The season slides
to wind and showers
and sharp hot sun
(for rare half-hours)
and all the world
lays waste its powers
pursuing what it cannot own.
Then mists and fogs and hazy sunrise
ships’ dull horns and lazy gull cries.
Now blazing heat
(bone dry pails)
sandy feet
single sails.
And thoughts slip in and out of being
just on the edge of almost-seeing.
.
Consciousness is Life
is the Light that lighteth Everyman
that cometh into the world.
Everyman is not that Light
but can become a witness of that light;
that, seeing it, others
may believe
may become
children of that Light,
may dispel
the Darkness
of the Children of this World.
.
There is the fire that consumes
and the fire that illumines.
There is Desire
and there is Love.
Those motivated by Desire
see things they wish to possess,
things they do not wish to possess,
and other things –
of no interest whatsoever.
Those motivated by Love
see Fellow Travellers
in a thousand different forms;
mirrors
of one Fire.
They feel compassion
and sympathetic joy
and friendly interest.
Others again
see transmutation
everywhere;
and pain.
Only a fool
thinks to possess
the moon
reflected in a pool,
or a sandcastle
or an articulated puppet.
.
It may not be the bearded man
who smiles at you and explodes.
It may not be the errant tyre
that slides on the icy roads.
It may not be the scaffolding plank
that bounces on your head.
It may not be pneumonia
that smothers you in bed.
It may not be the fever
that creeps through blood and vein.
Or the quiet worm in the sole of your foot
that climbs up to your brain.
It may be that the breath leaks out
in a mist of expiring pain
and nothing can make it turn about
and slide back in again.
Ready?
.
The great stone Hall is silent
that is now millennia old.
Through the western windows
shines a glorious sun.
It floods the walls and floors,
the tables, chairs and doors,
panelling, pictures, artefacts
and illumines every one
until the wraiths that gather
cry out in their joy,
‘Everything is gold!
Whatever is, is gold!’
A majestic cloud
emerges from the southern sea,
slides across the western sky
blotting out the sun.
Light through those western windows
pales to a thin grey day.
It dims the walls and floors,
the tables, chairs and doors,
panelling, pictures, artefacts
pales every one
until the wraiths in the shadows
cry out in dismay,
‘Gone is gold, the gold is gone!
All joy has passed away.’
.
It was different in the past.
Especially in the village.
Before you could read
Before there were newspapers
Before there was radio
Before there were telephones
Before there were films
Before there was TV
Before there were computers
Before there were smartphones
Before there was the endless whispering
of global gossip,
You lived mostly where you were:
on the street
in the room
at the market
in the church
in the inn
in the fields.
You lived mostly where you were,
suffered face to face with yourself
and your neighbours.
As you grew older, your Past lengthened
and you began to live in it
with that diminishing group of friends
who lived there too.
Things are different today.
No matter where, untidily,
you park your body
or put it on auto-walk,
auto-eat, auto-read, auto-talk,
auto-computer, auto-TV,
you are usually meandering
the surfaces of the earth
or plundering
the mists of cyber-space
and the mysteries
of Imagination’s Daughters,
Past, Present and Future.
Your suffering enshrouds you like the veil
in a premature womb-tomb;
and any way you look at this you fail!
“Hey, hey, hey? Mrs. Robinson?
Hey, hey, hey!”
.
Thoughts feed feelings.
Feelings activate the body.
It cannot tell the difference
between a real snake
and an imagined snake.
Fear stifles its breathing
accelerates its heartbeat
and makes it sweat.
The pretty girl
in your imagination
or pornographic video
produce the same reaction
as the pretty girl in real-time sunshine
stretched out on the park bench.
The body prepares itself for action
for the real snake and the imagined snake,
for the video girl and the park bench girl.
It cannot tell the difference
between the imagined and the real.
All demagogues (and advertisers) know this.
They pump you up with your imaginations
through your thoughts via your ears and eyes.
These take over your body
and send it out to fulfill
its artificially created desires
to riot or lynch or rape
(or empty your credit
in the shopping malls).
Books, music, viral gossip, propaganda, TV,
which do you use to feed your thinking mind?
Gnome says:
When you stop thinking
all your problems disappear.
Who can aspire
to this ultimate wisdom?
.
The Serpents dance hypnotically
filling the Void with Thought.
And in their game of wish-fulfilment
the Sons of Man are caught.
Slaves to the Dream Creations,
enflamed by its Hot Desires,
craving ever-new sensations,
singed by the Ancient Fires,
they sink
from brightness into embers
from cinders into dust,
with which they fashion ever new surrenders
for their never cooling Lust.
In their high empyrean mansions,
the Masters watch
and pass down from Perfect Peace –
living, trans-sangsaric ladders
for the burning souls’ release.
.
.
The pulling string,
which is Time’s tether,
brings
and binds
all things
together
in the contoured galleries of our minds.
Piaf has been dead
these thirty years or more
and yet her voice is bought
and sold in any CD store.
Yesterday and tomorrow,
mingled joy and sorrow,
are raw material for the present mind
to spin its webs and bind.
Only the present acts,
begins and ceases,
holds, releases.
The other tenses
only seem.
They
make a mockery of our present senses
and merely dream
the time away.
Release this present moment from its treadmill,
this trudging on from ‘was’ to ‘will’.
Locate the very pinpoint
of the here
and the now.
See the very pinpoint disappear
in a gust of autumn laughter
-leaves falling through bare and empty rafters.
“Oh God,” said Hamlet,
“I could be bounded in a nutshell
and count myself a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams.”
If Lord Hamlet would let go his dreaming,
he would be king indeed!
.
Whichever path you follow
you will always end up here;
and never
over there.
And here
is always now;
never
yesterday
or tomorrow.
.
A sample of intuitive Projects, Poems and Talks to support the practice of insight meditation in daily life.
Learn how to access the Centre. How to understand it. How to use it. How to enter it forever.
Western civilisation’s
TOP FOUR CAREERS
in today’s unstable, dangerous world.
A world awash with Wars, Pharma Mafias, Priests and Lunaticks… (40 pages, colour images, pocketbook)
