Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Take the Red Road
Take The Red Road
Poems in Algonkian and English Languages
copyright c 2000-2006 Evan Pritchard All rights reserved
Print copy (illustrated) available from Resonance Communications
PO Box 1028 Woodstock NY 12498 (212)714-7151 $5 plus $1 postage
(Note: The letter x is used to represent a gutteral sound like the “ch” in Bach.)
Part One: Mi'kmaq Songs
The Beauty Road
Maigwaig Outee
Gwelunk axanoodamax’n
I go out looking for teachings,
Maigwaig outee
Along the red road
Messenmen outee
Along the Beauty Road
Oosit’amo neebuktamough!
Across the green surface of our mother earth
It is spring; elmee-nimq, on the way to summer.
Mother, what can you teach me today?
Dalloo gegoonoo demooee geezkook?
She seems to say,
Geezkooseen (check) il….geegunoo?
“Today we are going to learn about …”
“Nenjuk!”
families!”
First I see a high-domed turtle mother sunning herself
On a floating log
Like a smooth serene island of calm
In the middle of Greenbelt Pond,
Four nervous little meetch-cheetchk-djeedj,
Four little turtles behind,
Like an Archipeligo of tortoise shells
Waving their hind legs in the air,
Trying to climb here and there,
Flexing their knees
Plopping into the water whenever I sneeze.
Then I see the duck clan mother of the pond appear
Her vigilant serious gaze unwavering as she glides
And guides her doduclets, her twelve identical ducklings
(identical at least to me)
through spring training swim school today. They play.
When one lags behind, she waits, holding back the others
With a sign from her beak; she doesn’t have to speak.
She looks exemplary in her dark brown dress
With the pockets hemmed in bright blue ribbon
Her friend swims up to chat,
With four even smaller children
And, oops! The exact same dress!
Ants by my hand seem to stop now and then
To sense, “Where are my brothers now?”
Are they safe?”
And seem to know somehow.
Satisfied, they continue on their way.
Geloog nenjuk!
Wonderful families!
These Familes are so bonded, so close
My own family seems torn apart
By the four winds of human affairs.
We are so seldom together, so harried
Everything seems to pull us apart.
New York, Maryland, Florida, North Carolina, New Brunswick
All tear at my heart.
We are scattered,
Like the twirling seeds, like dead leaves,
Like the nations of my Algonquin people.
The ducks go back to their nest
The turtles disappear into the water
And somewhere I hear
A human baby crying
Like it’s lost its mother.
You and I are Like Water
Neen Ach Geeoh Al Samgwan
Our spiritual lives are like tiny little rivers
Maymachoowach’n al seepoodjeedk
Running down the hill to make a gathering
Pulled by the force of consequence
We can’t even see around the next corner
Stumbling on every rock along the path
We bump into each other, join forces
“Maydalain?” we say, “How are you?”
and we keep moving.
What’s the difference between ourselves
And the runoff in the spring after a good rain?
Moohwah!
Nothing!
Genoo Mamawinini! We are the nomadic
Wanderers
They call us “The Freedom People,”
Nature takes its humble course with us
Sooneywen outee
And we call it freedom!
People damn us for being who we are
We just go underground
And we just keep gathering and gathering
Geenoo mayomee ach mayomee ach
Mayomee
Streams change into rivers
Samgwan sasee-ehwhy seepoogh
Rivers change into rapids
Seepoogh sasee-ehwhy mattewan.
Only gravity knows the way
Only the nature of things knows how things
Will fall together
But I Chipmunk can assure you that they will—
It is written on the rocks.
Na’goweh nitchya,
things fall
Samgwan nitchya,
Water falls
Na’goweh ulnuk nitchya,
Ach looweywoodee
Human things fall and it is ugly
Samgwan nitchya, ach uktchee geloog!
Water falls and it is great beauty!
Today our voices babble like the sound of shallow water
But some day we will converge into a great waterfall
Moving mountains with our thunder;
Sasee-eh why koomd’n gokdoogwow!
We continue to fall into the earth
But some day we will reach the great ocean
Ach geezkooseen geenoo alsootomay Geezoolgh!
And on that day, our many voices will speak as one
With the Creator!
Sitting On Pebbles
Gehgoodeg gundaljdeedj
Geezkook, Mahamaygo gessgwee-byeen
Gundal-djeedj!
Today, the whole earth is sitting on top of a pebble.
Naoa gundal djeedj!
One little pebble!
Push too hard and it will fall—
Nitchya wayeesgayeek!
It will fall into a million pieces.
Then where will you be?
Think about what you are doing.
You only have this day which is given to you
By the Creator. Other than this, you have nothing.
Take away from nothing and you have debt.
We are at the crossroads of the seven fires
There is no more easy credit.
No more games to lose or win.
This dream is real. Time to wake up.
Make this day an offering to the Creator—
Sasyeh-whiene Geezoolgh.
And you become part of everything—opsetgoweh!
Ent gamalamun gehgoo-degk gundaljdeedj!
My heart too is balanced on a tiny stone today!
Don’t push so hard. I might break on you
Like an earth-shaped egg full of red blood.
Nemeedoosup uktchee loowehwoodee!
I have seen a lot of sorrow and confusion!
Like the stones of the earth
Like the oldest of trees, neebuk sa’an
I have seen a lot of sorrow and confusion.
Nemeedoosup uktchee loowehwoodee!
Think about what you are doing to me.
I cannot be replaced.
You cannot buy a second me at a yard sale
Like the earth itself
I am the only one you will find.
You, my friend are climbing on a mountain
Of loose stones
They are giving way even as you boast of your height.
Watch your step. Don’t show off!
You may be burying those underneath
You may end up falling yourself.
Where will you be then?
Think about what you are doing.
Geezkook welmahdji-dasee!
My heart is not in place today!
Eganamooee wuntaktek!
Give me some peace!
Wanta-ey-ahee!
Zeezeebem Abachtuq
To My Wild Bird, Far Away
(in English and Micmac)
Sometimes when you and I are together
“Wolquassamough Ebeet,”
It’s amazing!
Baxalaiee!
Everything looks so good;
Welleeakamkook! Uktchee!
I’m so happy to see you
Weldaseen nemeedoo
That I have to sing
Amooshpa gedabagee-eh
Amooshpa
A song without words.
Your eyes
Ukpoogeek’l neebuxtamough
Your green eyes
Light a red fire in my heart
Wahsowahdoo weebuxtao maigwayg
That purifies my being.
Wha’qun mahdooee uxtep.
Let me smudge you,
Let me smudge you with its smoke!
Ghebigsonnup bigsod!
When I am with you
“Wolquassamough Ebeet”
Bpaxa-laieeg naq’oeh dleasik!
Amazing things happen!
Heaven opens up, and my spirit goes someplace
Hwa-so’q benadoo, oxtichitchachamidj madjaidex
Like an arrow to the sun.
My dreams are unreasonable!
I am so happy I am dancing and it is a sacred dance
Delldjee wellodegen, ehnoodahain!
Your love washed away the sadness
In my heart, and now I feel so good.
Geesalk whacha maldooeesup
Gamalamun welowdaygass.
I think you have healed me with your embrace
Welain daan behlimp pehlin nebuhdiek.
My heart goes to you now
Like an arrow to the sun
Al eltaeegen nagooset.
When will I see you again?
Donn upnamooltessanoo?
I miss you! I miss you!
Messalagoo! Messalagoo!
Ent ehbitem!
Zeezeebem Abachtuq
Donn neen ach geeoh mahweedadjik
“Wolquassamough Ebeet,”
bahxalaiee!
Weleeakamkook! Uktchee!
Weldasseen nemeedoo
Amooshpa gedabagee-eh
Dabageeach’n mu eloeestagetk
Ukpoogeek’l neebuchtamough
Wahsowahdoo weebuxtao maiguaig
Ent gamalamun
Wha’qun mahdooee uchtep.
Gehbigsonnup bigsod!
Donn neen ach geeo mahweedadjik
“Wolquassamough Ebeet”
Bpaxa-laieeg naq’oeh delahsik
Hwa-so’q benadoo, oxtchitchachamidj madjaidex
Geloog dan del queesee
Delldjee wellodegen, ehnoodahain!
Geesalk whaxa maldooeesup
Gamalamun welowdaygass.
Welalin daan behlimp pehlin nebuhdiek.
Ent gamalamun nahdamee geeoh
Al eltaeegen nagooset.
Donn upnamooltessanoo?
Messalagoo, messalagoo,
Ent ehbitem.
The Path of Aglamz
(Aglamz: A Micmac word whose meaning resembles the Tao. It is a way of understanding.)
Listening to the music which cannot be heard,
This is the sound of Aglamz
Seeing colors which cannot be seen,
This is the light of Aglamz
Knowing things which have no sense,
This is the understanding of Aglamz
Visiting the inaccessible place
This is traveling the path of Aglamz
Calling and calling for that being which has no name,
This is the song of Aglamz,
Coming to the end of all roads
This is the beginning on the path of Aglamz.
Neegeh
(This Moment Now)
At this eventful moment of the day
The snail has found the jail key to her shell
The beetle bug is measuring the tree
The butterfly emerges from her womb
The lotus shows the petal to the bee
The dragonfly in dancing on the lake
The ladybug is yearning to be free
But the praying mantis sits there mindful of them all
And contemplating dew upon a single blade of sweetgrass
Learns to see.
Haiku
Emptiness of space
In you the Great Blue Heron
Has room to stretch wings.
Smokey summer moon
Thin like a new candle’s flame
Burning midnight oil.
Dusk. The mountain blurs
Them melts away. Lightning brews
Teardrops on the breeze.
Blossom you are vain!
You wait til I notice you
Then plunge to the ground!
Would you have the sun
Shining all the time?
What about the owls?
Where’s heaven?
It’s in the last place
That you look.
The Earth Is Our Mother
Ma’amaygo Geedjoo-en
I have heard the elders say,
“The Sun is our grandfather.”
”Geezeegool Nisgamitch.”
But we have lost him in the wilderness
And no longer go out to search for him.
I have heard the old women say,
“The moon is our grandmother.”
“Geezeegooeesk Depkunoset.”
But we have left her house a mess;
We barged in and took things
And brought bad luck to our own house.
And I have heard the wise man and the warrior say:
”The earth is our mother.”
”Ma’amaygo Geedjooen.”
But we have tricked her
And cut off her hair while she was sleeping
Then we threw it in the fire,
And now we must live with
The stench of our deceit.
Now she is balding and ugly
And has no long braids
On which to hang the stars
Her skin is covered with scars.
We are one tribe
No’ogamaq
And yet we have made separate camps
And have found excuses to disagree,
To throw rocks, to fire arrows,
At one another’s hearts
With murderous eyes.
And yet on days like these
Geezkook al ootdetk
When my eyes are cloudy
And the rain falls on my hearth
I go to my mother for understanding.
I talk long walks with her
And she explains the way of things to me
Agoolamzin
And I am reassured.
She heals me with her mixtures of herbs
And barks and grass
Clever old woman
I drink in the essences of flowers
And my eyes are made clear.
Entpoogeek al samgwan
And I never know wheterh she has forgotten my
Childish pranks
Or just doesn’t care,
But I am newly amazed each time.
After a long day’s walk
I am ready to go back home
And then, through the trees
I see my long long grandfather
Geezeegool Niskamitch
His red, round face shining with joy
At my return
The searching is over once again.
I run to the clearing to greet him.
Tonight, my grandmother will greet me too,
My big, fat, pale grandmother
Geezeegooeesk Depk’noset
The one who shines at night
Whose smile is as broad as the river is long
And whose hair is as black as the night.
She will smile on me alone
And tell me of her travels,
And all will be forgotten.
One More Eagle Song
Nauqte Geetpo Oochtabaygee-eh
Geezeegool Geetpo moosehgisq
Eagle in the sky
Neen melxeeganan dbemaxseen
Do I have the strength to fly
Damee geeoh bukdakseen
Where you fly
Donn nebp’d?
When I die?
Damee eleeun—
Where are you going—
Welneedap?
My friend?
Aboch’n mooee gwelahk dju-zen gamalamun
Help me find my heart’s direction
Oochdjuzen mussegeesk
It comes from the direction of the sky
Oochdjuzen nagooset
It comes from the direction of the sun
Oochdjuzen nagooset
The direction of the wind and the stars!
Ooxdjuzen ooxdjuzen ach gullohwitchk!
Can you help?
Aboch’n mooee?
Nahdamee boxtuloogaiq ella-diq(oo)
Do you want to go someplace with me?
You who fly to the sun
Geeoh wenit buskoosod nagooset
You who fly on the wind
Wenit buskoosod oochdjuzen?
And converse with the stars?
Ach elgoolo-see gullohwitchk?
Bring me the message
Eeganamooee ahganoodemax’n abaxtuq
From afar.
Gehdoo samqwai naq’o-eh
I am thirsty for something
Moohwa samgwan
It is not water
Gaydax’n!
It is understanding!
Otch-tchi-tcha-hau-midtch ma-djai-dech welleh
My spirit goes someplace good
Donn nebp’d
When I die.
Take me there now
But only take my eyes
Naneen gaydoolee-ay doo-ahlee
I want to go, take me from here
Gaydjoo wadoo ukpoogeek’l
To the spirit world
Weygadex
Where I will see clearly
Nemeetdhun mu-metcheegheh
Like you do,
Al geeoh!
Mou-messenoo-moolx!
I don’t get it!
I climb
Ahmasek
A long way up
Kmmdn’ uktchee Manitou
The mountain of Great Spirit
Hunting for knowledge
Gwaylunk gaydax’n
Wisdom
Unkeedassee-wach’n
And peace
Ach wuntaktek.
Geeztelahdayg’n
The Quest
Tachadungmooee
The quest has finished me
Bochtchin lua-dhung!
But it is just starting!
Donn geeoh geezeegooldjeedj!
When you, old grandfather
“Sa’an wabay sobonne”
“Old white-hair”
Buskoosod achdadoo
Fly right past me
Alaee Niskgam.
On your way to the Sun.
Axanoo-demaq’n abee
Bring me back words of wisdom
When you return!
Donn upnamooltessanoo!
Gaydoo damee entgwaylaken
You’ll know where to look for me
Bemee’en al meetch-tcheetch
Trudging like a turtle
Maygwaig outee ahmasek!
Along the red road!
Take the Red Road
Mee-eneemoo Maygwayg Outee
Walk towards the sun for a day
Eleeun Nisgam nauqte negwew
You shadow will know the way
Otchitcha-hau-mitch(oo) gaydoo aglamz.
Donn geeoh nemeedoo daboo outee
When you come to an intersection
Ach ga’xamee mooshpa lagoowax’n uchtup
And standing there you have to make up your mind
Mee-en-eemoo Maygwayg Outee.
Take the Red Road.
Waneeshee, ucktcheegehloog djoosin
It’s more beautiful in that direction
Ach witchoowoo donn taxadung.
And shorter in the long run.
El-loo-gaik weegooum ixtuq
Keep walking until you come to a dwelling
Ixtooq nemeedoo djeenum geeoh gaydoosup
There you will meet someone you used to know
Gesalgkedt
Embrace him
Ax wixomut micmac, Meegamooatch.
And call him countryman, kin-friend.
Sooner or later, the blessings of night will fall
Ulabadoo depkik nitchya al geetpessan
Like the rain.
Sakseegwadoo buxtao gamalamun
But let your fire burn brightly
In your little shell.
Meegus-djeedj.
Maygwayg buxtao whasowahdoo ukpoogeek-el
Let its red glow light your eyes
Bemee-en mee-eneemoo nehbunn
Keep walking until you find sleep
Geh-gobeet ma’amaygo
Then lay upon the earth
Geesalk Noogamee
Embrace the Great Mother.
Donn mundjai
When you awaken
Mee-en-ee-moo geeoh
You’ll find yourself
Uxtaahnuq
On a beach
Boxtchin waben-eeah
Welee-etseepoq
Just before the dawn
Of a beautiful morning.
Geeoh aimoo wedjibennah neegeh.
You are in the eastern direction now
Munjai ax nemeedoo wedjibek
Rise up and look to the east
Geezeegool Nisgam
To the Grandfather Sun
Munjai gwessgweedjai abaxtuq
Rising over the ocean.
Eleeun taxadung oo’sitgamoo
Walk to the end of the earth
Ga’amee botchin abaxtuq
And stand at the edge of the ocean
Tchai-nai
Wait quietly
Wuntaktek uk-kamalamun
With peace in your heart
Ax ahlsootumy Neesgam
And pray.
Take your offering
From its pot of clay
Eganee sasee-eh-whyn
Tcha wo’qtch-tyou
Something in exchange for the light.
Na’qo’eh sasee-eh why whasowuck.
Slowly, the sun will show his face to you
Nisgam elxeedamool seesk gee-el
And unfold for you a stream of red
Ax eganugee-el seepoodjeedj maygwayg
Whaso-buxtau weskitdek
Firelight sparkling along the crest of waves
Al ahmasek outee maygwayg
Like a long beautiful red road
Waygadex
To eternity.
When it washes your shoes
Donn ilwax’n malseen makassink
Take that red road to the center of the sun
Mee-enee-moo maygwayg outee gamalamun Nisgam.
You will not fall
Muxwa nitchya
Your feet will fly to heaven!
Mukatk buskoosod Whasowuck!
Geenoo el-eeun Nisgam nauqtegwew
We all will travel towards the Creator one day
Otchitchahaumitch(oo) gaydax’n aglamz
Our spirits will understand the way
The way of truth and harmony
The Red Road!
Maygwaig outee!
Bemee’en wedji-bennah
Walk towards the place where the sun rises
Gamalamun Nisgam
To the heart of the Creator
Ax taxadung oo’sitgamooo.
And there at the edge of the world..
We’ll speak as one with the Creator!
Geenoo ahlsootumy Geezeegool Nisgam!
Eganuwax’n sasee-ehwhyn
Laying down our offering
Tcha woq’tchk
Pots of clay
Sasee-eh-why whasowuck
In exchange for Heaven.
Geenoo aim outee ixtuq
We then will be the road itself
Ax muxwa mooshpa bemee’en abaxtuk
And we’ll no longer need to walk so far
Aim ixtooq
To get there.
Ees neegeh
But for now
Mee-enee-moo Maygwayg outee!
Take the Red Road!
Part Two: Poems in English and Delawarian Languages
You And I Are Like Water
(In Northern Unami and English)
Ni wox ki alinaquat m’bi
You and I are like water
Ni wox ki alinaquat m’bi.
Coos tchupik tekenuk
Axsuanl tchupik ni-waxtschuk
The Pines are rooted in our forests
The stones are rooting in our mountains
The corn is rooted in our soil
Chasquaysem tchupik nihakki
Ees nee wox ki
But you and I
Aliniquat m’bi!
Are like water!
Gilunoo matta’tschupik hakki
We have no earthly roots
Wox axtchin messoxwi!
And we must keep running!
Ejajan
Wherever you go
Ejajan
Mamsxali, mamsxali!
Remember me! Remember me!
Ni wox ki, alinaquat m’bi
You and I are like water
Ni wox ki, alinaquat m’bi
Alinaquat sheepoos
Our lives like tiny streams
Messaxwe
Running down hill
Mogowoa gitchitoon!
no one knows where we end up!
Lill!
Tell me!
Delli tchanindewoagan
What’s the difference
Between you and me…and the water?
Ni wox ki…wox m’bi?
Moxwa!
Nothing!
Luewak axtchin aan
They say that we must leave
Axtchin aan, aan woole-hakki
That we must leave
Leave this sacred land!
Al peptelaan,
Like a shower of rain,
Pimuxquayu waxtsxuk
Pee-etchookw
We are turned from these mountains by changing winds
And can’t return
Mo-ma-tsxil
Mamsxali!
Ni wox ki tchanind seepoo
You and I are from different rivers
Ees ootchitchan giluna liniquat!
But inside we are the same!
Our hearts split like wood!
Ktehena paxat taxan!
We cut our hair in mourning!
Gisx kschummen milax
Giluna pomsi aney metelen
We walk a humble path
Ees geequey matchapeek
But this is the hardest day of all!
Delli ann?
Where will we go?
Ni wox ki moxwa wikooum!
You and I have no earthly home!
Ejajan!
Wherever you go
Mamschali! Mamschali!
Remember me! Remember me!
Mamschali! Mamschali!
To Come:
Unquachoag Prayer (Unquachoag)
The Mud Diver Story (Munsee)
Poems in Algonkian and English Languages
copyright c 2000-2006 Evan Pritchard All rights reserved
Print copy (illustrated) available from Resonance Communications
PO Box 1028 Woodstock NY 12498 (212)714-7151 $5 plus $1 postage
(Note: The letter x is used to represent a gutteral sound like the “ch” in Bach.)
Part One: Mi'kmaq Songs
The Beauty Road
Maigwaig Outee
Gwelunk axanoodamax’n
I go out looking for teachings,
Maigwaig outee
Along the red road
Messenmen outee
Along the Beauty Road
Oosit’amo neebuktamough!
Across the green surface of our mother earth
It is spring; elmee-nimq, on the way to summer.
Mother, what can you teach me today?
Dalloo gegoonoo demooee geezkook?
She seems to say,
Geezkooseen (check) il….geegunoo?
“Today we are going to learn about …”
“Nenjuk!”
families!”
First I see a high-domed turtle mother sunning herself
On a floating log
Like a smooth serene island of calm
In the middle of Greenbelt Pond,
Four nervous little meetch-cheetchk-djeedj,
Four little turtles behind,
Like an Archipeligo of tortoise shells
Waving their hind legs in the air,
Trying to climb here and there,
Flexing their knees
Plopping into the water whenever I sneeze.
