With each breath
the possibility exists
that your heart will no longer
merely window shop
along the shores of Eternity,
sneaking peaks into that vista
of marbled light,
self-tending gardens
and pain-free childbirth,
imagining
with aching joy
all the wonders
doo-dads and
luxuriant, long-lasting features
that you probably
can’t even begin to comprehend
that come standard with the Wholeness package,
but will pull open
the door, step inside
and ask itself,
really ask itself,
to whom or what
you will have to answer
if you were to
give yourself over fully
to the Possibility
that you are exactly the kind of being
who deserves,
is destined in fact,
having long ago been bequeathed
access to a whole boatload
of inner resources,
to walk into a shop like that One
and make one, definitive,
doubt-obliterating,
world-changing,
non-refundable,
and totally
outrageous
Purchase.
I know.
I have goose bumps, too.
Not to break the mood,
but it’d be more of a trade, really.
It works like this:
you give the Shopkeeper
every silly theory
you ever cooked up
about Him
or you
or the way Life really works–
the ones you tried to convince
the whole world were self-evidently true
while you wandered the streets
like an out-of-work drum major,
alone and bereft, but insistently rhythmic,
before you actually stepped inside of His shop;
and then…
He gives you Everything.
What.
Are you worried
it might not be a fair trade?
Ask your heart
if it cares about
what you call fairness.
It may be worth noting
that He has been in business
for a very, very, very long time.
In certain circles
filled with beings
who inhabit
the space within
your every breath
and dare you at the apex of each inhalation
to do something wild and crazy,
His Place is practically an Institution.
Embracing Forever 
Clever perspective Michael. So have you given up all your expectations, beliefs, dreams etc. and simply allow life/ God to flow? Surrender is hard and confusing for me. Does that mean we stop even having dreams and preferences or merely stop trying to control?
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Surrender is hard and confusing for me, too, Brad. Just last night I was reading a passage in A Course of Love related to this topic, and it really spoke to me. Jesus was suggesting that our access to unity and to abundance are as natural as breathing, but that just like anything we do naturally, when we try to think about it while we are doing it, it gets kind of screwed up. You know, even a concert pianist, if they raised the playing of music to a state of mental planning, like “I’ll move this finger, then this one, then these three…” and so on, then the playing becomes awkward and stilted, maybe even some wrong notes crop up. Jesus was basically saying, we’re going to have to stop thinking about the details, about what each little thing means, and just accept it all as the reality that it is. For me that kind of approach is very helpful.
It also often helps me to look at the fundamental motivation behind my desires and dreams. Are my “dreams” based around a plan I have concocted that I think will lead me eventually to a better place or happier state? Then… they’ll probably just change, or come up a little short. For instance, we may imagine that the main obstacle to peace is a health issue. We may do some research and come up with a plan to cure it. We may realize we don’t have some of the ingredients, so we have to commit some resources to obtaining them. We may need more income to make our plan work. Pretty soon, that “dream” we are working on is five steps removed from what we truly desire, which can never be truly provided through material means anyway. The real dream we carry within is the waking experience of wholeness. We end up becoming expert an on nutrition and the right use of pharmaceuticals, and we may even resolve our symptoms, but still may not dwell within the waking experience of wholeness.
There’s increasing willingness on my part of late to accept the idea that when the starting point is the truth of our relationship to Love, Power, Joy, Abundance, etc., the rest takes care of itself. It seems important to give up the question and move deeper into the feeling of it all.
I think a big part of trying to control comes from the meaning or interpretation we assign to what we see. If we constantly are bearing witness to the likelihood of things heading south, of events that will derail and fall short of expectations if we’re not careful, then how can we help but try to control and guide them?
I think when we make the heart of Love our home and give ourselves to it fully and absolutely, we simply won’t see the need to control. Taking our hands off the wheel while we believe we’re in a vehicle moving at high speeds through a field of boulders and sink holes will never feel very good. Stopping the vehicle, getting out, and walking easily amongst the boulders, though, perhaps with a few friends, might be the most natural thing in the world. Suddenly the boulders are no longer life-threatening objects in our path, but the beautiful stone sculptures of Nature.
Michael
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Thank you so much for your very thorough and thoughtful reply. It helps to know you still have challenges with surrender and yet, like your poem and pterog suggest, we’re already it! Such irony that we get in our own way so much with mind. I like your suggestions to make the “waking experience of wholeness” our primary goal/ intention based on our relationship to love. Meanwhile, as I was writing this reply, two sparrows came to visit outside my window.
Maybe all is well after all. 🙂
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All is well, indeed. 🙂
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I read this one out loud to Don. We both think you are brilliant!
I am saving this one to read at our next full-moon drumming circle.
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Thank you both… I am touched by your words, and by the surprising delight of pure connection. WP seems to be teaching me about the reality of knowings and recognitions and giving-receivings that shunt back and forth with ease through the invisible realms, heedless of distance or theory.
Wishing you both a glorious day-
Michael
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wow. I loved this!!
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Thank you, my friend! You amaze me on a daily basis with your ability to craft new words and worlds with ease.
