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.

Thank you, John!

Time is a concept
by which we measure
our gain.

I don’t believe in “better”;
I don’t believe in “worse”;
I just believe in “is”.

And if, beyond our fevered thoughts,
there is no past or future,
no yardstick to judge the present with,
then we are left with the freedom
to accept and embrace it,
with nothing to compare it to,
as the only reality
there ever is.

Why does the news
read like the script
of a cheap soap opera?

Why does this drama
of clashing opinions
draw us in
to this vortex of judgements,
this cauldron of conflict?

Why are we seduced
by these delicious distortions,
stoking the flames of our indignation,
stroking our sense of righteousness?

Why do we accept
the fodder we are fed
by those who would buy our attention?

Not because we seek the truth,
but because we are addicted
to living in a world,
an interactive fiction,
in which we are always right.

We have always been more than our thoughts,
and we have always known this,
when we were not thinking.

There is so much that we know,
when we are not thinking,
that goes unnoticed in our memories,
unindexed by analysis or judgement,
unremarked in our internal conversation,
but simply lived and experienced.

We were born this way,
drinking everything in,
content to not understand,
to rejoice in life itself,
not in the story about it.