Mom and I often connected thru our dreams ...Several months before her death,

I drempt of the highway highway between Russell and Hays...a straight long highway... and instantly there was a large banner across the highway that read Gertrude Rita Hoff.

I called Mom and said that I could not read her middle name and knowing that this was a great mystery even to her immediate family.

She loved my visions as she shared with me that it was Rita but never liked her middle name...I discovered in that moment that our dreams revealed something that was heavenly and beyond time...messages of love...
There is a place within that is beyond words.

Trying to describe it we use words like,
stillness, peace, love, divine, God.

When we are in that
stillness it seems that every
word expresses it. The truth
comes through in so many ways, words feel like beautiful
arrows shot from the infinite source.

That is the nature of subjective
poetry, the
expression that is completely
ourselves, expressing us to
ourselves within
ourselves. Our own sense of the
divine that we understand perfectly.

If we are not in the
stillness the words may seem
inadequate, limiting, even
inappropriate or wrong.

Words do the one thing. They
refer. They point. They
are not themselves the
vessel. It may feel
that way at times, but even the
most delicious expression is
pointing toward
something that has some form of
existence and can be
referred to or pointed at.

Again, the beautiful Buddhist
expression: Words are
like fingers pointing
toward the moon. If you look at
the fingers you
won't see the moon.

But the still point within is
truly beyond any
expression. It includes anything
and everything so anything we say
is the truth. We
just cannot speak the
whole of the truth.

And so there is the beautiful
moment of being beyond
the speaking, where
words have become
unnecessary. Not really just
inadequate, but truly
unnecessary. Our experience is
full and needs no
expression to complete it or
fulfill it.

A Chinese comedian once remarked
that Lao Tzu had
said that he who
speaks does not know and took
several thousand words
to say that.

Aren't we glad he did?

Poetry, truth, beauty are all part
of the dance, but
even the dance is not all.

A Friend You'll Never See My teacher once said to me, "I'm glad you've found a friend you'll never see." *That's* what the enlightened mind is: a friend you'll never be able to see. That friend emerges when you discover that the most authentic part of your own self is already *completely* free. It is not possible to be mindful or aware of this already free part of yourself in any ordinary way, but when you have the courage to let go, you will find that miraculously, it can and will respond with great passion and incredible precision, seemingly with no premeditation whatsoever. Out of the blue, the right response will appear. And only *after* such a faster-than-thought response do you become aware of the fact that a part of yourself that you're not normally conscious of is paying attention all the time. That part of yourself is always awake—even when you don't *seem* to be. The expression of that wakefulness is the shocking spontaneity of enlightened awareness. Many of us say we want to be enlightened, but how many of us are ready to let our whole lives be guided by a friend that we will never be able to see? For most of us, it's unbearable even to conceive of, because it points to a kind of surrender that is unimaginable. A surrender in which the ego no longer gets to run the show. Finally, all the weighing and measuring is given up, because you have no doubt that what you are seeking for is something you will never be able to grasp with the mind. This is the dawning of humility: when you begin to discover a non-materialistic, not-knowing relationship to the immeasurable, ungraspable, inconceivable, all-consuming mystery that is your own deepest self. It is this that opens the door for that friend you will never see to begin to speak through you and ultimately to become who you are.