A beautiful prayer, courtesy of the Rootlight website, associated with naam yoga and the yoga center I volunteer at, Universal Force Healing Center. I repeat this prayer every morning for 11 minutes as a meditation. You can also replace “me” with the name of another person to pray the same prayer for them as well.

Love before me
Love behind me
Love at my left
Love at my right
Love above me
Love below me
Love unto me
Love in my surroundings
Love to all
Love to the universe

Peace before me
Peace behind me
Peace at my left
Peace at my right
Peace above me
Peace below me
Peace unto me
Peace in my surroundings
Peace to all
Peace to the universe

Light before me
Light behind me
Light at my left
Light at my right
Light above me
Light below me
Light unto me
Light in my surroundings
Light to all
Light to the universe

Conscious love is self-sacrificing,
Unconscious love is self-serving.

Conscious love respects its beloved’s will,
Unconscious love imposes its own will on its beloved.

Conscious love results in freedom,
Unconscious love results in bondage.

Conscious love is constant,
Unconscious love is erratic.

Conscious love seeks only the highest good for its beloved,
Unconscious love seeks its own immediate gratification.

Thus, strive only to love consciously, or not at all.

A man of silent dignity. You carry yourself with an air of wisdom that commands respect of others.You have a strong determination in your eyes and poetry in your soul. You are virtuous, serious, deep, self-controlled (a master over yourself). You have a strong mind. You have the power of determined focus, of mind over matter, of mind over body and over mundane enticements. In your wisdom and love, you know the folly and perpetually unsatisfying nature of earthly pursuits and desires, thus, you reject them. Truth and Wisdom form the true north by which you navigate your life. Thus, you are a man; you are a master over earthly desires—you love, reach for and understand the Divine, above and beyond the earthly. You will never suffer yourself to become a beggar or a clown, a fool or a puppet, by any earthly pursuit or distraction, nor allow yourself to reduce another to such a lowly state; you are a man.

And beneath this noble exterior, you hide a gentleness, a softness, a loving nature … and sensual passions, which, alone, you know not to think of.

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where you are; one day we will meet; you are the man I love—my husband. Your wisdom is glorified in my heart and uplifting to my spirit. Your understanding of Truth and unfaltering devotion to a life of Righteousness and Goodness is a beacon to my feminine soul, which is overwhelmed with love and admiration for you.

You know me. You find the sweetness and compassion of my spirit a divine beauty in which your soul delights, and my deep and tender love for you is as your own breath.

A worthy man, you come inside me and you know every flowing contour of my supple soul. You see my intuitions and you give them words. You understand me; you understand my blessing and you lovingly guide me in the wealth of your wisdom. Through your knowing and your love for me, you cradle my fragile heart within the fortress of your masculine mind. You touch me at profound depths, penetrating my virgin soul with your loving, masculine strength and I shudder at your firm and guiding hand, as you caress my softness.

Mind’s eyes meet, man, woman from afar. Across the distances their glances lock. His eyes, a penetrating and sincere blue, hers, a deep and soft-warm brown.

Slow… Affection, understanding grow in their eyes. The unutterable nuances of his soul she sees in his eyes…In this silence, the steadfastness of their mutual stare, so fixed upon one another, forms an unseen bond between them, existing together in an unearthly realm, they are thousands of miles apart; only their mind’s eyes have met.

Together in space and time, see, face-to-face, their hands touch, one finger to the other. Again their eyes meet…slowly…turning her gaze downward, closing her eyes, her finger moving on his, she can feel inside her, how heavy, how strong his finger, she feels her own as a feather; he feels her flutter lightly down, ever-closer to his palm. How solid, how strong his masculine palm; she feels and senses there on him a scar and her heart is touched with his past pain, and with such gentle love, holding his pain securely in her soft hand, she caresses his scar tenderly, gazing upon it, pondering the affliction that might have caused it. Turning her expressive eyes up to his, she finds his gaze on her; again they meet.

Slowly their bond grows, in respect, in love, understanding, trust, yet only their eyes have met, hands touched.

She looks to his face. Their eyes meet; at deeper and deeper depths, their eyes delve into one another’s soul.

