A Present Moment Embrace: The Breath Within the Breath and the Music Between the Notes

By Tom Steward

This is a compilation of three books of poetry:

Book 1: Until There Is Nothing—submissions from real life and the spiritual world.

Book 2: Choices Made Prior to Incarnation—standard musings from a life that has been given.

Book 3: Love’s Timeless Breakthrough—a gentle reminder that love is who you are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796024074

Tom Steward

Tom Steward is a Licensed Psychotherapist in Northern New Mexico who seeks to facilitate the healing of himself and others by using tools and practices from ages past and also the latest developments in energy healing. This book is his latest effort to provide practical tools so the reader is set on a course of discovery, recovery, and transformation.

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Copyright © 2019 by Tom Steward.

Library of Congress Control Number:    2019903588

ISBN:                Hardcover                       978-1-7960-2409-8

                         Softcover                         978-1-7960-2408-1

                         eBook                               978-1-7960-2407-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/28/2019

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Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1 The Deep That Calls To Deep

1. Until There is Nothing

2. Coming Into Your Own

3. Deeper Waters

4. A Heavy Life

5. The Story of a Soul

6. The River

7. Leaning Forward

8. A Larger World

9. Holy Struggle

10. This Car, This Feeling

Part 2 The Christ of God

11. The Great One

12. From A Wake to An Awakening

13. Wounds and Healing

14. The Will To Live

15. Sometimes

16. The Powers That Be

17. A God in this Room

18. Energy Forms

19. Word

20. The War in the Middle Heaven

Part 3 People in the Lives We Lead

21. My Business, After All

22. I Saw Happiness Yesterday

23. The Seasons We Have Been Given

24. Fathers, and Other Worlds, Yearning

25. The Anointing of Maternal Touch

26. I Didn’t Know

27. Heaven’s Chorus

28. Send (DMS-BC 1:13:14)

29. The Sexuality of Transcendence

30. The Sheet Between the Worlds

This book is dedicated

to my sisters: Jan Eileen Wolfe, Cindy Lynn Meek, and Renae Boyd-Powers.

A Compilation of Three Books of Poetry:

Book 1: Until There is Nothing—

Submissions From Real Life and the Spiritual World

Book 2: Choices Made Prior to Incarnation—

Standard Musings From the Life That Has Been Given

Book 3: Love’s Timeless Breakthrough—

A Gentle Reminder That Love Is Who You Are

Ultimate Truth Is Wordless,

The Silence Within The Silence

~ Pirke Avot

Enclosed in this document are three books of poetry. Book One has to do with the building project that was once my life that went through a dismantling process. It appears as if The Powers That Be allow a time of construction as the ego life takes dominance. Then, at some not always definable point, that seems to last a considerable amount of time, one is brought to her or his knees. Something, someone, somehow… strikes us seemingly mercilessly, and we are brought low with our own personal version of an onslaught.

As my wife says often, it’s all about the suffering. This unsolicited movement proceeds… Until There is Nothing… if this were possible. Truth be told, it is always an ongoing project that has many contours and quite a few detours. This entire process may be comprised in the following Jack Engler phrase that has influenced me for at least three decades:

You have to be somebody before you can be nobody. (1)

This becoming nothing and nobody may very well be the best thing that could ever happen to us. To be struck in some manner so the meaningless fluff of our lives would be released from us once and for all may be a blessing.

It is the very difference between the denizens in Plato’s Myth of the Cave, who are either strapped to chairs staring blankly at the shadow images on the wall before them or breaking through to the illumined world outside. (2) I have often said, What you do not willingly surrender, could be aggressively extracted from you. This is always in the form of a blessing because it is getting rid of something that you would not have let go of unless you were forced to. This is where life really begins. In recording this I have offered…

Submissions From Real Life and the Spiritual World

In Book 2 we see that all we experience in this life runs according to some predetermined format that we are not only privy to, but we also may have elected. These are the Choices Made Prior to Incarnation. We chose our particular life because we knew that this was precisely what was needed. We knew it was necessary for the precise soul development that was required for this lifetime. In surrendering to this path, we see who we really are— our true selves— and also our life’s purpose. In this way, the reason for our personal version of suffering becomes clearer. It is here that we may entertain the…

Standard Musings From the Life That Was Given

In Book 3 we envision the eventual objective of our lives— what we are coming into after all that we have been through. The aim of it all is to move us into the alarming and soothing rhythms of love.

This is the grand symphony of the Universe that offers a mellifluous sonnet with the accompanying crescendo of a loving refrain and chorus. It is here that we are enabled to see that we were made in love, by love, and for love, because we are love.

Love is the primary attribute of the Divine. This Grand Being as Ultimate Consciousness lives within us all as Imago Dei or Uncarved Block so that love as a defining characteristic also becomes our true identity. This is what every one of us is stepping into— Love.

This is not only so that we can have love and give love, yet, even more… to know that we are Love. This will occur for all beings because Love always finds its target, particularly when the target is ready to receive it.

In truth, the primed soul receives what it already has. We are love and always have been, because of Love’s Timeless Breakthrough. The precious mystic, Julian of Norwich, has referred to this as the "Revelation of Divine Love." (3) This comes as…

A Gentle Reminder That Love is Who We Are

This love, and everything else that is true and eternal, is apprehended in the present moment. When we embrace the present, ceasing our time travelling to the imagined future and an unreal expired past, we fall headlong into the time frame of Eternity.

