Tag: conquering fear

Do You Remember…

Leave a comment

…my love for you?

Two outstretched hands with forefingers almost touching
Thank you Shoeib Abolhassani on Unsplash for the image

Do you remember how many times
I told you I loved you and held your face
So close to mine, my hand on your head
Our bodies aligned, all fear erased

Do you remember now you’re in pain
Determined to fight with a past you can’t change
But can only forgive and render untrue
As a twisted perspective still living in you

Do you remember the infinite love
The passion we shared for reaching to light
The gratitude, wholeness, and beauty divine
The determination to rise above

Do you remember your humbler times
When arrogance cast to the floor, you could find
The gratitude, brimming with love, you were true
I watched seventh heaven arising in you

Do you remember? Can you say
To me in the clarity of today
This instant, ringing clear and true
That you’ve forgotten my love for you?

Do you remember how many times
We stood together, your heart in mine
The greater majesty rang true
In every holy breath we drew

Do you remember being in light?
Tempestuous pasts redeemed in our sight
As everything that was past and gone
Was the sacred path we’d journeyed on

Do you believe I can’t see through
The jealous haven you’ve quarried to
The depths of hatred you won’t rebuke
Amidst the storms of desolate truth

Can you believe what I can see?
Devotion, loving, true, truly
Chasms that open, painful, wide;
Your own to choose to dive inside

But you can’t shake the truth I see 
Only pure, loving memories
A life entirely given to
The ones you understood could save you

Do you understand what it’s like to find
An angel of light right here in my mind
Who’s desperate to serve what’s holy and true
If only you felt my gratitude!

Do you remember how many times
I told you I loved you and held your face
So close to mine and we disappeared
Into the divine, His eternal grace

I Wanted to Share it With You

Leave a comment

You who are always there

Rays of light hitting a dark path through the forest, with the end in sight
Thank you Christiaan Huynen on Unsplash for the image

I wanted to share it with you
The gift that penetrates my violent miscreating
Savouring its own gentleness, permeating so softly that I can bear its entering

I wanted to share it with you
Your mind, open and receiving, yold to depths of gratitude 
Whose consistency yet eludes my ever-presiding choice

I wanted to share it with you
Certain of your implacably honest, infinitely receptive heart 
I wanted to share it with you
The moment I began to wonder if there was another way of thinking

It’s been like cigarettes; a smoker allowing themselves to gorge on filthy air
Relying on eventual disgust and derision
Perceived pleasure turning to, finally unmistakable, pain
The remotest moment from my sanity
Gorging insatiable desire for vanity, victimhood and blame
Believed inability to change that which I cannot bear
Determination not to surrender my desperate need to one who is able
To help me

I wanted to share it with you
The loneliness of wandering deep in the darkness of my indignation
Though always, always, beneath the frosted ground on which I trod
In the sullen air I breathed
And deep in the mind that raged with clamorous certainty
There, unmistakably present throughout everything,
Was your love
And I could never have travelled the lonely breadths of hopelessness
Without you

Finally, I trust, the ring of responsibility will be drawn
The peace evocative of gentle laughter will return
And I will be my own friend again
Lover of all that is beautiful, simple, and as far beyond my raging
As the universe of light is beyond the weight of my quilted profiting
Though encompassing and dissolving it lightly within its own gown of gentle gratitude

I wanted to share it with you
The gleam of projected hope
The memory of miracles past
And the clarity that remains
Though sunk like a small stone within the depths of my murky assertion

I have been plagued by troubled notions
Drowning in perceived helplessness
Unwittingly recreating irks of my own past troves
Digging through subterrene tunnels and wandering on hills of blackened heather 
In wretched pursuit of my comfort and my love

I have found her, barren and weeping,
And though I do not yet know what will emerge from her finding
I can see that everything within and around me is still, gently, powerfully
With utmost, unshakeable certainty
Guiding us both home

I wanted to share it with you
The gift of my eventual becoming
I need to rest for a little while longer
But first, first I wanted to share it with you

The Side Door

Leave a comment

Finding the cracks

An old blue door slightly open, darkness inside
Thank you to Aziz Acharki on Unsplash for the image

If you cannot stand, facing, knocking at the front door
If the demon is unconquerable through straight, unswerving means
If control becomes unwrestable from the devil within
And your mind is impervious to tactics you intended to employ
Though their theory stands implacable within your belief and understanding

If your heart is wrestling, candid, amongst the many wolves of hatred, fear and peaceless writhing
If the context of your practice renders it incapable of penetration
To the murky depths in which you choose to sit and wade
If the inconsolable nature prevails 
And the unrelenting assertion never ceases to withstand
You can find a side door

Try creeping silently around, knocking gently 
At one that no one has ever found
A window open just an inch, dark, unoccupied within
All attention focused on the voracious vocation of hating

Try slipping softly through any open breach, however small
If you are patient and merely watch the unfolding
There will be an opening, a brick missing in a side wall
A forgotten latch, a barrier stood brazen but choked on cobbled floor
Pushed closed to no avail
A gate that, neglected, has become derelict through the unrelenting poison play of time

