The Humble Musings Of The Manhattan Monk 6/19/11

I have a confession.

I am a unrecognizable fallen soul

I am lost, bereft of the embrace and the company of my Beloved. My whole being is saturated with this forgetfulness, yet by the mercy of a few powerfully kind soul, I am a getting a glimmer of what I should know, of who I should be. Rays of truth pour into my heart-space challenging me to come home.

Part of my great work is learning to call out to You from the depths of my heart, in every Name I chant. My distant voice aches. I long to see You again, but I am so broken, so disconnected. Even writing these words has no juice.

I have to build the house of my heart again to live with You there.

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"The Prison Of My Own Isolation"

I rot and dwell in the prison of my own isolation, but I find myself kicking at the iron bars, demanding my liberation. No longer do I want my heart to be locked up in this cold cell, where it cannot taste a warm embrace.

No longer do I want to sit alone in my castle. What good are the gifts I keep there, if you can't taste their splendor as well? Why am I so selfish? To solve that riddle means confronting the pain of the lie of my whole existence. I hate that pain. I hate its searing obviousness, and in my castle I keep all this at bay. I live in a fairy-tale that no one wants to read.

I am so high up in the tower of this castle that your suffering heart is inconceivable to me. Para-dukha-dukhi is a foreign language to me, as abstract as string theory. My compassion s distant and amorphous, entirely theoretical, without the force of action, touching nobody and no one. I cannot walk the walk. I can barely even talk the talk. Cut off, floating up near the clouds of my mind, in the turbulent airs without meaning and substance.

Rays of truth poke into my heart, challenging me to come home.

Where do I find this truth? In the simplest gesture of care. In giving up my time, my selfish pursuits, to open my voice in the gestures of honest-to-God communication, my eyes in the expressions of affection. I can find my heart in your heart. I earn the affection of your heart by giving what little of the simplicity of love that I have.

Get out of my head. Get into the ground of my being. Get into the heart.

You are knocking at the door of the prison of my isolation. For once, I am willing to answer, to bring you in and offer you a cup of tea. You want my pain, to know it and to help me transcend it. I pray simply for the courage to peel away these layers of pain around my heart-space, to free me. I need your help.