Recognition

I saw your face again today for the very first time in a long while. Your eyes sparkled like diamonds.
When we looked at each other it was as if there were nothing separating us, we could see each other, and we each knew the other was seeing us back. It hasn’t been quite like that for a very long time. Not quite like that.
It reminded me of a night in a distant dream where you came and sat on the couch in my living room while my lover was out. You came and sat there on that maroon sued couch not far from a life size painting of Pan that my lover had commissioned months ago.
I saw you and I said:
“It’s over now.”
And you looked at me, perhaps coyly, smiling while the rest of your face and body seemed passive, immobile. You asked me what I meant.
“Seeing you sitting here. It’s like you’ve come to claim me. My life is over.”
You were pleased, because it was true. I was frightened, but you told me not to be afraid.
We left that dream together and entered another and here we have been.
This has happened many times between us, in many different dreams. You arrive and I go with you. Whatever dream I have been living, when you come, it is a pale mirage in comparison to your stark presence.
My lovers, my families, my hopes, my wishes, my plans, my hobbies, my friends, my accomplishments, my shortcomings, my possessions, I leave them and we go on.
You have led me out of the nightmare dimensions in this way, you are still leading me from them in this way. We are at this moment, in the darkest chamber of existence and in the brightest and in every place between, and in all of them, I am seeing you and you are seeing me and we each are aware of this rare experience of recognition.

Slippery Fish

Way is a slippery fish.
Squeezing tighter is not better, it will only cause the fish to slip in a descending or ascending direction.
Inner stillness keeps us in the Way.
When we make a sudden move we loose our grasp of the fish. Very easy to do. These moves, they extend in every possible direction, they cover an infinite array of possibilities ranging from obvious to subtle.
There is a first move, and a second, and a third… each one will present itself like a head of the hydra, if you vanquish over one yet another option takes its place.
The challenge is to remember that you are not waiting for a good choice, you are not waiting at all, you are staying.
Because every move is a move out of the Way. Way is remaining, holding, staying, keeping, containing, restraining.
When you feel that you must do something to end the agony of holding the wriggling fish, stop there. There is no good way to readjust your grip. Holding the fish is agony. You want the agony.
Existence is suffering.
There are no good options.
There is no point in changing directions, a point in every direction is like no point at all. Enslavement is hoping to end the suffering. Energy does not cease to exist, it merely changes shape.
Immortality is stillness.
Holding still is horrible until you stop minding the pain and acquire a taste for it.
Then you can help hold up the Eternal Burden of Atlas.