Radical Acceptance

Yesterday the horizon was razor sharp

The azure blue sky abruptly ending

Where the ocean claimed its watery turf 

As if, heaven and earth’s boundaries

Were clearly delineated,

Their limits forever set

The divine …safely distanced from the mortal

The depths of the oceans, however, are another matter

The vast geological variations hidden below the calm surface

Betraying mountains as tall as and caverns as deep as

Anything on the surface.

What a contrast to the blue celestial nothingness of infinity.

Today however all is different

In the fog and haze of the same vista

The horizon is barely visible.

The grey clouds merge imperceptibly

into the ashen gray ocean

Everything lacks clarity as if…

The heavens touch earth only in such times of visual blurring

Of doubt and uncertainty

The horizon now representing a leakage of sorts

Allowing only now, for the perception of contact. 

In these two visions of the horizon lies

the charge for radical acceptance

The blessings of clarity and acuity

But also the place where all is lost

All hope of contact is surrendered

All belief questioned

Especially of the lost Self

The illusions of control of one’s life

Even morality/religiosity

Teaching one the bloated sense of

imitation piety meant nothing,

Where the celestial spheres appear indifferent

to the suffering and anguish below

Where even the hiddenness of the Divine is itself hidden [1]

Yet the knowledge that another day will harbor

a different landscape and fuel

another vision of that same horizon

With the hope of divine intervention in all its clarity

forces on me

Bears down on me a radical acceptance.

That all this was meant to be this way

This duality

This oscillation

Hovering between the hope and despair

Clarity and confusion

Light and darkness

Pencil razor-sharp horizon yesterday

and blurring hues of grayness today

Learning so late in life

That equanimity of the soul is so precious

That deep connection with higher Self

Demands the light AND the darkness within

And accepting this is the very challenge.

[1] Likutei Moharan 56:3:19