Author: Tom (Page 55 of 71)

The whisper speaks. Sometimes in a language your aren’t sure you understand.  Be quiet, let it speak, and feel its message as the darkness fades away around you.

Like some great monument of hope, the sun rises above the frosty landscape of your mind. Your body shivers in the warm contrast from night into day, and your heart responds to the change by forming tiny pools of light in the deepest parts of you. You feel the urges of a soul renewed, the promise of a dream realized, and the truth of the moment as your feet land in the exact place they were meant to be.

It’s indescribable, benign yet remarkable at the same time. Words are traded in increasing anticipation of the moment you find a comfort familiar yet unknown. You want to dive into those blue pools that have taken your breath away and sink until you find their soulful bottom. You want to hear more, even as the fire within you builds from a tiny spark into a raging inferno. Soon, you are consumed by it and, with any luck, you become a sun rising above her horizon too, warming the furthest reaches of who she’s grown to be.

Fascination is born in the simplest places. There, memories fade when bodies touch and fires meet, and in the truest space desire melts as two people answer the call they shouted to one another an eternity before. There is no rhyme or reason to the embrace, there is only a dedication to a journey begun as they discover the very thing that has always been searching for them.

Heaven is there, in that space. It never fades and it never truly ends. It exists as a constant beginning in the screams of passion and ecstasy found in each moment of their breaking dawn, in each kiss shared, and in each human reaction their souls demand they make. In the courage of a step taken, in the warmth of truth shared, and in the promise of a first kiss, the mountains bow to their sun, and the valleys flourish in the hope of what is yet to come.

Great things are born there, and in the awesome presence of a voice whose language we cannot speak,  we live. Perhaps just for a moment, perhaps for a lifetime, but live there we do for as long as that sun may shine and the voice may speak. Here’s to hope, and to the pleasure possible when two lovers meet at the perfect place at the perfect time. We call that place harmony, and may we soon make a home there.

A sleeping person is at their most dangerous in the beginning stages of awakening as confusion between what is real and what is dreamt creates chaos. When one is losing the safety and security of their dream, the fear they feel often creates reactions that are unpredictable, and their desire to fall back into slumber is at its greatest. The strong will continue with the process, the others we return to the cozy throes of the dream, regardless of how painful the nightmare has become.

If you have awakened, you can recall that time when you, too, battled the fear that nearly drove you back to the illusory light of darkness. You can remember the fiction you created in your mind, how you pretended to be fearless, strong, and awakened. You can remember the fear that caused you to grasp, not because of the security of your own reality, but in the dreaded fear of another. You can remember the time when the idea of being alone, truly alone, was so frightening even as you pretended to love aloneness in all of its glory.

You can remember the dream you had of heaven and hell, of sinner and saint, of morals and ethics, and how utterly devoted you were to the ideas implanted in your heart not by the God you worshiped, but by the men who created Him. You will recall how devoted you were to guilt, to seeing selfishness as evil and unholy, and you will understand the fear your brother or sister feels in their first moments of awakening.

You will be reminded even if for the brief nanosecond of time the memory arrives in your present moment. This memory will focus the love that your awakened Being knows, and you will act in the compassion such love demands of you. You will not need force it, but like a caregiver you will assist in whatever way you are guided, and you will feel so much love for your neighbor that you will help either the flower close until it is ready, or help it bloom into the magnificent colors it was destined to shine. In that moment you will become lover, friend, guru, student, all at once.

To me, that is what is meant when Christ said, “Love thy neighbor as I have loved you.” Be rooted in your own sense of self in the place that you are, and be true to the only thing that you know – you. In that way, your neighbor will always get the best of you, and you will always present the best of your Self.

Love, sometimes it’s the ax, sometimes it’s the tree, and others it’s the hand the wields or embraces either.

I’ve heard it before, but it has been so long that the sound is not a familiar one. In a swirl of clichéd verses shouted down my spine like a waterfall of déjà vu moments, some pleasant, some not so much, I hear it for the first time even thought it feels like I’ve heard it as some persistent mantra in my past. Like the roar of great cascading falls, I can hear the stories being told and the wisdom being shared, and can feel the not-so-wise teardrops wetting my mind like a mist departing the roar of those cascading waters I’ve known forever, but only now have seen fit to call my own.

The loud roar of droplets being torn from their placid flow fills the air around my observant soul; each one telling its own story in a way that makes it seem oh-so-real. The air dances as it embraces the misty tales of love and woe, each teardrop filtering the light around it in tiny little hues of color and bewilderment. It’s hard to focus here, and I hear the Voice whisper to me in the warm, spring arms that embrace us all,

“Your saddest tears can create the most beautiful rainbows if you point them toward the light.”

