Easiest Path to Enlightenment

Poem a Day Project

July 30, 2013

Garnette Arledge ©

Easiest Path to Enlightenment: hearing the stories of the saints and being in their company, p. 60-62, Sai Chitarita of Shirdi Sai Baba

Why? When the world is spinning the other way to stories of disaster, horror and ugly fantasy? For simply, we are like a glass bottle thrown into the sea of Earthly life. Open it for the message yet automatically inhale the aroma-residue of the liquid it once contained.

So I choose to fill my body bottle and my time with what I love. I am free. Therefore I choose to imagine spinning a gossamer web, each thread shining with Light. That’s what happens inside me when I write. Listening to the muse in my fingers and heart, passing over rocks, Steering the Craft as Ursula LeGuin said. Sailing on the ocean – that fabric of light, wind, spirit blowing the plot along whist it will.

Manifest goodness and glory, dancing on the head of a pin with all the angels. In my case, the pin is a laptop. Knowing I’m in the lap of Creativity in the straight chair, at my mother’s desk, with five coffee table books for ergonomics holding up the world which is the IBM ThinkPad.

Romp! Yes. Effort, of course. Getting the translation exact later with commas, semicolons and spelling steadies the course. And miracles can unfold word by word for readers, partakers, friends who later come on board for the publsihed voyage into the stars within.

Hearing the stories of saints not difficult. Once one remembers every living being is a saint come marching in.

Writing what I hear in the story of saints, mind fills like a billowing sail, swiftly flying across the sea of Samsara. Worldly existence in English. We know it as a boon to the spiritual journey. The body is for writing, living, loving, breathing. Stalwart the body-boat – Avast me beauties! Calls the Admiral, steer forth, skim by the storms. Waves may buffet: just more ballast for the tale. Write on, write on, there’s treasure inside, all sparkly and dancing, plethora to share. Make each word ecstatic like exultation. Inhale glory, exhale joy, color it with pain, and anchor it with fear. Plot your course as you go, or chart it ahead, no matter. Sail on.

Re-hearing, re-reading, writing the stories of the ‘saints’ is keeping their company. Increase non-attachment to later marketing and responses. Be indifferent to pleasure and pain – some of your best writing is awful in the modern sense. Some will be awe-some but don’t critique yet – just write with the flow of the tides.

Writing a bit after meditation in the morning leads onward – always more stories come to the uncluttered mind.

Take refuge in a quiet cove today inside yourself, take refuge whole-heartedly. It will carry you safely across the white sea of paper. And the ocean of time.

No ocean, you live in the mountains? You get to adjust the metaphors, babe. Stories are like baths. They wash away your cares and woes, enmeshed in the story. And you will want to do another the next morning. So it is with meditation. Or a walk in the woods. So it is with writing following meditation, walking or sitting meditation.

Visualize your (wor)ship giving you grace after meditation. Then, now, run, run to your pen or keyboard without censure, just write.

Thank you for listening, hope you didn’t drown in all the metaphors. I’ll tone it down from bliss for the blog. Or maybe not, be true to your self in writing, in life. Love, Garnette