ir a principal |
Ir a lateral
June has been the most eye-opening, emotional and insightful month of the year so far. It is because of conversations that I have had, both with others and with myself. I have begun to see my fears for what they are, and in this quest for inner peace I have had to realise how much baggage I carry wherever I go, how doubtful I am of what I do and why I do it, how self-limiting my mental dialogue is and how ashamed I am of it all. As "Bohemian Rhapsody" sings, when I look at myself, I see a silhouette of a man. A shadow. There is a light behind me of course, which is why I can see through the darkness to make out an outline. And self-consciousness begins, and self-discovery continues as the silhouette disappears to reveal the truth. Will I like what I see? Will I be joyful, as I have been promised?
I wish to recapitulate some of the conversations, from memory, focusing on their impact upon my perception.
At the start of the month, university courses were ending. Exams were on the horizon so it was time to prepare for them. I was able to concentrate as much as I needed and I am thankful for that. I was to discover things about myself I never realised. I was to face fears and uncover a silent vulnerability that had been building up in me like a balloon, empty inside but occupying my space, my consciousness. "A Course In Miracles" had informed me of the truth that I would need to come face to face with my past, to let it go. I had not expected the difficulty this would bring. I had been much more attached to my fears and grievances than I had realised. I was in search of peace, as we all are on any level. And to find peace, I must accept the moment. I seemed unable to do that. I was lost in my own thoughts, and as I shone the light of consciousness upon my 'problems' so had they intensified and curled within my person, as if in fear. The emotions of course came along with that and turned the whole ordeal into difficulty. Nonetheless, I went on in my quest.
I had begun talking to a friend, a good friend to whom I had not talked much before, about my plight. He decided to make the connection with another friend to whom I wasn't very close yet, and we began a three-way conversation that would last hours a few times a week. It is here that I opened up my wound. I had begun taking off my plaster, and the metaphorical blood started siphoning out. It was difficult to express myself how I had. I told them about a couple of moments in childhood from which I retained my emotional scars. Moments that I hadn't let go of. Baggage. Pain. But finally I was placing them in the light to be cleansed.
On the 8th, I had what I might call the most emotional conversation I had ever had. That night I had two conversations, one with the twosome mentioned above, and one with a dear friend who I was trying to understand, and in doing so trying to understand myself as well. What began as a simple conversation about how he was doing, turned into emotional release, of pain that I held with me. I don't know how he took it, but my despair blew out its dam and out flowed out my hurt. I felt myself vibrate within at how ashamed I was of what I was expressing and I was very conscious of how it might make him feel to know how I felt, about him but more so about me. I wondered about it for days afterwards, if it was really the right choice to share things with them. They are there for me, and I love that. I appreciate it deeply. Gradually I shed my skin and tried to understand what was hurting me so much.
I went from being "easy", two of the three calling me that although I not really understanding why, to a point where I felt "overemotional". If one were to judge by the content of this blog, one may discern that I am quite sensitive. I have been empathetic in the past so that may have evolved with it. I discovered that I had problems of my own, that I had believed in sacrifice of me for the other. I had not really known happiness for what it was but instead as a dependency on other things, things that 'brought' happiness. That's difficult to understand, I imagine. I realised my focus had become split among what my mind wanted to what God wanted to what I wanted to what others 'may' have wanted... Only one of those is true... God, what the hell have I been through?
Courage. Doubt. The first one is what I want and what is growing in me. The second is what I do not want and is decreasing. Through my conversations with the three, they correctly picked out how much I doubt myself. How much I limit what I do by how I feel. I have this filter that I send everything through and it comes out très sanitised and devoid. Empty, and I didn't like that. No one could, it's not who I am. How could I have been making this excuse? Because it was easier to than to be brave, to not let all my childish fears barrage the fun and joy of life. I am so glad they talked to me. I am glad I am learning to become more courageous, to choose love over fear.
Moreover, the conversations continued as June went on. I found myself consciously internalising my reactions and they would render me 'damaged' for hours at a time. I had been uplifted on a few days by my friends, but mostly I left myself in my own corner of the world to suffer because I felt I deserved that for lying to myself, for denying my past, for not allowing me to move on. I realised I wasn't on top of the world and that I never really wanted to be. All I want is love. Love. And all I can really have is love. I do not yet believe this, though I wish I did. It would solve all my problems. But I had also learned that my problems had already been solved ("A Course In Miracles"). I had stopped trusting it at one point but I returned my faith once I realised I was not putting my faith in it before but in my own perceived weaknesses. God, I confused myself, tied myself in knots then undoing them trying to sort out my life, my problems, how I was going to come through. I know I will, I have faith in that. I have undying faith. And faith has me.
