“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
“Love is from the infinite,
and will remain until eternity. The seeker of love escapes
the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will for certain fail the test.”
“O Beloved, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Shekinah, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”
Today I’m loitering about, preparing for a large journey elsewhere. I’ve returned to a hometown of mine recently after 40-or-so-years and in doing so I’ve come to be aware that there were looming elements of my past deeply still in existence wrapped up and rooted here. It wasn’t until today, finally, that I began to understood why I still have any connection to this town, and why all of my flights (3 separate flights to 3 separate time zones mind you) to depart have somehow managed to synchronistically fall through in the last 3 days.
As the day had gone on, I found myself sitting on a porch wistfully contemplating into
a private and whispy park-side. Despite the sense that I’d been engulfed a wandering Berumuda Triangle, my heart had been telling me something I just barely managed to notice as the sound of the leaves rustling in the mid-day breeze were so cathartic… A very old Proverb, in the 13th chapter to be exact, that I hadn’t heard since my youth, and since the beginning of the Path I now walk… Well, this proverb continued to replay in my Within, “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick”. Over and over again it played… It was almost as though someone was gently whispering into my ears. The ears of my soul more accurately. After each recitation, this mantra would continue echoing…
Earlier this day:
Sometime around the afternoon, I received a call from my childhood sweetheart for the first time in a long time. Since I’d been back, we had met to catch up, but it wasn’t particularly… transparent by nature. Well, she heard that I would be leaving very soon and asked to speak to me once more over the phone. This woman explained to me that she had been in love with me still (and still un-married but often very close to being so), since she 11 and I 16.
It was the most amazing and peaceful death of an extremely long and overdue life… the life of an imaginary possibility: “The One”. The fact that her and I were not “The One’s” for each-other is not the source of imagination, quite the opposite actually. The source of imagination and over-due death was her own clung, emotional fantasy. It was something that survived only off of illusion, because the one she was still in love with was the one she thought I was before I left life as I once knew it and followed the path. The Tao.
Despite this woman’s charming and timeless allure, it was an immense relief. It was to fulfill a conversation I had never realized I had always needed and that we had never had. In some way I felt a huge freedom from a trap that was not my own, and for my friend I think she found the same, and in doing so released us both…
Look closely and you can spot a mid-day rainbow across the sky.
As I pondered this day these experiences my lady-friend had embodied early in the day echoed throughout my thoughts again, along with this proverbial saying I once knew and learned in this very town probably around the time I was once with her. Well, I meditated on these things and their relevance and as fortune would have it, out of nowhereI heard a loud “Crack! SNAP!!!”. One of the main trees at this park just let go of a very large and seemingly alive branch. At this point the implications were clear.
Symbolism of Cracked Tree Branches:
“The only time a branch falls off a tree on its own is when it is dead. No more life to keep it attached to the tree. No sap. No nothing. The tree feels no pain when the dead branch falls away. It might even feel relieved that the dead weight is finally gone. That the dead branch has finally fallen off.”
To see a tree branch signifies good luck, growth and new life. Because trees represent life and branches represent relationships, a branch breaking often means the death of a relationship connected to either family.
Additionally, My Master once said:
“He [the divine father] cuts off every branch in Me [the christic son] that bears no fruit, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes to make it even more fruitful.”
See below for the connections…
Since I’ve been back, I’ve felt like many deaths, divorces and broken branches have evidently made themselves apparent. It’s strange though, because all along, I couldn’t help but shake this feeling as though I was being reborn again in some way. This town and the last months of my life have brought about closure for me in a very old, and ancient chapter of my Genesis; and it’s now as I think about it that I remember: “for any new life to be made manifest new death must occur just as well.” This truth is a universal one which can be seen so poignantly seen throughout all life, including the glorious sign of a broken and fallen branch.
I can safely say that if this form of closure has been a “chapter”, than I am certainly nearing the final pages.
It’s through this process of revisiting others that I’ve remembered more and more that when we ourselves move on in life, somehow the perceptions loved ones have on us can withhold our own development and process if they’re not actually ready for us to move on. I love that this is the case, I love that I can trust my guides, and I love that the universe cares for me and my friends just as I would. Tenderly and in due-time. Such as this is the Creator whom I ineffably love. Oh, yeah, and I love his little whispers… My Master’s wondrous whispers… ❤
I’m not sure what it is, but something up ahead looks awfully bright…
•••
“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but, when that desire cometh, it 𝑖𝑠 that tree of life.”
“In a world where there are no limbs No limbs to pull, no voice to cry with My soul screams and my mind reams for your essence… “Just a hair..”, “It’s all I need…”
“A little closer” I said, Yet, I knew you were just as far But closer somehow, seemingly more than before “How can one be in a world afar, and them a world anew, yet so close, but still beyond reach from you?” I said…
“There’s ice caps where I come from.”, “You see,” “These ice caps are a sight of beauty, behold, And atop them you reign Reign over theAll, Yet the chill is sheer, and the days, Too long. So alone… This is what my world is like. This is what my hour is like. When will it all be done? “
I just hope that on that day of spring My winter will truly be over And my lover will be the headdress That finally keeps me covered
How long can an hour be? How long a day? Why then does it feel like eternity Starts all over again Once the minute has passed And you are still gone away?
Can I reach out to you with no arms? Will you have one there for me? Can I hope that you don’t need me Need me here so long
Need me here to brave These elements,
so strong?
The sHaded elEphant 