slip below the noise of the day, past the thoughts in your mind and fall into the silence that settles gently as you descend
The Purity of Silence
There it lies, powerfully quiet
beneath the exhausting traffic
and the clamor of construction.
Patiently it waits, behind
the chatter and shriek of popular people
and the nagging of your important assignments.
This shy and gentle permanence exists
like the air you breathe, invisible
and honest as a new day,
a trusting companion, willing to be found
if circumstances, or you, allow.
All this peace-filled state requires of you
is a small donation – a moment of your time,
and the entirety of your attention
to create an undistracted presence
and a complete reduction to now.
Commit to sink in, and slip
below the noise of the day,
past the thoughts in your mind
and fall into the silence
that settles gently as you descend,
offering a pause, a moment of perfect quiet
for you to enter calmly,
embrace it fully
and notice your refinement,
a cleansing
into a still purity, distilled from
the chaos of life, blanketed by
a soft and soundless love
that can only be discovered there.
The Rapids
With bleached knuckles,
we attempt to navigate
a world of whitewater,
blurred by cataracts
filming our vision.
How can we learn to swim
in these unpredictable waters
without an intricacy of mind,
evolved enough
to soothe the contortions
of our agitated earth?
The world we see
was never out there.
It has always been
carefully constructed,
and constricted,
by our self-indulgent minds
determining our worth,
by our need to perform.
But this knowing,
this understanding of
our conceited creations
Ignites a vital spark
that kindles the conversion
of mankind --
the transformation
of humanity.
Now comes the time
to fully mature
from the stub
of our completeness.
Our awareness invokes
an inevitable evolution
which will uplift us all.
If we want to renew
our external world,
we must surely
transform within.
The Ascent of Mind
How many pages
will you turn?
How many times
will you get up,
rigidly adrift,
before you wake up?
Before you shine a light
on your purpose?
Before you kindle
a spark of humility,
realize your fate,
and stretch to uncover
the courage to advance,
to unearth
a spirited resolve
to evolve,
as is the fate of us all,
one heart,
one mind at a time.
Your self-knowing
crawls, still learning
to stand upright,
yet you can learn to climb,
to reconstruct yourself,
to discover a greater
expanse of character
and intention.
Don’t be the one
you used to be.
Shift your center of gravity
to an elevated view.
Step up from coping
to reinvention within
your internal crucible
of development.
Realize your human
imperative to mature
the way you make meaning.
The time is here
to do good, rather
than do well,
and use your heart
instead to inflate
your chest.
There is no antiseptic
for the angst of the world,
but you are precious
and full of healing.
You are the instrument
of your fate,
and your own salvation.
You are the incubator
for your abundant future
as you expand towards
an integral mind,
radiating fully from
your Self
from a limitless source
opening the new brilliance
of your life.
Not Our Fault
As our careful self-construction
reaches its limits,
we bang our heads
against our unconscious self-constriction,
our mind-fueled exoskeleton
becomes a carapace of fiction
that protects our bewildered identity.
We wonder why the world we see
is not what we want, so
we masquerade as victims,
oblivious to the self-creation
of our experiences,
pointing our accusing finger
at everything except ourselves.
It’s not our fault
that we fail to comprehend
that the complexity of our world
is beyond the abilities of our mind,
and yet we sit, perplexed
by our frustration, unwilling
to admit our deficiencies.
But the more we resist our inadequacy,
the more persistent it becomes --
a confusing contradiction wrapped
in bandages of shame, arrogance, or fear.
We cannot seek the answer
to our confusing conundrum,
because seeking is born from scarcity.
It’s not to the fix we need to turn,
not to the solving, nor the blaming,
it’s to ourselves, to inquire inside,
within the intricacies of our mind,
where, if we sit quietly, we will notice
our thoughts and conclusions,
our values and assumptions
and how they direct us.
We will feel our needs
and how we obsess in meeting them.
We see our beliefs for what they are,
guardrails on an open plain,
handcuffs in a world of freedom.
Now, in witness to our constraints,
We can abstract them,
separate ourselves
from their relentless grip
and realize they are not our truth.
We are the observer of these chaperones
and can free ourselves from their hold,
finally knowing they do not define us.
We can shed them
like discarded clothing
peeling away these protective layers,
until, at last, our core is revealed
and we stand without shame
in the nakedness of our true identity,
strong and free of doubt,
grounded in our capability,
our potential,
clear on our purpose
and bold enough to step forward
into a future
we know we can create,
because we are whole,
we are abundant,
we are pure,
and all destined
for something greater.