THE SPACE

The hours of my soul

Just as every living thing, my soul is blessed with change.

As weather swirls, clocks tick, seasons mellow, my soul is not a static thing.

Mystics speak of the dark night of the soul but what of the bright day, the fresh morning or
the languid afternoon?

Change is all we know, and for my soul what is it that makes it so?

The dark night is when I feel alone, an abandoned boy without comfort, connection, swirling
in an empty universe of mind-blind and to myself unkind, sentenced to an endless dread
that it will never be alright or bright or anything but this damned fear-filled night.

Then the morning comes – the first blessing of early light, waves of relief rising to gratitude
for the safe day, the unearned return to flow, promise, mystery settling my troubled soul
with the stroke of renewed faith in something more, another’s touch,
you do not have to face this fear alone,
being near, body heat, sweet, steadies me again to softly step into my many-coloured day.

Noonday sun shines on my soul with celestial light –
almost too bright,
for eyes more used to the relative, conceptual second-hand ways of being bargained from
the car boot sales of used religions.
Now blazing oneness beyond all understanding, waves of awe and wonder, dissolving and returning to source that I cannot force but only disappear into,
a noon day void, alive and shimmering
No knowing how long or why or when my soul is blessed by this epiphany.

My soul is most at home when I am gone,
it bathes in bliss, this kiss, yes, yes, and grateful yes to all death and no death fulfilled
complete, my soul’s great docking station in universal space.

Then afternoon comes with its absorption addiction, desire rising, longing, yearning, the
hungry ghosts wanting the world on its plate, to taste the fruits of everything.
Hunger and lust.
Circles of ambition, satiation, indigestion and self-disgust.
Flowing waves of pleasure followed by suffering as obsession tightens its jaws.
Round and round it goes again and again and yet again until when the soul does not know.
How much further does it have to go wheeling through the seasons of creation and the hours of its day?
Soul is being gently and not so gently forged in soul making, tempered with the hammer
blows and anvil of spirit until its time is done.

Ger Murphy