside me. Yes, I knew you.
A smile crossed her moistened lips.
I fell in love with you, too, she said.
When? came his reply.
Before I met you. I was walking alone through a trail in the woods. It started storming, and yet despite the lightning and thunder crashing all around me, I felt at ease. I felt safe as the wind bent the trees to prayer, and I felt comfort in the way the rain washed away my tears. It was in that moment that I fell in love with you.
Their eyes met, their hearts embraced, and they kissed a lover’s paradise.
I once was so lost
I needed a faith.
I once was so scared
I needed a god.
I once was so forgetful
I needed a book.
I once was so helpless
I needed a priest.
I once was so uncertain
I needed a Word.
I once was so blind
I need your cause.
I once was so lonely
I needed your church.
I once was so mistaken
I created it all.
“Leave me alone!” I screamed from beneath my layered blankets. “Just go away!”
They wouldn’t. They just kept pounding at that door, never giving me a moment’s peace.
The Voices are maddening. I want to fly. They tell me it’s too high up there. I want to sing. They tell me I’m way off-key. I want to smile. They tell me there is nothing to smile about.
Fuck them. When the hell did I give them control, anyway? I don’t remember, but everywhere I look there are signs of who’s boss. The clothes I wear, the way I talk, the words I choose, each of which I’ve pretended to choose for me while really doing so for them. Even the walls and doors are methods of their control. They own me, and I’m just starting to see it.
I hide under the thick blankets I pretend are parts of me. I relish in their warmth, in their thickness. Here, the sounds are muffled and the light dimmed. The darkness rules, and sometimes we are fooled into believing that there is great security when we simply cannot see a thing.
Yet, those layers I heap upon my fearful self for protection are nothing more than shackles to hold me down. Some may judge the clouds a place where fools play, but I find the very ideas that holds us firm to something nothing more than a prison. Some may find my notes and words much to their dislike, but I find heaven in that release. They may find my smile reminds them of a long-lost friend, but I surely have no need to pretend I am saddened in the departure.
Thus it goes, on and on. The Voices pound away at the door over and over again. I’m beginning to think they don’t want me to open it, they want it shut. Maybe they don’t want me out from under my cocoon. Maybe they want me to add even more layers to the shroud.
I laugh hard as I somehow see the walls to the layers I’ve embraced. How limiting they are! They’re weighty, almost suffocating in their pressure, and I marvel at how I never have seen them this way before. I could feel their weight and struggle under their pressure without ever truly seeing them. I sit and stare at nothing in amazement.
I reach out to push outward, and get pushed back. I thrash and flail against these surly confines only to get more entangled in the mess. I feel the rush of anger as I scream and yell, only to be deafened by the noise of my own turmoil.
Finally, I become exhausted, and have no choice but to sit there, still. I have no choice but to breathe. I have no choice but to stop the fight.
In the stillness, I finally stop focusing on the nasty shroud I have entangled myself in. I just want to rest, to sleep, to let my dreams take me somewhere I’ve always wanted to go. I want to be, there, with you – the absent traveler who may be entangled in a prison of her own.
Someday, love, but for now I have some work to do. That work looks much like nothing. A realized man’s virtue is that he never, ever, stops.
In the dark hell of my own design I surrender. My fight has left me no choice, and the war is over even if the battle has only just begun.
My eyes open again, and I only see the darkness that has befallen me. I move nothing, and I just sit with three eyes open, at peace with what I see. Perhaps this is the end of me, perhaps it is only the beginning. Maybe, it is both happening at the very same instant.
Somehow, I see a light. Like a beacon on heaven’s shore, it’s there. My eyes are brought to focus on this star, intensely feeding on its promise, completely open to the cause of its design. Was it always there? How did I miss it? Could I have been so focused on the drama, on the chaos of my stormy seas, that I overlooked the very method of my own rescue?
A flash, a crack, and the sound of rolling thunder.
“How sweet the sound…was blind and now I see…”
The twinkling light grows larger with each peaceful breath I take.
“Do nothing,” something inside me says, “just do nothing.”
I listen. I sit. I breathe. I watch. I allow. I do, nothing.
