In Our Secret Life

In Our Secret Life
thanks to Leonard Cohen

In our secret life we are you. You fill us with wonder and awe. You make us one with you in our secret life. You see us as we are and still love us and we might see ourselves as you see us in our secret life. You guide and teach us how to be here in our secret life. Yet you let us discover for ourselves. You free us and we give ourselves in our secret life.

In my secret life our every break is mended, every injury healed, not because we are good or bad or anything in between, but because it is the fullness of the love you intended, from the first yes you uttered to thrill light to matter.

an opportunity to participate

Life is not about that which is commonly sought after but is an opportunity to participate in a unique yet universally available experience. Here we are with the innate yet generally ignored ability to sense the presence of the divine within ourselves and the whole creation and instead we chase after fame, fortune and power. We busily pursue the offerings of a man made world thereby losing the sense of mystery and awe which makes it possible for us to commune with the creator and the creation. Instead, we wind up worshipping the “reality” we make and thinking it is life.

We fall into a man made trap, the vanity of God made in our image. We fall into a pit dug by our arrogance, our conceit that the creation, the universe exists for our domination. The simple truth of our being born into a world over which we have little control and in which we could not survive except for the graciousness and self giving love of countless generations of ancestors is quickly forgotten if acknowledged at all.

Perhaps if we could envision the process wherein the one without ancestors poured self into the creation dividing and differentiating into everything that is, while remaining whole and present in every part of it, we could appreciate the magnitude of the gift we have by virtue of being alive, awake and aware.

And being aware of the gift of life and the presence of the one who is self giving love in ourselves and in each and every other being, we could relate to the divine mystery in each with clarity and wisdom born of the knowledge of our interdependent existence. Perhaps this is an awakening from the illusion of power over that upon which we are utterly dependent. Perhaps this is the humility which would allow us to relate to each other in terms of mutuality, common good and the welfare of all life. Perhaps this would quicken the light of love and compassion in everything known and unknown which is capable of such feeling and emotion. Perhaps we could learn to dwell here and from here.

Along the Seam

Along the seam which runs the length of the two halves of each of us, there is an itch as though from a scar. Small differences between the halves bespeak the asymmetrical development of the portions that comprise the whole. We do not gradually flow from state to state, mood to mood, feeling to feeling. Instead we sometimes stall or balk, leap ahead, fall back, progress and retreat, and once in awhile we are utterly transformed into a beauty and peace we are not always prepared to comprehend. These moments of disproportionate grace, uncalled for and arising out of a type of mystery we only glimpse at the periphery of the senses, give us the hope (or is it courage) to follow the spirit’s leading.

Some follow an intuition which is far more profound that a hunch. We are listening and looking for signs and miracles from the deepest places within our personal universes for what attracts our whole being in subtle and consistent ways. Even long after we have walled ourselves off from one another and our true selves, what calls to us explores the crack and crannies of our walls and shells and masks with the implacability of root and tendril until we have exhausted our ability and desire to shore up the illusions of separateness we have created to protect ourselves from the truth.

When this happens and we choose to finally let go of all the blocks and self created illusions and explanations to which we cling, we discover a love, a compassion suffusing the whole creation. This love guides us to participate and cooperate in its unfolding in us and all the fields of being and consciousness. Space-time is love’s form entering into conscious communion with the mystery from which all life springs. We open ourselves and invite the spirit of wholeness, the holy spirit, the Beloved to resolve every paradox.