What you feel is life, what you live is another story.

Author: Tom (Page 69 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/".

Old Harriet (Creative Writing Exercise)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Setting:
Sidewalk corner of a 4-way urban intersection. You are a pedestrian waiting to cross the street.

Subject:
A badly rusted yellow car with a large dent in its fender, rimmed with blue paint, waiting for the light.

Timing:
The 30 seconds until the light changes and the car drives away.

δ

It had been a while since I had walked this route to work, and I was pleased to have the rare feeling of actually not being late for a change.  My early start had given me time to take in the scenery of the City I’d rarely gotten a chance to see.  I got to stroll through the Park, and had the opportunity to see street vendors set up their wares and some older couples casually walking and feeding the pigeons who seemed very comfortable in the routine.  It was a beautiful morning, the type of morning where even the rush hour seemed quiet and peaceful.  The extra time this walk was taking was nothing compared to the feeling of peace and serenity it afforded given what is normally a morning filled with chaos in meeting “the man’s” appointed hour.

The park’s exit was a few blocks from where I worked, and I promised myself upon exiting that I would make a habit of this trip.  I needed to get my act together and end the chaos that kept mornings like this from happening.  I became lost in the endless promises and vows that come along with making such a momentous change.  I would have my clothes ready the night before.  I would wake up earlier.  No, I would not start emailing and Facebooking before I left for the office.  No, I would not…

I was suddenly brought back to the moment by a tug on my shoulder.  I looked at the man who grabbed me, a rather slight and frail older gentleman who looked at me with a certain amount of curiosity.  As I was about to give him the “what the hell” line, he stuck out his nose and chin, pointing to the direction I was walking.  It seems I was not only ready to walk into traffic, but was also ready to walk directly into a car stopped at the waiting traffic light.

I became transfixed on the car.  It wasn’t anything special, certainly nothing that would ordinarily grab my attention.  It was what appeared to be an old and rather used taxi, one that was bought and converted into a car for a family or a teenager who could afford little else.  It was hard to tell if it was yellow with rust or rust with yellow, but one would not be corrected if either description was used.  It was missing a few of its pieces for sure, but it was nothing that this car had or didn’t have that caught my eye.  Rather, it was a large dent in its fender that suggested it had either hit something or been hit by something.

It wasn’t the rather unspectacular car or the completely unremarkable dent that held my attention.  The concave crater formed by someone’s mistake was streaked with a cobalt-blue paint as if someone had applied it with their fingers.  The paint was a unique kind of color, one that I didn’t see much of, but one that had brought fond memories into view.  As I stared blindly at the cobalt blue paint, an onrush of memories took me to a place I had never forgotten.  One that had me lost in a combination of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

It was the color of her car, and it brought me to the first time I saw her.  I could still see her pulling up for our first meeting in that car.  I struggled to fight off the glare of the street light I sat under to see her face in person for the very first time.  I wanted so desperately to look into those eyes; the very eyes that had captured me weeks prior.  I noticed the car only because it was in the way, and I cursed it somewhat for the intrusion.  Yet, it was the horse that brought her to me, and as such I would always remember it.

She pulled up, and I was in love all over again.  I fell in love with her many times.  In fact, I fell in love with her too many times to count.  First, I fell in love with her picture as her eyes caught my heart and would not let it go.  Then I fell in love with her voice, melodious and strong it brought me to places I never knew existed.  Then I fell in love with her words.  They touched something unwounded and dormant within me, and offered me promise that all I had seen, done, felt and faced was worth it.  She exited the car and walked to me, and as we embraced I fell in love with her completely as this moment became the opening to the song my heart would sing to her over and over again.

My thoughts went back to our moments in that car.  We had shared laughs, tears, love, and anger there.  Old Harriet (her pet name for the car) had certainly seen enough of me.  Ours began a long distance affair, so Old Harriet had seen the miles fly by on the way to my town.  She had also seen miles driving me around my Love’s town.  She has seen us meet somewhere in between.  We began, shared, and grew our love on the back of Old Harriet, and for that I owed that car something I could never repay.

Suddenly the old beaten car that had streaks of memory stained in it pulled away.  Startled at the suddenness of its departure, I looked up at the traffic light.  I had missed my chance to cross the street, instead joyfully living in memories that always seemed to complete my days and bring life to my nights.  I had to call my Lover, now, and tell her how much I loved her.  Delay would not do, I missed her and needed to tell her my heart’s story.

