Tom Radcliffe

All there is is goodbye, goodbye. Leaving, leaving this wonderful illusion. Empty. Full. Peace is my home, homeward-bound. No regrets, just live flowing in no direction. Bubbling in stillness. Dancing in emptiness. Hello, hello. Goodbye, goodbye. Take care. Look. Listen. See. Om.

Silence pulsing, chirping, rolling in the shifting dark. The eyes unseen; a shakey camera. It used to be so captivating, so real, so full of mystery. Now my stillness surrounds it all, making it seem so quaint, faint and predictable. Maya - Queen if the Jungle - clues everywhere.

Reading my own words in chapter two of Bhagavad Gita. I am stillness itself. I am Krishna talking to Arjuna. Even the darkness shines around and within. Meditation has no meaning this morning as I chant with Swami Dayananda. Deep, silent, endless, free! Om shanti, shanti, shanti.

Falling asleep over the Bhagavad Gita in the cold misty morning. Incense burns, candle flickers. The dullness and sadness of Tamas floods the system. Ha, ha! I shine bright in the darkness. The dawn comes up, old thoughts and feelings sink back down the well or fly up, out, away.

After all these years, lifetimes, world ages, this little apparent person called Tom, oh how I love him, is till looking for love and acceptance. Doesn’t he know? I love and accept him. I’m him, although he doesn’t seem to see that yet. I am here though, where I have always been.

Dirty concrete mind. Memories of wet, 70’s council estates. Memories of steel drums ringing out and the smell of incense, African shirt and endless summer. Looking out of those eyes. Looking out of these eyes. The eyes have changed, blurry now but I, I am still, bright as always.

Snowed in. Spring cleaning. I have lived most of my life snowed under with fears, desires, doubts, regrets and obligations. This year I am throwing them out with the drab old clothes, the empty books and the fucking family heirlooms! All I ask in return is peace, peace, peace Om.

This night is truly dark. The just beginning. The prayer is deep. The silence within and without is the same. This body has had it’s edges taken away. The mind is bewildered, weakly grasping at ghosts. Peace slowly raises the crown, but needs my permission to place it on or down.

I am a result of desire, my own and other people’s. It is quite disgusting to contemplate really. Sitting here, still and in silence, worries appear in the simple joy. I have no desire, except for the happiness of myself and others. The market place has nothing for me or for you.

Waking without fears. Walking from the bedroom, kneeling before myself to find that today surrender is redundant. This world is vividly unreal today and the stillness that I am is in love. Bhagavan appears as the oak tree, the sunshine, the purring cat. Ok, time to feed the Lord!

Wet, misty, pigeons calling, breath in the nose and that old longing. Thoughts from the past, old houses, empty, crumbling, back to before I was born. Goodbye again and again. I see it all around, the loneliness, the ambition, the fearful, tentative relating. The not knowing why.

Every day the ghostly shaman arises. He mourns the past and fearfully predicts the future. He exists in a confusing world of separate events and creatures, of conflicting values and meanings, of relationships, duties, crimes and punishments. Snow is white. Leaves are green. I am.

There are no teachers, no students, no presidents and generals, no Christians, no Muslims, no Hindus and no Jews. These thoughts are not mine, nor these feelings nor this body. There is only awareness and God arising from awareness as all these incredibly intricate, vivid ideas.

We fall again and again into the comfortable silence. The fire flickers. The silence deepens with each return. The fruit of thousands of hours of meditation and self acceptance, often agonizing. Three old warriors lay down their weapons, knowing they are utterly safe from attack.

When you are listening, can you hear the silence behind the sounds? When you look, can you see the stillness? When thoughts appear, do you know you are the awareness of them? When feeling is gushing, can you ride them? When your dreams dissolve, can you kiss them gently goodbye?

Quiet day; prayer, Yoga, meditation, coffee and conversation, some phone conversations, cutting and pruning trees, bathing, cooking, eating, satsang, conversation, reading Bhagavad Gita in bed. Oh yes; emails, Facebook comments, thoughts, feelings and of course a little tweeting.

Those poisonous twins, fear and desire. As soon as one is gone, the other appears. Have you noticed you never see them together? I begin to suspect they are one and the same. An old mad actor desperately throwing on the tattered robes and plastic jewels and tarting in the mirror.

Soft rain agrees with my gentle grief. The trees all stand in their proper places and I in my customary place on the sofa. My father stands above the clouds in the fresh wind, his white robes billowing and fluttering. An ancient snake winds across the red, shimmering sand - time.

Contemplating the Mahabharata today. In this appearance called your life no-one is ultimately real. Each apparent person is perhaps a symbol for something - who in your life represents love, ignorance, greed, truth, lust, ambition, freedom, imprisonment, security, joy, yourself!?