I held myself as a person who knew who they were, but while I knew deep down, I kept forgetting. But the time to be authentic and remember is now. Now I am. I wanted to be the best, the hero, the one that receives the attention, the one that is loved, the one that has all the answers. None of those came true. I know that none of those is real. Love is reciprocal. So, its light guides to where I must go, where we must all go eventually. Home. I don't want to spend any more time in hell. I was as lost as everyone else was. Finally, love is coming and washing away my hurt and the sun within is rising. God... I may look like a silhouette now, but I am whole, and as the light grows so shall the truth become more apparent. I hope all my secrets will be exposed, not that there's many of them, but that the few that remain will be known to me and if it be willed, to others. But I want honesty to be my breathing and I want life to live in reality not in an excuse for it. I deserve the best, the only, the all there is. It is not too much to ask, because I already have it. And it's bizarre to say that because I don't understand how I can have something, but I only have it because I am it. Nothing else belongs to me but what I already have. Paradox, whatever.
Love is here.
And it all comes down to leaving it all behind, moving on to the rivers of love, and never be lonely again. How long have you waited? How long 'til you drown?
This gives me hope. The piano is tuned to play on my emotions, the strings that tug at my heart in vulnerability. It soothes my silent despair, my loss, my drama-addicted fuse. It tells me that they are not needed, that I can let go of them and really live. The music moves me because it sings to me what I feel, what I hope to be true.
How many times have I questioned my worth?
How many times have I lost myself in my mind?
How many times have I forgotten peace?
How many times have I not been able to answer my own questions?
How many times have I spoken to anyone truly?
How many times have I spoken to myself truly?
How many times have I taken a leap of faith?
How many times have I felt guilty for what I have done?
How many times have I been confused by my fears?
How many times have I really said something that I meant?
How many times have I gone around in circles?
How many times have I felt something to be true?
It doesn't matter. Quantity is a number and it doesn't matter. Numbers can repeat themselves over and over and not matter at all. Stock markets, Lotto tickets, binary. Rien.
Yet my focus has been programmed to concentrate on quantity. How much, how many. But the wonder of life comes from quality, the truth resonates qualitatively. It is from within me, from within depths and limitless yonders and beyond horizons and sunrises and sunsets, that life really lives. It's not magic. It's not magic. It's real, and I love to know it. To witness it. To feel it.
If you lift me up, just get me through this night, I know I'll rise tomorrow and I'll be strong enough to try.
A simple request. It is done.
This lack, this lack I feel is like nothing that is real. It wants me to be free to be enslaved. It wants something? How does it want something when it isn't something real? Twist not, knots. Preen some feathers further away from distraction, into solitude. Crayons, landslide, epitome, sustenance, spelling mistakes with the arrows of ink. Emotion.
Compris? Moi, non plus. Le point? Aucun. Surprise!
I have said before, there is no gap here. I have continued to perceive one, for I have thought it served me, but it is increasingly dawning on me that there is no gap and there is no need for a gap. A gap is a void, and a void is empty. Why would we need such an illusion when what we would have it filled with is here all along, untouched? I don't have an answer because there is none, as there isn't supposed to be - remember, it is a void. Voids are empty, therefore as unwelcome as they might be, they are still barren and desolate. And I am not. So I do not belong there, but where love is.
So love, I invite you. You are shining your light and I am beginning more and more to see it. I want this miracle, and I have it. Love, come.
Viens. Mes bras sont ouverts, et mon coeur est le tien.
Silence, is deeper than the energy combined of an eagle and an angel, both soaring and calling the firmament a path between homes. Neither struggles to find comfort in the absent because both know where they are is where they ought to be. One could say they don't even know the absent, the otherwise, for to them the air is present and that is all there is. Owls are the same, although they prefer the night to fly over the day. I think they can all tell that the world is quiet. There are no clouds that separate and no creeks that divide. It's just one whole plain, varied in its form to display its sheer beauty, inherently simple. Mountains rise up and appear to tear at the sky, but the intention has always managed to make way for the action.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's in a song by Madonna which was subsequently covered by the cast of Glee, so it's not an idle signpost to a broken well. The wrong thing done for the right reasons is still the wrong thing, although one could dispute that if something 'wrong' is done that its reasons must have been flawed at some point. Intentions can be misguided by illusions that pose as lights, as true guides. One can tell they are fake by their ephemerality. Nature doesn't crumble, by contrast. Yes, seasons happen, leaves fall, grass grows, but there is a certain intelligence at work here, something or rather somehow knowing what to do, when to do it and executing it with exact precision. To understand it we could call it Gaea or Mother Nature, because what it does looks to be similar to what human beings do. But I suggest that it doesn't do anything at all, and it merely is. Perhaps it fulfills all its desires through its being. We have a relationship with nature that we honour. We all share in the miracle of life. We are connected via the 'being' because it is the same. Discover this by going amongst nature and listening, appreciating the sounds of insects, leaves and wind, but also the silence, in its incomprehensibly peaceful depth. And breathe, letting the quiet resonate, radiate and remain.
