A Rant on War as an Atavism
I have it on good authority
that the world is entering an Age of Intuition,
a leap ahead from its long Age of Reason!
We have been in the entranceway,
the atrium, for at least my entire
adult life. I thought we’d be
moving through to the main realm
by this time—goodbye Kali Yuga!
But I guess I, a Westerner, am not
accustomed to the units of time
conceived in India, which as I also
understand, is closer to the Om Point
from which this Creation issues forth,
where a kalpa is 4.3 billion years,
a yuga, 432,000 years,
and a Year of Brahma, 3.11 trillion years
[all of this, even, somehow
an eye-blink to the Eternal One?]
So though it may appear
to my human eye and mind
that we are “stuck in the anteroom”
of a new, more awake
and compassionate Age, things
happen in God’s time, not mine.
But surely it is becoming obvious
that War, as the world has known
for so many thousands of years—
War, which has become, if such a thing
is even possible, progressively more
of a nightmare as science lends its mind to
the technology of murder and destruction—
that War of this kind
or any kind
CANNOT BE TOLERATED
ANY LONGER ON EARTH!
Not by the “white folks” in Europe,
Not by folks of any colour
or any ethnicity or religion
anywhere!
We are ignorant,
we of the Kali Yuga,
especially here in the West,
of any of the inner laws
underlying this life—
die Law of Karma,
so hidden in today’s
spoils-grabbing world,
a Law which as I understand it
brooks no exceptions,
by which our love and kindness,
our courage and sacrifice
are rewarded later
with joy and peace of mind
and our schoolyard bullying,
our thuggish brutality,
with the opposite of
the power over others we seek…
indeed, we receive our just desserts,
apportioned by the Hidden,
Omnipotent One, via karmic Law
once we leave this stage
and are absolutely powerless,
except for the lone power
of our good deeds,
over what happens next.
Will we be born in our next life
as an abject beggar?
With an utterly deformed body?
In a country where everyone is starving?
Or where we find that the very bombs
we rained upon hapless victims
when we were top dog,
are now falling upon us?
Someday the world will know—
won’t it, God?
Someday, won’t everyone everywhere
understand that the only rule needed
anywhere is the one that says,
“Do unto others as you would
have others do unto you?”
And someday—will not War,
all war, be seen
as the Atavism it is,
the primitive flailing
of the ignorant
to enforce a bully’s will
upon other beings whom,
in their ignorance,
they do not know are closer
than brothers and sisters,
are indeed parts
of their own Selves?
Playing With Fire: The Footfalls of Addiction
How many times must I watch
pleasure turn into pain—
into a numbness painfully
removed from the Living Present?
How many times before I learn
not to cross the line at all,
not to play with limits
seeing how far I can go?
I sip my morning coffee,
sweetener and cream added,
a kind of nectar in the first sips,
the pre-dawn breezes
wafting through the window.
I begin my day enthused
at prospects for this brand-new
24-hour mini-life,
as yet pure, infinite potential—
but as I sip while perusing
online correspondence and interests,
I begin to notice that early promise
deadening.
Doing the same thing as moments before,
I’m getting a different result,
until finally I have to stop
and, facing the truth, act
to reverse the course of excess:
of my addictive behaviour.
I open the medicine cabinet
of our closet for a bottle
of purified water, and begin
to flood my polluted body,
going next to our Brita pitcher,
drinking until starting to feel
intimations of relief,
Consciousness beginning
to clear again.
As respite comes, so does
a frightening awareness:
there is no one
to regulate me
but me,
the clear-eyed self within,
who happens to co-exist
with the daredevil self
who continues to put
his hand in fires that
have burned him before.
When will he learn?
There is also a “dullard self”
who doesn’t know how
to have a good time,
and against whom recklessness
may sometimes be a reaction.
Conscience speaks
with such a quiet voice.
How long till maturity—
identical, I think,
with becoming
what we call
"an old soul.”
«VERWANDTES LESEN» POEMS BY JOHN GREY: Tuning Down, The Man on the Ledge and more»
image 1: Wikimedia Commons; image 2: Max Reif
