I do, regardless of fit or fancy…simply choose to be.
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ
Category: Spirituality (Page 12 of 19)
Today, when we look at the moon and the Earth, we see a beautiful relationship. The Earth faithfully orbits the Sun, reflecting the Sun’s light magnificently for the universe to see. The Sun gives us light and warmth with a promise to shine for a billion tomorrows. That, however, was not always the case.
For once upon a time the Sun and the Earth had a much different relationship. The Sun was angry; sending destructive flares outward into the cosmos. The Sun burned intensely as all young stars did, searing nearby planets and destroying all that came near him. The Sun became lonely, but still could not help himself as his heat and intensity caused all in the universe to avoid him. The Sun was a product of the explosion that created him, and he knew no better because he was just the Sun acting like the Sun he was created to be.
The Earth was peaceful and calm aside from the occasional temper tantrums and changes that came with experience. She steadily went about her business as she grew, becoming quite a stable planet as time went by. Objects from all over the cosmos were drawn to her, but eventually they collided with her and caused her great pain. She felt alone until one day she discovered the Sun.
Other planets had tried. Mercury came alone at the wrong time and got too close. She became a barren wasteland and laid to waste by the intensity of the sun’s heat. Venus too had tried, but she also got too close to the Sun’s youthful intensity. Other planets stayed further away, and while they were magnificent in the their own way they could not enjoy the benefit of the Sun, whom they feared. Those planets were cold and distant, and while beautiful they remained unable to enjoy the warmth.
The Earth was different. She loved the Sun. At first she was drawn to him by his size and intensity. The Sun also loved the Earth. He enjoyed her beauty and the way she she seemed to love him back. He didn’t feel threatened by her as much as he felt threatened by the memories of what brought him here, to this place and time. He did all he could to get her to stay away, yet their love would always draw them closer.
As she got closer to the Sun his intensity began to burn her. His flares would scorch her surface and she would show great pain. The Sun looked around the universe and saw places that would be much better for the Earth, and in this pain there would be another flare and more pain for the Earth. “Sun, I need you to end these flares or I will have to go away,” she would say. The Sun tried and tried, and soon the flares became less and less until they faded away.
“Sun, I need you to stop being so bright,” the Earth said. So the Sun tried and tried until his once blinding light became a faint glimmer. “I need you to be less hot,” said the Earth. So the Sun tried and tried until his once searing heat became more bearable to the Earth. Yet, as time went on, that one bright part of the universe became darker. The universe all around the Sun became a frigid wasteland. The stars shone less brightly, and even the moon went dark. Even the Earth herself became cold and bored as the Sun worked day and night to be, well, not the Sun.
One day the Sun just could not help it. He exploded with a fury, sending light far and wide around him. The moon shined, and the Earth became amazed at the beautiful universe around her she could only see as the Sun shined brightly. She looked at him and saw his absolute brilliance. She decided at that moment something that changed them both forever.
“Sun,” she said, “I want you to shine. I want you to be warm. I want you to be who you want to be.”
“But won’t that hurt you?” asked the Sun.
“You will be who you need to be and I will be who I need to be. We need to love each other as we are if we are ever going to survive in this place. You were created for a reason as was I, and we need to love that purpose as much as we love each other.”
The Sun understood, and in his appreciation and love shined just enough for the earth. During the day, she could bask in his his warmth and his light and at night she could see the beauty of the universe around her because of the light he was. As the Sun looked out upon the universe, he could see the coldness and the danger, but in his love he learned how to provide the right amount of light and warmth for the Earth. Every once in a while he would send out a flare to protect her, and she had even learned how to stay close to him even when he was simply being the Sun.
They had learned harmony through disharmony, love through egoic selfishness, peace through suffering. Soon, miraculous things began to happen. Life became abundant on the Earth. The Earth and the Sun together provided for these miracles; miracles born of the love shared between two unlikely things who allowed each other to be.
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ
Freedom is not the pathway to love, love is the pathway to freedom. Happiness is not the key to acceptance, acceptance is the key to happiness.
