A novel.
Within each of us,
beneath skin and bone,
flows a divine consciousness
which is
everything.
We are of one.
Living in the physical world
need not be merely
existence.
It can be the alchemy to realizing
who we truly are.
What do any of us experience of this world
but our own nervous system?
Sending signals through our body,
that manifest as feelings
thoughts,
and memories
the same pattern of fear, desire, and anger
repeating themselves
over and over
stuck in the same loop.
Living the same moments again and again
like an apparition walking through an empty house
down the same corridor
past the same window
entering the same door
destined to repeat its movements
until
the pattern is broken.
How can these patterns of thought,
of conditioned desires and manipulated fears,
that keep us bound
be broken?
It is not by wishing
and not by will.
It comes in a moment
when the weight of the scaffolding
that we have built around ourselves,
made of delusion,
and the demands of others
that we have carried as our own,
and called
self,
becomes too heavy to hold.
It cracks, shifts,
falls in on itself.
And we let it go.
We surrender,
and see the vastness of what truly is,
what truly can be,
who we truly are.
Release any insistence
on control over the outcome.
Come what may.
Let the ego move through the heart,
not the nervous system.
Free it from the prison of reaction
that pulses in patterns within us.
Once the ego finds its home in the heart,
it will discover its creativity, its power.
It will lead us
to each other
and to our truest selves.
The ancient one came to me
in brown feathers and talons.
She whispered, “What do you seek?”
I sought control and foresight
and she tore into my flesh.
“Wisdom, guidance,” I begged.
She devoured my soft parts.
“I seek healing, protection.”
And she turned me over
until I was merely blood and grit.
I stopped asking.
I surrendered,
numb and not knowing
what might be left of me
when the ancient one was done.
She kept pecking and tearing and eating,
until I was nothing but bones
picked clean, rolling loose,
rattling.
Gently, she gathered me, held me high,
then let me fall.
I landed in a heap,
a pile entangled.
Again, what do you seek?
Freedom
Only then did she read the way for me
in my bones
and push me.
I rolled, gathering dirt and thorns
and crawling things, the tears
of my ancestors
to make myself again,
not in the old way,
but in the ancient way, renewed
I stood.
As one not in control,
yet,
unleashed.