Saturday, September 7, 2019

Miriam Louisa - I need to tell you this before it’s too late






 The knowing of Knowing

is the sweetest somatic intimacy, the ultimate G[od]-spot.

It’s no wonder poets pen passionate love-notes

to their beloved Beloved.



It’s more evident than any revelation,

more obvious than anything observed.

Yet this seamless saturation is neither an experience

nor anything that could be called an attainment.



It’s prior to consciousness,

to memory, to perception, to imagination.

(I say “prior to” but I don’t mean a-p-a-r-t from.

Perhaps precursory would be a better word.)



How mysterious that it’s completely overlooked, ignored,

while at the same time

hungered for/longed for/searched for/worked for/studied for/meditated for/practiced for
/
prayed for/paid for, in time, devotion and sacrifice . . .



What a joke!

No GPS can locate it.

Yet it’s inescapable.



I don’t need a guru, method, scripture, sledgehammer

to wake up to the fact that whatever I am

is unarguably and precisely whatever I perceive, experience, feel.

I only have to look from a silent mind.



To acknowledge this Knowing –

to abide as it, to act as it –

restores me to the all-inclusive immensity

I knew all along.



All along.



Since breath #1 was gasped on a summer’s morning in 1944

and these innocent eyes first opened

onto the mindscape

before

words like suffering and salvation were sown there

sprouting addictive fantasies

about enlightenment, transcendence, escape

before

I was thought-washed to believe that

the embodiment of this Knowing

would erase every discomfort and dysfunction from my experience

before

the dark net of distinctions descended

before

I learned to be clever.






Vladimir Solovyov - Near, far off, not here, not there




 Near, far off, not here, not there,
In realms of mystic reveries,
In a world invisible to mortal eyes,
In a world neither of laughter nor of tears

There it was, goddess, that I first
Recognized you one misty night.
A strange child was I,
And strange dreams did I see.

It was in an alien guise that you appeared
To me. Your voice sounded obscure.
And as the obscure creation of a childish dream
I long considered you.

Now you appear to me once more
With a caress of unexpected love.
I see you now not in a dream,
Your speech is clear to me.

I, who had been deafened in an alien world
By a roar of incoherent speech,
Suddenly heard in your salutation
The word of my homeland.

The voice of my homeland in your magic speech,
In the light of your azure eyes,
My homeland's reflection in ethereal rays.
In the golden color of your marvelous curls.

Everything by which my heart and mind live,
Everything trembling here within my breast,
All powers of feeling, will, and thought
That are mine I've given into your hands.

That morose despot, the cold ego,
Sensing its death, trembles.
As soon as it sees you approaching from afar
It grows silent, pallid, and then flees.

Let it perish, arrogant fugitive!
In free bondage and in living death,
I am the sanctuary, I am the sacrifice and the priest.
Tormented by bliss, I stand before you.



 

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Fred LaMotte - In the form of this breath




She comes
in the form of this breath.
She dances
as the dawn of awareness
in the fading of sleep.
The dream was never real.
I need no mala beads
to invoke her.
Time itself is a rosary of pearls,
each moment
rounded and gleaming
with eternal unity.
My Guru is her silence,
respiration of the unchangeable.
O breath, what do you
teach me this morning?
Stillness is pulsation,
hollow, full, and hollow.
Corn and wheat,
a withered husk, and finally
a seed,
the ordinary of the seasons
explaining everything
in pigments, flavors,
pungency and musk,
excruciating sweetness,
and what rattles
in the zero of a gourd.
The order
of unsettled weather
is the mother of ceremony,
rain and sun the sisters of the sky,
midnight darkness
merely a cup
for the elixir of stars.
Whatever you suffer
is a womb.
Enter it more deeply,
and be born.
Now your atoms
are wider than galaxies
because the only dimension
is being awake.
Sink into the groundless,
resist nothing,
cling to no self,
and you will know the secret:
the vacuum of space
is not empty.
Each infinitesimal point is
ayin soph, a portal
and a whirling door
to the crystal path that
tangles ever inward.
One sparkle of this wine
that is your flesh
contains all suns,
all heavenly and infernal
destinations.
The void
is like a pomegranate
gushing wet red gems.
When you taste the nectar
of your next inhalation,
you will hunger no more.
Your expiration will be peace
upon this holy confusion.
Only one world exists, child,
the great circle
of our breathing.