Then I see the duck clan mother of the pond appear
Her vigilant serious gaze unwavering as she glides
And guides her doduclets, her twelve identical ducklings
(identical at least to me)
through spring training swim school today. They play.
When one lags behind, she waits, holding back the others
With a sign from her beak; she doesn’t have to speak.
She looks exemplary in her dark brown dress
With the pockets hemmed in bright blue ribbon
Her friend swims up to chat,
With four even smaller children
And, oops! The exact same dress!
Ants by my hand seem to stop now and then
To sense, “Where are my brothers now?”
Are they safe?”
And seem to know somehow.
Satisfied, they continue on their way.
Geloog nenjuk!
Wonderful families!
These Familes are so bonded, so close
My own family seems torn apart
By the four winds of human affairs.
We are so seldom together, so harried
Everything seems to pull us apart.
New York, Maryland, Florida, North Carolina, New Brunswick
All tear at my heart.
We are scattered,
Like the twirling seeds, like dead leaves,
Like the nations of my Algonquin people.
The ducks go back to their nest
The turtles disappear into the water
And somewhere I hear
A human baby crying
Like it’s lost its mother.
You and I are Like Water
Neen Ach Geeoh Al Samgwan
Our spiritual lives are like tiny little rivers
Maymachoowach’n al seepoodjeedk
Running down the hill to make a gathering
Pulled by the force of consequence
We can’t even see around the next corner
Stumbling on every rock along the path
We bump into each other, join forces
“Maydalain?” we say, “How are you?”
and we keep moving.
What’s the difference between ourselves
And the runoff in the spring after a good rain?
Moohwah!
Nothing!
Genoo Mamawinini! We are the nomadic
Wanderers
They call us “The Freedom People,”
Nature takes its humble course with us
Sooneywen outee
And we call it freedom!
People damn us for being who we are
We just go underground
And we just keep gathering and gathering
Geenoo mayomee ach mayomee ach
Mayomee
Streams change into rivers
Samgwan sasee-ehwhy seepoogh
Rivers change into rapids
Seepoogh sasee-ehwhy mattewan.
Only gravity knows the way
Only the nature of things knows how things
Will fall together
But I Chipmunk can assure you that they will—
It is written on the rocks.
Na’goweh nitchya,
things fall
Samgwan nitchya,
Water falls
Na’goweh ulnuk nitchya,
Ach looweywoodee
Human things fall and it is ugly
Samgwan nitchya, ach uktchee geloog!
Water falls and it is great beauty!
Today our voices babble like the sound of shallow water
But some day we will converge into a great waterfall
Moving mountains with our thunder;
Sasee-eh why koomd’n gokdoogwow!
We continue to fall into the earth
But some day we will reach the great ocean
Ach geezkooseen geenoo alsootomay Geezoolgh!
And on that day, our many voices will speak as one
With the Creator!
Sitting On Pebbles
Gehgoodeg gundaljdeedj
Geezkook, Mahamaygo gessgwee-byeen
Gundal-djeedj!
Today, the whole earth is sitting on top of a pebble.
Naoa gundal djeedj!
One little pebble!
Push too hard and it will fall—
Nitchya wayeesgayeek!
It will fall into a million pieces.
Then where will you be?
Think about what you are doing.
You only have this day which is given to you
By the Creator. Other than this, you have nothing.
Take away from nothing and you have debt.
We are at the crossroads of the seven fires
There is no more easy credit.
No more games to lose or win.
This dream is real. Time to wake up.
Make this day an offering to the Creator—
Sasyeh-whiene Geezoolgh.
And you become part of everything—opsetgoweh!
Ent gamalamun gehgoo-degk gundaljdeedj!
My heart too is balanced on a tiny stone today!
Don’t push so hard. I might break on you
Like an earth-shaped egg full of red blood.
Nemeedoosup uktchee loowehwoodee!
I have seen a lot of sorrow and confusion!
Like the stones of the earth
Like the oldest of trees, neebuk sa’an
I have seen a lot of sorrow and confusion.
Nemeedoosup uktchee loowehwoodee!
Think about what you are doing to me.
I cannot be replaced.
You cannot buy a second me at a yard sale
Like the earth itself
I am the only one you will find.
You, my friend are climbing on a mountain
Of loose stones
They are giving way even as you boast of your height.
Watch your step. Don’t show off!
You may be burying those underneath
You may end up falling yourself.
Where will you be then?
Think about what you are doing.
Geezkook welmahdji-dasee!
My heart is not in place today!
Eganamooee wuntaktek!
Give me some peace!
Wanta-ey-ahee!
Zeezeebem Abachtuq
To My Wild Bird, Far Away
(in English and Micmac)
Sometimes when you and I are together
“Wolquassamough Ebeet,”
It’s amazing!
Baxalaiee!
Everything looks so good;
Welleeakamkook! Uktchee!
I’m so happy to see you
Weldaseen nemeedoo
That I have to sing
Amooshpa gedabagee-eh
Amooshpa
A song without words.
Your eyes
Ukpoogeek’l neebuxtamough
Your green eyes
Light a red fire in my heart
Wahsowahdoo weebuxtao maigwayg
That purifies my being.
Wha’qun mahdooee uxtep.
Let me smudge you,
Let me smudge you with its smoke!
Ghebigsonnup bigsod!
When I am with you
“Wolquassamough Ebeet”
Bpaxa-laieeg naq’oeh dleasik!
Amazing things happen!
Heaven opens up, and my spirit goes someplace
Hwa-so’q benadoo, oxtichitchachamidj madjaidex
Like an arrow to the sun.
My dreams are unreasonable!
I am so happy I am dancing and it is a sacred dance
Delldjee wellodegen, ehnoodahain!
Your love washed away the sadness
In my heart, and now I feel so good.
Geesalk whacha maldooeesup
Gamalamun welowdaygass.
I think you have healed me with your embrace
Welain daan behlimp pehlin nebuhdiek.
My heart goes to you now
Like an arrow to the sun
Al eltaeegen nagooset.
When will I see you again?
Donn upnamooltessanoo?
I miss you! I miss you!
Messalagoo! Messalagoo!
Ent ehbitem!
Zeezeebem Abachtuq
Donn neen ach geeoh mahweedadjik
“Wolquassamough Ebeet,”
bahxalaiee!
Weleeakamkook! Uktchee!
Weldasseen nemeedoo
Amooshpa gedabagee-eh
Dabageeach’n mu eloeestagetk
Ukpoogeek’l neebuchtamough
Wahsowahdoo weebuxtao maiguaig
Ent gamalamun
Wha’qun mahdooee uchtep.
Gehbigsonnup bigsod!
Donn neen ach geeo mahweedadjik
“Wolquassamough Ebeet”
Bpaxa-laieeg naq’oeh delahsik
Hwa-so’q benadoo, oxtchitchachamidj madjaidex
Geloog dan del queesee
Delldjee wellodegen, ehnoodahain!
Geesalk whaxa maldooeesup
Gamalamun welowdaygass.
Welalin daan behlimp pehlin nebuhdiek.
Ent gamalamun nahdamee geeoh
Al eltaeegen nagooset.
Donn upnamooltessanoo?
Messalagoo, messalagoo,
Ent ehbitem.
The Path of Aglamz
(Aglamz: A Micmac word whose meaning resembles the Tao. It is a way of understanding.)
Listening to the music which cannot be heard,
This is the sound of Aglamz
Seeing colors which cannot be seen,
This is the light of Aglamz
Knowing things which have no sense,
This is the understanding of Aglamz
Visiting the inaccessible place
This is traveling the path of Aglamz
Calling and calling for that being which has no name,
This is the song of Aglamz,
Coming to the end of all roads
This is the beginning on the path of Aglamz.
Neegeh
(This Moment Now)
At this eventful moment of the day
The snail has found the jail key to her shell
The beetle bug is measuring the tree
The butterfly emerges from her womb
The lotus shows the petal to the bee
The dragonfly in dancing on the lake
The ladybug is yearning to be free
But the praying mantis sits there mindful of them all
And contemplating dew upon a single blade of sweetgrass
Learns to see.
Haiku
Emptiness of space
In you the Great Blue Heron
Has room to stretch wings.
Smokey summer moon
Thin like a new candle’s flame
Burning midnight oil.
Dusk. The mountain blurs
Them melts away. Lightning brews
Teardrops on the breeze.
Blossom you are vain!
You wait til I notice you
Then plunge to the ground!
Would you have the sun
Shining all the time?
What about the owls?
Where’s heaven?
It’s in the last place
That you look.
The Earth Is Our Mother
Ma’amaygo Geedjoo-en
I have heard the elders say,
“The Sun is our grandfather.”
”Geezeegool Nisgamitch.”
But we have lost him in the wilderness
And no longer go out to search for him.
I have heard the old women say,
“The moon is our grandmother.”
“Geezeegooeesk Depkunoset.”
But we have left her house a mess;
We barged in and took things
And brought bad luck to our own house.
And I have heard the wise man and the warrior say:
”The earth is our mother.”
”Ma’amaygo Geedjooen.”
But we have tricked her
And cut off her hair while she was sleeping
Then we threw it in the fire,
And now we must live with
The stench of our deceit.
Now she is balding and ugly
And has no long braids
On which to hang the stars
Her skin is covered with scars.
We are one tribe
No’ogamaq
And yet we have made separate camps
And have found excuses to disagree,
To throw rocks, to fire arrows,
At one another’s hearts
With murderous eyes.
And yet on days like these
Geezkook al ootdetk
When my eyes are cloudy
And the rain falls on my hearth
I go to my mother for understanding.
I talk long walks with her
And she explains the way of things to me
Agoolamzin
And I am reassured.
She heals me with her mixtures of herbs
And barks and grass
Clever old woman
I drink in the essences of flowers
And my eyes are made clear.
Entpoogeek al samgwan
And I never know wheterh she has forgotten my
Childish pranks
Or just doesn’t care,
But I am newly amazed each time.
After a long day’s walk
I am ready to go back home
And then, through the trees
I see my long long grandfather
Geezeegool Niskamitch
His red, round face shining with joy
At my return
The searching is over once again.
I run to the clearing to greet him.
Tonight, my grandmother will greet me too,
My big, fat, pale grandmother
Geezeegooeesk Depk’noset
The one who shines at night
Whose smile is as broad as the river is long
And whose hair is as black as the night.
She will smile on me alone
And tell me of her travels,
And all will be forgotten.
One More Eagle Song
Nauqte Geetpo Oochtabaygee-eh
Geezeegool Geetpo moosehgisq
Eagle in the sky
Neen melxeeganan dbemaxseen
Do I have the strength to fly
Damee geeoh bukdakseen
Where you fly
Donn nebp’d?
When I die?
Damee eleeun—
Where are you going—
Welneedap?
My friend?
Aboch’n mooee gwelahk dju-zen gamalamun
Help me find my heart’s direction
Oochdjuzen mussegeesk
It comes from the direction of the sky
Oochdjuzen nagooset
It comes from the direction of the sun
Oochdjuzen nagooset
The direction of the wind and the stars!
Ooxdjuzen ooxdjuzen ach gullohwitchk!
Can you help?
Aboch’n mooee?
Nahdamee boxtuloogaiq ella-diq(oo)
Do you want to go someplace with me?
You who fly to the sun
Geeoh wenit buskoosod nagooset
You who fly on the wind
Wenit buskoosod oochdjuzen?
And converse with the stars?
Ach elgoolo-see gullohwitchk?
Bring me the message
Eeganamooee ahganoodemax’n abaxtuq
From afar.
Gehdoo samqwai naq’o-eh
I am thirsty for something
Moohwa samgwan
It is not water
Gaydax’n!
It is understanding!
Otch-tchi-tcha-hau-midtch ma-djai-dech welleh
My spirit goes someplace good
Donn nebp’d
When I die.
Take me there now
But only take my eyes
Naneen gaydoolee-ay doo-ahlee
I want to go, take me from here
Gaydjoo wadoo ukpoogeek’l
To the spirit world
Weygadex
Where I will see clearly
Nemeetdhun mu-metcheegheh
Like you do,
Al geeoh!
Mou-messenoo-moolx!
I don’t get it!
I climb
Ahmasek
A long way up
Kmmdn’ uktchee Manitou
The mountain of Great Spirit
Hunting for knowledge
Gwaylunk gaydax’n
Wisdom
Unkeedassee-wach’n
And peace
Ach wuntaktek.
Geeztelahdayg’n
The Quest
Tachadungmooee
The quest has finished me
Bochtchin lua-dhung!
But it is just starting!
Donn geeoh geezeegooldjeedj!
When you, old grandfather
“Sa’an wabay sobonne”
“Old white-hair”
Buskoosod achdadoo
Fly right past me
Alaee Niskgam.
On your way to the Sun.
Axanoo-demaq’n abee
Bring me back words of wisdom
When you return!
Donn upnamooltessanoo!
Gaydoo damee entgwaylaken
You’ll know where to look for me
Bemee’en al meetch-tcheetch
Trudging like a turtle
Maygwaig outee ahmasek!
Along the red road!
Take the Red Road
Mee-eneemoo Maygwayg Outee
Walk towards the sun for a day
Eleeun Nisgam nauqte negwew
You shadow will know the way
Otchitcha-hau-mitch(oo) gaydoo aglamz.
Donn geeoh nemeedoo daboo outee
When you come to an intersection
Ach ga’xamee mooshpa lagoowax’n uchtup
And standing there you have to make up your mind
Mee-en-eemoo Maygwayg Outee.
Take the Red Road.
Waneeshee, ucktcheegehloog djoosin
It’s more beautiful in that direction
Ach witchoowoo donn taxadung.
And shorter in the long run.
El-loo-gaik weegooum ixtuq
Keep walking until you come to a dwelling
Ixtooq nemeedoo djeenum geeoh gaydoosup
There you will meet someone you used to know
Gesalgkedt
Embrace him
Ax wixomut micmac, Meegamooatch.
And call him countryman, kin-friend.
Sooner or later, the blessings of night will fall
Ulabadoo depkik nitchya al geetpessan
Like the rain.
Sakseegwadoo buxtao gamalamun
But let your fire burn brightly
In your little shell.
Meegus-djeedj.
Maygwayg buxtao whasowahdoo ukpoogeek-el
Let its red glow light your eyes
Bemee-en mee-eneemoo nehbunn
Keep walking until you find sleep
Geh-gobeet ma’amaygo
Then lay upon the earth
Geesalk Noogamee
Embrace the Great Mother.
Donn mundjai
When you awaken
Mee-en-ee-moo geeoh
You’ll find yourself
Uxtaahnuq
On a beach
Boxtchin waben-eeah
Welee-etseepoq
Just before the dawn
Of a beautiful morning.
Geeoh aimoo wedjibennah neegeh.
You are in the eastern direction now
Munjai ax nemeedoo wedjibek
Rise up and look to the east
Geezeegool Nisgam
To the Grandfather Sun
Munjai gwessgweedjai abaxtuq
Rising over the ocean.
Eleeun taxadung oo’sitgamoo
Walk to the end of the earth
Ga’amee botchin abaxtuq
And stand at the edge of the ocean
Tchai-nai
Wait quietly
Wuntaktek uk-kamalamun
With peace in your heart
Ax ahlsootumy Neesgam
And pray.
Take your offering
From its pot of clay
Eganee sasee-eh-whyn
Tcha wo’qtch-tyou
Something in exchange for the light.
Na’qo’eh sasee-eh why whasowuck.
Slowly, the sun will show his face to you
Nisgam elxeedamool seesk gee-el
And unfold for you a stream of red
Ax eganugee-el seepoodjeedj maygwayg
Whaso-buxtau weskitdek
Firelight sparkling along the crest of waves
Al ahmasek outee maygwayg
Like a long beautiful red road
Waygadex
To eternity.
When it washes your shoes
Donn ilwax’n malseen makassink
Take that red road to the center of the sun
Mee-enee-moo maygwayg outee gamalamun Nisgam.
You will not fall
Muxwa nitchya
Your feet will fly to heaven!
Mukatk buskoosod Whasowuck!
Geenoo el-eeun Nisgam nauqtegwew
We all will travel towards the Creator one day
Otchitchahaumitch(oo) gaydax’n aglamz
Our spirits will understand the way
The way of truth and harmony
The Red Road!
Maygwaig outee!
Bemee’en wedji-bennah
Walk towards the place where the sun rises
Gamalamun Nisgam
To the heart of the Creator
Ax taxadung oo’sitgamooo.
And there at the edge of the world..
We’ll speak as one with the Creator!
Geenoo ahlsootumy Geezeegool Nisgam!
Eganuwax’n sasee-ehwhyn
Laying down our offering
Tcha woq’tchk
Pots of clay
Sasee-eh-why whasowuck
In exchange for Heaven.
Geenoo aim outee ixtuq
We then will be the road itself
Ax muxwa mooshpa bemee’en abaxtuk
And we’ll no longer need to walk so far
Aim ixtooq
To get there.
Ees neegeh
But for now
Mee-enee-moo Maygwayg outee!
Take the Red Road!
Part Two: Poems in English and Delawarian Languages
You And I Are Like Water
(In Northern Unami and English)
Ni wox ki alinaquat m’bi
You and I are like water
Ni wox ki alinaquat m’bi.
Coos tchupik tekenuk
Axsuanl tchupik ni-waxtschuk
The Pines are rooted in our forests
The stones are rooting in our mountains
The corn is rooted in our soil
Chasquaysem tchupik nihakki
Ees nee wox ki
But you and I
Aliniquat m’bi!
Are like water!
Gilunoo matta’tschupik hakki
We have no earthly roots
Wox axtchin messoxwi!
And we must keep running!
Ejajan
Wherever you go
Ejajan
Mamsxali, mamsxali!
Remember me! Remember me!
Ni wox ki, alinaquat m’bi
You and I are like water
Ni wox ki, alinaquat m’bi
Alinaquat sheepoos
Our lives like tiny streams
Messaxwe
Running down hill
Mogowoa gitchitoon!
no one knows where we end up!
Lill!
Tell me!
Delli tchanindewoagan
What’s the difference
Between you and me…and the water?
Ni wox ki…wox m’bi?
Moxwa!
Nothing!
Luewak axtchin aan
They say that we must leave
Axtchin aan, aan woole-hakki
That we must leave
Leave this sacred land!
Al peptelaan,
Like a shower of rain,
Pimuxquayu waxtsxuk
Pee-etchookw
We are turned from these mountains by changing winds
And can’t return
Mo-ma-tsxil
Mamsxali!
Ni wox ki tchanind seepoo
You and I are from different rivers
Ees ootchitchan giluna liniquat!
But inside we are the same!
Our hearts split like wood!
Ktehena paxat taxan!
We cut our hair in mourning!
Gisx kschummen milax
Giluna pomsi aney metelen
We walk a humble path
Ees geequey matchapeek
But this is the hardest day of all!
Delli ann?
Where will we go?
Ni wox ki moxwa wikooum!
You and I have no earthly home!
Ejajan!
Wherever you go
Mamschali! Mamschali!
Remember me! Remember me!
Mamschali! Mamschali!
To Come:
Unquachoag Prayer (Unquachoag)
The Mud Diver Story (Munsee)
The Golden Sphinx and the Silver Phoenix
The Golden Sphinx and the Silver Phoenix
Copyright c 1983, c 1985 c 2006 by Evan Pritchard
All Rights Reserved
Print copy available from Resonance Communications
PO Box 1028 Woodstock NY 12498 $5 plus $1 P & H (212)714-7151
Part One
The Golden Sphinx
Copyright © 1983 by Evan Pritchard
There was in ancient days
A story of two lovers
A tale of how they met
A legend of their passion
And unlike other stories
There two were not rulers
King or Queen or even rich or powerful
But on their meeting day
When love began its slow and sputtering fire
Each were much too lowly for the other
Yet somehow as a salmon
Climbs the fall to find its nest
These two found a haven
In each other
And on some special nights
Shared stories rich in detail
Piling wealth on top of wealth
From stores of images within
As potentates swap kingdoms, jewels and woes
And deal them back again.
One such tale was called “The Golden Sphinx,”
Perhaps it bears repeating once again.
The dusk settled in upon the window sill
The intimate shadows grew
Until they enveloped the youthful lovers
Woven one about the other on the bedspread loom.
The sun had fallen quickly from the sky
And all of dark deep space rushed in like tide.
She held her Phoenix lover, vanguard of the sun,
Vanquisher of night
He blessed her in return with his caress,
For she was the summoner of the moon—
Its falconeress who caused that distant bird to rise
Shining on golden wings, reflecting in her
Great and Sphinx-like eyes.
The moon rose up again this night
Because of her enchantment
And it glorified the far-bespeckled sky,
The sphere of stars
She drew her lover close and held him near,
For at the darkest pole,
He was her constant morning sun.
She welcomed in the moonlit night,
For with it came the hour of magic,
Their secret time of power
In which the golden star of passion
Grew until it filled the room
With such a nectar, sweet-tasting honey light
And the incense of their desire
Glowed like amber-colored fire
On the private altar of their bed.
She lifted one precious eyelash
And looked upon her lover
Who had been laying so close beside her
Staring softly at her beauty
Now apprehended by her captivating eyes
And the moments he had stolen from her
Tender-blossomed innocence
He now, like stolen fruit
Had to share.
“Tell me a story,”
She said in her smallest mouth.
He smiled at her wisdom
For she always knew the perfect thing to say.