In it is within. Out it flows, not as displacement, but as courage, as romance - a short whisper and a gentle murmur that says absolutely nothing but means everything. Heroism? Threats? None. Just connection, the reason and result of being one.
Happiness, not something found in someone else's hands. Don't look for it where you think you have placed it because it has never left its source.
In my fingers
You can see the lonely night
You can just about touch
The sadness.
I gave my heart away
To those who never found it
And I lost its place
Among the wreckage.
It's all fair in love and war
The wisemen speak betrayed
And the rules tell you to ask for more
Lest all the happiness may fade
But the lie was told
And taken to the heart
And rejected by the rest
For no one really understood
What happened?
Everybody fought in vain
For what could never be retrieved
What never seemed to be
In your arms was never free.
And we all draw conclusions
And we all make lost mistakes
But we all forget to listen
To the sound of tears,
Tears streaming down your face
Your cheeks, your mellow chin,
Your voice within,
Silenced.
It's more than I can handle,
It's more than anyone can put up with
So I ask you why you do
The things you do?
Don't you realise yet
That what we do
We only do,
Because we think we have to.
Home is where the heart is.
Happiness is home.
Love is happiness.
And love is everywhere we see it
Because it's everywhere we are
And in each place we put it
We find more of it.
You don't have what I can take
But you promise to undo my mistake
So for that, I look upon you finally
And smile stupidly and freely.
I have it within me
I've had it all along
Life awaits me to begin
On the path I left so long.
I play a social game. When I do, I am lying. I just became conscious of how much I do it. I'm not alone in doing it, but others doing it is totally missing the point here. In this play that stands for life, I act as a victim, as a rescuer, as well as a prosecutor. These are the three main faces of my ego. I am slightly ashamed to admit that, but I can only see that becoming aware of how I act will help me become a better person, the best me.
# Victim
"I want love. I need love. Please give it to me. I need help. I am lonely. I am sad. I am hurting. I am in pain. Please help my lonely soul. Please give me what I ask for. I don't deserve happiness. I am useless. The world is better off without me. Give me attention. Feed me. I need your sympathy. Pity me. I can't do this, do it for me. No one likes me. It's all my fault. I am an idiot. I don't see how the people around me can take my crap. I should rot. I should die."
When I wear this mask, I am the victim of the world. I act, and I feel, that the world is against me, that I am lonely and that nobody loves me. It is an unconscious way of asking for love because it acts from a place of lack. Whenever I am the victim, the role I play is one where I project an image of disappointment to those around me so that they can comfort me and desecrate that image. I desire to be loved, yet I must hurt myself, diminish who I am, to get that love? I must tear myself down before I can be built back up. The essence of the victim is the imagining and projection of a need or a lack towards someone else who can save me.
# Rescuer
"I'll help you. Call me anytime you need. I am here for you always, until the end of time. You can count on me. Anytime. You're welcome. I will always love you. You always have my back. I am here for you no matter what. I will save you! I want to be the hero. Don't kid like that, I didn't save your life. Your life is worth more than mine. I will die for you!"
This should not be confused with the true feeling of wanting to help someone. But that true feeling comes from the healing recognition that the perception of the victim is incorrect, because in truth they are not broken. So rescue in that sense is the correction of perception, the reawakening of awareness of light. That, I gladly do and will continue to do, for it is natural.
This mask is due to me wanting to help others because I can't seem to help myself with my own internal problems. It is defined, in essence, by sacrifice, which my ego feels is righteous and pure. This is a misperception. As a rescuer, I look for the pain in people, for the hurt in their own lives at my personal expense. I want to help them only because after helping them, they will somehow validate my own existence. The mask comes with glasses because they make people appear broken, needing to be fixed. In this state, I refuse to perceive my own lack and attempt to bring out others' lack so that I can fill it. But in my lack, I cannot fill nothingness with nothingness.
# Prosecutor
"Fuck you. Loser. Idiot. Bastard. You suck. You are horrendous. You don't know anything. There's smarter people out there. Dumb shit. I would be better off without you. I don't want to listen to you complaining. I don't want to know what you want to tell me. Why are you talking to me? You are annoying me! Go die!"
This mask normally comes with the emotion of anger or negativity. I feel I have been attacked, so I attack whoever back. I wear this mask lightly, because I don't pick fights with people, certainly not directly. But it is also characterised by envy and other forms of jealousy. This mask comes with an imaginary gavel, too. It reignites drama. It is used to increase my sense of superiority or make me feel less inferior. In essence, once more, it comes out of lack. A fear response is triggered so I feel the need to defend myself. The best defense is a good offence? That's probably the principle at work. I have to be the best, and to feel that way, I have to diminish the rest around me. Yet I meet resistance, unsurprisingly.
