I am a flowing gown of echoes

Your heart breaks
Falls through its own infinite pieces
Stars fall
Ignite the night
Until all darkness consumes itself
Swallows all ideas of light

Love burns itself
With every touch
Every kiss
Every word
Melts
In this heat
In this conflagration
Of sorrow
Of joy
Of time

Whose heart is not yours?
Where is your heart
But in my chest
Ripped open by love

Whose tears,
Whose eyes are not yours?
But these jewels
That no one owns
Reflecting the universe
Naked unadorned love’s beauty
Streams
Erases all ideas of ownership
All handholds on the edge of the river
All fingertips clinging
Dissolve into this flowing
Burning river of life’s desire
Collapsing all and everything
Flooding into this edgeless ocean
That I am
That you are
That we are

Life dissolving into life
Without a trace
Or unheard melody
Of love’s grand illusion
Listening to itself
Whispering
I love you


feathered moon-glow
melts into morning
softly softly
soaring wings
kiss the air
gently gently
love caresses my slumber
dreams me into the day

evening song
of late falling shadows
swooning into cricket night
a picture show with no edges
strums itself
on a guitar with no strings
only our hearts
beating madly
this love
in love with love
strains out light and dark
and all shades in between
there is no middle
there are no sides
to love
yet love needs hearts to sing its song
I cannot hear it
without you



Morning paints itself in this mind stream

Crickets fade to birdsong as someone awakens and yawns

Gently walls and ceiling pirouette into the morning song

A dance floor arises in this ballet of one of two of many

Of none

Light caresses the room with shadow

A hand appears cradling a cup of tea

Steam lazily rises to kiss its reflection in the window

That was painted shut

Long ago

The images of outside and inside collapsed

Time appeared to die in the catastrophe

Of crashing shadows

Tsunami of winged waving glass

Pierced a broken heart

With love’s magic

No clarity or fog remains

Just empty footfalls echoing

Turning dark into light

Light into dark

And in between the in between

We dance



combing the vastness for words
...vastness a word
far more unthinkable
than infinite suns exploding
bleeding light
and darkness
into the most intimate depths
of intricate spiraling thought dreams
weaving secret places that seem hidden
revealed
with these very words
that paint the sky
and clouds
and shadows racing across the desert
and a lone shadow
leading these footsteps
to the edge of the dream
where you
and me
and infinity
collide

even my shadow burnt on love's sublime pyre

edges singed with blue and gold

left no trace on the sidewalk

wind found no ashes

to dress her slumber

leaf rushes down the empty street

catching the breath of sunset

what is the sound of the evening light

as it melts into dark?

where is this song

without you?

faded roses hang

bathed in pale moon

memories echo

pool in rippling shadows

there is nothing underneath them

nor above

nor in-between

where is the end of sky

where is the end of love

where is the hand the heart to hold this beauty?

plummeting unfathomable depths

reaching the end of infinity

where no one wanders

listening to her story unfold

a call and answer love song

singing itself

this all pervading love 

of not knowing what love is

echoes across the canyon

no one sings it

no one listens

I am simply memories flowing

painting a dream of light waltzing 

with light

space falling

through space

emptiness melting 

into emptiness

reflections of echoes

dissolving into themselves

you protect and hide your pain

like a stone in your heart

to keep that feeling that there is something solid

and unchanging

something which feels real

and never leaves

it longs for release

to escape your rib cage

a million suns exploding 

infinite rainbows shattering

colors falling through colors

one shooting star

across the vault of heaven

and hell

and fading

into dark...

love wrote her name in your heart, once

kissed you with your own lips

pronounced your name with your own voice

it sounded like hers...

you will never forget

you are memory

what would you be without it?

what would you be without this pain

of love and love lost

such beauty has no home

nor slumber

but rests peacefully

ease-fully

embraced in perfect freedom

what would happen if all that pain

all that love

you are terrified to feel

ripped open your chest?

where would your anchor lie?

where would you end

and the world begin?

you are this pain

this fear of love

this longing for love

no one owns it

no one has it

no one wears it

or can shed it

there is nothing under this rawness

you try to hide

I see you 

naked

alone

afraid of the dark

and I love you

I love you

I love you

shhhhhhhhh.....

it is your own voice beckoning

this is your heart song singing

ripping the illusion of armor to shreds

piercing your heart so deeply

you will no longer be able to hide

from your ultimate aloneness

nor this love

If there is the belief in separation it FEELS like there is something solid and unchanging 

Most 'teachers' teach that. 