There will be a gap, there will be an opening
And in the tender twilight of eventual longing
For harmony, for gentle remembering,
For symphonies of joy cascading between expanding, softening walls
You will allow yourself, secretly, to enter

You will feel the entering, and you will not resist
Though you persist, focus and fire, fighting foremost in your mind
Still determined on your deathful, rageful charge
You allow this calm, small voice to penetrate your mind
So quietly it enters you did not observe it’s coming
Though you felt it’s presence, and secretly welcomed its relief (though we will never tell…)

You can keep your consistency of determination for death’s dying goal
You can focus your attention on hatred, attack
Anguished thoughts that tear at your heartstrings 
And cast you into wasted thorny deserts of your previous contention
That infinitely interesting, unfathomably meaningless occupation

But still, this gentle voice has entered, and now offers you its council and its plan
So gently it advances just a subtle change of plea
So noiselessly it offers you a new dream, a new interpretation
A universe unenchanted by the mocking, gnarling wolverines of war

You are welcome
You are welcome to commit your time and all your energy to hating
You are welcome to turn to battles raging and impervious within your veiled mind

And You are welcome
You are welcome now to enter in the side door
And offer me painless relief from the incessant clamour of my snarling, terrified mind

All There Is To Find

Leave a comment

The seeking heart must some day find its gold

Under the surface of the sea, light rays shining in, beautiful clear water but you can feel the weight and the depth at the bottom
Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash — thank you

I want to tread the deeper dives
Where blessings hold beneath the flow
The stillest waters, richest tides
A sweetness brought to light, sublime

A travesty it feels to give
Only this superficial slant
Fragmented personality
Divorced from what I can’t reveal

I want to tread the deeper dives
And stem the tide of surface flow
That, jesting, as its joker’s wont
Has ridiculed the depths I know

I want to be a truthful one
Who shows the innards of its own
Who casts an acted part aside
Its timbre ceased, its wings unflown

I want to ride the waves of flow
That authenticity has wed
To leap unbridled on the growing
Self that has straight past me sped

I want to know what lies beyond
Within and at the core of me
I want to let the self be dead
That still affronts, entangles me

I want to feel the death, complete
Of all that I have willed and known
I want to leap, unfathomed depths
Beneath me as I fall below

I want to hurry to the cliff 
And wrest this putrid body home
And catapult the self that shames itself
Upon the rocky road

I want the death that’s promised me
Within the pages of the tomes
The script that’s written, hands of light 
Bequeathing all the joy they know

I want to die a thousand deaths
To everything that I have made
And watch with gentle gratitude
As what I truly am is cradled

Gently by the opening shaft
Of sunshine that has borne the child
That I have never known before
Whose smiling beauty makes me wild

With happiness, an opening hearted
Calmness and tranquillity
Encompasses the instant
That I finally feel free

So if you look to find me
And you see that I have gone
And all that’s left is peacefulness
A gentle hearted song

All you can find is writing
Carved upon an ancient wall
This joyful death, with life becoming
Everything and all

If all you find within the tomb
Of death defying Will
Is that which troubles heaven
Not a syllable or swell

If all you find is gratitude
Within a peaceful mind
You’ve found the place where I discovered
All there is to find

Your Own

Leave a comment

In gratitude for perseverance through perceived adversity

Stalks and leaves of a tall plant and their sharp edged shadows dancing on a sunshine yellow wall, overlaid with the softer shadows of the leaves of a nearby tree
Photo by Holly Rose Thomas | The author retains all rights and permissions for the use of this image

I’m sorry that you missed it
I’m sad you didn’t see
The blossoming of beauty
That has come alive in me

I’m sorry that you didn’t feel
The draw to carry on
That you decided to begin
A different life alone

I’m sorry that your heart
Was never open to receive
The joyful understanding
That you’re being loved, received

I’m sorry your experience
Got twisted in your mind
That you believed the lies you told
Pulled up the blanket, remained blind

I’m sorry you’re not here to witness
What could have been clear
A blossoming of fruitful understanding
Past the fear

I’m sorry you weren’t brave enough
To sit it out and know
That all your indignation
Was a block to harvests grown

That all your insignificance
Was only in your mind
That no one was attacking
The defence that kept you blind

And everything you had received
Was your own story, told
A billion times before
An ancient history, dead and cold

And life itself was waiting
In mysterious certainty
There within the grievances
That stopped you being free

If you’d been willing to discover
All that lies within
Deep inside the core of guilt
And anger, hated sin

If you’d been willing just to look upon
The feared grime
That smeared and blurred your vision
And that kept you here in time

If you’d been willing to expose
The fractures of your heart
That, crumbling, could have freed you
From the life you held apart

If you’d been willing to decide
To question what you knew
Then all your indecision
Would have breezed away, blown through

And you would have been standing
In the space I know as me
Beyond the terror foisted on myself
By what I’ve been

Beyond the death, calamity
The direst treachery
That spread like eagles’ wings
Across the landscape of my dream