He took delight in the music-perfect timing
Of her heart’s sweet cadence
S it sang within his mind
And as it pulsed under his hand.
He took a fatherly pose
And awaited for the newborn story to arrive
For there were many joys to be described.
But there still remained an ancient lost apology
Long owed to her heart,
Which she herself forgot
And a single tale alone would have to find it
Freeing all his secret thoughts
Like blackbirds in the night.
“In ancient times…” the tale began,
“…there was a man whose heart had been starved
by neglect.
And now like a weakened flower, fell upon the earth
No longer with the strength to open.
He spent his lifetime looking for his mate
He even bought a ring for her,
A lifetime’s worldly savings
And he carried this ring with him
At the bottom of a deep coat pocket
As he moved restlessly from place to place.
Several had seen it, for he’d fallen deep in love
Offering it foolishly to them
But always it was much too big or much too small
Or did not suit their taste at all.
Always in the end,
His efforts were discouraged.
Finally, he made the decision to throw it out
Or give it to the perfect stranger
Or better, leave it in the square
To be picked over like a piece of trash
By local peasant women.
One day as he walked
He saw a pottery shop
Upon a row of junk trading establishments
A sign in noonday shadow spelled out
“Everything On Sale”
And he decided then that he would buy a jar or vase
Of clay, and he would place in it his precious ring
Along with all his love poems
And just bury it in the sand,
To allow some far and future person
Perhaps ten centuries hence,
To find the remains of his broken heart
And share his sorrow
And perhaps his tears.
He stepped into the shadows of the little shop
But the entire place was bought out
Right down to the tile on the floor.
No one was in sight.
He turned and stood in wistful contemplation
In the summery doorway
his face turned from the sun.
Suddenly he felt a presence
He turned to find the shopkeeper behind him.
An old and broad-faced man with caramel brown skin
Smooth, far-Eastern folds upon his brow
He wore a cape of dusty colored cloth
And a smile that the oldest children wear.
“What do you want?” the seeker said, surprised.
“What do YOU want?” the shopkeeper answered.
“Oh well, uh, I…wanted to buy a jar,
perhaps a vase.
I don’t know. I see I’ve come too late.”
“Yes, my little sale is over
Everyone has come and gone and taken from me
What is theirs to take
And now my floor is empty for the next clay to arrive
I don’t know when.”
“I…just wanted a jar,” the somber seeker sighed.
“Just a jar? Well then, I think that you are not too late.
If that is all you want,
You are a humble man and shall be happy!”
I have a jar for you, it’s in the back!”
And the old, unaging shop keeper returned
A moment later
From the curtain in the back, with a dusty little jar
“Something like a pot, you see, but nearly like a vase
With two small handles and a tightly shut lid.
No one wanted this one, I’m afraid.
Too bad…returned twice.. ‘wrong size,’ ‘too small’
‘Too big’….so I kept the thing myself.
But I tend to think this jar and you
Will get along fine
You both have so much in common!”
And he laughed and thrust it in the seeker’s hands.
“How much?”
“Take it, its yours.”
”Free?”
The old unaging man just smiled
And squeezedt he seeker’s forearm gently,
Turned and shuffled slowly
To the back of the room,
His two plodding sandals watched
By two careful eyes from the
Doorway to the world outside.
The curtain was drawn and the elder
With the two shining eyes
And the beaming face and simple robe
Was seen no more.
“Strange.”
“Very strange, but I got what I came for.
It will serve my needs just fine.”
And taking to his breast
This thin forlorn and kindred vessel
He returned to his home, placed his ring down on the table
Splayed his poems across the chair like a hand of cards
And by the candlelight began to wrestle with the
Tight-closed lid of the jar
But no amount of pulling could undo it.
After several days in which the lid remained fastened
After testing it and tapping it and twisting it,
Talking to it, then he cried out,
“Well, no wonder no one kept this God-forsaken jar,
It won’t open!
It’s just a worthless piece of junk!
I thought that it was free,
But it has cost me days of labor and frustration.
Small wonder that he gave it away,
Now I know the reason why.
He said it was just like me—
Why, it’s just a useless vessel
Like my heart, too old to open.
That is probably what he meant!”
And crying out, he brought the clay pot down
Against the hearth, and smashed the lid upon the earth.
“What have I done?” he cried aloud.
(“Not like myself…to lose control.”)
“I think the jar has opened me instead
Now to be forever open!”
He wept, and rising from his knees,
He blow out all the candles, saying,
“Yet again we are alike,
For like my heart, it can never be buried.”
He lowered his tired and delicate body to rest in bed
And immediately had a dream.
Even as the smoke from the candles filled his nostrils
In the darkness, the vision of a great sphinx-like woman
Rose before him
And instead of being sinister or angry
Her face was filled with tenderness.
Her breast was bared; her eyes;
Her huge and Sphinx-like eyes,
Glowed with compassion.
On a golden chain around her long Egyptian neck
There hung his ring, now shining gold
And in her hand, the poems;
Inscribed on bond and bound in gilded leather.
“I am the heart of a woman
you scorned long ago—
scorned because she was not
lovely enough for your eyes.
You barely remember her
She was frail and delicate
Soft-spoken woman,
A woman whose heart you once touched
And drew to yourself
Even in your cool refusal.
I will appear to you now and again
Until you recognize me as your equal
No longer deceived by my humble disguises!”
The vivid vision vanished,
And the seeker fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
When morning came, he rose up from the bed
Went back to the broken jar
And lifted it.
To his great amazement,
A parchment scroll fell out
Of the jar and tumbled upon the sharp,
Shattered clay puzzle below.
The trembling hand lifted slowly
And in the new
Light of the morning, unrolled
The most beautiful gold-inscribed scroll
That the physical eyes could behold.
He rushed to the table to stretch it out full
On the board
To examine it closely.
Immediately he became so absorbed and entranced
That he could not pull his eyes away.
It was clearly from ancient times,
Long before the earliest memories of any living soul.
The scroll was beautiful to see,
“Worth a fortune!” so he thought.
But also told a story,
And the story was as follows:
“In ancient days there was a man
whose heart had become hollowed
by success and wealth.
He had met with potentates and kings
He had climbed the rugged mountains of the north
Shared his verse with the greatest of poets
Played for the praise of the greatest musicians
Given advise to the greatest of artists
And he had explored the highest realities
Shared with the holiest saints
He had done business with the greatest
Of international traders,
Discovering much in his own global travels
And all of the secrets of each ancient ruin
He brought to the daylight were his secrets also.
He’d seen the people of many lands,
And solved many mysteries,
Won with long hours of scholarly study
And yet he was empty and couldn’t say why.
There was something much more important
Which he had not found
and that became the quest that obsessed his later life.
Nothing he had found was truly great
Just shrewd reworkings of the old and proven
Theories of the time.
He wanted evidence in hand
That some great soul had walked upon the earth
And had left his footprints in the dust
That lay before him.
But each promise, every signpost in the wilderness
Brought only temporary joy,
For he would soon
Uncover falsehood lurking, like a squirming face
Behind a great gold mask.
Eventually, he excavated one false
Wonder of the world too many
He forsook his worldly chattel;
Left it at an inn, they say;
And set forth into the desert
To become a solitary nomad
To meet no one, to see nothing
And become a name forgotten.
He traveled to the most inaccessible place
To live in isolation
Yet the hunger deep within could not be stifled.
He cried out to the deaf and heartless desert in despair.
And flung himself upon a dune
To be swallowed up
By ever-shifting sands.
He fell asleep for days and nights it seemed
And finally awakening
He saw the sand had cleared, to bare
The faint glimmer of gold beneath
The blowing desert dust.
Still, an archaeologist by nature
He began to clear by hand the drifts of sand away
From where the earth shone gold.
“It’s probably some common-place phenomenon
with which I’m not familiar,” he observed.
“Perhaps I’m better off just preserving my resources.
It is probably a tray of brass or such.
It’s not important.”
He sat and drew his thoughts within
And mused about his sorry state in life
Til boredom caused him to return
And solve the case at hand.
He began to dig away at the object, in order to lift it
Maybe sell it in a nearby town for food or goods,
Whatever was available.
But the more he dug, the more there was to dig.
It grew beneath his hands
Days by days…weeks by weeks turned into
Months and months,
And finally the structure was revealed.
There stood, freshly returned to the world
After many silent years in the belly
Of the great, restless desert
A monumental sphinx, gigantic in size,
And sculpted out of good solid gold.
“Whoever created this monument to life
must have been the greatest man known to his age.
Now I have the found the footprints I seek.
I have found pure inspiration!” he cried.
“This, this is greatness!”
Life became light again
Joy found its mark in his narrow heart.
The fortunate man, now delighted,
Began to dig further
And found deep within the dry sand
Inscribed on the side of a monolith gleaming,
A panoply of hieroglyphs!
He translated them as follows:
“I, THE PHARAOH OF ALL THIS LAND,
MARDUK, AM THE GREATEST OF PHARAOHS.
I HAVE COMMANDED MY ARMIES TO FIGHT
AND THEY HAVE BEEN VICTORS IN EVERY EARTHLY CORNER
I HAVE INSTRUCTED MY BUILDERS
MY ARCHITECTS, DRAFTSMEN,
CRAFTSMEN AND SCRIBES
IN THE WAYS OF OUR ANCESTORS,
ANCIENT AND WISE
AND HAVE WROUGHT THIS—
THE MIGHTIEST SPHINX!”
(Here, the digger was convinced he had located
The single most powerful man of the race
A Pharaoh unknown to history,
But whose greatness must have been legend.
He dug deeper and found a further inscription
Which disturbed him greatly.)
“I HAVE CREATED THIS MONUMENT
NOT OUT OF PRIDE, BUT IN SHAME,
IN HUMILITY
I DO THIS DEED TO BEG FORGIVENESS
THE ONLY WAY I KNOW HOW,
BY COMMANDING.
I BEG THE FORGIVENESS OF
ONE YOUNG GIRL
LOWLY AMONG OUR PEOPLE
TO YOU, OH CHLOE IS ALL OF THIS SENT;
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
IS ALL OF THIS MEANT.
MAY YOU SEE THIS CRUDE LIKENESS
THIS SPHINX
AND RETURNING TO ME
LIFT ME UP OFF MY KNEES
BEFORE I DIE KNEELING.”
(The seeker thought—
if this was the greatest man
who could he kneel before?
What woman could have accomplished a life
greater than he?
He dug further down.
“I HAVE MET WITH POTENTATES AND KINGS
I HAVE SCALED THE RUGGED MOUNTAINS
OF THE NORTH
I EXPLORED THE LOFTIEST REALITIES
WITH SAINTS.
EXPLORED THE ANCIENT RUINS
AS A SCHOLAR
STILL I FEEL MY STRENGTH
WAS SPENT IN VAIN.
I HAVE BECOME EMPTY IN THE CHASE
ALL I HUNTED WAS
A SINGLE SOUL OF STRENGTH
AND FOUND THERE NONE.
ONCE, WHILE ROAMING IN MY OWN KINGDOM
IN DISGUISE
I MET A COMMON WOMAN
AND ASKED THE GIRL HER NAME.
SHE SAID HER NAME WAS CHLOE,
AND I ANSWERED,
“WELL, DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
I AM THE GREATEST IN ALL OF THIS LAND
I AM THE PHARAOH, THE LEGEND,
MARDUK.
I AM THE GREAT SOUL.
BEHOLD ME AND WONDER!
THINK YOURSELF FORTUNATE
THAT I REVEAL MYSELF
TO SUCH PLAIN EVERYDAY WOMEN AS YOU!”
THE YOUNG GIRL CALLED CHLOE
SAID NOTHING
BUT FLED THROUGH THE CROWD
WITH A LEONINE LEAP
DISAPPEARED IN THE THICK
NOONDAY CROWD.
I WAS SOON STRICKEN ILL
AND IN HEAVY DELERIUM
MET WITH A GREAT GOLDEN SPHINX
IT STOOD FOURSQUARE BEFORE ME
WITH THE POWER OF LIONS
AND THE GENTLE FIRE OF THAT WOMAN
IT PENETRATED ME
WITH ITS GREAT HUGE EYES
AND IT SPOKE WITH THE FORCE
OF AN ORACLE:
“I AM THE ONE YOU SCORN!
I AM THE ONE YOU SEND FLEEING
FROM YOUR KINGDOM!
YOU SOUGHT THE MEANING OF LIFE
IN SCROLLS
BUT NEVER SOUGHT GOD
THROUGH MY HEART.
YOU MAY SEARCH THE LAND
FOR YEARS
BUT YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME
IN YOUR KINGDOM.
I AM YOUR EQUAL
IN YET HIGHER KINGDOMS
MORE NOBLE THAN THIS SQUALID
PLAYGROUND THAT YOU RULE!
YOU WILL FIND ME THERE.
I WILL APPEAR TO YOU
TIME AND AGAIN
YET YOU MIGHT NEVER
RECOGNIZE ME!
BUT IN ALL OF THESE PLAIN
AND VARIOUS FORMS
I WILL STILL BE THE SOUL
THAT YOU SEE HERE NOW.
WHEN YOU HAVE ATTAINED
THE HUMILITY
VISION AND WISDOM
TO SEE BEYOND MY SIMPLE VEIL
DIRECTLY INTO MY PURE HEART
THEN YOU ARE READY TO FIND
THE SUPREME ONE
WHO HAS LEFT FOR YOU
ITS SCENT THERE
THAT YOU MIGHT BECOME
ITS HUNTER
THEN YOU WILL HOUND
ITS BLOOD-SCENT
TIL THE END OF TIME
THEN ONLY WILL YOU KNOW
THE PURE MEANING OF LIFE AND OF LOVE
AND BE HAPPY!”
THESE WERE THE WORDS
THE GOLDEN SPHINX SAID.
AFTER A TIME I RECOVERED FROM ILLNESS
AND BUILT THE INADEQUATE
TOKEN OF LOVE
THAT YOU SEE HERE BEFORE YOU.
BUT WHEN I LOOK HERE
UPON HER LIKENESS SET IN GOLD
I FEEL THAT GOD WILL HEAR
MY LONGING HEART
AND SMILE.”
“Did he ever find her”
she asked.
“Often.
Through life after life, he found her,
Sometimes appearing within as the Sphinx,
Sometimes as a plain, unadorned woman
Sometimes passing her by,
Sometimes sharing her life,
Often without recognition.”
“Did the archaeologist find her too?”
she asked.
“No, but the man with the broken jar found her!
He made her his wife.
Together they lived a harmonious, long
Songful measure of life
A tale full of blessings
And eloquent lessons
Of love, enchantment, and joy!”
“Did you find her?” (she smiled)
“Yes.”
”Like the tip of some great Sphinx
buried in the sand, or
like a jar which I could not find the way to open,
or, like an unassuming girl
who holds a mythical identity within.
But
I found her, Chloe,
And I love her with all my heart!”
With all the words having taken their course
And the night having fallen in full
He gently removed every veil from her heart
Moved, strong and slow
Like a creature of the night
And fell upon her as his mate,
The tender sweet figure reclining in shadows
Embracing his whole being with her gaze.
And tossing aside the drifts of cloth like sand
In the wind
He moved
To touch the Golden Sphinx of her pure heart.
May 17, 1983
Part Two
The Silver Phoenix
Copyright ©1985 by Evan Pritchard
She looked at him with eyes like shiny pennies
Puzzled at his dark and shadowed thoughts
And wondered why he seemed so somber sometimes
Yet so sunny other times.
He said,
“Love me as I am today and I shall come to be
far greater than the greatest past,
shining on you like the springtime sun
rising from the old November snow
And sweeping away the ashes of the winter-tide
With the broom of some tomorrow’s
Apple blossom branch.
Love me, and allow me to surrender
To the force we call death
So I can once again repeat the ancient ritual
Of conquering the darkness in the mind
And in my struggle
Cause aurora borealisese and burning sunsets to arise
That provide a guiding light for those who might
Encounter such a death at such a future time.
Love me as you think that I shall be,
And you are chasing phantoms,
Things that don’t exist, like whisps of Elmo’s fire
Ever shining on the blue horizon
The future is a fourth dimension P.O. Box
Where we deposit secret unmarked packages and dreams
And reams and reams of yet unwritten letters.
Some attempt addressing questions that our visions
Left behind
Dreams have no address at all sometimes
And are returned to us for our revision.
Love me as I used to be and I shall lose my
Whole direction.
I shall unwind slow
And lose control and will untie just like a sail
That’s lost its hold upon the wind.
Love me only as I was,
And love will cease to be a lamp unto my feet
And shall instead become a blindfold to my eyes.
Do not cling unto my past or be attached
to that which melts within the grasp
For I as soul am only that which is.
“How could I ever possess a thing that comes
and goes and changes shape,
then vanishes again?”
He answered,
“A greater object may possess a smaller,
and a smaller object may possess a greater thing
But when two objects see themselves as equal
How can they but share that which they are?
With none belonging to the other.
They are sets of equal size;
They are spheres that overlap.
Where we intersect is the boundary
Of our knowledge of each other
The border of our map.
And HOW we overlap
Is the measure of the quality of love that we have found.
Let us push the boundaries back
And also work upon the quality we find
Between the changing moving lines
Where shades of meaning now abound
The I in you, the you in me
The passion and the alchemy that happens
When these widening circles insect!
“How do we develop these, the untranslated
qualities of meaning that we find
between the outlines of our lives?”
He said, “Study all the darknesses
Touch them with the brush of your devotion
Color in the spaces with a child’s eye for beauty
Rhythm, taste, or texture,
All that which appeals to you.”
“How can we expand the land and move
the lines
around the land that lies
where both our hearts can understand?”
He said,
“When we reveal the deepness of the secret space,
the feeling place that wells within our being,
Face to face, good or bad, great or small,
Then we expand the borders of the land
That lies where both can share and understand!”
“Tell me just one secret of your heart,
my love,
So I can move the borderlines,
The bounds that bind the land we share
And I can find the entrance to your heart.”
“Ask.”
“Who are you that comes and goes
and grows and bursts
and dies like some enchanted flower,
or the sun?”
He paused and thought for a moment,
“I am the Phoenix!” he whispered at last
“I am the bird of fire
and a symbol of desire
I am the Phoenix!”
“I am the one who must challenge the sun
Like a latter-day Deadalus
Lifted by feathers and tethers and wax
Drawn by a force that temps me
Towards a spiraling course,
Like a Phoenix flying
To the source of all life
And of light, and of height
And of falling and danger and dying!
I fall and I sink
And I rise like a moth of the Eastern skies
That returns to the ring of God’s flame
For another burning bout with death.
Unto my dying breath I am the Phoenix!
“But why must you
continue this ravishing path?”
she asked.
“Why worship this fickle and flickering
God of fire
This furnace that purifies soul’s desire
This lime-kiln that spews you
Out from his mouth
That burns you until you are molten hot
Or spurns you because you are cold as clay…
Or worse…lukewarm!
Why do you go through with it?
The path of peace is bright and long
It soothes you with a quiet song
All life falls neatly into place
And benefits the human race.
You chant the formula to find
The quiet place, the empty place
Within the mind.
And when you find this patch
Of still-uncluttered mind,
It tends to cleanse the heart
It mends the spirit, soothes the soul
Gives you hope, makes you whole,
And brings you ever closer towards the goal,
Perfection.”
“Yes, everything that you have told me is true—
the ancient of Greece and the sages of Asia agree.
But ever closer to the goal is not enough for me.
For ever closer means that you are never ever reaching it.
That is mental exercise,
Like multiplying fractions to reach zero.
Zero is eternal, it’s the omnipresent number,
A circle holding everything, yet nothing.
And yet this point can never be attained
No matter how intelligent the brain,
By multiplying and dividing fractions.
It is this present point in time in which I live,
And God is here,
And now and then I take the route
That goes directly to Its heart
Something like a blustering boy in love
Who wastes no time in flustering and
“Asking ‘round” about her name,
But boldly asks her for the dance.
The names can come later!
The tune leaves no time for lengthy discussion.
This life for me is of transition from perdition
To combustion
And sometimes back again
In case I missed a sin.
Perfection is for saints and mathematicians,
And I am not a plaster or of chalk.
I am a thing that lives!
Let them be praised for their pretty perfection.
I’d rather be soiled by the stigma of growth!
There is beauty in the flame into which I retire
And truly no shame in the failure to which I aspire.
I too must seek for that uncluttered place in the mind
But it is like shuffling mountains of papers around
To clear a good spot on the writing-desk surface of time.
To inscribe with my quill on an eloquent slip
Of the tongue
And add to the mountain of indispensable trash.
If I were to truly create such a quiet place
I would have the whole pile
Tossed into the fireplace
Including the table
And maybe the chair,
It may seem unfair, but
Heaven’s gates open to any who dare!”
“I concede a certain method to your martyrdom
You never really fall to father death,
But walk with him unfaltering
As you approach your funeral pyre
Of purification.
But somehow you escape,
The rainclouds break, a pardon comes
And always at the final step you take
You find some liberation and you dance,
Like mother life,
A tantric tarantella on the
Way back down the stairs.”
“Yes, I am the Phoenix,” he said.
“I’m the silver bird of fire, and a symbol of desire.
A rain of shimmering quicksilver
Pours down upon the earth
At the very moment I expire
And in that Perseus shower of light
All life gives birth!”
“It makes for quite a diary, I guess,
but I am not entirely impressed.
This constant transmutation,
Transfiguration is…
Immature.
It makes one undependable and also
Inconsistent.
