THE CLOSET MYSTIC

stolen my breath?

no —

this sensation of being captured, enraptured, consumed wholly and totally by the electricity of bearing witness to the work of art that is your soul —

it is like being given something greater than breath. you’ve NOT stolen my breath — rather, it’s as if I can breathe for the first time, as if I’ve taken a full and complete breath for the very first time in all of my days. you’ve filled my lungs with something better and greater than breath itself, and oh, now that I’ve seen, I long to never be without again, for a life without this is suffocation, asphyxiation, confinement and imprisonment.

23 years and perhaps I’ve just started living.

it’s like my eyes weren’t being used the way they were meant to until you blinked into focus, like my ears hadn’t ever listened to anything worth a damn until I heard you profess your dreams and aspirations. 

what else can I do but believe? what else can I do but believe in happy endings? what else can I do but believe in true love, a forever after, and in the ultimate power of the higher and greater good? I think belief is a choice, I think belief is a houseguest we can allow into our heart if we’d answer its knocking and let it make itself at home.  I hope to make my heart a place hospitable to belief, to love, to hope, to faith, to kindness, to forgiveness, to all of these beauties that are emanations of light. I believe virtue is each striation of the splitting of the rainbow. I believe virtue is each color, each flavor, each wavelength of the whole spectrum contained in the brilliant white light. 

…

but, really, what else can I do? time and time again I’m reminded that we live not by bread alone, and if I am without belief, if I am without love, if I am without hope, then my heart, my spirit, my soul starve.

I’ve learned that we never starve for these things due to famine, nor due to scarcity, but due to their refusal, like petulant toddlers with pursed lips. these nutrients of the soul are more abundant than matter itself. we need only open our hands and our hearts to receive.

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.

“I am, I am, I am.”

The Bell Jar, pg. 243

and perhaps these feelings were meant to remain secret,

a treasure held in my chest.

but they’re stirred, 

for I see the treasure in yours,

and lost in your heart am I.

your delicate vulnerability 

reduces me

dissolves me 

from what I am not

to what I am.

what does this teach you about strength?

you’ve pinned me into submission 

with the soft surrender of your heart.

i want you to believe in yourself

this inexplicable, urgent need

to protect a heart like yours.

i don’t even need to have you

i only need see you —

and i do —

really see you.

for feeling is seeing when it comes to matters of the heart 

and I see what you feel

feel what you feel

and it is beautiful.

never let anyone convince you otherwise.

never stop caring. 

you are a jewel in these coal mines.

and here’s what I learned:

physicality and is all that is touched by our five senses — our five most basic senses — are like a curtain waiting to be drawn back, waiting to reveal its mysteries, eager and dying for an ear to whisper its secrets into. 

the only way to peer behind the curtain and to see what lays behind the omnipresent door is to look inward, inward, inward. the secrets within are the secrets without, and to live in the know is to know what it is like to truly live.

so, go ahead, get lost. get lost in yourself, for it’s been said that those who seek are never lost. to look inward and to discover your heart is to discover the gilded orb that is the Self, the center of your own personal Solar System. It is to discover the golden thread to lead you through the labyrinth of life. It is to live a life that is art, and to know that all art is life. It is to discover the inner palette, to take the brush, and to paint. 

so, what are we to do but look closer? I cannot stand it. I cannot stand another second looking at the dust that’s gathered over the higher faculties, that which reconciles the spiritual and secular, that which is both and that which is neither.

how can we be so blind? how can we fail to see the world, how can we fail to see the miracle, how can we fail to see the grace, the mystery, the beauty, again I ask, how can we fail to see the miracle? simply take a look around. look not just with your eyes, but with your heart. feel. breathe. breathe in the fucking air, don’t be afraid to fucking care. 

break free from the condemnation of a perpetual groundhog day.

for once, please, for once, would you just let your heart have a say?

and then,

I looked skyward,

and knew that was where I belonged.

though my body is flightless, my spirit is not.

the whole of the heavens and of the earth,

and the whole of the animal kingdom,

and all that it is worth,

exists in the hearts of every man and every woman.

that potential is like a caged bird,

and the opening of the heart

is the spreading of its wings,

its freedom.

how funny is it 

how one can live 

day, after day, after day,

without truly seeing…

and, today, as the eye of the sky blinked open,

with the Sun, its brilliant pupil, glaring down from the heavens,

so too were my eyes truly opened,

for the first time. 

