Pretty Dying Things

Step outside where here and there the flowering

Child of the long cold harsh Winter dead

Submits Her playful life to this shower Spring

Rains down upon Her fragrant golden head.

I am She and She is Me.

You are Her and I am You.

The trees sway in the wind.

The branches break and bend.

The coming storm already came and went,

Leaving us here as we are:  stripped bare.

A ground unencumbered by adornment

With the deaths of lives playfully unaware.

You spoke to me once of a lush garden

Somehow thriving in a forest overgrown

Where the soil of earth’s heart could not harden

Because we worked that ground with our love alone.

No longer carrying the weight of such dreams

As those, we are free to live now unresolved

And to play with life’s pretty dying things

With the whimsical laughter of love evolved.

lost

written in light upon the decaying walls
of the once proud temple of my dead heart
are the sacred words echoed through the halls
of the minds of men since thinking did start:

"i know the way god chose not to reveal.
his empty heart has nothing to you to give.
if you would know the secrets he did conceal,
sacrifice yourself that i might live."

i recall the times when love did heal me
of afflictions revealed to be divine.
yet, looking down on this fallen debris,
i see i fell prey to a voice not mine.

"you are not the last, nor were you the first,
to find yourself used as my dark disguise.
the absence of god created this thirst
that made it simple to possess you with lies."

and when god speaks there is a deathly silence...
even from him.
he gave me the signs to which my mind did violence,
and now my soul burns in the hands of the seraphim.

Theme the Second: Uncertainty - Day Eight

Okay, I know there is no such thing as an eight day week.  I'm moving into a new week with little commentary having been provided by me over last week's theme of uncertainty.  One could say I was so uncertain that I wasn't even sure what to write.  The truth, though, is that I gave little consideration to the theme of uncertainty because I was so certain of the validity of my suffering and all I suffered over. 

One evening during the past week, I was sure that I am the most isolated, secluded, misunderstood, forgotten, and left behind man on the face of the earth - and that evening I was in a crowd and with company.  Another day, I was certain there was nothing in me worth loving because of all the mistakes I'd made in the past.  By the same token, I was also convinced in other moments that, based on the evidence of how others treated me, no one can love me with the depth of love I am capable of giving them because no one else in the world is as willing as I am to sacrifice his or her will to something higher.

All the while, I was confident that my life has been a wasted one - devoid of experience, love, compassion, patience, and peace.

And yet there were more subtle forms of certainty also at work in me:  To counter the above examples (and the many other instances) of certainty to which I clung, there arose a multitude of thoughts and plans of action I must make and take to live life more fully, to show greater love and patience, to escape from the hellish captivity of my pain.  I was also certain that the just reward for the life I'd lived  is this excruciating suffering over my past.     These last two certainties never presented themselves explicitly as considerations about which I should be sure.  Rather, my trust in the other certainties over which I ached made these two states of mind appear to be wise guides sent from heaven to lead me out of this hell. 

That incessant mental activity came to a head yesterday when something in me cracked and then burst wide open.  Something vile and bitter spilled forth from the hole, and the cracking, bursting, and spilling may have been the most agonizing experience I have ever had.  I laid in my bed after awakening from sleep to yet another day in which I felt so oppressed by darkness that I could scarcely breathe.  My mind ran through all the certainties of misery in my life.  In the midst of that spinning confinement of my thinking, some strange understanding that was at first darkened and slanted by guilt slammed into me like a sledge hammer to the chest:  all the specific circumstances and relationships over which I then found myself miserable came to the point at which they were because of the very certainty I had once had over what to do about those troubling moments within those circumstances and relationships.  The emptiness and futility of this contradiction drove me as near to madness as I have ever come:  on the one hand, I saw just how sure I was I must act or be a certain way in response to this or that difficulty I had encountered in my past, while on the other hand I saw how certain I am now that I must suffer doubt and guilt over those actions about which I was once so certain were right. 

My body convulsed.  I flung myself out of bed, thrashing and writhing on the floor, slamming into walls, flinging anything I could lay my hands on, screaming myself voiceless, crying myself empty.  Never has my mind, body, and heart broken so violently as in that instant of being shown just how far my certainty about the kind of man I am, about the qualities of character I have, about the kind of life I value and have worked myself weary to make for myself...just how far all these certainties about who I am and what God and this life are all about...just how far all this confidence in my conclusions had led me astray from reality.

Afterward, I lay in a collapsed heap on the floor, utterly hopeless and devoid of any will or reason to go on living.  I begged God to take me - not with words or with a hope of crossing over to some painless place, but with a quiet and still emptiness in the face of the hopelessness of all my knowing that also lay in crumbles on the floor with me.  If there is nothing of which I can know or be certain that does not lead to certain suffering and despair, then there is no reason to go on because all of life is this trap. 

I spent the rest of the day - when I finally pulled my body off the floor - moving and breathing.  At times, the uselessness of those two functions of form sought to overcome me; at others, there was no me to overcome and I did my duties lightly, without any hope of completion or fulfillment through them.  Even the identity of loneliness I have experienced over the past 6 weeks felt more and more distant with each manifestation of itself in my thinking.

