Sitting in that chair,
body almost broken,
your mind and spirit soared,
way beyond
what most of us
can ever see.

You made your life a gift
to all the world,
accepting the gift
of your own life
without regret.

And now
your crooked body
has finished its brief trip
through time,
as the blinding light
that was your brilliance
shines on,
timelessly.

When I feel the world’s beauty,
am I feeling the world outside,
or just its refection,
in my own world,
inside?

What if there is no inside or outside,
but just a vast, exquisite whole,
which stands revealed
when the veil between the worlds falls away,
and the myth of separation subsides?

I’ve been hiding out
in a little room,
most of the time,
for most of my days.

I must have thought
I was safe in here,
that someone told me
I should stay inside.

I had forgotten
the vastness
outside these walls,
gotten used
to how small,
how tight
it is in here.

I had forgotten
that this little room
grew out of nothing,
like a cocoon
around my fears.

I had forgotten
that I was born
without it,
that it was my choice
to stay within it,
and that it is my choice
to leave.

A memory
is like a ghost,
a wisp of smoke
from a fire long dead.

How longingly
we fan the embers
of these fading fires,
adding our breath,
the fuel of our being,
to the heat
of things long gone.

How we cling
to past experience,
building memorials
in our minds,
while the present,
all too often,
slips away,
unnoticed.

Each thought, as it passes by
in the stream of our thinking,
is like the seed of a little world,
the embryo of a pocket universe
that we could choose to live in,
if we nurtured it with our attention.

What heavens or hells do we conjure
when our thoughts run wild,
which could germinate
in the light of our regard?

How often do we remember
that we CAN choose,
in every moment,
that we are always one step away
from joy or suffering?

Each uncomfortable moment
is a doorway,
a peek beyond our boundaries,
a glimpse through the cracks
between our fears.

To stand in that doorway,
and look through it,
unflinchingly,
is to see that we are bigger
than we thought we were.

You are with me now,
but you will not always be here.

Someday,
I will mourn you,
but today,
I rejoice in your presence.

Alive with me
in this moment,
you are the gift
that my own life gives me
right now.

Look between your thoughts.

There is peace and aliveness
in the emptiness.

Sometimes
a bright epiphany
pulls back the layers of mind,
and we are left with a profound silence,
and an abiding awareness.

These are the moments
when the universe peers out
through our eyes,
and we stand witness,
empty and alive.

There is a sublime order to this world
which we can never fully see
or fully understand.

Yet we are moved
by glimpses of its essence,
inspired by its outlines,
dimly perceived
by our mortal eyes.

And so we paint
our imperfect pictures,
construct our flawed philosophies,
aspiring to the grandeur
of what is just beyond us.

Bound in this bodily realm,
we strain to see
beyond our senses,
conceive of what our minds
cannot contain.

We are cursed
by our human form,
and we are blessed
by our human spirit.