Like a flower that emerges from rocky soil
Only on a fully moonlit night, Truth appears
And its fragrance enriches whoever waits near.
Then suddenly, just as it appears
On no appointed schedule, it disappears again...
Only silence marks the empty spot from out of which it sprang.

Some try to dig it out, but manage to extract only
Bits and pieces of petals, stem, and occasional root.
None can pull from the ground intact
What is one with its nurturing soil;
Nor can they harm this precious flower they pursue...
Because it cannot be possessed, it is deathless.

Perhaps the harm in their pursuit, if any,
Is the almost impossible discovery that the beauty
They so long to possess does not live apart from them;
Rather, it lives for them -- even in those moments
When they tear it apart, trying in vain to possess
What it gives freely to those who die for the sight of it.

It may not always seem so, but everyone wages
The best battle possible at the time.
When challenges come, we stand as upright as stature allows,
And life delivers the inevitable blow that bends the will to break.

Is that greatly religious, wise, or wealthy person lying there,
Worn and torn on the ground, any less shattered
Than the one who, despite all effort, loses the little so hard won?
I think not.
None are better; none are worse in their weakness.
All are equal in this light.

If the passage of time reduces all to this lowliest of places,
If none may win other than momentary pride,
Then perhaps the true heights are best measured
Not by where one has once stood,
But by what rises in one's heart even as it falls to the ground.

Look at what one reaches for in his darkest hour,
And you gaze upon his God.

Our task . . .
Is to prepare a Vessel to be filled,
And not . . .
To fill an imagined vessel with what we dream it has been prepared for.

The former begins by the light of inner work, fueled by an awakening faith.
The latter has its beginning in the darkness of spiritual sleep; its inertia sustained by the machinations of self-centered considerations.

The New Vessel is built to house all that is Eternal.
The imagined vessel holds nothing but the content of its own empty dreams.

The evidence of these Truths . . .
Is unseen by eyes blinded by their intoxication for the wine of this world.
But for those with eyes to see . . .
The same invisible testimony induces a deep spiritual sobriety within which the willing soul is prepared for a taste of a Wine bottled just for her at the beginning of Time.

I do not have to be better than you have made me,
For you have created me in your image
And there is perfection in this promise.
But I do have to bear what you would make of me,
If I wish to know my maker.

Perhaps the greatest, yet least understood spiritual secret in the World is that being what I am is what it takes to make me better; Because only within what I am
Is what **you* would have me be . . .
And nothing can surpass this desire, nor exceed its fulfillment.

And what is difficult in this task is not just in being what I am,
For all being is natural in itself
And what is natural is necessarily easy.

No, the toil is in bearing what I am
So that I may no more be that,
For it is only in learning to bear myself
That I am given birth, that I am able to witness
A whole new order of being that rises to praise its creator,
And that glorifies His creation again and again Through its willing sacrifice.

Just as a shadow tells of the object that casts it,
And that behind this object shines a light casting this shadow,
So do the moving notes of any melody tell of the space through
Which they pass. Within this space is our True Dwelling Place.
This unknowable quality of space is the unseen pleasure
In real music. By it we are whisked up and transported to our
Native Realm, where Peace and Enchantment are as one fine air.

One may assume this Heaven without assuming a New Form,
But such a heaven will be the stuff of former forms;
Not new, but bound -- not open, but closed off by the very content
Of our former life to which we cling. In short: not Heaven at all.

Heaven is a realm of New Forms unbounded by time and space,
And if we would assume our rightful place in the True Heaven
We must forgo all that was, and agree to assume a New Form.

Some take the high road.
Some take the low road.
Some take the road with friends and family.
Others take it alone.

Some travel with clowns and animals.
Some take only walking shoes.
Some take the road with guru and saint,
While others take the road with drunks.

Some walk the road so slowly as to stand still,
Even as some sprint toward a finish line as if it's in sight.
Some take the road filled with dreams.
Others take the road to leave their dreams behind.

Some take the road and wait for each sunrise,
While others walk all night, every night.
Some don't want to take the road at all
But wind up taking it anyway...
While others say they take the road,
But only walk when they can stay in one place no longer.

Some take the road with a forced smile.
Some dampen the road with their tears.
Some take the road and kick up dust with dancing heels
Just happy to be upon it wherever it goes!

Some take the road and pray the entire way,
While others sing to fill the emptiness that comes each time
They round a bend and see only more road ahead.

