Poem ‘Enlightenment’ by Alan Wherry

In my early teens I spent a weeks pocket money
On a book on Zen
Didn't understand it much, if at all.

Thirty three years later,
No understanding necessary
Swamped in a tidal wave of love,
There was no mistaking what came my way and why.

The ascendant Kundalini
Established a direct connection
With the unconscious
Beyond thought, verified as a vibrational flow of bliss.

I knew my life had changed
That what I'd always sought,
through all the years that passed
This gift beyond price, was made manifest.

It didn't come cheap
There was a price to pay
Total surrender to the divine power
Ego and superego sucked back into Ida and Pingala nadis.

Knowing spiritual concepts is easy enough
Knowing them through direct experience
Is the hard part
The only part that matters.

God is not your concept
For concept is thought
The divine is not to be found there or in a book.

They, deities, each aspects of the divine within.
In inbuilt centers of spiritual energy,
Patiently waiting, lifetime after lifetime,
To be recognized, reconnected.