what is it like the moment before you release all memory of the painful past?
right then, when you fully feel the lifetimes of pointless thought
invested in reciting litanies of “what I don’t have,”
“what I can’t or won’t experience,”
“how I can’t feel love because no one gives it the right way,”
or “how I feel alone—with people or without them”?
right then, when none of it matters anymore?
what is it like when you release the twisted benefit of feeling bad
because you ignored opportunities to love and create joyfully?
what is it like when you come fully present
in spite of having matched other people’s limited vision,
in spite of indulging in the stimulation of adrenaline,
in spite of the adolescent tendency to project rage and blame onto others
when really you were just afraid to feel the fear in them and you?
in that moment, the old is SO old
the mistakes so idiotic, archaic, antediluvian
even remorse seems stupid;
to punish yourself for wasting all that time
seems appealing for a tiny moment
then you suddenly know:
one present moment full of the real you
experienced fully by the real you
spreads out through all time
healing past, future, and all suffering souls
—the magic of the Midas touch—
and what freedom looms!
what is it like when you step into that overwhelming freedom
where you are entitled to any talent, creation, and reality?
where you have unlimited help
and are supported by the soft cloud of love on every side?
all you did that you thought so bad
is now unseen, unknown, and nonexistent
the Others are You!
when you are clear they are too
and now the joke:
YOU created the suffering world
the Others suffered to be with you in your world
agreed with you out of love
and you agreed with the Others who played at suffering
to be with them—because you, too, love
now, no waste, no sacrifice
it was all a creation, all an imagination, all a belonging
now, the freedom is a belonging
now, the love-world is a belonging
the moment
was, and is, all, always
arising and dissolving in the Belonging
Copyright by Penney Peirce