Ground

and I must not forget
that I stand today,
not upon the shoulders
of those long left,
but upon their hearts -
who, though terrified
to look into the labyrinth
of light and dark,
led me into
the presence of things
that I can only add
to my growing years,
stitching up the ground
so I can stand
and peer into
my own roots
and wings,
of darkness
and light.

Forgiveness

~ A Conversation with Myself ~

My Beloved,

Today I long to talk to you....to explore the deepest recesses of my being with you.....to bare it all....for I know that with you I can be naked and vulnerable and you will not judge me for who I have been or who I am now in this moment....for you are and have been the intimate friend that I never had....I know that you will listen to me in that silent well of togetherness that we share, that goes back to our sacred womb....when we took seed like triplets waiting to be birthed - mind, body and spirit, in a strange and perhaps necessary splitting......which I am still trying to make sense of....

Who are you - the one I talk to? Which of the three? I don't seem to know the difference sometimes, like now, when my heart is wide open....and yet there are times when I can see three distinct forms, trying so hard to join hands and cohabit the space that reminds them of that moment when the cosmic egg split. So then is this life of suffering and grace, the path to forgiveness and feeling gratitude for that divine birthing?

What is this forgiveness? Is it a cutting off of ties, in a bid to move on quickly, for there is no time to 'waste' in our manic pursuit of happiness and self-obsession? Is it the band-aid that we quickly stick over our gash to save ourselves from being hurt in the same place and in the same way again? Or is it that safe space of a mother's womb, where we feel whole, where we can love and be loved for who we truly are? Vulnerability allows us to be hurt and also to be loved! Is this forgiveness then an expression of our vulnerability?

'Forgiveness' - how many times I have heard this word.....and tried to make sense of what it means to me...and so many times it has eluded me like that distant horizon that looks reachable, but yet never arrives, however much I go after it....I know in my cells that I can get there where my heart meets my eyes, but I am unable to....a heart that yearns to reach that place where there is no difference between a sunset and a sunrise, or water and sky, where light and dark merge and mate into a sweet union where one cannot tell the difference between the two....where do I go to find that point, that place where I can finally rest into myself in a blissful self-forgetting? How do I get there through all these buttresses that I have lavishly created and built, only to inflict myself with the misery of separation from what I think is 'whole'? Will I ever get there? I wonder....

Is forgiveness a reminder of sorts?....like that one thing on a 'things to do' list that never gets ticked off, and simply and quietly slips into the next list and the next? Is it like that stain on my favourite dress that doesn't go away, but rather keeps reminding me of that someone, that place, those words that were uttered, the words that I so longed to hear trickle into my whole being, and that hole which never seems to get filled? When I think of forgiveness, I always think of wounds. I feel a deep pain in the deepest parts of my being, radiating outwards from my gut. I feel a self-feeding hole, an emptiness, that tries so hard to feed itself and fill itself, like an insatiable black hole that sucks everything into it, and is born again and again.

Forgiveness reminds me of my brokenness and the others'. It is the song that my heart sings - "I was broken and so were you.....now let us mend our brokenness, not by hiding away the cracks and wounds that we inflicted each other with, but rather by pouring gold (love) into those cracks, so that they are celebrated for adding value to the broken whole. Forgiveness then is the unconditional love that gilds our broken beings.
And this life, this path into myself is my journey into forgiveness, into that elusive place where both a sunset and sunrise are born. Is that it?

But what a struggle it is to get there! Sometimes, it is so easy to move to forgiveness.....because the wound is not that deep. The most difficult ones to forgive are the ones that reflect my deepest fears. I know that. I know and feel it in my guts. I know it when I get that sinking feeling of dropping down into that blackhole of nothingness. And that is when I stop. Because I am terrified....terrified of that hole and the threat to my whole existence. And yet, I long to get in there. I long to know how it feels. I long to go in and find out whether I will really disappear or die. But I cannot jump in. I will wait it out. I will wait for anger and rejection to sting me and scathe me with their acrid fumes. I will wait to let the poison fill up my whole being, so I know what it is to hate and to scorn. And then, from that venom that threatens the opening of my heart, maybe some day the heart will rupture and I will drink a sip of that nectar that everyone yearns to taste. Or maybe not. But I want to wait without a hopeful melancholy. I want to dream of that sinking....that free fall....where I hurtle down into a black void, not knowing where I came from or where I am going.....but knowing that I will be held through it all with love and that I will fly...for Life loves me. She is my mother, my father. She will give me the wings to take me into that wondrous white space of forgiveness someday.

