THE CLOSET MYSTIC

sometimes I am still hit with the urge to run away from it all, as a renunciant. but i believe my path is to transcend without escapism. 

but, still yet, does a wanderlust stir, a coalescence of light that is a call to life. it is when one has a taste of the fountain, when a mere drop hits the tongue, and the desire is to not just sip, but to bathe in those holy waters. 

and then one wonders: do i confine myself by denying the impulse? or am i serving myself? can the impulse be transmuted? what am i being called to do? i want to be free — and, sometimes, in meditation, i taste the highest freedom. it is pure light, it is pure love, it is something richer than rich and beyond me. it is love. it is luminous, it is grace. it is ecstasy, it is unity. and, in these moments, i know i could be happy without anything that is before me. i know i could be happy alone in the wild. i know i could be happy alone in a grove, alone by a waterfall, alone adventuring into the great unknown. 

but maybe they call it wanderlust for a reason — perhaps the slow burn is best, rather than giving into one’s passions in the moment, releasing it as spendings in the now instead of letting the ecstasy, wonder, and mystery build over time. perhaps i am being called to conservatism, to tradition, to patient courting in this wonderful love story between myself and The Mystery, whatever she may be. perhaps i might first sit in admiration without immediately lunging to possess that coveted celestial flower. perhaps i might let it choose me, perhaps she prefers not grand displays of my affections but potent subtleties. perhaps she’d prefer the flame to not be a torch wielded recklessly, an unwitting arsonist made of me, but would instead prefer a candle-flame, perhaps on an altar. perhaps my devotional flame might on occasion be a bonfire under a full Moon, perhaps my devotional flame might be the hearth of a loving home. 

but still, do i have the urge to run. still, do i have the urge towards absolute freedom. a life of no material worry, a life focused on the riches of the spirit, the heart, the mind, rather than the prison sentence of a mortgage. perhaps my spirit will become as heavy as the literal cumulative weight of all of my material possessions. perhaps to have is to be had. 

and yet, i’ve seen the fruits of this path. i’ve seen the barren earth it creates. i’ve learned that, often, those who run are those who are afraid. i’ve learned that life is work. to create something of purpose and meaning on this Earth is to toil. why run away? did your spirit come here for paradise now? what if paradise is reaped after the work? would you really run into a masturbatory paradise, your own mental creation, your own idyll, far far away, while the rest of the world suffers? why not go and live and love and try to help somehow? 

this is what i learned. this is what i learned long ago when i ran away from home into a place in the woods that was a hall of mirrors, each soul i met a jarring reflection of how lost and confused i was. so quickly did i realize that i was lost and confused by choice, that i did not have to be. so quickly did i run back home, learning that all trails do indeed lead back to the center. still, yet, do i have to work this all out — a reminder of where the wanderlust is to be channeled, through sacred sublimation of the impulse rather than to be taken by greed of the spirit, to have paradise now, squandered. it shall be built sustainably over time, for not just myself to enjoy its fruit, but for others, as well.

again i say: 

sometimes I am still hit with the urge to run away from it all, as a renunciant. but i believe my path is to transcend without escapism. perhaps i can touch heaven even with my feet planted firmly on the ground

all the heavens and all the earth exists within all the heavens and all the earth — and we are a part of that, are we not? all is interconnected. we dramatize the elements, we are the living personifications of the natural world, 

to be holy is to be whole. to be whole is to be holy. to recognize that the whole exists within and to make all as one is to be holy. to love the world is to be whole. there is really no difference between within and without, for all is one. if you love yourself you love the whole, if you love the whole you love yourself. 

if ever you feel lonely, ask yourself if you’ve recalled the very essential fact that you do not exist recently. how can one ever be alone when witnessing the interconnected universe? no matter how far you run, still you remain on the web. you are stuck. there’s nothing you can do about your own unity with the whole. 

i forgot, then i remembered. i remembered, and I again forgot. 

karma is the law of interconnectedness, for if all is one, then you really do only do to yourself what it is that you do unto another. if we are all one being, one macro-identity beyond the micro-identity of mini-selves, then all you’ve ever done to another has been done to you — this is why loving the world is loving yourself. 

to love the universe is to discover the powers of the universe. to love the universe in adoration is to dissolve into the universe. then you are a child again. then you recognize that eternal youth is the only truth that exists. no matter how old you’ve grown, you’ll always be a child of the universe. so, why don’t you drop the act of “adulthood” and embrace the reality that the whole human lifespan is childhood? 

