Condition of a half-and-half soul

How much say do we have
in defining who we are?

Is it our choices that define us?
Or our God-given nature?

Our nature is infinite in essence,
but particular in expression.

I long for the ecstatic joy and freedom of Source.
Alas, I will never know it as long as "I" exist.

But I don't.
I'm an imaginary character, playing a part.
That's all.
And when my part is through,
I will smile and remember
or scream and fight to the last
and die
in glory or oblivion
in accordance with how my part was played.

Did I find redemption?
Did I save my heart from the
darkness within it?
In the moment of truth,
did I fall or did I rise?

Prepare me, O Lord Shiva.
Cleanse my blackened self.
Blow the carbon out of my jets.
Burn me, burn me through
and let no impurity remain.

Lord Shiva does not answer.
He cannot do for me
what I must do for myself.
I know not how much work is left,
be it a lifetime, or an age,
or eternity.

And so I continue
the alternating heat and cold,
light and dark
process of the Great Work:
to know myself.

If it is so, as my dream has told,
that, in another time and place,
I was a hired killer,
then it comes as no surprise
that in this lifetime, I should be
a wounded healer,
channeling life and love and light
through hands that once devoured them.

My past is with me - I cannot change it -
reminding me of the depths of evil
of which I am capable.
What led me to murder fellow beings
who'd done me no harm?
It was fear, only fear
and unknowing.
So the antidote, you see,
must be love,
love
and awareness.

The bodhisattva exhorts us
to continually seek the One,
to make it the focus of all our endeavours,
to diminish our vain and limiting thoughts about ourselves
and let the light of the real shine through.

There are few, so few, who take these words to heart
and employ this sincere counsel of the wise.
Myself, I know not how,
for my desire is yet divided
and my will a sputtering pipe.
My hope lies in the mysterious
and inescapable workings
of the Architect
who owns all ways and means
with which to challenge hearts and minds
and, given only time,
win over all Creation
and make it bloom ever so much more wondrously
each time it's seemed to die.

1 comments:

    "Our nature is infinite in essence,
    but particular in expression."

    These words strike a true chord, beautiful.