Lost and Found

This morning (ahem, I mean afternoon) when I woke up I didn’t feel different or anything. As I started my walk to work, however, I felt something. I felt a little more open, a little lighter. As people walked by I looked at their expressions and though I didn’t know them I felt I could sense their being beneath the surface. I felt I was more sensitive to their souls. Just a little bit. Maybe it was the brightness of the sun, the crispness of the breeze, the vibrancy of the trees on the green mountain nearby. Maybe it was my imagination. It felt a little bit like I had just been meditating or doing yoga for a while. I still felt that way when I got to work. I forgot about it as I got busy though.

That’s the story of my life. A few minutes of heaven and weeks of…..sigh, I don’t know. A mixed bag. Earthly life. The jumble of the jungle. Decidely not soaring in the heavens. I know many other people feel the same way. Maybe millions. That’s one the many strange things about this life. The central purpose of existence here is to prepare us for the world to come, yet this world seems to have so little in common with the spiritual realm, sometimes I wonder how I can really learn what I need for the next life. All the things I long for are what the next world is made of. It doesn’t just have love in it. It is made of love. There isn’t just communion with God and closeness of souls and opening of our eyes to His beauty and drinking in the rivers of His wisdom and perfection. In that world God’s voice is on the wind and His face is in the sky. His beauty really is a fragrance on that wind and a thousand rainbows in that sky. His wisdom and perfection are the air we breath in deeply. His presence fills our being. We do not just love each other. We are one.

I’ve spent over 15 years longing for that. I guess I’ll spend about 60 more longing for it. The longing doesn’t seems to bring me closer to it. Can I feel any closer to God than I do? Can I feel close enough for this life to be bearable for the next many decades? I know the answer is yes. The answer has always been yes, but I haven’t been willing to do what it takes.

Something that really hurts me is that I felt happier in the past. There was a time—or times—when I was joyful, pure, even holy. His spirit was truly flowing through me and, looking back, I really feel He had accepted my commitment, confirmed my longing, and deigned to unleash the river of love and light—that one special, unique stream, issuing from His hidden springs and rushing towards His infinite ocean, reserved only for me, a path from Him to Him that could only be run by the waters of one soul, the soul of Daniel, every pebble of its bed a testament of our love, my love for Baha’u’llah, His love for me—a river that had been dammed in waiting for that time.

This is not my imagination. I know it in my soul to be true. I have felt His love and His presence. I was soaring in His heaven, drinking deeply of His gifts. It may sound corny, but once one has tasted this sweetness, nothing else will have any flavor for him for the rest of his days. After that melody, all else is silence. After that beauty, all else is flat and featureless. That is my life now and that is what it has been for many years—it feels like a lifetime—tasteless, soundless, featureless. Right about now you may be thinking, “Um, what you really need is anti-depressants!” If so, I’ll grant that whole side of things has great merit and must be considered. I feel strongly, however, that medication won’t solve this. When a lover betrays His best beloved and breaks his heart and hers, no treatment or anything else can cure him of the agony of regret and loneliness haunts him all his days! There is only one way for the thousand shattered pieces of his heart to be fused back together into true wholeness. His beloved must forgive him completely and open her heart again and, like a magnet, draw all those fragments to her heart until every last piece is gathered around it. Then, in the fire of her love, her lover’s heart will melt and join into one whole around hers. Then, at long last, he will find the love he lost and the peace he had forgotten.

This is the case with me (and I know I’m not alone!) Somehow, by some unfathomable mystery of His love, Baha’u’llah opened my eyes and led me to Him and embraced me. Somehow I managed to not screw it up immediately and experienced, for a few years, the bliss of pure dedication to Him. I was a gazelle in His meadow, a humble servant prostrate before His throne, a lover gazing into His eyes. His eyes filled me with peace. They filled me with joy. The caused me to brim over with a life-force that I can now barely remember, much less describe.

Then I screwed it all up. I broke His heart and exploded my own. In the years since I first turned my heart away from Him I have only found a few pieces. I will never find all my heart in the dust of this world. I have spent ten years searching for signs of pieces of my heart. Now I am tired. I feel old and worn. I feel like this world has swallowed me up and has been slowly digesting me for years. I find it hard, even when I have thoughts and feelings that direct me towards Him, to sustain my efforts. I get distracted. I feel like a man with Alzheimer’s who occasionally awakens from his sickness to remember his true self and his family and friends but then tragically slips back into oblivion.