The light continues to grow. Bit by bit the darkness surrenders too. I wonder if the darkness could fight back, if it could overwhelm the light just in its size and experience. It seems, though, the both the darkness and the light are not experienced curses by which we are enslaved, but wonderful teachers of which we must experience. Neither exists without the other, and neither was born or dies to suit a need of human ego. They are in perfect harmony, allowing us all to focus on which we want to experience.
In our focus they grow. In our observations, they live. In our dedication, they thrive. Neither grows on its own but exists in the power of our own attention, in our own intention. Love the light, and find it difficult to see the darkness. Worship the past, and miss the present moment.
Do the opposite, well, you know. You may have your doubts, but it’s hard to argue this truth.
Finally, I am ready. One deep sigh and I stand, shaking the cobwebs from my legs and letting the blood flow once again. Another deep breath and a chuckle, and it is time to leave this place.
Wait. Where have all the layers gone? I hadn’t noticed their departure. I look around and see tiny remnants of them strewn about my sacred space, but nothing of real substance. Somehow, and some point, they have gone.
I notice the voices again, somewhere outside the door. I laugh at the knowledge that I had almost forgotten about those pesky intrusions on my holy moments. I notice they aren’t silent, but they are now murmurs and not shouts. Those last vestiges of a past that’s still a part of me, but not me, have surrendered themselves. They now work for me, not I for them.
Just as I’ve seen the kinship between the darkness and the light, I now see the friendship I have with my voices. I’ve given them names in our relationship. Fear. Doubt. Uncertainty. Anger. Love. Kindness. Joy. Desire. Revulsion. Guilt. Acceptance. Each of them has a value, and has led me someplace wonderful. Each is worth listening to, yet none are my master. Instead, I’ve mastered them, understanding that in accepting their advice I am going to learn a lesson only warriors are able to learn.
Everyone receives these lessons, but only warriors sharpen their swords with the textbook.
I’m gone now. If you are looking for me there, I apologize for my absence. Follow the signs you see until you find me here. If you care to look, offer me your hand to dance. Or lend me your voice to sing. Or kneel with me in the hallowed spaces of a lover’s church. Whichever you choose, be free about it, and leave your layers at the door.
I sit, wandering around the trails of my own mind. What am I searching for? Where can I find it?
Lost, perhaps, but maybe not lost at all. Sometimes it helps to be a rudderless ship on the open sea, just allowing the wind to take you where you need to go. Sometimes it helps just to breathe when the stress of resistance becomes too great to bear.
The Art of Doing Nothing is not doing nothing at all. It is the active work of the enlightened, and it takes serious practice. It takes active participation in surrender. It takes fucking balls.
I’ve found that I was once way too afraid to practice the Art of Doing Nothing. I believed I had to act out, to be actively engaged in creating the life I thought I wanted. The problem is that I never really knew what I wanted. I just thought I knew.
Where once I sought security through strength and violence I now find them in peace and love.
Where once I sought happiness in wealth and materialism, I now find them in myself and in simplicity.
Where once I sought love in your approval, I now find it in my own sense of joy.
Where I once thought I knew what would define me, I now know I am beyond definition.
There is such a peace in that place of surrender. You watch the little things fall away, then the big things until, finally, you reach the place you were always destined to be. You find your home, your palace, your place of peace, and you find that it looks very little like you imagined it would.
Yes, there still is fear. When you have something to lose you fear its departure. Yet, when that thing is taken by the Great Wind you realize that nothing worth holding on to truly wants to be held on to. You realize how awkwardly irrelevant your fear was, and how beautifully constructed things are in your surrender. Things seem natural, pleasant, and happy.
How often did I resist this change? How much suffering did I create in this resistance? How much joy have I found in surrendering, in letting go, in the mere observation of a process to which I participate by Doing Nothing?
How often was I consumed by the fear of standing in the very space I now call “home”?
