Tag: Forgiveness (Page 5 of 5)

The Final Breath

September 28, 2012 / Tom

♥

He laid there, the immense pain in his chest beginning to numb under the realization that he was dying. Just moments before he was alive, enjoying the morning with his beloved, laughing about the memories they had created the night before. Now, he was sprawled out on the living room floor fighting for air, and wanting so desperately to talk.

She was there, above him, her hands holding his face as they had a thousand times before. The worry in her eyes was clear as she begged him not to leave her. “I love you baby, please stay with me. We never have to be apart again, I promise. Stay with me, I love you so much. Please…please.”

He wanted to talk, but the words just would not come out. He wanted to remind her that he loved her too. He wanted to bring her back to the many moments they shared. As her blue eyes cried the rains of hell onto him, he wanted to bring her back to Heaven, the place that they shared when their bodies meshed and their minds fell into each other. He wanted so badly to comfort her as she tried to comfort him by touching him, kissing him, and reminding him that yes, he was all she ever needed. All he could do, however, was lay there. As the tears streamed down from the corner of his eyes he could only stare at her and beg whatever gods there were that this would not be the end.

His desperate struggle for air began to settle as his mind drifted back to the first time he saw her. It was a picture, and her eyes had enveloped his senses and drew his attention. He couldn’t explain the feeling, he only could utter something to himself that he would say to her a short time later: “beautiful”. She stole his attention to the point that despite loving the mountains he did not notice them behind her. All he could do was look at her face, those eyes and that smile. He felt he knew her once, although he couldn’t say when. He also felt he needed to know her again, although he couldn’t say why. So, he sent a simple message, and then came her reply.

He could remember the reply, the poetic way she stated her emotions of the moment. He could feel her presence despite never meeting her. In a brave and courageous moment this man had sent that woman a message and she had replied. He knew then that something was happening within him.

A sudden shift brought him back to his reality. “I’m going to get the phone to call 9-1-1. Baby, please hold on!”

“NO!” he wanted to scream. “Please stay here with me. I need you baby, hold my hand. Kiss me. I don’t have much time left. I have so much I need to say to you.”

She was gone, and although only a few feet it seemed like a million miles had separated them. They had begun their relationship hundreds of miles apart, and although they had settled into a routine he could remember the pain of being separated from her. So many days had to be spent missing her and wishing she was there with him. In the early days he had often doubted that this woman could love him. He had often doubted that she could stay true to him. He often caved to the frantic fear of his mind created long before he ever met her. Even at its worst when they ended for a short time, she came back to him proving that he mattered, and that he had value to someone. She loved him, he could see it in her eyes and feel it in her touch, and now as he heard it in her voice as she frantically begged the dispatcher to get there as fast as he could. As she screamed at the phone, he only wanted her voice to become sweet again like it was when she said “I love you” or “come to bed baby”.

“Please sweetheart, let me hear you sing” his mind whispered as his mouth remained silent. “Don’t cry, just whisper in my ear and laugh. God, let me here that laugh please. I have a joke here somewhere, please just laugh.”

He could almost hear her laugh. It made him tingle to hear it. Her eyes would light up and her mouth would curve “just so”. It was no wonder everyone loved her so much. It used to drive him crazy, and he often felt in the beginning like she liked them more than she liked him. She paid more attention to them, and he felt relegated to a dark corner of the room. He believed she gave them more of her than she gave him, but once he began to listen and to see the truth he realized what a fool he was. She gave him so much more of herself than she had given anyone else. She loved him, and offered to him parts of her he was sure no one else had ever seen. She even gave him what he asked for, and in the process showed him the truth. “What a fucking idiot I was” he said to himself. “I want my fucking life back, I want to love her like she deserved to be loved from the first time we met. Please God, give it back to me, I won’t waste a second…”

God’s answer was a gasp for air and an intense pain in his chest. He shook his head angrily at the reply, and then focused as he had learned on the beauty around him. He could feel his children in his arms again as they had been as babies. He could hear them say “I love you dada” and feel their little hands take his index finger as they struggled to walk. He could feel them cuddled next to him when they got older as he read their favorite book. He could remember the lectures to his son about sports, the diatribes to his daughters about boys, the millions of laughs and the relatively small numbers of tears. He loved to make them laugh, and he would often make himself the butt of his own jokes to get them laughing hysterically. As he looked into his woman’s eyes something must have told her, “please tell my babies I love them. Please don’t ever let them forget.”