So I began my walk to the office anew with her in my ear and in my heart.  She was telling me about her morning so far, how she missed me and couldn’t wait to see me.  I didn’t tell her about the car I almost ran into, or the memories the stains of cobalt blue had jarred loose from within, but I did tell her about this moment, and about how much she meant to me.  The time in between that first meeting and now had seen the distance between us shrink while the love between us grew.  As I walked we talked, and laughed, and cried, and talked to each other as only we could.  I sat outside my office on a bench and listened, loving every word, thought and plan that she was telling me about.  Here, there, everywhere I fell in love with her all over again in a timeless cycle that demanded that I fall in love with her again and again with each passing second.  Finally she had to go, and as she told me she loved me my smile forced a tear from my eye.  Yes, baby, I love you too.

In case you are wondering, yes, I was late to work again.  Some things will never change.

Ω

my Sweet Affinity

How much is too much
Of me?
How much can you hear?
How much can you see?
How much can you bear 
Of me, my Sweet Affinity? 
 
Which time is the last time
You’ll be
Smiling at my words?
Wanting to hear from me?
Oh how much can you bear
Of me, my Sweet Affinity?
 
Which moment gives the rest
A loss of dignity?
When I don’t exist at all
In the Sunrise that you see?
Oh how much can you bear
Of me, my Sweet Affinity?
 
I pray, I struggle and look for signs
Or a simple, golden key
To unlock a moment’s saving grace
To set the question free
Just how much can you bear 
Of me, my Sweet Affinity? 
 

I F*cking Love You {Adult Language}

You touched me there
And I awakened
The light inside of me burst to the heavens above
God Herself took notice
And smiled…
 
I try to find the words
To describe this feeling
The only thing that seems to do this justice
The only thing that comes out of me 
Is…
 
I fucking love you
I love your face
I love your eyes
I love your hair
I love your smile, your wit, your state of Being
I love your voice
I love your skin
I love your …well, you know
I love your intelligence
I love your teeth
I love your legs
I love your…yeah that too
I love your back
I love your neck
I love your arms, your shoulders
I love your feet
I love your knees
Yes, I love that…damn.
 
I love fucking love you
I love your passion
I love your devotion
I love your brain
I love your ability to swim as I try to drag you under
I love your strength
I love your heart
I love your mind, your way of thinking
I love your sensibility
I love your commitment
I love that you’ve survived
I love what you know and what you don’t
I love learning when you are my teacher.
 
Yeah, I fucking love you.
 
I love how you put me in my place
And how it is always a place much higher
Than I ever thought I should be.
 
Yeah, I fucking love you.
 
So I’ll close my eyes and drift to dream
Knowing that you know
Feeling that you feel
Believing that you believe.
So when you touch me there again
And I awake
I can whisper in your ear the phrase I know you long to hear
 
I fucking love you.
 
Ψ

Love’s Own Forgiveness

You can fee the icy stare of sin glare at you from some unlit corner of your mind. It looks not at you, but through  you, using the attachments you have to your own judgments against you even as those rights and wrongs of yesterday pile on top of your chest like an avalanche of jagged stones.  Your mind takes you away to some place you’ve been before, haunting you with a memory or two of what was versus what was supposed to be.  You falter, you fall, and you look up for mercy.

The stare continues.  You don’t dare stare back for the monster will devour you whole.  You look away, usually down, toward some invisible savior that will rescue you and take you away from it all.  None comes as you try to sneak away from look, from the sin, from the very idea you gave birth to the moment you sought to hate yourself.

There is no sneaking away as the beast grabs you from within and hauls you to some magical courtroom in your mind.  There voices from a past not just yours will serve as judge and jury while you play the role of your own executioner.  You wonder if you will ever escape, but you know in your heart that only a miracle can keep you from the gallows you are constructing.  You have feared.  You have suffered.  Now, you will die for it.

This sin pretends to be a mortal wound, and you pretend to be a mortal sinner.  You fall into line just as you were taught.  You see the evils that men and women do as a truth not unique to them, but universal to all.  You feel the rush of fear-turned-anger rise up from somewhere within you and spill out of you everywhere.  You see ghosts masquerading as Now replaying the same old stories in your head, telling the same old lies as if this time they will come true.  So you make them true regardless of their validity.  You cast a stone in the direction of a sinner who has committed no sin save being the one you love enough to fear.

Hhhhmmmmm.  This grunt betrays a new understanding of the ignorance within me.  I can see it as plain as the skin on my hand as it plays with me, teasing me as if I was some child and it had the only ball in town.  I chuckle back, your days are numbered my old foe, and I will be coming to root you out of my Soul and replace you with an unbridled sureness in the One I love.  I have a long road to walk, a mighty field to sow with something other than the weeds I have long planted.  Yet I have the tools and the support from her to do so, to not only replant this field but to live long enough to reap a bountiful harvest.  I just must know, and feel, and share.  The dream is worth it even as it sprouts Now a hope my lungs inhale with each passing breath.

