Author Archives: Arlene

The Candle We Left Behind

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I will tell you today about a small unlit candle that I left behind in a hidden corner of a beautiful garden that I no longer visit.  It is a most magical garden that has gone into shadow for me as I’ve become distracted by the bright bugle sounds that fill my current world.

When I lived in that beautiful garden, the little candle glowed from within me, giving me its light, its warmth, and its guidance.  It resided right here in my heart, and I never knew darkness or confusion.

When I decided to go dream about that other world, I could not take the little candle with me, for in that other world, light is poised from without in a big lamp that sits in a sky that is often blue. Once in a while, that lamp goes away and the blue sky turns an ever deeper blue until it becomes black. When it is black it appears flecked with tiny specks that wink at me and seem to say unknowable things that stir my heart to memories I cannot remember. I call out to them but they are too far to hear.

“Too far,” isn’t that odd?  In my garden there was a Nearness that never faded.  Oh, what spell can I be under to think myself now in such a nonsensical world of gaps and measures?  What spell is this that has me often managing to be beguiled by this nonsense, while so many can never be sober enough to enjoy a world that seemingly captivates them, little realizing that they are missing a little candle that is patiently waiting to light their hearts once more.

Tell Yourself

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You are a full Circle, dear One. In your inner world, the world beyond the world of words, lives the gloriousness of new dawnings that erupt with each of your breaths.

Your every movement is a Morning.  A morning…only you…can bring to your world.  It is…as you…that the Infinite plays its Instrument of loving song.  It is…through you…that a Garden redolent with blossoms of such life-affirming magnificence unfolds, urged into being by a single sigh, a single intention, showing Simplicity’s wealth, free of the shadows of doubt and forgetting.

Need you tell of this to others?  No, no, only in the telling of this to yourself will the world you now journey in show it forth, for you are the Receiver and the Giver of the Light that emanates from your silent dialogue of what you are and, this, brings Life into view.  All, are the Receiver and the Giver.  None, is left out.  Be restful in this knowledge.  You have been made whole.  Nothing more need be done … but to be joyful.

When I Don’t Listen To The World

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Little drops of laughter fill the petals of my flowers. They appear as bits of dew and let the morning shine all over as if the day’s beginning were a thing worth rejoicing in. I wander through the meadow of my yesterdays and wonder at the insanity I planted there.  Apparently I allow no end to the nonsense I can consider real.

And yet, nothing of my true self can be altered by my foolishnesses, nothing in me, nothing that is mine, is harmed by the mistakes I have allowed to be made by my idle and fruitless human mind. I must remind myself that the human mind I am thinking I’m thinking with, isn’t real. It is a pure invention in forgetting. Life, being creative even when I am silly, will take my notions and render them into my actions and experience, never contradicting me, until I finally see for myself.

I have discovered, to my utter relief and delight, that making a mistake is a reminder to Let Go. It is meant to bring the understanding that dissolves all belief in regret, remorse, and punishment … although the world I live in so believes in punishment. Letting go is the Blessing my self-awareness brings when I am quietly present in the moment not filled with all the things I’ve been told. The deep Quietness within me speaks to me of my unchanging innocence and when I listen carefully, in that place with no words, I hear it too.  And then I clearly see and hear the drops of laughter filling the petals of my flowers.  And I know they are my tears of rejoicing in what is true about me and will always be true about me, even while I live in this world that tells me otherwise.

Believe in secret

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Go to the quiet place, dear One.  Go to the sweetest thought that mind can give and see that it is yours for all time, capable of filling all space.  It is yours, this beauty that keeps knocking at your heart saying, can you see me?  Can you believe how close I am and how dear you are to me?  We are one, dear One.  No thought of otherness separates us, even when you have thoughts of otherness. 

 I am what you want from life and what you want to be giving to life; your life, your canvas of celebration.  I am the Song in your heart that wants to be heard.  You want to hear it but you have been afraid to believe in its reality.  You have been afraid to believe in your reality in relation to it.

 The thing you want, the thing dearest to your heart has come to look to you like that thing of frivolous unimportance.  How the world around howls its view of what is important.  And you have come to be a bit confused and you have withdrawn into yourself but not into yourself enough.  You have gone into the shadow place and you have not found what makes worlds come alive.  You have been afraid to believe what you know–being so full of what the world believes.  But, you know what you want and you are asking for it–and in the asking it is becoming evident–even as you watch the world around you spew the same old meaninglessness.

The thing you want is not anything you can speak of to others.  It is the thing to tell yourself.  It is the truth that comes from the Self within that has waited to have you hear.  It waits with gentle hands resting on your brow, stroking away all the forgotten-ness that has become too real, too painful to endure.

 You want to believe in what you no longer feel. You have waited for someone else to help you feel.  But you need no one.  You need no one.  Nothing has gone away from you.  The Real is still real.  It is here, breathing its sweet breath, living from its brave heart and filling all space before you and all around you with confirmation of its Presence.  Believe in secret.  Believe your secret life and rest deeply on its strength and purpose for you.

What Matters To Me

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I know there is a quiet place deep within the hidden part of me.  It is a tender corner that holds all of the Universe within it.  It takes up no room and knows nothing of space or time.  It is the sweet invisible that is the very source of my most treasured sense of self.  It is the loving arms upholding me and breathing into me the wonders that make my heart thrill.

I have thought that I could never feel You again, Secret One of My True Self.  I have looked for You where You are not: in other people, in the stories they tell of their lives.  I read and read, I looked and looked, and waited for scraps of proof that You could be found in this Earthly world.  I’ve waited to hear from others what they found, if they found, and how well they lived with You.  But the more I looked, the more I sought, the more the emptiness grew within me.  How could we speak to one another, You and I?  Oh, how I’ve missed You.  I have been so good about learning the language that is spoken here, the one rendering soft thoughts into hard concepts turned into bits of sound that must be strung just so—only to be found inadequate and misunderstood.

I’ve found it hard to turn myself away from the world of “other people” and be still with You.  I’ve wanted to bring them with me, or thought it must be so that I should bring them with me and have them share in the goodness.  To go somewhere without them was arrogant on my part, and even more it was selfish and made me a cold, self-centered person.  To turn my back on this world and to go to You, alone, seems selfish.  And yet …   

… You are the Life of all of us, aren’t you?  You are the order of all being, the very thing that keeps the seam from ripping, the place that never changes but grows to unfold and reveal the tenderest new thing full with possibilities and delight in being expressed.  You are the very reason the snow comes to remind us of the hush of stillness that is Your Voice.

Oh, how I miss You. Oh, how I miss my True Self. Oh, how I want to speak “our” silent language again.  Oh how I want to make, You, most real of all.  Show me how.  I’m listening.