crossing rivers gone dry

crossing rivers gone dry, empty clouds hurry from the parchment land weaving shadows through the rolling grasses and shrubs, greens fading to browns as each drop of water is milked into the stubborn soil, waiting for the seasons to change, not knowing if they ever will. the smack of the canteen clangs against some loose plastic cord tie and finds its own rhythm against the slipping sandals. the desert through the bend of the river bed betrays no secrets, speaking simply welcome to all who come, words like all of man's necessities, have no justice here, waiting inevitably changes to introspection, to escape the dull reality that time is a wall we cannot scale alone, and cannot find some one to boost me over and wait for the miracle written on the sandpaper faces of every farmer. i seek the transparent water, floating and falling from the sky, spreading up from deep wells, held captive in the greediness of sun parched tongues and faces dulled with desires. i wick swiftly, using the mind to imagine the ancient wells and aqueducts that stretched with the expanding empires of conquered glory and greed, once water flowed from this spot, a mountain so small, only in the unchanging tabletops of compressed sand could frail humans picture a great water works, pleasing the royalties and commoners alike as  the walled city's slaves would turn the mighty wheel that lifted the now dry river to this unloftley top, sending even in the shimmers and reflected light, designed to last forever, the miracle of distributed water. send to every point claimed by birthright of the majesties that reign where no rain will ever drop and dampen this dusty soil that clings to every uncovered inch of skin, seeps up through the sinuses and invades the precious brain blood barrier, throwing sand into the delicate exposed transaxle of the human/being barriers, the walls between the flesh the chakras and the divine shell are leaking, the transporter of experiences, sits hot and dusty on rocks of burning desire and passion, now left to heat the air long after the ancient sun declines all invitations to stay, just this one moonless night. my footsteps depart on the smooth stone beneath the banks that shield me from prying by well meaning but unbearable sufferers from their lives, they eke a harsh harvest, those that plant in the rocky earth. what wonders that once were and are no more as eke becomes less than eke and finally the small embarrassment of death is managed, as if there was something that could have changed all this, somehow denied the inevitable yet again but for some more perfect sacrifice, some sale of those deathly organs, that become the final entry in a e-form stored on some infinitesimal portion of virtual space, now so perfect as a non entity so easy to manage without the constant babbling of wasted thoughts that have all been thought before, all words that have been spoken in a language that enslaved everyone from birth, from a contrived life, meant only to fill the time, fill the space, become the most finited restrained and fearful reincarnation that could possibly have been programmed in everyone, from birth, until that journey ends, i slip and feel the bruise of the small boulder i chose not to see directly in front of me. pausing just long enough to realize that to go or to stay is completely neutral. all action is the movement of the divine will through this created universe all experiences are the diving consciousness, untouched by the mind, you are the expression and the form of the formless flawless unknowable truth. it is not the answer that is sought but rather the  moment without minutes, the spaciousness unspoken. there is only being in the dry river, without the water, it has become perfection.

