One person
Tells me
It is in your heart
To find grace
Another one
Tells me
It is in your mind
To hide that face

That is when I look
To my conscience
Telling me right from right
As you can never tell
When you are denying
Everyone your best
Heaven will come to you
If you fall in line with Hell

Existence is the center
The present is the deep ocean
Where you may lose
Where you may win
It is in all of us
To be the worst
Yet, we choose our purest self
Right or wrong

I know I cannot trust the first
Be still my heart
As I do the necessary
The choice of yours
Gives my soul a voice
So, please do not do wrong
As I shan't choose to be right

It is my compassion
That stretches the imagination
If the love can grow
I will let it flower

God speaks to us in the language of our ancestors
We find truth in the lineage of our hearts,
and a new God is revealed,
from a unique truth
that is God’s expression through you.
Do you think the living God
would play the trickster god
to kneel before humanity’s god of fear?
Say you look like this,
but I look like that?
How could living be
but what you are
and you are always changing.
Living is forever
and forever
is never
the same.
Ever.
Think you know?
Then think two more times.
We know what we have passed aside.
Make way for your redeemer.
A newer version
of the completion
of the promise you made
when you promised
to seek the truth
no matter the cost
or pain.

And when you gaze upon the face,
the one you always knew was there
peering back at you,
Heaven’s gates spring wide
and hell’s fury feasts
on milk and honey saints.
Come now
and reason with me;
for fortunes,
and endings
and the whole **** web.

If you sit in silence
the God of your ancestors
will come to you -
if you want to see.
The living God is there to see
like trains passing on tracks
of inbound & outbound dreams.

Ask why before you die
Seek answers don’t just cry
Don’t just accept what people say
Resolve to find out the Truth today

Who are you and why are you here?
Why this birth? Who got you here?
Are you just meant to live and die?
Is there a purpose? Find out why

What is death, what is the end?
The body dies, it is just a bend
I never die, I will live on
But where will I go, will I be reborn?

Where is God and who is He?
Is it he or is it she?
I want to find where is heaven and hell
I am seeking answers, who will tell!

Am I the body, mind or Soul?
What is it that makes me whole?
Am I the ego, who says I?
I want to find out who am I

What is this thing called life?
So much joy and so much strife
Is it real or just a show?
Where we come and then we go?

Who created this earth, who created the sky?
Was it just a bang, oh my!
How could all this just come about?
There must be a Creator, there is no doubt!

Is there a law that keeps a track?
Whatever we do, it will come back
Or will we escape from all our sins?
And have no rewards for all our wins

What causes us to be happy and to be sad?
Is it true that desires are bad?
Can we be happy with joy and peace?
Removing cravings, the big disease

Is our mind our friend or foe?
Will it help us cross the shore?
Is it a monkey that makes us blink?
And does it make us in ignorance sink?

What exactly is the Soul?
Where is it, what is its role?
It is the energy that gives us breath
Without it, there would be death

Why should we ask so many questions?
Is it necessary to take all these lessons?
Or should we just laugh and have fun?
And spend our days till life is done

If we don’t find the real Truth
If we don’t get to the bottom of the root
If we don’t answer before we die
Then we will suffer and we will cry

Yes there are questions that we all must ask
Before we die this is one task
Though we know still we must find
That’s our life-purpose, the Truth to unwind.

Ever since I was a child I've listened to the whispers,
Those whispers reverberating within me.
And I've submitted to those whispers during timeless moments of
my life.
And I became a citizen of the Eternal Realm.

And during my forays in the Eternal Kingdom,
I saw a new age soon to dawn upon humanity.
It is the age prophesied so long ago by all religions.
It is the Age Of Aquarius.
It is the Age of Messiah.
It is the the Second Coming for those who believe there was a first.
It is the age I call the Third.

And I saw Jerusalem,
The shining city of Zion atop a hill.
But in the Eternal Kingdom it is not a city of brick and mortar,
It is a city of the spirit's yearning and of effervescent light.
And the whispers lingered within me.
And they proclaimed, with the final trumpeting of a ram's horn,
The coming Third Age,
When all of the Earth will become the city of Zion,
A Jerusalem spread from pole to pole,
And around the great circles of our world.