“I won’t. But you’re not going anywhere. You will tell them yourself.”

“God I wish” was his heart’s reply. His children were the first people he ever felt pure love for. They taught him what it was to love and be loved, and the woman who now cradled him softly taught him how right he was. His children gave him value as a father, she taught him value as a lover, together they taught him value as a man. Even now as he spent his last moments in this existence she was here, showing him his value and the true meaning of love. It wasn’t in the nifty words he could string together. It wasn’t in the sex. It wasn’t in the outward show of affection. It was in the truth that made all of those things possible, but not necessary. They were necessary to the ego, the truth was necessary only to itself and it owed something only to itself. He had understood that early on, but it took him time to get over himself to actually use it. His past had once so cluttered his mind that it stole precious moments away from him and from them. Moments made even more precious by their imminent end.

He could feel the end coming. Within him became a mixture of peace and pain, of darkness and light. He realized this interesting parallel in the life we all lead. It seemed what we call death is just like what we call life, a mixture of suffering and joy. Even now, as he suffered intensely amid the final pathway to peace he couldn’t go there. Not yet. He wanted to spend one more moment with this woman who had changed his life and brought the sunshine where none existed. For that he would bear whatever pain that had to be borne. He suddenly became calm, and the pain seemed to subside. This, as it had been his entire life, was the power of Love.

He looked at her and felt healthy. His breathing seemed to return to normal, and the pain in his chest subsided. He shook his head slowly, although he was not sure at what. It felt like the first time they met, with a mixture of excitement and anticipation followed by realization and love. Then she laughed, oh God she laughed. Through the tears and sniffles she laughed. His head, now on her thighs as she stroked his head and wiped the tears from his cheeks, shook a bit with each burst of laughter. He was able to lift his arms long enough to wipe her hair from her face and stroke the contour of her jaw line one final time. Suddenly, he found his voice for one last poetic verse to his lover.

“Baby, I love you. Since the dawn of time I have loved you. It may be here, or it may be there, but somewhere I will be loving you. Please, know that it is you, and it always has been you. I am grateful for last night, and for every night I have had with you. I am also very grateful for this moment and that it was with you. I love you…I swear.”

As she bent to kiss him, he closed his eyes, grateful that the last vision he would have in this lifetime was of her, his lover, his friend, his guiding star. They kissed sweetly with a passion that had never left. With that, he inhaled deeply and headed toward peace.

♥

Our Love Heals

September 13, 2012 / Tom

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.

A Conversation of Love

September 10, 2012 / Tom

♥

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.

∞

My Garden of Gethsemane

July 17, 2012 / tomgrasso

In my Garden of Gethsemane

I walked along with her

She could not know my suffering

A worm stuck in my own cocoon.

The wounds I bore

She touched them

And they opened

I screamed silently until I could be silent no more.

She did not mean it

She could not see they were there

And I hid the bleeding

Until our river ran crimson with untold memories.

By touching them

She healed them

The flesh, it tore

But allowed the Light to enter.

There are some Souls

Who bless our lives with presence

Who heal us even amid the suffering

Such is Love.

I wonder what wounds I touched in her

And I weep at the thought of the injury

Even as I pray that I healed her too

A reflection of the Light she is to me.

I can see her now, clearly

The clouds of torment gone

The attention to wounds forgotten

Love eternal reigns the day.

In the ending a new beginning

In the loss a prize eternal

I bask in the tears I shed for her

Such medicine the salty rivers give!

I feel her now not through a pain soaked curtain

But through a warm vessel of Light

The Sun, the Moon, the Stars

The Glory of a Dancing Tigress.

I felt the Universe unfold in beautiful awe

As she fell into my arms weeping

Telling me a million stories

Without ever saying a word.

And I heal…

That moment I came down off my cross

And turned it into just another tree

I fell in love with me.

Right there, in my Garden of Gethsemane

Where the Beloved showed me who I am

Right where the wounds became no more

Right were she touched where no one has touched me before.

I wrapped my arms around her

Our sweated Beings merged

I loved in that moment like I’ve never loved before

I swallowed all of her she’d allow me to have.

