Trouble

Trouble now

however subtle

within ourselves, mirrored in the world, whether we see it, or no.

every moment, a subtle pull, an urge for a scratch

intimate with life and being

vanished momentarily by a kiss, a wonder, a gift

later returning

Distraction calls a sirens call away from now, this moment.

Anger flares reality intrudes against pleasure and control,

only to fall victim to itself and extinguished.

the self, forever arising like the sun bringing movement and furry coming not even to peace, it eats the world and our lives running from the trouble that is waiting.

surrender to this trouble it is the doorway that leads to what I do not know,

It may be heaven and god, or hell and suffering, or simply

beyond words or concepts, really no choice, so go forward, and perhaps, see.

Peace or enlightenment, is not the absence of trouble but moment by moment,

greeting it as family, that came, for cup o coffee.

Non-Linear Trajectory

I like to pretend I’m in control

That I know what is happening

and where I this will all end

I’m so gratefull that this insanity

is not constant, today.

Now humbly with pain

I can be sunedered

from some of my ego

remembering that I

Will go whither I am thrown

And that my only choices

Are subtle, and lovely.

This Sadness

Like a heavy stone lid, thick dark and obfuscating

Its appears to rest grave upon your brow

Heavy and painful in the dawn light of life

I imagine a sarcophagus sealing not death, but life

The waters of darkness become grief fluid

Always this mystery of life from death

Unknown gifts await those who are willing

To risk the plunge into an unimagined future

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Rejecting Local Realisim

Always this reluctance

To attempt the impossible

Washing away our mingled scent and essence

Your molecules deep in my being

Coming into orbit in my soul

There is a resonance in our fields

So exquisite it hurts, this connection of

Karma and love calling inseparable

Incessantly demanding surrender

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Silence so Loud

I’m quiet in some mute way

I feel deaf to the madness that

Dominated “me” for so long

It speaks quietly now in my heart

Calling me towards others suffering

As well as my own past, an opening of heart

To a unknown vulnerability I had suspected

Lay in wait, within the labyrinthine paths of soul.

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Grasping And Aversion

Grasping And Aversion

We all know these actions of the ego,
Which seems so inseparable from the self
Without detachment & awareness.

Pain is at the heart of both in the end
For me.

I slowly come to trust in the path
Beneath my feet

Somehow I find compassion within my heart

Natural Buddha nature, unsought, awakens.

Letting go of judgment, hope, and fear

I practice to abide, gently, in the world
As together, we breathe

Past & Future

I’m so scared to be alone, not in the moment, but in the future. The future scares me. I think it scares us all. I can be calm, here, in the light of the campfire of the now, in the dark I wander lost between the inviolate moonscapes of the past and the twinkling star glimmers shining, bringing me my future in their dying light, long extinguished, far away.

Relating

I can see that when speaking of my anger or disappointment with relationships is very hard for me. Particularly when there is an actual depth of feeling. I seem to be unable to tolerate different opinions or experiences or even explanations.

What I really want at these times is abject submission or apology.

There is a feeling as if I have to be treated as I treated my parents.

All these feeling of shame and hurt come up that I could not express as a child. I instead internalized. I made myself wrong, bad, shameful and perhaps this happened because of some messages I received as a child.

I never guessed that I caused my parents harm. I never imagined that they were capable of feeling hurt. I guess that I always assumed that they were invulnerable and uncaring. I guess that’s how I had to see them in relation to how I felt hurt by them.

Yet at some point after leaving home, I left these feelings of pain somewhere outside of me. Not so far, evidently, because I can see that they come up rather quickly, in any intimate relating with another.

I really liked meeting with K, She seems like a good fit, perhaps better than many I have had in the past. I think I will stick with K, I like her, she is sweet and kind and a bit tough, a good mix for me.

Sunday night. what a painful day. I really miss ____ allot. I miss her and know the relating was a long way from deep at the end, but she soothed me and I miss that. I also love her and I’m quite sad.

I also am so scared, I don’t know what’s going to unfold, sometimes I have hope and optimism and other times I fell so dark and hurt and angry I just want to die and even hurt people I feel have hurt me. I understand my suicidal thoughts are linked to my parents and my anger at and with them for ignoring me and letting me get hurt by others.I also want to continue to keep my focus on my recovery as well as abstinence, for as long and much as possible.

Today

I wonder at my writing here again. Looking for attention or approval?

Can it be something more or less

Reaching out in my humanity for some subtle connection of community or humanity

I don't know why, and i can stop the thinking, for now.

I am grateful for everything, even though it is really just not fighting what is,

gratitude as surrender to this constantly shifting experience.

On moment happy, the next crying, learning to let go of all ideas of "what's right".

