The Gift of Pain & Darkness

May you get back what you have given,

so you truly understand,

that you are the giver – and the taker,

no matter whose hands are involved.

May your ‘I’ dash against Reality,

so you see, it is a part of ‘we’.

May you see the vaster picture – the true picture

And realise, what you see has to do with

blinkers you wear – or don’t.

Let them rise – the stinging scorpions,

the hissing serpents, the crawling lizards,

so you know the night is more than

moonlight on waves.

May you look beyond magenta nights

and turquoise noons, to see other hues.

May the dazzle of light

that blinds you to true vision become dim.

May you travel far into the deep blue hollows

of the dark night of your soul.

Stay there till your eyes are cleared

of the dazzle of half-vision.

May you learn to see whole.

Then rise again into a new dawn.

May you experience times when

you neither seek nor strive,

dazzle nor shine,

but retreat and reflect.

May the gift of hibernation

where the cocooned self withdraws

to grow its wings, come to you.

Not all falls are curses.

If you learn the lesson of darkness,

you begin to see the fireflies,

because you haven’t

closed your eyes too long

And you haven’t let tears

blind you from seeing the truth.

The gifts of darkness

are not seen by ordinary eyes,

they are whispered to your heart.

They are not tangible as gold and silver,

but are as real. More so.

May you grow into your own power –

The power to hold without having,

to experience with wanting – or resisting.

May you be free of the tyranny of desire,

and become a master of your slippery mind.

May you know that

in the landscape of the soul,

the valleys are as precious and

necessary as the mountains.

That mountains can only exist

because there are valleys.

May you absorb the silence of the valley,

so you sing the song of the mountain

in its glory.

Do sighs overwhelm you?

May you know the secrets of breath

while it still flows through you.

May you learn how

the patterns of life are knitted

into its rhythm.

May you see the criss-cross of Life

as it beats in your heart

and expands into your life,

how the whispers of your breath

become the orchestra of your life.

Do your limbs become heavy and

your heart a wound, from betrayal and loss?

Gifts come like this too!

For how else could you know?

The lesson of life is in its living.

If words alone could teach,

scriptures would not have drowned in blood.

Life speaks through life,

so you understand.

May you learn to listen to your cells

as they speak –

pain and ecstasy are some of the colours

the soul inks upon cells.

Read them carefully.

Do your hands tremble from the pain

they cannot hold?

May you open to the mysterious paths within you!

May your rocks dissolve and

Life’s majestic flow find its way

through the channels that lie within you.

If a surge breaks a stubborn mould

that blocks the Light, so be it.

May the pain free you from the smallness,

you have made your own.

May you take back your power

Power you frittered away over smallness.

All is small before the truth of your soul.

May the truth dawn upon you

and give you unto yourself.