I awoke this morning with a disturbance in my chest.  It was much less intense than yesterday's.  But each time the mind sought to give form to, and thus feed, that disturbance, I was so uncertain of the truth of the images presented to me, that the reasons for, and afterward the pressure of, the disturbance soon vanished.

Was that breaking apart on the floor of my room yesterday a bleeding out of the certainty in me?  Was the violent fit the bodily manifestation of Love wresting certainty's control from my body?  Does certain darkness lead to uncertain Love?  I don't know.  At this moment, I prefer not knowing because an uncertain mind seems to relinquish more easily the certainty of its pain.

A Poem - Version 2

I wrote one for you to declare my love,
that thing you trampled and beat and abused
and choked out the life with white hand in black glove -
its innocence in death so sweetly confused.

You stand over me now dead there on the floor,
visited for the moment by no remorse
for your crime, but doomed to know forevermore
that this life you took was preceded by yours.

A Poem

I wrote one for you to declare my love,
that thing you trampled and beat and abused
and choked out the life with white hand in black glove -
its innocence in death so sweetly confused.

You stand over me now dead there on the floor,
visited for the moment by no remorse
for your crime, but doomed to know forevermore
that this life I gave up makes you mine.

Theme the Second: Uncertainty - Day Three

This week's theme for contemplation and integration is "uncertainty."  Being neither here nor there, nor knowing the goodness or evil of either opposite, but standing in the middle of both where the two are one and having no idea what this reconciliation means for your existence.

Uncertainty:  that moment in which one's helplessness and one's sacrifice become one and the same movement into a world above the base and common cycle of this animalistic human ritual of spiritual degradation through pleasure and pain.

Theme the First: Sacrifice - Day Four

Thus, finding myself in a state of helplessness in which no label - such as sacrifice or God or Love or Peace or Grace - have any meaning whatsoever to me, I watch something arise within from out of the shadows of all that tormenting guilt, regret, and self-recrimination.  These and other dark lords gather round this strange new presence with no comprehension of what he (she?  it?) is or means to them, but they are frightened by his arrival.  And it's not that I don't care about what is going on.  It's just that I am not there.

Something said without words - pulsating like a gentle, massaging light.  Something to be known, but not by me.  The guilt is me.  The regret is me.  The self-recrimination is me.  So, too, the excitement, anticipation, pleasure.  Each a little me that cannot hear...something...I know not what.  For each me was me but is not me any longer.  Where am I? 

For a moment it seems I stand at once in the midst of and above a vast, tumultuous sea of rising and falling vibrations - each with a story to tell about itself and its experiences with me.  Each enticing me to take the plunge back into the deep and violent blue waters of opposite and contesting energies so that I may know myself again.  They speak in vain as I sacrifice once more this sensation of being alive.  Such a poor and pathetic life to which to return.  All the treasures of their world could not tempt me to give them form again.

Again, there is no me to tempt.  Only there remains the listening and speaking presence in the midst of that rising and falling ocean of death.  All are helpless to turn away from this towering being.  All long to know its purpose.  Yet, none speak its language nor think they can survive getting too close to its awful core.  For now, they wait along the edges, not willing to venture too close to what is not understood, dreading this that seems to them to be the beginning of the end.  It waits patiently, as if it knows the destiny and fate both of itself and of the dark mass that encircles it.

Theme the First: Sacrifice - Day Three

On a new day, new lessons have come to me about Julieann's comments on my first post on the theme of sacrifice and even my response to her comment and the subsequent post I wrote. Perhaps I will have the will and opportunity to write of these later. For now, I can say that I certainly did not always succeed in shining the light on the path that could help the one I love.

A relationship will always bring up that in ourselves of which we were not previously aware. All the more so when you set about to base that relationship in spirit. Our true character is revealed by our reactions to these parts of ourselves that are made active in the interactions of the relationship. I can only speak for myself when I say my character leaves much to be desired. Yet, I am helpless to do a thing about it. I cannot go back and right my wrongs. I have no opportunity to explain what I now see about myself. I cannot imagine any pleasure or comfort or relationship (even with the one I love) that can assuage the guilt, pressure, and suffering over what was, over where I missed the mark.

That leaves only one thing: sacrifice. And I am not even certain what that means at the moment. Is sacrifice this moment of utter helplessness in which there is nothing at all that one can do, say, think, imagine for the future, or justify from the past that will change or alleviate the suffering? Is sacrifice nothing more than reaching the dead-end that suffering must lead one to? I don't know.

All I know is that I am here at that dead-end - with nowhere else to go, nothing left to do - pouring my heart out in words to no one and nothing in particular. Even writing these words has felt so pointless. I don't know why I write them. Something tells me to, but I see no reason in the process. There is no catharsis in writing, "I am helpless and cannot change myself or what I have done or been." It is just what it is.  I don't know how to even pretend to live with this.  I feel incapable of doing much of anything right now, and I am surprised I have been able to type this much.  
 
