Billy
Crazy Diamond
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2009
- Messages
- 1,192
- MBTI Type
- INFJ
The poem:
Down to the Green Dragon,
I’m getting nice and clean.
At the temple of the dragon,
they sell Buddhist beads.
There is a temple in the Dragon,
jealously kept by an earthen creek.
Swept moist by summer mops,
and patted dry by children’s feet.
Turn your eyes from the hungry,
the starving and the maimed.
Its easy to light your incense
or count beads while you pray.
Down to the Green Dragon
under lazy willow trees.
I lost my heart in China
with peasants on their knees.
Sometime later…
Fast forward a few years, the bracelet is mostly gone; it’s lost somewhere in the 2 or 3 moves I did from apartment to apartment. If fate had wove this tale, then it has done so with a sense of irony, because during this time that the bracelet was lost, I was free falling, from breaking up out of long term relationship to losing my home, to hating my job, to becoming angry and desperate. I made a stone of my heart and no lessons got through, meaning was subverted in favor of gain and pride.
Early in 2010 things began to change for me. I lost touch with the hard shell I was wearing as I noticed it was driving away my family and friends. This hurt so I undertook a massive level of introspection and came to some conclusions. I concluded that I could only ever be myself. I cannot be the cool and calculated person I wanted to be, it wasn’t real to myself and I grew deeper into a depression. After I concluded that I could no longer live that lie, and that I was always going to just be that sensitive kid who wanted everyone to get along and to be happy. And that I had to take that form of myself and mature it into a viable lifestyle. Things turned around.
People from the past have come to me, opportunities have been given to me, when I opened my heart, all frequencies, the universe began to speak to me. Event after event, situation after situation, I see the connections between us all. Maybe we are all electrified impulses in a greater beings head, but we are all the same, all connected. And because of that connection and because I was open to know it and to hear the truth, the message came to me. Bring love wherever you go, love is the wellspring from which life flows, we must cultivate life and guard it. We are gardeners of people and shepherds of love. Days after this realization the bracelet reappeared from nowhere. I literally found it in a drawer I swore I never put it in. I began to wear it and the significance of the lesson back in China remained.
weeks later:
Alan my friend and I decided it would be a good idea to get buzzed up and walk around Manhattan. The Belgian Bar BXL, Aramark office, all around we went. The day was strange, there was snowfall in the air but it wasn’t snowing really, and the wind bellowing down between the buildings was almost tropical and balmy, there was a metallic and electric flavor to the air. I wasn’t cold, but I felt cool and as though I was adrift in the winds as we walked. I sensed that that night was going to be special.
I had been wearing my bracelet for a month at this point. It had a deep significance as I now fully understood the message and why I wore it. Late at night the city was very welcoming but also in great pain. I could feel it. Times were hard, people were in pain. There was a lot of negative energy. One corner we turned and an old black man came to me. His eyes were yellow and his beard was peppered gray and black, his coat was tattered and his voice was low and soft. His skin was weathered, he had been homeless for some time.
“can you help me man?â€
Alan gave me a sideways glance and kept walking on, my instinct was to follow him… but my feet were rooted there on the ground and I turned to face him. I reached into my pocket almost like in a trance state and it’s when I made the connection. “my bracelet is missingâ€. It was gone, I had worn it all day and I last remembered seeing it on the train, but now it was gone. That absence made me think aboutit, it sparked an eternity of connections, bracelet… bracelet, China… It was the cosmos tapping me on the shoulder again. I then came to realize, this is the final exam, I failed my 1st test, and now here, years away on the other side of the planet, the same token I took from China, my cheat sheet as it were, reminded me of the lesson I had already learned.
“I can’t make the same mistake again†I say to Alan, his eyes lock mine and he stares silently. I hand the old man a few dollars, he doesn’t smile, he doesn’t say “bless me†he stares right in my eyes and says “Thank youâ€. I feel my eyes welling up with tears, my heart shrink wrapped in warmth, and I feel like it’s ok that the bracelet is gone now, it served its purpose and now it has faded into history to effect someone else's life. I am free of my pain and I have concluded that my life has been half full for too long.