I ceased to be in that moment still

The final thread of my veil fell away

Or so it seems that weighted cloak is gone

Lifted by a selfless act of Love.

I do not pretend to know tomorrow

There are many crosses with many weights to bear

Yet in this instant I fear no more

I am free in this, my Garden of Gethsemane.

The Debt Ceiling Crisis – A Lesson In Spirituality

July 29, 2011 / tomgrasso

While others are digging in to the ideological positions I have been simply watching. While some are calling each other names and suggesting that the “sky is falling” I have been stuck in observation mode simply taking it all in.

Now that ends. I have seen enough.

I am left rather exasperated by the shear infantile behavior of our political leaders and pundits stuck in their ideological camps. The are rolling around in their ideas of what is “right” like swine rolling around the mud in their pigsties. It’s like watching elementary school bullies pick on each other until one goes home crying. It simply is insanity at its worst.

For instance, allow me to paraphrase a conversation recently overheard on Capitol Hill:

The Hobbit (Source http://www.shockya.com)

Sen. McCain: “Tea Party members are like hobbits.”

Congressman Rand Paul: “Oh yeah, but you’re a troll.”

Sen. McCain: “This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.”

Um, excuse me kids, but don’t you have a job to do? While I may agree with McCain, wasn’t he the one who gave us all Sarah Palin? I mean isn’t there something I heard once about those in glass houses throwing stones? You betcha!

Now I don’t want to belabor the points that ideologues have presented countless times already on the issue. Between the endless news stories, tweets, Facebook updates, and forum posts I have read it is very clear to me. The points everyone is raising aren’t the cure, they are part of the problem here. Things like the debt crisis are not problems, they are a symptom of a much larger disease.

The Diagnosis

“Calling Dr. Moe, Dr. Larry, Dr. Shemp” (Source Amazon.com)

We are infected hopelessly in a condition I term “human stupidioitis”. When I first used that term, I realized that I was saying “human stupid-eee-oh-itis”, but now realize that I was missing a consonant there. It should be “human stupid-idiot-itis” since that’s exactly what it is. We have become a species so addicted to our own ideas that we have redefined the entirety of the universe according to the ideas we have created of what it is. We have created God into an image of man, we have created pollution as “good”, we have created social responsibility as “redistribution of wealth” and we have created greed as a “gauge of success” (just to name a few).

I will leave it “human stupid-eee-oh-itis” for now. It just sounds so much more “medical” since it is nearly impossible to spell and to say correctly.

What is This Condition?

Modern man became what he thinks he is (notice the italics) today largely because of his frontal lobe (sorry opposable thumbs, but you aren’t the main reason we dominate the Earth). Our frontal lobes have allowed us to do all kinds of things, from pondering “what am I?” to finding cures for medical conditions to finally realizing that there is no money in a cure while riches await in the treatment. Our frontal lobes have created not only our abilities to save each other, but to kill each other. Yes, our frontal lobes have helped us truly understand what we think we are, and have given us ideas not only on who we are

Now, where did I leave my wallet?

but also on who everyone else should be.

Therein lies the root of the disease. The frontal lobe, to me, is an “idea creator”. I bet we didn’t have one when residing in Eden. In fact, we were so “idea-less” that it took a snake to have one for us and once Adam and Eve ate of the apple “wham-oh!!” there it was. It seems our first idea, if you believe the story of Genesis, was that our genitals were horrible and needed to be covered. So we covered them. It’s been all downhill from there.

In fact, I believe that if we all took off our clothes right now we would all be back in Eden. Just kidding…

I was recently asked what I believed the crux of the Bible was. I stated that when I shed all ideas that were given to me by my family, friends, acquaintances, clergy, teachers, and books I was left with only one idea that made sense to me.

“The entire Bible has only one moral, and that is that human ideas are harmful while acceptance to what is brings to you to God.”

I was thoroughly ridiculed on that one. I had made the statement to a group of Christians on an internet forum I frequent. It was probably the wrong group to suggest that the Bible was not anything other than pure, unadulterated fact. It turned out to be yet another idea that just smacked me in the face.