And so began my morning in such clarity as to need no interpretation or thought. It just was, as clear as the sky on a cloudless morning. You never know when such moments of clarity will come so you just embrace them as they open themselves to you. Is it possible that these moments are always there but we cover them with layer upon layer of meaningless stuff?
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ
I can no longer hide the essence of who I am. The basket I’ve used is no longer thick enough. To share this light with the world; to be the guide toward whatever it is you seek; to strengthen you when you require; to weaken you when you demand; to comfort you when you request; to cause you pain when you need to feel something is my greatest purpose.
You have torn from me that last great veil! You have ripped from me the security I once sought with all my being and fed it to the wolves from which I once ran. You have denied me the simplest pleasure while chastising me for seeking the greatest sin. For who has that bell tolled if not for me? Seek and you shall find without the slightest guarantee that what you find is what you were seeking in the first place.
With outstretched hands I beg of you. Do not spare me from the slightest pain. Do not keep me from the darkness. Do not hamper me from the fall I must endure. Allow me to bask in the darkness and embrace the suffering so that I may know what it is I am here for. Allow the cup that you pass to press upon my lips. Allow the nails to do their work. Allow the taunts and unconsciousness of those around me to cause my wings to flutter uncontrollably. It is for that you have created me; it is for that I have created my self; it is for that we have created each other.
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ
I frown at the thought of mothering yet another pitiful episode of the mad wonderings in my mind that create a sense of insanity outside of it. Still, when faced with the combined sense of being misunderstood and misunderstanding I cannot seem but help to give birth to such a monster. Gone are the thoughts of rosy sunrises in which we hold each other tightly. Gone are the cascades of kisses thrown around as if they are candy during an Halloween parade. Enter in this scene a morose feeling of incompleteness and solitude combined with fear and a sense of ineptness only experience in both could understand. I don’t sense you have this experience and therefore do not have this understanding. I am happy for that, for I love you with all of my heart and do not wish such a pain to be burdened by you ever in your life.
So I sit in silence.
Riding the wave has never been so hard. Caught between the break and the riptide I am slowly losing my way from the shore. I claw at the water to no avail as the sand and stone fades from memory into nightmare. I drift away into the nothingness from wench I came, into an abyss so dark as to suggest it cannot exist. To what do I owe this moment? Is the “self” I was being so bad as to justify the hell it has been cast into?
The answer is silence.
I once heard a voice that seemed to inspire me. I once felt tears that seemed to move me. I once heard cries that caused me to look inward. Now all I hear are echos from my own mind. The voice now rejects me as if I were poison. The tears now sting at my soul and keep me from being able to open my eyes. The cries now are gone and have been replaced by nothing that matters. I sit here, a soul of wholeness amidst the broken chains that bound me. The chains only rattle, they do not hold me. The links fall to the ground as broken shards of a heart once kept whole by the anger that imprisoned it. It’s funny how the bars of the prison can keep the monster whole until the bars fall and the beast explodes, no longer existing but as a fraction of itself.
Its roar is now silent.
Oh little boy, scarred by those who claim love, brought into the darkness by those who claim to know the light, who do you latch hold of when the coldness comes? Who is your savior when you sin against your fairy tale? Who is your executioner when you are no longer needed to be whole? Time, my friend, will answer these questions. Time, my son, will teach you truth. You will come from solitude and be taught who you are only to find peace in the absence of everything you were taught. You will rebel against who you are in the hopes of finding who you are. You will cry, you will scream, you will grasp at nothingness until nothingness is all you know. You will hear a voice that inspires you, you will cry tears that heal you, you will hear cries that cause you to look inside of you. Through all of this noise you will see the honesty in its absence. Through all of the clatter and instruction and direction and conditioning you will see the beauty of the what comes before and after the thunder.
You will smile. You will love. You will know silence, and in silence you will know your self.
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ
So I do not dare find the completeness within me. What would be the purpose of existing if, in fact, I understood the point of it all? I don’t, can’t, will never know it all. That is liberating.
There will be mistakes. There will be demands to which I cannot answer. There will be tears to shed and words to be used as daggers forever. It is our point of existence, our purpose for Being, our mission to which we will never see an end. For every point of evolution there will be another challenge. For every loving embrace a bomb shall fall. For every gentle pat on the back a hard slap in the face. Imagine this life without the one to balance the other. What kind of life would that be if we simply had nothing to strive for?
