Listen to the Voice of the Universal Artist

I have no illusions about death
Two caskets burned in the sacred fire
One was my Lover in the height of his youth
The other was my dad not yet an old man
Both of their voices whispered in my heart:
“You do not need to leave the body to be free”.

Both of their bodies dissolved to soft ashes
My Lover’s were more silvery than my dad’s
Felt more fine and my dad’s felt courser
We released them gently into sunlight sparkles
Autumn winds whistling over the caressing waters:
“You do not need to leave this body to be free.”

I keep thinking I come from up there somewhere
I keep thinking that I like the seeing exercise
When you stand in front of a mirror with a candle
No light except that single flame unmasking your face
In that far away gaze a mystery sings:
“You do not need to leave your body to be free.”

Sometimes I sit on the ground and cry
Feeling wretched disconnection
But then inside I hear my Teacher’s words:
“All the Power that ever was or will be
Connects to me from every point in space
I do not need to leave my body to be free.”

I AM not the body
I AM That I AM
I AM

© Ganga Fondan, 2013


Journal Entry: October 7, 2013

What is true freedom in unity? I used to think that this body must be like a cage holding the spirit captive.  The spirit must be this thin whispy energy that has to stay close in order to maintain and take care of the physical shell.  Isn't that just seeing them as separate all over again?  In a world where we see the smallest particles as a wave, nothing is fixed.  If everything comes from No-Thing, then this energy of the body is just a different state of the same energy.  How can I come closer to knowing this in my own experience? 

Questions flood my mind again:

Why is there only enough energy to keep a body for 80 or 90 years?

Why do we age at all?

Why does so much energy leak out of us and deplete us?

Why do some young people have to leave this world?

Why does this energy create illness?

Why are we so afraid of the unknown?

Logically of course I know that we are conditioned.  Every self-help book worth its salt will go on and on about how thoughts create our reality.  We are programmed by our upbringing and environment to follow a pattern which others also repeat over and over.  We find ways to change our habits.  We are told to meditate and eat right.  We memorize all the catch phrases of consciousness and occasionally we feel an inner calm welling up inside of us.  If we persist, we will feel this calm radiate outward into our daily lives.  Deep down inside, we have not yet answered the harder questions.  Tonight I wonder if the rational mind is meant to solve this at all.  Maybe while immersed in a creative flow, we emotionally connect with the Truth and it is enough:

The artist sits at her table.  The phone rings.  A friend cries on the line and seeks comfort while going through a crisis.  The artist listens intently while beginning to sketch onto a notebook just in front of her.  The conversation rises and falls like a great piece of music.  The sketch begins to unfold now with brightly colored pencil crayons filling the page with lines and curves and illuminating light.  The phone call ends in depth of love and connection.  The artist stares at the image and marvels at the pleasant sensations that come while looking at it.

A few days pass by.  The artist begins to play with layering the sketch onto a picture of herself.  More feelings come and go.  She does not know if the artist is a piece of the sketch itself or not.  More playing.  She thinks of skin forming on a pot of boiling milk.  The skin appears out of the milk itself.  Then there are thoughts of an ice cube melting in a glass.  A frozen chunk of water dissolves back into another of its states.  She continues to play.  She thinks of her Lover.  She thinks of her dad.  Peace flows through her being.  A shift has occurred and poetry flows out of this experience.  There are no logical conclusions.  Only peacefulness.  The ache for explanations and definitions dissipates.  

The artist nods with understanding.  Does a dance make sense?  Does a flower make sense?  Does the wind make sense?  Does the idea of living forever make sense?  We experience a knowing beyond sense.  On this we ride in the direction of our dreams and realize that there is nothing we cannot know.  The art reveals itself throughout our  life.  It gives voice to our infinite heart.  We connect with the Truth and it is enough.

Journal Entry : October 14, 2013

Many years ago, my mom had a baby.  He survived only 13 days and then passed on.  He would have been 6 years younger than me.  My mom never told me the date before.  She suddenly called me on the phone and told me about how she celebrated him with a white rose on his day of appearance in this world on the 7th of October (the day I started this posting).  

Another sweet voice alive in the Mystery reminds me:
"You do not need to leave your body to be free."