When you look at each and every event composing the debt crisis, it seems to mirror every other human crisis in history. When you look at it simply and without your own ideas you are left with one incontestable truth. We suffer from a disease of the mind and ideas are its tumors. Tumors that the mind has become reliant on not only for a sense of identity but also for the creation of what is commonly called “truth”. This truth, however, lacks any sense of the present moment. It only knows the present through the past. In this state of the disease, the present simply cannot exist without the past and therefore cannot stand on its own. Oddly enough, this condition is not dependent on the individual’s past for life, it also uses the past of everyone else. We call this condition, ironically enough, “conditioning”.

The Cure

I’d love to tell the world what the cure is. However, I have learned from my friends in the pharmaceutical world that there is no money in the cure, only in the treatment. In addition, I obviously have no idea how to cure the pain of ideas. So allow me to render you a treatment and hope that you will pay me for it. (Yes, I am laughing, and hope you are too. If not, email me and I will send you a Paypal link.)

Allow me to admit that I realize how idiotic I must sound here. First, I am presenting an idea (or several) about how harmful ideas are. Second, I am suggesting that I have no cure, but can provide a treatment. I have not evolved spiritually enough to follow the wise words of the Tao: “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” Understandably I am torn on the prognosis as well as my inability to shut up about the disease.

Treatment #1 – Suffering

Most of us avoid suffering like the plague. Well, we think we do anyway. In fact, most of us are the creators of the conditions that create suffering even as we do our best to avoid the suffering itself. We simply ask for it and then feign ignorance when it falls on us like a brick.

In the case of our debt crisis, we have overspent our revenues for at least the last 10 years. We have ASKED for the debt crisis, and then act not only surprised that we have one but amazed at the consequences. Now, while most of us want to blame our political leaders, I don’t. I blame ME. Why? Well, I am part of the citizenry that has elected those bozos. They are in place with their ideas and tactics because I have put them there (“I” is collective here).

We have overspent our revenue. We have asked for debt under the incorrect assumption that governments MUST operate in the red. Both political parties (ideas) have done had their hand in this cookie jar, and neither seems to willing to end the insanity. They are, however, all too willing to end the other guy’s insanity. The easier of the two, healing thyself, is avoided in favor of the more difficult healing of thy neighbor. It’s a worldwide problem, and not one I can see as easily cured without the complete and utter collapse of governments, economies and cultures.

This will create suffering because of our unobstructed attachment to all human ideas. The suffering will lead to an understanding that allows Treatment #2 to be successful.

Treatment #2 – Removal of the Tumors

Meditation – The Surgery

If the mind is the patient, and ideas are the tumors, then meditation is the surgery necessary to separate the tumors from the patient. Ideas themselves will always be a part of the human mind much like pathogens are always part of the human body, but when we become unattached to those ideas we become free from the disease. It’s not that the tumors themselves won’t be floating around in our minds, it’s just that we won’t let them take hold and we won’t allow our minds to feed off them. They will vanish and have little effect on our present moments.

The treatments themselves are quite successful, at least they have been for me. Even the ideas I present here are not firmly fixed in my thoughts, they are experiences. Sharing experiences will always have much more truth for me than the sharing of ideas will. The more present the experience is the more truth I find in it. Because I can let go of this idea at any time experience provides me with a different one, I am not rooted in that idea and therefore am not “sick” with it. I can let it go at any time, or not depending on the experience of the present moment.

Prognosis

The doctor states that the patient is critical but that there are glimmers of hope. The world’s consciousness is shifting, and the collective enlightenment is near. When I was a young boy, I would often see the Urban Jesus (my name for him) with a sign that said “Repent, the End is Near”. An idea evolved within me that suggested that “repentance is the end”. Then I learned that “repentance” involves guilt, shame, remorse” and all kinds of things that made (and make) little sense to me spiritually, so I dove into the idea of repentance as it relates to my human experience. Now, through my experience, I realize that repentance is the Treatment #1 raised above, with forgiveness being Treatment #2. It has been my experience that you will not heal without first being injured and then forgiving the injury. Repentance is the suffering necessary to recognize the tumor, and forgiveness is the surgery that removes it. You cannot truly heal without going through both treatments.

So, we will eventually suffer for our “human stupidioitis” so that we can recognize the tumors. We will then have to forgive ourselves and heal. Perhaps the suffering will create an immunity to the disease, but so far that hasn’t been the case. I keep hoping that this will be the fever that gets us to the cure, but realize that we are so busy treating the symptom that the cause just keeps festering within us.

The good news here is that you can self-medicate and be cured.