how could you look another stranger in the eye and not feel love? how could you not look another stranger in the eye and see the universe? how could we not ever immediately feel deepest understanding? just a glance at a passerby? it’s in plain sight, just existing at all is utmost vulnerability, eyes reveal all secrets. the epic drama hidden in plain sight, the stage the glance of a passerby. to exist vulnerably, to bare your heart to the world, and to really look at another with an open heart, is to strip them bare, naked. 

it is an illusion that approaching this world vulnerably means only wearing your heart on your own sleeve. the more you’ve allowed your heart to shine, its opening like a rising Sun coming to meet the world, the more others’ secrets are revealed to be in plain sight. they who do not lie to themselves cannot be lied to by another. to uncover the truth in your own heart is to have the truth of the whole as plain as day. even they who lie to another cannot lie, for they tell the truth of their own cowardice and fear. a lie is still a truth in this way, and they with an open heart can see this plain as day.

how can I “be loved” when I am love? how can I “love the whole” when all is love? love becomes a medium, a fluid to exist in, rather than something that permeates or fills another vessel. no, we’ve got that mixed up — love is not something that fills; rather, love is the vessel, the medium, the solvent in which we all exist.

sometimes I simply blink and then am awake, like that truth that always was re-appears, like I was sleep-walking and suddenly stir, like I was blind then suddenly see. a jolt to the system — oh, all really is love — oh, all really is sacred — oh, I do feel my heart lurch for every being I see, like suddenly the blindfold is taken off, how could I have not seen this before, the complexity and emotional gravitas each and every beating heart carries, epic tales carried in plain sight, their hearts like storybooks that empathy, love, universal compassion can allow to simply be opened by just… looking, and loving.

maybe optimism is realism because the reality is that without optimism how the fuck are you supposed to make it through the shitshow?

your love was the firmament’s crack

you relieved the weight on Atlas’s back

piercing the heavens, you opened a gash

it bled light and freedom.

any urge resembling self-destruction, any urge resembling self-harm and any and all corresponding actions, 

perhaps it is a desire for self-knowing. did I pierce my flesh, or was I attempting to pierce the barrier between me and my core? 

maybe I was done with the knee-jerk reactions to evading suffering. maybe one of the greatest forms of modern hypnosis is how we are trained to ignore our sorrow. does it always have to have a silver lining? does it always need to be for some higher purpose? does it always need a bright side, do we always have to run from it in some way or another? we don’t do the same with happiness. we don’t treat happiness like that at all. we don’t think of happiness as a stage leading to sorrow. no, we bask in it, cling to it, wrap ourselves in it like a blanket. happiness, the end; sorrow, the means. 

I say bullshit.

perhaps I was just trying something, anything at all, to give the suffering a voice, purpose, intrinsic worth. perhaps I was done evading it. maybe I needed to dive into the suffering and pain fully, rather than needing to run from it, and thus, myself.

so I pierced the veil and my pain bled, free at last, free at last. 

those who run from pain run from wisdom. those who run from suffering are condemned. in the sorrow I found truth. in what caused me pain, I found what my heart valued. I learned I suffered because of the ways in which I loved, and ignoring my pain was ignoring my capacity to love. putting the pain on pause was putting the love on pause, I learned they’re one and the same.

I learned I can “self-harm” beautifully, that instead of needing a literal act to spill forth my pain, I could penetrate the very core of my being with love’s razor. I learned nothing is more penetrative than love, and self-love meant letting myself hurt, cry, and express my pain. I learned a hand clasped over a mouth was the denial of love’s nourishment. I learned closed lips were a closed heart. I learned that those who resorted to a blade at the wrist were those who wouldn’t let themself cry it out. no, instead of the pain spilling from the eyes as water, as tears, instead it needed to spill from the veins as crimson. 

nothing is more piercing than love

I just wish I could have given you my best self. but I couldn’t. I guess the best self is something that exists like a memory within each of us. We know it’s there, because we were it, at a point. We were it in our childhood, we were it when we shone like the Sun, before the drapes closed through adolescence and into adulthood. It would be there, but then this would happen, and that would happen, and I’d get home, they’d break my heart in a million different ways time and time again, aches both radically acute and despairingly chronic, and I tried. I swear to God, I tried. But oh, I’m here now. I’m here now, and I made it. I finally have my own home, what I wanted for years and years as long as I can remember is finally here. and it really feels like the Sun has come back up, where I notice myself just being me. Just being me. The creativity has come back, just cause. The natural instinct to just create just cause is back. So much is returning. I am happy, that’s just who I am.

one who lives with a firm understanding of death is one who lives with a better relationship with fear. i think one who has a deep sense of the inevitability of death is one more likely to be free from fear. what is there to fear when we all die anyway?

one who has accepted death is one more likely to truly live. to know death is to know life. 