It’s so hard to keep God in my heart and mind! Even as I was deep into writing this, thinking of nothing else, an alert popped up on my computer screen saying, “Your Windows license will expire in 14 days. Back up all your files and install any version of Windows.” What I have to buy Windows again? What the hell! No way! That’s like $200 or something! That can’t be right! Oh please let me not have to buy Windows again! Oy…anyways, where was I?

Where was I?

Who was I?

There seems to be no escape from the constant siege of pleasure and pain which is this life. It’s like trying to meditate when 100 people are outside banging on the walls of my room. No escape from all the bad habits I’ve developed. No escape from heedlessness and distraction. No escape from all these cravings and aversions. No escape from loneliness and remorse. I’m at the bottom of a well and the only way out is the way I came in. I can’t claw my way out. I’m trapped, imprisoned in the mesh of my own desires.

Baha’u’llah knows that this suffering comes to many of us in this life. He captures the experience of countless souls when He says:

“Ye are even as the bird which soareth, with the full force of its mighty wings and with complete and joyous confidence, through the immensity of the heavens, until, impelled to satisfy its hunger, it turneth longingly to the water and clay of the earth below it, and, having been entrapped in the mesh of its desire, findeth itself impotent to resume its flight to the realms whence it came. Powerless to shake off the burden weighing on its sullied wings, that bird, hitherto an inmate of the heavens, is now forced to seek a dwelling-place upon the dust.”

The first time I read these words of His, and the first time I ever read His words, I was reading a large, thick paperback copy of Gleanings of the Writings of Baha’u’llah. It was white with an Irish-looking green winding pattern on the front. It was water damaged from a flood. It was given to me by the Sepulveda family at the first fireside I ever went to, the first night I heard about the Faith, in early 1993. In the days and months to come I read voraciously from that heavenly book. I soaked it up like a sponge. I was so ready, though I hadn’t known it. I knew I was searching but I knew not for what. As the realization grew within me that I had found my heart’s desire, so grew my joy and zest for life! Finally, with the help of amazing, pure, wonderful Baha’i youth, I overcame my last lingering doubts and threw myself into Baha’u’llah’s arms! In the next several years I grew by leaps and bounds. I was still foolish and immature in many ways, and there were a few setbacks, but I felt Him with me! I felt urged on and guided by Him! I felt my longing to serve Him driving me and I heard His voice calling me! Many people in my life at that time sensed the spirit flowing through me and were drawn to it and benefitted from it, as is His intention.

Eventually I lost that copy of Gleanings. I don’t know how. Around that same time I started down a path that caused me to lose all the gifts that had been imparted to me by Him through that book. I didn’t realize my utter folly until it was too late and I was caught in the mesh of my own desires. I feel as if I’ve been struggling in that web ever since, sometimes freeing a limb, maybe two, but eventually giving up and settling back into the sticking strands, letting them wrap themselves around me in some new pattern.

Baha’u’llah knows my heart completely. He loves me completely. He forgives me completely. He is waiting to release the waters of the river of my destiny, flowing out of Him and into Him. His heart is open and, like a magnet, is exerting its powerful attractive force through all creation, seeking to gather all the fragments of my heart around His own. But my shattered heart is asleep and heeds not His call. My Best Beloved is calling me to return to Him! He is moving heaven and earth to bring me back into His arms! Yet I sleep.

I pray to Thee, O my Lord, and beseech Thee. Help me to awaken from this sleep! Whatever it takes, please shake me out of this trance! I beg Thee, aid me to be the embodiment of these words, spoken by the Tounge of Grandeur, my Best Beloved, and the Desire of all the worlds:

“I am he, O my Lord, that hath confessed to Thee the multitude of his evil doings, that hath acknowledged what no man hath acknowledged. I have made haste to attain unto the ocean of Thy forgiveness, and have sought shelter beneath the shadow of Thy most gracious favor. Grant, I beseech Thee, O Thou Who art the Everlasting King and the Sovereign Protector of all men, that I may be enabled to manifest that which shall cause the hearts and souls of men to soar in the limitless immensity of Thy love, and to commune with Thy Spirit. Strengthen me through the power of Thy sovereignty, that I may turn all created things towards the Day Spring of Thy Manifestation and the Source of Thy Revelation. Aid me, O my Lord, to surrender myself wholly to Thy Will, and to arise and serve Thee, for I cherish this earthly life for no other purpose than to compass the Tabernacle of Thy Revelation and the Seat of Thy Glory. Thou seest me, O my God, detached from all else but Thee, and humble and subservient to Thy Will. Deal with me as it beseemeth Thee, and as it befitteth Thy highness and great glory.”

Ya Baha’ul-Abha!