That is the beauty of Love’s forgiveness.  No sin is too great, no trauma too devastating and no beast too strong to escape a touch from the one you love.  No mountain is too tall or forest too thick to hide from the her loving gaze.  When it’s there, you know it, and you will soon desire a new path beyond the torments of then.  This path leads to the beautiful shores of Now, where you eat of the mangoes and dance in the soaked sands you have come to call home.

Embrace that and know that you have found exactly what you are looking for.  Relish in her steadfastness and belief in you, and do not stray from the line of footsteps she has given you to follow.  You will be grateful one day, and you will know that the sin and the sinner only existed in your mind.  Then you set them free, in Love’s own forgiveness, and never hear from them again.

Our Love Heals

Photo by: David N Cooper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I met her I felt I must be dreaming.  I had to blink once, twice, a million times or more before I finally saw her as real.  This great dream came true before my eyes, in my arms, now, then, forevermore.  I still, a lifetime or two later, have trouble believing what I see, feel, or want to be true.  I need to heal.

She smiled and the Sun rose above the horizon, exposing a fog lightly hugging the fragments of my life.  I could see the firm ground where there was firm ground, but beyond that I could see a fine, white mist hiding parts of me I simply never wanted to admit existed.  There was a fear there, a timely loss of awareness born as she slowly burnt away the veils that hid what laid beneath.  Cracks in solid ground appeared as she dusted off those parts of me I had always felt and had always tried to forget.  There would always be a shaky patch of ground in the otherwise solid earth, and she sought through no ill will to expose all of it.  It was who she was, without excuse or apology.

Let’s not fool ourselves.  There is a price to be paid for burning away the shrouds a man has donned in order to find security in this life.  Fear shows itself to be a devil’s tool, a torture for the minds of even the strongest of men.  Take me on physically, and I will stand firm.  Challenge my fortitude and you will find layer after layer of a stone wall built by years of facing the shit thrown at me.  Seek to find a trust from me and find a fear that can often create a Mr. Hyde running through the streets of our life.  Even the most docile of creatures can become vicious when you touch their wounds, and I am no different.  I don’t mean to react, I don’t want to react. Yet I flinch when the pain arrives and I suffer the moment I realize I have reacted.

These wounds are a strange thing.  They are there, and they speak whispers whenever I flex the area around them.  I’ve learned to ignore the whispers, but they become shouts the moment they are poked.  There is my Beloved, running freely in the fields with me until she pokes unwittingly.  I react, I pounce on my tormentor without ever realizing who is actually doing the tormenting.  It is not her, it is me.  I have not yet learned to ignore the wave of pain or the sinister thoughts that suggest she is somehow to blame for it.  I cannot stop it, I cannot change it, I simply ride that wave as it crashes all around me often sweeping her up in the carnage.  I try with all my might to stop it, but I am no match for the wall of water that has, by now, dwarfed even its creator in size.  I simply stand by like a child as it destroys the landscape, ending the run and the freedom as the once-pristine fields become a muddy swamp of lost promise and torturous memory.

All of this because she unknowingly swept away the mist and touched the wound that laid beneath it.  The ground shook and the wave came, and now if I am lucky we stand before each other locked in a steady gaze.  A part of me feels grateful for her survival, for our survival, and a part of me seeks to protect her from further inundation.  I want to take her to higher ground and leave her there, in tears, so that she may never have to swim for her life again.  I am unsure and like a child again searching for her arms, her breast, her soothing voice.  The tears I cry are hidden by the salty remains of the wave I let loose on the world, but they are there.  Sometimes best cried in solitude, other times best hidden, especially from the parts of me that want to let them flow.

I know I have nearly drowned in myself, and I don’t want to take her down with me.  I want her to leave, but I don’t have the guts to ask her to.  I need her, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars as clearly as I need the breath inhaled upon rising from the wave’s remains.  Where she stands is steady ground, and I want so desperately to be there.  Yet my feet are stuck in the mud of my own design, and even as she demands me to “walk” I can’t even lift my leg.  I stare at her, often hiding the grip of helplessness and fear that dominates my mind.  “Please don’t leave me” I utter to her in words she will never hear.

She gives it to me.  She gives me her embrace, her breast, her soothing voice.  I exhale as if the air itself is burning my insides, but it is not.  It was simply holding me up like the man I was taught to be, and without it I collapse into her completely.  She accepts me.  She loves me.  And I am home.