Yes, it seems silly to me now. I am at home in a place I once feared, happy in a space I once thought hopeless, consumed by joy in a place I once fought hard never to visit. I can only guess the fear I feel now in where I may be going is equally silly. I know this, yet embrace the experience as a matter of personal growth, not personal criticism. There is no need to criticize that which was created perfect, a Sequoia was not born an earthly giant, but a small seed. The small seed was not, however, imperfect just because it had not yet reached its full potential.
It was perfectly a seed. It was perfectly a sapling. It is, now, perfectly itself as a tree.
We are all works in progress, but we have to surrender in order to become works of progress. Sometimes progress is in the realization that we need to stop grasping and need to start letting go, that we need to stop resisting and divert our energy toward the commitment to surrender.
You will have to work very hard to surrender. You will have to develop strength you never knew you had. You will suddenly see how little you actually accomplished before, and you will see how much you get done when you simply stay out of the way.
You will be afraid. You will be very afraid. Old voices and conditioned behaviors will arise, and you will fear what happens when you let go of them. You will start judging yourself as they judged you, and you will feel shame in the act. Pay attention here, for you will learn a lot of how little you love yourself. You will understand your own self-loathing and the poison you swallow that makes you feel abandoned in your glory, and lonely in your suffering.
You will not like this at all. If you discover that you don’t love yourself here, you have to admit that those you need to love you must not have truly loved you either. You learned this self-loathing from them, you didn’t create it on your own.
Forgive them, for they knew not what they did. They loved you in the way there were taught how to love you, and you learned to love you in the same manner. Perhaps that’s the original sin, that we are born to learn love from those who likely never learned to love at all.
Believe me, it is easy just to embrace the status quo. It’s easy to just be like everyone else, both creating your own drama and becoming absorbed in the drama of others. There is nothing I’ve ever done as hard as this transformation has been, but I can promise you it’s been worth it. Where I once spent hours actively engaged in the life I thought I wanted, I now spend that time actively letting go, in active surrender. Where once I tried to do everything, now I Do Nothing.
I still hear the voices judging me. I still hear their voices telling me what to do, how to do it, and that “failure” is not an option, albeit something that is easily attained in their judgment. Then, I sit still, and Do Nothing. Invariably I realize I cannot answer to them any more, that my own life and health are at stake, as is my own sense of sanity. I must remain resolved to my own journey, to the symphony of music I dance to, and to the absolute love I have discovered in the process.
So, to that end, I let go. I love you, and wish you could let go, too. Maybe, someday, you will see.
Don’t get confused. The Art of Doing Nothing does not mean you just give up. Surrender is not an act capitulating to the whims of magic outside of the Universe that is you. It’s just the opposite. It’s finding your true path and sticking to it. It’s in removing the brush that clogs your route. It’s in knowing what brings you joy, and Doing Nothing to get in its way.
It’s in love. Complete and utterly in love. It is in being in a relationship not only with yourself, but with your joy. It’s about putting your joy first, in whatever version that looks like now, and in being aware of the slight deviations that will take you off course. Love, that awesome Wind that, once filling your sails, will never let you down. You’ll see…one day I promise you will see.
While I can’t seem to wear the label of “Christian” with any real sense of truth, I can appreciate the Master who led a crazy band of followers through the streets trying to change the mind of those whose ideas were creating great suffering in his world. I can appreciate the man who stood up to the self-inflicted notions of the “powerless man” by showing others their own power through the discovery, embracing and expression of the love that exists within us all.
I can understand the reaction of those whose power was built around their being special, or “chosen”, by the mightiest creation in their universe. I can understand their fear of man’s self-discovery, and the realization that Jesus was trying to teach that no man has true power over those who live the Love within them. I can understand their wanting to rid this Jesus and his message from the mindset of followers who thought they needed these special “leaders”.
I can also understand the mindset of those people who would eventually, and rather quickly, turn their backs on this enlightened soul. There is great fear that can be seen when exposed to the truth of your own power, and the realization that there is no heaven waiting for you outside of the one you create for yourself. There is a great unease that exists when you realize there is no great “plan” save one, that everything happens for you and not to you. When you realize you are solely responsible for you, your feelings, and your well-being, you also realize that you have no Great Protector, no Great Overseer, and that you are not a chosen anything. In your ordinariness you can realize just how special you truly are.