I just returned

I just returned from the land down under, underland, wonderland, where the coconuts grow like weeds, the air is soft and silky, and the true master resides. his small bamboo pole hut is barely big enough to sit in, the top wrapped like a hersheys kiss in an old tarp because this has been a very cold winter so far here in the unending summer. all day the breeze blows westward and the windmills like old propellers spin lazily in the sun. but there are no windmills in this old neighborhood, where we jump in the local lake down stairs of antiquity covered in slippery green algae and wash up before our meeting, our divine obeisance to the lord Ayya narayana, this ancient body dweller, his limbs weathered like old koa branches, sitting before his hut, with the eyes of a child/mystic/ancient seer, we do not see him at first, we sit in our dhoti and head scarves behind his camp. but he feels each one of us, some have come bearing large bags of rice and vegetables to cook for the days meals prepared for the villagers and devotees, others like ourselves have driven all night sleepless and bearing only a few bananas and sweets. yet our hearts beat together in the love for this divine soul who in a body still after 80 plus years is giving darshan this morning.and though he has not seen us yet nor us him, he calls to my friend and companion johti with a guttural command and then I am waved around the small enclosure to be served morning chai in coconut shells by the master himself. I cannot tell you the joy in this graceless body to be seen by his loving eyes full of merriment and curiosity and love, yet I feel my insides being turned inside out I fumble with my cloth and throw myself to the ground before him, forgetting what the correct kneeling and holding cups formally are, I am smiling like a silly schoolgirl and am covered in the sacred dirt that he sits upon. I drink my chai slowly looking in his kind face and form even as I am being signaled by the chief of the devotees to come back to the line, I rest my head upon the ground before him after I have enjoyed my few stolen moments and there is a heat a fire inside my skull and stomach that sends me into a nirvana of joy that I still to this moment am lost in. his soul is ageless and his heart so complete without condition or judgment, yet in me my soul my self this being within was somehow asking for liberation, from desire from self from any sense other than the eternal now and this freedom to not want to not need but to be eternally present and somehow this is being granted as the heat inside like an oven burns behind the eyes and in the solar plexus. for two days I sit and meditate and walk and exist in this wonderland of southern india and every moment I am in ayya's heartand feel his connection like a flame catching the limbs of my existence and I burning like a ghee lamp before the eternal soul preparing his morning chai. I cry like a baby given all he can drink and so wishing he could drink more of this nectar that he sends without restraint to hearts that truly and always are here to only be within a flames distance of his heart. in these two very short days that still linger like the taste of sweet chocolate I am transported to the great sense of bhakti and the surrender to a divinity within that is seen in physical form before me. to have travelled halfway around the world, to the density of the southern point of india where three oceans meet, to find in a small hut in a small village, the ancient one, still persisting in human form and to be recognized and smiled upon by him, who could not cry as the prodigal son does when mother wraps her arms around his weary shoulders and there is no other place to be. this heart this life all has been for these moments short they may seem, yet eternally touching every moment of every life that this soul has known, and truth like love has no restriction on when it comes or how it will look. I am this time so fully comprehending, experiencing and loving this small master that fills the universe with his gaze. tears like flames falling from a fire on the cliff, pour from my eyes and from my heart for this love, this life this moment that will never end

one life one love one master

one life one love one master, to thee I surrender endlessly, empty of the small universe of desire and held in your palm. knowing here the universe is nothing, and the heart of the master everywhere. beloved this watery world, the oceans surrounding the lands, the earth holding all the waters, one love one earth one sea. in this vast universe there is only love that makes all untrue  true. the pure joy that weeps in the purity. filled beyond measure or knowing. every song a mantra, each leaf and flower blossom a mandala of the living earth. inside your tiny hut, all the universe is love and all divine truth comes forth, a glory of humble being and weeping for  all the sacrifice to be here in the body thy love Jai Ayya! Jai love! jai Naranaya!

in truth, what is love

in truth, what is love, the sweetness of home and protection of the child before the unfeeling emptiness of time. forever is a long and empty road and at the end there is only here and now, the world seeks love as we hurtle through the lost emptiness of space, searching for answers to riddles without meaning. we say we need an answer when really its just to ask the question loudly proud to have discovered in ourselves a deeper layer than just what is the social normalcy, but the answer is not the reason we seek, its the seeking itself that gives purpose gives direction, but if the answer were accepted, that would all be gone. better to keep looking than accept what is. for love is protection from our own mistakes and love is a sweetness that makes the truth seem bitter by comparison, but ultimately we are not the individual alone and needy, there is divinity but it ends the dream, once divine, then the excuses fall away, and the dream ends, one awakens to the truth, that all are sleeping and the awakeness is what is needed, love is a tool in the box, but eventually there is a totality that like the ultimate stage of love, has no other, no object, no return or sharing, but just the work. love is doing without result or ownership, surrendering the personal, the will, the direction and letting the truth be. its in that moment that truth and love become one and the same, neither free nor enslaved, neither alone or together, all becomes this tiny part of the whole and as the tiny part so too the whole. I find myself both afraid and excited to be both giving up and getting with the same hand. I have no prayer for this but a small heart still beats within, shedding its fears and tears as every dilemma and choice is faced as a new moment with only the possibility of completion, not outcome. I race to my own conclusion truthfully, for I have loved completely and still do. everyone is love and everything is truth, for nothing has been left out or forgotten. the way is always right in front and the light is where you look to find it.