This simply is. All the joy and suffering, mine and the worlds.

It is, I am. somehow willing to submit to this now

instead of the violent self hating that is resistance to "this".

I can love what is, if only moment by moment.

as rumi says

Say yes,

Quickly.

A difficult new Year

I don’t know,
I think it’s a new year
For someone, somewhere, perhaps a whole tribe or nation
This mental illness, depression, anger and self-recrimination
I just hurt. I’m tired of it. I miss her. All the time knowing
There were two sides to the pattern, it takes two to dance.
And I miss having my love hate partner, no moon to my sun
I walk the sky and the earth alone, just watching,
Holding my vow of silence to not pursue her.

Writing is a salvation. As well as sitting and crying
Talking to friends, knowing I am not the only one alone
Or sad, grasping at what small beautiful gems of joy
And brilliance I find throughout the day
Now I find myself going to work and the anxiety
And desperation of doing a good job and not
Breaking down in front of strangers
Will fill my day, and I am grateful for this.Next breath

Monday Morning writing practice

Monday Morning 7:30

I awake from dreaming I am coming to you
Not the you of my soul, myself, but my confusion and pain.
I spent the last year there, perhaps lifetimes in chaos
Avoiding the harder work of just being present with myself now.

So I return to this practice of being, each breath, this one.
So many, many thoughts, all embraced, all released
Like all my loves, held too long, never truly met
Wanting some person or idea to take care of me
As if anyone, can offer ground to even themselves.

This joy of pain, this tender surrender to suffering
The destruction of all the past. It has only brought me
To this morning, so full of gratitude for the beauty
Outside my door, within my heart, all the love
I heave received, and given onward, away.

sunday morning

Slept better last night, many dis-jointed dreams
Skating on my sneakers on the city streets (even uphill!) why cops cruise by uninterested
While great rains flooded many neighborhoods as echoes of Katrina resonate. I see cars sliding and SUV’s drowning in great watery pits like strange alien beasts come to play but over their heads just headlights floating to the surface un answered pleas for succor.
Picking up laundry and receiving strange coins in exchange, I wonder at these strange
coins and haggle for some saint’s medal from a strange meditrainan city, I seem to recall
visiting long ago. Seeing old friends and working together the dreams leave me slightly
More connected to my life and sense of self yet also strangely anxious in my solar plexus as I awaken to the silence in the house and the seemingly noisy Sunday morning traffic which is actually so quiet in comparison and energy to the rest of the week.

I did the Body scan meditation from the book, still strangely aware of my solar –plexus. Some shamans consider this area to be the center of personal power, and I guess I have a great deal to learn about that, it’s certainly the most alive area in my body, I don’t know what it means, or how to feed it, yet is actually seems alive and very powerful.

It’s interesting being celibate, I play with it from time to time, yet now, it seems more serious, as if a goal, or an exploration. My personal energy has usually been focused sexually, and this shift towards holding it appears to awaken some unlooked for gift or shift which will take time to investigate and watch unfold.

Thoughts continue to move in habitual patterns that have brought nothing but suffering in the past. I am awake to this yet feel almost groundless in living into a different life.

Very much enjoying Reading the Myth of Freedom and seeing my own spiritual materialism and finding relief in just being here, in this moment, house, body, life.

More of this

Fuck me.

I’m so god dammed angry
I hate that life returns me to this place
Again and again I come back to this failure
Of wanting something different, happiness outside.

I’m so tired of blaming myself
for these repeated mistakes
If I actually had a sense of choosing,
that would be an improvement.

Yet i can remember such a moment
at least in this pain, a thought on the first
night, this is going to hurt later,
I had no idea.

Yet that’s not here now, only this frustration
and anger at my life and existence
I’m not even motivated to do anything,
just seethe like a child, wishing I were absent

This is a comfortable place of anger,
a tight knot of self-hate that is furnished with
Self-judgment and condemnation.

Cetian Moon

Dark cold-water caries the Cetians call well

Grief and loss resonates in these depths

Of being so easily surfacing in solitude

Family life, community and society give us

Artificial buoyancy that is lost when in the grasp of

Luna driven seas within us moves us in its rhythms, old sure

Ebb and flow of life is dominant in these gentle depths.

Just this fuckin feeling again.

Grief and rage, grief and rage
No longer at anyone, it feels impudent without a target
Cruising aimlessly this shallow breathed anxiety without fear

The fear awoke and when met, left,
I thought in peace, but no, it is not that easy
Slowly growing disease flowers suddenly into anger
Leaving me feeling guilty and miserable in moments

Then peace. When greeted, perhaps not with open arms,
Yet not ignored or suppressed, these feelings shift
And my psychotic experiences evaporate suddenly in
Normalized blood sugar and I can find grace again here.