For so long I lived in fear of what other people thought. That if I was soft and gentle people would think I was weak willed or that I was easy to push around. It was much easier to hide all that insecurity behind a veil of arrogance and sarcasm. Only I came to learn I couldn’t live such a trivial life, hiding from pain and fear all the time. I had to break free and let myself flow into the world and stop trying to bottle it all up and keep it to myself. I learned that in truth, we need each other, we need to connect. Even though we are all our own people, we are all animated from the same life force that has enriched this planet with the opportunity to experience existence. Existence a gift so rare and incalculable in a universe so grand that it couldn’t merely be an accident, and even if it was, what a wonderous accident.
Through connecting to one and other and spreading real genuine love and caring can we balance the tides of pain and win the fight for mankinds soul. Talent and gifts are abound in all of us, how many times have I used my intellect, my cunning, my physical strength, my beauty as a tool to enrich myself at the cost of someone else, denying my true nature as a nurturer and a keeper of my brothers? How often did I lie to myself and those I loved?
Gifts are meant to be shared, and I am done being the fat kid at the party. The universe takes care of its own, you get what you need, when you need it, and then we die when the lessons are learned and we go on to wherever we go on to. We cannot ever know the true nature of the cosmos, that’s not the point of life. We have been put here into the 3rd dimension to do 3rd dimensional things. That means we live and work in a world of material, and it is through this matter that we must prove our rights to exist through charity, understanding and self actualization.
It is truly our duty to shepherd those around us and to care enough about life to protect it and to stimulate it with love. I don’t know if the day will ever come when all men will see each other as family of the same organism, I can only hope that it does come and participate in bringing it to whichever degree I am capable.
But for now, I do what I can, when I can for who I can and I walk through life with my mind focused and my heart open. I will stumble again, but I have no excuse for giving up.
Down to the Green Dragon,
I’m getting nice and clean.
At the temple of the dragon,
they sell Buddhist beads.
There is a temple in the Dragon,
jealously kept by an earthen creek.
Swept moist by summer mops,
and patted dry by children’s feet.
Turn your eyes from the hungry,
the starving and the maimed.
Its easy to light your incense
or count beads while you pray.
Down to the Green Dragon
under lazy willow trees.
I lost my heart in China
with peasants on their knees.
Sometime later…
Fast forward a few years, the bracelet is mostly gone; it’s lost somewhere in the 2 or 3 moves I did from apartment to apartment. If fate had wove this tale, then it has done so with a sense of irony, because during this time that the bracelet was lost, I was free falling, from breaking up out of long term relationship to losing my home, to hating my job, to becoming angry and desperate. I made a stone of my heart and no lessons got through, meaning was subverted in favor of gain and pride.
Early in 2010 things began to change for me. I lost touch with the hard shell I was wearing as I noticed it was driving away my family and friends. This hurt so I undertook a massive level of introspection and came to some conclusions. I concluded that I could only ever be myself. I cannot be the cool and calculated person I wanted to be, it wasn’t real to myself and I grew deeper into a depression. After I concluded that I could no longer live that lie, and that I was always going to just be that sensitive kid who wanted everyone to get along and to be happy. And that I had to take that form of myself and mature it into a viable lifestyle. Things turned around.
