Surrender

Surrender was coming to know,
Beyond all doubt,
That I will never know.
Never…
Ever.

It was coming to see, beyond all doubt,
That unlike those with clarity of mind,
And the hopeful certitude of faith,
I would live out my life in and as…
A Great Mystery.

Although I found jewels in religions and philosophies,
That resonated with Heart and mind,
I was ultimately left wondering,
At the vast and varied differences debated,
Among the Great Traditions.

Who had decided that “truth” was thus?
Traditions within traditions.
Emphatic partialities, all, they seemed to me.
And… did it really matter to me, at all,
What “truth” was?

Was “truth” what I longed for,
Or “understanding” of the nature of “reality”,
Argued with dogmatic hubris,
By mind-bound academics,
Of the vast and varied schools?

It seemed that in all but the rarest instances,
The Heart had been “thought” out of the Great Matter,
By those cherishing “knowledge of”,
But lacking Direct Experience.

As the years passed, I lost clarity,
Even around what it was I sought,
Hobbled by the confusion of teachings,
Prescriptions and proscriptions…

And descriptions of “truth” and “reality”.

Decades passed further,
And I watched fall from my hands,
The few shards of clarity I had garnered here and there,
Which had seemed, in their time, so “True” to me.

Trinkets of Belief once held, white-knuckled,
Against the Great Unknown,
Abandoned now…
Collapsed lean-to's against the Incomprehensible.

Stripped naked of hope,
Faith, a tattered rag, long fallen away,
“Knowledge” burned to ash,
In the fierce Heat of The Great Mystery.

Turning from all outward searching,
Into the depths of formless Being,
I searched within to see,
If anything at all was left to me.

And there found…
To my gentle surprise…
The only thing that remained;
The last vestige of the first cause…

The Longing in my Heart.

Somehow,
Impossibly…
Inextinguishable.

The Longing that had moved me,
From the very first step,
Somehow, impossibly… remaining.

And falling headlong into that Pool,
Breathing those Living Waters,
I drowned, at last, in The Heart's Desire.

Longing having been the Wellspring,
All those long, weary years,
Of that which was longed for.

The Fragrance of that which was Longed for,
Having been, all along,
“Of” that which was Longed for.

Drowned, into and as Formless Aliveness,
I returned, Alive, as form,
But drenched, thereafter, in Bliss.

Bliss…
Not coming and going, as I had read,
But effortlessly ever-present.

Who were these “awakened” ones,
Who spoke with such certainty and authority,
Of that which was not in their experience?

Bliss…
The Peace that Transcends Understanding…
Imbued with the Ecstasy of Formless Pure Being.

Rapturous, the background of experience,
Not merely Peace, Happiness, and Joy,
Which flitted erratically in the realm of causality.

Bliss…
When Attention moved outward,
The background of all Experience.

Soft, subtle, ambient…
Everywhere and nowhere,
Impossibly, both at once.

Bliss…
When Attention relaxed inward,
The Ocean of Ecstasy within which all arose.

Inherent in the tsunami of Dissolution,
Flooding the Whole of Being,
Dissolving inward and outward.

The mind too dissolute to contemplate,
What remained when “i” and the world Vanished,
Or ponder the Bliss Shining thereafter in the Heart.

Unable to cognize or articulate,
The nature of “truth” or “reality”
Recoiling from concept, theory, and conjecture…

I leave such things to those who must know.

Illumined with ever-present Bliss,
The salt doll “I” Dissolved,
I remain, as ever, Surrendered to never knowing…

Ever.