What you give your attention to, expands. Drama, love, peace – make a choice. You are the creator.
Similarly, if you hold your eye on the beauty of a woman, you will be witness to her ever expanding beauty.
It is your responsibility to make your world beautiful by holding your eye on only beauty, not the world, or your woman’s, responsibility to be beautiful for you. Correct yourself lest you see only an enemy and be ruled by the ubiquitous despot – the ego.
In each woman; mother, daughter, child; there is the seed of the goddess. She may plant this seed in fertile soil, step into vulnerability (her power) and tend to this garden herself and channel the divine goddess deliberately. Or, you (the God) may foster it in her through channeling your own divine masculine energy.
Therefore, if you see only girls, or are unimpressed by the women in your life, it is you that is the problem, not the women. You are bringing to these people only a little boy, keen to be looked after and tended to like your mother did for you. You are looking for a woman to take care of you to avoid stepping into your own power, and therefore reflected back at you you see only women who are yet to step into theirs.
A man watches intently the woman in all female forms, knowing all he must do is listen, watch her spin around, admire the beauty and that this is all that is required for the seed of divine femininity to sprout into a mighty oak under which you might find shade. Allow her to cool you, be her sun.
I have a stone upon which I sharpen my sword – a woman – whom through serving I build my tolerance for sacrifice and thereby step further into my strength. Service to her and to all women is my daily practice. And I have become fond of repeating the basics until perfect.
I was served by a woman as a child, and I now serve this woman and all women as a man. So turns the cycle of birth, death, and birth.
Woman, I now need nothing from you. Not your romance. Not your sex. I have everything I need internally. And all that is mine, externally, is coming to me. All you must do is be what you are and you will be loved deeply, and unconditionally. You will be listened to, and seen. You will be cherished for all that you are.
So do not clean after me. Do not cook for me. Do not exert yourself for I am not a kept man.
Accept me, consume me, and I will be a God for you that we might perpetuate this eternal dance of energetic polarity into each night and spill it over into each morning.
And when you wake I will be here. Unmoved. Unmovable. The warrior.
From the seat of peace, and in the fields of isolation, one’s path is chiseled out of stone, slowly revealing the sculpture hiding within – and it points you in the direction you must go until you are lost once more and you return to the seat, and stand in the fields and wait. Wind whistling in ear.
The signals whispered to us by life are subtle inferences, unintelligible over the dull roar of the party life or arguments with loved ones. So quiet yourself and listen (drama serves you not). The answers have been coming all along, your attention was simply fixed elsewhere. And when you listen you will see. And when you see you will act. And when you act you will be victorious. For the signals never lie, and action taken in truth is sublimely effective.
When you listen to these inferences you will be calm and you will be still for you will know with certainty that you are well situated and this will serve you. This will relax you. And when you are relaxed you will be witness to more and more flowing towards you. And then you may rule over your kingdom from the dignity of your throne and not from the chaos of the battlefield. Do not leave your seat for all that is yours is coming. Let what is not yours remain elsewhere, and disregard egoic desires around obtaining these things, for they will only limit you.
Artwork by Bharat Sikka
You are being summoned. Both beautiful endings and opportune beginnings are upon you.
Come to me dressed up in daisies and chain mail. I will unsuit you.
Walk away from me in irreverence – the door will be held for your exit.
Amused for your presence, and grateful for your absence. Come or go. The enemy in neither.
My greatest strength is knowledge of my greatest weakness which is ignorance. Of you. Of me. Of energy. My next greatest strength is resolve. I unravel you slowly. And as I unravel you I unravel me, your divine reflection, and energy twists us toward perfection.
This is a class act. And like a boxing bag, rounded into shape by the repetitive thud of the hungry, I learn the hard way and am fashioned into shape by mistake after mistake. Yet I endeavor to trip over everything just once. For thereafter lays the realm of the fool.
I work at my art. Beat away at my craft. Perfection is nearing.
So come for me, dressed in whatever you like. And be ready to be undressed. Of everything you’ve been told you must be for me.
Artwork by Andrea Tomas
Walk from me, with as much or as little love in your heart as you can summon. Love finds its home within my eye. And you may find love, and the long road home, by my side. Home bound, nonetheless. Walk with me.
I have burdened her in days of old with the heavy weight of expectation. Have contrived to make her magnificent and missed the greater spectacle before me, as if I knew the blueprints to a grander display than the greater powers at play could manage.
Stepped away, and saw her afresh. Refreshed. Came carrying an empty cup, allowed her to fill it by the bottomless reservoir of her wonder, and to empty it again. Fixed, then, my eye on her beauty and witnessed her become the beauty I could not see, previously.
Nature knows a greater philosophy than my faculties of speech have an allocation for, so I hold my tongue before it. And so, too, with a woman, will become busy now with my sacrifices, and ardent in my chivalry and reverent before the providence in her presence.
Why would I expect her to be anything but beautiful? I do not expect an eagle to be anything but an eagle. A man does not live by double standards, and her beauty is inherent.
I receive you, now. As I failed to receive you before. You are not for me to create in my own eye, but a target to adjust that eye to and know there that I see truth. And of love, money, fame or truth, I choose truth. I choose truth. I choose the man who will lead me there and I choose your beauty, unconditionally.
I rid myself of the filter of age, occupation, predilection, predisposition and like the clothes that fall delicately around your feet at the end of a long day, drop everything and stand nude before you, nude in reflection and see only beauty. Thank you, goddess. You need to do nothing for my gratitude and nothing to be beautiful. All that requires change is the perception of the institution that tells you otherwise. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
“I am beauty. I am worthy of the goddess. I am worthy of success.”
