My Descent

I've been trying to step into a different way of thinking. 

  I catch glimpses of a place from which I will draw my power.

  I feel the words on my tongue, but before my fingers hit the keyboard,

  they are gone, and the revelation igniting my heart disappears into the mist.

I believe that I am creating the mist. I am blocking the Divine.

  The mist arises from my inability to grasp the conditions of my life.

  I am incredulous at the seemingly immutable fact of my circumstances. 

  The absurdity parks my mind in a perpetual state of unconsummated analysis.

'What stone sits unturned?  What misperceptions await clearing?
  What silence have I not held?  What lessons remain unlearned?'

  Dancing with lessons, steeping myself in each, gathering its gifts,

  looking to see if it is the one offering my release from purgatory.

I find a landscape unchanged, except the hemorrhaging of my resources.

I list the strategies, silences and lessons alongside the one hundred jobs.

  They share in common big, bold, red letters stamped across their face, 'DENIED', 

  and the concomitant silence in response to my appeals to understand.

The brain is overtaxed by investigations that never resolve in answers.

  My heart is gripped by fear of impending disaster, by deeper fears

  that I am unworthy, have failed once again, don't have what it takes, OR

  that I am superfluous to this economy, a resource sink, expendable.

This all strikes fear in my heart, further perplexes my befuddled brain.

  The brain and heart collude, inciting a riot of unanswerable questions, 

  manic analyses, desperate conclusions. They paint a bizarre backdrop

  on the canvas portraying my life, fear tinted with drunken irrationality.

All my life is superimposed on this backdrop.

  Incidents and people are seen, not as presented, 

  but as scenarios and characters in a predestined plot;

  one written and produced by me; one leading to my demise.

I cannot celebrate other's lives or their fortunes.

  No, I feel envy at their fortune; contempt when I find

  my expertise eclipses theirs; chagrin and humiliation that

  they have the jobs for which I can not even get an interview.

High on this toxic cocktail of jealousy, resentment and swelling bitterness,

  I act foolishly with a foul mix of self-disgust and bombastic showmanship.

  My behavior leaves a bile in my mouth that eats its way to my stomach, 

  turns to acid, feasts on tender flesh and nourishes the burgeoning despair.

All folds in on itself, creates a lethal quagmire out of which

  I cannot climb, or see, or feel, or act, or breath, or believe...
  I can't find the bottom of this pit, can't stop from digging.

  And, amid the chaos, the quiet solace offered by Spirit is lost.

There is a natural resistance to seeing oneself as deplorable or expendable. 

  There is an instinct to protect oneself in any way to avoid this possibility.
  Finding fault and placing blame on an other relieves me of responsibility.
  So, I forge villains out of strangers, those I envy, those I don't understand.

This is one path from fear to hate.
  There are many paths from fear to hate.
  But, they all end in destruction of the soul.
  The journey on this path, I believe, is ever so common.

Do you recognize this story?

  Can you name the actors?
  Can you describe the plot?

This is the rotting, fetid cesspool, the primordial sludge,
  the undifferentiated mass out of which we must climb.

  Like an unstoppable landslide, fear begets anger which
  sires contempt, jealousy, loathing, resentment, hate...

This is what holds us back from seeing our potential,

  from recognizing our connection and our ONENESS,

  from stepping back from the brink of our extinction.

  

The answer that Spirit calls to me through my insanity

  is love, simply love, incomprehensible, indisputable,
  love.