As one may have realised, none of these faces satisfy or fill the gaps they imagine. The ego never does, never will. Switching between my masks gives the illusion of progression, but it is only until I have taken them off now that I can truly see.
I am so glad, thankful and blessed that the people around me do not always play these games with me. It sort of infuriates me that I do play them, but there is only room here for forgiveness. If I stay angry, I am prosecuting myself, which turns then into a victim mindset, and later maybe into a rescuer. There is no way to stop acting unless I take off the masks. And I know I only did it because I thought it was necessary to my happiness, but I thought wrong. I think right, now. I only have one face.
I may have hurt you in the past, I am sorry. I was not myself. Realisation has come, so as I get off running life on auto-pilot, please know that I am awakening. I am going to find the light in me, and I am going to see the light in you, both of which will increase the light in both of us.
Happiness. I want it, you want it. We both have it. It's time to realise that there is no reason for it there, because if we limit ourselves in thinking that we can only be happy if certain things happen, if so and so isn't there or if such and such happens, we'll have big fat gaps in our enjoyment of life. And the spikes that we do get will be even less short-lived.
Euphoria doesn't occur all the time, no, and it doesn't need to. Let us not make the mistake of conditioning our happiness, because when it comes to joy, it is our natural state. We are children after all, in the midst of our childhood. You could be happy because of so many things, or so you may thing, but you are happy because of you. Because you respond. Because you live, and breathe, and encounter life wherever you go. Because you are honest, because you are light. Because joy is you. I say these things and it may sound like you have to 'do' things to be happy. But that is precisely my point - you do not have to do anything. Do not make the mistake of depending on someone else for it. It is within you, and from there must it radiate, never from the outside, although it might look like that.
Be happy. We are human beings, not human doings.
It's like everyday I start anew
Like I don't even have a clue
How to live my life.
I pretend it's clear
But I know that I'm wrong
Because finding peace takes far too long.
In my quest for an answer
I have broken myself down,
Told myself that happiness is too lost to be found.
And I believed in me and in those words
So desperately, so foolishly,
So childishly I spent my energy in vain.
Hopeless, I'm lost.
Sought validation for the things that I had done,
But took none to heart.
Breathless, I gasped
For the one to make everything all right
But no one ever said a word.
There's always some reason
To feel broken apart
By the hands I pen these words with.
It will never get any easier,
The words never meant anything at all
So this wall that's built remains tall.
I find comfort in the abyss,
In the maw of sadness
There's always, ever an opportunity for bliss.
But solace doesn't heal my wounds
Love doesn't know why it left
And I don't know why of them I am bereft.
Shedding tears might be beautiful release
But no love is given to those who can't see
And I'm blind, faithfully so, in pain.
Somehow despair renders my eyes inert
And I don't know where I'm going
To find sweet surrendering paths to true knowing.
Caveat silence, tripping the switch
I fell into my trap of ages and gloom,
From where I weep for my own tomb.
I think I'm stupid, so stupid,
Such a fool to believe.
For missed redemption I grieve.
Chances are, I've given up,
Chances are there's no tomorrow
I held on too long to my sorrow.
And out of that came hell
Beckoning nightmares to come ravage
My dreams, my hopes, my terrifically mistaken hopes.
You shouldn't care about me,
You shouldn't listen to my lament,
You shouldn't know what I'm crying about.
But you do.
Here's the life you wanted, messed up.
Because we feel the same, we're losing this game to our pain.
Gotta wonder when it's time to feel right, when it's time to live the right life that you wanted. Don't you? Sometimes, I listen to songs and I reminisce, to myself, about the feelings that they have brought me. Somehow, those songs that once struck me with a sentiment of sadness, loss, loneliness, feel comfortable now when I listen to them. Maybe it's time to shed my skin, my exterior, for the form that's an expression of love.
Can you see how I sound? Ridiculous. Talking about love as if I even know what it is. I'm still a boy, dreaming of what love could be. Yet I know I am love. Seen from the eyes of the lost, it sounds vague, unfamiliar. Seen from the eyes within, it's true. But toggling between two visions is tiring, as I am in the transition period. I know which one I'm picking but focus isn't yet straightforward enough.
I need to know me, to remember me. I have forgotten, I have lost, which means I can regain. I can discover, I can come once more. I call love, I drink the beauty of you in.
To do this means I am willing to give up my secrets, the shades of darkness. Love is total, so must be my surrender. I don't know what it is, but I know it is worth being. Being love. Let me shed my skin so I may know.