I want her to love me, and soon I will forget this miracle.  Another wound will be touched at some other time.  Another wave may come, another time of reaching for her will arrive.  I will touch her wounds, and a wave will hit me square in the face as she reaches for me.  We both survive by loving the place where we stand together, strong and immovable even in the brutal face of human nature.  The waves come so that we can experience each other after the crash, and in that experience we are healed.

I want her vulnerable even if she tries to hide it well.  I want her to collapse into me after the storm as she exhales her strength into the void between us.  I want her to need me, want me, and know that I am there.  I don’t offer more than to suggest that I will be vulnerable if only to her.  I will collapse into her waiting arms and embrace her with whatever strength I have remaining.  I will need her, want her, and know that she is there.  The power of that awesome place we stand is found when the waves come, and together we face the storm and survive it knowing something that most may never see.  There is a safe place.  There is a harbor here.  There is a heart that beats for you and arms built to embrace you even when you are soaked to the bone.  Especially when you are soaked to the bone.  You will find warmth.  Yes, you, too, are home.

Imagine such a place called “home”.  Imagine even a single piece of ground so steady and strong as to survive all things.  Imagine a Love so real as to know humanity and Divinity in the same place at the same time.  Then close your eyes and see her and know that it is real.  Feel it in the essence of the man you are embracing the woman she is.  Feel its power.  At that moment you realize that you did not choose it, it chose you.  You are powerful and powerless all at the same time just as you are in all of this existence.  You fight it in your humanity and surrender to it in your Divinity.

Now you see it.  The scars begin to heal.  The wounds no longer matter.  You freely expose the tenderness that makes you the man you are.  You allow the tears that form in the corners of your eyes at the sight of her to freely spill onto your face.  You have found your true strength that goes beyond the physical prowess you have developed and the mental rigidity you have been taught.  There is a firmness there, on that ground you share with her, and you will not relinquish an inch of it to fear.  You no longer see yourself as “just a man” and you realize you can stand up to the wave.  True strength does not show itself as that rigid, emotionless, tough man you were taught to be.  Rather, it shows itself in Love, compassion, and an unbridled devotion to be who you are outside of who you were taught to be; who you have chosen to be.

Want to know what strength is?  Cry in front of a crowded room.  Wear your heart on your sleeve.  Surrender to the woman who shares your love.  Forget.  Forgive.  Love.  That’s where real strength is shown.  Remember.  Don’t ever forget who you are in spite of what they told you.

Your love will heal you.  You love will heal it all.  Just trust, and you will see.

Ω

The Unkempt Man

A man walked into church one day.  He looked haggard, tired, unkempt and his clothes were unwashed and wrinkled as if he had slept in them for days.  He could not help but notice the stares of the congregation as he moved to a pew near the back of the building.  He could not help but feel their disdain for him as he took his seat and removed his worn and battered baseball cap.

One woman seated directly in front of him whispered to her friend loudly enough to make herself heard by the man.  “Have you ever seen such a sight?  That man has no respect for anyone! Just look at how he came to church.  I can’t believe it!”  Her friend offered no reaction or judgment.

“My dear,” replied the man.  “I have the utmost respect for you.  In fact, I saved your life once.”

For some reason, the woman’s mind traveled back to a time when she sat alone in her bedroom with a bottle of sleeping pills in her hand and a picture of her dead husband in the other.  As she contemplated taking her life, her deep despair lifted and she felt a calm and loving presence sweep over her.  “You are loved, you are needed.  Lift yourself up off your bed and share yourself with the Universe” came a voice from somewhere.  She just could not tell where.

She put the picture down, and as she did she knocked over a small vase.  The single rose it carried fell to the floor.  As she picked it up, she remembered the time when her husband had given it to her just a few days before his accident.  She held it for a moment, and then placed it down next to the picture of him.  Both the picture and the rose would make it inside her husband’s coffin later that day.

Back in the present moment, the woman stared straight ahead at the empty altar at the front of the church as the man continued.

“Do not let my appearance make you forget who I am.  Do not see my clothing as a sign of anything.  Do not judge me for what I wear or how I appear, but for who I am.  I saved you for this purpose.

Rather, see those who taught you to judge as in need of your Love.  Those who see wrinkled clothing as a testament to truth need to see the reality of their condition.  Those who taught you that the veils mattered more than the core are in need of forgiveness.”

The woman remembered the feeling and the tears that flowed when she left the room and saw her children.  She cried openly then as they hugged her and told her how much they loved her.  Yes, Love.  It saw her through her suffering.

“Yes,” said the man.  “That’s what you need to share.  That’s the feeling that matters most.  You can now leave this building, for you have found God’s house.  It is where that feeling resides.”