But before the Third Age can dawn,
Jerusalem, that shining city of Zion atop a hill,
must be gifted to the world,
So that no one nation shall exercise dominion over it,
Only humanity's shared Soul.

Before the messianic age dawns the third temple must be rebuilt,
But all of Jerusalem is that third temple,
And the rebuilding is its gifting to the world.
In the Eternal Kingdom it is not a temple of brick and mortar,
That is just its shadow on the cave's wall.
And once that rebuild comes to pass,
Then the Third Age will explode in all directions,
From out of Jerusalem, ground zero,
And it will ripple across the lands and the waters,
And it will reach every kingdom and every nation.
It will become sharded into our shared soul,
And the Third Age will then dawn.

to stand beneath a sunlit
flowering cherry
is to stand in the
presence of
god

I am roaming the emptiness of the desert.
The moon's rotund fullness hangs in the void of the heavens,
Mid-way to the unseen horizon in the East.
The moon threatens to plummet into the desert floor,
Yet it maintains its oversight above its dominion.

The dulcet tones of the moon's milky-white soothe me,
But it is not my body they charm,
They pierce the ramparts to an unfathomable chamber in the bedrock of my soul.
And I feel a joy not confined to the borders of my flesh.
It is a joy emanating from deep within me,
And yet it belongs to us all.
And then I ask: Why is it that the sun's strong light exposes my body,
Yet the moon's milky-white exposes my soul?

I am peeking between two almost kissing cliffs.
I still my mind and then I see the snail's pace of the moon,
As it peeks at me behind the West cliff on its mission across the sky.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the moon's sliver advances past the cliff's edge,
And widens until it once more appears in all its rotund glory,
As it falls to the other side.
When the moon's edge reaches the other cliff it hides again,
Until once more I only see its thin sliver,
And then it is beyond my sight.

When the moon reveals this subtle dance to mine own eyes,
I feel an intimacy with it that no book can offer,
No teacher can teach.

On this night, the crescent moon floods the recesses of my soul with its pale milky glow,
And a mystical silence envelops the desert's void.
On other nights, in other places, the silence would be dulled by a crying baby,
while her mother sings a lullaby,
Or in the desert by the plaintive shriek of an anonymous wind,
As it hurtles across the desert floor,
To lands beyond horizon's reach.
But on this night, the silence is absolute,
And it comforts me like a blanket during this milky desert night.

I had unsuccessfully danced with the paradoxes of Reality,
Its feet were not in lockstep with mine.
And yet I sensed they were a lesser peak in the shadow of the mountain peak above all.
I went into the forest in a state of Chaotic confusion.
It was a cold day, my wispy breath wafted in front of me.
It was a sunny day, the sun's explosive light,
Through the trees bare and bright,
Exposed my body, my soul was nigh.
I walked into the forest as far as possible,
And then completed the journey on the half-way out.
I emerged at the precipice above a sea,
Its shoreline on the other side of a narrow and meandering road.
Across the waters were the North Shore mountains.
They were snowy and rugged and hoary.
The sea was a blue-green marble sparkling by the sun's strong light.
I sat at the precipice.
In front of me my feet dangled above a void,
And behind me the Autumn leaves were dying.
I reflected on Reality's paradoxes,
On what they are truly telling me.
I stripped them of all prejudices and banalities.
I pealed away their artifices and artifacts.
I aimed to see them with a Zen state of mind,
deconstructed and bare.
How to describe a state of Zen consciousness?
Imagine looking at a painting depicting a beautiful sunset.
This painting evokes powerful emotions in you.
Emotions of serenity and your soul's longing for communion with divinity.
You ARE Zen consciousness when,
upon pondering this evocative painting,
All you can see is a coat of paint.
Zen deconstructs reality and returns you to the white-eyed womb of Creation.
Imagine descending the branches of a tall and sprawling tree,
From child to parent branch,
And then repeated like nested mirrors,
Until you reach the trunk.
You are now communing with the Source.
When you descend the Tree of Existence it is for the void,
The nothingness, the ineffable truth at the core of Existence,
That you are yearning.
And when I fell into the Zen within me I saw a grand tree.
But the world of space and time,
The implicate order imprinted by the paradoxical,
Was only one branch and not its totality.
On each branch I saw a myriad of wrestling angels - the denizens of its dream.
They perceived only the completeness of their own branch,
But not of the totality.
And then a denizen of a branch's dream soared high above the tree,
And saw its entirety.
How naive he was to think its home branch was the whole tree.
How myopic to only aspire to wrestle its home branch,
Instead of yearning to dance with the entire tree.
To this wrestler it slowly dawned, freed from prejudices and tethers,
First a release of tension due to paradox resolution and then,
like a shadow illuminated by the light,
The paradox lost its fight.
And then I snapped out of my reverie.
I witnessed a sunset with a beauty transcending sight's domain,
And which can only be parsed as the soul dancing with divinity,
Reverberating within its innermost grasp - Creation's womb.
The sky splintered into crimson shards that pierced the wispy clouds,
And then the sun's turgid red ball hung low for an Eternity,
Above the sea's furthest edge,
And then sank into the void beyond horizon's ledge.

