Number Twenty Seven

The relentless light arrives.  There's no thought, no awareness that isn't touched by it.  Quite suddenly the lie of time is gone.  Before and after is gone.  The reasons are gone.

There are only the choices.  All now; all forever.  Each choice shines in the light.  Like a house on the plain -- individual and yet connected to every other house.

The light shows the choice for what it is -- something that cannot be taken back.  Something that lives.  Something that pushes every other soul -- somewhere.

In the house on the plain one thing happens that pushes the whole world together or farther apart.

Number Twenty Six

We travel to see something new.  But every moment is new.  We travel to be in the moment, to see it finally for what it is: the creation.

Choice is what creates the soul, how it evolves.  But the choice in every moment is gone with that moment.  The choice unseen is always lost.

We travel thinking that only in a foreign place will something new exist.  But it is there when we are dropping off the dog, packing, waiting for the taxi.  It's in that moment, the moment which is creating us.

Number Twenty Five

There is nothing done to us.  There is nothing taken, nothing broken, nothing stained.  What happens, no matter how sad or painful, is just the color, the motif of this moment in life.  The moment has its purpose, what long ago we agreed to, what we needed to fully use our days.

There is nothing done to us that wasn't necessary for the lesson we came to learn.  The life we had planned or wanted is no more than a source of necessary disappointment.  The love we expected, looked for , becomes no more than a turn down some empty road, weeds and branches choking the way.

In the darkness, the place we never thought we'd arrive comes like a sudden warning, like a dog barking in a lonely farmyard. The place feels wrong, as if we were the victim of something.  But despite its strangeness, it was our own plan.  It is what we needed to know, to feel, to embrace.

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.

Number Twenty One

We are not here to be redeemed, or prove ourselves righteous. We are here to become, to learn.  That's all there is -- lessons.

The lessons arrive according to plan, what we agreed to face.  They are strung out, pearls of cause and effect, across the days of a life.  Some come from failed challenges in past lives.  Some from the shape and wiring of the body we were given.

As lessons arrive, we are free to learn or resist.  And there is no guarantee we have the strength or tools to learn a given lesson at a given time.  It's all good.  They will arrive again -- in this life or some other.