Tears flowed down the woman’s face as she slowly turned to see the man.  As her eyes made their way to the spot where he had taken his seat just moments ago she saw that no one was there.  The seat was empty save a single rose laying alone on the wood.

Miracles happen daily.  Some we see and most we don’t.  Embrace Love, it’s the only miracle you’ll need.

A Conversation of Love

 

 

 

 

 

 

My friend you ask such a wonderful question!  Let me try to answer you in the only way I can.  Let’s be still for a moment…

My Soul knows.  In some respects It has always known.  Before my mind could question a thing my Soul knew.  Before I could form words or understand their meaning my Soul understood.  Before the concepts of time and space took hold in me my Soul felt her presence.  When I learned to crawl I was crawling towards her. When I learned to walk and to run she was the finish line.  Before I could read or write I had already written the book of her in my heart.  Each experience of this life has led me toward her, the woman I’ve known a thousand lifetimes and loved since the dawn of my Soul’s creation.

I cannot explain how it feels when I look at her, when I see her face.  I cannot explain why my heart jumps when I see her smile, or feel her fingers snake between my own.  I can’t explain the welling up in my eyes at the very thought of her.  I can’t explain or describe any of it, but I know it’s there and I know it is my Soul talking to me clearly.

And although my mind may not always be satisfied with the answers it gets.  It may not always like what it sees.  It may not always have faith.  It may not always have blind trust in the woman who inspires such Love in me.  But my Soul, ah my Soul, well It always knows who she is.  My Soul always sees the light of Love radiate from the clouds my mind has created.  Those rays of love warm even the coldest parts of me, and even when my mind creates things that don’t exist or focuses on those human things that do, my Soul always feels those rays of light and always knows they’re there.  They are the meaning of it all.

That is why I love her my friend.  Not because of some need of my body or mind, but because my Soul wills it to be.  Because my Soul knows, as It always has and always will.  When I close my eyes for that final time and breathe my last, my Soul will still be with her, and Its heart she will carry into whatever place she travels next.  She is not perfect in this form but my Soul bears her name regardless of where my body or mind take me.  That is Love, my friend.  It is a Mindful, mindless, pure and simple Love that encompasses all of who we are.

What a gift it has been to have it, and what a gift it has been to see it at work.  Each tear a gift unto itself; each twitch of pain a confirmation of the simple truth of Love often left complicated by a mind seeking to explain it.  In letting go, however, in leaving the mind to its quieted place behind the Soul if even for a moment, you will see it clearly.  You feel it, you have no doubts as It carries you beyond your mortal place into a Heaven best left secret to Lovers.  Yes, it is in your midst and you can’t see it only because you have failed to look with your Soul but rather chosen to look with your mind’s eye.  Forget the mind for a moment and see It in all of Its glory.  That is Love, that is power, and that is her.  Now, take her hand and walk into the Sunrise and never look back again.

When Your Soul Cries

The first time my Soul wept for Her was the moment I was born.  Our Souls were once together, wandering across the Universe free from our minds and our stories.  Then, in a moment’s folly, I was born into the world without Her.  A piece of my Soul was lost, a hole was created and a baby cried in fits of sadness as my Soul wept bitterly at the loss.

The mind forgets, sometimes soothed by a mother’s embrace.  It is from here our stories begin and we lose sight of the loss our Souls feel.  We experience.  We find love; the kind of love that satisfies our bodies and our mind.  Still our Souls are lonely, looking for the One who shared a dance across the openness of the Universe once upon a time.

In reality I found Her.  We danced, we touched, we Loved and we knew.  Our Souls embraced and our bodies followed.  Our minds responded with meek translations of the song our Souls were singing.  The Universe responded with joy.  Then the mind, the stories we had created from the moment we were born, invaded.

Now, it has ended, or so it seems.  I feel like a grenade just went off next to my head.  I stare blindly out into space, as a numb ringing invades my mind.  Nothing seems real as I gaze through eyes clouded by the tears I wish would end.  I walk aimlessly, unsure of my direction and confounded by the waves of emotion hitting me from all directions.  I am not even sure if I am alive as I wonder aloud through the haze “is this hell?”

I stumble.  I fall.  I feel pain shoot through my knee as the carpet of my living room tears at my skin.  I can’t react, the rest of me feels numb.  I try to get up but the cross I am carrying is just too heavy.  I look for her, I reach into the empty space around me and I know.  A part of me has died.

I know it will get better.  I know that the pain will end.  What I am unsure of is whether or not the space inside of me will ever feel full again.  I just couldn’t make her happy, I just couldn’t control the demons inside of me.  She gave me what she could, but it wasn’t enough.  No, it was enough, I was just forgetting how great it was.  I saw the past as now, and it tossed a grenade at me that I just let explode as if frozen for reasons as unfathomable as they are unknown.

