9 January 2021
“’Respect’—to consider worthy of high regard: to esteem or revere.”
_______________
The Being of the world flashes forth from nothing,
Astonishment that anything exists,
Astonishment that I exist,
This mode of being wherein lies respect,
But then—what, who, and why? ‘Why does He spend the Earth
and stars upon our being?’
__________________
What is this world that flashes forth in the overwhelming
immediacy of sights, sounds, and smells?
What is this ‘I’ that sits at the heart of all my doings,
and never says a word.
Without judgment, without error, without accusation?
Can one respect or esteem this Silence?
_______________
Greater than all language, beyond all sound,
Where the free ‘wafting in the God’ obtains,
Where nothing fills the void as a fullness
beyond all language, all meaning.
Does Absolute Mystery emerge within respect?
_______________
Flood of words overwhelms the silence of Being,
Entanglement in the jungle of language,
Among vines clutching at my thoughts, appearing real,
A net obliterates astonishment, desecrates Silence,
Submerges my respect in the ‘dingy world of everyday.’
______________
Respect, a dictionary word embedded in the net,
Elicits beyond the word—RESPECT
Not an emotion, not a thought,
An attention emerging from the Silence,
An awake discernment of the Mystery.
_____________
Self and world arise together, beyond all words,
In ecstatic immediacy, exploding into Being,
At each instant—from nothing to nothing,
A nothingness revered,
‘A flight of the alone to the alone.’
_______________
The I in absolute uniqueness,
In unsayable immediacy of selfness,
Evokes the Thou, lives from the Thou
Utter aloneness and utter communion,
Does respect evoke this Thou?
______________
The aloneness and the communion,
The Bread and the Wine consumed,
We live within the embrace of Emptiness,
Evoked by respect to Absolute Fullness,
And utter redemption.
_______________
To respect the Silence,
To revere the Emptiness,
To esteem the gods of Unutterable Mystery,
‘Let this be my prayer, O Timothy,’
That this attention fill my life,
And guide my path to Nowhere.
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one world renaissance 