Number Twenty Four

The left hand doesn't know the right hand.  The conscious mind doesn't remember what the unconscious holds.  All around the voices of the dead are speaking.  But we are afraid because it's considered madness to listen.

On the right side of the brain we listen -- because that's where we intuit; know wisdom.  On the left side we make up the story of being alone.  Invisible.  With no destination.

Our hands join in prayer.  But the prayer is speaking without listening.  And god doesn't know us.  Only the souls who love us do.  The mind finds words for love.  Describing it.  Seeking the beauty of being known, accepted.  But we remain deaf to the chorus that bathes us.  Holds us.  Takes each step with us.

Number Twenty Three

Something breaks.  The feelings we've kept hidden flood across our lives.  And the pain gathered from every loss rises; becomes a shout.

This is the way pain works: whatever pain has been disowned, closeted, will finally knock down doors.  Then, in the mind's last try for control, the judgments come.  Someone is responsible, someone has done wrong, someone caused this suffering.  So pain becomes anger.

Still resisted, still disowned the pain is first turned on what we hate and finally what we love. This is how things fall apart.

Number Twenty Two

Sadness surrounds us.  Like the dark beyond a ring of firelight.  The sadness is the illusion of separation, the apparent loss of the ones we knew.

The fire, stoked by the small pleasures, by the comfort of the familiar, burns out.  And then the wolves come -- that image of abandonment, a lonely death -- to devour us.

The sadness is all around, like the gleaming eyes of animals.  Yet out there, just beyond the last breath, is everyone.  We have just forgotten them.  It is their eyes glowing in the dark.