May I find the Courage to withstand the crumbling of my
delusions so that the light of right understanding guides me on a life path absent of greed, anger, and ignorance.

” ‘To find a pathway absent of greed, anger, and ignorance’ messages hope that there is indeed a way of life that leads out of this petrified forest in which there looms gigantic trees twisted and bent by an ego intent on creating a self- referenced world. Each tree has been tagged with a label that takes possession of it through the identification of “my memory”, “my feelings”, “my ideas”, or “my dreams”. Circling the trees are multiple pathways carved out by the anger of unmet desires and covered over by entangled vines driven by a need to satiate an unquenchable thirst. For years I have wandered in the shadows of this forest unable to see that it is of my own creation.

I come to a place where I envision myself eagerly before bookshelves, my eyes lightly and briefly touching upon one book’s title and then another, feeling their words tickle my thoughts until I surrender to their unspoken promises. Once engaged by the promising nature of a title, it is hope that opens a book jacket and begins another journey through pages. With the turning of each page, desire seeks the experience of validation within the configuration of a writer’s text. All of this, I believe, is driven by memory traces of how the words of unknown authors enfolded my emotional self as they alleviated the subsequent emotional chaos that followed the death of my father when I was three years old.

Later, literature provided me with alternate threads by which to darn a harmonious, yet delusional, understanding of death, of fatherless children, of a family.”

~B C Koeford (A Meditative Journey with Saldage)