Some take the road and help others along the way,
While others can't help themselves from wishing
They were ahead of everyone walking just ahead of them.

Some take the road and complain the whole way.
Some take the road with sheer gratitude that they can still walk.
The point is it does not matter how you take the road...
All that really matters is that you take it.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like ...
A man who, passing over a certain high ridge,
Comes upon an unknown Mountain outside his country
And there catches a glimpse of a valley within a valley
Surrounded by mountains over-towering his own.

Great footings and plains from these uplands spread,
Yet each seems to pour itself out from a single source
Lo, the surging bed of a great sea,
Into which they appear to pour themselves back,
Only to come forth again.

All of this does he see at once
Including mists that live to climb the valley's floor,
Rising to form clouds above the cliffs
Where rains tumble into streams and rivers
To race home as floodwaters to their beloved sea.

All of this does he see at once
By the Light that touches all things.
Even by the shadows the sun sends in its absence
Does he see and touch these realms without end
Knowing they too dwell at once within him.

We are creatures of the outside.
We know as real only the movement from without to within;
From hand to mouth, we exist. Yet,
Real life is inside...out.

The Christ is before the world.
His Light precedes the letters that spell His name.
His Life is to the thoughts and ideas about Him as is...
The fusion of the sun to the light it generates.
And when the inner Sun stirs...

...My thoughts, once themselves only,
And considering only themselves, are no longer alone.
There is a Life within them.
They move and conceive as before,
But in every cell and single strand of them
Lives something inconceivable to them.

Like a still and remote harbor that receives her first ship,
The waters therein now know a new master and...
Are glad for its entrance; celebrate its presence.
For not a wave rolls in or out of her that doesn't carry
The impression of the vessel now anchored safely there.

The Great Mystery of it all
Is ever-always present.
It is never not there, this unknown.
Real Mysteries are silent moments rising,
Unfolding, untelling,
Enthralling, in-drawing.

For most there is no Mystery in suffering.
Only imagined greatness
They know. They tell. They agree
Then fall because they've refused
The Great Mystery.

The noise is their certainty
Being torn from limb; the rattling,
The chattering empty shells of hopeful selves
Littering the floor.

Embrace the Great Mystery.
Make room for the promise of emptiness,
Not the futility of what wasn't!
All moments are promises
Impregnated by the eyes that fill them.
See the Mystery, not the misery.

Suffering loves suffering.
It looks out upon itself from itself,
Drinking itself drunk with darkness
Until its blindness closes Mysteries door.

Open it. Stand there. Wait there
For the unspeakable Invitation to live there.
Never mind time.
There's no Mystery in impatience,
Only the known chasing down the known
Consuming nothing.

Linger instead in the Great Mystery
Of moments untold.
Learn to listen for what ears can't hear.
Make your prime directive the Great Mystery.
Let it provide. Let it prevail.
Accept it's unspoken fervent undoing.

We come from the Great Mystery.
Let us return before the biding
And know again this Timeless place as our own.

With one hand He gives, with the other He takes
Filling and emptying the soul,
Carving out receptivity to His Name
With each deft blow of His soul-sculpturing hands.

I am never full, nor ever bereft. Neither am I,
But all is He.
I am His form. No other form have I
And it is to the shelter of His Name He guides me
Regardless of how He shapes me.

God wants me to want only Him;
To have no place to rest outside of His Heart,
To hold nothing in mind without the thought of Him.

To this He surely bends my will to His own,
Silently, so that no one,
Not even I see His hands hard at work.
But I cry out nevertheless,
Let it be done!

He reads the Great Truths in order to resonate...
To have his heart sound out the soothing tones
     of Timeless Light
Captured in the printed word upon each page.

What are such words other than invisible Truths
     made visible...
The ineffable made tangible to nourish hungry hearts?

Such sentiments caught on paper may be
Either a window or a door -- a passage or an impasse
Depending upon whether the seeker sees them
     as an invitation
To a Feast, or mistakes them for being the food itself.

But for those who wish direct relationship with God
It is not enough to reverberate, knowing
These tender tones must soon depart.
Besides, what purpose is the sound of this
     interior Invitation...
But to know The Singer Himself, to be His Song?

"Impossible" cynical voices intone, laughing within
     and without,
Even as they abide alone and apart, lamenting
     their barren rampart.

But who will... Must choose to be! After all,
Invitations require preparation
And their Promise must be laid down in favor of
     their Purpose
So that the Good Work of preparation for Perfection
     may begin.