One way or another...

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

-TS Eliot

Oneness exists whether i am aware of it or not.

We embark on our voyage.

Over there, the Buddhists are getting into their rowboat.

Over here, the Sufis paddling a canoe.

"Look at the pretty sails of the New Age schooner!"

And when we arrive Home, we scuttle the boat.

Oneness exists. The natural state is not something I can achieve.

And whatever ship takes me across the seas of selfish madness,

doesn't so much matter.

Someday perhaps we'll all meet again at a oneness celebration.

"Hey, weren't you a Buddhist, sitting on your ...... all day?

I remember you, whirling your self into peace.

And you with the bleeding heart, isn't that where Christ stabbed you, and left you to dissolve into eternal love?"

Someday, sitting around a nondenominational campfire of love,

singing songs of merriment, of love, and songs of grief,

and trying our hardest to remember,

"What was that thing we used to call oneness?"

 

I've waited a long time. And i've looked into my soul and seen darkness.

Little failings that seem magnified, by the urgency of our Mission.

We only want to save the world. We only want to share love and bliss until

all identities dissolve in holy water.

The jackals of selfishness yap wildly all around us,

the angels soothe us with songs of heavenly peace.

One flower child dancing in a field of flowers, mesmerized and delighted by the sight of God's beauty.

Two, three, four flower children become a cult, a movement, a religion.

All human endeavors are imperfect. All groups become political.

We thought this would be easy, to return to the belly of the beast,

put our hands on wounded hearts and heads, and let the bliss rain down.

No one has a copyright on love, and on the depths of Being.

Yet in this world of commerce and politics, we pretend it's ours to sell.

The light of love shines outward from our hands, and inward into our hearts.

We can't run. Love is stalking our imaginary identities,

and will catch us in our lies, in our falseness, and our imagined spiritual magnificence.

Only when no identity is left, and no Movement is needed,

will the final explosion of love and bliss descend.

We are the walking wounded, those who have agreed to feel the depths of sorrow,

dragging the past along with us, unable to see the Dawn, sometimes getting lost in the darkness.

Especially when we build an edifice of Oneness prematurely out of our imagination,

and believe in our Dream of Love.

 

Oneness exists whether  or not i am aware...

or not.

Love exists whether i feel it...

or not.

 

We embark on our voyage.

We arrive Home, and know it for the first time.