I am deeply overjoyed to share this poem, the first to be published today on MasticadoresUsa. I offer my utmost gratitude to Editor and #1 Amazon Bestseller Author Gabriela Marie Milton for finding my poem worthy of their platform.
The Earth of my Being as if is splitting into parts yet again
Dry lands of my emotions as if fueling Fires of my thoughts
Wildfires spreading no tears raining : : Please go here to read the complete poem. It is an honor and a privilege that you would take the time! Thank You. Thank You. Thank You :)))
When suggestions are heard as criticism Followed by gaslighting & defensivism Criticism could be offered as suggestions Followed by choice for personal decisions It is often effective To speak in languages native To all that internal wiring Sparks that have grown old & tiring Need a lot of space for nurturing The grounds of self-loving & caring
My internal dialog when this came up to be posted for this week: “Really is this what you want to post? You have better thoughts, better words, better works to share! This?” Am I sensing judgment for what truly came out of nowhere and is clearly asking to be the one today?: “Well, does it even make sense?” “I think so… hope so…it is written and ready to go!” So here it is. I don’t know why but this needed to go today from my universe into yours. I would be humbled to know if it spoke or made sense to you.
Photo of me lounging on our beloved planet by Manish Doshi at Death Valley NP, California
The words on the picture above formed a short post Your Choice, published on April 30, 2017.
While I was thinking for a picture to pair with the poem Love Warrior, the above came to mind, along with wanting to add words from the older post to make it into a word image. I am shaking my head to myself over this compulsion I am feeling, to combine various elements to a post instead of just sharing the poem I intended to. Perhaps they are slightly different flavors of Love Warrior. I hope you enjoy the expressions of this phase I am going through.
Love warrior Made Unseen Unfelt Unnoticed After being Seen Felt Noticed
Love Warrior Not Victim Yet Victim From Heart assaulted Ignored Gaslighted
Love Warrior Taking space Humbly Courageously Vulnerably Still looked down By those Taking space Boldly Unapologetically Powerfully
Love Warrior At war within Without enough Self Love Wary from Letting go Expectations of Natural reciprocity Even from those Placed in rolesof Nurturing tender hearts And failed to deliver
Love Warrior Daring to be so alone No complacency For want of company Often doubting sanity Counting blessings Cultivating Gratitude Choosing Love
Love Warrior Colored leaf Drifting Through space Finding Ground Becoming One With Earth Finding And receiving Divine reciprocity
Love Warrior Becoming the Ground For bold ones standing their ground Holding space For unapologetics to walk upon Lending strength For the powerful to use From the subtle Power of Humble Courage And vulnerability
Love Warrior Often Invisible Being The ground And space The embrace They themselves Yearn for
Photo by Manish Doshi at Death Valley NP, California
Note to dear blog friends: I have become slower in my visits to your blogs, I still treasure my visits to read you work the same, I will keep doing so, just going through shifts in routine.
The light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion, the tunnel is.
We parked our vehicle on a tiny street lined with closely spaced homes. We walked along to find a tiny opening between homes. It was this path filled with sand that led to the ocean.
There was no guessing of the expanse to which, that tunnel on Earth opened up. It felt like a magical portal. Especially because we walked through the tunnel before sunrise, so it was dark until we saw some light when out on the other side. The pictures of the tunnel were taken on our way out, so you can see the light coming through the roof made of branches.
This is from our trip to Oahu, Hawaii Islands in February 2021. The experience of being here felt so much like life itself. There is so much intricate and exquisite beauty available that we are actually immersed in when we go through the seeming dark tunnels – light keeps leaking in the form of exact people and guidance pouring from all directions. The sand keeps the feet engaged mindfully (I walked barefoot here), there are occasional pricks to make sure I am present to where I am and also heeding my direction.
Intense times Life itself Shapeshifting Dig my heels To stay standing And oriented
Dropping All things head Into my heart So I don’t Lose myself In the fluid reality So I do Find myself In the flow easily
Guiding Light So present for me In the seeming Absence of it too I honor the seeming Dark spaces They are actually Healing forces gathering Fuel for my ExpansiveBeing All that is exactly needed For ease, joy & well-being
I am amused how this post turned out to be a combination of pictures, a bit of prose and the poem. The poem is what I wanted to post and the rest just tagged along, tugging in my mind to go with the poem. I was happy to see it all seemed to connect well – hope you enjoy this mixture of a post and the poem itself. I am curious to know which part spoke to you most.
I feel that I am personally transitioning through a portal from a known past into an unknown future in so many ways at once. It is eerie how outwardly all the walls of reality still look the same, and yet as if all the mental castles of reality have inwardly collapsed. Each day I find another brick falling.
As if each day I wake up and walk into a hall of mirrors absolutely wanting to confuse me – Is that me? or is that one me? Until I push back on a mirror to have it open on to a very expansive space of peace, joy and lightness, carrying an air of crisp clarity.
It is so thrilling and awesome terrifying to surrender in to that space, and live without alignment or resistance to any mental constructs, comforts of relations, definitions, concepts of what exactly makes up our everyday life. Also it is awesome that I don’t have the ever insistent fear rumbling inside me. For I recognize this portal from 5 years ago, and I know now what brilliance awaits on the other side of it.
I love and embrace with a much robust gratitude and awe, the exquisite and divine guidance, synchronicity and perfection with which this play of life is executed. These are such powerful times that our tribe of truth seekers and heart followers are finding their way with themselves and each other like never before! I am now ready to show up in ways like never before.
And hence, I wished to post this poem and picture today to share with you, my gratitude for the trail behind me. For the people on the trail with me.
This poem wasfirst published on August 16, 2016, 5 years ago today.
