with gratefulness to Joi Sharp
Not just to know the self
but to know the nothing
that surrounds it, to feel
how vast that nothing is,
how inside that nothing
is more nothing, and
inside that more nothing
is even more nothing.
To know that. To feel
the self held by infinite
nothing, to feel the nothing
held by the self. How quiet
everything is then. How
easy it is to believe
peace is not only possible,
it is already here. How
beautiful to meet this
truth with another.
Sweet paradox: imbued
with all this lavish nothing,
the moment overspills
with love. It’s everything.
(title from “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake)
Posts Tagged ‘Joi Sharp’
Eternity in an Hour
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Joi Sharp, love, nothing, peace on February 16, 2023| 13 Comments »
When I Told My Teacher About My Dream
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anxiety, dream, heart, Joi Sharp, love, perfectionism, student, teacher on May 24, 2022| 8 Comments »
The heart doesn’t have perfectionism.
—Joi Sharp
All night I dreamt
I was teaching a class
I’d never prepared for.
I’d never even seen
the textbook,
didn’t have a roster
for the students,
and couldn’t understand
how I’d arrived in this place
where I seemed destined
to let everyone down.
Even the chalk wouldn’t work
on the chalkboard.
All night I fought
an inner monster,
the one that says,
You are not enough.
All night it chased me
through the channels
of my fears, those
synaptic paths
well-traveled for years.
Oh world, let me be
the student.
Let me be one
who learns to live
through the heart,
who loves with confidence.
Let me study the ways
love meets the monster—
not with a fight
but with indifference.
Journey of Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged advice, brain, grief, impermanence, Joi Sharp, journey, love, path, wisdom on February 22, 2022| 6 Comments »
with thanks to Joi Sharp
When my teacher told me
Everything we love can
and will be taken from us,
I did not know how she
was preparing in me
a synaptic path.
I understood her words
in the way one understands a journey
by reading a map.
Now, ten years later, with every breath
I travel this path of loss
as so many others have before me,
and yet there is no trail, no signposts,
no destination, and the path changes direction
from moment to moment.
But the path does not feel foreign.
Every turn of it is paved with truth—
Everything we love can and will be taken from us.
Those words now offer
the strange comfort of prophecy
as I wander these trails of impermanence,
stunned with gratitude even as I weep,
alive with loving what doesn’t last,
astonished by the enormity of love—
how love is the red thread that pulls us through,
not a thread to follow,
but a guide that never, ever leaves the path.
The Path of Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ego, Joi Sharp, jude Janett, love, path on January 6, 2021| 10 Comments »
| (If you are looking for the poem that Tara Brach read in her meditation, it is called “The Question” and you can find it here) with gratitude to Jude Jordan Kalush and Joi Sharp And here I thought the path of love would look like love. Like kindness. Like generosity. Like gentleness. Instead it looks like me being bothered by the sound of loud chewing. Me wanting praise. Me needing to feel loved. Hello me. How elegantly love has arranged for me to meet all the parts of me that would stand in love’s way. How easily it shows me I’ve thought of love as a destination. But here is love with no expectation. Here is love with no name, no locus. Here is love with no face, no shape, no promise, no vow, no hope. Here is love as itself, surging and flowing, love as itself insisting on love, love as itself eroding all those layers of me that still think they know something about love (and love holds me while I rail and love throws me back in the stream and love is what is still here when I am not). |
After Talking to My Teacher, I See the Invitation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, failure, invitation, Joi Sharp, letting go, poem, poetry, teacher on July 12, 2019| 2 Comments »
What wants to happen?
—Joi Sharp
Today it is the tow truck
that leads me back to myself.
For though I call the driver
and though I receive
a text that says he is coming
and though I have paid
my AAA bill on time, the tow
truck does not arrive.
Though I did everything right.
Though the same actions have worked before.
Still the world has not turned out
the way I expected, the way
I want it to. The car
is still stranded. The tow truck
is still not here. Oh failure,
how clearly it shows my attachment
to outcome. How clearly it
shows me the world is in charge.
I look for more doors to knock on,
try to plan more ways to control.
Meanwhile, I am the door.
Meanwhile, this chance
to let go.
Though It Is Tough to Choose It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, Joi Sharp, poem, poetry, transformation on March 24, 2017| 4 Comments »
This is the path of failure. We see that our definition of success is what is not working. What is working is deep, unseen. —Joi Sharp
Even a small discontent is enough to shut us down,
convince us that the world is cold and indifferent.
Everywhere there’s evidence of this: The slush
that falls on your car seat when you open the car door.
The carrion eaters with their great black wings
that linger beside the road. You pray for sun,
and it gets darker. Someone asks
you a question, and you see your whole life
fold into one small envelope of failure.
Then one day you hit against the same
impassable wall you always hit and this time you fall
to your knees, not because you are weak,
but because at last you are ready to be opened.
Oh sweet failure, how it leads us.
Any unhappy ending is only an invitation
to crawl into the blank pages
of the next unwritten chapter.
It was never success that transformed us—
always the breaking. Not the breaking itself,
but the mystery inside pushing through us
like bindweed through pavement
making cracks in everything
we think we know so that the world
can come streaming in.
After Talking with Joi about the Last Few Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amma, Joi Sharp, poem, poetry, truth on June 5, 2013| 3 Comments »
You should long for the truth like a drowning man longs for air.
—Amma
Laying face down in a puddle,
a woman might think
she is drowning.
She could, in fact,
drown, though anyone
around her can see
all she need do
is roll over.
How many puddles
have we lain in,
lips to the pavement,
eyes closed, feeling
the million points
of panic rising in our lungs,
shrugging off the hands
that would help us,
caught in the drama
of our own doom,
flailing, thrashing.
drowning.
What saves us,
even if we manage
to roll onto our backs,
is never ourselves
but the air rushing in
to fill us, the air rushing in
as if it longs for us
the way we long for it.