I became pro-life when I started seeing dead children. I became pro-choice the moment I realized what life would be like without it. I became free the moment I realized I was imprisoned. I became liberal the moment I discovered conservatism was a lie. I became communist the moment I sought to end the thievery. To which box did you just assign these words? To which compartment did you just place my thoughts? To which standard did you judge me at the moment you read simple things entered through a simple keyboard? Did you even realize that I became these things not through matters of my own creation but through the efforts you provided in order to create me as you wanted me to be?
My simple answer is “I am”. Create away…make me who you think I am. Take clay and make it into a vase and it is still clay. You may make it what you want but, in the end, it is still clay. And to clay it shall return someday regardless of what I want it to be. I am meaningless, as are you, except as the Creator, and in being so I am all-powerful. You are as meaningless as I except as the Destroyer, and in being so you are all powerful, as am I. We all have this choice, these billions of small moments that decide who we are although not who we were and not who we will be. Focus a billion times on each of these billion moments as they arise and you will define eternity.
We will make mistakes, and in doing so will continue perfection. We will slap the face of a friend, and in doing so will be the best friend we can be. We will turn our back on our brother and in doing so will provide him a target to focus on. We will ignore our abuser and in doing so turn to face the light of love that surrounds us both. The balance of the moment will never be distorted by the choice we make but exists because of the choice we make. Just love who you are and what you do and allow others to be free as well to be as they are. It’s all just so gloriously perfect.
This post is a result of my midday meditation. It has not be proofread or edited in any way, so please don’t shoot the messenger who can’t speak or spell clearly. Just <3.
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ
So I was alone, helpless as the day I was born. Actually, I was even more helpless, because in addition to not having hope I knew I did not have it. So there I lay, floundering in my own despair, searching for a light to guide my way. I reached for you but you weren’t there, gone was the life-after-life – the solace to which I had become accustomed.
You were my strength; you were my weakness. You cradled me in your arms as I sat helpless and bleeding. You stood with me as I faced torment. You lit my way as I groped down the narrow valley in which I was thrown. You held me up when I thought I would fall, you pushed me down as I struggled to stand. You helped me find my way as you kept me lost. You gave me a name even as I had forgotten who I was.
You helped me escape unbearable suffering as you heaped on the misery. You filled my cravings as you kept me wanting more. You kept me from looking by telling me what I saw; you stopped me from searching by destroying all I had found. You forced me to be who I wasn’t so that I could escape who I was; you created disdain for me while holding me true to a lie. I do not judge you in these descriptions, they are what I see when the blinders have been removed.
I have said goodbye to you. Not because I see you as good or evil, and not because I dislike you. I have said goodbye because I no longer need the walls that you create. I have said goodbye because I no longer fear my shadow. I have said goodbye because I have said hello to the me that was before I embraced you. I love you for the experience you have given me and for the now that I live in joy. I could not have gotten here without you.
Goodbye to you my friend; my foe. I am sure we will meet again someday, yet I can promise you that I will see you this time. I will feel you come and I will simply try to watch you go.
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ
It is said that the path of heaven can only go through hell. If this experience is known, and the way to heaven is hell, then perhaps it must be reasoned that the path to hell is everywhere heaven is not. If one can see that there is no true duality in our existence unless we have created it, then one can see that there is, in fact, no place that heaven is not. Yet, perhaps the hell that we experience in heaven’s absence (or the veil that separates us from experiencing the heaven that we are in), is nothing more than our creation. It would be like a guppy in a large bowl who can only see the water saying “there is nothing but this water, no bowl, no air; nothing but this water”. The things beyond his grasp are not absent, they are simply not seen and therefore not known. If he has not seen it he cannot know it, and therefore cannot experience it. Yet it is there.
