[A Meditation for an Eclipse Season]

“Saw the face on the Moon last night —
shocked, marvelled and amazed
that the wrong ain’t made right.
Looking down on this broken old world
over which flags of cowardly deeds
have unfurled.”

So I wrote in a song nearly ten years ago, entitled “The Wailing Moon” (so far unrecorded). But it’s not only the Moon who wails at this broken old world. Sometimes I look out across the vast jigsaw puzzle of everything (seeing all the pieces, though quite a few are missing) and I weep and weep and weep and weep. There are times when I weep so much and so hard that I wonder if it’s possible to continue remaining alive. It’s as if I have no energy left to be in this form, in this dimension, in this cosmos, at this imaginary time of beingness. I am pained and drained by the stupidity and hubris of lemming-life on this biosphere.

Other times, I look out across the vast intertwinection of totality with a feeling of impetuous wonder at the staged intricacy of this sensate hologram experience and I am filled with a zest for being and overwhelmed with joy at its ragged radiance. In this world, all the temporary brutality and bravado, fallacy and fakery — in their tempestuously tragic manifestation — when seen through a heart which listens to the music behind everything, can only wonder at how the jigsaw is ultimately self-healing, carrying both the toxin and its antidote.

These are two seemingly different responses to the bellicose brokenness of the world. But in reality they are two facets of the same priceless diamond. The first is coming from a deep experience of empathy with the suffering and upheaval of the world — siding wholly with humanness and matter for as long as is spiritually necessary. The other is born out of a stupendous transcendence of that matter, painting a big blooming flowery presence of NOW. Each of these two experiences is as valid as the other. The truly spiritual person is not so removed from the world that s/he cannot identify with flesh. On the contrary, just as one cannot be fully human without developing spiritually, so one cannot be truly spiritual without a profound care for and identification with the lure of incarnation.

As I gazed lovingly at one of the geranium plants on my balcony (see photo), it occurred to me how similar it is to the dual-faceted nature of my responses to the world in its apparent brokenness. Parts of the plant are wilting or dying, while others are buddingly thriving and flowering. Yet, these apparent differences apart, it all forms one cohesive whole of ebbing and flowing — coming and going — dying and growing.

Thus, tears and transcendence are linked as humanity and spirit forge themselves into an alliance (while a voice whispers to us innerly: “This is why you are here”).

© 2017/2022, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. 
 
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]