I “motherfuck” myself.  Why couldn’t I have felt this way before I shared my wounds with her?  I get angry, and that anger lifts me up, cross and all, and carries me to a mirror.  I yell at myself.  I call myself names.  I want to beat the fuck out of the moron I see.  Why. Couldn’t. You. Just. THINK?  Breathe?  Practice?  Know?

Then it hit me.  I will be free from the emotional pain in time.  My body will no longer ache for her one day.  I will find someone who makes me laugh and who takes care of my physical needs.  I know that part will get better with the passing of days but I am not happy in the discovery.  Instead, my Soul starts to weep uncontrollably.

The tears flow down my face as my body crumples to the floor.  My hands are soaked with the salty stains of a Love lost.  I may replace the body and the emotions, but my Soul may never feel Itself again.  It had never before, and perhaps that one moment of Truth in a lifetime of moments had just escaped me.  I let it go because I could not control my fear.  So now I simply suffer.

My Soul cries out to Its Mate, this time there is no reply.  The Song has ended, the Stream no longer flows in this direction.  The lake I once bathed in freely is now a cracked and dried scar reminding me of what once was.  The Sun, the Moon, the Universe Itself seem to be crying with me.  Nothing has color, the breeze no longer blows gently across my brow.  I stare at the hands that once held the Dream and curse them for ever letting go.

Yes, my Soul will weep.  Uncontrollably at times.  My body and mind will carry on as I return to the time when my Soul walked alone.  This time, however, I know the solitude as I feel the wasted promise shoot through my heart.  I know She was out there…waiting and wanting and being.  I know She is out there now, hurting, crying, wishing it all away.  I wonder if Her Soul is crying too, and screaming out for me as I scream out for Her.  I wonder…I know…I can almost feel Her here.

One day my Soul will be free.  Perhaps in that release She will find me.  Unencumbered by the mind we will be free to dance again across the Universe together.  Maybe this time we’ll stay put and dance the dance forever.  Or maybe we will find ourselves once again as babes, crying as our Souls weep for the loss as our minds begin a new creation.  Maybe…

Making Love Work

We’ve settled in next to our Lover.  We kiss, we cuddle, we make love until we have nothing left in our bodies to give.  We are blessed by wave after wave of bliss as we give of ourselves and take of our Lover.  We gaze, we touch, we feel and we share of ourselves in a way we have never before.  We have found our Heaven and we need nothing outside of it.

We are One with each other.  We can feel the power of the mind, body and soul intertwined in a Holy dance.  Each kiss a testament of some Holy verse never written, never spoken but Universally known just the same.  No prayer brought us here.  It is the prayer itself we utter with each sound of our ecstasy, and God Itself exists where we are not as some judgmental old man portrayed on a wall but as the indescribable state of Being we have found in each other.  We are in our Paradise, our land of milk and honey, our Garden of Eden.

And then we eat of the apple.

The morning Sun shines and we awaken as man and woman once again.  We don our fig leafs in various forms and we hide ourselves from the very God who blessed us.  Slowly the veils are refreshed in our minds as we listen to the serpents tells us our stories of woe, creating the reality by which we live and in which we become who we think we are.  I become “man” with my story and she “woman” with hers.  We begin to taint the milk and honey with a bitterness that would not exist without our introduction.  We begin to see the then in the now, the there in the here and completely change the landscape.  The view hasn’t changed, the way we see it has.

Soon the lush vegetation begins to wither as the salty waters of our tears pollute the Garden.  We begin to pull out the flowers with the weeds, and throw the good out with the bad.  We hear the voices from our conditioning rise up within us and tell us a story that does not mesh with the one our Love suggests is true.  Our wounds open and we cry out in a searing testament to what was, often forgetting what is.  We become the blinded Cain who forgets that yes, we are each other’s keeper.

Imagine the perfect Heaven we have found in the Mindless act of pure Love destroyed by the hell we have created in the mindful act of reliving pain.  Yes, the very God we have found in our moments of Heaven throws us out of our Garden, never to return.  We curse the serpent, but it us who has created it.  We curse the apple, but it was us who chose it.  We curse the very Garden that brought us pleasure, but it was us who polluted it.  Love never forgot, we forgot Love and in that Mindless moment of fear we set it all on fire and watched it burn.

Yes I have.  Yes I did.  And yes I have the burns to prove it.