And Most seekers long to find that 

'True self'

Or 'timeless awareness'

Or 'pure consciousness'

Or 'god' 

As if the self is seen to be made up, the resulting glimpse of this (not even) emptiness is far too scary 

And the blanks are filled in with old or new philosophies...

ANYTHING to stop that feeling of lostness of falling of no safe harbor, ...of not knowing (as self is the assumption of knowing) 

It's simply unbelievable that there is no self and no thing underneath that has a self

Many believe that there are three stages to enlightenment 

Realization of no self 

Realization of unity consciousness 

And realization of god consciousness 

Which is that it is god that glues all this together 

All learned of course 

Seekers are their beliefs about enlightenment 

That there are no things that can be glued together 

Nor one big thing that could be split apart is unthinkable 

My songs can sometimes dispel that certainty 

And introduce a beautiful unknowing

Which some resonate with 

Some not

If there is fear, you are fear

 there is no you separate from this fear.

That is why you cannot get away from it.

There is really no self to identify with 

There is nothing separate or apart from the illusion of self that can identify with it.  

No one has belief,

 no one has illusion.

we are belief 

we are illusion 

Of course, when even considering ideas like 

there are no things... 

there are no separate events 

there is no cause and effect...

there is no self

there are no others...

That would mean that everyone you love 

and all you have loved 

Your beautiful wife 

your beautiful daughter

Your parents grandparents 

all your friends 

all your favorite things 

all your beautiful memories

your entire life would be illusory!

What a terrible loss! 

That is why awakening feels like dying!

If there is no self then there is no personal volition 

there is no will

There is no one who has control in this life

All of your efforts have been in vain

Your attempts to attain enlightenment and your trying to not try

There is no thinker of thought 

therefore there is no controller of thought

There is no feeler of emotion therefore there is no controller of emotion

There is no doer of action 

therefore there is no controller of action

This would mean that life does it self and that you are powerless 

however, when it’s seeing that there is no self to be powerless 

this does not seem so scary...

And truly if they were a thinker of thoughts and a controller of them 

then you would probably have the thoughts you would like 

to have intelligent or witty or creative thoughts

Same with emotion 

if there were a controller of emotion you would like to have only the feelings you like 

to have fuzzy warm loving feelings and not the ones that you have been taught to fear

And certainly if there were a controller of life

Well then life probably would’ve turned out a little bit different by now wouldn’t it?

And if there were a chooser, well,  perhaps you would not have chosen illness...

And if it feels like you are the chooser can you choose to stop feeling like a chooser?

But if life truly happened all by itself

 then there would be no meaning or non-meaning 

no purpose or non-purpose 

nothing called enlightenment or Endarkenment

 no goal to attain 

no special place to be....

All your ideas of solidity 

of permanence 

of going somewhere 

Having purpose 

all the ideas that you have about yourself that you don’t like 

all the ideas that you have about yourself that you like

every idea 

every thing that you think you are, and are not are all made up....

Everyone knows this somewhere 

this slipperiness 

this insubstantial nature of things 

of life as it seems to appear 

yet this is very scary and often painful as it does not go along with the beliefs that you are....

All parameters of who you think you are 

And what you are not 

Are simply learned ideas

You are is real is the characters in last nights dream.

You exist only as this imaginary persona

As this mask 

No one wears it 

The ego is a flowing imaginary image 

It does not do, or not do, anything or nothing.

It seems to be an imaginary center around which the dream of separate things and events swirls

It is the brain which creates this imaginary world of separate things and events and selves using shared learned words and concepts, and it is this imaginary conceptual world that we exist in. Most brains believe this imaginary world is reality. Some brains have seen through their own charade, so to speak, and realize that all thingness, all separation is imaginary... these people whose brains have shifted live beautifully balanced between the actual physical world and the imaginary... dancing on the edge of a feather between love and nothing at all.

The known world, the objectified dream of separation, is conceptual ...the physical world exists yet it is completely unknowable except through concepts. 

Fear of actual threats to the body help keep the physical organism alive

Fear of imaginary things may be the driving force for some selves but certainly not all.