It is not what life gives to us but what we accept, and what we say “no” to and keep walking, that most informs our experience. It is not what you manifest, but what you accept, that makes the difference. And we all accept what we think we deserve.
Life will, in other words, treat you as well or as poorly as you let it..
Now, the keen observer will, at some point, be inclined to realize that he is the sole creator of every element of the reality he is witness to. That everything he sees around him is the child of a decision he made… No one’s lastingly rude to the Dalai Lama. Is this a co-incidence?
If you look around and what you see is destruction, then it follows that you believe you deserve destruction. Why does a victim of domestic violence, given a room of 100 people their age, always pick the one that will beat them? There is no co-incidence. Only perfection.
Our actions are the many children of our internal world. Nagging back to their mother when challenged. Validated and pushed on.
Strong actions, however, need no validation. They sing their own song
– to themselves.
Our romantic lives are the most telling examples of our self-worth being reflected back at us. The world is a mirror. What do you see looking back at you?
Let go, now, of whatever you’re gripping on to, and allow what is next to come to do so. Mostly know that should nothing come, you are wealthy without it and wealthy within. Your internal wealth is the only true wealth you will take with you beyond the narrow grave. You shall escape with nothing else but this internal, eternal wealth.
Wooden floorboards on a stage someplace foreign await the heaviness of my foot. I’ve know this since it hit me as a child and brought tears to my eyes outside of my mother’s favorite fashion store. I sank to the floor, back against the wall and sobbed in revelation.
“Mum,” I said “one day they’re all going to wait for me.” And with the only words I knew at the embryonic age of 6 I told her “I was born to be famous.”
God experiences through me the performer. He sees what it is like to be watched. He sees what it is like to live against the grain. This is his wish for me.
So my foundation is being built, and what must be done is being done. I am not eager, I am not excited. I busy myself with the task at hand and await that day. Yet no more than I await the weekend. With a mild amusement and anticipation, but the relaxation of someone who knows it’s there and if missed, that one is just around the corner.
I write to you. I speak to others. I am captured by those who like to capture beautiful moments and looked on at by those who like to watch beautiful moments. I watch as Who I Am (Michael Sunderland) comes slowly into alignment with What I Am (a court jester).
And the process is beautiful, even when the current moment might itself appear ugly. Is the most beautiful part of an olive not that it is nearly rotten? Is the fragility of crystal not a weakness but a fineness? Does youth not owe its beauty to being short-lived? I sit, I watch, life turns. I’m told the way will present itself, and then I will know to act. Until then, the moment calls for patience.
So back to patience. Back to life. Back to not caring what happens next or how it unfolds before me. The stage awaits me. This I know. And I will owe what it said on it to my journey towards it.
They’ve been dragged back and forth across bumpy holes and have searched out peace in stones and crevices unknown to those that never rose and walked the path. Perfection is near, and far, and here all at once.
A chord change to major relinquishes the unruliness of minor and we are grateful. Humans have never had a lasting predilection for tension. We are creatures of comfort and therein lays our destruction. For sloth befits only the sloth. Humanity only the human, and where is the humanity in your laziness? So rise… and walk the path.
The form the destination takes is only hinted at by the wise and those with sufficiently corrected perception. These men are not with big mouths for talkativeness is not a trait admired by those with knowledge. Discretion, however, is and so I know only the body of the beast and none of its guts. Never mind. The destination for us all is perfection and I shall let that be enough.
You and I are all so mad – are we not? – for what is coming. So much so that we divert its beeline to us and step, instead, into the morass of futility. We farcically amble about here and drown ourselves with all the drama of Prince having lost his favorite raspberry beret. Yet this serves none of our ambitions and supplements only the burgeoning catalogue of things we have yet to correct.
So correct.
Return to your seat, now, be patient. Dinner is being served. And you shall feast with patience until you feast on reward for patience.
So feast.
Devour this moment and the next and be indiscriminate in your hunger for whichever the moment provides; another opportunity to be patient, or a hot meal. Who cares? Fill yourself. Do not wait to be filled by that which is outside you or you will forever be hungry.
When it is time for walking, know to walk.
When it is time for sitting, sit.
When it is time for eating, you shall eat.
When it is time for starving, you shall starve.
And then, fill yourself from the source and in your fullness, relax. And in your relaxation, allow. And through your allowing, attract. Finally through attracting, conserve. You will no longer go hungry.
Clutching hands and urgent grasps, for me, for food, for drink.
I will provide, young child, let me see to little necessities for you. I shall take ownership of all that my eye falls upon and see that what needs doing is done right. I waited so long for your arrival. And my patience was rewarded with the divine fit into a bundle no larger than my palm.
The park air and piano hammers hitting piano strings that float out of open windows nearby are made all the more sweet by the electricity of excitement you lend so freely to me each day. I thank you for that, and feel indebted for such a gift.
Let me point the way for you, and walk or crawl or fall however you see fit to open tiny doors with tiny hands. One day humongous gates will open at your slightest touch, yet we will build slowly and I will not open anything but the way for you. You will live the life of a warrior and, like me, will walk through the fire of life and come out crisped. I will not protect you from your burns, but teach you how to heal them and, in this, you will be self-sufficient and unafraid of fire. If I don’t teach you well what will you have to pass on to your own, in time?
Your mother will be loved and well looked after. She will find me unmovable, gentle, hard, and unconditional in both love and my approbation of you both. She married a man.
And so rest now, you both. Amidst the still certainty I bring to you, relax.
I am honoured to take care of you. This is the longest and dearest duty of my life, and when done I will leave you and sleep easily, forever more. I will be missed but not mourned.
Powerful spirits dwell in these bodies I have made.
The Way of The Gentle Man 