Rider on the Rays

image borrowed from bing

Rider on the Rays

“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze

with undimmed eyes on all darkness.”--Nikos Kazantzakis.

We are told,

               reminded,

                     instructed by the sages.

                                                shaman,

                                                philosophers & psychics

that the only true answers to all of life’s problems

are an inside job;        Go within, young man, 

                              while traveling West

or napping beneath a weeping willow,

                              that there should be/is a simplicity

                              to any level of enlightenment,

because Jehovah dwells inside us,

                                 connecting us        to the farthest reaches

of the most remote corners of the trillion universes;

moreover, We are God, we are entities of such immense power

& pure white light that we surely co-created this universe

with All-That-Is,    that we surely inhabit multi-dimensions

simultaneously,    that we are a soul who has a body, not

                                               a body who has a soul.

Awakening has many faces, many names in many languages;

bodhi, kensho, satori, moksha, kenosis, prajna,

           and yet even with this keen historical awareness

of divine Light,                 our perpetual journey toward it,

much of the time              dwells in the densest of darkness;

& this divergence, this dark side, this shadow with teeth,

plunges half the planet & half of us into its brutal blackness,

& too often, as today, can seem overwhelming;

             planes & ships disappearing into thin air,

             emboli escalating into a probable pandemic,

             Western youth being trained as terrorists by ISIS,

             zealous assassins beheading journalists, poking a 

sand dagger into the underbelly of the American wasp nest,

             daring & goading us to put our boots on their ground,

             kidnapping, raping young women in Africa,

                                            young boys being forced into

             homosexual servitude by imams & parish priests--

while dictators, demagogues & bullies trample on liberty &

ancient feuds in Palestine drench the Gaza strip in fresh blood,

                       never ending pods & factions of evil,

                       carcinogenic cruelty, pernicious greed,

                       wholesale slaughter of the innocents--

yet, when the din diminishes between murderous beats,

                       I can hear those tiny voices,

                like angelic crickets at midnight, calling

for each of us to be a Jina, 

                a liberated soul, but their lyrics

are drowned out by the demonic dissonance

like psychic jackhammers tearing at our exposed hearts,

                blurring the message--  save the whales,

                                                               the oceans

                                                               the planet

                our very souls--conjure the white light,

                bring the healing, salve the wounds,

                pierce the onerous darkness;

while most of us, tears streaming, heads spinning

walk the tightrope between the extremes,

              tracing the lines between Yin & Yang,

              trying tenaciously to keep our balance,

              creating the illusion of safety,

even as the tired rope begins to untwine,

the dangerous darkness billows beneath our feet.

              and the Light 

              seems to grow dimmer

              & more distant.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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