Fierce Simplicity

Leonor Fini - La Passagere

The beauty of life shares the same root system with the difficulty of life. Indeed, the deeper your embrace of life's beauty, the greater the difficulties that rise up all around you.

But it is NOT the truly human choice to rip out that whole root system, i.e., to sacrifice the beauty in order to eradicate the difficulty.

The bitter irony is that those who choose to attempt it end up killing out the beauty, and being left to contend with even more virulent strains of difficulty.

The truly human choice is to utterly embrace the beauty, in all of its vulnerability and transitoriness, and with eyes wide open to the greater difficulty that arrives in the same moment. From this brave choice arises a poignancy, a powerful poignancy, in which both the beauty and the difficulty are held perfectly, as if by the hands of some invisible goddess.

Turning to face difficulty from inside of this great poignancy, one is witness to yet another miracle: from inside of the difficulty itself, a fierce simplicity arises.

The difficulty is still difficulty, but from here it is translucent, and it carries within it this mysterious simplicity. So now, stepping toward the difficulty instead of away from it, you are also stepping toward the fierce simplicity inside of it.

And with each step forward, the fierce simplicity invites you in ever deeper, until you are moving from inside of the fierce simplicity itself, and the very nature of difficulty has changed forever. All the while, you have held beauty in your arms.

-- Richard Power

Power's eighth book,  Humanifesto: A Guide to Primal Reality in an Era of Global Peril , is available now in soft cover and Kindle versions, from Amazon and elsewhere.

Small Beautiful Creatures Suspended in Amber

Kay Sage - The Hidden Letter (1943)

No regrets? Really?

I have regrets. They are sacred to me.

They inform my character. They bear witness to my evolution.

Glimpses of lost love and treasure are held inside of them;
like small beautiful creatures suspended in amber.

Do not avoid your regrets. Do not discard them.

If you deny their existence, you cheapen your experience.

Embrace them. Listen to their stories.

Wrap them in tattered prayer flags and place them on the altar of your life.

Hold them to your heart when you want to remember the price you paid to become who you truly are.

-- Richard Power

Power's eighth book,  Humanifesto: A Guide to Primal Reality in an Era of Global Peril , is available now in soft cover and Kindle versions, from Amazon and elsewhere.

Unspeakable Holiness (New Moon. Solar Eclipse. May 9th, 2013.)

There is a cynicism that is profoundly spiritual, and a sarcasm that is sacred.

Within the shadow, there is an unspeakable holiness.

Do not turn away from this truth.

It will save you from much that does not serve you on your journey, and lead you to the "high, wild places" where too few ever worship.

-- Richard Power

Power's eighth book,  Humanifesto: A Guide to Primal Reality in an Era of Global Peril , is available now in soft cover and Kindle versions, from Amazon and elsewhere.

Impossibly Beautiful

A Makah Maiden (Photo by Edward Curtis, 1916)

Each day, at dawn, the universe offers us a clean sheet of white paper; and on this clean sheet of white paper, we endeavor to render what we know of the divine reality within which we live. It is an impossible task, but in pursuing it, we generate something impossibly beautiful, which, if we allow it to, will transform our lives into a priceless artifact of that divine reality we cannot capture in our words or images.

Subsequently, each nightfall, the universe offers us the warm solace of its dark embrace.

If we allow ourselves to release our worries, judgements, rules, limitations, thought constructs and anticipations into that indigo blue fire - in the ensuing silence, we can hear the true stories of our lives unfold to us, chapter by chapter.

Yes, and no, like Yin and Yang, nourish and sustain each other.

Out of their love-making, the truth arrives.

Welcome it.

-- Richard Power

Power's eighth book,  Humanifesto: A Guide to Primal Reality in an Era of Global Peril , is available now in soft cover and Kindle versions, from Amazon and elsewhere.

Secret of Happiness

Edward Munch - Madonna (1894)

Sadness has no home.