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Everything falls away
All my fantasies
Identities
Knowledge gone.
The grief is the last to go
Then silence

Many Pieces

Many pieces make up a story
What happened is the easy part
Seeing how they fit together is difficult
In the attempt to find truth one may wander
And end up searching for fragments
In the light of the moment, when we may have dropped them
Long and far away upon an emotion darkened plain
And we may ask is it worth the journey to seek a clue
To an answer that may be found, but implementation
Obliterates all traces of the question.
Any story is but a collection of parts that are found
What do we find here, in this silence, between the pages of a book?
Or the sheets of our soul?

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Peace (& quiet) or quiet in peace

Peace (and quiet)

There is peace in this house
As I cook dinner in the silence
Reading to myself, I listen:
The stove murmurs to the rice
Vegetables wait for the chef’s knife
My stomach aspiring to be sated

There is more here than that
There is years of yearning
In passion & rage; grief & ecstasy
To be here, silently within myself
No longer angry with the invited guest
Who has left the home, yet entered the heart.

Today

I'm coming along, this being alone is challenging. When i look within, to express what i want, there is a very strong, core desire for mothering. It brings me to my very sensitive edge of feeling feminine within myself, and perhaps my violence toward that woman. My disregard and rejection of the one within that could heal me. As if within the heart of every father is a mother. I see how quickly i conceptualize this. To "mother" nurture, embrace, suckle and sacrifice the "masculine ego" for the process of the child, of growth, of unfolding compassion with myself, here, today is my path. . .

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Waking Up

Waking up

I wonder how to spend this day
All my ideas of it unknowingly spent
Within a framework of plans
I sacrifice my imagination
What would it be like?
To live it even a bit more
Consciously aware, alive
In every moment of the activities
Of this day.

I often wonder if I need to eat so much
My stomach often feels full of last night’s dinner
Or perhaps yesterday’s activities undigested
As I think about breakfast
The habits of consumption
Whiter my thoughts or food
Point to my discomfort
To live the emptiness that
I glimpse I am.

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Slowing Down

Just less movement, perhaps less violence, a little space opening up
Between the Thoughts, Feelings, And Ideas. I write of compassion
Or the gentle softness natural to the human heart.
Overlooked in a rush to judge, protect and criticize.
There is a beautiful clear seeing that
Is graceful and poignant, So we realize, if we are honest with ourselves that
We really have no choice what is revealed
Sometimes in the midst of grief and sorrow there is joy and freedom
We are deeply challenged to surrender our ideas of what is happening
Who we are, and what is true, when for a moment, day or hour, we
Can just be OK in whatever is happening and participate in the beauty of the world amidst the suffering, there is such quiet beauty, grace and joy.
In gratitude we naturally share that
With you, everyone, everything.

a different

morning offering

wcw

Not Knowing

I don't know what to say.

I'm a bit confused.

I love you, I know that.

I have for a long time.

I don't know what that means though

Before, i always had a story to tell

Some fabulous future to run towards

Perhaps grow tired of not reaching.

Or,

appreciating a "Now" that slowly grows stale

Like a garden without imaganation.

This ache is the result of many beatings

self administered, like injections

By some crazed junkie.

So for truth, for any knowing to come

I have to be quiet, or at least try to be still

In my murmurings, I will write myself sane

Knowing your there, on your own journey

Shining brighter each day

We burn.

Life

When touched I usually run
Especially when I think I hurt
Before I even know if it does
I’m running away from life

Trying to slow the reaction down
I breathe through a throat grown tight
Into a chest frozen with fear of unease
opaque over decades of cold facts

However the sun is warm, & I have many chances
Every day to go out and thaw, a little at a time
This ice that has grown around my heart
The fire there is warm, in an icehouse
I once called love, I know now, simply is.

...

...

The Mirror

I’m always scrying
For the past or the future
Never looking into this moment
I miss my life

The past pulls with such violence
My own anger at others
Reflected rage at myself
Internalized rejection of a child
Grown into destructive patterns in the world
This gut wrenching grief
Again and again
Releasing into Joy?

I don’t know
I’m too confused
Just grateful for some movement
The constipation of suffering
Finally beginning to loosen
In the grace given rain of compassion

This Mourning depression

This Mourning depression

The perceived absence of life

Another gray day in purgatory

I know it is far from the hell most live in

I step into the role of torturer

So quickly, gracefully even

I raise the flail and strike harshly in offering to this pain It seems god has given me to awake from.

“You are alone, no-one loves you, you will die here, alone, by my hand miserable”

As I gasp and sob my first morning breaths, wondering whether to call for help

I despair to ever be free from this silly, contrived prison of depression, antique pain and

Antiquated fantasies of suicide that are a habitual response to solitude.