C.S. Lewis has offered that the Present is the point at which time touches Eternity. (4) Kabir, the mystic poet and saint of India, has written of "the breath inside the breath to describe the Divine. (5) Yo-yo Ma, perhaps the greatest and most known cellist of our time or ever, has described what happens when he is absorbed into his music. He stated once in an interview that there is music between the notes."

Each time we breathe we have opportunity to enter into the dynamic pulse of the Divine in A Present Moment Embrace. It is here that we apprehend the sound of the music in between and throughout each note. Hearing music and capturing its celestial rhythms is one thing, yet sensing its timeless and soundless vibration from an energy field that can only be seized by stillness is the most sublime gift of all.

Perhaps this is why the Psalmist from the Hebrew Bible’s Kethuvim has offered that the best posture is to: Be still, and know that I am God. (6) This is the stance of surrender and the pose of abiding that is our best vantage point. Lao Tzu has written the following words in the Tao te Ching: Practice not doing, and everything will fall into place. And then there is this from the same man who lived 2,500 years ago in Ancient China:

"Do you have the patience to wait until the mud settles,

and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving

until the right action arises by itself?" (7)

You will answer yes to these questions when you arrive at the place where you have always been, in…

A Present Moment Embrace

… while you are being held entranced in the warm protection of Eternity’s soft feathers.

1. Transformations of Consciousness; Wilber, Engler, and Brown

2. Republic, Plato

3. Revelations of Divine Love; Julian of Norwich

4. Screwtape Letters; C.S. Lewis

5. The Kabir Book; Kabir

6. Psalms 46:10

7. Tao te Ching

Book One

Until There Is Nothing

Submissions From Real Life And The Spiritual World

Preface

The Deep That Calls To Deep

Life and its patterns takes us where it will, seemingly without any consideration for the need to maintain our dignity or our need to feel safe. There are inevitable moments of struggle, early on and throughout our lives, that we learn to navigate through.

Where we are sent in our personal catastrophes is certainly to a deeper place, in the previously uncharted depths of the human psyche and consciousness. This is where "the deep calls to deep," as the Psalmist suggests. (1) It is here that we may finally apprehend something that had previously eluded us. As I tell my wife it may in fact be about the suffering, yet the suffering has a purpose.

This deeper place we are descending into through life’s vexing moments is inside of us all. It is in the inner caverns beneath all of the sedimentary layers of the heart’s interior topography. It is here that the meandering streams flow into what has been known as The Rivers of Living Water that gently course within all of us. (2)

Entering the deep is rarely done so with our approval or permission, and it most often emerges in our lives when we least expect it. In response, there is nothing to do but consent to this process, even after much resistance and posturing and protesting. This may be the best decision we could ever make, to yield to what seems at first glance to be madness. We may come to find, however, that our surrender is what leads to an advancement of the body/soul’s intricate system of consciousness. This is the deconstruction and progression of the soul/mind, the metanoia of psuche, and the construction and evolution of the true self’s spirit— pneuma’s grand marvel.

Christ of God

You may use any number of terms for the Higher Power (or none at all), yet Christ does seem apropos for many. The man Jesus who lived two millennia ago revealed to us a more abundant life through the practice of simplicity, sacrifice, and surrender. There was also a stillness in his Center that responded to every situation with grace and poise and vibrancy. He modeled that in giving you receive and in releasing you apprehend. He tapped into a power source while demonstrating the spectacular, as his healings and miracles became legendary. He also gave his life as a ransom for all so that we may live in and through him.

The Spirit of the Cosmic Christ helps us to fathom that there is more than the physical world and its observable realities. There is another realm that is the place of unlimited possibility that we may approximate in our better moments, our more spiritual moments. We may realize as we follow this Source and align our intentions to the wider spectrum of infinite realities in an unseen world, that a new perspective opens to us. This new seeing is our awakening and enlightenment.

People in the Lives We Lead

I do very much enjoy observing people. I love watching others in their daily lives and also hearing their stories to see how they have overcome obstacles, rudimentary and calamitous, that have beset them.

There are so many champions, those who have consented to the mythic adventure of the heroes’ journey. Many of these go largely unnoticed as their gallantry is often seen within the confines of an ordinary life. We frequently do not acknowledge the great ones until they are removed from us.

The tenacity of the human spirit against considerable odds and unbearable challenges has been revealed in the lives of many. Every one of us has a story and a version of personal travail to go along with it that we have either found a way through or are finding a way to move beyond. This is what guarantees that we all have the potential to become great in our own way.

Many of us have learned to jettison the extra baggage of a busy life full of fitfulness and toil. We have all been hurt and wounded, yet we realize that this is part of the plan. Adversity is the fertile soil of what was meant to be all along. This is the process resulting in our healing, as well as our transcendence. As we accept our fate, that which has come upon us, we are catapulted into a destiny that we had only previously dreamed of. Consequently, many look back upon hardship as a timely endowment. As Dag Hammarskjold has written:

I came to a time and place where I realized that the Way leads to a triumph which is a catastrophe, and to a catastrophe which is a triumph… and that the only elevation possible to man lies in the depths of humiliation. (3)

Buddhism has offered that there are Four Noble Truths (4):

1. Life is suffering (dukkha);

2. There is an origin or cause to all suffering (samudaya);

3. There is a cessation to our suffering, a refraining from that which results in suffering (nirodha);

4. And there is a path (marga) that leads to refraining from actions that cause suffering.

The objective for all of us is to move through these noble truths. It very well may be that it is the pain walk that has guided us into this unasked-for disintegration. This is what has, now, thrusted us into a new existence that, we come to