open gates

You are standing at a gate. Apparently an ordinary garden gate. Strands of ivy have combed its edges. Dark shadows obscure its threshold. Its form is uncertain, my sight is blurry. Bricks, seaweed, a dreaming, or your fate? You have been here before, perhaps after birth. The gate was ajar and opened to no thing at all. Your gaze lacked focus, was in no hurry to focus. You were held up to a mirror and was told, This is you, this is us, and that is the world. This is confusing when you come from no thing at all. When you sense yourself as being and being no thing at all. But you see the eyes of others, which helps you find your way. You learn from the world’s blame and praise, its endless desire. And yes, you become well in-formed, find adequate names Insatiable desire. It’s best to forget about that first open gate. The world is what you know, its forests, sorrows, burrows, and concepts. Its merciless joy and its relentless living. Its overwhelming love and inexplicable beauty. The world is what you know and yet what is this love? Why me, why them, why us and why does it all vanish in sleep? You begin looking for gates behind which might bloom answers. The tent flap you crawl through to lie down with your lover. The hallway you cross for your first college class. That lone flight across the Atlantic with no one waiting for you at the exit. The door to the sanctuary that closes in silence. The mystery eludes and embraces with the unbearable tenderness of your being. But here you are standing at that first gate again. The world sprawls behind you and you yearn to turn back to its sure certainty. You stand at the edge of a void, you can see this. You can see that as you stand there the void wills A reality that is no other than you, That is free and creative. You see now that you have always been at this edge And that there really is no world with well-defined blooms But for the void that wills and creates right in this astonishing moment Where you are. What are you going to do but surrender all that is familiar and leap? It is safe on the other side and there is no other side. The gate has always been gate-less. You forget your own name and sweet image. You leave behind all that is known including your cherished beliefs. Who goes through the gate-less gate? There is something that is. Something that is aware. Something that is at once stillness and moving. This is enough to live by, dear friend. Leave behind all qualifications: It is not so hard. But what is one to do with so much freedom? When there is no structure, no sense of a separate self, No woman no writer no friend no role. No nationality no borders no limits? Freedom loves itself alone and celebrates all that is. One loves. What happened in the first nanoseconds of the universe, Before photons illuminated its expanding body? What awesome beauty flickered in the openness of reality, awareness? We drop into singularity and blast out again. Dark and light without any discernment. Birds and trees but no seeing. Just this love, just this love, just this love.

credit: annie spratt | unsplash