Like a drunkard with his drinking
You feel lucky with your thinking
And you jump to wild conclusions.
With your heels two feet above the ground
In leaping levitation
You are not a ballet dancer,
You’re a child risking stunts upon a swing.”
“So that’s it! You fear that I might die of youthfulness?
If half the population of the world is made
of youthful fools
The other half must be a room of teetering antiquities,
Fearful of the floor.
Well, if I must tip my glass to one group or the other,
I’ll choose youth.
It’s much more difficult to celebrate old age.
Of course I concede
There must be a fulcrum someplace
Between these two extremes.
But while I’m looking for this balance,
I must keep my equilibrium.
I’ll either spin off into space
Or a greater danger, become stagnant if it’s lost
If in all my swinging I can generate
The power that creates
Like an alternator changing
From the negative
To positive and back again
And thereby to empower a Light to shine
Or Wheel to turn,
Then why is this so frightening?”
“It is not a frightening thing at all,
as long as you’re keeping your balance.
But you forget who gets to be the fulcrum,
And who has to keep the balance
And the equilibrium,
While you’re seeking it yourself.
It is I,
The Golden Sphinx, with my two feet on the ground
Haunches anchored
In the sand, and my head above water!
It is I
Who is the axis for the Wheel and for your reeling
And the lamp post for your Light
And for your drunkenness with God.
As you dance your whirling dervish
It is I who clears the furniture
And steers you clear of walls.
If it were not for me
You’d not have danced at all.
Like a horse upon a rein
I plot your course
And see you’re bridle-trained
And hold you taut
Until I’m sure that no steps are forgotten.”
“Is it that you want to hold my flight?
Imprison and control my flight to only that
Which can be plotted on a course?
Is that what you would call maturity?”
“If it were maturity
that ranked my highest virtue,
I would not have chosen
Such a firey horse to ride.
It’s only while you counter me
With everything that’s you
That you keep me from
A life too safe to bear.
I need your heat to wake in me
The fire that sleeps within
Just as I keep you from burning up
At once.”
“And why must I be kept from burning
why must I be cooled?
To reach the sun
It takes a Phoenix six or seven hundred years.
And if I ever reached the sun,
I’d only die
And be transformed to ashes:
The earthy dust from which I’d rise
To live another several hundred years.
Defying death, my spreading shadow
Sweeping across the earth
Until all ashes everywhere had disappeared.
Is it something that you envy?
Is it something that you fear?”
“It’s only that I’m jealous
when you try to dance with death.
It seduces all your thoughts
Away from mine
The fire in you throws itself
In every stream
That seems to lead to God.
You disappear in deep dark thoughts
‘to get to the bottom of this’
But what becomes of me
Until you’ve thrashed it out?
And what becomes of me if water wins?”
“It helps to understand
that there is just one element involved
I am both the earth and water
I’m the fire and the sea
The struggle that you see is the fundamental effort
Of the universe to try to re-emerge back into me…
After splitting into myriad dualities.
And in your different way,
And beneath a different stream,
You do the same,
At least symbolically, I mean!”
“My understanding now has become
greater than my fear
And my love will always pass my understanding.
I hope you find this fulcrum,
Or this axis that you seek
For when you swing to left or right,
You pull my heart along.”
“I suppose that you are right,
I’ve been a bit too rash
And too much in a hurry to enjoy the subtle things
That life eventually brings.
There is a certain complimentarity
A valuable quality
A passion and an alchemy
I melt the one who tempers me
We have a wealth of checks
And balances
That somehow have gone unaccounted for til now
And even when our separate ledgers don’t agree
We add to one another…spiritually!”
“There will always be these differences
between attracted people
and always an attraction
between two unlike spheres.
We are sets of equal size…”
“We are spheres that overlap.
And where we intersect
Is the boundary
Of our knowledge of each other.”
”The I in you, the you in me
The passion and the alchemy
That happens when these widening,
Unlike circles insect!”
Echoes in the Monkey House: A Healing Journey
Echoes In The Monkeyhouse
A Healing Journey
© 1993 by Evan Pritchard All Rights Reserved
Print edition available from Resonance Communications
PO Box 1028 Woodstock NY 12498 $5 plus $1 postage (212)714-7151
Echoes In the Monkeyhouse
Sometimes, late at night in contemplation,
the outer sight and sounds of night
evaporate like vapors on a mirror
when breathing ceases.
And then a strange phenomenon occurs,
a tinny inner ear becomes unplugged
and sounds from around the crowded world
collect there
emerging from beneath a deep
semi-circular canal somewhere.
The voices jumble, they break and tumble;
the way the sound of an entire sea can fit within a tiny shell
the voices of world
whisper and yell within the spiraling well
of my inner ear
like echoes in the monkeyhouse.
So much confusion, chattering, squeaking,
rattling of cages,
sometimes speaking
calling to some higher primate for assistance.
Meanwhile, I hear a tense resistance
in the calls for freedom.
I sing the secret word
for those who do not know the sacred key,
the key that opens doors in desperate hearts
unlocks the RNA and DNA of consciousness
turns pain to understanding
and monkeys into men.
The song at first is lost in a tumultuous sea of noise
but when it reverberates back to me
I know it has found its sympathetic ear.
Sometimes I hear voices
cutting through the fog on the sea
like the hiss-and-sputtering voice of a short wave.
And sometimes a child’s voice
will call my name
or some other puzzling thing I can’t explain
some music, perhaps
on un-invented instruments
hollow-toned
like Charles Ives,
performed by gramophone.
Sometimes there is nothing…
but the high and quiet
humming of the spheres
and other times,
a voice somewhere
will simply say,
“I love you!”
Logic’s Blade
Fearsome power of solution
Intellect and worldly reason
Life’s own life-dissolving potion
Doubt from which belief is risen.
Minds once pulled
With blind aggression
Serpent’s tails from where they’d frozen
Leaving souls with no transition
Leaving dying’s venom brazen
Causing Time’s disintegration.
Confused, confined, and blinded mind of Man
Still dreaming of the steaming, stagnant past
When infant footsteps crept out of the sand
To sculpt by hand a pyramid that mirrors him like glass
To glimpse the paths and patters spirit planned
Just once before he leapt into
The Maelstrom of madness
Of the Matter, Mind, and Mass.
Then Man became a hunter,
Stalking his bewilderness.
He killed for skill and stained his blade
With intuition’s blood.
He waited through the moon-slight night
For lambs of light to rest.
Then, sheltered by the shadows
Slaughtered innocence
With shrouded lies, religious words, and mud.
Oh fierce and piercing power
How your destined hour flowers into dawn.
You followed Logic’s Blade until it took you
to the forest’s fiery core
And soon the sword that saved you
And the blade that you once gave so much to own
Will fade,
So you’ll be free enough to try the Needle’s Eye,
The Tenth Door.
Narrow Way
These ashes that lie on your hearthstone
Are not dead but yet retain their fire
And with a branch cut from a limb
You stir to life the dust
Of logs you once carried home to light the hearth.
Like embers of the day
The stars are swept
Across the smoky night
And they tremble in their vacuum of space
With silent songs of light.
But your ears cannot hear
And your eyes are turned to the dust.
There’s a world that someday finds you
Where there is no one to say good bye to
And no sad songs remind you
Of yesterday.
You can’t change the world by weeping
So let go the hound of pain that you were keeping
And embrace the teaching of the narrow way.
So come on up
to the world beyond the mind
To a world where anger finds a better way
You needed to cry,
But now you need to fly
So come up and watch the dawn of this new day.
Like beacons of the dawn
The angels are swept across the cosmic sky
And they call you from their temples of space
With silent songs of light
But your ears cannot hear
And your eyes are turned to the dust.
Oh, lift your eyes from the stones
Like those sheer threads of smoke
Even the smoke can surrender the Earth
And be lifted upwards to the sky.
Man have you noticed a single star
Lined up this hour with you?
Its gaze now finds its narrow way
through the grate
To meet your upturned eye!
Charity
I spend my flask and flagon on the sand
The desert drinks my essences in vain
And nowhere is the promise of the leaf
To herald hidden flowers seeking rain.
I sling my water bag across my arm
I will not drain my life to share with death
Dry death who has no blossoms to return
No foliage to transform milk to breath.
I see a traveler, bearded and serene
Approaching me and speaking with his glance.
And with each footstep, flowers bloom,
Then fall
So saith he, “What is Life and Death
If not a dance?”
The Healing Journey
I had a dream and you were there
you walked beside me in a summer dress of blue
as we were walking silent through
an orchard laden everywhere with fruit
and like a sweet angelic messenger of truth.
You turned and gazed at me and said:
“Break the yoke of addictions, and put them to the side
and something wonderful will come to pass!
The things of which you’ve dreamed will manifest at last,
if you can place addictions to the side!”
It must have been a feasting day,
on that remote and gracious plane,
we walked among a multitude of souls
as each of us made our way
beneath the tattered awning of the trees
a pilgrimage perhaps
to where a master was to speak to us
of sound and light, and love,
and things that have substance to the soul.
But I awoke from sleep before I ever reached that site,
awoke and found myself surrounded
by the weapons of the mind
which exploded into form in front of me,
lunged at me and took me by the throat
I struggled to control the crazed, five-headed beast
But it sustained my blows
and seemed to grow in power
for every time I struck it with my fist
it whipped around and stung me with a poison tongue
until my legs and arms were paralyzed
so that they fell when I commanded them to rise
and fingers clenched
when I commanded them to arch and play.
The music I conceived was still-born
locked between the frozen fingers of my hand
and for a moment silence surged across
the far horizons of my dreams
like Noah’s flood,
But where was there an Ararat to climb?
And where was there a ship to save my kind?
It’s said when people cease to grow
they begin to die
but the pruning knife of death
sometimes inspires
plants to find just one more bud to bloom,
one more twig to sprout
as if seeking a way out
defying clippers, shears and winter winds.
We as humans do the same
and in God’s name
we dig to find the strength for branching out.
But only after we have felt the sharpness
of the famous razor’s edge,
the blade to which there is no middle ground,
do we find the strength within the earth
and cleave to it with long tenacious roots
and stand our ground against the reaping of the wind.
But now that I was weak,
I couldn’t grasp and could not stand!
But running, like a winged Mercury,
perhaps I could outpace, outdistance this disease
and so I fasted, prayed, and made
an offering
and then I ran.
I ran until I thought my lungs would burst
running for my life I raced the sunset
until I found myself
atop some mountain of the mind
with no direction left to go but inwardly
and so I sat.
I saw the steam of passion’s fires rise
but like the summer clouds
it couldn’t pass above the line of trees
and so it seemed that as long as I remained there
I was safe from harm
and from that lofty point I could see the miles
that lay behind and miles that lay ahead
and saw the deep moraine through which I had to pass
and saw the thunderheads of fate
that gathered there in wait for me.
They charged out of the sky on raging steeds
and hurled their practice javelins upon the impervious earth
a target whom they knew could not be killed.
I knew that they were only killing time
waiting for their challenger to appear,
to test his muscle,
me.
Then I saw a sign that said, “Something wonderful is taking place”
and felt a subtle change.
A first thaw, a warm wind
to crack the icy locks of wintertime
and a door within blew open
and following a golden thread
I passed through the door
to find a realm invisible;
an ocean of the air
where I could be absolved into the Emptiness
and could then move freely
free from crippling weights, of time and mass.
But playing with invisibilities
like water, air, freedom….or the soul
things tend to slip away between the hands.
I lost the thread!
A voice said,
“You have failed the test
return to Earth!”
and so I did.
How strange it is to try to win
in matters of the heart
How blindly we succeed sometimes
how cleverly we fail.
But failure is assurance that our sights aren’t set too low
the higher that we go
we have to seek out great and greater goals
so that we by failing
reach at least the modest aims of yesterday
and by and by shake loose these mental ornaments like ropes
the way a kitten, through persistence
manages to lose the tightest collar
imposed upon its throat.
I returned and soon I realized
that the noose bound around my neck
was tightening fast
and I cried to the Teacher
“How long will it last?”
The Teacher answered
“Not until you are permanently in God
will you be completely free of this disease
that plagues mankind
and not until you put aside
the five deadly weapons of the mind!”
I had a thought
What if I reached the Conscious Knowing State in God
that I could change the body and the mind
change the past that led to this dilemma
change the future too
and using images of both the fixed and unfixed forms
turn imagination into knowingness,
and knowingness to truth.
But how does one accomplish this?
How do you pit time against eternity
and hope to win?
To realize God, some writers say,
takes lifetime after life
yet I had little time in which to live this life
or if I failed, in which to die.
I sat in “Indian fashion” closed my eyes,
and traveled far and fast.
I found myself in front of
that being long ago appointed Lord of Souls,
the ancient Sihks of India called “Sat Nam.”
I felt a pleasant tingle of surprise
it was as if I as soul
had gone to call upon my King
petitioning for advice
on matters far beneath his scope
but what other hope do I posses
than to be able to address
my questions directly to the source
of that great all-embracing force
and ask for his assistance?
I had nothing yet to lose.
And so I was bewildered and surprised
when this great being began to rise
up from his throne, descend the steps
and sit beside me, we two alone
like he might attend
some long awaited guest or closest friend,
and put me at my ease.
I asked if he could heal me
or perhaps reveal to me
the secrets of such healing.
He said he had a hundred other bodies I could use
but since I seemed so attached to this one
it would have to do.
“And anyway,” he said, in a tone much kinder,
“It’ll serve as a reminder.”
A reminder so that I would not forget
the price one pays
for serving two task masters
misusing the candle that leaves no shadow
burning the wick ends,
both of passion and devotion
at one time.
“This body is now a piece of junk upon some heap!”
he said,
This is what I supposed I had to reap for my mistake
and my heart sank.
But then he reached for me and said,
“And yet I utterly forgive you, and accept you
to my breast
For you are the prodigal son, returned at last
You are my pride and joy
known to us as Sat Deva,
I will do whatever possible to improve
this bent and fevered form
As any true devoted father might
you could have come to visit me any time
but you had heard some word of sin and death and guilt
and believed that gossip-talk
and did not call or write
but let misunderstanding keep Soul from returning
to Its palace, Its true home
to take Its place as Prince of Souls.”
He had me stand within a square,
my tattered rags all disappearing,
and with a kiss of blessing
he restored to me my own robe.
“Perhaps you thought me lacking
in qualities of love and mercy?
yet I give this gift to all who can accept
and there is none so lowly that I would reject
as long as love was burning in their heart
in my eyes they would be no dimmer than a star.
For this is the secret way
to fill thyself with love for all that is
fill every empty vein and vessel,
nerve and muscle, with this light
and hold it there within the body form.
Let its power build, until it must break forth
like a wave that surges from the center of the sea
to seek and strike each distant shore at once
with a compelling force
and merge back again into the source
the glorious heart
of the lover of all life.
This is how to heal your wounds
or get in tune,
or even alter all reality.
Just let yourself become a resonating chamber
for that harmony
that we call Universal Love.
I emptied out myself until I became a hollow shell
and filled that well with the sacred water of the Soul,
the light and sound
and then lay down
and found myself repeating this
as a blue light pulsed around me
like a cobalt blue sun—
“All beings are one,
all beings are one.”
It magnified the love by which
all being are united.
but wondered how all souls
could retain their separateness
in spite of such a healing force as this.
And as if reading my thoughts, he tells me,
“Souls are each like cells within the Body of the Divine,
each are like the bubbles of a tiny stream
as it makes its way to the sea
like a particle of dust in a grain of sand
They are all, though separate souls, all one
if only they choose to look at it as such
the universe is made of waves of God’s own love
made manifest into form and sound and light
but take away the love,
and what you see are particles of God,
which we call souls.
and both are true, at all times and at all places.
But now you see that when you put your focus
on the oneness
one can feel the presence of that God Love
vibrating everywhere,
and this is how we heal ourselves and others
and in the process eventually find
that we have put aside
the five deadly weapons of the mind.”
The Messenger
1. Lantern of Light
It was early evening
and the sun
sat down wearily on some western mountains
puffing hot summer air
like the fan on my windowsill.
I threw off my shoes
and rolled into bed,
weary from battle on Route Nine,
weary from a day of marketing
and bartering and bargaining.
I laid myself straight
and gazed into the spiritual eye,
the window to the north of the World,
and though immobilized by tiredness
my body suddenly whooshed forward
as if down a long dark tube,
or downhill on the Great Adventure
Roller Coaster lunging toward some loosely bolted curve
I felt the vertigo of free-fall flying
and for minutes I was weightless.
Four senses said, “We must be plummeting through space!”
but blinking eyes,
the body’s Fifth Estate,
reported otherwise,
observed the motionless form
on which they perched.
They suspended judgment,
passed no sentence
concerning this infraction of Sir Newton’s Law.
Like a child on a runaway wagon,
I closed my eyes for luck.
I saw a 3D spattering of stars
whizzing past my eyes like bugs and flies
caught in the headlight beams of a speeding car
and airborne, like a bee, lighted down on a planet
familiar to my dreams
but strange to my awakened state
I flew down those rough-stone corridors,
those long, canal-like walkways
swooped under the chiseled archways like a bat
and round the silver-domed towers,
glinting with the light of several moons,
flew on and on until I saw a bearded figure
standing, waiting for me there,
beneath a graceful arch
and I lighted down before him,
eager to talk to someone
who knew about the higher realms of God.
We shared a few brief greetings
and a few brief thoughts.
He shook my hand, and said,
“Go on, on until you find
the palace of Sat Nam,
and can return and report back to your brothers
all that you have seen!
If you would be a lantern of the light
then be thee ware!
Guard your health and keep thee strong
for when the holy fire flares within you
It will consume you heart with passion for the soul.
Kindle what is right,
and burn out what is wrong.
If you are whole,
then this energy force will be a glowing sphere
around the heart
and if you’re any less than this, I fear
that same substance will feel like flames of seven furnaces
and make your skin feel raw.
So this is why the masters keep a healthy mind,
a healthy heart and body
for these three must all agree
and work in harmony
to reach those lost in realms of night
if you are to maintain this light
and be a beacon to your kind,
to magnify the filament within
and give sight to the blind.
You must take care of your health
and beware the five weapons of the mind
and purify the heart with acts of charity
if you would hope to be a lens for God
of crystal clarity.
2. The Map Maker
I walked into a city
wonderful, but strange—
and everywhere were buildings
smooth and round
and in the air I heard
a musical sound
as if a mother planet was sweetly humming
to her new moon-cradled son
above a blue horizon.
I went inside a room and found a library of maps
the shelves on every side were leaded down with books
on explorations, expeditions, and some astronomical charts
and at the center of the room
I found a large display,
an ancient map, a chart not used since ancient times,
a map of this whole planet.
I saw how it was patched together
how some roads were still unmarked
how vague it all seemed
I wondered how it must have been in former lives
when maps were treasures of the state
and research done by hear-say,
bold conjecture, creative inspiration,
and when available,
experience.
No wonder travel guides stand
at every crossroads on this planet!
I almost expected to see one such guide appear behind me
in that chamber of the past,
and as I was peering, puzzling through the glass
at a map of some antiquity,
its strangeness and its age appealed to me
and to my fantasy.
“You have an interest in maps?”
he said,
“Well, then, I’d guess you had a thirst for traveling!
In all my years the only men I’ve seen
that can see the beauty in a wandering line
scrawled across a folded page
were those who had a longing for the road!
How can one who’s never loved the royal path to heaven,
see the mountains in a switch-back road line?
Behold a lacy shape bordered in blue
and see a shoreline, feel the splash of cold sea spray
and smell salt in the air?
Only one with wanderlust and a poet’s well-worn soul
can know the thrill and danger
the temptation and renunciation
in a bold and sweeping line of road across a page
a line that enters boldly from the wings
runs across the curtain of longitudes
and disappears stage right beyond the margins of the page!
Just as one who’s never been to God
cannot decipher or enjoy
the poetry of heaven
so a map means nothing to the soul
who has never left his own front door!
Here, scrolled up in my hand
I have such a map for you if you but take it.
It is not quite accurate
It is just to be a source of inspiration,
not instruction
observation, not dissection,
it is not complete, for the regions drawn
between its longitudes
are not yet fully known,
but grow and change as we explore them.
Therefore, take this map
and be such an explorer if you dare
and add your notes upon it as you go
to help yourself and be a guide for others
who come after you.
Our mapmakers here have always been revered
as sages of a sort
but none has ever drawn a chart from atop an ivory tower.
The perspective is distorted from that height.
They’ve always found the countryside
with hand upon the staff
and foot upon the path.
What closer look at life
could one desire?
I ask you?
The men who find the goal at last
are those who love the traveling of the path,
and often as not
have had some other purpose first in mind
some business to complete or plan
or find a certain mustached man,
deliver messages or packages, or gold.
That’s the way the watchers of the road
have always worked.”
“But I’m a busy man myself!” I said,
“And I have matters to attend back home.
I have no time to tramp down endless roads alone
and go exploring distant planets out in space
it’s not my place!”
“But this planet spins reverse of your poor backwards planet
and the time spent here is time saved in the long run
and anyway, what business of a single person
on your solitary planet can hold
against the business of a Lord of Souls?”
“Sat Nam?” I asked, “He’s here?”
the old mapmaker laughed and told me,
“No, he never descends below the second grand division
of the universe.
To find him, you would have to travel once again
deep within, to where he dwells.
There is no map, no winding road
that leads you to his door.
The only way is to go directly
to be there with him in this ever-present moment
for he is here with us
(and he pointed to his chest)
He needs you as a runner
a Mercury or Hermes
a messenger like Thoth
or like the old Celtic Lugh
who sang to Wales about the mighty HU.
take his message far and wide
to every city, every farthest countryside.