Now is the perfect moment. Eternity beckons.
When there's a piece you hide inside,
You don't know anything, anything
About the world outside your emptiness.
Hearing shot whispers, voices bellowing
Are cries of fear of being loved
For who you are, for who you are,
For who this damn confusion knows its spark.
And something tells me you won't know,
You won't care less to know what's right
Unless you break the chains that you're still tying yourself in.
Please, don't give up the fight now,
There's a guiding light, a path for you to take
And that's the way the wind is blowing
That's the way your love is flowing, away.
Cruelty keeps a place of hate in the abyss
Where your heart once used to be, to belong,
And it doesn't want you to come back, it doesn't want you at all.
But it needs you to survive
The pain you kept inside it wants too,
Yet you have to make the livid choice
To live or die by prayers you make, for your sake.
How do I know,
That you'll be here,
When I come back?
You'll still be near
And not fall away
Not broken
Not shattered
Not ashamed
Not in pain
But okay. Okay.
'Til then you might only peace undisturbed
But yours certainly will be tainted.
You can't run away forever
And you can't light all speed.
You have to take your chances
And throw them all into your fire
Out of the sparkles and heat
Will come alive, again, a bird.
As it flies away, you'll be on its back
And you'll spend the life together,
No ashes will carry in the wind
That's tearing your dreams apart.
Oh, don't confuse yourself any further
Truth is but a wingspan away
Bring it into the horizon,
And let it shine the darkness into day.
Come. It's time.
Repetition, of partition, of repetition... we have a mission and it is in our lifeblood to protect it.
These thoughts somehow fit together on the screen. We see them not as a whole, but as something broken, divided by words. This is how we see the world, fragmented. Writing is an excellent reflection of it; it comes from it, does it not? It is an interpretive dance without the movement of limbs. Instead, oil lifts up above water. Words come up on the screen, no, colored pixels. The brain is trained to remind us of that which we attribute meaning to, and what that meaning is. And ultimately that that meaning never really was inherent in what it was attributed to. That part's not a special feature, but it is part of the film. The movie ends, sometime.
Caught amongst the feelings of grandeur, is a little boy. He's wee tall, wee small, wee wee-wee. The youngster accompanies the desire for love every where he goes, but he knows the desire for love is simply a shard of amnesia, forgetting that what it is looking for is in itself. How then, could I describe to you, and to me, that love is within us? Here.
I know your every move, you know mine too. And off the screen falls a place of enlightenment, somewhere where you can't see where you are going but that you know you inhabit. Already, there's a search going on for shadows, in the night, for emotions that are hidden in the most obvious of places. If only you looked during the day, when there is light, when the streetlights were off. That way, you could actually see, because in the light, love is most visible. In darkness, love is still there, but it is not visible to you because you choose to see with your eyes instead of your heart.
So I ask you, the writer, the reader, the interpreter, you, to look up in the light. There is no more to your pity than your bones, your body, your weaknesses and grievances. No more to your anguish than what you invest in it. No more to your loss than your lack of recognition. The light fails to see these, and instead merely shines. One day, sooner, you will know that the light shines so bright because it does not shine through anything. And the day that you will know that will be the day that you are uplifted and you will see. The truth. All of it.
We already are brothers. I just don't know it, but you do. I'll find out though, and you will have already known and will still know and when we both know, we will rejoice because are brothers. And that moment will be, and is, now.
So tell me, how do you feel? If you let it all go, it will fall apart.
But now we both know that life remains. And that's love.
Worries have traveled far
Clutched in my tired hands.
I have been waiting so long
To let go,
To let them go.
Hills became mountains to climb
When my burdens held me back.
But that's all gone now,
In the past,
I've let it go.
Aching whispers, breathless gasps,
I couldn't hear the silence behind
So I turned off the set.
Eyes up high,
I said hello.
And my understanding descended,
And I knew this:
The baggage that we hold on to, the past that we cling so dearly to, is gone.
Today I realised I didn't really know how people and life worked. I thought I did, with my expertise and experiences under my belt. But I don't actually. I have made the present into a very complex image based on the past and it didn't turn out as simple and easy to interpret as I thought it would be. So I got some advice from some good friends, about living life and breathing. They told me to take it easy, to chill out, to not think everything means something. We give meaning to things, I should know that, and now I recognise it because I see that this is what I have been doing. I am the one that places value on Facebook, on clothing, on imagery, on things said and unsaid. I am the one that allows doubts to be placed in my mind about the most trivial of things. I decide what's in and what's not. The basis that I have been making these sorts of decisions on is experience. Things I learned in high school don't apply as rigidly to life in general. For example, friendship in high school taught me that friends were around all the time and the ones that you stuck with in the cluster/clique were the ones you would leave with and that would be happiness. The world is not high school. There is a much much wider variety of forms and people out here, and that certainly adds a touch of flavour to this great moment we call life. I have learned that I have put my faith in the images I have of people instead of the people themselves. Mistake made, lesson learned. People are more than just what you see, and the surface isn't just a cloud of irrelevance. Faces, particularly eyes, lips, cheeks and teeth, are used to make connections. I've gone for the quick version of getting to know some people, straight to where I thought was the heart but was instead just a piece of paper with a heart drawn on it. People have to let you in. And I admit, there is a sense of urgency that makes my own search for people seem desperate. I recognise that and am willing to change my gears and my approach.
