Until you’ve given yourself to it entirely–
until you’ve stepped forward in the silence
of your own heart,
drenched in commitment,
and called your life’s bluff,
or taken a sabbatical
from what makes sense
and spent a few
of those precious vacation days
sleeping in back
of a rusted car
that is flying awkwardly
in gutted stasis
on a litter of cinder blocks
strewn along the ground
like the crumbs of a passing
barrage of scrapped cities,
living on tinned oranges
and over-salted vegetable broth,
just to be near
to someone
whose devotion
is so complete
your nervous, wanting presence
is the very reason
they stay up all night
by the fire
huddled in a woolen wrap
saying thank you—
one whose knowledge
has been purified by
ten thousand nights
of exalted silence
awaiting your visit–
you won’t know what
the hell I’m talking about
when I suggest that
I awoke today
thinking of you,
and what the reality you are means
to every being in existence,
and I had no choice
but to take the day off.
Embracing Forever 
I had this type of day today….where someone meant a lot to me…perhaps I did not mean that much….it was a sad day for me..but I accepted it
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Hello my friend, thank you for your visit and heartfelt comment. I am sorry to hear about these feelings through which you are or traveling, though I daresay we’ve all been there. Part of the inner meaning of this poem is to say that we all matter, not for anything we have ever done or will do, but simply because of who we are. Who we are can sound like something we have the potential to fabricate, like we can embellish on who we are by assembling a resume of friends, lovers, accomplishments, successes, etc., but this is just not the case. We matter, period, independent of and a priori to any events or comings and goings that arise.
Wishing you a tranquil passage through the tunnel of sadness into the fullness of joy, in your acceptance.
Much Love
Michael
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Thanks for this immense description of events unfolding after ‘until’. I’ve been there – I know what you’re talking about 🙂 Have a nice relaxing day off…
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😉
I wish I really did have a day off! Lately I think my sense of well-being is more abiding if I consider a day off as a day of vacation from worries, instead of from the hustle and bustle of the world of encounters and responsibilities. So in that sense, it was lovely…
Michael
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how very, very touching… my heart just grew tenfold. the dear-ness of your heart speaks volumes.
<3. have a fun day!
~m
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Thank you, M. We pump up one another’s hearts, do we not? Hanz and Franz are working in the wrong dimension!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WxjCJxfECD8
Michael
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Beautifully tender.
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Thank you, Sarah. The silence of the heart is indeed a tender realm…
Michael
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I’m up for a bit of R&R myself as from midnight U.K. time Michael. The power here will be off right through until tomorrow night whilst remedial works are done – crack open the tinned oranges and huddle up in a woollen wrap – and I’m flying around in an attempt to pay my courtesies in the blogosphere before the plug is pulled. My apologies for having nothing by way of observations to share, though I greatly enjoyed the above work, for which many thanks as ever my friend.
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I hope you stayed warm and cozy! Thank you for the kind words. I happened to oversee the link you left on Bert’s site about the PHI information theory, which is intriguing, and if and when I get a break in the action I hope to read a little about that. Looks very interesting. It has been many years since I read it, and it is not exactly related, but I am curious if you have ever read Julian Barbour’s work The End of Time? That just popped in for whatever reason…
Michael
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I haven’t read anything of Julian Barbour’s work at all Michael, and would be interested to know your thoughts on the same if you have a moment. I looked him up online and saw that he theorises that time has no fundamental reality as a property of the universe. Lots of people in the spiritual arena have this idea too, though for them, it comes from their seeing that time is only known in awareness through the relations of phenomena – no relations = no time. In other words, if awareness absorbs either into a single object, or accesses no object at all, then there is no perception of time; as the markers of time absent, so the apprehending of time itself absents. Such people tend to say ‘time is just a concept’, which I think is only half the story.
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Hi Hariod,
I will probably soon find myself re-reading Barbour’s book, as it’s essential points have faded somewhat– dare I say it?– over time. I think Barbour’s essential point is that time is an experience that is created by the way the Universe works, but does not exist in any real way. In his approach, past and future (and all sorts of variations thereof) exist as a sort of phase space, a landscape of static snapshots he calls “Nows.” Every moment is static, and the illusion of time and of change are derived from the way we scan through the landscape.
I have probably over-simplified. I recall he had many interesting and stimulating arguments related to the basic findings of quantum and relativistic physics, but I do not recall those all off the top of my head. One interesting, and perhaps unrelated point, is that part of the transformation in physics that seems to slowly be reaching popular culture is the realization that time and space do not exist as an independent landscape populated by “things.” Rather, the properties of time and space are integral to the “things”, and vice versa.
I find that particular insight of modern physics fascinating, that there are effectual linkages between what we call time and space, and the objects and processes that seem to inhabit them. We tend to imagine that if you took all the objects and processes away, time and space would be rather unperturbed, and unchanged, but at least in relativity, this situation cannot exist.
Michael
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Thank you for your response Michael. Who knows quite what to make of all these (literally) incredible ideas that bounce around the minds of our whacky theoretical physicists? And now we have a new take on the multiverse theory to contend with; too much for my tiny little brain I’m afraid!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141030101654.htm
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Wow! Very interesting, Hariod. I like to think that these various insights into reality, while they may not and maybe never will contain the full story, do provide some interesting insights into aspects of the order at work in Creation. In this theory for instance, the notion of worlds pushing away from each other suggests the idea of differentiation, of the way a singular wholeness might progressively differentiate into manifold realms of expression. Having said all that, mastery is not figuring all of this out, but of being able to sit calmly at the center of all of it, and know nothing, and radiate contentedness… I think of science as far closer to art than a scientist would probably think, in the sense that these theories suggest a structure to the cosmos that is fundamentally the result of an overlay of an idea onto “what is.” We’ve yet to find, and may never find, an idea that explains it all. But there is so much beauty and discovery in discovering the way these ideas stick… 🙂
Michael
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Sure thing my friend.
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I do hope you used this wonderful piece of writing to inform the appropriate higher ups of your absence (or rather presence) today. 🙂
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Yes, well… ahem… it has been a whirlwind couple of weeks, and I’m afraid the device was a literary attempt to express my deepest feelings on the matter… 🙂 As I noted to Tiramit, the real vacation is from worry and doubt. Then, whatever speed march of responsibilities stare me in the face far more closely approximates the experience of being a holy object traveling at the speed of light along a frictionless loop-de-loop in this theme park of life…
Michael
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Michael, I am so very much in the back of a rusted car sustaining myself on salted vegetable broth, just to be near someone who is actually a side of myself that has been neglected and ignored, as she is perhaps not the prettiest, most socially acceptable version of myself. But as I sit with her, and listen, I realize she is a powerful teacher. As you said above, to sit with this side means the release of worry and doubt, for she cannot surface in the miasma of ‘life’s bluff’. I love that all the musings and beautiful prose of this little wordpress spiritual support group weave together new meanings and awakenings for all members. Let the vacation begin!
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Hi Andrea,
I loved how you subsumed all of the characters in this piece into facets of your own being. Of course this is so… It is time spent with the holiest of Selves alive within us, who has waited tens of thousands of nights for our return, that heals all. All these felt selves within us, the sparkling collection of faces through which we feel and interpret, what are they? Each a carrier of an ache, a dream, a sadness, a vision… There is One in there willing to sit with all of them, to welcome them Home. I do love the WP interweavings… 🙂
Michael
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I’ll pause on this one, Michael. I have been here, and so I shall return.
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Excellent. Take a day off and rest… 🙂
Michael
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