what sweetness pervades

there are different ways of knowing than by form alone.
there are alternate ways of being than those offered by
the urging of consensus sociocultural demands.
they will find you when you are made more tenderly receptive
by forces vaster than you can understand or encompass.

it feels like destruction & devastation: the spaciousness!
the bones of the old order no longer demanding your flesh,
the freedom of nothing remaining to lose, save or cling to.
you may fall into the heart of gravity or glide in winds
of the cosmic breath of OM. you may pause at the still center
beyond human thought as the divine play of polarity
sets the cost of exit & ushers you through the dark doorway.

into the void you descend, the nothingness: but what sweetness
pervades that mysterious emptiness! what love flows warmly
through the center of the heart! there are many other ways of
knowing than by form. Shiva, this i learned & now share freely
in the same way that birds feel the urge to sing in glad wonder
as the new day reveals rising light; or as the flower spreads
the fist of the bud into petals held wide like fingers to
salute You, Shiva, & bask in the rays of the newborn sun.