As I cry my anger of being alone, I attempt to lower the nexus of the sobs

Deepen the pitch of my own pain to something appropriate to a man almost 50

Yet as I stop resisting my feelings, they shift and the sodden gray day

Lightens to tarnished silver that I might, somehow polish.

WCW

all rights reserved

Ohh Mommy

Why did you leave Me?

How dare you ?

When you were not even barely here?

I’m so fucking mad.

All this emptiness is your absence

Dad’s was minor by comparison.

I’m tired of forgiving you, being understanding.

Fuck your career. You children need you

Not some therapy or concepts of growth or healing

Leave your anger with dad there and embrace your children.

I know that you can’t. And I grieve that as well.

Always this rage that I am the victim of a victim of a victim

That was the perpetrator. Where else but here now

Can I end this horrid fucking chain of grief?

I just want it all to die

Now.

Be over. Be accepted. Be healed.

Embraced finally as god. Or fact.

An opportunity just to be with this heartbreak

The one at the beginning, in the garden

From our mother

The earth.

all rights reserved

copyright ward c williams

The Bell

The Bell

Ring the bell
It’s an invitation,

he said,

You rang it in beauty, your nature revealed.

Now I invite the bell to reveal what is:

My heart torn asunder.
I stumble as I attempt to prostrate myself
In surrender to this emptiness, broken sobs,
Vomit out of a choked throat. Nothing,
Never anything, but this, but this
Empty essence.

Desire and Aversion have ruined me
I want only refuge in you.
But that is not here she says
Go back, go back,

Ring the bell Die to this

Die to this.


7/23/2007

Fire

This crucible only makes gold

Yes, I have silver and copper

In abundance the market is full of tin.

But here, only gold, is made.

Again and again it is refined mercilessly

Releasing all that is impure, and untrue

Why do I complain, I am only being improved

By the merciless hand that I love.

Only Peace

Only Peace

Within this storm of emotion

There is a quiet center

only I can’t find it always

it’s sometimes enough

to know it is there

amidst the chaos of feeling

swiftly the falcon’s gyere

as the beast slouches along

Trying too hard,

I fall away

from what is

That I Love,

not because I am good,

or even that it is true,

well,

maybe,

because it’s true

And I need that

In this storm

of illusion

Another Step

Another Step

This dawn endlessly breaking across the world

Apparently discrete moments, connected endlessly

Who gives? What receives? What is Aware of this movement?

Prayers offered and received

The dreaming of splintered god

Breathing

Inspired

Released

Trying to hard to be pretty

I endin a mess. Just like everyone I judge

Phony, full of shit. dishonest

I’m just as fucked up as the rest;

The old man, the generals and greedy petty fools I despise

Or pretend to love as myself

Well maybe that’s real enough

I’m confused, just like the rest of us

Living here with the dying that go’s on and on

Secretly hoping for some new life

that redeams this experience

Wanting other people or myself to be different is hell.

Yet difficult to live in surrender. I constantly want to help or change what is.

Often I blame myself for wanting it to be different. This is yet another form or strategy of the mind to help my “spiritual awakening” My mind allies itself with my goal; to have a better experience than I am having. The result is frustration and contempt.

This morning I drempt of effort-ing. Sometimes others were assisting me and there was a feeling of being supported. The dreams shifted to more solitary work and there were unknown adversaries and dangers as well as dis-ease in the dreams. I ended up trying to deliver something to suspicious people who did not accept the delivery before the dream ended.

In none of the dreams was there any clear completion or attainment.

Being in relationship seems to be predicated upon my relationship with myself. If my sense of grounding is absent then I am going to be problematic in my relating.


So the question or Challenge is:

How do I embrace my “Shadow”?

Fist, I can only do it now.

Second it is a practice or a process of

Looking at what I resent, repress and avoid

Third, It is embracing what I Despise, Judge or have Contempt for.

Really that is it. I just have to hang in here one day at a time,

Day after day with what is both beautiful and horrific

Until all preferences loose any belief.

One moment, one sensation, one thought and blessing at a time.

I am seeing

How I treat others,

To be what we want,

Is exactly how i treat myself,

(As well as others)

Rather than seeing

What is happening,

Is not to be "helped"

By beating myself.

No matter what.

Dr. King

I have been to the mountaintop

Truly I was born there

We all were.

In the true light

Of being

We are

Connected

A Present

Every moment; A present waiting for you

Accept it?

Without Surrender

experience it’s wonder

Again,

Now,

You are offered another

What is this unwrapping you?

Your thoughts, hopes and dreams,

Even cherished beliefs given

(Surrendered) to this present

All lies, especially the most dear,

That yours,

Or mine

Is a separate life.