In the back of my mind, there used to be a voice that was saying how I was manipulating everyone, that I was a controlling bitch, because I was able to make friends by building them up instead of breaking them down. That voice never got loud until this year when making friends suddenly became obligatory and more unconsciously feared and now I thought there had to be a process involved. That was a mistake, listening to the voice. Manipulation comes from a lack of security, a fear that people acting autonomously would mean my demise. Now I know that not to be true - manipulation causes people to stop understanding you and forces them to interact with a projected image of yourself, of someone better, of someone you think they need. And this is how it complicates things, because then the friends you are trying to make no longer comprehend how your world functions. Mine didn't. I was torn between manipulation/seeking attention and authenticity, an imbalance which is poisonous to relationships because it injects confusion and blurriness, and what we see then is not what we get and the complexity suddenly becomes very foreign.
Life is simple. I see now that I looked at people and discerned what their problems are and somehow made that part of who they were in my mind, thereby somehow giving me a way into their hearts if I could repair the damage. But this is a misperception. If you only see the problems in people, you stop seeing people and see problems instead. And how can you befriend problems? People carry problems with them, but as a person who understands that they carry them, I realise that what they carry is simply their past, which is no longer here, so they are in reality carrying nothing.
The aforementioned friends made me realise this because they were looking at me as a person, as a friend, not as somebody with a perception problem. And I awoke. I was making them into what they were not. The removal of my filter made me see that I had made a big error. I was seeing broken people, but people are not broken.
So I thank you for the lesson :)
I think the following reiterates it well. It came to me in the library while I was taking a break from studying for exams.
"I want you to know that in each of us there is a light, a light so bright that it penetrates through our grievances, our guilt and our mistakes. It radiates from within our soul, so this light keeps us always warm, always at home in its peace. And whenever we are lost, it is only because we stop seeing it when we close our eyes. But it never ceases to shine, and neither do we, for we are that light."
Being apart ain't easy in this love affair. I get the joy of rediscovering you. And since we're here together, let us not part ways with broken promises and lies told. We both know that light shines so much brighter when our lives are intertwined, together as one.
Insignificance belittles our magnificence as artists, not as works of art, although we are neither, and one more than the other. Flattering smiles, brushed cheeks and unknowing, the singers make up songs about us, about themselves.
Everybody knows that nobody really knows. Somber messages are drunk, and being sober pushes us to drink further from the chalice of poison. I don't understand where the soliloquy began but there was a sound at the start. This petite utterance was a golden voice in the sun, glaring at the darkness as if it wasn't even there. Such bravery. Why do we not share the moments when we are together and how can we not realise the futility of estrangement, of difference, of any reasons why there is no celebration? It's not always going to be someone's birthday, but there is a day today, and here it is.
Embrace suchness, for it creates a sensation of being, and that means it's one step closer to reality than potions and cocktails. Makes us feel rather than think. We both like pressing the keys instead of voicing it, and as such we both /emote rather than shine a light on our sentiments. Let's not run away again, we are in this together after all. We can hold each other's hand and be there for each other, not just like in the movies because the movies are movies. But because we care.
Language betrays. Questions are asked, and answers are given so more questions can go back to the end of the queue. Now there's no point in placing the blame. Hurt is just an empty plastic bag in the wind, hiding silhouettes of nothingness. The people are the ones who shine. Their spirits glow, and I can see. This is vision, when punctuation ceases to mean anything.
Have you ever been told by a day that the world is your oyster, it keeps itself together and it won't fall apart? In the moments that pass, know that there is a chance to redeem all that you've lost. I do believe in substance, in the forwards backing truth, and there's an idea that speaks in the past like a wheel. It turns. Some call it the eclipse, some the sands of time, some aren't quite aware of it. Regardless, it spins, and out comes a web that we all are tangled in, not trapped in the sense that we yearn to escape, but free because the web protects us from what is not real. Rest assured, you shall not asphyxiate because the web grows larger by the moment, always expanding, always growing. Will it collapse upon itself one day? Irrelevant, until it isn't.
