The Law

5/25/15

Him and I, we're on different sides of the Law. We're from different tribes. I know him, at least I think I do, but I don't know, not really, not for certain. How can you really know someone like that? I see him from time to time, we catch only glimpses in the flash of an instant. I know he's there, even when I don't see, and I know he knows I am too. In the corner of a mirror, in the midst of a mid-night's dream, we meet each other's eye, just for a moment, and gone. The moment resounds, reverberates in my mind and my depth of feeling. It gives me pause, a light tremble, because I know he's always there, just beyond. The Shadow of my Self. Who is the third who walks always beside you? When you turn to look, then nothing. As fast as you can search, the faster he can hide. He lurks behind your eyes, just where you look through. He hides inside your ears, just behind your eardrums, the one thing that doesn't resonate from the sound moving through air, ever so slightly, he is just behind it. Too subtle for the most sensitive instrument to detect, barely too elusive. He is the thief who can never be caught. That's why I put him on the other side of the Law. He need not run, he need not fear, he need not hide. From what is there to hide from? He looks for me too. You catch it in the whiff of smoke, the call of a bird's morning song, the crash of a wave on the surf. As much as you can apprehend all at once, he's just beyond it. Who are you looking for, Shadow? Your many arms and many hands cannot reach me, without number and form. I live on the physical plane, we only see each other through the rarest angles, but still, I search for you. Always with me, but always just beyond. Without hesitation, you are the cloud jumper, the rock hopper, gliding from plane to plane with an effortless leap, a tap on the head, a lover's caress, an intense stare into the eyes of what you most abhor, the boom of a bass drum, the throbbing of a hopeful heart, the careful tie of a bow on the greatest Gift. Unwrap at your own discretion. "I live in all these things. I wait for you here, on the other side of the Law," he says to me in the quietest whisper, slipped into my ear as I wake from the deepest sleep. "Abandon your rules and doctrines, and here I stand," he tells me. Releasing all concepts and theories, allowing free movement of all kinds, the catcher becomes the caught, all at the same instant. The Law of impermanence is then absolved.