The path to heaven does not appear to me to be something we “get to”. We do not walk aimlessly through this life until we finally die and then see heaven. The guppy will eventually get to the bowl or the air if he just stays still. Encountering the bowl or air is not incumbent on any action on his part. Eventually the veil will be lifted. It is no different in our quest for that which we were told exists, but that which we can’t remember experiencing. We were there before we were “born” and will be there after we die because, in essence, we have never left it. Rather, we have created water to separate us from the bowl and the air. We wonder aimlessly through the water. We fight the currents and wonder why we haven’t moved or have fallen backwards. We dive to the depths and wonder where all the air is and, in fact, question whether the air exists at all. We create the veil of doubt because of our own actions if they don’t work out to the purpose we have also created. Yet, nothing changes but in your mind.
I believe Jesus was an enlightened man dealing with guppies swimming about. When he said to follow him, that he was the path to heaven, what exactly did he mean? Did he mean that being Christian got you to heaven? No, Christianity did not exist when Jesus did. Did he mean that preaching and teaching would get you there? No. So what did Jesus mean when he said to follow him to heaven?
Look at the stages that are known about Jesus. He lived as a man, learned his religion’s traditions and virtues, and then discovered an enlightened path along the way. He saw the bowl and the air and although he couldn’t tell you much about them, he knew not only how he got there but that they existed. So, he tried to tell us how to get there so that we could know, and thereby experience, heaven.
Heaven is all around us, but we can’t see it. It isn’t because it is some mystical place to which we are not privileged, but rather because of the veils of distraction we have created that block us from viewing it. Perhaps Jesus wished to offer us an extreme example of what is necessary to lift the veils and move beyond the distractions. Perhaps, as I believe, this is what he meant by “follow me”.
Jesus lived as a man. He fasted (ascetic), prayed (meditated), and practiced compassion and love. Those things alone are not enough to know heaven. In order to know something, you must first know its opposite. You know day because of night, light because of darkness, yin because of yang. Therefore, in order to know the paradise that is heaven, you must first know that suffering that is hell. I don’t believe that many of us could relate to Jesus’ life as “suffering”. We aren’t given that information (although fasting for 40 days and nights would seem to suggest some ascetic form of suffering). So we are given the extreme in order to understand that suffering must be part of any experience of heaven. Without it, we simply would not know what heaven was.
So Jesus suffered and died, which in my experience is an analogy for the suffering and death we face before knowing heaven. That can happen in this existence we call life without the death of the body. Death is nothing more than the lifting of the veils we have created in order to understand a much deeper reality; a reality that is, at its most quantum level, our Source. What we call “heaven”. I have died many times in this existence, and as each layer is removed I get closer to the core. As each veil is lifted I begin to see.
So, in effect, every path to heaven must go through hell. It doesn’t matter if you believe that Jesus existed as a man or see him as God. It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe that God exists or have a wonderful relationship with God. It remains the same for each of us.
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ
Observance is a gift that should not be overlooked. I love to just sit quietly and observe everything around me without interfering. It’s refreshing to see the universe spin around me, how it all works just exactly as it should. I can inhale and get air, I can exhale and give a gift. All without doing anything at all.
I was stuck, as has been the case a lot lately, sitting at an airport gate just waiting. Sometimes I find work to do, but this time I just wanted to sit and watch. Some people where hurriedly rushing about, others were taking their time, some had family and friends and others, like me, were alone. Some were sleeping, some were being frustrated for one reason or another, others were reading or watching TV. And some were just doing what I was doing – observing it all.
I realized something in a memory I had. I wondered if I viewed this activity from above if it would look like the video of the bloodstream I saw once. A rush of activity with each pulse of the heart followed by stillness. In that stillness there was still activity, and in the rush of activity there was stillness. It all seemed chaotic yet it all had beautiful purpose; an organization of creation inspired by what was necessary. When I viewed this video, as I viewed the activity around, me I realized that each component of this activity was individual in nature yet serving a much higher purpose. Each cell was itself, yet fulfilling a purpose it was created to fulfill. I have no idea whether or not that cell realized what it was doing, but I realized that it had very little choice no matter how much choice it thought it had. I must fulfill its purpose, for its purpose was being fulfilled with each passing moment.