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. And, those dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true.
Something tells me the rainbow is somewhere behind me. I stand here, where else but here? And that dream that I dared to dream has come true. Happiness, is unfolding itself within me and this places the rainbow behind me. I can always turn back to look at it and admire the hope that it gives, and remind myself of the days when it did offer me hope. When it signed itself as a guide, a myriad of lights playing in the rain, it shone. I followed, step by step, until I went over the rainbow. It hasn't stopped raining, and I am closer to basking in the rays of heaven as they glow a larger and larger halo through the clouds in the firmament. It's wonderful. Mysterious, but a known mystery, a reminder that I've been here before and am simply welcomed back. It hasn't changed one bit, nor should I expect peace to do that.
I like it here. This too shall pass. D'accord.
Peace.
Don't give up on the promise you were made
Never stop believing in the one you are
For to no end will you suffer and away fade,
You are saved, glad, loved close and afar.
Sentences, words on a page
And the music in the background
Oh, hello joy
You surprised me with your light.
Sunlight touches my skin
But you reach in from my soul
And touch everything around me
And make it glow.
The melody, the sweetness,
I'm forever yours, faithfully,
I never took apart my chances
But merely wrote romances
Which never came true.
In the background you lay
Smiling, never ceasing,
Always singing, always being faithful.
Tug you go, sounding golden
Never skipping a moment;
In your permeating aura
You never leave anything out.
So the angels fly with you
Bringing the light in the sky
And to the eyes of many
To hearts, and lives that shine.
Oh joy,
Ode to you,
For knowing everything
For not skipping a beat
But for getting it right
Every single time.
I know that to you
It's all the same,
Because it is all the same.
But thank you in any way, shape, form and formless.
Yours faithfully.
No hearts can break.
No stones can shake.
No love can kill.
No death can will.
No light has passed.
No wind has grasped.
No hate has flown.
No peace has blown.
No hearts can truly mend.
No darkness can transcend.
No stories are told.
No present is old.
No fear is meant.
No fire is sent.
No shadows are paved.
No ego is saved.
No hearts are torn.
No grace is born.
No silence is shattered.
No pieces are scattered.
No hurt is real.
No pain can feel.
No truth is a lie.
No life can die.
And the rest is silence.
I remember when we were children. I remember it because that time has not ended. We are all walking around as if we had only learned how to a few short days ago and are discovering the world for the first time. Everything is amazing, even though we've seen it so many times before. Everything is just fantastic and fascinating, the tops of trees, the shine on windows, the clouds, the faces of the other children. Oh joy, childhood lasts a lifetime. We don't grow up, we just decide to abandon our innocence for irresponsibility. Mate, that decision is not practical or plausible. We are children, we walk the Earth hand in hand and we play together in so many locales and ways. It's so much fun to be. Adults don't exist, so don't fool yourself into thinking that we are old or that we are somehow mature inhabitants. Insecurity doesn't make you mature, but it makes you feel like a scared child who has let go of our hands. Don't worry though, you'll eventually stop crying and open your eyes. You are going to smile then because you'll realise we were always here for you, with open arms, ready to laugh with you once more. The disorientation will just serve as a joke for a while, and we'll get much entertainment out of it. Come on, we can laugh at anything.
Let's play with our building blocks. We can make so many things. If we put them one way we can make a pyramid, or another way and we can make a wall. We can fort ourselves around the bench and protect the doll on her throne. From the elements? I don't know from who? But psychology might be able to tell us what she is afraid of. Yes, I know she's a doll. We are playing pretend aren't we? Like when we used to play pretend when we pretended to be bus drivers. Oh, how fun that was. I had so many pencils, pens and felt tip pens. Excellent markers for roads; an experience that allowed me to visualise cityscapes. And back then, I did. And I didn't have a bus, so I used a toy car. Not Hot Wheels, but some tiny ones that probably broke very easily because the plastic was cheap. You could find them with the cheap cheap cheap gum. What a treat, ephemeral, but that was part of the deal. Cheap doesn't last long. But it lasted enough time, or else I would have lost my appetite and would have wanted to try my mum's or grandma's food afterward. But back to the vehicle sandbox, remember when I put my thumb and finger onto the car and drove it around the roads I had made? I'm smiling. I pressed a bit too much sometimes to the point that the small wheels either snapped or stopped working properly. That's okay. They were buses anyway, and when I went from room to room through those roads that led me to interesting and unlikely intersections in differently congested areas (traffic-wise), I could always stop by gas stations/repair stores/anything else I wanted them to be. What a simple time that was. I'm not quite as naive as I was back then. I don't believe in it anymore. I don't find roads as fascinating anymore. Sometimes traffic lights make me anxious.