A smile crests my soulful lips as I watch each drop float in the sunlight before landing on my skin. I can see the hues of color projected chaotically all around until, mystically, they form one brilliant, bright rainbow upon the very mind that creates them. If I change my view the colors fade, and the mist becomes nothing more than a chilled reminder of what I lack. My choice is to remain where the warm sunlight shows me the brilliance all around.  There, I am free to smile, to love, to accept it all on terms uniquely my own, on conditions that suit the me I wish to be.

I have followed the river against its flow until I came to this place. I have learned a great deal, but as I look upon the great falls in front of me I wish to scale the rocky cliff to find its beginning, and to find the source of all I seek to see. I’ve discovered the wounds fail to exist in the presence of such great wonder, and that the darkness we seem to dwell on fails to live in places where the light shines even in the tiniest of specks.  We are the gods of our own devices, the masters of our own destiny.

“The world is not flat as you’ve been taught,” says the Voice. “Go find the new world, and fear not your discovery.”

The Wanderer begins.

 

Are you searching for your soul? Then come out of your own prison. ~Rumi

She dreams so loudly, like an exploding star in the vast distances of our universe. In the vacuum there is no sound, only the bright light of a brilliant soul radiating from her eyes, but in the ether she loudly displays the fantasies of a well-traveled mind. There is a certain air to her illusion, a certain power to the way she sleeps, yet a definite familiarity to the story and her devotion to it.

I wonder, am I so familiar a being to her?  Do I live in the quest to find my own sense of comfort? Do I have a way about me that grasps so rigidly to the ideas I was raised to know? Do I define people so easily as to not truly know them? Have I defined her this way?

I listen to her story, one she’s likely told silently and aloud a million times before. I don’t know the script, so I improvise responses rooted completely in my truth and laid neatly in the fog of her beautiful mind. I feel myself getting lost not in the story, but in the one telling it. Her eyes embrace me tightly and I’m lost in the swoon of her tales. I enjoy the back and forth of equal minds sharing their tales of joy and woe, and the suddenness of the warmth growing within me shines brightly in the gaps between my thoughts. Tell me more, please. I need to hear you sing.

She smiles, letting me share the humor within her as it tickles places within me. I try to reach inside her through the crevices she allows me to see until I reach the walls she has yet to tear down. I can feel the years of work done there and, for a brief instance, I lose myself in the sadness of this place as I discover the years, the tears, and the wounds that give life to this hardened part of who she is. I’m brought back to the moment, mostly due to the power in her eyes and partly because I want to honor the warrior who sits in front of me, shrouded and blanketed yet fully exposed in both the reality and fantasy of the her own unique human experience.

Here I find I would rather be nowhere else. Here I am in amazement, bewildered by my own sense of truth mixing with hers, sensing something real in the illusions we share. I can either surrender to this journey or run from it. My legs decide they can’t move, my mind decides it is safe, and my heart decides that it is exactly where it wants to be. The white flag is raised in the most wonderful way possible.

There are no certainties in the folly of man and mind, yet first steps are as close as we truly get to the future we so devoutly question and so eagerly entertain. Those steps can often resemble an infant crawling, a toddler’s clumsy footfalls towards there, or the strongest of warriors walking headlong and confidently into battle. Yet they’re all the same. They are all motions toward a fate we choose, and we arrive in the best way we can with no certainty of destiny’s sweet embrace.

Yet we go because we must, in either direction in whatever manner we choose. Some remain stoic as granite statues sculpted by the winds of suffering that have weathered the softness away. Others move in various ways toward the sands and surf of a life ripe with beginnings. In this dream, in this illusion of promise and bewilderment, I sit and stare into the eyes of an angel, wondering what lies within the footprints not yet cast.  I smile, and I know.

Peace.

Softly whispered, never spoken, yet forever known.

That’s true love. That’s pure honesty at its best. A truth you know in your heart not in the words spoken, but in the words unspoken. A truth you feel not just in every cell of your existence, but in every space between. Come, dance with me there and lean to my ear as you whimper tender mercies of a body living its soul’s demand.

“I love you.”

I can see it in the pools of her eyes. Something deep within me, beyond what she can see, feels something deep within her, beyond what I can see. There’s a truth there, subtle explosions of a new reality composed in a natural order like some great, perfect symphony. Unseen power flows through subtle reminders of its presence. In the raised bumps of our skin, we are reminded. In the natural flow of words and in the wispy trails of discovery, we are reminded. In the rising tide of our arousal we are reminded, and in the promise of things to come we lose ourselves to a truth we have surrendered to.

