Bad Company

It’s been a few years
since the fear left,
but I’m still a slave
to types of craving
from time to time.

They never quite
take over my life
anymore,
but old friends come knocking
at the front door
at odd hours
of the day and night.

Sometimes
I still let myself answer
just to make sure
it’s really them,
that they’re still available
anytime I need.

You Won’t Want to Hear This, Until You Do

What you’re afraid of
doesn’t exist.
You’re angry because
you attend to what’s not here.
You’re depressed about
something you’ve imagined.

You aren’t anything like
the person you think you are.
You never had a birthday,
can’t experience death.
You’re invulnerable, infinitely free, omnipotent.
You’re harmless, compassionate, at peace.

This tiny speck of seeming
whirling madness that you see
through your apparently
physical eyes,
this swirl of sentient thoughts you think
through your ostensibly
human brain
all flow from misperceptions,
fleeting fantasies
long since passed away.

These are only images
you thought you saw
in a rearview mirror
while driving through
some solitary dreamscape
in a past that never was.

Let it go.
The sun is rising.

On Beginnings

Do not begin the day
with scattered scrapped
shards of dreams shattered
on the cluttered shores
of dawn’s demands,
each quivering sliver
still bleeding with desires
for private phantoms,
secret ghosts
and strictly personal illusions.

None of this is real;
this is your dream
you’re dreaming—
the whole charade
as far back as you recall,
every event,
each experience,
every seeming choice
and conscious act,
and even every thought
you ever thought
to think.

All of it—
this is your dream
you’re dreaming.

Therefore
begin the day again
by letting go of dreams
and nightmares both.

See how wide open
the sky is,
how unobstructed
the view,
how bright
the waking mind,
how clear
the Great Perfection
in every direction.