Enthusiasm

People spend their days
Grudgingly doing tasks,
Enslaved
By the mind that tells them
They can only do this or that.

Day after day,
They hope for the lottery
To be free to fulfill their dreams—

Dreaming, praying,
While their eyes become more sunken
And their bones more protruding,
And gravity becomes more relentless
To pull their bodies back into the soil.

O Adventurer of the Cosmos,
Take up your banner of joy,
And go out into the jungle
And roar with the tigers,
And charge with the rhinos,
And live each day with a light
Shining in your eyes.

Janaka has,
And the toy chest of heaven
Lies open for him to pick and choose,
With angels anxiously waiting to bear such gifts.

When your body drops
A rerun of your life you’ll see.

Make it a good one,
When no yawns will drown out the words.

Make it a show
At which you can smile, laugh,
Say ooh and aah,
which finishes in a crescendo of a Wow!

The Infinite Self needs nothing to add to ItSelf,
So it does not tell you
To go grab something outside yourself,
Which will give you happiness
That they tell you is to be found
Only upon a Hollywood screen.

That Self,
which you are,
And share with All That Is,
Is happiness complete,
Wanting to express in this wonderland of delight.

If you feel anger at a desire thwarted,
Happiness did not send you that way—
But only the shadow of unfulfillment.

Let every moment be your desire,
Free of the whips of ‘shoulds,’
That you may be donned in creation’s garment—
A glorious garment removed by angelic hands
From the toy chest of God.

Janaka wears this garment,
Is given everything he needs,
And each moment

His heart utters: Wow!
 
--Janaka Stagnaro
from "Footprints along the Shore of an Incoming Tide"