To begin again,
A meditation of renewal.
To begin again,
Begin to breathe.
Slow and deep breath of life.
Close your eyes to this world.
Enter in your mind's eye a new world.
A place you sit with the wise and the patient.
Imagine a great table before you,
Surrounded by the wise and the silent and the patient.
Above the table is a great light,
A light that fills the entire space of your being.
Imagine peace.
All that was is gone.
All that will be is unknown.
Imagine only the presence of being.
All the pain,
The exaggerations,
The abnormalities,
The projections of personalities.
The exaggerations of desires,
The greed,
The lust,
The traumas,
The worthlessness,
The vanity.
They are gone.
They are no more.
With the removal of one breath,
They fall away.
In your sacred palace of peace.
All the dreams unfulfilled,
All the love unrequited,
All the ambitions that knock and knock and knock at the door of the mind.
All the fantasies of childhood,
The visions of youth,
Belonging for something you have never had,
The hope for something that has never been.
They were part of you.
But now,
In my palace of peace,
They are gone.
In this moment,
In this long,
Deep exhalation of breath forlorn,
Of waste,
Of mind and spirit.
Are we sad to be in this presence?
Are we sad to be at peace with nothing but our consciousness,
Pure,
Simple being?
This is the way we were born.
Pure,
Simple,
In wonder,
In observation,
In contemplation,
In gazing,
With innocence.
And this is how we are reborn again.
From the destruction of the outside world.
We can also learn of the destruction of the inner world that cannot sustain.
The world of endless pursuit.
The life of acquisitions,
Possessions.
Material dreams evaporate in the light of being.
Gone is the vanity,
The horrible vanity of competition for another man's glory.
Competition for another man's possessions.
Even the competition with myself is an illusion.
All evaporates in the cool breath of the evening.
Peace is here and now.
Do not let ourselves be deceived.
Peace is a state from which we emerge.
In return,
Emerge again into the world and return.
But each time we step forward into life,
We are also stepping backward in time to the beginning.
And the seeds were sown.
And the stories were told about what would be.
We are those stories.
We are those living visions.
We are the end of days and the beginning of new ones.
It is an awesome responsibility to carry ourselves with glory and pride and strength and belief.
But do we have any other option?
Here in the palace of your peace,
Begin again.
Begin to wander.
From the place of nothing,
We can see what is and what is not,
What will be and what will not come to pass.
Begin again.
Begin anew.
Be born in nothingness.
We create the potential for something real,
Something great,
Something astounding,
Something wonderful,
Beautiful,
Pure,
And innocent,
Whole and complete.
So here in the palace of your peace,
Begin again fearlessly,
Awesomely,
Patiently,
Quietly,
To know the world begins with you.