With this, my mind shifted toward a tree. I love trees…they embody what I see as a “microcosm of existence”. Each tree has a component that is individual in nature yet cannot survive without the others. A branch is a branch. A leaf is a leaf. A trunk is a trunk. Roots are roots. They are individual components of the universal thing we call a “tree”, each integral to the other, each necessary for the other to fulfill its purpose. In this way, the purpose of the leaf is to give the roots an opportunity to live their purpose. It is no different when we view anything we can see in this existence; our ecosystem is built on this premise as is our entire universe. Everything serves everything else. Nothing serves everything and everything serves nothing. Light and darkness serve each other. Both are individual, yet cannot be without the other. It is a consistent theme in our universe.
Our greatest gift to the universe is just to be. The cell of a tree’s trunk doesn’t spend its time worrying about whether or not the cells of its root are working. They are too busy doing what they need to do. Our red blood cells don’t worry about what the white cells are doing, they are busy fulfilling their purpose. It isn’t selfishness to do what you intend to do because when you fulfill this purpose you provide a gift to others so that they may do the same. In this way, I am not an individual, but a part of a whole. I create so that you may create. You are so that I may be. Without each other we simply do not exist.
We are no different from the cells of a tree, or the cells of our own body. We are as temporary as every cell in our bodies (most of which renew every year). We were before we are and will be after were gone, as this existence is but a transition. A mighty oak was once a tiny seed, it just kept on fulfilling its purpose without question and will continue to do so even after it has fallen. We are no different, we are not separate, we are ONE.
So, as I write this on a plane I see all of the people around me. We are individuals, but one on a plane. I will look at the ground as we land and see the rush of activity coupled with beautiful stillness. I will see an entire universe below me, all necessary for it all to be. This story never ends, this story never dies, and this story never gets old. After all, it is our purpose.
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ
I simply did not know. I felt the energy the first time our eyes met; like the shock of cold water running down my sunburned back it felt oh so good while exposing what was oh so bad. I needed it, I needed you but was not ready. Or so it seemed. I was an infant, and there you were demanding that I run when I had so much to learn before I could walk. You weren’t demanding, I was demanding. I could have let you go to your own wonders, yet I selfishly demanded that you walk this path with me. I was begging for it to be whole; the voice within me saying “this is it” while the voices around me were saying “this is over“. So I ran, blistering my feet softened by self-loathing. So I ran, abrading my knees with each stumble, scarring my legs with each fall. So I ran, until you were broken and I was healed. I learned to run before I learned to walk and I forced you to crumble with the stench of my fear. The fear that kept me still even as my legs were making the motions you required of me…of what I had to require of myself. I ran as to not lose you. I ran as to not have to let go of the only piece of me that felt real.
Yet I did not know. The tear-stained site of where your smile once stood remained proof of my ignorance. My longing heart broken by the steel coursed remembrances of time simply did not know how to beat. Such pitiful displays of weakness bound us together by sheer force of will – shear force of fear of what lie on the other side of knowing. My sheer force was destructive; yours moved mountains. My force caused pain; yours created love. My will laid barren a once beautiful oasis; yours spawned life anew from a craggy cliff.
So what do I owe this practice of inspiration, this creation brought from the example you have given me? Your love, my dear, the cooling spring in the desert, the chilly breeze on a hot summer’s day. Your steadfastness in the most uncertain of times; your example of what love is in the midst of a torrent of fear. My hand is all I have to offer, my heart is all I have to give. It is yours as I have no need for it beyond you. Perfection is not my middle name and sorrow follows me as surely as this shadow reminds me of who I am without the Light. Yet now I know, for you have shown me. Now I know.
All I know I learned from you. Others taught me fear, you taught me love. My life had been a story of suffering, you gave me an opportunity to see. I am but a sapling, but you helped me break through the soil. I did not know how great life could be until I realized how bad it was. How bad I was making it. Yet from that seed nurtured by what Love Is I stand, a sapling in the woods with you as my Sun, my Rain, my subtle air. I inhale in joy as I bask in the Love you have given me. I feel your touch as I enjoy all that being is spirit provides. In this I know.
What was born from what I did not know I surely now know. I did not always see this sun, I sometimes lose sight of the way, yet from the darkness I stand still and all I need do is listen. Listen for you. Yes, now I know. I am home wherever I can hear you.
©2010 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