I will not shrink from that battlefield
where the heat of longing meets
the chill of dread,
where cold steel fingers,
sharp filaments of fear,
wrap tight my heart and
squeeze.

No, I will not.

I will instead,
fan the fire,
my Soul’s desire
to free forever
the fledgling wings
that flutter wildly
beneath my ribs.

Hope is feathered
but often flightless,
anchored to earth by
the gravity of neglect,
shivering in exile.

But now I warm it
within that chamber
where fire meets ice
where light meets shadow
and diamonds are formed
in the press of pain.

In that crucible
where the alchemy of Soul
turns lead to gold
and magic and miracles
meet the illusion of suffering
in Divine dissolution-
the prodigal child
clasped tight in homecoming.

All soul fragments
all slivers of myself
once rejected
flung far and wide
into pitiless dark,
called back to me now,
full in their flowering
come laden with learning,
and bright with blessings.

We are but an Aspen tree.

The meaning of life?
I think there’s seven billion meanings on this planet.
I don’t believe truth is fixed, but rests on shifting sands.
We move on a dynamic travelator,
stop every now and then, look around,
the view is different and so then is our perspective.
Where we came from may now
have no bearing on our new truth.

For some of those billions,
unfortunately,
life is narrowed to survival.
One mouthful of rice at a time.

For some it means yet another corporate rung
to haul one-self up on.

Others may measure their meaning in the drip, drip, drip of chemo,
in the tic, tic, toc
of how many days they have left.

Meaning might come from the children of our loins
or our imagination,
as we paint, sculpt and scribble
our offspring into being
and send them into the world
with high hopes.

I find meaning in recognising the Buddha in all of nature,
you however, might call this Jesus or Krishna,
in the end our meaning may very well be the same,
just a small difference in semantics after all,
one that has killed thousands in holy wars.

Can we say there is an ultimate meaning,
a one size fits all approach?
This has proven a dangerous philosophy.

I will be brave, however, and say,
that mine would be that we are all one entity,
it may appear that we are separate
in bodies that are contained by skin,
my skin, your skin,
but we have electromagnetic fields
that radiate out around us
and connect us intimately with others,
and, in fact, with everything in our the world.

We are part of one continuous invisible field of energy .

Quantum physics questions the belief in duality
and skin- boundary assumption
and poses that energy can be both wave and particle.

Could we be one as well as One?

Like the Aspen grove, which looks like discrete trees,
clearly demarcated from each other in their own skins of bark and leaf,
we are similarly connected as one being,
they by their their underground root system which is one root ball,
each leaf sharing the same dna,
the Aspen grove covers many square miles
but the whole grove is one tree.
We by the energetic tapestry of life/light/particles/waves.

I believe our hearts, no matter where we are from,
what culture, what country,
yearn for the same things, love, peace, prosperity,
community, connection, spiritual meaning, acceptance.

In this way we are more similar than different.
I think this is the pulse, the glow, the electricity,
the heat that holds that quantum field of connection together.
I believe that when we finally realise this as a global collective,
not just intellectually,
but when we feel the truth of our sameness
sinking into our hearts and settling there,
we will be saved forever from ourselves.