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1. What is religion?
Religion is the path to spirituality.
2. What is spirituality?
Spirituality is awakening.
3. What is awakening?
Awakening is the release of illusion.
4. What is the illusion?
The illusion is that we are at the mercy
of people, things and circumstances.
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
Be real
to heal.
When real,
we heal.
You'll heal,
when real.
Really...
you'll heal.
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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Picking up a few leaves
is easy;
harvesting the root vegetables
takes work.
On the surface
lie the facts;
beneath the surface
waits the truth.
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
I experience moments
of intense happiness,
moments when this moment
is enough,
when I forget the past moment
and stop desiring the next moment
and discover how the current moment
contains all that's necessary.
I am full, content, satisfied.
All other moments combined,
whether remembered or imagined,
are worth nothing compared to this moment--
this momentous moment.
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
You say my words are nothing new,
you've heard them before,
but they are new to my experience,
and so, as they flow from my pen or keyboard,
find renewed power.
You claim you have nothing new to add,
but I watch your words--
though spoken by others before you--
find fresh reality in your life.
This is why both of us must speak---
we rebirth the words in our experience of them.
Ever and ever again
old truth becomes first truth.
Old truth blossoms,
burns
into first truth.
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
When you stick yourself with a thorn
and say ouch,
this is healthy.
When I stick myself with a thorn
and you say ouch,
this is empathy.
When those who will our destruction
stick themselves with thorns
and we say ouch,
this is divinity.
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
Oh, I am a lovely,
paradoxical thing,
a slug in the slime,
a bird on the wing.
I'm riddled with defects.
I'm goodness galore.
I'm wondrous and loving.
I'm cracked to the core.
I'm petty. I'm giving.
I'm sweetness. I'm snot.
I'm everything beautiful--
everything not.
So please don't discard me
when I miss the boat;
honor those traits
that keep me afloat,
and I'll do the same
when bearing with you,
for one thing I know
that's most certainly true:
You are a lovely,
paradoxical thing,
a slug in the slime,
a bird on the wing...
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
This camouflage I wear,
this glossy, chirpy happiness,
this pseudo-confidence in God's intention
to neatly resolve in 30 minutes or less
(like any good sit-com)
every "challenge" life lobs at me--
like I said,
this camouflage is,
unknown to me,
thin like sheer drapes,
only filtering (not blocking)
my widened eyes, shortened breath, trembling hands.
You see the signs,
read the tea leaves of my insecurity,
observe the first bricks
crumbling at my foundation.
I pretend it isn't what it is.
You wonder if I'm committing
(via intentional blindness)
a sort of spiritual suicide,
a metaphysical, faith-ending bullet,
straight to my soul.
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
Planted in the garden,
I know only beauty and peace.
Mine is a simple task--
to accept what you offer
(rain and sun, admiration and touch);
to breathe, to watch, to listen;
to give what I am--
form and fragrance,
color and contentment.
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
"Ideas about God aren't God," she said.
She dabbed at her forehead with a fluttery handkerchief
that had appeared--
like a magician's dove--
from her cleavage.
"Furthermore,
abstractions about God aren't God;
theories about God aren't God;
all these words about God aren't God."
Now she fanned herself with the handkerchief.
"And so...?"
She looked around,
made a circling gesture with the handkerchief:
"Abstraction isn't life;
experience is life.
Experiencing yourself is life.
Experiencing life is God.
Experiencing yourself is God.
Experiencing God is life."
She shook her head in annoyance:
"And here we are talking again!"
"But how do we get there without talking?"
Silence for a bit,
and then she said,
"Let us move out of headquarters
and into heartquarters."
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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