I reminisced of a time long ago when I was only twenty years old.
I was studying English 101 at the University Of British Columbia in the summer of Eighty-Four.
It was at a summer session because I had failed English 101 two years before.
A failure due more to my citizenship in a different realm than to the failings of my intellect, aptitude or the magnanimity of my core.
“You have such a poignant and evocative writing style,” wrote my teacher on the short-story I had submitted the week before.
I had written about a lonely sojourn on a desolate beach in the pregnant moment,
When sunset injures day's abandon and grants night the freedom to roam.
I had written about the mighty North Shore mountains,
Hoary with age and reverberating with an energy ineffable to the mind,
But savored by the soul.
I remembered how exhausting of mind, but above all of the soul, writing that short-story had been.
I tried to reveal my spirit bare and exposed.
I tried to destroy the ramparts and blow open the heavy gates shielding my secretive core.
But through my exhausting efforts I had only succeeded in weakening the facade between me and the world,
Usually held at arm's length,
But through my story then, only slightly nearer yet still remote.
There is an essence within everyone hidden in a chamber far beneath the veneer that encrusts our core.
We seldom allow it expression beyond just its fractured shadows dancing on an external wall.
But if we all dig deep and reach into this secretive chamber,
We will, to our astonishment, discover we are all reaching into the same chamber,
Not a separate one for each within the all.
And then we will grasp each other's same-hand.
We all share the same soul.
I knew that in the novel of my compulsion I would have to expose this chamber,
Ramparts and heavy gates destroyed once and for all.
And my novel would then cry out from this collective chamber,
And speak for my left and for my right with one voice for all.
It would be the ineffable ground of being reaching out to humanity from the navel of Creation,
Proclaiming the dawn of a Third Age.
It would announce the sunset of the Second Age before this coming dawn.
A moment pregnant with change that will forever be remembered in the annals of the Civilization of Man.
It would herald a paradigm shift far greater than the Renaissance,
Not just an age of reason, but of reason and divinity intertwined as an inseparable whole.
I envision the Third Age to be promoting the two primordial dancers,
The abstract magical and the other its complementary whole.
To engage in the Dance and thence unshard into the Eternal Garden from whence we all came forth.
They are in Eternity entwined, but sharded into the realms of space and time.
They are shards of the divine.
Would composing such a novel be an arduous journey,
Exhausting my body and above all my core?
Would I be as a drowning man,
Gasping for breath,
Kicking and screaming while with futility grasping for shore?
But would every paragraph and page exhaust me,
Yet also leave me yearning for more?
It would I am sure.
This arduous compulsion will also uplift and invigorate me with waves of catharsis and frisson.
And I pray dearly for the same in my reader,
of soul-piercing joy.
If I fail to evoke the same in my audience then I would have failed to breach the ramparts and the gates shielding my innermost chamber,
Our collective soul.
Only within this innermost shared sanctum can I truly touch someone's soul.
And by touching one, I will be touching them all.