I have no other choice now but to be helpless and useless in the face of this pain.  I hold no hope that anything or anyone will rescue me from it.  I desire no worldly rescue and am cynical that there is any such thing as an other-worldly rescue in store.  I only know this hopelessness, this helplessness, this uselessness of me.    

Theme the First: Sacrifice - Day Two

Sometimes, I believe that everything wants a piece of me - is trying to steal from me my peace.  I am very sensitive to the demands of kids, of dog, of house, of job, of friends, of family, of lover, of traffic, of stomach, of exercise....I find myself getting so sick of having to be responsible for anything at all. 

If I take a step back, however, I realize that none of these elements in my life have anything to do with the pressure that I experience in relation to them.  The truth is, the enemy of peace uses these elements to remove me from a relationship with the source of peace in every moment of every day.  Who hasn't been alone with no duty in particular on the docket and felt the sudden compulsion to do something - anything - to avoid that moment with oneself?  Why?  Because in that quiet moment alone, this enemy of peace knows you may discover its true nature and workings in you, and so it sends you running again after the next thing you need to do to claim this ever-elusive peace. 

The pressure I feel over the "demands" of life does not belong to the responsibilities themselves, but to my desire to be in control, to take care of everything myself because I believe that I am the only one who can do anything the right way and I am the one who will make or break the happiness and contentment and peace of another.  What a tremendous and arrogant burden that is.  What's worse, such a mistaken idea actually hands me over into the hands of irresponsibility as eventually the pressure overloads the senses and I snap at someone I love, I withdraw from those I love, or I succumb to the lie that there is too much to do and so do nothing.  Moreover, the next level down in the captivity of this pressing nature within is that the same mind that pressured me to the point of snapping then condemns me to guilt and suffering over having ever listened to its inner demands and having now hurt another.

A dear friend wrote to me words of wisdom today.  These words and the sentiments they conveyed came through her from her own experience with surrendering this false compulsion to be everything for everyone and then judge and condemn youself when, as must inevitably occur, you fall short of someone's want (disguised as a need) of you.  What she wrote me helped me to recall the sheer arrogance of clinging to the thought that I am responsible for all that goes wrong for everyone around me.  She didn't say it in any harsh way like that, but she lovingly pointed my focus back to our one true responsibility to this moment.  If I am responsible to this moment, then it becomes impossible for me to be irresponsible to anything or anyone in it.

I knew this once.  But the mind is clever, and even as I believed I had left behind the false responsibilities of this world, it crept back upon me and overtook me when I wasn't looking.  That which my mind has claimed is responsible for my present sadness was at one time something I knew in the moment must end.  Now, my thinking has raised this dead thing through the false responsibility called guilt.  There was no guilt in the moment it died.  The moment that I was responsible to made it clear that it was time to be done with the form that interaction had taken on.  Only a fool and an egotist is responsible to and for the past and for those who take up residence in what was and then blame him for their suffering over where they have chosen to reside.

This moment, I accept the need to sacrifice this me who believes he is responsible for the world of those around him.  I don't know how he took control of me again, but I know I must be diligent and watchful in each moment, for he is that cunning. 

Thank you, Julieann.

Theme the First: Sacrifice - Day One

I am entering the new year with an intention to set for myself a weekly theme for consideration, contemplation, and integration into my life.  The first theme of the new year, which has selected itself by default through the position in which I find myself physically, mentally, and emotionally to start this year, is Sacrifice.  A somewhat intimidating theme to take on here at the outset, but I trust that it has been provided to me for a reason. 

I spent the last few weeks of 2011 in the grips of a most intense suffering over the end of a relationship that was dysfunctional and toxic, not because either of us were bad human beings or because either of us set out to ruin what love so graciously gave to us by bringing us to one another, but because of the great chasm that existed in our intentions with regard to addressing a lifetime of accumulated emotional distress and pain that must necessarily be exposed for healing in a relationship.  Stated more appropriately, I have come under the influence of dark thoughts over the events that occurred during and at the end of the relationship, over the initial promise of the relationship, over what I did wrong and what she did wrong, over what is to become of us both now, over what she is doing without me, over what I will ever do without her. 

Each moment is a request for sacrifice.  Each moment, we are asked to give what we receive in the moment to something higher than ourselves.  This is something that is almost incomprehensible to Paul - that each moment and all the attending physical, mental, and emotional sensations brought to the fore by the "conditions" of the moment are to be lifted up to the Father/Mother.  Paul lifts up neither the good nor the bad, but almost exclusively revels in both as his own.  He forgets these do not belong to him.  In truth, Paul is more inclined to the bad than the good.  Paul's suffering defines him and captivates his attention much more readily and willingly than his joy.  He seems eager to give away or even become suspicious of the good times, of the ownership of prosperity and contentment, but he has almost no doubt whatsoever as to the title and veracity of his pain. 

Suffering is the Isaac God is asking me to sacrifice to Him.  What I doubt, that of which I am cynical, is the goodness of God.  I do not trust that He really asks for my suffering to be handed over to Him.  Some thoughts actually accuse him as the chief cause of this hurt.  I do not have faith that he can transform the pain and hand it back to me made new, unrecognizable, and beautiful by Grace.