You can feel those moments when the puzzle pieces snap together, when the stars align and the heavens call your name. You can sense when one foot wants to fall in front of the other, when the emptying hourglass gives way to something beautiful, undeniable, and somewhat insane. There, in those orderly storms we find in the place where Yin meets Yang, you know. The soul knows. It always knows.

To which song we choose to dance is anyone’s guess. Yet, the moment is here, and now, and ours for the taking. Which notes we choose are ours to select, and to which fate this moment bears is within our dreams to hold. There is no tomorrow; there is no past.  For lovers born there is only the moment and the lyrics softly whispered, never spoken, yet forever known.

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Why won’t you talk to me? Why won’t you tell me what is wrong?, she asked.

Because I love you, he responded.

Why won’t you accept my apology for being scared, for being addicted to my drama, for wanting to embrace the fear that has dominated my life?

Because I love you. Because I love me.

Why won’t you help fix me, be my strength when I am weak, be my ears when I grow deaf, be my breath when I cannot breathe?

Because I love you. You are not broken, you are perfect. You are not weak, you are strong beyond measure. You are not deaf, or blind, or anything else, you simply choose to keep your ears and eyes closed. I cannot give you air when it is you who is holding your own breath. I love you enough to allow you to discover these things not through me, but through you.

Why are you so distant? Why are you being so cold?

Because I love you. I have little interest in the tattered, rotting layers of fabric you’ve wrapped yourself in. Beneath them is the light I’ve grown to love, the song I love to hear. I love you there, and I am so close to you there that I cannot be close to you anywhere else. I accept the layers, but cannot embrace them and you at the same time. Let go of them, and see me where I am, right there next to you. Hold them tightly, and see there is no room in your embrace for anything else.

But they’re part of me.  You cannot love me without loving them, too.

Ah, but I can. Because I love you, I cannot love them.  They are not part of you; you have told yourself so many times that you and they are one that you now believe the lie. You’ve adopted them as your limbs, leaned on them as your crutch, and created an entire existence based on the stories they tell.  I tell you, that because I love you I can see the entire truth. You are not the noose you place around your neck, or the shackles you place around your ankles. You are the executioner and the jailer, but you are not the gallows nor the prison.

Why don’t you just accept me, for me, and love me for who I am?

Because I love you. Through your protests and your tantrums I have loved you. Through your delusions and your fantasies I have loved you. I can’t, and I won’t, carry the crosses you have built and decided to carry. I accept you, but cannot accept them. They are yours, and yours alone, and you choose them all. If you think it isn’t painful to watch, if you think it isn’t hard not to take them from you, you are wrong. Yet, because I love you, I am willing to simply watch you struggle so that you can choose either to cast them aside onto the ground, or continue to carry them as if they have worth.  These are your lessons to learn, and I can’t take them from you and love you at the same time.

Because I love you, I will listen to you suffer under the weight of your own devices. Because I love me I will recoil when you try to hand them to me. When you try to cover me with those rotting, tattered layers of fabric you have wrapped yourself in, the light within me will burn them away, and you will become angry. You will say horrible things, you will do horrible things. You will try to use your fear to force me to grasp, you will try to use your pain to injure me. Yet, because I love you and because I love me, it will not work. I will focus on our light, and bask in its glory.

Yes, because I love you, because I love me, I let them be as they are while remain rooted in who I choose to be. We deserve nothing less than to walk as one in the experience of our own individuality discovering our complete Oneness. Is there a greater cause for which we live?

In the blink of an eye the journey changes, or so it seems. In one moment you are firmly attached to the ground, walking with purpose upon the cleared path of your life, and the next you are falling, freely, through wispy air toward some uncertain destination. Sometimes you flap your arms wildly in a vain attempt to halt your flight until, finally, you stop and enjoy the ride. Your laughter replaces your cries for help, and your attempts at grasping the air are replaced with a simple acceptance that, sometimes, you have no control.

A pesky something pushes you from your grounded path and over some unseen cliff. A pesky something gives you nothing to grasp, nothing to hold on to, while giving you that awesome feeling in your gut as you fall. Here, it’s not about the landing, but the falling.  The landing will take care of itself.

Love.

