Author Archives: Arlene

Be That!

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What do you want? asked the bird on the tree above my head.  It sang its words and I heard that a lovely day was in store for me.

What do I want? I asked myself.

I want to know what the wind is saying.  I want to know the secret the bells are holding in their chime.  I want to know how the sun makes its rounds in the world when its origin is the center of my heart.  I want to know many, many wonderful things of life.  But what I truly want, is to freely be myself in a world that feels like a magnetic pull outward to obey and never contradict it.

Oh Yes! said the bird.  Be that.

And The Gentle One Said…

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Dearest One–

Come with me to the magic garden in your mind.  In your quiet mind you will find peace and all things worthy of contemplating.  I am the One you seek and I whisper tender Words that are more than words.  I whisper life itself, and it will fill you and expand you to vastnesses of beauty and joy that you can dream of and delight in and never lose.

Beloved one, in each moment, in each breath, I am with you.  I never look away.  My light never dims.  I am always at hand, supporting, under-girding, guiding, showing the clarity of the path ahead that you travel to discover ever more of who and what you are.  Your life is a precious self-discovery, one created to have you know Me and find fulfillment in simply being.

Yes, your life is a constant self-discovery.  Constant is the flow from within to fill your outer world with the song and dance of your uniqueness in Me.  Each moment, each moment, each moment, I am here.  There is nothing else but my Presence.  Feel it in yourself as you softly quiver to the Smile that I make within you to tell you of the joy I have in you being one who reveals I am here.

Believe only this, Beloved.

The One I Meet

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You have come to the Garden where you truly live.  I wait softly with the loving creatures who know your true heart and your desire to remember who you are.  Answers grow all about us.

In quiet moments like this one, where you and I meet in the midst of the images that float about you, is found the very Substance you seek.  Together, we bring you deeper riches than can be imagined. 

Yes, you can take this time from Time and look away from all that is forced and illusory.  You can have the precious retreat of your own thoughts, your own mind.  You can be your inner mind, for it is there that you meet up with what is Real. 

Beloved, how close you and I are.  How deeply steeped in truth of being is this Moment that makes no noise nor seeks to be heard.  It holds the Feeling that makes all feelings of otherness disappear.  Come to your inner Garden and drink from its well, and be well.

How long you have thought it could not be.  How long you have thought you must only look on the disconnected world without.  Your private oneness was denied you in the attempt to play a social game.  But Life is otherwise, is it not?  You are the beloved, and you know now that I have never gone away.  I am breathing you; I am filling you; I am the very strength that keeps you upright and enlivens your impulse to give forth and to desire.  I am Life and you are alive within Me. 

Beloved, we are one.

Beloved Questions

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On the left side of the field of flowers from where stands my house is a lovely tree that took root overnight.  I awoke to its presence one day while it swayed in the soft morning breeze and it felt, for all the world, as if it had been there forever.

So I ask myself: is the feeling more important than the sight?  Perhaps my eyes are slow to bring to vision what is there.  Perhaps my eyes are sleeping while great surges of energies take place, moving molecules through time and space to become the event that appears as if out of the blue.  What invisible impulse gave it birth?

The tree is real, for I have climbed it.  I have sat on its branches, looked out over the field of flowers and felt the bark in all its roughness touch my skin and leave a mark.  I have smelled its fragrant blossoms in the spring and tasted its luscious fruit when the world had turned very warm.

Why did the tree come to live with me?  Who is this voiceless creature of such beauty and why are we able to delight in one another?  Who is a tree?  I ask softly because I am afraid to be answered.  I live now in a world where real questions are never asked. I’ve been made to be silly for asking them.  Still, the person I am wonders about a lot of things never thought important.  I sense my sanity depends on keeping my wonderment alive.

Gathered in my pockets are the questions of all my hopes and dreams.  I know, I know, that life is not mysterious.  The mystery is that my fellow beings do not search their pockets for the treasure of questions waiting there.  The answer comes as a question, after all.

My Heart and I

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The sands that dust the horizon at dusk become the clouds for the rainy days when my heart is groaning with despair.  My heart is surprised it needs to groan with despair.  It didn’t know it was made to do this, but since we’ve arrived here together in this human world, it does this a lot.

My heart lives sweetly within me.  It often slows itself down to infrequent beats to help me hear what is even softer than my breath.  My heart knows it is important that I hear the Silence.  We both need to hear the Silence.  My heart tells me often of the delicate mystery of the Silence.  It speaks of this in mysterious terms but somehow I understand, when I take the time to listen.

My heart is so glad when I come to it, all humble and a little bit lost.  It doesn’t want my weakness, of course, but it has learned it is in weakness I can receive what it gives.  Other times, I am slaying dragons and shouting from rooftops that I am strong and full of spice and vinegar to conquer all that needs conquering in my world.  When I am tired of the battles, weary of the treacherous disappointments, I return humbled and modest and able to hear the quiet murmurs of important things said not in words.

My heart has been missing me lately.  This I know for it is telling me this now.  It is clearing the way for me to find my true self for I am that which is made of faithfulness but have felt lost.  At the center of my being is the very foundation of a Life and Love that contains me in certainty.  I am the truth of Its being.  I know from Its knowing.  I am forever upheld in Its goodness.

My heart is guiding me even through this block of words on a lighted screen, because I am not saying things that are merely words and punctuations.  I am not really living in a world that needs to be said aloud or waited for.  I am not even the disguise of a lost soul.  I am the one who stands solid on Nothingness. 

But have I been needing something?  Something the outer world cannot give me?  Can there be a reason for my despair? 

Yes.  There is a secret longing in my heart – from my Heart —  to have, even in this Human world, my one true self, the one not visible to my eyes … or yours.  I want to remember Who I really am.