Free from The Beautiful Prison
By Jane Tawel
February 13, 2025
*
Thoughts embrace me,
not as the lover that I think they are,
but as the ever multiplying,
tightening, restricting coils
of a deadly snake;
which in the end, and endlessly,
goes ‘round and ‘round and ‘round,
sucking out all my life, until it
Strikes!
And all my thoughts and
the “I” of me
will be no more.
*
What a waste of Time
my thoughts have been.
*
Words create and — Oh!
How I love them!
And yet words, when given
so much power
deny the True I AM.
Words create a false me,
deny the Real, and the real me.
So many words,
so little Time.
Words create barriers to my freedom to exist.
Why do we hate it so much when words escape us?
Why do we hold on to words that
we once thought belonged to who we are —
even if they hurt us?
With our first word, “Ma-ma”,
we make our choice and in our last breath,
we regret words spoken and unspoken.
“Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.”*
Words are lovely as they reach across
the chasms of our communication,
the hopes of our interactions,
the rallying cries as we come together.
Our words create stories that can keep us —
safe and warm.
We are our own Scheherazade.
Words also keep us apart.
And as they spin
their endless tales of that which was
and fear of that which might be,
they create the webs which constrict
the formless, namelessness of Life,
like a giant spider
we weave and weave and weave .
*
Oh, how I adore a good abstract word,
a metaphor, a sensory description,
a symbol!
Oh, how I long for words that make me feel
Loved, cared for
Seen.
But oh, what better joy
to live in the Spaces
to feel without words,
to Be.
If only I could escape my words.
Words — The Beautiful Prison.
*
Wordless, Nameless One,
Accept my prayer,
with groans too deep for words:
Create in my, Oh, God — just…
Create.
Create me like a baby
with only cries and sounds of joy
to tell you how I feel
and who I Am.
No — Create ME, O, God.
IAM.
Let me be a new and emptied skin-clothed vessel,
ready for the new wine of ***
Being —
unattached, unthinking,
with only this one thought –
of only this one Word —
The Word from the beginning,
that was, and is, and evermore shall Be.
That Word beyond Thought,
Beyond Ego, beyond Me;
the only Meaning
that shall never, as I will, die.
“But I, in one short sleep past,
will wake eternally,
and death shall be no more;
death, thou shalt die.”****
Awake, My Soul! and be emptied
to be stilled by Holy Stillness,
and in peace, to live,
As One.
*
© Jane Tawel, 2025
With many thanks for those whose thoughts and words are high above mine own.
*Robert Frost, “The Road Less Taken”
**The Bible
***Jesus, The Christ
**** John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”
And along with these, thank you to the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle among so many others.
Jane Tawel 