To fall freely beyond your comfort zone is to find the greatest comfort. To plunge heart first through the thinnest of air is, well, fear converted into the most awesome experience. To let go is to find something worthwhile to embrace, and to finally trust that all you have experienced will bring you where you need to be is to take flight among the stars. To let it all happen as it was meant is something to behold, and to finally feel the rush of air around you as something meaningful and desirable is something you discover to be all you have ever wanted.

Yes, that love is something.

To have felt your lover before arrival, is to realize the importance of letting to. You find your heaven in your empty arms as you reach for her, and you find your truth in the empty places in your life that she will surely fill. You have not given up, you have not surrendered, you have simply waited for her arrival.

You know it’s time. You know it was all supposed to be, so you let it happen. You open your arms and let her in, and as the air rushes around you her warmth guides you to the happy places in the ether. You hear her laughter in the roar that settles in your mind, and you feel her joy in your own. Yes, this place is where you have always been heading, and she has always been there.

That’s something.  That is love’s something.

In the heart of a man so in tune with what he feels, sometimes the feeling is all he has. It’s like a spark in need of fuel or a flicker in the darkness that needs someone to see it. He can feel her hand in his, her head on his shoulder. He can feel everything he has ever written about or thought about or believed existed swirl around him like a loving storm. There is no rhyme or reason to the rain, there are no clouds and there is no thunder, yet the man is being soaked to the bone as he falls through the clear air. The chills are warm, the unknown becomes comforting, and nothing ever again feels as it did. He forgets the path he was on, and willingly chooses this new one as the way he must go. His fear highlights his courage, and his uncertainty magnifies all that he has ever known.

There are moments in one’s life that define it for some time, and there are microcosms in those moments that change his eternity. Sometimes it is a quiet prayer that results in a fall from his cliff. Sometimes it’s the patience chosen until it feels right to move. Sometimes it’s a gusty wind that pushes him over the edge, or a quick glimpse of a desired future that gives him the courage to leap. Whatever it is, it happens, and everything changes.

That love is something, huh? When you are willing to finally let it take over you are free to let it do its thing. When you are finally willing to leap it will take you to where you need to go. It will all make sense then, and you will finally be free to realize just how worth it the journey has been.

Enjoy it. It’s something. 🙂

To hold me,

Now, then, forever,

In the vestibule of nature’s wonder,

Is to never let me go.

We are there, in that special place of ours, among the trees and the plants and the animals and the sky. We are without the distractions of our lives, focused intently on the meaning of them rather than on the inane things we used to define the living. In the thinly walled cabin we lay, naked and without reservation, under heaven’s starry gaze, in the grips of Nature as she holds us tightly.

We make love on the top of a mountain, rooted in the sounds our Nature creates around us and within us. We offer our gifts to one another, taking and giving, giving and taking, over and over again in the deepest way our souls know how. We embrace, we let go, we enter and we leave in the pure liberation of our Lover’s Song, and the world rejoices around us.

Two more powerful warriors history has never known, and we neither care for the role nor create it. We make love, and in turn it makes us. One.

Gaze into the windows of my soul

Forgetting not yourself in the song

But hearing who you are within its notes

Rise up, my Love, to stand and hear it played.

Such power we find in the salty stories of our sweat, and such openness we find in the many prayers of love’s holy book we sing! There is no place that exists outside the on which we stand, as One, in the divine fields of loving inspiration. The sweet harmonies flow through us, and we never stop until the final bar is played.

It is you; it is me, who realize our truth in the eternal form of rapture’s lyric. We hold firm to the releasing of truth, allowing it to change, to grow, to go, where it must and when it should, however it may need. Interference is a fool’s endeavor, and we have no need for the fool’s gold that chains that jester to the box of which he will never surely own. The song demands our flight, and the music requires our return to place we find each other. The embrace says it all.

In memories we shall not leave

This place, we cannot depart

Hold me, again, among our trees

And hear my beating heart.

Lover’s walk together for different reasons at different times. We share a truth here, that we have shared a journey of living’s will that has brought us to this place. Each and every step before has led us to where our feet lay now, intertwined, letting go of the grains of sand that have parted us for way too long. Each touch becomes a confirmation of the last, and each moment becomes a testament to the one before. Yes, it was all worth it; we are here in the Now frolicking as was always the intention. I would suffer a million more moments like the one before just to have this one, again, with you.

Hear the strong heart beating within my chest, and feel it throb throughout the all of me. You will know where my strength resides now, and you will forever feel your Lover’s song. Feel faith, know truth, and be wise to the soul that speaks to you. I am here.

Upon this hill we have found our heaven, on this hill we will make it last forever. Until then, I say to you, I love you so.

Peace.