Love Warrior

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 roles of
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.

Of Tunnels, Life & Illusions

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
Expansive Being
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.

The trail behind me

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 was first 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

The Fear-quake at 3am

Photo by myself

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

Life Waves

Photo by Arnav Doshi

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.

Arcane Truth

Fractal Mirror

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 sight
Seeking soul Suffering heart Existence blight

Befuddled by the many vandalized paths to know our birthright
Seemingly battered, finding & losing, losing & finding our own Light

Ridiculed unaware by many, revered by few diverging paths of haze
Assured yet doubting our way through the maze

Breaking into the comfort of the unknown eternity to set the soul ablaze
Oceanic 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 pot
Particles settling, soothing clarity descends, buoying up the Light of Truth sought

The Truth may not be as you conceive, before you wake up in the lessons of nets caught
The truth is in all that you perceive, after you wake up to the knowing in your gut

Alerting to soul growth, Truth beckons from the depths of bodily and psychological pain
Returning to self core, Truth awakens to the expanse of the universe and wisdom innate

Truth is the Reality, all else is ignorance, deception, distraction, distortion, limitation and indoctrination and the elaborate mystery we imagine life.

Sleep Chaos

Photo by myself

Clarity exceeds capacity
Calmness becomes chaos

Dreams keep awake
Sleep alive with dreams

Life itself pulsating, Allow it
To draw you out from within

Float away into the day
It will carry you back

To a good night’s sleep
When you give up the need

Tidal Wave

Photo by Manish Doshi

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.

Awakening

Sunrise photo by Manish Doshi

Yes Dreams Come True
The Waking Ones often Do

Fears too Come True
The Sleeping Ones often Do

Each can be stifling to the other
Awakening within, the creator

It is so interesting to look at our life and reflect on how it is a sum total of our dreams and our fears come true. Often when we stumble into suffering that diverts us from going towards our dreams, we are actually living our unconscious fears. Our waking dreams are our desires and yearnings that give us hope, direction, trust to find our way back again to where we are actually living parts of what we always dreamed of.

I chose not to make the C capital in the word ‘creator’ above because in the tender moments when we are transitioning from fear to faith, it is hard to feel the power of the Creator, and yet we are getting in touch with our creator self within to not succumb, but to dream even more boldly.

Awakening is a short poem published on June 20. 2018. The words felt very relevant to me to repeat and put them in the form of image.

Drink in with your Senses

The peace of pink & purple I can see

The expanse pours in through my ears

The sweet gratitude I smell reaches my heart

All the pores of my skin bloom open

And then seal in the feelings together

That taste of fullness lingers airily on my tongue

Peace, gratitude and expansiveness

Of the pink sky and majestic mountain

Are now part of my being

Photo by Manish Doshi – Death Valley National Park, CA