Law of Cause and Effect – A Love Poem

~ by Stephanie Ross

Sit with me on this earthen floor.

Arms linked

encircling our like-hearted community

graced with illuminated teachings on Dao-the Laws of Life.

Let us focus on transformation, neither good nor bad

but a natural shift from Yin to Yang and back again.

Each a totality, each part of an infinite whole.

Raise your awareness. Look up and see the ladder clearly.

Suspended from the sky, thick ropes holding each wooden rung.

Swaying in currents of change.

Twisting gently in time and space.

We’ve embarked on this inner voyage together.

Let us now summon the courage to climb higher,

Allow our differences to hold each other

as I brace the base for you,

arrest the instability so you may begin your ascent.

I send you love and Qi, encouragement from my heart.

I trust in your presence even as you disappear from sight.

I know you are there, silently calling me, lending me your strength

as I lend you mine, as I remember that my fear is merely a symptom

of my mislearned resistance to the Laws.

Without warning, the Law of Change gusts

into the company of us remaining on the ground.

I feel its push towards the ladder.

I feel my heart say YES as my arms reach up without effort,

propelled by the natural effects of my own sincere work,

my own desire for transformation.

Decades of studying the opposites within me,

sometimes triggered by forces in relationship,

but always the cause rooted within –

Now I seek to alter lifetimes of patterns diverting me

away from Dao, away from my inner yearning

while distracted by conformity with a culture not yet ready–

Until I met you my wisdom family.

I unify within. Consciousness quiets

as body, Qi, and heart merge. I ascend rung by rung,

notice my breath become heavy, my arms stretch

further as the distance between each step lengthens.

The ground no longer visible, I am aware that I cannot go back.

My muscles are fatigued. So many lifetimes of effort

coalescing into this moment of exhaustion, my trust begins to fade,

my body wears thin – or is this my mind?

Is it again a core False Self pattern seeking survival?

I re-anchor within, focus on decades of practice, whisper

to my heart to open again to you my family of life-cultivators.

My love for you transforming into love for myself,

Gongjing carries me closer to Shen.

Now boosted with each step as if an invisible rope hauls me upward,

I climb again but at a pace faster than I’d choose for myself.

Above, I see the platform and summon the strength to hoist myself

onboard this resting place where I know I will need to choose

– carry on– or wait – while some of you climb and others still anchor the ladder.

I’ve been here before. It felt wobbly last time and all I wanted then

was to get off – be free of fear –  return to the ground where I felt safe

in the known, in the comfort of your arms, in the simple pleasure of togetherness,

–unaware there was more.

But today I feel steady as my toes edge over the side.

I look not below but into the void, to nowhere and everywhere,

to all that is and all that will become.

I stretch my arms into nothingness, step forward into change,

allow movement without interference, allow trust in the outcome,

surprise in the lack of freefall as I am buoyed and swaddled

in your love without physical embrace. I find safety

in the teachings,

awe as my arms turn into wings.

These wings propel me into the Law of Change with purpose and joyful intent.

Soaring into freedom, a true understanding of expansiveness,

a real knowing of who I am, of who you really are–

I take flight and spiral upwards as my heart

spirals outward meeting the abyss.

I merge with this jet stream travelling

to birth a new world held in waves of wisdom.

Shen calls without effort to those still on the ground– Join me! –

Let’s go nowhere together!

It is joyful. It is unconditional. It is time.

Begin your new cause - climb.

Realize the effect ­– be free.

Notes:

Dao = the Laws of Life. We each have personal laws of life to discover. There are also more universal ones. These include The Law of Cause and Effect and The Law of Change.

In Ren Xue, the closer we move to living in accordance with the laws, the more harmonious and joyful life becomes.

Shen = True Self

Gongjing = a composite heart quality, true respect and humility, oneness