Michael
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Thank you for the kind words Michael. I have yet to craft a piece like yours! 🙂
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It takes at least 31 flavors to open a Baskin Robbins, but it requires an infinite array of poets to open a Creation, and no two are exactly alike. Unlike an ice cream parlor, each type of poet is not only unique, but a unique version of the whole thing. They look at one another, catching glimpses of something familiar, and then dash off to write it down. In this way we keep passing the One Secret back and forth, until all the poets have read their lines… And Love is the only flavor left in the shop.
Michael
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Beautifully expressed Michael 🙂
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Instantly I was reminded of an old television commercial where a woman receiving a manicure is told by the manicurist that she should use Palmolive dishwashing soap and in fact she is soaking her hand in it now!
Even when I cleverly try to convince myself that I am not IT, not whole, not here, not an amazing occurence of the All, the One, the Holy Divinity, I still am, or I Am as it is sometimes said.
We are so much IT that we even have the power to deny it.
Doubt comes in and says, “who do you think you are?” or “You’re not perfect, so you’re definitely not Holy or Divine.” The mistake we can make is a self-reflective quality that thinks that we are what we think. It’s okay because it is all part of the dance, a dance that we always participate in and therefore can never be beyond enough to see it. Spectators, spectres, no more.
I do so love your poem Michael. Can you imagine if every day we lived we had the awareness that all we do is already “a totally outrageous Purchase?”
Debra
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Ahhh…, the joys of YouTube. I think I found it:
I watch these old commercials and cringe on behalf of human consciousness. We thought that was clever? Ha! I love it. And yet you are right, we’ve always been and always will be IT.
I do enjoy imagining the day you describe. It would be like realizing everything came from nothing, and it just keeps doing so… From nothing… to Palmolive commercials… It’s incredible.
Michael
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I really loved reading your poem Michael. There’s a really cool build up to it 🙂
And I do like all things wild and crazy! Although I do agree it would be veeeery difficult to surprise Him. There’s not one purchase He wouldn’t expect… xox
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Thank you much, my friend. Wild and crazy can be very good, depending on whose dictionary we are using. By most definitions I am probably quite the opposite. The wild and crazy that I love tends to involve quiet moments of forgiveness, or looking the world in the eye and telling it I don’t believe it… I’m browsing through His Store more and more these days, contemplating that Purchase. Yesterday I asked him to put a fur coat on lay-away, a request He accommodated but not without a pretty feisty chuckle… What does He expect? We’re headed into summer here! 🙂
Michael
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Fairness… wow. What a big one to get over on ourselves. So much often seems so unfair… pain free childbirth. Please sign me up for that purchase 🙂 . Brilliant. -x.M
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Maren, if you spring for the self-cleaning diaper, too, I think you can pre-order the pain free childbirth kit…!
I know. Fairness. Still workin’ on that one. I do pretty well until someone cuts in line… 🙂
Michael
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… Or drives ten miles an hour UNDER the speed limit. Then I become one of those adolescent friends…
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Oooohhh… Good one. The on-ramp slow poke. My mother tells me I come from a long line of speed merchants. Apparently my grandmother on my mother’s side viewed the on-ramp as ten seconds of pure bliss, and many a trucker there were who were forced to yield to her streaking VW Bug, which she was not inclined to deviate from course…
Michael
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Do you happen to remember the cross streets? I was sure that I knew its locale when I read your post, but I’ve been wandering about town thinking maybe it was in a dream, after all. You are helping us to re-remember a town full of such shops, you know!
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The cross streets… I love it! I think it’s about half-way between Yesterday and Tomorrow. Look for the “House With Many Rooms.” Go down the stairs, by a token, wait at the platform, and Hafiz will pick you up in a horse-drawn subway carriage.
Michael
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and remember… the house with many rooms sometimes looks human. I don’t know enough about the rest of your directions, but I feel quite sure about remembering the part I just wrote down. shapeshifting is part of the adventure. 😉
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Yes, I think so, Meredith. A human is a house with many rooms. We are beginning to learn how to browse through one another. There is a coming over for tea that is happening without boiling water or selecting the leaves. I think that must be the beginning of shapeshifting… I am you and you are me, and we are one, yet we are no one. We are both close and far. You don’t need my directions, for you have given me yours, and they worked perfectly!
Michael
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Meredith wrote that “shapeshifting is part of the adventure” and I read it (too quickly) as *shoplifting* is part of the adventure! Shoplifting at that store would be an adventure indeed– wonder what the Shopkeeper would say…
Brilliant and beautiful poem Michael. Thank you for that.
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Ha! Love that, Tracey! I think the Shopkeeper would encourage theft if it would do any good, but without making that trade, without turning in our badge and gun and giving up on our old notions of vigilante justice, we’d get home, open the box, and find nothing but another object…
The Store is just a front… for the real Product… 🙂
Michael
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This Is Awesome!!!!!!! it made me smile and I think I shop there a lot, he’s got the best stuff around and it’s always FREE….all ya gotta do is ask, anything the hearts desires….how he fits so much in that store is beyond my comprehension but my kinda store indeed ❤
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Thanks, Kim! He does know how to run a retail establishment! Hahaha! The gift of every good thing can be hard to accept. How would we fit it into the car to take it home!?
With Love
Michael
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