No matter how steep the mountainsides
you have to climb
run the miles of this map
until even your sandals bleed
for dire is the need,
at this auspicious time!”
Then he stopped
and placed the map down on the table top
and said,
“It’s up to you...it’s your decision.
Do whatever suits your vision—
Only be careful if the visions do not suit the selfish heart
for there’s no turning back
until the moment that you finish
from the moment that you start.
Just make sure you get the message right
and then when you have heard it,
go and let it run its course with you,
and run with all your might.”
“Tell me what this Lord of Souls,
this wondrous being looks like,
so I can find him,
or at very least, please
tell me what this message is!”
But even while I say these words
the vision vanishes.
I try to bring it back
to hear what else the being has to tell
before the memory of it fades as well.
But he is gone and suddenly I know
it was the God Man who wore that plain disguise
then vanished right before my eyes.
It is no accident, the meeting was complete
the message here was clear enough:
“There is no time to waste!”
3. Split Infinities
I am an infinitive,
an unlimited verb, that is,
if I want
To Be.
It sounds so simple, just to be;
to know; to love; to act; to see;
not play a role or try to win a game
but to be in the present moment just as I AM
and simply state what one already knows
But that’s never quite the way it seems to go.
Life always makes Itself more limitive,
more adverbs to define us
as if we expected
split infinitives
and the world didn’t want to ever
disappoint us.
Once, not long ago, I’d had the chance
to be the fleet-foot messenger of Soul.
to find the realm of Sat Nam
and learn his message and relay it
Like the famous man from Marathon:
This was all I had to do
To earn a place in history
among some Angel’s reckonings.
But spiritual history is an iceberg lurking low
and beneath the icy waters of the past
there lies a hundred thousand souls or so
who had their opportunity to gain
a place in the sunlight
and to last
within the memories of men or angels for a day
but hesitated
fell upon their spear
their fears or vanity
or some other weapon of the mind
and lost heart
or even worse
their sanity;
and then entombed themselves with shame
beneath the icy brine of pride
and went down with their names.
and yet when we now gaze back
across the surface of the sea
we read the small white pile of work
of time-tested sagacity
the ice-berg’s tip
and wonder, where were all the others?
Weren’t there more?
Didn’t any other men or women
try to scale those slippery heights?
Which float before us like a flight of stairs.
But now I know,
for those same icy stairs
now look hard and cold at me
beneath the waves of sparkling light
and now I know how quick we are to fail
and tumble out of sight
the minute we are free on bail.
and so instead of melting into liquid in the sun
I lie in icy numb paralysis.
as if that weren’t a catalyst enough
for hopelessness
it seems that every inner being or guide
is saying,
”Step aside—
Make room for the agile ones to pass
The youthful ones still fleet of foot and fast
enough to be the messenger of soul!”
And so I have reason to suspect
I failed the test!
But before I lock the tenth door
the narrow way
I call once more on Sat Nam.
Perhaps he has some task in store
or word to say
to one whom all of life has passed on by.
To my surprise, his great bare hefty arms
come down from heaven
and hold my smaller hands within their grasp!
like daddy reaching down into the crib, I clasp
the father-hand, the link with all the outside world.
It reawakens memories almost as old
as I’ve been on earth
back to when I was starting out
for the hundred thousandth time
waiting in the carnival line
just to have another crack at mastery,
and win the prize called freedom.
And then he kneels and huddles over me
and rests his great cheek atop my head
and cuddles me within his arms to comfort me
and hums to me the way a father hums
quite slow and deep
to charm the sickly infant back to sleep
and dreams.
He gives to me his strength
and I’m a child no more
but now a strapping son, asking for my birthright
I ask if he could heal me
change my plight, and make me well.
He reminds me that the cure to everything
is dwelling in the love.
I say, “Even that is not enough to cure my ills,
like Isaac I must ask you as your son
to grant this help that I might not be killed
for a father can love a son
more than any man can love himself as Soul!”
But he says No, he will not heal me
and my heart sinks back into the ice again.
But then he adds,
”I will adjust your karma
so that you would have the power
to start again in trying to reach the goal
the goal of Realization.”
Now I have no choice
it seems I’ll have to try again
to reach the source
to reach the God-head all alone and heal myself
for only I could undo
what I alone had done.
He starts to teach me,
to leave with me a legacy
of learning
pulling books down off my shelves
into my hands,
and telling me to open to a certain page
to find myself.
I finally begin to understand
some things I missed before
I sit in contemplation for a while
and see a curious thing before my inner eyes
a string of steel is tied between two sides
like a violin string
only shorter—just two inches long
a circus tightrope or maybe an oscilloscope
when the musicians are playing the rests
and the beam of light is still.
But as I watch this string it starts to move
it bends and stretches upward and then down
I watch it as it wanders all around
and then I realize what it is I see
“This strange dancing string is me.”
I said.
“It is my consciousness
in visible form
Whenever I relax and let my thoughts ascend
it rises up
and when the pull to worldly thoughts
is too intense
it bends low
Now I understand
now everything makes sense.
That is how my own awareness tends to go
wildly up and down like a child’s yo-yo;
And this is what we call “normal.”
I try some test, and every case proves the same
I can only hold the positive for a while.
And then the negative magnetic pole
which represents the downward flow of spirit
grows stronger and the string sinks down
no matter what I think or do.
With practice, I am getting quite a knack
of balancing the two opposing poles
and keeping all the energies in tact
and balancing at the tip of my nose
the string suspended in the air in front of me
you have to look at it objectively.
You can’t be strictly positive or dwell in negativity
but aim for stillness, for repose
caused by the true equality
of poles.
This is the technique of master souls
and a necessary tool,
a survival skill I suppose
That you will need
to ride the tightrope called the razor’s edge
and go to God
But this apparent stillness isn’t dead tranquility
it comes from the ability
to see both sides of a thing at once
to pit two great opposing forces at each other
let them clash
and match them perfectly
throughout your personal eternity.
This is how Sat Nam is helping me to balance out the mind
and as the dual forces stabilize within me
I think: “Now’s the time to seek the greater light”
and so I call out with my inner voice,
and with all my might,
“I want to have God Realization!”
I don’t know what answer to expect
I feel as if I’m inviting myself to dinner
but I am hungry for this experiential dish
and thirst for truth as well
And Sat Nam from behind me, says,
”There is a way for Soul to communicate with God
if that is what you wish,
but call It by a personal name,
something that has secret meaning
for you alone.”
I said, “Geezoolgh, then. That is an Algonkian name
For the Great Mystery which I seek to understand.”
And Sat Nam says, “Okay, then.. It’s that vibration sound which holds the key
for going into its great heart, directly!”
Then he adds:
”You may go to Geezoolgh now…”
and a darkened void is thrust upon me
an empty place
without a trace of light or life
I wait for signs, for something big to happen.
Could seeing God be, after all, so simple as this?
I have my doubts;
But who would look a golden stallion in the mouth?
4. The Whippoorwill
I’m perched now on the furthest limb of contemplation.
I know I have to be the momentary cause
for in this place I am now beyond the law of karma
Here there are no chain of linked events;
No straight lines between two points;
Only endless points along a line of sight.
I say, “G-geezoolgh?”
I feel embarrassed, like standing at a grave
and talking to the dead
and wondering if any overheard what I had said.
What if there was no one in there?
But I feel a presence in the air,
and call to it again:
“G-geezoolgh?”
“Yes.”
“You’re seeking Realization……
and yet you do not know the meaning of the word!
You chant the mystic syllable HU yet do not realize yourself within it!”
It was true, I am like the whippoorwill
a lonely bird so lost in song
he doesn’t know his own name,
yet he sings it all day long.
“First,” he says, “you must empty yourself
of all dreams and desires,
ambitions, attachments, and thoughts!”
I do so, and he fills the emptiness with light and energy.
And the impersonal love that fills this being,
this first manifestation of Geezoolgh
pulses through me, easily
as if it were my own.
A misty blue embraces my body
and the clear and keening sound of a single flute
is heard as from behind.
And now before me shines a silent, thin and
shimmering arch, a whispy rainbow
like the ones I used to make with only water and the sun;
my seven year old thumb across the end of a garden hose;
Not a grand archway across heaven’s gate in a far off sky,
but something small and personal.
I stare and then unfocus with my eyes.
I close them once then open,
but this fragile, thin refraction
remains unbroken.
The last pilgrimage I took across the country—
weren’t there rainbows everywhere,
to boost me on towards my goal?
Is this now the end of all those rainbows?
Or the beginning?
Time passes in the worlds below
and gradually I fade beyond the spectrum’s visible bow
And then this one called “Geezoolgh”
This form without form
begins to speak again.
“You have just experienced a taste of God Realization.”
”Oh?” I thought, as this impression percolated down
until it reached the filter paper
of the journalizing mind.
“It was so simple!
It was not so different from the feelings I have felt before!”
“Yes. Anyone, at any stage along the path
can garner any one experience,
and anyone at any time can have a taste of spiritual fulfillment.
It’s just a case of letting go and letting God!
Whenever animals are messengers for God:
Whenever one fulfills God’s will instinctively, unconsciously,
one is then the living realization of Geezoolgh’s dream.
This is a lesser aspect of this term, it seems.
“In this specific sense,” he laughs,
“it is so easy that only a child can accomplish it.
This feat, which is so difficult for humans,
who are bound up by their multitude of choices,
blinded by their numerous perspectives
and crippled by their vast array of tools,
can be accomplished easy as that
by any bird or animal
given that the beast has not spent too much time
around a human being!
It seems ironic; animals more close to God than men?
I ask if He could please explain a little further.
“Counter to this simple realization
is what I term “God Consciousness.
These two are like opposite poles,
One, the realm of animals,
And one of men—
And thereby hangs the tale!
This whippoorwill can be a co-worker with God.
To be the conscious co-worker, which is our goal as men,
Is quite a complex matter!
To utterly unfold, one must break the mold,
Go where none have gone before,
Open every door,
Suffer death in eighty-four embodiments of man,
And through your own experience,
Come to finally understand
What it really means to be a conscious co-worker with God.
You must learn, and grow and train,
Overcome each barrier of pain,
Fall and rise again,
Like a Phoenix flying,
Trying to become the sun.
For eventually you will be the one
Who comes to understand the inner workings of the universe
And link into the universal mind
Become a true custodian of power
And have the spiritual freedom all men seek.”
“But those animals you mentioned…
they have freedom here and now,
Can’t we be but like those simple souls?” I ask,
“And not endure the pain?”
“But you are Man, and have a brain
which must be exercised to fulfill its God-intended purpose
otherwise, it can become diseased from lack of use.
You can have that calm and peaceful freedom here and now,
But you’d still not be free from karma;
Not be free to roam wherever you will
Without the slightest degree of danger.
What animal has that freedom?
become a conscious atom of God’s light;
enter in the inner ring of power
and then have any part of the truth that you desire.
And with the truth, you have a position of strength
a place to stand,
from which to move the earth.
like the president of a company
entrusted with authority
you then can act out what the power wishes
for the good of the whole.
It is distinctly different from the freedom
that an animal would have,
or the freedom that the sweeper
or bookkeeper
had before they rose to be the president….
yet so similar.
“Remember when you healed another’s pain by using light?
That was a spontaneous action,
a gift of love, of Realization.
there are higher and higher forms of this
as you will learn,
until you are a clear and perfect vehicle
for some of my most important work.”
“This work of which I speak defies Man’s logic and his mind.
The vehicle for God must trust the light and sound implicitly.
It must override your logic and your concepts
as to what is real and what is fantasy;
For laws of light and sound are greater than
the laws of probability,
the laws of right and wrong, and impossibility!”
“This is why the God Realized
can go where others can’t;
succeed where others fail;
and also why it is so rare
to ever reach Consciousness.
The path is not direct
but zigzags back and forth and side to side
but ever upwards;
Like the road to any mountaintop!”
He gives me time to think this over
over in my mental body…
There are many vehicles for God;
Everyone to his or her degree
and then there are the few and scattered conscious vehicles
and a long and varied spectrum of each kind along the way
encompassing the whole of human endeavor.
Although the animal is closer to the first than most of Men,
surely any Man is closer to the second than a beast!
Yet each Man has inherently
the power and ability
to reach both peaks at once.
This, then must be the goal;
To expand towards the center from these complimentary poles
and keep them both in balance
until they merge and become one
at the top of the mountain!
He says I stand within a foggy region of his realm;
The outer sphere of Geezoolgh’s vast interior.
This is why I cannot see his face or form
or see his light more clearly.
He says I have to be here because
my consciousness is only open to this level at the moment
but that I will soon move beyond it,
as a matter of course.
I am eager for the chance, at perhaps some future date.
I leave the contemplative state
and find a book, and cracking it
I open to a page where an adventurer of light
was led to this same place
and found the same fog as I had.
Now I don’t feel so bad!
5. In The Second Person
I pulled a book of meditations from the shelf
and slipped outside myself
not halfway through the text.
I’d planned to read some more but then
the volume seemed to slip
out of my hands.
as I immersed directly into contemplation,
Geezoolgh spoke.
This time there was no distant voice, no foggy, light blue mist.
Just direct communication between the I and Thou,
The one and only Two.
And when those two can speak as one, I ask you,
which of us ceases to exist?
After it announced Itself to Me
to initiate my journey
it moved past light, and then beyond the barrier of sound,
that I might follow further towards the vast interior of God.
I spoke for It;
It, the second person of Geezoolgh,
It spoke to me, through me,
in the second person singular!
How upsidedown!
Here a man less integrated into sane society
might succumb to doubt, his best neuroses worsen.
For what does every four year old spend hours doing?
Talking to himself, through himself, in second person!
Here I saw the razor’s edge again beneath a safe façade.
For how do you know when it’s you who talks
and when it’s really God?
Asked again about God Realization, and answered back,
“Everyone has flashes of illumination,
everyone has moments as a vehicle for God.
but only Masters can sustain it all the time,
and even they can never score one hundred,
or even ninety-nine per cent.”
It’s not a thing that can ever be perfected,
you always find another octave on the string
by moving half way closer to the bridge,
but you never cross the river.
Likewise, you may “Act as if” you’re on the far shore
of perfection all the time
should your feet get wet now and then,
don’t be too surprised,
especially when its time to cast your line.
Generally, we only perfect limited things;
I would tend to suspect anything
a so-called perfect master can perfect!
“It’s no cosmic accident
when anyone can touch the ninety-ninth per cent.
We must struggle then conceive
the vision of ourselves becoming fully alive
not now and then but all the time,
to fully give and fully receive.
If you wish to set such a mold
throw your thoughts into the future
then retrieve.
No one accidentally reaches the mountaintop
the precipice of man’s existence
by following the path of least resistance.
I tried this exercise
and found it hard at first to visualize
myself as some compassionate Buddha all the time.
This mountaintop requires quite a climb!
I struggled with the little self
could it wait on God in utter trust
for any future pleasure God might toss my way?
(including lust?)
And could I agree to stay in the desireless state
even when the moment finally came to satiate?
I felt attachments grab ahold then tear away.
I used the forming force to keep those hungry hounds at bay.
I used the sound, the ancient song of God,
each time triggering the high and piercing sound of piccolo,
and where it took me, hungry thoughts could never go,
and then the sound would change to feeling
I formed an empty shell of light around myself
and filled it up with all that energy and love
and then I’d make the shell expand
and spread that love across an ever widening band.
My beloved Geezoolgh, he spoke again.
“Here you find just knowingness upon this plane.
Knowingness is that which lies beyond all light and sound and form.
When one understands the question
one does not need illustrations to explain.”
“You will not be granted true God Consciousness,
until you can maintain the purely realized state.
Do you know why?” I said to me.
“It is for the good of the whole.
Who would trust an epileptic person with an axe,
or trust a frequent drunkard with the keys to any car?
(Once the speeder has the keys, how do you reclaim
except when found among the wreckage later on?)
I thought I’d prove my worthiness,
by holding the enlightened image of my future self in mind,
but soon a host of hungry ghosts
and other graven images attacked
and managed to distract!
My state of permanence needed constant restoration.
but I needed this Consciousness
to bring about my preservation.
Even with the perfect image of the Self,
the chances are I’d still be flawed,
so how does anyone ever earn this key,
the consciousness of God?
Finally, I felt a strange vibration around my skull,
the healing touch that made me well.
I sensed the Supreme Being behind me,
and felt It’s healing properties.
Perhaps I’d have my healing gradually from within
like silk that is dipped in saffron dye
and fades when set to dry,
but then the tint sets in,
when it is dipped and dried again.
It told me that what healing I received
was only for the benefit of others, not for me.
For strength can be used selfishly or altruistically
I didn’t have to ask what that would mean
if I was healed, then lost sight of Geezoolgh’s Dream.
I walked outside,
and on the way back home,
a column of white light shone down on me
and followed me conspicuously.
I checked the nearest mirror on the wall.
My skin had changed from rough to smooth;
my face from dull to bright
as if filled with moonlight.
It was cool, not like sunlight, red or fiery
I thought this all hard to explain…
and wrote it in my diary.
Initiation day
I brought nine plums,
A choice selection.
and while I heard my secret word,
I took a shower in a purple fountain
that danced with light and shimmered.
I found the word had power
to change the light
to shape the light into radiant forms
to send a message to knock on someone’s inner door
or mend that which was broken.
6. The Inner Circle
I was laying back, awake but dreaming,
in the early morning hour,
between a night of learning dreams
and a day of earning dollars,
and was watching with my inner eye
what appeared to be a pool of water.
a constant dripping hit the center of my vision’s circle.
I saw the ripples going outward from the center.
This water was crystal clear,
the background set behind it a milky white.
For a moment then I thought it might just be an outdoor pond.
There should be smooth round stones behind it—
Where were they?
I watched it closely for a time,
trying to find the lesson.
Why would Soul, after all these evenings with Sat Nam,
and then Geezoolgh, the Great Mystery Itself,
be preoccupied with such a clear perception
of a shallow pond?
Then, on closer examination, I realized there was no water!
There was no pond but Allah!
There was no dripping drops
But those clear, even ripples, those endless concentric circles,
were not ripples, but the flow of atoms
which rose out of the Ocean of Love and Mercy,
and from Great Spirit’s center, spread in all directions;
not concentric circles, but whole spheres,
of compression and refraction,
not of cause and then effect,
but cause and cause and cause….
In three dimensions, through all dimensions,’
Carrying wisdom, power, freedom, to all Souls,
I watched it for a while longer
until it finally disappeared.
And just at that moment,
when It’s wisdom had finally reached the shores
of my poor perceptions
someone on the inner planes asked a question.
“What is truth?”
I, as a deity of Soul,
without a moment’s hesitation, answered,
“Truth is that which is,
that which exists!
You ask me what exists, I say God exists!
It is that which says I alone exist!
Everything is part of It,
therefore nothing exists outside of It,
and all things not a part of It unreal!
The second level of truth is found in the question
‘Where does it exist?’
The answer is, God exists everywhere, yet nowhere
Its everywhereness, and Its nowhereness are inseperable.
Truth exists everywhere, yet nowhere,
Therefore, truth and God are the same.
The next question to be asked is,
‘Why does it exist?’
God exists because it loves to be.
It is not love as we think of it,
but an expression of Its power just to be.
And this power is expression of Its energy,
and energy is the key to God’s great mystery.
Next the question could be asked,
When does this being exist?
It exists in all times, at all places,
yet sometimes this existence is in the active sense,
sometimes its potential,
such as when God sleeps and dreams
and when It only sleeps.
“And who does It exist in?”
It exists in Godly men
and exists in each of us as Soul,
but as a microcosm of Itself.
Finally, the question asks itself,
“But how does It exist?
What are the rules, the laws, the properties
of this ground of all existence?”
Here is the question you really meant to ask!
This is what most people mean when they say
“What is Truth?”
And yet it is only the outermost layer of truth,
the empirical, observable behavior of Existence.
One could write a book on this one subject
It acts, It manifests Itself within an image,
and then a series of images derive from that,
each one more specific;
more specialized,
until It has successfully defined one aspect of Itself
in such an image.
The first manifestation of the Creator
is the universal image of Itself
then from It come multiple images,
reaching down to soul’s domain.
There, everything is split up into two divergent streams;
psitive and negative atoms,
and a middle stream, which sustains all life,
and stabilizes the other two contrary forces.
From this point down,
God expresses Itself in detail;
in the counterpoint of atoms
which we know as life.
The motion of this counterpoint
is the basis of both science and aesthetics.”
After saying this, I went back to the source of truth,
the source of all existence,
which now appeared differently,
for I returned to It on a deeper level
than I had been before.
Now I saw It as a nearly invisible sun,
a milky white and vaporous ball of energy
against a white background,
emitting beams of light in strong straight lines,
and spiraling streams of newly emerging souls,
while drawing experienced souls back in,
breathing in and out as It had breathed for half an eternity.
Everywhere were snowy particles of soul
like the scene inside a snowflake paperweight.
This was then The Ocean of Love and Mercy,
totality as seen from the “outside,”
if such a thing within the bounds of God could ever exist!
I still was not a part of It;
Not merged, with all those other particles,
not submerged in all those waves,
but still on the shore,
and I knew there must be more.
7. The Decaying Log
Pulled into a parking lot,
half a mile past nowhere,
took a walk in wilderness and trees.
Then I saw a Monarch
butterfly, symbol of the spirit guide
riding on the sultry summer breeze.
Where are you leading me,
Delicate-wings?