There’s a trail from the past behind me From whence in this moment I arrive I look forward to see Whereto it wants me strive The smile on my face Belongs to those who helped me thrive
The chosen and unchosen soul friends The given and unchosen of relationships With their simply Being or coaxing mends Diffused and dissolved perceived hardships
I have all of You in my heart To walk with You, I would go back to start Gratitude for You will keep You forever with me Especially when I seem to have parted ways with thee There’s times when only You can make me less lonely
That’s when I look back at the trail Find the bend where you found me frail Then I walk forward steadily a mile Taking with me the newfound smile
3 am Fear-Quake Seismic activity Not plates colliding More like River revolving Not flowing But like Pouring Out of the Heart cave To form a whirlpool In the belly Richter scale reading registered Incessantly in the brain Momentum of thoughts Keep pale awake Heavy eyes Floods they make Pulling the river Reversed From belly to cave Heartbeat Aftershocks Desolate search Breath rhythm found Richter Scale broken Blank Lost Quiet Grief No river Anymore Cave open To the ocean Of Being Belly becomes shore For the waves Of breathing Vision ships Awake sleeping Powerful release To all turmoil within
The process keeps going life beside you yearn for a bit longer respite A sense of having found a ground maybe for a day and yet again slip down Another layer being called to shed more, then called to show up and Be more
Allowing lower energy mind games to penetrate to become like others around to be able to relate Showing how attached still to comforts of certainty then suffering for not being your own self worthily
Feel and sense the divide happening Grief of as if current reality leaving Comes with having to keep going while still staying in your Being
Cusp of opening up from the guardedness feel the transition and rawness The waves keep coming yes you hope you can let go… Maybe this is how it looks like always you simply learn to breathe better in calmness
PS : This poem was composed sometime last year from my response to one of Sue Dreamwalker’s post on her profoundly inspirational blog Dreamwalker’s Sanctuary.I realized I had never published it.
I am thrilled to share this Poetry in Collaboration with Amber from DiosRaw. When Amber invited me to write poetry together I doubted myself. Yet with her gentle loving nudge, I decided to give it a try. It was a very beautiful experience to engage in, with the brilliant lines she would send me, and I would add a line to it. It was a truly immersive experience, and that too in the very topic of Truth! What a gift, thank you Amber for this unique experience and opportunity!Here it is, the lines in italic are mine, that follows each of Amber’s lines:
Absolute Truth arcane masked in plain sightSeeking soul Suffering heart Existence blightBefuddled by the many vandalized paths to know our birthrightSeemingly battered, finding & losing, losing & finding our own Light
Ridiculed unaware by many, revered by few diverging paths of hazeAssured yet doubting our way through the mazeBreaking into the comfort of the unknown eternity to set the soul ablazeOceanic waves of the heart to swim through that often rage
The house of mirrors of the cosmos, reflecting Truth in the stirring of the chemical universal potParticles settling, soothing clarity descends, buoying up the Light of Truth soughtThe Truth may not be as you conceive, before you wake up in the lessons of nets caughtThe truth is in all that you perceive, after you wake up to the knowing in your gutAlerting to soul growth, Truth beckons from the depths of bodily and psychological painReturning to self core, Truth awakens to the expanse of the universe and wisdom innateTruth is the Reality, all else is ignorance, deception, distraction, distortion, limitation and indoctrination and the elaborate mystery we imagine life.
The deep blue Ocean Clear waves Peaceful purity I watch I feel From the threshold Careful that I Don’t get wet So I can Turn back walk in home Engage with drama
I glance back at the blue It calls me back “Watch” it whispers Enormous tidal wave It drenches me Sweeps me off my feet I playfully give in Then come back to my threshold again The insistent blue wave Now peaks higher than the roof Breaks through the doors and windows Floods in through me and everything From the back of the house, out through the front Cleansing everything on the way Within me and the house I am amazed at, how clean and peaceful it feels Despite such powerful waves breaking in
And I am reminded ‘they’ will return soon The ones that I am not done playing with yet And their games have different rules So I close the windows and the doors The wave, like the romantic lunatic lover whispers “I won’t give up – now that you are wet, you can’t keep me out” I smile one way and annoyed in another Proceed to hold the door shut tight with all my strength The wave still pours in, flows through me, and the house This time it is careful, once inside the house, not to flow higher than my ankle Flows out the front silently, without the uproar unlike before ‘They’ arrive and I start explaining and convincing How I tried my best, with all my strength To hold the door, so no water comes in I just couldn’t do better than this
I was amazed again How they simply said “Oh the floor is wet” Fetched the mop and started mopping the floors I watched them from the corner All wet and floored at myself Wondering if they would ever want to know About that amazing blue ocean That visited this house Did they even notice That I am All Wet!
Perhaps I will just Allow myself To Hang dry As I help Them Mop and dry The floors Of the house.
I woke up recently with a sense as if I had had a profound experience, and slowly realized and recollected this vivid dream. I decided to write it down and this poem is how it got described. It gave me abundant clarity in my juggle and confusion in navigating my relations while allowing/resisting the waves of transformation that keep washing over me. I am in deep gratitude for the gift of healing and awakening afforded to me in this lifetime. All relations and interactions serve a purpose in this evolution towards embodying my authentic being. Emotions of guilt and grief tend to interfere when we first become aware of how we have been unknowingly contributing to false constructs and agreements of relations. Guilt for not keeping up with our end of the agreement any longer and grief for losing some comfortable ways of being, not being acknowledged for who we truly are. It is my personal responsibility to honor the truth of what the tidal wave brings me and continue to walk with that truth. This acceptance helps me smile and continue to engage with all my Love and Gratitude.
Did you relate to the poem in some way …similar or different? I would be honored to know.
Infinite Living 