People from the past have come to me, opportunities have been given to me, when I opened my heart, all frequencies, the universe began to speak to me. Event after event, situation after situation, I see the connections between us all. Maybe we are all electrified impulses in a greater beings head, but we are all the same, all connected. And because of that connection and because I was open to know it and to hear the truth, the message came to me. Bring love wherever you go, love is the wellspring from which life flows, we must cultivate life and guard it. We are gardeners of people and shepherds of love. Days after this realization the bracelet reappeared from nowhere. I literally found it in a drawer I swore I never put it in. I began to wear it and the significance of the lesson back in China remained.
weeks later:
Alan my friend and I decided it would be a good idea to get buzzed up and walk around Manhattan. The Belgian Bar BXL, Aramark office, all around we went. The day was strange, there was snowfall in the air but it wasn’t snowing really, and the wind bellowing down between the buildings was almost tropical and balmy, there was a metallic and electric flavor to the air. I wasn’t cold, but I felt cool and as though I was adrift in the winds as we walked. I sensed that that night was going to be special.
I had been wearing my bracelet for a month at this point. It had a deep significance as I now fully understood the message and why I wore it. Late at night the city was very welcoming but also in great pain. I could feel it. Times were hard, people were in pain. There was a lot of negative energy. One corner we turned and an old black man came to me. His eyes were yellow and his beard was peppered gray and black, his coat was tattered and his voice was low and soft. His skin was weathered, he had been homeless for some time.
“can you help me man?â€
Alan gave me a sideways glance and kept walking on, my instinct was to follow him… but my feet were rooted there on the ground and I turned to face him. I reached into my pocket almost like in a trance state and it’s when I made the connection. “my bracelet is missingâ€. It was gone, I had worn it all day and I last remembered seeing it on the train, but now it was gone. That absence made me think aboutit, it sparked an eternity of connections, bracelet… bracelet, China… It was the cosmos tapping me on the shoulder again. I then came to realize, this is the final exam, I failed my 1st test, and now here, years away on the other side of the planet, the same token I took from China, my cheat sheet as it were, reminded me of the lesson I had already learned.
“I can’t make the same mistake again†I say to Alan, his eyes lock mine and he stares silently. I hand the old man a few dollars, he doesn’t smile, he doesn’t say “bless me†he stares right in my eyes and says “Thank youâ€. I feel my eyes welling up with tears, my heart shrink wrapped in warmth, and I feel like it’s ok that the bracelet is gone now, it served its purpose and now it has faded into history to effect someone else's life. I am free of my pain and I have concluded that my life has been half full for too long.
For so long I lived in fear of what other people thought. That if I was soft and gentle people would think I was weak willed or that I was easy to push around. It was much easier to hide all that insecurity behind a veil of arrogance and sarcasm. Only I came to learn I couldn’t live such a trivial life, hiding from pain and fear all the time. I had to break free and let myself flow into the world and stop trying to bottle it all up and keep it to myself. I learned that in truth, we need each other, we need to connect. Even though we are all our own people, we are all animated from the same life force that has enriched this planet with the opportunity to experience existence. Existence a gift so rare and incalculable in a universe so grand that it couldn’t merely be an accident, and even if it was, what a wonderous accident.
Through connecting to one and other and spreading real genuine love and caring can we balance the tides of pain and win the fight for mankinds soul. Talent and gifts are abound in all of us, how many times have I used my intellect, my cunning, my physical strength, my beauty as a tool to enrich myself at the cost of someone else, denying my true nature as a nurturer and a keeper of my brothers? How often did I lie to myself and those I loved?
Gifts are meant to be shared, and I am done being the fat kid at the party. The universe takes care of its own, you get what you need, when you need it, and then we die when the lessons are learned and we go on to wherever we go on to. We cannot ever know the true nature of the cosmos, that’s not the point of life. We have been put here into the 3rd dimension to do 3rd dimensional things. That means we live and work in a world of material, and it is through this matter that we must prove our rights to exist through charity, understanding and self actualization.
It is truly our duty to shepherd those around us and to care enough about life to protect it and to stimulate it with love. I don’t know if the day will ever come when all men will see each other as family of the same organism, I can only hope that it does come and participate in bringing it to whichever degree I am capable.
But for now, I do what I can, when I can for who I can and I walk through life with my mind focused and my heart open. I will stumble again, but I have no excuse for giving up.