If you’d been able to stand still
And trust the path you’d sown
Then you’d have found me standing here
Your gentle love, your own

Something Real

Leave a comment

In gratitude for truly authentic expression

Author image, thanks to NightCafe AI

If you say something real
It can’t not be received
If you say something 
That within their own hearts they can feel

If you say something true
Something that feels alive
Beating deep within your heart
Or bubbling up inside

If you say something you can feel
Within your very cells
There’s nothing else that they can do
But feel it there as well

I can feel your words
Within my beating heart
I can feel the burning
Of your thoughts inside my hearth

I can feel the silkening
Of your gently tumbling hair
As you fall into the spirit’s
Wholly death defying stare

As you stand alone
Within the worlds that you have made
Raging at the forces
You believe can hold you staid

I can see your mind
As it’s lashing out in pain
I’m sorry for the winding pathways
Harrowing again

I would love to speak to you
As we in heaven do
Standing at the end of time
Each other’s dearest view

The chasm it is cursed
As it tears your plans in two
The teeth are gnashing wildly
As they are wont to do

The peace of being true
To the self that sings the soul
The force that clears the flotsam
From the mind that ousts the storm

Is wholly to be felt 
And wholly to be known
And wholly to be cherished
As you step in from the cold

So next time you say something true
I’ll hear you from afar
And answer you from closer than
Your gently beating heart

Because of You

Leave a comment

Finding the courage to give

Sunlight streaming through the trees onto a sheltered glade
Author image, thanks to NightCafe AI Art Generator

Because of you it opens
Because of you they come,
They hear the call to witness to
The ever pulsing drum

They hear the call to action
In their hearts, so blessed be,
And they determine to become
The light they see in thee

They come because they’re hungry
For what you have to serve,
The crops that you’ve been nourishing
Within your sacred verve

The spirit you have hearkened to
Each time that you have called,
Intrepid, to the warrior 
That tears apart your walls

In fearlessness we stride ahead
Through valleys dark and drear,
Amassing to our side
The hearts that rise amidst their fear

And heartened, blunder onward 
Though the path seems dark between
The glorious gentle openings
That in their souls still sing

We rise amidst security
Of knowing we are free,
In spite of the hallucinations
Haunting all our dreams

In spite of darkness clinging to
The self we knew before,
Our gentleness is conquering
The battle lines we’d drawn

Between the misty nothings
Of our hearts, so troubled through
Complexities of passion,
Contradictions to the truth

Between the old ideas 
Of reality, that sown 
Into the seams of royal robes
Had seemed to occupy our thrones

Because of you they’re torn apart 
And thrown upon the floor,
Their power disacknowledged
In the heart that looks for more

Because of you the souls 
Who had been struggling in the whelm,
Return to power, beauty, sentience:
Their rightful realm

All I’ve Ever Been

Leave a comment

A love poem to water

Pink blossom trees overhanging a beautiful still lake, a gently sloping bank just asking you to sit for while then dive in!
Author image, thanks to NightCafe AI

I let myself be water 
As I finally choose to see
That deep within the mysteries
Of life, I’m always free

I let myself be water
As my tendencies to hide
Are loosening as the swell of beauty
Rises through my peace of mind

I struggled with my water 
Because I refused to see
That deep within the mysteries of the soul
I’m running free

Coursing through the fields of battle
Ever flowing rhyme,
Past such scenes of devastation
Guardians of time

I’d forgotten I was water
As I tried to be
Something that was static
Cast in stone amid the stream

In the dream of sanctuary
I’ve finally deigned to tell
Stories of the gratitude
That lift my heart to swell

With the water’s majesty
And with her sacred flow,
As I return to that which courses
Humble through the gloam

In gratitude I rise 
Amid the water’s folky rhyme,
Its purity immerses my
Intention to divine

The fear that I had lived within,
Believed myself to be,
It’s thus released and handed to
The flow of perfect peace

The mysteries that engulfed my mind
And left me crooked, bowed,
Are now revealed in candour
As my heart finds its way home

The spaciousness, a watery grave 
That’s separation’s tomb
Is waiting with her open arms
I flow into her womb

As I become the ocean
With such startling clarity
I recognise within myself
It’s all I’ve ever been

Everyone Knows

Leave a comment

Everyone knows how beautiful you are
Everyone knows the extent to which you give your whole heart to everyone
Everyone knows how extraordinary the light that pours from your purity of soul
Everyone sees it, throughout the universe and further into realms that words do not have presence for

Everyone knows how much you shine
Everyone feels the light that radiates eternally through your expression
Everyone knows the beauty of your sacred smile that blooms and sheds its petals in swathes of gentle colour, lighting up the pathway for the ones who follow on

Everyone sees the depths you think you go to, to deny the promise that you gave us
Everyone sees, and no one cares, but you

Everyone just… waits
Waits for you to finally understand
That everyone knows how beautiful you are, how much you give, how much you love for the pure sake of loving

Can you not now give yourself to this…
This that everyone, everyone knows?