The strongest things that nature ever made.
“Follow me over the hedges
and on down the road
and let the road teach you,”
its motion seemed to say.
The butterfly led me step by step
along the deserted road
and then turned left
into a glen, over the hills
and down into a great abandoned field.
It led me to the center then disappeared
as suddenly as it had come.
Standing alone in the middle of that field
I had the overwhelming feeling
that Earth was just a tiny planet out in space
and I was Its explorer.
What a strange planet! I thought.
What was I sent here to do?
And why does it seem so familiar?
Then Sat Nam’s hand guided me
to the edge of the forest that lay beyond that field.
He stood me before a log
so decayed it had rotted flat
from countless seasons,
dozens of rains
and told me to put it together again.
It seemed too much to ask.
The air was thick and heavy and hot
and I felt too weak for the task
and in frustration, turned away
I didn’t know where to begin.
“Put it together,” he told me again.
I said, “Why should I? Why even try?”
“Tell me what good will it do?”
But he insisted, and so I knelt,
and put pieces of bark, like a puzzle, together,
and big chunks of wood that lay around,
could still fit if you used imagination.
But there was little else I could do,
and little else I could say.
I got up an kicked a few pieces together
and started to walk away.
Sat Nam said, “If you were God Conscious,
do you think that you could change this back into a tree?”
I said I thought so, but wasn’t there yet,
and turned my back on this pitiful pile of debris.
Then the butterfly, the spirit guide, flew by me,
I followed it out to midfield
And I contemplated there, standing, eyes closed,
Silent, but no vision or message revealed.
Then thunder suddenly started to grumble around me.
I looked up at a darkening sky
like a man marooned on a planet of doom;
There was nowhere to run, only wait.
It was the most ominous sound the earth ever made
but I refused to feel fear,
for I knew that I’d done nothing wrong.
It started to rain, a light, even rain
like the gentle tears of a weeping God,
Aand I felt some great being was mourning at this hour.
But why would He cry for a rotten log?
I had no regrets, I had done my best
but in order to do one better than that,
I would have to rearrange my perception of life
and myself.
It wasn’t a fair test, not yet!
It was only one day till my weakness returned
I knew what the log was supposed to represent;
It was me that was fallen apart at the seams
and now I knew what He had meant.
He was asking me if I was ready as yet
to heal myself through God’s power—
I worked on this problem for several days
and then had a dream where the log was made whole
and finally thought of the answer.
I drove back down to that place in the woods
and found the tree as I’d left it.
I used light and sound as my surgical tools to repair
what I saw as my physical shell.
The sun broke through heavy clouds
A weight was lifted from me
Sat Nam liberated me with love
and set my feet upon a higher course.
8. The Maker Met
I’m sure there’s some significance to this:
I had a guitar and after many years it fell apart;
The head was cracked
from an old injury and much misuse.
I went and found another to replace it,
and then my body fell apart,
a problem with the hands and legs
and still I couldn’t play.
And then the tuning pegs,
the machine heads to be exact,
fell apart as well.
I went to local vendors,
but they said my instrument was totally unique
that I would have to go back to the maker,
personally,
to find the healing that I seek.
I thought that strange
and kept looking, even found a smiling,
fast-talking man
who sold me standard parts for quite a price
knowing they wouldn’t fit.
Finally, I had no choice but to make the lengthy journey
to the realm of Brooklyn
where the maker dwells.
When I arrived, he told me
the foreign company
who made the broken parts,
the totally unique, one and only parts to my new guitar
had long been out of business,
and those parts are very rare.
But looking through his shop he found a pair
of matching pegs, which somehow time forgot;
One needed slight repair, but that was quickly done.
And then I met the maker’s son;
a guitarist somewhat in demand,
and we found we had the same
distinctive problem with our hands!
We played together, and then I played
and tested each of the old guitar-creator’s instruments;
Some were perfect,
some “required work” I said, and he agreed.
and then I asked him what his fee would be
for all that he had done,
and he said, “Keep your money, this is free—
you’ve filled this shop with music for an hour.
“You’ve tested each guitar,
probed their subtleties,
and gauged their power.
Just remember me
and tell your students;
Tell the other players that you meet
who it was that made
the instrument you play so sweet.
9. The Cave
While walking along a riverbank, I found a cave;
A small and rugged opening among the rocks—
The kind that Milarepa might have once enjoyed.
The perfect spot to contemplate the vast interior of God.
The cave lay below a great bulwark of natural stone
A cliff like the bow of a warship heading seaward,
full speed out from port.
Atop its precipice a three-hundred-sixty-degree surround,
like the view from a crow’s nest tower.
With lantern in my hand I climbed inside
the Disneyland-like cavern of the underworld,
and crouching low,
I made my way into the mountain’s vast interior.
Yet for all the vastness of that subterranean frontier,
the way was very narrow, like the eye of a needle;
the tunnel barely big enough to let an empty-handed man
pass through.
The tunnel then split off in two, I chose one,
and looking down into that dark, womb or tomb-like space,
I went within.
Sitting tailor fashion on a stone,
my head against the ceiling,
I chanted the song of God resonantly,
a novel feeling.
At first the images were broken up and jagged
like the walls before my face.
Then I saw the old discarded imagery, weird and strange,
of phantoms I had long ago misplaced.
I exploded them like bubbles
until only darkness remained.
Why preserve an illusion?
Pass up vision for vision’s sake
and you pass beyond another cob spider’s veil
deeper into the wells of understanding.
10. An Unexpected Visit
I sat again in contemplation
and chanted Milarepa’s name.
I thought this cave would be the proper place for him.
An inner voice, with greatest certainty, said
“He is far away, and won’t descend to this plane any more.’
And so I put him out of mind and stared into the wall,
and for what seemed like hours,
had no experiences at all.
I suddenly was standing straight up in my cave,
only now the cave was gone
and there, a foot in front of me
was the strangest creature I had ever seen!
He wore an impish, half-a-smile on his broad and elf-like face,
and his wide eyes flickered playfully from side to side,
as if to say, “Did I hear someone calling me?”
Avoiding my bewildered gaze,
pretending not to notice me,
although I blocked his line of sight!
“He must be playing games,” I thought,
For I was six feet tall, and he was barely four, in height.
At seventy or eighty years of age
his skin seemed remarkably fair.
He wore a plain, rough, grey-brown robe,
a beggar’s robe, or I should say rag,
his hair was the same color-beggar’s hair.
It was long and straight and stiff,
like a stack of hay,
that splayed out to his shoulders and beyond,
and in his right hand was a staff
of ordinary wood,
but what an extraordinary man!
And not a word on who he was,
or why he then appeared, and he was gone!
I went back to my interrupted contemplation and asked
this past impression who he was,
what his name is now or used to be.
He answered, with a riddle
in an accent somewhat Himalayan
“Me? Ah (I’m a) Rupa.”
(It was hard to tell what he was saying)
I sat confused, I hadn’t caught the fellow’s name;
Hadn’t guessed the riddle.
I hadn’t guessed, the name and the riddle were the same.
I looked down, on the inner, to my folded hands
“What is ‘Rupa’ or ‘Repa’ did he say?
I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
And then a hand popped out of inner space
and stuck a goblet in my face,
thrust it firmly in my hands, then disappeared.
My God, this guy’s a little weird!
Maybe he is evil—
And this, this otherworldly drink…..
I hate to think!
I took a look at what it held within,
foaming green and ugly as a sin,
and lots of it too, a moldy stew.
I held it in my hand, and wondered what to do.
“Why not test it with the blue and healing light?
Why not test it with the sound of Huuuu?”
The thought appeared.
“Not a bad idea!”
I tested it this way for quite some time;
bombarded it with Huuuing and of course the blue,
but to my surprise, it did not fade at all.
But this ghastly gothic goblet full of green
kept becoming solider and realer, and heavier in my hand!
I stopped testing just in time
before it became a physical thing!
I took a breath and braced—
For what? You ask. The deadly poison?
No, the deadly taste!
And then I drank the stuff down to the dregs (not to waste!)
But surprisingly, it had no taste at all!
I threw the cup into the inner, far beyond the wall
and waited for my fate.
Then I noticed that the sickness I had felt all day was gone…
all the symptoms vanishing at once
as if nothing had ever been wrong!
I felt great!
I wanted more! (or was it now too late?)
NO! Another goblet inwardly appeared.
I drank it all and then another took its place
and so I sipped some more until my illness had completely cleared.
Who was that man? I asked an inner friend.
”Milarepa,” they replied.
“Repa,” “the cotton clad”
(yes, cotton was the brown robe he was wearing)
“But he said he was a Rupa,” I exclaimed.
“Perhaps he was joking.
Note that a Rupa is a lower body that one is forced to take.
I guess he wasn’t happy to be drawn back to this lower plane
just for your sake!”
“And what was that stuff I drank? That tasteless, healing,
miraculous, unappetizing goop?”
My inner friend answered promptly,
”Milarepa’s favorite…..NETTLE SOUP!”
11. Unison
Then I remembered there was one more thing I wanted to try.
It was said that God would not deny us our identity
that we could merge within it,
blend ourselves into Its heart,
and be not one apart,
but resonate as one, the whole,
in unison and still be one as soul
when we returned.
And this is true because it is the Creator’s firm desire
that we retain our individuality; that our own voice be heard
within the symphony of life
among the chorus of souls
until the trumpet
sounds to mark the end of time,
and with a sure finality, call all souls back to the key
from which they first emerged.
Converge into the heart from which we came,
beyond the voice, beyond the face beyond the form
beyond the name
of God!
I did this, and lost myself completely within Its peaceful eye
the eye of life’s wide hurricane;
The Eye of God,
and felt protected by a bubble that lifted off the ground.
I had no sense of time,
but suddenly I popped back in the physical
and knew that I had been very far away for quite a while
and that’s all I could say.
I blinked and stretched and reached for the torch of the twentieth century
and switched the flashlight “on”
and a subtle voice said,
“You now have the authority
to be a messenger of Soul;
to do whatever the Creator, Geezoolgh tells you to.
Let none deny you the least opportunity
to serve Its stern command!
I said, “Where do I begin?”
“You can start by cleaning up this cave!”
was the reply.
I flashed the light around the floor,
and there were thirty years of broken bottles,
muddy trash and cans
I hadn’t seen before.
I thought, “I don’t have a bag or gloves or any way
to carry them out!
What, Oh Lord, do you have planned?”
”Take them out by hand!”
12. The Invisible Man
When you found me on a sandy beach
so many years ago
I was a melted lump of glass,
the remnants of a bottle
that the ocean had deposited.
And you, oh great soul
bent and lifted me up to your eye
and saw the sun through me
and thought it wise to keep me
for your alchemy
and placed me in the pocket of your robe
because you saw some quality in me
that no one else could see,
perhaps I was misshapen….
dirty, rough or chipped on edge,
Yet you saved me!
Was I uncracked or did I blossom in the sun
with radiant rainbow tones
when you held me aloft?
I don’t know.
I only know you polished me
and ground down slow and painfully
my imperfections
And now that you have spent a thousand years
in grinding and examining,
do you find me fitting?
Am I still a diamond in the rough or in the clear?
I hope that I am perfect for your purpose
for now not only am I worn away
but I’m invisible as well!
I am next to nothing!
I have no identity other than being that which can’t be seen
no one really knows me but for what they can see through me.
That’s why I appear so different to each eye that tries to wear me
It depends on where they stand (and where they’re going)
and that is why I still remain a mystery.
You made me more or less invisible
but mostly less.
except when you use me in your work
to magnify the Word
I lay against the table undiscovered
and pass unnoticed like the wind
and people wonder where I’ve been
bBecause the human mind cannot perceive
or understand
the glory of becoming the Invisible Man.
But hang me in your window frame
and I will be a vehicle for light,
a rainbow of a thousand tones
will spread across the cluttered wall of stones
whenever you open the curtains.
I am not a diamond
but set me in the proper place before your light
and I shall be a magic lantern for your love
filling all of space with this great light
and filling up the darkened screen
with images of God
in all Its thousand emanations
each one playing opposite itself in countless subplots
each unfolding simultaneously
before our wondering eyes.
I am not a precious gem
but make of me a magic lantern for your love
and you will see the flicker of your fire
in every flashing flame of mind that comes to pass
across this aperture.
I will make it very clear that it’s your light
that brings to life these pictures.
and even then there will be those who don’t know
from where these pictures are projected.
No one likes to think the mystery movie they enjoy
is just a grand illusion from some projection booth
and will not look behind themselves
to see the source of light
but are absorbed in its reflection
and the shadows there that hurry
across the proscenium.
So I’ll remain the mystery behind the mystery.
I’ll go as I do now
among the crowds at rush hour
the unknown, unseen man
and, working in the ancient secret way,
I’ll be your silent messenger.
A Healing Journey
© 1993 by Evan Pritchard All Rights Reserved
Print edition available from Resonance Communications
PO Box 1028 Woodstock NY 12498 $5 plus $1 postage (212)714-7151
Echoes In the Monkeyhouse
Sometimes, late at night in contemplation,
the outer sight and sounds of night
evaporate like vapors on a mirror
when breathing ceases.
And then a strange phenomenon occurs,
a tinny inner ear becomes unplugged
and sounds from around the crowded world
collect there
emerging from beneath a deep
semi-circular canal somewhere.
The voices jumble, they break and tumble;
the way the sound of an entire sea can fit within a tiny shell
the voices of world
whisper and yell within the spiraling well
of my inner ear
like echoes in the monkeyhouse.
So much confusion, chattering, squeaking,
rattling of cages,
sometimes speaking
calling to some higher primate for assistance.
Meanwhile, I hear a tense resistance
in the calls for freedom.
I sing the secret word
for those who do not know the sacred key,
the key that opens doors in desperate hearts
unlocks the RNA and DNA of consciousness
turns pain to understanding
and monkeys into men.
The song at first is lost in a tumultuous sea of noise
but when it reverberates back to me
I know it has found its sympathetic ear.
Sometimes I hear voices
cutting through the fog on the sea
like the hiss-and-sputtering voice of a short wave.
And sometimes a child’s voice
will call my name
or some other puzzling thing I can’t explain
some music, perhaps
on un-invented instruments
hollow-toned
like Charles Ives,
performed by gramophone.
Sometimes there is nothing…
but the high and quiet
humming of the spheres
and other times,
a voice somewhere
will simply say,
“I love you!”
Logic’s Blade
Fearsome power of solution
Intellect and worldly reason
Life’s own life-dissolving potion
Doubt from which belief is risen.
Minds once pulled
With blind aggression
Serpent’s tails from where they’d frozen
Leaving souls with no transition
Leaving dying’s venom brazen
Causing Time’s disintegration.
Confused, confined, and blinded mind of Man
Still dreaming of the steaming, stagnant past
When infant footsteps crept out of the sand
To sculpt by hand a pyramid that mirrors him like glass
To glimpse the paths and patters spirit planned
Just once before he leapt into
The Maelstrom of madness
Of the Matter, Mind, and Mass.
Then Man became a hunter,
Stalking his bewilderness.
He killed for skill and stained his blade
With intuition’s blood.
He waited through the moon-slight night
For lambs of light to rest.
Then, sheltered by the shadows
Slaughtered innocence
With shrouded lies, religious words, and mud.
Oh fierce and piercing power
How your destined hour flowers into dawn.
You followed Logic’s Blade until it took you
to the forest’s fiery core
And soon the sword that saved you
And the blade that you once gave so much to own
Will fade,
So you’ll be free enough to try the Needle’s Eye,
The Tenth Door.
Narrow Way
These ashes that lie on your hearthstone
Are not dead but yet retain their fire
And with a branch cut from a limb
You stir to life the dust
Of logs you once carried home to light the hearth.
Like embers of the day
The stars are swept
Across the smoky night
And they tremble in their vacuum of space
With silent songs of light.
But your ears cannot hear
And your eyes are turned to the dust.
There’s a world that someday finds you
Where there is no one to say good bye to
And no sad songs remind you
Of yesterday.
You can’t change the world by weeping
So let go the hound of pain that you were keeping
And embrace the teaching of the narrow way.
So come on up
to the world beyond the mind
To a world where anger finds a better way
You needed to cry,
But now you need to fly
So come up and watch the dawn of this new day.
Like beacons of the dawn
The angels are swept across the cosmic sky
And they call you from their temples of space
With silent songs of light
But your ears cannot hear
And your eyes are turned to the dust.
Oh, lift your eyes from the stones
Like those sheer threads of smoke
Even the smoke can surrender the Earth
And be lifted upwards to the sky.
Man have you noticed a single star
Lined up this hour with you?
Its gaze now finds its narrow way
through the grate
To meet your upturned eye!
Charity
I spend my flask and flagon on the sand
The desert drinks my essences in vain
And nowhere is the promise of the leaf
To herald hidden flowers seeking rain.
I sling my water bag across my arm
I will not drain my life to share with death
Dry death who has no blossoms to return
No foliage to transform milk to breath.
I see a traveler, bearded and serene
Approaching me and speaking with his glance.
And with each footstep, flowers bloom,
Then fall
So saith he, “What is Life and Death
If not a dance?”
The Healing Journey
I had a dream and you were there
you walked beside me in a summer dress of blue
as we were walking silent through
an orchard laden everywhere with fruit
and like a sweet angelic messenger of truth.
You turned and gazed at me and said:
“Break the yoke of addictions, and put them to the side
and something wonderful will come to pass!
The things of which you’ve dreamed will manifest at last,
if you can place addictions to the side!”
It must have been a feasting day,
on that remote and gracious plane,
we walked among a multitude of souls
as each of us made our way
beneath the tattered awning of the trees
a pilgrimage perhaps
to where a master was to speak to us
of sound and light, and love,
and things that have substance to the soul.
But I awoke from sleep before I ever reached that site,
awoke and found myself surrounded
by the weapons of the mind
which exploded into form in front of me,
lunged at me and took me by the throat
I struggled to control the crazed, five-headed beast
But it sustained my blows
and seemed to grow in power
for every time I struck it with my fist
it whipped around and stung me with a poison tongue
until my legs and arms were paralyzed
so that they fell when I commanded them to rise
and fingers clenched
when I commanded them to arch and play.
The music I conceived was still-born
locked between the frozen fingers of my hand
and for a moment silence surged across
the far horizons of my dreams
like Noah’s flood,
But where was there an Ararat to climb?
And where was there a ship to save my kind?
It’s said when people cease to grow
they begin to die
but the pruning knife of death
sometimes inspires
plants to find just one more bud to bloom,
one more twig to sprout
as if seeking a way out
defying clippers, shears and winter winds.
We as humans do the same
and in God’s name
we dig to find the strength for branching out.
But only after we have felt the sharpness
of the famous razor’s edge,
the blade to which there is no middle ground,
do we find the strength within the earth
and cleave to it with long tenacious roots
and stand our ground against the reaping of the wind.
But now that I was weak,
I couldn’t grasp and could not stand!
But running, like a winged Mercury,
perhaps I could outpace, outdistance this disease
and so I fasted, prayed, and made
an offering
and then I ran.
I ran until I thought my lungs would burst
running for my life I raced the sunset
until I found myself
atop some mountain of the mind
with no direction left to go but inwardly
and so I sat.
I saw the steam of passion’s fires rise
but like the summer clouds
it couldn’t pass above the line of trees
and so it seemed that as long as I remained there
I was safe from harm
and from that lofty point I could see the miles
that lay behind and miles that lay ahead
and saw the deep moraine through which I had to pass
and saw the thunderheads of fate
that gathered there in wait for me.
They charged out of the sky on raging steeds
and hurled their practice javelins upon the impervious earth
a target whom they knew could not be killed.
I knew that they were only killing time
waiting for their challenger to appear,
to test his muscle,
me.
Then I saw a sign that said, “Something wonderful is taking place”
and felt a subtle change.
A first thaw, a warm wind
to crack the icy locks of wintertime
and a door within blew open
and following a golden thread
I passed through the door
to find a realm invisible;
an ocean of the air
where I could be absolved into the Emptiness
and could then move freely
free from crippling weights, of time and mass.
But playing with invisibilities
like water, air, freedom….or the soul
things tend to slip away between the hands.
I lost the thread!
A voice said,
“You have failed the test
return to Earth!”
and so I did.
How strange it is to try to win
in matters of the heart
How blindly we succeed sometimes
how cleverly we fail.
But failure is assurance that our sights aren’t set too low
the higher that we go
we have to seek out great and greater goals
so that we by failing
reach at least the modest aims of yesterday
and by and by shake loose these mental ornaments like ropes
the way a kitten, through persistence
manages to lose the tightest collar
imposed upon its throat.
I returned and soon I realized
that the noose bound around my neck
was tightening fast
and I cried to the Teacher
“How long will it last?”
The Teacher answered
“Not until you are permanently in God
will you be completely free of this disease
that plagues mankind
and not until you put aside
the five deadly weapons of the mind!”
I had a thought
What if I reached the Conscious Knowing State in God
that I could change the body and the mind
change the past that led to this dilemma
change the future too
and using images of both the fixed and unfixed forms
turn imagination into knowingness,
and knowingness to truth.
But how does one accomplish this?
How do you pit time against eternity
and hope to win?
To realize God, some writers say,
takes lifetime after life
yet I had little time in which to live this life
or if I failed, in which to die.
I sat in “Indian fashion” closed my eyes,
and traveled far and fast.
I found myself in front of
that being long ago appointed Lord of Souls,
the ancient Sihks of India called “Sat Nam.”