I learned that fear is the shutting of the eye,

and wonder

is its opening.

I learned of the sights that await

when we simply

awake

the real charm of The Bell Jar lies entirely in this scene, where Esther sees Buddy naked for the first time, and these are her thoughts:

“Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.“

…

on a more serious note, this passage struck me earlier today:

“But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”

The Bell Jar, pg. 147

there is a shroud, a veil, cast over modern man — a blindfold shared by all, a curtain between us and the celestial, a firmament of obscurity, entirely of our own creation, inheritable, hereditary, passed down by near every lineage —

to realize the self is to realize the universe. to stargaze is to learn of the origins of humanity, for we are the progeny of the stars, the offspring of the heavens.

how blind can we be! how can the magic be right before us, permeating us, animating us, within us — it is us — and yet, be unbeknownst to us? 

this world needs a spiritual renaissance. no, our spiritual sensibilities never disappeared — they merely lay dormant, hibernating. our luminous eye never disappeared — no, it is merely closed, to be opened once again if we should wish. 

what is spiritual living? oh, my dear, it is but a life lived in wonder! it is but a life lived in joy, in the virtues of the heart. I see spiritual living in the dissolution of disillusionment, that is, the dissolution of the supposed barrier, illusory in nature, between us and all of nature — not just nature below, Mother Nature, but also the whole of the cosmos. it is disillusionment that is liberation. to eradicate the barrier between us and the grandeur of the whole of creation is to reclaim the grandeur of all men and women. it is the reclamation of our own potential, for to look skyward is to live skyward. 

it is both utmost humility and starlike radiance. it is to recognize that we are of both dirt and stardust. we are both star and dust. we are Earth and ether. it is the making of amends with ourselves, with our benefactor, the whole of Creation. it is the recognition that the greatest anthropomorphic projection is the supposition that the cosmos is inanimate, and the recognition that the greatest act of hubris is that we are the sole source of meaning and awareness, all better put perhaps by Richard Tarnas:

“Perhaps this complete voiding of the cosmos, this absolute privileging of the human, is the ultimate act of anthropocentric projection, the most subtle yet prodigious form of human self-aggrandizement. Perhaps the modern mind has been projecting soullessness and mindlessness on a cosmic scale, systematically filtering and eliciting all data according to its self-elevating assumptions at the very moment we believed we were ‘cleansing’ our minds of  ‘distortions.’ Have we been living in a self-produced bubble of cosmic isolation? Perhaps the very attempt to de-anthropomorphize reality in such an absolute and simplistic manner is itself a supremely anthropocentric act.”

Excerpt from Cosmos and Psyche, Richard Tarnas

belt around 1:07 lol

and i wish i could tell you that i did it. i wish i could tell you that i did it, that i made it happen. i wish i could tell you that i did everything i said i would and perhaps more, that i never stopped. i never missed a day. i wish i could tell you that i can count on one hand the days that i didn’t run at least a couple of miles the past year; i wish i can tell you that i’ve now meditated everyday for about one year. i wish i could tell you that i got promoted, that i pulled straight A’s my first semester at university, that i’ve fostered beautiful friendships. i wish i could tell you that i worked for it, and that i now live alone in my own home. i wish i could tell you. i wish i could tell you i never stopped reading nearly daily, a bug you, you, you infected me with, and i thank you. i wish i could tell you that people do change, i wish i could tell you that i never, ever, ever quit. i wish i could tell you it all, wish i could show you.

but none of this was for you, i suppose. you were a catalyst, yes. in some ways a teacher, yes. but none of this happened for you. i thank you, but i didn’t do it for you. i will continue to shape myself into the man that i am meant to be, for many people — the personal project that is myself is done for many. it’s done for my mom, whose pulse, the very beating of her heart, is tied to my welfare. it’s done for my father, who wants me to outdo him. it’s tied to my sister, who needs a positive role model in her life, someone to give her hope. it’s tied to my brother, who maybe just wants reassurance that he didn’t fuck me up too bad LOL. it’s tied to my future clients who will benefit directly from the work i put in now. it’s tied to my friends, who are my team in this life. it’s tied to my relationship with God, who gives me hope, love, and refuge on a level that transcends human understanding.

so, no. none of this was for you. still, yet: i wish i could show you. i wish i could tell you: i did it. i wish i could tell you that when i told you i was set to move out by the end of the year, that i did it. i wish i could tell you it all. but i can’t, i won’t, and we’re done. and that’s life