She wanders among us, clutching to the lost artifacts of nameless others.

Through the long dark hours of the night, she holds these artifacts to her ear, one by one, yearning to hear their true stories.

When you meet Sadness on the road, invite her in for a pot of tea.


When she is waiting on the door step of your mind, let her in to take a hot shower.

She has no existence of her own, she is simply the sum of all that is lost but not yet liberated.

Sadness wanders ceaselessly between Heaven and Earth, but as long as those two abide she is never forsaken.

Remind her of this, when she comes to you on the wings of a morning dove.

Welcome her, she carries the secret of happiness, she just doesn't know it yet.

-- Richard Power

Power's eighth book,  Humanifesto: A Guide to Primal Reality in an Era of Global Peril , is available now in soft cover and Kindle versions, from Amazon and elsewhere.

Some Holy, Rarefied Secret of Existence

Vincent Van Gogh - Still Life with an Earthen Bowl and Potatoes (1885)

If you are a person who lives with open eyes and an open heart, you will encounter grief. Indeed, you will likely have a lifelong relationship with it. Sometimes you will dance with grief (a tango), sometimes you will be in a race with grief (a marathon), sometimes grief will cradle you in its arms, sometimes you will cradle grief in your arms. 

There are different strains of grief. Some strains do wear away over time, once they have been exposed to the elements of a healthy inner life. 

But there are other griefs that are like a some mysterious sector of the sea where it is always raining. It is as if it has always rained there, and always will rain there. 

Such griefs are sacred; they nourish the biosphere of your psyche, they replenish the waters of your tears, they provide the salt needed for living with open eyes and an open heart, they make laughter deeper and joy sweeter. 

When you find yourself out in one of these patches of endless grief rain on the sea of feeling, just remember it is all sacred, and that everything is as it should be in that space. 

Know that some holy, rarefied secret of existence has been stored there just for you. Know that it will always be there, but that you will only have to visit it every once in awhile (although often when you least expect it). 

Yes, when you find yourself out in one of these patches of endless grief rain on the sea of feeling, just stand up in the boat of your awareness and let that rain fall on you, it is a benediction; and as you stand there, listen to its sound, the sound of that rain will transform you forever.

-- Richard Power

Power's eighth book,  Humanifesto: A Guide to Primal Reality in an Era of Global Peril , is available now in soft cover and Kindle versions, from Amazon and elsewhere.

Where We Are

King Mahajanaka announcing his decision renounce worldly life, Ajanta Caves, Sixth or Seventh Century.
Source: Wiki Commons

Boundless love and utter peace. They are unattainable. 

Because you cannot "attain" that which you already are. 

We live of our lives skimming the surface of these infinite reservoirs. 

Boundless love and utter peace. 

If you relax into them, their pulsating currents will rise to the surface of your life ever more clearly, ever more uninterruptedly. This is the neglected truth of our lives. 

The cup of every moment brims with this truth. 

We taste it with every act of kindness, we touch it in every instance of letting go. We move from it whenever we move with authenticity. We embody it whenever align to the innermost pole of our beings. 

This truth of boundless love and utter peace; it is always waiting just beyond the veil of forgetfulness. It is your own joyous, invincible nature. Become intimate with it. 

However much time you have spent in forgetfulness and fretting; there is still enough time to arrive at the place you have stood from the beginning, and to become the person you have always been. 

There is drumming and dancing in that place, there is feasting and pleasuring. Every loss is hallowed there, every sorrow is heard as beautiful music, every failure is celebrated a sacred vessel, every mistake is handled as a sacrament. 

Boundless love. Utter peace. Forever. Co-existing with chaos. 

Truth occupying the same space as illusion; each embracing the other as lovers. 

This is where we are.  

-- Richard Power

Power's eighth book,  Humanifesto: A Guide to Primal Reality in an Era of Global Peril , is available now in soft cover and Kindle versions, from Amazon and elsewhere.