I haven’t been able to write as of late.

I transitioned through immense amounts last year, especially during the month of November, transitioned through what I hesitate to call “junk,” but that which most certainly felt akin to garbage.

It was rumored, through various channels, that the end of last year would be a period of much availability for release. The key was to freely bring up the past and old aches, to tear open the scars, dig deep, and like magic, much would be healed.

Truth be told, and truth I often tell, this aforementioned rumor was mostly true. In fact, repeatedly I brought up to the surface my unfinished “business,” and repeatedly the thoughts, emotions, body-history, and spiritual “business” rectified itself and was reborn into sudden and freeing understanding, acceptance and forgiveness.

Interestingly, there was little analysis I undertook during this process. In explanation, I offer a contrast: instead of opening a book of an event or events and feeding myself the pages, unlike a reader, or even an observer, in my process of recovery of self, the experience was liken to watching some other part of something open a symbolic window to let the lingering pain in; and within that same instance of the opening, some force beckoned a sweeper, an unexplainable substance, that now entering the space of self, scoured away to dissolve unneeded residue.

A dear friend calls some people “sandpaper” friends. They refine us. They grate on us. In a certain bowing of spirit, we allow them to hurt us. But in the end, we come out better for the experience.

Well with the window open, and the sweeper entering, I felt the sandpaper. I felt the needling rough edges pry open my skin, go asunder, and dig up the muck and guck that had lived and harbored within. I felt the intensity; I felt extreme discomfort. I felt exposed. I felt found, singled-out, even hunted. And then, I gradually felt slaughtered and left to die. Until, in the swirling of sensation, that came rather abruptly and all at once, I was cleansed and left lighter.

Through this all there was no effort on my part. I didn’t try to heal myself. I didn’t even want to heal myself. What I prayed for was love. That and to be a vessel for spirit and light.

This is what I went through most of the winter season. One day after the next of windows opening, and then finding myself in the midst of both trouble and rescue. Until at last, after months on end, I begged for reprieve, for break, and opportunity for rest.

And rest came.

But soon following was a time period of vultures, of name calling, of doubting who I was and my own path. Then with the passing of these trials, after I’d faced more inner frailties and demons, I found a profound inner peace and knowing. I had a clarity and a comfort. I felt blanketed by the divine. I was granted an unbridled passion to create and communicate. And each morning, I experienced intense visions which included powerful visuals, healing words, and much beauty. This too, this rapture of passion coupled with the visions, like the sandpaper and vulture times, became daunting, and I begged too for these to stop. And they did.

Soon the window closed to whatever was entering.

And here I have sat in silence for over a week wondering what my next step is; while all the while I hear a distant whispering of “There is no next step.” A whisper reminding me everything is okay and is occurring in divine timing.

I think I am mourning what I thought I’d found. I think I am mourning this profound peace and understanding I had for several weeks—a traveling period where I saw heart-clouds in the sky and angel shapes everywhere I looked. A time of deep prophetic prose and agonizing, sweet-release through creation. I remember asking for this profoundness to stop, to give me reprieve, but I don’t think I ever thought the experience would truly end.

Yet, as I sit here now, I don’t wish it back; as much as I miss this part of where I have been and the connection I had, I am glad the window has shut. For it is time for me to move along my path further. A time of new mysteries and discoveries, and a time of further refining. I guess what is somewhat discomforting is I know I have made a spiritual vow of learning. I have made this life about growing, despite the personal cost. I have dedicated myself to being the best me I can be. And with this dedication, I understand there is no stagnant place. And there is no final place either. There is just this continued traveling to a new something and new someone.

I think I have been mourning the past selves. The ones who thought they found themselves. The ones who thought they knew so much. I am mourning the possibility of ever knowing again. As there is no knowing, and there is no finding this self I so diligently had searched and longed for. I am here. In all my states, in all my emotions, in all my frailties and fallings, I am here. And this acceptance of self, in all stages and all phases, past, present, and future, is perhaps the most frightening feeling of all. The learning I am enough. I am love. I am light. I am home. Whilst still traveling this road that eventually leads somewhere else.

Sam Craft, March 2013

Beautiful One
I love you. I don’t know why or how. I just do.
You are immeasurably good, immeasurably pure, immeasurably wonderful.
I want to wrap myself in your essence, to bathe in your beauty.
I want to pour my soul into you, my every thought, experience, desire and dream.
I want to harbor my pain there, within your secret chamber.
If only there were a door.
If only I could find a key.
If only you would open.
Instead, I glide past your existence daily; hour upon hour, building my hopes atop the other like a child with wooden blocks, thinking eventually something will tumble, something will crash.
But nothing ever does.
You remain, and I remain.
And I am left dancing around the image that I imagine you to be.
Standing in a threshold, I both created and wished into existence.
And here, in this imagined place outside of you, I have found the enterance to self.
In this endless delight of searching out the possibilities of you, I have found the remarkable possibility of me.
My friend, my entwined beautiful one, in the wanting of your glorious being, I am.
I am. I am.
And I smile from the deepest place of happy soul child.
Smile as I swing upon the healing rainbow of you.
Still searching for the treasure beyond the imaginary door.
Yet, knowing when you are found, when you have at last welcomed me forward, that I will fall in love not with one, not with two, but with the illumination birthed from the reunion of beauty.