But for now all I have are questions.....to myself.
Why am I unable to forgive?
Why do I get stuck in the place from where I actually want to get 'unstuck'?
What is it that stops me from reaching a space of forgiveness? Can I actually forgive everyone for everything, which to me means this: 'Can I forgive myself for everything that I feel I should not have done or done differently?'
I am not sure yet. Should I have to forgive at all? Why yearn for something that is not there now?

When I remember an old wound sometimes, it is anger that comes up first, and then a sharp prick of pain, and sometimes the thought of gratitude. A voice inside tells me softly and firmly :"You must be grateful. Think of what he / she did for you." And then I feel stuck. Stuck because that thought does not allow me to move into a new space. It holds me down like a wall, shutting off avenues to explore....Gratitude and anger in a tug of war!

Yes, I would love to feel gratitude in my being.....watch it buoy up like that upturned container in a tub of water, that keeps bobbing up, but never goes down however much you try to push it down.Yes, I have been in that space before so many times, but not when there is a wound that's smarting, almost like new. I have noticed that I don't get stuck with gratitude when I feel it in the moment and let it go....like when I see a beautiful rainbow at the end of a blue day, or a gorgeous sun that peeps from behind dark clouds after a challenging day or a precious flower blossoming. But with people, I get stuck. I get stuck with the thought and feeling of gratitude that I feel for them, for something that they have done for me in the past. Why can't I let it go like a dandelion blown into the wind? Why do I want to hold on to this feeling of gratitude? Is that what actually stops me from experiencing forgiveness and moving on? Perhaps.

The people I need to forgive or want to forgive are the parts of me that I want to hug and love. Is that it? But I am unable to do that fully yet. When I remember my mother telling me this in a moment of brokenness and helplessness - that I was killing my father, by what I was choosing to do (i.e. wanting to marry the person of my choice), when he was sick in the hospital, I still breakdown choked with emotions. There is a lot of sadness inside. I want to tell her how much I love my father. I want to tell her that I understand how helpless she felt, how worried and terrified she was perhaps, but something stops me. And I think it is this thought of gratitude. I feel that I owe her something for giving me my happiness and guilt for taking away hers. I start owning that thought and that leads to the stuck-ness that I feel. I wonder if I can call it gratitude then....maybe it is indebtedness.....a wanting to give back, which is stuck in feelings of guilt.

On my wedding day, when my in-laws insisted that I had to leave to get to their house by a particular time, blind to the anxiety and heartbreak I was experiencing as my father collapsed in front of me when I hugged him and bid him goodbye (he had suffered a heart attack), I can still feel the rage inside. The rage for not being able to stand up for myself, for not being able to break out of tradition and do what my heart told me to do, for not being able to make myself understood. I have not been able to forgive them for that. Or is it myself? This stands like a wall between us, which I am still not quite ready to break. And yet the very same voice tells me of all those times when they (my in-laws) took care of me when my mother was not around. Again, I get stuck with this 'karmic indebtedness' that I am so conditioned to feel and embody. That cannot be gratitude, because it does not set me free. It does not make me feel light and joyous. It makes me feel weighed down, bound by thick iron chains. It still binds me to those parts of me that I have not been able to love.

So then my beloved, shouldn't gratitude and forgiveness emerge on their own?.... shouldn't they rise and fall into the space between interactions and in the moment?.....For it is when I want to 'hold on' to gratitude that I am unable to forgive and let go....then that very gratitude becomes a wall too difficult to climb over......if only I can let everything happen or emerge and then fall back into the space, and not think that it is because of the other or me, and not want to hold on to it.....life would be much easier....I will then be free every moment...