I wish it was as easy as knowing all of this.  Yes, I can see it all from the safe distance of my memory and yes, I can still smell the smoke tear apart my senses.  Sure, I know all of this but when the fear takes over the knowing is often forgotten.  You believe you know something else and believe that the apple is really what you want.  The serpent whispers loudly in your ear, telling you that the past is here and now, and that this is just like that.  You forget Heaven and relive hell.  You begin the search for proof that the serpent is lying, that the whisper isn’t real regardless of how real it once was.  Yes, you know that you are dreaming but the dream seems more real than the reality you see.  Truth becomes fiction and fiction become truth.  Worse, you just can’t seem to help yourself.

You are, I am, Forgetting

Then you become the wound, not just a wound on you but also a wound on your Lover.  You create fear where none existed.  You turn smiles into tears and laughs into cries.  You don’t mean to, you are just responding to the whisper, but you can’t help but share the pain within you.  You fail to remain Mindful, and instead dive into a pool of Mindless ambition where you do nothing but forget.

You think you are remembering.  You think the wrongs inflicted on you in some distant life are protecting you.  You believe that you are remembering.  You are not.  You are forgetting.  You are forgetting everything that matters to you in this moment and replacing it with the nightmare of hells lived long ago.  You are bringing fire to the Pearly Gates, and you are burning all that you Love.  You are wrecking it by forgetting.

You even forget to breathe.  You forget your mantra.  You forget your dedication.  You forget how awesomely wonderful it felt to be surrounded by your Lover.  You cast darkness into the light, and break windows with a stone hammer of forgetting who and what you are.  You can only see what once was as if you are dreaming some truth but in reality you are forgetting the truth.  You are leaving reality behind.

Had you truly been able to remember you would have breathed.  You would have settled down.  You would have tasted the sweet nectar of the fruit in front of you and left the bitterness of the old stuff behind.  Your peach would not have become a lemon, your wine not vinegar.  You would have seen what was around you and not what was behind you.  You would have embraced what was there now and forgotten what hurt you then.

Making Love Work

So, are we doomed to reliving hell?  Yes, in some part we are.  We are a sum of our experiences, and we are spiritual Beings having a human experience that begins at conception and ends with the moment we often call “the present”.  Yet, even as we are a sum of our experience we need not become a slave to it.

This has been the part I often forget in my daily life.  Yes, I have experienced a lot in my life and yes, those experiences are a part of me.  I have seen transformation and experienced the pains of that metamorphosis.  Yes, all of this is “me” and I have a memory.    It seems to me, however, that I have too often become a slave to the very things that have hurt me in this experience.  I see the pain and not the happiness too often in my life.  I hear the whisper of the past more clearly than I hear the song of the Love I feel in the present.  I let the nightmare dictate my reality, and this is where a man must draw the line if he wishes to end the suffering and become One with the Love and the Lover.

It’s a choice, and it must be made.  How do we make it?  How do we flip the switch and end the grip that our pasts have on our nows?

Well, the answer seems to me to be meditation and awareness.  See, the pain of the past (for me) has created a condition similar to the reaction Pavlov’s dogs got at the sound of the bell.  Yes, I know the stimulus and I know the reaction.  I can see the bell ringing and I know I am about to start drooling.  So, it would seem I need to change the reaction the bells create in me.

That happens through using the awareness and meditating on the response I wish to have. I’ve done that a lot in my life, seeing what I want to change and making it happen through contemplation and consciousness.  It can happen, but I know it isn’t easy and I know that there aren’t many Eves out there who can wait for this Adam to drop the fig leafs.  The question must be asked.  Do I want to end those practices that have created suffering in my life and in the life of those I Love or am I happy ignoring my role in choosing hell over Heaven?  If there truly is bliss in ignorance, I haven’t found it but can certainly see why some people bury their heads in the sand.  Sometimes it just feels safer.

Now, my Lover, I know.  We’ve eaten the apple and we’ve burned the Garden.  In the smoke-filled haze of what once was a beautiful experience we view the ashen landscape we have created.  There is hope, however, for in the fading embers of what was there is a small sapling that has survived.  There are seeds planted in the ground still fertile with hope and Love.  Beneath the surface of despair there are tiny seeds of hope and promise for what is to come.  All is not lost despite the destruction we are seeing now.

That is how we make Love work.  We feel enough to know, care enough to see and Love enough to want to bring the Garden alive.  Our tears carve paths through the ashy remains of our dreams now staining our faces.  This is hope as we can either use those tears to cleanse us of our wounds or to create new ones.  For me, it is time I clean up this act and move beyond the fear my experience has created.  It won’t be easy, but it will be a walk in the park.  Or rather a walk in the Garden.  I’ve seen it, I Love it, and I want to live in it.  Forever.