I would say that all belief is accompanied by hope and fear 

hope that it’s true and fear that it’s not, 

or hope that it’s not true and fear that it is

So all belief is never actually really believed unless it’s belief in the physical world

We are this thought stream

No one has it 

there is no outside to it 

as outside and inside are created by thought

there’s no before or after thought 

as before and after are thought created

Enlightenment happens when the brain basically no longer believes in the dream of separation that itself is painting

There is no more feeling of there being separate things or events or selves or others or clouds or mountains or sky or hands or pockets or tears or rainbows....

Many believe that enlightenment is sitting through the illusion of self 

but that is only part of it

And most when the self is seen to be imaginary, fill in that huge emptiness with other learned concepts, like true self or awareness or consciousness or God

If there is fear then that is the brilliant intensity of life living itself 

Full on 

It is the actual immediate lived reality

Life always is whatever it looks and feels like

fear is beautiful 

fear of fear is beautiful 

The feeling that fear is wrong 

is also beautiful

Investigating fear won’t make it go away, it’ll just make you feel more separate from it

I read Suzanne Segel’s book.

After the feeling and belief in self completely fell away she lived in constant fear for 12 years before the belief in separation and the feeling of all separation vanished

She realized there was nothing wrong with fear, there is no need to try to get rid of it, as all trying or trying not to try to investigate it will just make it feel like there is a you and something called fear.

I am trying to say that fear is not a block to living life full on and that there is nothing ever right or wrong with life as it seems to appear.

fear and fearlessness, even the feeling that it is wrong arises utterly spontaneously... all of life does... 

as there is no chooser of thought or belief or feeling or action how could there possibly be a right or wrong thought or feeling or belief or action? as there is no doer or thinker or feeler... right and wrong are completely made up, like you ...

names have lost all feeling of solidity

all echoes of meaning

and non meaning

wind dissolving into wind

I hear my name

I say yours

I hold them in my mouth

and listen for meaning

its like hearing a foreign language

with no reference point

or watching photos develop over other pictures

blooming and dissolving 

images sliding through each other

they have no center

nor sides

there is no place from which to view them

all words are like that now

vibrations rippling

beautiful light dancing on an edgeless sea

and what is left 

when there are no sails to catch the wind

when there is no direction

nor shore to reach

not even an empty space

that memory tries to fill

with faces I have loved

as meaningless as this carpet of rippling shadows

and light

flowing through my reflection

that has no source 

there is a beauty in this sensuous lostness

when there is no one to be lost

some may call it bliss

I like to call it love

love of everything

love of nothing

there is no in between

the dawn and dusk

day into night

night into day

the bird feeders are empty

yet I can hear them singing in the plum trees

I call it love but it is simply a name rushing down the streets of time like images in yesterday’s mirror 

Burning tumble weeds spark in the night 

pieces break off and shatter the windows of the empty storefronts 

Yesterdays reflection is neither caught nor held

There is no mirror 

Just pools of echoes

as you walk along this path

with no end in sight

not knowing what you seek

there may be a collision of never and forever

as space and emptiness slide through each other

erasing all sides

and the middle

the horizon is lost as sea crashes into sky

rips the fabric of your universe

into ribbons of endless mirrors

reflecting nothing 

as well as all things

as they explode 

and implode

all and everything dissolve....

the very ground upon which you danced

collapses

there is falling

and falling

and falling

until the falling is falling

and there is no place to land

and no one falling

I am a flowing gown of echoes

A river of tears

Of cold mountain winds rushing down the canyon

Streaming through the tall pines

Trembling needles pierced with sky

Dancing in the cottonwoods

Leaving autumn leaves floating

Golden carpet softly sweeping into piles 

Wind pools silently in this desert mirage

Shimmering reflections of not even nothing 

Mirroring love’s reflection 

Soaring without wings

Sky letters written with sky

Unwrap sky

Horizon unfolds 

Falls gently into ribbons of highway

Undulating across the map

Torn into shreds

By hot desert winds

All my love letters left 

An un-answered echo

Burnt the hands 

And the heart 

That wrote them 

Starlight consumed the edges of my shadow

After love ate the inside and outside 

Moon devoured the rest

Crumpled dreams lay deserted on the side of the path 

that time forgot

When it went looking for the future 

And found it’s own footsteps

Filling with sky

Overflowing onto my feet

As the stars emerged from their shadows

I became lost in love’s reflection 

I am this dance of mirrors

A wind ballet of wind in wind

You cannot hold the name wind in your mouth

Nor can you grasp it 

It exists only in this dance

This word ballet 

That has no outside 

Nor inside 

Tangled sweetly in love’s echo 

We dance