Terrible/Beautiful - Fred LaMotte

Everyone carries a dark secret.
We do not know its name.
But it's the same secret in all of us.
Terrible. Beautiful.

Sometimes we smile to hide it
because we are each afraid
that this is our secret alone.

But I know that your smile
covers the darkness
because it is mine.

[.....]

It is better that you look into my tears.
It is better that I look into yours.
The night embraced
blossoms into dawn.
A strange grace, is it not?

[.....]

How the soft wound
of courage glows
through this not trying
to hide it.

And a deeper secret:
I gaze from your heart,
you gaze from mine.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Precipice - Fred LaMotte

The bold become themselves.  There is a point in meditation,
if it is true meditation, when you fall off the precipice of practice
into groundlessness...  You can no longer resist the subtle sorrow
in your flesh, that which the Buddha called Dukkha...

You've been carrying it for years, for centuries, the stuff made of
stories about a suffering 'me.'  It is buried deep in the rind of your
body, but neatly packaged in the sterile cellophane called 'spirituality.'

Now the time has come to let the wrapping go.  Be vulnerable to
yourself.  Allow your every distant ache, the brittle anguish of a
 trillion nerves, the  secrets of grief, the worms of rage, the clogging
 undigested waste of blame, this whole discomfort you are, to erupt
 in one magnificent purple blossom of pain, fragrant with the gift
 of tears. Let it flower from the subtle into the gross, gushing
 without name, and without distinction between good and bad,
beautiful or ugly.

It is just Dark Energy, percolating wordlessly out of your molecules,
yet pulsing with photons of fire and swirling suns.  It is holy
destruction and healing, cosmic in scale yet intimate with every
cell of your body.  It is the chaos of possibility.  It is the cleansing
smile of...No Secret Me Any More...
It is pure love, the stuff of your bones.

Be bold.  Let your edges dissolve.  There is no one else in all
the universe for you to become.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

Being Authentic - Elizabeth Lesser

The irony of hiding the dark side of our humanness is that our
secret is not really a secret at all.  How can it be when we're all
safeguarding the very same story?  That's why Rumi calls it an
Open Secret.  It's almost a joke - a laughable admission that each
one of us has a shadow self - a bumbling, bad-tempered twin.
Big surprise!  Just like you, I can be a jerk sometimes.  I do unkind,
cowardly things, harbor unmerciful thoughts, and mope around
when I should be doing something constructive.  Just like you,
I wonder if life has meaning;  I worry and fret over things that I
can't control; and I often feel overcome with a longing for
something that I cannot even name.  For all of my strengths and
gifts, I am also a vulnerable and insecure person, in need of
connection and reassurance.  This is the secret I try to keep from
you, and you from me, and in doing so, we do each other a grave
disservice.

Rumi tells us that the moment we accept what troubles we've been
given, the door will open.  Sounds easy, sounds attractive, but it is
difficult, and most of us pound on the door to freedom and happiness
with every manipulative ploy save the one that actually works.  If
you're interested in the door to the heavens opening, start with the
door to your own secret self.  See what happens when you offer to
another a glimpse of who you really are.  Start slowly.  Without
getting dramatic, share the simple dignity of yourself in each moment -
your triumphs and your failures, your satisfaction and your sorrow.
Face your embarrassment at being human, and you'll uncover a deep
well of passion and compassion.  It's a great power, your Open Secret.
When you heart is undefended you make it safe for whomever you
meet to put down his/her burden of hiding, and then you both can
walk through the open door.

Elizabeth Lesser
from: Broken Open

~

...the person you think of as "yourself" exists only in you, and
even you don't really know who that is.  Every person you meet,
have a relationship with, or make eye contact on the street with,
creates a version of "you" in their heads.  You're not the same
person to your mom, your dad, your siblings, [that] you are to
your coworkers, your neighbors, or your friends.  There are a
thousand different versions of yourself out there, in people's minds.
A "you" exists in each version, and your "you", "yourself", isn't really
"someone" at all.

Commentary on a chapter in a book called
One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
by Luigi Pirandello