Peace.

Her Eyes (Love’s Warrior Series)

 

He could smell the moment he had waited so patiently for.  It seemed like a lifetime ago he first had looked into her eyes.  Those ivory-circled pools of beauty had captured him, and as he dove deep into their magic he found something he had not expected.  He found Love.  He found clarity.  He found Himself.

His life was not one that suggested these things were possible.  He could feel the scars inflicted in his time, and they reminded him of moments when those eyes would not have stopped him.  His mind would wander in the moments that had led up to this, to the very moment when he knew who he was.  Those wounds would sometimes cause him to scream out in pain.  Other times they would cause him to recoil in anticipation.  Still others the reaction was a simple reminder that each rose has a thorn and that each pool of beauty had a depth that could drown even the heartiest of swimmers.  There was nothing simple about that reminders in actuality, they created the reaction he could not control.  Much like the swimmer drowning he would lash out uncontrollably, often attacking his rescuer in the most horrible of ways.  He could not control himself in those moments of fear.  He was drowning, and he was unconscious of his actions beyond survival.

She had hung on.  She would subdue him in these moments.  Sometimes her rescue would come in the form of letting him struggle until he was too tired to struggle anymore.  In others she would turn her back on him and head to her shore.  He would reach out to her in those moments and she would always take his hand.  In other times she would fight him and they would find themselves bloodied and bruised but in each other’s arms, safe and secure.  It must have been a sight to behold for her as her Warrior struggled with unseen demons and irrelevant wounds in what would be an otherwise serene place to bathe.  Yet, she had her own demons and her own wounds, and they often showed themselves in ways he would respond to.  He would fight them with her.  He would cradle her in his arms in the darkness.  He would stand by her regardless of which demon suggested the knife she carried was meant for him.  Another moment in her arms would be worth the wound and much, much more.

He looked up from his memory into those eyes.  The familiar surge ran up his spine.  He had long stopped trying to describe this surge to her.  It felt something like a mixture of immense strength and complete weakness.  His body would stand firm and his knees buckled. His heart would find a clarity even as his mind became a cloudy mess.  His Soul would settle into a calmness even as his heartbeat and breathing quickened.  He had resigned himself to a complete inability to describe this moment until he settled on the simple word that seemed indescribable Itself:

“Love.”

Yes, this was Love for him.  It was the Kingdom of God he might never have seen if not for those eyes.  It was the Garden of Eden he was cast out of when he became ashamed of his nakedness.  It was the realization that of the million lifetimes he had felt course through his moments this one exposed the Truth of truths.  Love is beautiful.  Love is peaceful.  Love is the moment you realize you are not the sum of your experiences, you are the realization of the moment.  As the surge invaded his Being there were no scars.  There were no memories.  There was only here and there was only now.  Here and now had him lost in her eyes unable to remember that time or this space.

As their hands grasped for each other all ideas of separation vanished as the heat rose within them.  He could feel her Soul speak to him and guide him to those places he simply had to go.  There were no barriers, no walls, just two Souls merging into One complete understanding.  There were no words needed, no guidance required as they explored their desire in perfect harmony with one another.  It was here they knew the perfection of the Universe.

They kissed passionately and breathed in each other’s essence as their bodies betrayed the rising desire building within them.  The room faded from their awareness as only they mattered in the moment.  Clothing disappeared as did any inhibitions their pasts had taught them.  They teased each other’s bodies, they played a tune unique to their own set symphony.  She would taste him and he her in sheer delightful ecstasy.  His mouth became her tool, her’s his as they took each other to places never seen by either.  Her wetness surrounded him as she took his hardness in.  They would dance a dozen dances to a hundred beats climaxing too many times to count along the way.  Finally he would explode as he gazed into her eyes, knowing she had exploded as well.

They would collapse in each other’s arms having given all of themselves to one another.  This is where God’s home truly could be found – in the arms of a lover who had given so freely of herself that nothing else existed but that Gift.  Her moans were the Angels singing, their movement the perfection of the Universe.  This moment was the Big Bang.  It was a moment when everything was created and a new Universe showed Itself.  As he searched for her eyes she looked into his.  Tears disguised as beads of sweat flowed freely from his eyes as his hand found hers.  He stared into beautiful ivory-rimmed pools of eternity knowing where he was.  He felt renewed, and could feel the surge begin again in his spine.  Actually, it had never gone.  It was like a constant glow that became more intense as her eyes looked deep into him and pulled out the once-forgotten beauty that resided there.  He wasn’t drowning, he was saved, and as he leaned in to touch her lips with his he could sense he had found a place he never wanted to leave.

He was home.

 

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