I felt a pleasant tingle of surprise
it was as if I as soul
had gone to call upon my King
petitioning for advice
on matters far beneath his scope
but what other hope do I posses
than to be able to address
my questions directly to the source
of that great all-embracing force
and ask for his assistance?
I had nothing yet to lose.
And so I was bewildered and surprised
when this great being began to rise
up from his throne, descend the steps
and sit beside me, we two alone
like he might attend
some long awaited guest or closest friend,
and put me at my ease.
I asked if he could heal me
or perhaps reveal to me
the secrets of such healing.
He said he had a hundred other bodies I could use
but since I seemed so attached to this one
it would have to do.
“And anyway,” he said, in a tone much kinder,
“It’ll serve as a reminder.”
A reminder so that I would not forget
the price one pays
for serving two task masters
misusing the candle that leaves no shadow
burning the wick ends,
both of passion and devotion
at one time.
“This body is now a piece of junk upon some heap!”
he said,
This is what I supposed I had to reap for my mistake
and my heart sank.
But then he reached for me and said,
“And yet I utterly forgive you, and accept you
to my breast
For you are the prodigal son, returned at last
You are my pride and joy
known to us as Sat Deva,
I will do whatever possible to improve
this bent and fevered form
As any true devoted father might
you could have come to visit me any time
but you had heard some word of sin and death and guilt
and believed that gossip-talk
and did not call or write
but let misunderstanding keep Soul from returning
to Its palace, Its true home
to take Its place as Prince of Souls.”
He had me stand within a square,
my tattered rags all disappearing,
and with a kiss of blessing
he restored to me my own robe.
“Perhaps you thought me lacking
in qualities of love and mercy?
yet I give this gift to all who can accept
and there is none so lowly that I would reject
as long as love was burning in their heart
in my eyes they would be no dimmer than a star.
For this is the secret way
to fill thyself with love for all that is
fill every empty vein and vessel,
nerve and muscle, with this light
and hold it there within the body form.
Let its power build, until it must break forth
like a wave that surges from the center of the sea
to seek and strike each distant shore at once
with a compelling force
and merge back again into the source
the glorious heart
of the lover of all life.
This is how to heal your wounds
or get in tune,
or even alter all reality.
Just let yourself become a resonating chamber
for that harmony
that we call Universal Love.
I emptied out myself until I became a hollow shell
and filled that well with the sacred water of the Soul,
the light and sound
and then lay down
and found myself repeating this
as a blue light pulsed around me
like a cobalt blue sun—
“All beings are one,
all beings are one.”
It magnified the love by which
all being are united.
but wondered how all souls
could retain their separateness
in spite of such a healing force as this.
And as if reading my thoughts, he tells me,
“Souls are each like cells within the Body of the Divine,
each are like the bubbles of a tiny stream
as it makes its way to the sea
like a particle of dust in a grain of sand
They are all, though separate souls, all one
if only they choose to look at it as such
the universe is made of waves of God’s own love
made manifest into form and sound and light
but take away the love,
and what you see are particles of God,
which we call souls.
and both are true, at all times and at all places.
But now you see that when you put your focus
on the oneness
one can feel the presence of that God Love
vibrating everywhere,
and this is how we heal ourselves and others
and in the process eventually find
that we have put aside
the five deadly weapons of the mind.”
The Messenger
1. Lantern of Light
It was early evening
and the sun
sat down wearily on some western mountains
puffing hot summer air
like the fan on my windowsill.
I threw off my shoes
and rolled into bed,
weary from battle on Route Nine,
weary from a day of marketing
and bartering and bargaining.
I laid myself straight
and gazed into the spiritual eye,
the window to the north of the World,
and though immobilized by tiredness
my body suddenly whooshed forward
as if down a long dark tube,
or downhill on the Great Adventure
Roller Coaster lunging toward some loosely bolted curve
I felt the vertigo of free-fall flying
and for minutes I was weightless.
Four senses said, “We must be plummeting through space!”
but blinking eyes,
the body’s Fifth Estate,
reported otherwise,
observed the motionless form
on which they perched.
They suspended judgment,
passed no sentence
concerning this infraction of Sir Newton’s Law.
Like a child on a runaway wagon,
I closed my eyes for luck.
I saw a 3D spattering of stars
whizzing past my eyes like bugs and flies
caught in the headlight beams of a speeding car
and airborne, like a bee, lighted down on a planet
familiar to my dreams
but strange to my awakened state
I flew down those rough-stone corridors,
those long, canal-like walkways
swooped under the chiseled archways like a bat
and round the silver-domed towers,
glinting with the light of several moons,
flew on and on until I saw a bearded figure
standing, waiting for me there,
beneath a graceful arch
and I lighted down before him,
eager to talk to someone
who knew about the higher realms of God.
We shared a few brief greetings
and a few brief thoughts.
He shook my hand, and said,
“Go on, on until you find
the palace of Sat Nam,
and can return and report back to your brothers
all that you have seen!
If you would be a lantern of the light
then be thee ware!
Guard your health and keep thee strong
for when the holy fire flares within you
It will consume you heart with passion for the soul.
Kindle what is right,
and burn out what is wrong.
If you are whole,
then this energy force will be a glowing sphere
around the heart
and if you’re any less than this, I fear
that same substance will feel like flames of seven furnaces
and make your skin feel raw.
So this is why the masters keep a healthy mind,
a healthy heart and body
for these three must all agree
and work in harmony
to reach those lost in realms of night
if you are to maintain this light
and be a beacon to your kind,
to magnify the filament within
and give sight to the blind.
You must take care of your health
and beware the five weapons of the mind
and purify the heart with acts of charity
if you would hope to be a lens for God
of crystal clarity.
2. The Map Maker
I walked into a city
wonderful, but strange—
and everywhere were buildings
smooth and round
and in the air I heard
a musical sound
as if a mother planet was sweetly humming
to her new moon-cradled son
above a blue horizon.
I went inside a room and found a library of maps
the shelves on every side were leaded down with books
on explorations, expeditions, and some astronomical charts
and at the center of the room
I found a large display,
an ancient map, a chart not used since ancient times,
a map of this whole planet.
I saw how it was patched together
how some roads were still unmarked
how vague it all seemed
I wondered how it must have been in former lives
when maps were treasures of the state
and research done by hear-say,
bold conjecture, creative inspiration,
and when available,
experience.
No wonder travel guides stand
at every crossroads on this planet!
I almost expected to see one such guide appear behind me
in that chamber of the past,
and as I was peering, puzzling through the glass
at a map of some antiquity,
its strangeness and its age appealed to me
and to my fantasy.
“You have an interest in maps?”
he said,
“Well, then, I’d guess you had a thirst for traveling!
In all my years the only men I’ve seen
that can see the beauty in a wandering line
scrawled across a folded page
were those who had a longing for the road!
How can one who’s never loved the royal path to heaven,
see the mountains in a switch-back road line?
Behold a lacy shape bordered in blue
and see a shoreline, feel the splash of cold sea spray
and smell salt in the air?
Only one with wanderlust and a poet’s well-worn soul
can know the thrill and danger
the temptation and renunciation
in a bold and sweeping line of road across a page
a line that enters boldly from the wings
runs across the curtain of longitudes
and disappears stage right beyond the margins of the page!
Just as one who’s never been to God
cannot decipher or enjoy
the poetry of heaven
so a map means nothing to the soul
who has never left his own front door!
Here, scrolled up in my hand
I have such a map for you if you but take it.
It is not quite accurate
It is just to be a source of inspiration,
not instruction
observation, not dissection,
it is not complete, for the regions drawn
between its longitudes
are not yet fully known,
but grow and change as we explore them.
Therefore, take this map
and be such an explorer if you dare
and add your notes upon it as you go
to help yourself and be a guide for others
who come after you.
Our mapmakers here have always been revered
as sages of a sort
but none has ever drawn a chart from atop an ivory tower.
The perspective is distorted from that height.
They’ve always found the countryside
with hand upon the staff
and foot upon the path.
What closer look at life
could one desire?
I ask you?
The men who find the goal at last
are those who love the traveling of the path,
and often as not
have had some other purpose first in mind
some business to complete or plan
or find a certain mustached man,
deliver messages or packages, or gold.
That’s the way the watchers of the road
have always worked.”
“But I’m a busy man myself!” I said,
“And I have matters to attend back home.
I have no time to tramp down endless roads alone
and go exploring distant planets out in space
it’s not my place!”
“But this planet spins reverse of your poor backwards planet
and the time spent here is time saved in the long run
and anyway, what business of a single person
on your solitary planet can hold
against the business of a Lord of Souls?”
“Sat Nam?” I asked, “He’s here?”
the old mapmaker laughed and told me,
“No, he never descends below the second grand division
of the universe.
To find him, you would have to travel once again
deep within, to where he dwells.
There is no map, no winding road
that leads you to his door.
The only way is to go directly
to be there with him in this ever-present moment
for he is here with us
(and he pointed to his chest)
He needs you as a runner
a Mercury or Hermes
a messenger like Thoth
or like the old Celtic Lugh
who sang to Wales about the mighty HU.
take his message far and wide
to every city, every farthest countryside.
No matter how steep the mountainsides
you have to climb
run the miles of this map
until even your sandals bleed
for dire is the need,
at this auspicious time!”
Then he stopped
and placed the map down on the table top
and said,
“It’s up to you...it’s your decision.
Do whatever suits your vision—
Only be careful if the visions do not suit the selfish heart
for there’s no turning back
until the moment that you finish
from the moment that you start.
Just make sure you get the message right
and then when you have heard it,
go and let it run its course with you,
and run with all your might.”
“Tell me what this Lord of Souls,
this wondrous being looks like,
so I can find him,
or at very least, please
tell me what this message is!”
But even while I say these words
the vision vanishes.
I try to bring it back
to hear what else the being has to tell
before the memory of it fades as well.
But he is gone and suddenly I know
it was the God Man who wore that plain disguise
then vanished right before my eyes.
It is no accident, the meeting was complete
the message here was clear enough:
“There is no time to waste!”
3. Split Infinities
I am an infinitive,
an unlimited verb, that is,
if I want
To Be.
It sounds so simple, just to be;
to know; to love; to act; to see;
not play a role or try to win a game
but to be in the present moment just as I AM
and simply state what one already knows
But that’s never quite the way it seems to go.
Life always makes Itself more limitive,
more adverbs to define us
as if we expected
split infinitives
and the world didn’t want to ever
disappoint us.
Once, not long ago, I’d had the chance
to be the fleet-foot messenger of Soul.
to find the realm of Sat Nam
and learn his message and relay it
Like the famous man from Marathon:
This was all I had to do
To earn a place in history
among some Angel’s reckonings.
But spiritual history is an iceberg lurking low
and beneath the icy waters of the past
there lies a hundred thousand souls or so
who had their opportunity to gain
a place in the sunlight
and to last
within the memories of men or angels for a day
but hesitated
fell upon their spear
their fears or vanity
or some other weapon of the mind
and lost heart
or even worse
their sanity;
and then entombed themselves with shame
beneath the icy brine of pride
and went down with their names.
and yet when we now gaze back
across the surface of the sea
we read the small white pile of work
of time-tested sagacity
the ice-berg’s tip
and wonder, where were all the others?
Weren’t there more?
Didn’t any other men or women
try to scale those slippery heights?
Which float before us like a flight of stairs.
But now I know,
for those same icy stairs
now look hard and cold at me
beneath the waves of sparkling light
and now I know how quick we are to fail
and tumble out of sight
the minute we are free on bail.
and so instead of melting into liquid in the sun
I lie in icy numb paralysis.
as if that weren’t a catalyst enough
for hopelessness
it seems that every inner being or guide
is saying,
”Step aside—
Make room for the agile ones to pass
The youthful ones still fleet of foot and fast
enough to be the messenger of soul!”
And so I have reason to suspect
I failed the test!
But before I lock the tenth door
the narrow way
I call once more on Sat Nam.
Perhaps he has some task in store
or word to say
to one whom all of life has passed on by.
To my surprise, his great bare hefty arms
come down from heaven
and hold my smaller hands within their grasp!
like daddy reaching down into the crib, I clasp
the father-hand, the link with all the outside world.
It reawakens memories almost as old
as I’ve been on earth
back to when I was starting out
for the hundred thousandth time
waiting in the carnival line
just to have another crack at mastery,
and win the prize called freedom.
And then he kneels and huddles over me
and rests his great cheek atop my head
and cuddles me within his arms to comfort me
and hums to me the way a father hums
quite slow and deep
to charm the sickly infant back to sleep
and dreams.
He gives to me his strength
and I’m a child no more
but now a strapping son, asking for my birthright
I ask if he could heal me
change my plight, and make me well.
He reminds me that the cure to everything
is dwelling in the love.
I say, “Even that is not enough to cure my ills,
like Isaac I must ask you as your son
to grant this help that I might not be killed
for a father can love a son
more than any man can love himself as Soul!”
But he says No, he will not heal me
and my heart sinks back into the ice again.
But then he adds,
”I will adjust your karma
so that you would have the power
to start again in trying to reach the goal
the goal of Realization.”
Now I have no choice
it seems I’ll have to try again
to reach the source
to reach the God-head all alone and heal myself
for only I could undo
what I alone had done.
He starts to teach me,
to leave with me a legacy
of learning
pulling books down off my shelves
into my hands,
and telling me to open to a certain page
to find myself.
I finally begin to understand
some things I missed before
I sit in contemplation for a while
and see a curious thing before my inner eyes
a string of steel is tied between two sides
like a violin string
only shorter—just two inches long
a circus tightrope or maybe an oscilloscope
when the musicians are playing the rests
and the beam of light is still.
But as I watch this string it starts to move
it bends and stretches upward and then down
I watch it as it wanders all around
and then I realize what it is I see
“This strange dancing string is me.”
I said.
“It is my consciousness
in visible form
Whenever I relax and let my thoughts ascend
it rises up
and when the pull to worldly thoughts
is too intense
it bends low
Now I understand
now everything makes sense.
That is how my own awareness tends to go
wildly up and down like a child’s yo-yo;
And this is what we call “normal.”
I try some test, and every case proves the same
I can only hold the positive for a while.
And then the negative magnetic pole
which represents the downward flow of spirit
grows stronger and the string sinks down
no matter what I think or do.
With practice, I am getting quite a knack
of balancing the two opposing poles
and keeping all the energies in tact
and balancing at the tip of my nose
the string suspended in the air in front of me
you have to look at it objectively.
You can’t be strictly positive or dwell in negativity
but aim for stillness, for repose
caused by the true equality
of poles.
This is the technique of master souls
and a necessary tool,
a survival skill I suppose
That you will need
to ride the tightrope called the razor’s edge
and go to God
But this apparent stillness isn’t dead tranquility
it comes from the ability
to see both sides of a thing at once
to pit two great opposing forces at each other
let them clash
and match them perfectly
throughout your personal eternity.
This is how Sat Nam is helping me to balance out the mind
and as the dual forces stabilize within me
I think: “Now’s the time to seek the greater light”
and so I call out with my inner voice,
and with all my might,
“I want to have God Realization!”
I don’t know what answer to expect
I feel as if I’m inviting myself to dinner
but I am hungry for this experiential dish
and thirst for truth as well
And Sat Nam from behind me, says,
”There is a way for Soul to communicate with God
if that is what you wish,
but call It by a personal name,
something that has secret meaning
for you alone.”
I said, “Geezoolgh, then. That is an Algonkian name
For the Great Mystery which I seek to understand.”
And Sat Nam says, “Okay, then.. It’s that vibration sound which holds the key
for going into its great heart, directly!”
Then he adds:
”You may go to Geezoolgh now…”
and a darkened void is thrust upon me
an empty place
without a trace of light or life
I wait for signs, for something big to happen.
Could seeing God be, after all, so simple as this?
I have my doubts;
But who would look a golden stallion in the mouth?
4. The Whippoorwill
I’m perched now on the furthest limb of contemplation.
I know I have to be the momentary cause
for in this place I am now beyond the law of karma
Here there are no chain of linked events;
No straight lines between two points;
Only endless points along a line of sight.
I say, “G-geezoolgh?”
I feel embarrassed, like standing at a grave
and talking to the dead
and wondering if any overheard what I had said.
What if there was no one in there?
But I feel a presence in the air,
and call to it again:
“G-geezoolgh?”
“Yes.”
“You’re seeking Realization……
and yet you do not know the meaning of the word!
You chant the mystic syllable HU yet do not realize yourself within it!”
It was true, I am like the whippoorwill
a lonely bird so lost in song
he doesn’t know his own name,
yet he sings it all day long.
“First,” he says, “you must empty yourself
of all dreams and desires,
ambitions, attachments, and thoughts!”
I do so, and he fills the emptiness with light and energy.
And the impersonal love that fills this being,
this first manifestation of Geezoolgh
pulses through me, easily
as if it were my own.
A misty blue embraces my body
and the clear and keening sound of a single flute
is heard as from behind.
And now before me shines a silent, thin and
shimmering arch, a whispy rainbow
like the ones I used to make with only water and the sun;
my seven year old thumb across the end of a garden hose;
Not a grand archway across heaven’s gate in a far off sky,
but something small and personal.
I stare and then unfocus with my eyes.
I close them once then open,
but this fragile, thin refraction
remains unbroken.
The last pilgrimage I took across the country—
weren’t there rainbows everywhere,
to boost me on towards my goal?
Is this now the end of all those rainbows?
Or the beginning?
Time passes in the worlds below
and gradually I fade beyond the spectrum’s visible bow
And then this one called “Geezoolgh”
This form without form
begins to speak again.
“You have just experienced a taste of God Realization.”
”Oh?” I thought, as this impression percolated down
until it reached the filter paper
of the journalizing mind.
“It was so simple!
It was not so different from the feelings I have felt before!”
“Yes. Anyone, at any stage along the path
can garner any one experience,
and anyone at any time can have a taste of spiritual fulfillment.
It’s just a case of letting go and letting God!
Whenever animals are messengers for God:
Whenever one fulfills God’s will instinctively, unconsciously,
one is then the living realization of Geezoolgh’s dream.
This is a lesser aspect of this term, it seems.
“In this specific sense,” he laughs,
“it is so easy that only a child can accomplish it.
This feat, which is so difficult for humans,
who are bound up by their multitude of choices,
blinded by their numerous perspectives
and crippled by their vast array of tools,
can be accomplished easy as that
by any bird or animal
given that the beast has not spent too much time
around a human being!
It seems ironic; animals more close to God than men?
I ask if He could please explain a little further.
“Counter to this simple realization
is what I term “God Consciousness.
These two are like opposite poles,
One, the realm of animals,
And one of men—
And thereby hangs the tale!
This whippoorwill can be a co-worker with God.
To be the conscious co-worker, which is our goal as men,
Is quite a complex matter!
To utterly unfold, one must break the mold,
Go where none have gone before,
Open every door,
Suffer death in eighty-four embodiments of man,
And through your own experience,
Come to finally understand
What it really means to be a conscious co-worker with God.
You must learn, and grow and train,
Overcome each barrier of pain,
Fall and rise again,
Like a Phoenix flying,
Trying to become the sun.
For eventually you will be the one
Who comes to understand the inner workings of the universe
And link into the universal mind
Become a true custodian of power
And have the spiritual freedom all men seek.”
“But those animals you mentioned…
they have freedom here and now,
Can’t we be but like those simple souls?” I ask,
“And not endure the pain?”
“But you are Man, and have a brain
which must be exercised to fulfill its God-intended purpose
otherwise, it can become diseased from lack of use.
You can have that calm and peaceful freedom here and now,
But you’d still not be free from karma;
Not be free to roam wherever you will
Without the slightest degree of danger.
What animal has that freedom?
become a conscious atom of God’s light;
enter in the inner ring of power
and then have any part of the truth that you desire.
And with the truth, you have a position of strength
a place to stand,
from which to move the earth.
like the president of a company
entrusted with authority
you then can act out what the power wishes
for the good of the whole.
It is distinctly different from the freedom
that an animal would have,
or the freedom that the sweeper
or bookkeeper
had before they rose to be the president….
yet so similar.
“Remember when you healed another’s pain by using light?
That was a spontaneous action,
a gift of love, of Realization.
there are higher and higher forms of this
as you will learn,
until you are a clear and perfect vehicle
for some of my most important work.”
“This work of which I speak defies Man’s logic and his mind.
The vehicle for God must trust the light and sound implicitly.
It must override your logic and your concepts
as to what is real and what is fantasy;
For laws of light and sound are greater than
the laws of probability,
the laws of right and wrong, and impossibility!”
“This is why the God Realized
can go where others can’t;
succeed where others fail;
and also why it is so rare
to ever reach Consciousness.
The path is not direct
but zigzags back and forth and side to side
but ever upwards;
Like the road to any mountaintop!”
He gives me time to think this over
over in my mental body…
There are many vehicles for God;
Everyone to his or her degree
and then there are the few and scattered conscious vehicles
and a long and varied spectrum of each kind along the way
encompassing the whole of human endeavor.
Although the animal is closer to the first than most of Men,
surely any Man is closer to the second than a beast!
Yet each Man has inherently
the power and ability
to reach both peaks at once.
This, then must be the goal;
To expand towards the center from these complimentary poles
and keep them both in balance
until they merge and become one
at the top of the mountain!
He says I stand within a foggy region of his realm;
The outer sphere of Geezoolgh’s vast interior.
This is why I cannot see his face or form
or see his light more clearly.
He says I have to be here because
my consciousness is only open to this level at the moment
but that I will soon move beyond it,
as a matter of course.
I am eager for the chance, at perhaps some future date.