sometimes i feel like i’ve been too sheltered from death. sometimes i feel like a relationship with death is to develop a better sense of what’s truly important. death, the shedding of illusion. death, the drawing of the curtain. death, freedom. 

currently reading the handmaid’s tale. a novel of an oppressive regime that condemns so much of the human psyche to the shadows. living itself becomes narrower and narrower until all enter the confines of what is the acceptable path to walk, room enough for two to trudge shoulder to shoulder, none more.

the word taboo loses its meaning. how can it retain any definition when existing becomes like an iceberg? 1% exposed to the light, above the water, the other 99% submerged into the depths. that is the taboo. 

i dislike how death has become something resembling a taboo. i dislike our discomfort with death. i dislike our discomfort with aging. i dislike our attempts to hide from its realities. i dislike our desire to forget the fact that we do eventually die. when that awareness hits us, the fact that we and all of our loved ones will one day perish, we seek a distraction from the jolt of fear that hits our systems. but what is that jolt but the electric current that is awakening to a higher purpose? why cannot that jolt be channeled into purpose? why cannot that electricity be used to create a meaningful life, why do we run from that feeling that is the beginning of something beautiful that tells us what is truly important if we would just let it?

why do we hide signs of aging? ugh, the silliness. the silliness. the distaste i feel seeing older men and women doing everything they can to portray false signs of youth. I find it embarrassing, I feel secondhand embarrassment for them. why hide? why hide from reality? it seems childish to me. they hide from the wisdom of aging, donning false masks to claim a sense of worth. enough. 

i think this is one of the many ways in which death has become a taboo. we not only hide from the reality of mortality, we hide any visible sign that we are approaching death’s gateway. the closer one is to that gateway, the less relevant they feel, the less relevant they may be regarded. how completely and utterly foolish. 

be. real. give me realness or give me death. give me realness and death both. maybe they’re more similar than we’d otherwise think. perhaps there’s more wisdom to the adage “in death, all answers are revealed” than otherwise thought. 

who among us (amogus) is worthy?

really, truly, who among us (amogus) all can say they are worthy?

so oft do i oscillate between oceans of unconditional love for all, the innate worthiness intrinsic to having a beating heart at all, to the sense of how much we all miss the mark.

what is the mark?

oh, the mark is goodness, the mark is rightness. i’ve a sense that all that befalls us is of our own doing. i’ve a sense that we reap what we sow. i’ve a sense that the wrongness of the world, the depths we’ve descended to, were attained one misstep at a time. 

I’ve still the relentless optimist within who is grateful to have a sense of what the mark even is at all, for at least it’s a direction in which to move, even if that mark is a star in the heavens and i’ll forever be chasing the horizon on a horse.

I’ve still the open-hearted youth who thinks God knows how silly we all are, that forgiveness is the reaching out of the hand. We need not reach the very top of the staircase ourselves, all we have to do is reach our hand even a little bit to be rescued. 

I’ve the sense that those who pressure themself to be perfect in every way, judging and condemning themself, will attract failure as the humbling reminder that none can do it on their own. The desire to be perfect is a grasping of the ego. 

so many think that the prideful regard themself as already being perfect. this may be true, but I think that distinction is also held for those who want to be perfect, and who grow angry with themself for not being perfect. to think you could ever be perfect, to think you have the seeds of perfection in you, is also an act of the ego, is also an act of pride. 

no, we can never do this alone. to be ok with not being perfect is actually to be humble. yes, always strive to live and love the very best you can, but to be upset with yourself for not doing it perfectly is prideful, for are not the prideful the ones who think themself capable of perfection? self-punishment in some pseudo-martyrdom is not humility, it’s folly and pride to think you could ever be perfect, that your self-punishment is at all justified. why punish someone for not attaining the unattainable? 

who among us (amogus) is really worthy? the answer is none, and yet, we live on anyway, and maybe that’s beautiful. maybe, somehow, the gift of loving all of ourselves and all of the world despite its and despite our flaws and all of the ways we miss the mark is to claim something resembling “worthiness,” whatever that means

your light shone so brightly. I looked into the Sun, and the imprint is still an overlay atop my vision, interlaced with all things at which I look. informing, highlighting, sometimes obscuring, but always there. 

your afterimage remains, the ghost of you a stalking wraith.

all I know is that I feel a pressure, the well of self expression is beyond full, if I do not let my hands pour the water forth, I become waterlogged and heavy. If I do not pour it out, pour my heart out, the life blood that needs to be bled out in order to attain health, if it remains in me, then, somehow, all is empty. Yes, if I let the water remain, if I keep it inside, then somehow I am empty; and yet, when I let it be released, then and only then do I feel full, when I pour myself out to the world.