the ancient miracle

the owlet moth

the ancient miracle the unconditional consciousness the point of brilliance where all things vanish in the light. then there is no separation no experiencer, no other, and in this emptiness only one resides imagining other separate consciousness the very end of pure truth, love, in the mirrors face, I can find none no thought. feeling, reaction. no vessel contains, no idea, no human left, only singularity. no voice or sound, light or dark  guides the soul to bring forth that which creates universes and as swiftly destroys them, lifting this empty palm where only Shiva returning all to his state, no safety from life  standing in the force untouched, grateful too be alive,  the knowing is a collection of habits repeating endlessly, the miracle is bound in the 5 sense, from which all  comparisons are made, image seen, totality becomes Shiva, swiftly bringing all to it end, and in that instant, newness occurs, there the miracle cannot stop, the step into the void and then only realizing its cessation, the mind is like the diving board, where it exists only to fling the hopeless emotions into so beautiful the azure sky and sea, waves of pure energy lifting to becoming the infinite perfection of every form shared with every drop of consciousness, and patiently awaits the inevitability that the tree of life extends through the primal form and its every iteration, evolution and change, allowing for the passage  of a finite self transporting into the eternal present. touching becoming the sane as everyone, both within and without, light is indistinct, time swallowed by the emptiness and ceases internally, allowing the exhilaration and the collapse in equal portions, delay not this world but the very sense of waiting that has no fulfillment no sensation, the void itself surrounded on all sides by frothing consciousness that has but one function, to be released, this soul heart awareness truth, beating in unbearable unconditional rhythmic dancing, propelling each and every human to seek that which is eternally silent. let no words confuse, the microscopic self its virtual mind approximating the measurements of its own experiences into the purity of this moment where nothing touches any other thing, but lives eternally within

every moment is contained

every moment is contained in this one, everything everywhere continues to exist through the universal connectivity of existence. all life is one life all things are but one substance in every possible form. that which is psychic is feeling the oneness that is the true being within. one source for all, one being existing, one dreamer dreaming. we have no end or beginning, that is just the dreamer passing from state to state, now dreaming through you then waking when you die. but you awaken remembering, the dream is you, and this world the dream living. and what of the meaning, the purpose, does your dreaming have meaning, have purpose, then so does your life as a dream. when the dreaming ends, when the mind stops producing reasons, when the muscles quit straining, the breath alone continues, and the light becomes ever present, here there is a message, a truth, a moment of brilliance. gathered together there is no separation from that which created you, the dreamer's slumbering, with no end the dream concocts this universe and lets loose a fantasy supreme and all within are the playmates of the mind, acknowledging this creation, agreeing to play the role of the created, the finite and whimsical souls of the lost tribe wandering for ever and becoming more and more lost in the universal drama that unwinds from the unconsciousness. what begins is  looking for an end, there is no other way out, the finite awakenings are only the dreamer trying to awake, to find the way back from this cosmic coma. there is no place or time just stream of consciousness evolving from nothing expanding to fill the consciousness of the universal dreamer, each tiny facet unfolding in an unknowable design that even the dreamer cannot grasp. as the end of the dream comes so will the souls created in the dream awaken to the dreamer within for who is dreaming but each one of us, together forever untangled without resolution, the meaning obscured and the ending lost in a brilliant haze of awakening.