Number Fifty Three

It is easy to see the darkness -- pain that cuts souls off from each other so they can feel only the "I," feel their aloneness. But the light, the slow movement of souls to point omega, is harder to recognize.  It is hidden by the illusion of detachment, our apparent separation from the whole. While the illusion is necessary for our lessons here, seeing that we are learning together growing together, is the first step toward spiritual liberation.

Number Fifty Two

In branches, on street corners, in familiar rooms are the ones watching over us.  They are visible and invisible.  They talk through the sounds of birds, they talk through falling water, through soft murmurs or an off-hand remark..

Yet we feel abandoned here, in the great silence of these dying, far-flung stars.  We feel alone in our bodies, in our death.  And we don't know our own angels, the ones who have loved us, the ones who surround us, both living and not.

We don't know our own angels.  We are deaf to their voice -- the wind in high granite, rain hitting the leaves, a sigh.  We can't see them when someone is waving, someone sleeps in a doorway, someone steps toward us for the embrace.

It's warmer and the birds arrive -- finally telling us everything.

Number Fifty One

Reality is nothing more than what exists in the present moment, what we are willing to see, to surrender to, as we take this one turn in the river of now.  Reality is the source of joy.

There is no joy outside of now; no joy without getting in the river and letting the current take us down whatever rapids, to whatever pool or eddy.

There is no joy outside of now -- what we see and feel and hear.  Joy is seeing and feeling it all without running away, without living in the past or future, without making up some story of our days.

Number Fifty

There is only one thing that works for remembering what love is.  That is to hold each other -- without hope or demand, without keeping track of what's taken or given, without any deliberate blindness to the pain.  Just holding to feel all of it -- the failure, the sweetness, the fear, the need.  Holding all of it -- the place from where the dark visions come, the place that gives, the place that runs away.

Holding until it is possible to hold without arms, hands, without touching chests.  Holding with mere breath -- felt across miles, years.  Holding with mere being.  Everything.

Number Forty Nine

Galaxies fly out, escaping the gravity that holds them.  There is no center.  In a while they will go dark as suns burn out, and all heat, all possibility of life is lost.

And another universe grows -- with new forms and new laws -- from all that was learned with this one.

The carpenter to be hammers his first nail.  Two boards are joined.  Everything he builds changes him, helps him learn.  And everything he learns changes the next thing he builds.  Makes it better, more beautiful.

Collective consciousness grows with the lessons of each new universe, just as the craftsman evolves with each new thing he makes.

Things fall apart.  But the lessons they give us last forever.

Number Forty Eight

If you walk into a hotel, you expect to be taken care of.  You expect to be safe.

The room surrounds you with silence.  No voice penetrates the walls and drapes.  The pain in the street, the angry running men, the shadows calling out for help cannot reach you.

You are safe.  You are contained.  The ones who wait for you to come, you cannot find.  The ones who have something to tell you, you cannot hear.

You are safe.  Comfortable.  You turn on the TV, watching a disaster too far away to imagine.  You have a drink.  And then sleep comes.

Now the sun is behind the curtain.  Bright but distant.  It is the same everywhere.  Death is the same everywhere.  Pain is the same everywhere.  The room protects you only from life.

Number Forty Seven

Loving the moment is embracing, with equal measure, the doubt and the certainty, the loss and the connection, the sin and the sacrifice, the fear and the courage.  Loving the flaws protects us from being the flaws.  Seeing the beautiful pain and opening to its perfection, keeps it from defining us.  The more we love the dark, the more we live in the light.

The pettiness, the anger, the selfishness, the cruelty must be seen and loved.  If these parts of the self are rejected and made "not me," they grow to envelop, to become the self.  The way to the divine always leads through what is wrong, what we are desperate not to be.

There is nothing at the end that wasn't at the beginning.  Each thought, each feeling that is banished becomes a monster that we feed.  We nourish them with fear, disgust, shame, and -- most of all -- avoidance.  The things we fear to think and feel grow large.  Haunting and powerful.  Until they become nearly everything there is.