I leave the contemplative state
and find a book, and cracking it
I open to a page where an adventurer of light
was led to this same place
and found the same fog as I had.
Now I don’t feel so bad!
5. In The Second Person
I pulled a book of meditations from the shelf
and slipped outside myself
not halfway through the text.
I’d planned to read some more but then
the volume seemed to slip
out of my hands.
as I immersed directly into contemplation,
Geezoolgh spoke.
This time there was no distant voice, no foggy, light blue mist.
Just direct communication between the I and Thou,
The one and only Two.
And when those two can speak as one, I ask you,
which of us ceases to exist?
After it announced Itself to Me
to initiate my journey
it moved past light, and then beyond the barrier of sound,
that I might follow further towards the vast interior of God.
I spoke for It;
It, the second person of Geezoolgh,
It spoke to me, through me,
in the second person singular!
How upsidedown!
Here a man less integrated into sane society
might succumb to doubt, his best neuroses worsen.
For what does every four year old spend hours doing?
Talking to himself, through himself, in second person!
Here I saw the razor’s edge again beneath a safe façade.
For how do you know when it’s you who talks
and when it’s really God?
Asked again about God Realization, and answered back,
“Everyone has flashes of illumination,
everyone has moments as a vehicle for God.
but only Masters can sustain it all the time,
and even they can never score one hundred,
or even ninety-nine per cent.”
It’s not a thing that can ever be perfected,
you always find another octave on the string
by moving half way closer to the bridge,
but you never cross the river.
Likewise, you may “Act as if” you’re on the far shore
of perfection all the time
should your feet get wet now and then,
don’t be too surprised,
especially when its time to cast your line.
Generally, we only perfect limited things;
I would tend to suspect anything
a so-called perfect master can perfect!
“It’s no cosmic accident
when anyone can touch the ninety-ninth per cent.
We must struggle then conceive
the vision of ourselves becoming fully alive
not now and then but all the time,
to fully give and fully receive.
If you wish to set such a mold
throw your thoughts into the future
then retrieve.
No one accidentally reaches the mountaintop
the precipice of man’s existence
by following the path of least resistance.
I tried this exercise
and found it hard at first to visualize
myself as some compassionate Buddha all the time.
This mountaintop requires quite a climb!
I struggled with the little self
could it wait on God in utter trust
for any future pleasure God might toss my way?
(including lust?)
And could I agree to stay in the desireless state
even when the moment finally came to satiate?
I felt attachments grab ahold then tear away.
I used the forming force to keep those hungry hounds at bay.
I used the sound, the ancient song of God,
each time triggering the high and piercing sound of piccolo,
and where it took me, hungry thoughts could never go,
and then the sound would change to feeling
I formed an empty shell of light around myself
and filled it up with all that energy and love
and then I’d make the shell expand
and spread that love across an ever widening band.
My beloved Geezoolgh, he spoke again.
“Here you find just knowingness upon this plane.
Knowingness is that which lies beyond all light and sound and form.
When one understands the question
one does not need illustrations to explain.”
“You will not be granted true God Consciousness,
until you can maintain the purely realized state.
Do you know why?” I said to me.
“It is for the good of the whole.
Who would trust an epileptic person with an axe,
or trust a frequent drunkard with the keys to any car?
(Once the speeder has the keys, how do you reclaim
except when found among the wreckage later on?)
I thought I’d prove my worthiness,
by holding the enlightened image of my future self in mind,
but soon a host of hungry ghosts
and other graven images attacked
and managed to distract!
My state of permanence needed constant restoration.
but I needed this Consciousness
to bring about my preservation.
Even with the perfect image of the Self,
the chances are I’d still be flawed,
so how does anyone ever earn this key,
the consciousness of God?
Finally, I felt a strange vibration around my skull,
the healing touch that made me well.
I sensed the Supreme Being behind me,
and felt It’s healing properties.
Perhaps I’d have my healing gradually from within
like silk that is dipped in saffron dye
and fades when set to dry,
but then the tint sets in,
when it is dipped and dried again.
It told me that what healing I received
was only for the benefit of others, not for me.
For strength can be used selfishly or altruistically
I didn’t have to ask what that would mean
if I was healed, then lost sight of Geezoolgh’s Dream.
I walked outside,
and on the way back home,
a column of white light shone down on me
and followed me conspicuously.
I checked the nearest mirror on the wall.
My skin had changed from rough to smooth;
my face from dull to bright
as if filled with moonlight.
It was cool, not like sunlight, red or fiery
I thought this all hard to explain…
and wrote it in my diary.
Initiation day
I brought nine plums,
A choice selection.
and while I heard my secret word,
I took a shower in a purple fountain
that danced with light and shimmered.
I found the word had power
to change the light
to shape the light into radiant forms
to send a message to knock on someone’s inner door
or mend that which was broken.
6. The Inner Circle
I was laying back, awake but dreaming,
in the early morning hour,
between a night of learning dreams
and a day of earning dollars,
and was watching with my inner eye
what appeared to be a pool of water.
a constant dripping hit the center of my vision’s circle.
I saw the ripples going outward from the center.
This water was crystal clear,
the background set behind it a milky white.
For a moment then I thought it might just be an outdoor pond.
There should be smooth round stones behind it—
Where were they?
I watched it closely for a time,
trying to find the lesson.
Why would Soul, after all these evenings with Sat Nam,
and then Geezoolgh, the Great Mystery Itself,
be preoccupied with such a clear perception
of a shallow pond?
Then, on closer examination, I realized there was no water!
There was no pond but Allah!
There was no dripping drops
But those clear, even ripples, those endless concentric circles,
were not ripples, but the flow of atoms
which rose out of the Ocean of Love and Mercy,
and from Great Spirit’s center, spread in all directions;
not concentric circles, but whole spheres,
of compression and refraction,
not of cause and then effect,
but cause and cause and cause….
In three dimensions, through all dimensions,’
Carrying wisdom, power, freedom, to all Souls,
I watched it for a while longer
until it finally disappeared.
And just at that moment,
when It’s wisdom had finally reached the shores
of my poor perceptions
someone on the inner planes asked a question.
“What is truth?”
I, as a deity of Soul,
without a moment’s hesitation, answered,
“Truth is that which is,
that which exists!
You ask me what exists, I say God exists!
It is that which says I alone exist!
Everything is part of It,
therefore nothing exists outside of It,
and all things not a part of It unreal!
The second level of truth is found in the question
‘Where does it exist?’
The answer is, God exists everywhere, yet nowhere
Its everywhereness, and Its nowhereness are inseperable.
Truth exists everywhere, yet nowhere,
Therefore, truth and God are the same.
The next question to be asked is,
‘Why does it exist?’
God exists because it loves to be.
It is not love as we think of it,
but an expression of Its power just to be.
And this power is expression of Its energy,
and energy is the key to God’s great mystery.
Next the question could be asked,
When does this being exist?
It exists in all times, at all places,
yet sometimes this existence is in the active sense,
sometimes its potential,
such as when God sleeps and dreams
and when It only sleeps.
“And who does It exist in?”
It exists in Godly men
and exists in each of us as Soul,
but as a microcosm of Itself.
Finally, the question asks itself,
“But how does It exist?
What are the rules, the laws, the properties
of this ground of all existence?”
Here is the question you really meant to ask!
This is what most people mean when they say
“What is Truth?”
And yet it is only the outermost layer of truth,
the empirical, observable behavior of Existence.
One could write a book on this one subject
It acts, It manifests Itself within an image,
and then a series of images derive from that,
each one more specific;
more specialized,
until It has successfully defined one aspect of Itself
in such an image.
The first manifestation of the Creator
is the universal image of Itself
then from It come multiple images,
reaching down to soul’s domain.
There, everything is split up into two divergent streams;
psitive and negative atoms,
and a middle stream, which sustains all life,
and stabilizes the other two contrary forces.
From this point down,
God expresses Itself in detail;
in the counterpoint of atoms
which we know as life.
The motion of this counterpoint
is the basis of both science and aesthetics.”
After saying this, I went back to the source of truth,
the source of all existence,
which now appeared differently,
for I returned to It on a deeper level
than I had been before.
Now I saw It as a nearly invisible sun,
a milky white and vaporous ball of energy
against a white background,
emitting beams of light in strong straight lines,
and spiraling streams of newly emerging souls,
while drawing experienced souls back in,
breathing in and out as It had breathed for half an eternity.
Everywhere were snowy particles of soul
like the scene inside a snowflake paperweight.
This was then The Ocean of Love and Mercy,
totality as seen from the “outside,”
if such a thing within the bounds of God could ever exist!
I still was not a part of It;
Not merged, with all those other particles,
not submerged in all those waves,
but still on the shore,
and I knew there must be more.
7. The Decaying Log
Pulled into a parking lot,
half a mile past nowhere,
took a walk in wilderness and trees.
Then I saw a Monarch
butterfly, symbol of the spirit guide
riding on the sultry summer breeze.
Where are you leading me,
Delicate-wings?
The strongest things that nature ever made.
“Follow me over the hedges
and on down the road
and let the road teach you,”
its motion seemed to say.
The butterfly led me step by step
along the deserted road
and then turned left
into a glen, over the hills
and down into a great abandoned field.
It led me to the center then disappeared
as suddenly as it had come.
Standing alone in the middle of that field
I had the overwhelming feeling
that Earth was just a tiny planet out in space
and I was Its explorer.
What a strange planet! I thought.
What was I sent here to do?
And why does it seem so familiar?
Then Sat Nam’s hand guided me
to the edge of the forest that lay beyond that field.
He stood me before a log
so decayed it had rotted flat
from countless seasons,
dozens of rains
and told me to put it together again.
It seemed too much to ask.
The air was thick and heavy and hot
and I felt too weak for the task
and in frustration, turned away
I didn’t know where to begin.
“Put it together,” he told me again.
I said, “Why should I? Why even try?”
“Tell me what good will it do?”
But he insisted, and so I knelt,
and put pieces of bark, like a puzzle, together,
and big chunks of wood that lay around,
could still fit if you used imagination.
But there was little else I could do,
and little else I could say.
I got up an kicked a few pieces together
and started to walk away.
Sat Nam said, “If you were God Conscious,
do you think that you could change this back into a tree?”
I said I thought so, but wasn’t there yet,
and turned my back on this pitiful pile of debris.
Then the butterfly, the spirit guide, flew by me,
I followed it out to midfield
And I contemplated there, standing, eyes closed,
Silent, but no vision or message revealed.
Then thunder suddenly started to grumble around me.
I looked up at a darkening sky
like a man marooned on a planet of doom;
There was nowhere to run, only wait.
It was the most ominous sound the earth ever made
but I refused to feel fear,
for I knew that I’d done nothing wrong.
It started to rain, a light, even rain
like the gentle tears of a weeping God,
Aand I felt some great being was mourning at this hour.
But why would He cry for a rotten log?
I had no regrets, I had done my best
but in order to do one better than that,
I would have to rearrange my perception of life
and myself.
It wasn’t a fair test, not yet!
It was only one day till my weakness returned
I knew what the log was supposed to represent;
It was me that was fallen apart at the seams
and now I knew what He had meant.
He was asking me if I was ready as yet
to heal myself through God’s power—
I worked on this problem for several days
and then had a dream where the log was made whole
and finally thought of the answer.
I drove back down to that place in the woods
and found the tree as I’d left it.
I used light and sound as my surgical tools to repair
what I saw as my physical shell.
The sun broke through heavy clouds
A weight was lifted from me
Sat Nam liberated me with love
and set my feet upon a higher course.
8. The Maker Met
I’m sure there’s some significance to this:
I had a guitar and after many years it fell apart;
The head was cracked
from an old injury and much misuse.
I went and found another to replace it,
and then my body fell apart,
a problem with the hands and legs
and still I couldn’t play.
And then the tuning pegs,
the machine heads to be exact,
fell apart as well.
I went to local vendors,
but they said my instrument was totally unique
that I would have to go back to the maker,
personally,
to find the healing that I seek.
I thought that strange
and kept looking, even found a smiling,
fast-talking man
who sold me standard parts for quite a price
knowing they wouldn’t fit.
Finally, I had no choice but to make the lengthy journey
to the realm of Brooklyn
where the maker dwells.
When I arrived, he told me
the foreign company
who made the broken parts,
the totally unique, one and only parts to my new guitar
had long been out of business,
and those parts are very rare.
But looking through his shop he found a pair
of matching pegs, which somehow time forgot;
One needed slight repair, but that was quickly done.
And then I met the maker’s son;
a guitarist somewhat in demand,
and we found we had the same
distinctive problem with our hands!
We played together, and then I played
and tested each of the old guitar-creator’s instruments;
Some were perfect,
some “required work” I said, and he agreed.
and then I asked him what his fee would be
for all that he had done,
and he said, “Keep your money, this is free—
you’ve filled this shop with music for an hour.
“You’ve tested each guitar,
probed their subtleties,
and gauged their power.
Just remember me
and tell your students;
Tell the other players that you meet
who it was that made
the instrument you play so sweet.
9. The Cave
While walking along a riverbank, I found a cave;
A small and rugged opening among the rocks—
The kind that Milarepa might have once enjoyed.
The perfect spot to contemplate the vast interior of God.
The cave lay below a great bulwark of natural stone
A cliff like the bow of a warship heading seaward,
full speed out from port.
Atop its precipice a three-hundred-sixty-degree surround,
like the view from a crow’s nest tower.
With lantern in my hand I climbed inside
the Disneyland-like cavern of the underworld,
and crouching low,
I made my way into the mountain’s vast interior.
Yet for all the vastness of that subterranean frontier,
the way was very narrow, like the eye of a needle;
the tunnel barely big enough to let an empty-handed man
pass through.
The tunnel then split off in two, I chose one,
and looking down into that dark, womb or tomb-like space,
I went within.
Sitting tailor fashion on a stone,
my head against the ceiling,
I chanted the song of God resonantly,
a novel feeling.
At first the images were broken up and jagged
like the walls before my face.
Then I saw the old discarded imagery, weird and strange,
of phantoms I had long ago misplaced.
I exploded them like bubbles
until only darkness remained.
Why preserve an illusion?
Pass up vision for vision’s sake
and you pass beyond another cob spider’s veil
deeper into the wells of understanding.
10. An Unexpected Visit
I sat again in contemplation
and chanted Milarepa’s name.
I thought this cave would be the proper place for him.
An inner voice, with greatest certainty, said
“He is far away, and won’t descend to this plane any more.’
And so I put him out of mind and stared into the wall,
and for what seemed like hours,
had no experiences at all.
I suddenly was standing straight up in my cave,
only now the cave was gone
and there, a foot in front of me
was the strangest creature I had ever seen!
He wore an impish, half-a-smile on his broad and elf-like face,
and his wide eyes flickered playfully from side to side,
as if to say, “Did I hear someone calling me?”
Avoiding my bewildered gaze,
pretending not to notice me,
although I blocked his line of sight!
“He must be playing games,” I thought,
For I was six feet tall, and he was barely four, in height.
At seventy or eighty years of age
his skin seemed remarkably fair.
He wore a plain, rough, grey-brown robe,
a beggar’s robe, or I should say rag,
his hair was the same color-beggar’s hair.
It was long and straight and stiff,
like a stack of hay,
that splayed out to his shoulders and beyond,
and in his right hand was a staff
of ordinary wood,
but what an extraordinary man!
And not a word on who he was,
or why he then appeared, and he was gone!
I went back to my interrupted contemplation and asked
this past impression who he was,
what his name is now or used to be.
He answered, with a riddle
in an accent somewhat Himalayan
“Me? Ah (I’m a) Rupa.”
(It was hard to tell what he was saying)
I sat confused, I hadn’t caught the fellow’s name;
Hadn’t guessed the riddle.
I hadn’t guessed, the name and the riddle were the same.
I looked down, on the inner, to my folded hands
“What is ‘Rupa’ or ‘Repa’ did he say?
I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
And then a hand popped out of inner space
and stuck a goblet in my face,
thrust it firmly in my hands, then disappeared.
My God, this guy’s a little weird!
Maybe he is evil—
And this, this otherworldly drink…..
I hate to think!
I took a look at what it held within,
foaming green and ugly as a sin,
and lots of it too, a moldy stew.
I held it in my hand, and wondered what to do.
“Why not test it with the blue and healing light?
Why not test it with the sound of Huuuu?”
The thought appeared.
“Not a bad idea!”
I tested it this way for quite some time;
bombarded it with Huuuing and of course the blue,
but to my surprise, it did not fade at all.
But this ghastly gothic goblet full of green
kept becoming solider and realer, and heavier in my hand!
I stopped testing just in time
before it became a physical thing!
I took a breath and braced—
For what? You ask. The deadly poison?
No, the deadly taste!
And then I drank the stuff down to the dregs (not to waste!)
But surprisingly, it had no taste at all!
I threw the cup into the inner, far beyond the wall
and waited for my fate.
Then I noticed that the sickness I had felt all day was gone…
all the symptoms vanishing at once
as if nothing had ever been wrong!
I felt great!
I wanted more! (or was it now too late?)
NO! Another goblet inwardly appeared.
I drank it all and then another took its place
and so I sipped some more until my illness had completely cleared.
Who was that man? I asked an inner friend.
”Milarepa,” they replied.
“Repa,” “the cotton clad”
(yes, cotton was the brown robe he was wearing)
“But he said he was a Rupa,” I exclaimed.
“Perhaps he was joking.
Note that a Rupa is a lower body that one is forced to take.
I guess he wasn’t happy to be drawn back to this lower plane
just for your sake!”
“And what was that stuff I drank? That tasteless, healing,
miraculous, unappetizing goop?”
My inner friend answered promptly,
”Milarepa’s favorite…..NETTLE SOUP!”
11. Unison
Then I remembered there was one more thing I wanted to try.
It was said that God would not deny us our identity
that we could merge within it,
blend ourselves into Its heart,
and be not one apart,
but resonate as one, the whole,
in unison and still be one as soul
when we returned.
And this is true because it is the Creator’s firm desire
that we retain our individuality; that our own voice be heard
within the symphony of life
among the chorus of souls
until the trumpet
sounds to mark the end of time,
and with a sure finality, call all souls back to the key
from which they first emerged.
Converge into the heart from which we came,
beyond the voice, beyond the face beyond the form
beyond the name
of God!
I did this, and lost myself completely within Its peaceful eye
the eye of life’s wide hurricane;
The Eye of God,
and felt protected by a bubble that lifted off the ground.
I had no sense of time,
but suddenly I popped back in the physical
and knew that I had been very far away for quite a while
and that’s all I could say.
I blinked and stretched and reached for the torch of the twentieth century
and switched the flashlight “on”
and a subtle voice said,
“You now have the authority
to be a messenger of Soul;
to do whatever the Creator, Geezoolgh tells you to.
Let none deny you the least opportunity
to serve Its stern command!
I said, “Where do I begin?”
“You can start by cleaning up this cave!”
was the reply.
I flashed the light around the floor,
and there were thirty years of broken bottles,
muddy trash and cans
I hadn’t seen before.
I thought, “I don’t have a bag or gloves or any way
to carry them out!
What, Oh Lord, do you have planned?”
”Take them out by hand!”
12. The Invisible Man
When you found me on a sandy beach
so many years ago
I was a melted lump of glass,
the remnants of a bottle
that the ocean had deposited.
And you, oh great soul
bent and lifted me up to your eye
and saw the sun through me
and thought it wise to keep me
for your alchemy
and placed me in the pocket of your robe
because you saw some quality in me
that no one else could see,
perhaps I was misshapen….
dirty, rough or chipped on edge,
Yet you saved me!
Was I uncracked or did I blossom in the sun
with radiant rainbow tones
when you held me aloft?
I don’t know.
I only know you polished me
and ground down slow and painfully
my imperfections
And now that you have spent a thousand years
in grinding and examining,
do you find me fitting?
Am I still a diamond in the rough or in the clear?
I hope that I am perfect for your purpose
for now not only am I worn away
but I’m invisible as well!
I am next to nothing!
I have no identity other than being that which can’t be seen
no one really knows me but for what they can see through me.
That’s why I appear so different to each eye that tries to wear me
It depends on where they stand (and where they’re going)
and that is why I still remain a mystery.
You made me more or less invisible
but mostly less.
except when you use me in your work
to magnify the Word
I lay against the table undiscovered
and pass unnoticed like the wind
and people wonder where I’ve been
bBecause the human mind cannot perceive
or understand
the glory of becoming the Invisible Man.
But hang me in your window frame
and I will be a vehicle for light,
a rainbow of a thousand tones
will spread across the cluttered wall of stones
whenever you open the curtains.
I am not a diamond
but set me in the proper place before your light
and I shall be a magic lantern for your love
filling all of space with this great light
and filling up the darkened screen
with images of God
in all Its thousand emanations
each one playing opposite itself in countless subplots
each unfolding simultaneously
before our wondering eyes.
I am not a precious gem
but make of me a magic lantern for your love
and you will see the flicker of your fire
in every flashing flame of mind that comes to pass
across this aperture.
I will make it very clear that it’s your light
that brings to life these pictures.
and even then there will be those who don’t know
from where these pictures are projected.
No one likes to think the mystery movie they enjoy
is just a grand illusion from some projection booth
and will not look behind themselves
to see the source of light
but are absorbed in its reflection
and the shadows there that hurry
across the proscenium.
So I’ll remain the mystery behind the mystery.
I’ll go as I do now
among the crowds at rush hour
the unknown, unseen man
and, working in the ancient secret way,
I’ll be your silent messenger.