But, as I was saying. This is all child's play. No one's really very grown up. We fight over things because we think that what we are fighting over matters. Politics, a toy car. Democracy, a rubber chicken. The sexualisation of young girls, flowers picked from the field. Homosexuality, the broken lead of a pencil. Choice, innocence. Close-minded people, honesty. Lies, telling the truth as the most natural thing. Loneliness, love. Fighting, smiling. Hell, heaven.
I want to make sure I get this. Salvation is here. The only reason I would be confused about salvation being here is if I was told that salvation was elsewhere, which I believed before but now realise I trusted someone who didn't trust themselves. But I know now. I am a child, a son.
Love gets you nothing.
If I were to leave that be, you might feel as if you had been struck by a pessimistic and/or depressed bolt of emotion. But, there is a continuation.
Love gets you nothing, it gives you everything.
We talk about love as if it's the most cliché cliché and yet the most sought after thing in the world. It's everywhere, yet we look for it in places we can't find it. This does not make sense. And it is upon this realisation that I have stumbled upon with the help and guidance of "A Course In Miracles."
To paraphrase "Entre les Murs", "Je ne sais pas pourquoi nous faisons ce que nous faisons." I could say it in many ways but possibilities are endless, and certainty, quite frankly, is certain. I am going to talk now from what I have learned.
We build bridges to the world. We climb mountains, proverbial and otherwise. We overcome adversity. We compromise. We seek out a life purpose. We search for other people. We search within people for similarity. We push other people away by shutting our eyes at their similarity. We form groups. We exclude, but we want to be included. We have arrived at a point where we exclude to include, which doesn't make sense. We go to war. We blame somebody else for an illusory reality that lies in our own heads. We shove guilt down someone else's throat because we don't want our own illusory crap because it's illusory crap. We use colloquialisms to fit into society. We conform to convention to be included. We exclude those who do not fit into the social conventions. We envy those who do not fit into the social conventions. We fight those people. We fight each other. We laugh at each other. We feel wronged by the world. We seek to be accepted. We seek to be at peace. We attack other people. We want our peace to come to us. We push our peace away. We look at each other and choose to ignore what we see in the mirror. We bombard the surface of the world, of other people. We dig into the core of weakness. We fashion masks to protect our egos. We fail at succeeding to find what we really want. We succeed at failing to see the truth. We see each other and ourselves as torn and confused and shattered and tired and bruised and wounded and pathetic and apathetic and hopeless and surpassed and distraught and shocked and mournful and lost and forgetful and ignorant and insensitive and obnoxious and stubborn and unmoving and unbending and gluttonous and defiant and disrespectful and scared. We don't know what we are doing and why we are doing what we are doing. But we know one thing. We want to be whole. We want to rise up and rejoice and be present and joyful and meaningful and at peace and to embrace synonymy.
We think we are alone, but we are not. We think we are hurt, but we are not. We think we are cursed, but we are not. We think we are worthless, but we are not. We think we are nuisances, but we are not. We think we are better, but we are not. We think we are worse, but we are not. We think we are unloved, but we are not. Amidst this confusion, lies the truth. We all want the same thing and feel the same-sized love-shaped gap within ourselves.
The gap is not there, and we realise it is not there by testing it. Not by feeling sorry or guilty or ashamed or depressed at our seeming incompleteness. We know love, by doing things that require love. By being who we are and letting others be who they are. Those bridges are made of love. We are lost, which means we have simply forgotten, so we must remember. We do this by giving. Love is for giving. Love is forgiving. Love is everywhere, but we look for it as if it weren't there. But it is. Open your eyes. I am standing in the same boat as you. We are sailing on the same sea. And I am glad we are on this journey together.
Love, it travels by everywhere,
Reaching us where we are most,
In the heart
In the mind.
I'd digress if I wasn't being honest
When I say I care.
I am learning how to speak from my heart,
Finding out that there are simple ways
To unite those pieces fallen apart
In love.
And for this to occur, there must be peace
There must be acceptance and truth,
There must be the things that are already there
For they have never gone anywhere.
And love, love, it never disappears
For it is more than what meets the eyes,
More than a box of chocolates, more than a surprise,
It's more than what makes it up
Because it's whole.
This sentiment, it yearns to expand
For it holds its holy place in all the land
In all the land
Where it flows, it transforms,
Where it breathes, it seethes,
Where it springs, it knows its way
To a brightest day,
Today.
And it's all around, in every space,
Upon every face,
There is the light of grace
Through which we see.
Are we not lucky?
We are free.
We are love.
In many attitudes, forms and formlessness, we burgeon
And touch each other's hearts with our own.
Whether we cry out in pain or in joy
It is love that we employ;
That which we call upon, we already have
And so we are reminded.
Are we blessed? We are.
We are.
We are.
