The Old Ways
The old ways are in you still.
Underneath the staticky din
of the mind’s frantic attempt to stay above it,
the eternal cosmic abyss of nothing and everything
abides silently within.
In your cells, your atoms, your breath,
resides a sacred undulation of cosmic proportions.
It requires a turning toward, an awareness of,
to breathe itself consciously within and through you.
It gave rise to you.
Subtle senses are required
to connect with it consciously,
to invite it in, to let it inhabit.
Subtler than senses made gross (more dense, not “ewww”)
by a rapid fire of stimulation, social media, news,
dancing in the right vs wrong/ he said she said place,
the “there’s something wrong with me?” state.
“There’s something wrong with me” is a corrosive force
to the trust, belief, courage, knowing, and clarity
required to commune with the sacred—
and it is all sacred—
in a conscious way.
The corrosion of trust and belief in self
yields fear-driven depression, anxiety,
at times a powerful polarization within
that feeds a constant swinging,
a powerful back-and-forth that
has the power to yield psychosis.
Subtler senses require nourishment
of life-force with an abundance of fruits, vegetables,
and other foods with few ingredients
that are themselves food.
You’d only put gas in your gas tank,
so why not put food in your life-tank?
When the body’s tissues—
cells, adipose, blood, lymph, liver, and kidneys—
cleanse themselves of harmful chemicals that gum up various systems—
senses become subtler.
The body begins to feel as it heals.
Mind softens and awareness becomes more subtle so the old ways,
and the unified cosmic vastscape of being that feeds them—
can radiate and express as unconditional love within and through us.
The healing balm we seek.
Unconditional love isn’t synonymous with
a permanently happy state.
It is also the weeping rain that meets the drought.
The deluge necessary to put out the fire.
Continuing the right vs wrong game
that lends to division on the outside
perpetuates division on the inside.
Not facing the subtle yet powerfully corrosive,
deeply ingrained, millennial old
“What is wrong with me?” (often unconscious) mental pathway—
one present in the gnawing, familiar, sick feeling
in the chest or the gut,
itself an inner lens through which
personal reality becomes distorted,
the distortion thereby feeding the
complex collective web of being,
is an erosion of the unconditional love
that has always been here now.
The unconditional love that desperation seeks,
that fear of uncertainty seeks.
The old ways are still in you.
They are in the unconditional love
you’ve momentarily forgotten with the conscious mind,
but that massages you while you sleep,
is the magnetic force that draws you to another,
or maintains the protons, neutrons, and electrons
in formation within your cells.
The old ways of compassion, knowing, forgiving, and loving,
of drumming up powerful benevolence with the eyes,
the heart, the senses, the fingertips,
of drawing it from the wellspring within,
crouch in the shadows of fear, grief, anger, and rage.
Since its nature is eternal it is not found in a hurry.
Like the animal that human presence scares until,
after repeated exposure it begins to trust and stay,
meeting the Beloved within requires
a quiet, patient, returning to,
again and again,
without expectation.
Meet the freneticism of
“I’d rather be on my phone or watching episodes or eating”
with courage, dedication, and will.
Exercising the strength that allows us to stay.
Subtler senses see in the dark.
Truth burns clean.
More eye contact.
More feeling and hearing the breath,
The rise and fall of the chest.
More listening to birdsong and feeling
the life-force in you as temperature on the skin,
the velvety caress of water on the body,
the emotions and felt senses within you.
More feeling another and wondering,
“What unique life path begun thousands of years ago by their ancestors
brought them here to this now,
giving rise to this unique life experience
that I may or may not understand,
but for which I am going to make room
so I don’t react to it further binding myself with my own chains.
Do not confuse this with complacency.
More bare feet on the earth.
More kneeling on the earth,
More laying on her with back or belly,
Smelling her, feeling her, breathing her in,
making love to her in being,
in surrender of all that we do not know,
yet that in which we fiercely feel and believe.
More listening to the leaves whisper their truth in the breeze.
More witnessing a gently billowing spider web
glisten a rainbow kaleidoscope through
tiny drops left by the rain in the late afternoon sun,
whilst feeling the presence of the spider
deliberately in the center of her web.
One must develop ears to hear silent music.
It is all okay.
It always has been and always will be.
Just ask the star swallowed by the black hole,
the landscape decimated by fire or flood,
or the comet that burned up entering
the Earth’s atmosphere.
We will return,
dissolve back into eternal nothingness
and everythingness either way.
There is no hurry because
that which vibrates truth within is beyond time.
It is an option, however, to do it now.
To remember that we don’t know shit.
That we have the power in our gaze,
in our voice, in our presence,
to alter our course in this now. This now. This now.
Not when this person does that, or that one says this,
Or when I become a perfect version of myself.
But now.
Starting first with this breath. This breath.
Not that one tomorrow, but this one.