When you are used to grasping that ladder of faith, letting go of it can be a scary prospect. Seeing the world around you is often easier than having to live within it, especially when you are so used to the rut you pretend to climb out of, but never truly leave.
Those that climb out are, invariably, crucified by those who only see the walls. Others are threatening in their state of liberation, and we want to vilify them for not living in our patterns, in our belief that we were born into great chaos instead of great order.
I wonder, what would it look like if Jesus had a blog, or a Twitter account, or a Facebook page? What would he be saying to his followers? Would he be roundly rejected by those around him? Or would he use humor to prove his point?
How many of his modern-day followers would unfriend him, or ban him, or call him out on his ideas?
I’m sure he’d have a few ardent followers, most of whom live vicariously through him. He’d be their “canon fodder” (purposely mis-used) so that they could agree with his ideas without ever owning them. Much like Peter, they would ensure they have plausible deniability when pressed for their allegiances.
Yet, what would be some of the things he’d be posting about? Here are some ideas, some are meant to be humorous, while others more poignant…
- I saved a prostitute from being stoned today. I guess someone wanted a refund. #ThingsWeDoAtTheGOPConvention. #MaryMagdeleneWasNOTAProstitute.
- I just raised Lazarus from the dead. He’s so pissed. #72VirginsAreReal.
- I turned water into wine. Single moms everywhere now love me. #BabeMagnet #eHarmonyMyAss
- “Peter is mad that I think Mary is da bomb. My God bro, relax. #BromanceEpicFail.”
- I went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. I was done, the guys were all asleep. I guess turkey for the last supper wasn’t a good idea. Plus, there was a marathon of the Bachelor on. Can’t blame them…
- I loaned Judas 70 pieces of silver like two years ago. #Deadbeat.
- I had a member of my flock yell at me for feeding a starving man today. Apparently, feeding the poor teaches them to be poorer. #ThingsIDidNotKnow.
- I learned about the Inquisitions today. I’m considering changing my last name since these morons are using it without my permission.
- Dear Joseph Smith, I didn’t say “wine” was bad. I said ‘WHINING’ was bad. Drink up, my friend.
- I was just kidding. Jeeze, why don’t you just nail me to a tree or something? #ThingsYouDoNotSayToPontiusPilate.
- You know, I cured a man of leprosy 2,000 years ago, yet I can’t get rid of these damned bed bugs. WTF.
- Scientology, and other jokes we like to play. #HeavenlyPranksters.
- God promised not to kill humans with a flood again, so he created Monsanto. And fossil fuels. And Republicans. #ThereIsAlwaysALoophole #DickCheneyForEmperor.
- I survived 40 days and 40 nights in the desert without food and water, but I’ll be damned if I can survive one Big Mac meal. #SquirtsThatHurt.
- Global warming IS real. Soon, I’ll have to part the sea just to get my mail.
I struggle sometimes With the words... They all seem wrong Lost, forgotten, Like jumbled coins at the bottom of a large bag. Those eyes, Your eyes... They fucked up the ugly order of things Chaos where the stones were once set Cracked concrete set in the easy path I had carved. Those lips, Your lips... Pouty memories of a hope once left dormant A fleeting memory Now burning deep inside the coldest parts of me. I touch that neck, Your neck... The raised bumps appear in the freckles of your skin, Telling stories Awesome stories of something soon to come. My eyes gaze downward, Toward gifts I will not savor Not yet, not now, I will force myself to wait Until a memory born will be a memory we hold together. Impulsive me, Restrained by the freedom of it all Not needing, but wanting Not being consumed by the fire yet surely feeding it, I'll hold onto the enormous possibility. No game of hide and seek here, Just a promise... Honesty and certainty our mutual agreement Lust and love will follow the virgin path Not yet cut by any footsteps made before. Ah, such love Such worship of our true Divinity Not yet lost in the pleasures of our own humanity, We laugh, Until the stars fade under the power of the One we call our own. Good morning, my sweet love. Now whisper to me something of things to come. Tell me tales of the depths we will shortly share And take me... There.