Dear Sister, I know you tried to grow.
In the early days, I was deeply awe struck by your struggles.
So much more sincere than my own dilettante musings.
You opened me up then to the meditation room's quiet seeking
and inspired me to make my own questing real.
I was a rough seeker; just a blunt Irishman with dreams
far too simple to be afraid to open any door, if I could but find it.
And, in your chair beside me, you burned with dedication
and called in the voices and the truth; session after session.
How many hours of channeling flowed through your conduit
how many times there did you open my eyes?
Looking back now across the years and all that has happened since,
I see what an unequal struggle it was for you.
You began so much more encumbered than I.
Your childhood, your Karma, your inflexibilities, your isolation,
your anger, your hurt and all your deep distrusts.
They walled you in even as you spent so many hours
seeking to break through.
They blocked you
even as you burned for release.
You sat in that chair with fierce will and dedication
and you held the vision of the highest good for all concerned.
You read Seth and pondered the mysteries locked inside T.S. Eliot's poems
and you filled the house with the symbols and sounds of many traditions.
And yet, Dear Sister, you've arisen from that chair un-transcendent,
un-opened, un-humbled and still essentially believing
that only your will, only your hard-won defenses, only your way,
only your opinions and only your disdain, strength and anger could protect you.
All of these I can see now betrayed you.
They were the very walls that kept you from breaking through.
Sweet Sister, what you tried to achieve through acts of will and dedication
can never be done; save through the erosion of all that you held to make you safe.
There is no growth without humbling,
no advance without disassembly, and no new becomings without unbecoming.
And only a deep and sincere choice to allow yourself to become porous
to all that has hurt you and all that you can feel
can free you from those things that impede your realization.
gallagher
06Dec2013
— Copyright 1965-2013 by Dennis Gallagher —