Embracing One

I’m trying to bridge worlds.

Woo-woo’s may remind that it’s all One. But for me, right now, an IRS 1040 form seems completely separate from mantra meditations.

This morning, Amma, the “hugging saint” is smiling at me. A small picture of her sits upon my desk, having been placed with hopes of balancing perspective. Not far from her, Triple A roadside assistance wants my signature for membership renewal.

Stacked just behind her peaceful gaze, a small pile of books tease, left relatively unopened. Recently, it seems insurance trumps literature, though “I Heard God Laughing” (Hafiz) is in the stack and Grace may be giggling at my current grumpy tone.

There’s also the borrowed copy of “The Good Earth” (Buck), a gifted, pocket-sized promise called “The Ultimate Secret To Getting Absolutely Everything You Want” (Hernacki), Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s “Daily Purification”, and for a little levity, “The Eye of the Albatross” (Safina).

Earth and sky, promised dreams and purification. A good chuckle from the Creator. Thousands of words configured, aimed at conveying the poignant and awe-inspiring. All the while, I find time to rest my eyes on none. I find no stitch to seam the gap between art and taxes, the sacred and bill pays.

Amma, she just smiles that knowing, saintly smile. Her third-eye bindi like a bullseye target, a signpost to a single point of true insurance. Her countenance reminding that it really is all One simply displayed in infinite disguises.

AAA, the IRS, G-O-D, or Y-O-U. All One. Yet, inside, I feel too fragmented to fathom.

Instead, I try the Sisyphus attempt at bridging worlds. Worlds that the Masters say are essentially interwoven anyway.

Somewhere within my deepest knowing, I realize it is all seamless. But this mind of mine, just still keeps seeing chasms. Thinking I can meld what’s already together.

Amma, she does her saintly work by simply hugging. She’ll embrace 10,000 people in one day. No words, just thirty seconds of heart to heart with this enlightened being, and people say their perspectives are transformed.

I’m not quite ready to hug the Internal Revenue Service, but I guess I can thank them for guiding me to observe my own internal world. Checking thoughts that in-come. Watching the ones that tax me.

I’ll look to Amma for a little inspiration. See if I can’t crack a smile into One.

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courtesy of http://www.thenuminous.net

Letting the Ink Seep

Sometimes the head gets too full.

Endless thoughts shaping words, ideas piling into heaping mounds of overflowing debris. It can be a never-ending ping pong game of lists and reminders, questions and answers, always doing…doing something.

The mind is important, powerful, necessary. But oh, the brilliance of pausing the constancy of my brain.

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Sometimes it just takes a pen. Slowing down to let ink seep into textured paper, not knowing where I’m going. On the blank sheet, it matters not. This is for no one but myself. There is no purpose whatsoever, except that it feels good to gaze upon colors, filling lines that lead me to an unknown place where there never is a wrong. No time.

Tripping Over Joy

What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?

The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move

That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think

You have a thousand serious moves.

~ renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky
“I Heard God Laughing, Poems of Hope and Joy”

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