Today, I want to tell myself that it is okay that I did what I did, that I could not have done any better then, that I genuinely wanted to care for them. I want to tell myself that it is okay to forgive....that by doing that, I am not going to lose myself and my freedom again or be unable to stand up for myself. I want to hug myself today for enduring that pain and separation from my father. I want to love myself for perhaps not being brave enough to speak up and say what I was feeling, but for being courageous enough to stay with all that pain and go through life with grace and trust. Perhaps this will be my first baby step towards forgiveness? I don't know.

But will I ever reach that magical space where all boundaries are blurred, where the drains that have been choked for eons will be unclogged and the vibrant, trans-formative energy of love will be released? Will I forgive myself for all my trespassing? Will I be able to love myself enough to see that I am not responsible for the way someone else feels but only for the way I feel? Will I be able to love myself enough to see and hold my beloved when he cannot fulfill all my desires, not because he doesn't want to, but because he is as broken and as helpless as I am? Will I be able to become that waterfall, that cloudburst, that seed burst, that are just waiting for that perfect moment to pour forth their incredibly powerful energy of vitality and unconditional love? Will I become the waves and the shore that forgive each other over and over again for their life and death? Will I?

Gratitude

Gratitude is the music of the soul that has touched the chords of oneness, even if for a moment in time. A soul that has seen a glimpse of how each note has its own place in the octave, rising from the universal sound, shattering and sinking into the silence from where they are born each time. Where every note can reach the ecstasy of being one, only through the merging of itself with another. And when that happens, what dances and weaves itself with the pregnant, flowing silences and the stand alone notes that join hands in a joyous rejoicing, is the soulful music of gratitude.

Gratitude is the sweet self-forgetting of the birth of the now, a moment of holding the joy of creation inside, like a mother holding her just-born baby over her warm bosom, smiling for no reason except for being alive to witness a sacred moment of perfection. Gratitude is not a looking back, or a bitter-sweet remembering of the meandering, rugged path that one has traveled to get here; it is not a quiet self-sacrificing or a silent bearing of a burden, nor is it the elixir of life. It is what turns every step into a joyful skip, and a skip into a dance. It is a freeing of the soul where the cross transforms into a magical raft that carries it to the distant shore and beyond; where resurrection and death pale into insignificant ripples on the moonlit river of darkness. Gratitude is not a thanksgiving ritual for a bargain with life. It is not a celebration for getting all the round pegs in round holes; rather it is the fervent holding of all pegs round or square, complete or broken, in palms clasped in an unflinching devotion to all of life, without hoping to fit them in anywhere. It is about looking at your cup and smiling softly, raising a toast to life, without giving a thought to whether it is full or empty. Gratitude is the song of a heart full of love brimming over.

The Alchemist

when the waves roll back
and all seems gone,
when the wet sand sinks
beneath your feet forlorn,
when your mind is drawn
towards distant thoughts,
when your heart gives up
after fierce struggles fought;
can you pause the stories
of your life, that run amok?
can you hold still for a moment
the space within that is rocked?
can you look to the horizon
with an unflinching faith
that the waves will return
and will rush to bring grace?
for when you begin
to change darkness to light,
and look at your gifts,
but not at your plight;
when you start to change
your darkest fears into love,
you become the alchemist,
moving the waves to the shore.

A Silent Procession

A silent procession
in a wild forest begins;
trees - old and young
shower their leaves -
a silent offering
of green and yellow,
gently bowing and waving,
as I pass by;
the wind whispers
an ancient hymn
of love and peace
from the hills beyond;
the distant sun
touches me softly,
warm speckles of light
on a lustrous sheen;
the flowing reeds
bow down with grace,
making way for me
to move on;
the soft, rounded pebbles
pave the way -
stepping stones
to my destiny;
tiny fish begin
their dance of joy;
the steadfast earth
brings me gifts
of a fragrant soil -
memories of sweet union;
and I flow on to touch
another forest,
in another time,
holding precious memories
of a celebration,
in the silent procession
of endless love.

A Curry Leaf

like a curry leaf,
giving of itself
wholly,
with no desire
but to infuse
a flavour and fragrance
like no other,
untouched
by life and death,
use and misuse,
a quiet thanksgiving,
a celebration,
for just being...