Slowly, tranquilly she reaches out to touch his face. Her fingertips move across his rough skin, slowly. Such harshness her soft, delicate fingers have never touched. He feels the sensation of her fingernails and soft fingers as they lightly graze over his rugged face. Deeply touched, he maintains a steadily deepening breath—she hears it— with the light caress of her fingertips, his heart beats stronger—she feels it. Then with the fullness of her curious hand, she touches his face, his cheek, runs her finger over his moist red lips, she feels every contour of his face, finding his roughness, his softness, and loving all of him. Gazing at her hand moving against his skin, seeing him, feeling him, his irregularities, his masculine beauty, his firmness, she looks up to him; again their eyes meet. Seeing deeply into her, piercing through her with his deep-probing eyes, he penetrates her virgin soul; overwhelmed with a slow-swelling wave of passion, tears come to her eyes, as he exhales, a long, steady sigh; closing his eyes, feeling her on him.

What’s in a drawing?

What do you see beneath the surface? What do you see in the drawing…?

Close eyes … feel … find peace … poetry …… love ….. look … dream … disappear …. see … sigh …… write …

I see a heart, the aging of a bounteous love, fruits of passion over-ripening, never won, never touched, waiting. A window, open to any who will see, yet never once seen. Chamber walls, worn with time and abandon. Emptiness in the chamber of a heart, deserted by its own soul.

I see a heart, not dead, in slumber. Fruits of love, not rotted, imperishable. But not the soul in sight. It is his heart, as he drew it. Sad, dejected. My love – he was the deserter of a wealth his downcast eyes denied to his sight.

This picture was drawn by the one I loved above all others in life.

*Finland-220905

One Man

I had believed all my life that somewhere in the world there was one man that God was saving for me and I had this dream of love and what it was…

because I had seen it in my dreams and written it in my poems and felt it inside myself…

and then I went out into the world and tried to find it…

and all I found was the deceit and manipulation of self-serving love, cowardice, denial, a proud feebleness for vulgar, carnal indulgences, narcissism, soul-devastation and plundering of hearts…

and after too much suffering, I conceded that the love I had dreamed lived only inside of me and in my poetry…and only when I died would I find that love…maybe

and I gave up

I stayed alone, left with just the tattered remains of my used up heart and mind, fragile, disillusioned, devastated, irreparably out of order…

and then, one man came along…he came along and I heard words come out of his mouth–the very words that I had written in my poems so many years ago–and they reverberated faintly in my mind like ancient echoes excavated from the core of my own heart

and he unwittingly spoke to me of things that I used to dream and imagine a lifetime ago in a forgotten existence

and I could even feel how he loved me and it felt exactly like the love I had inside myself and he was as crazy and intense in his love and passion as I was

he was so close to me that he spoke my words as I felt them and he felt my thoughts as they came

but not even merely because he loved me so much that he could come inside me, but because we are the same, our love is the same and there is no distance between us to travel, in heart or in mind, for us to be inside one another

because he is the mirror image of my soul.

*Finland-230605

Why do I fall apart when he stays away for days and days? More importantly, why does he stay away from me, why does he leave me…alone…wondering…writing…

“I sit alone here in my dark, silent room, writing to you by candlelight and staring out the window at the falling snow; each little snowflake living its brief moment in the light of the street lamp, lingering or hastened through this limelight at the whim of the wind, passing thus away, back into the dark space of night, becoming again invisible, forgotten.

Here I wait for you. I’ve waited for you all day. You said you would come. You did not come. I ask myself in my solitude ‘Did he forget me?’ I ask myself ‘Why does everyone forget me?’ like a small girl left waiting alone outside in the cold after her school has closed for the day and all her classmates have long since been picked up and taken back home to the warm embrace of a family. The small girl stands alone, shivering in the cold, unclaimed, abandoned, orphaned…scared. Nobody wants her, nobody remembers her – not even her own parents.

As I stare into the night, white with falling snow, deep inside me I feel this pain – my brief time in the light of your love is done.

I ask myself, ‘How many days will he desert me for this time? How many weeks?’

I ask myself, ‘Why did they forget me? Why did they leave me alone, waiting?’ Time after time, I only find one explanation – I am not worthy.”

*Finland-050505