Divine Friendship

September, 2007

She is someone with whom I see one truth,
who could be the Friend,
Or she could be one flower among
The thousand-flower rose garden
You've given me instead of a bouquet
This Valentine's Day.
This banquet is bliss, joy, happiness,
Pure and untouched by hunger.
Any suffering flies like a sled
Off an ice-jump in a cartoon,
And as I philosophize, I fly,
Animals conversing with angels.
And ignorance drops like a well-used rocket
to the ocean, as the ego dissolves
in the atmospheric fire,
And the transhumanized spirit
of the Nazarene in me continues into deep heaven,
Assuming its undisclosed identity,
Claiming the "I" for the very first time,
Swimming in bliss that is not
diminished by endurance
Not dimmed by awareness of pain in others,
Not ending or tapering,
Totally untouched by fear of loss,
Having forsaken all meanness
And limitation; having, rather
Accepted... Having finally surrendered.

There is no greater wisdom than
Cognition of divinity
In every phenomenon,
Every thought, feeling, perception
and deja vu; Every physical object
And mental Form, every principle
of logic, every proposition,
Every dream, image, illusion.
This is life as much as wisdom,
Wisdom as much as life;
Lived as much as known, known as much as lived.
They are sufficient,
Lacking no wealth, no power,
No status and prestige,
No pleasure among the myriad pleasures.
They are inseparable
And they are insuperable,
There being nothing else to be gained,
Desired, or hoped for but this,
Which is a river of knowing
(and steam of unknowing rising )
Flowing out of the Void
Of Uncreated Beyond-beingness
Through this psyche
Out, around, and back through the doorjamb
That I walked past in the hallway
Of the apartment in Huntington Beach,
Meeting itself face-to-face again
In this person's perceptive
Eyebeams. The One who has been given
This wisdom and re-cognition
Converses affably with the Angels at every turn,
Who, like honeybees, each of a different species,
Buzz melodiously in created things.
This crazy joy of waking up is the
The thing I shall like most of all.
But won't the joy of being woken up be greater?
No, being woke up, being finally awake,
Surpasses Joy like the Sunlight
Surpasses the dimmest glum and gloomy ember
In Death Valley,
When joy and self shall merge
And stillness shall reign.
Joy, while it lasts, that fine companion,
Will burn no brighter than while it is waking up.
The state of being awake
Will snuff out that candle with gratitude,
Hearing the words, "Arise, fair one,"
And coming into the joyless ground of joy
The invisible, ineffable ground of sight and speech
The non-existent Ground of Being.
I am but one man. But I am one. I am
With you, and a thousand friends,
Ten thousand sisters of bliss.

Glory to God Alone.