In shadows deep

In shadows deep, where hopes may stray.
The winds of doubt will brush and sway.
We climb the hills with weary feet.
Yet stumble oft, in trials we meet.
The mirror shows what’s broken there.
A face etched with both truth and care.
Within the heart, a silent plea.
To rise again and simply be.
Mistakes like stones, they dot our way.
But wisdom grows from each decay.
Though darkness falls and paths seem lost.
The soul fights on, no matter the cost.
For in the struggle, strength is born.
And pain is dusk that births the morn.
So let us walk through night and flame.
Forever chasing our own name.
To be better, to believe anew.
The journey’s end begins with true.
Hold fast the light that shines inside.
Through every fault, through every tide.
For in the striving, life is found.
A sacred hope, forever bound.

DCG

Screenshot

My discovery Bridge 

The post “A Bridge of Discovery” traces a lifetime hunger for love, acceptance, and a deeper, felt truth, showing how this longing evolves from family love to self‑acceptance and finally toward a metaphysical connection that thought alone cannot reach. It frames memory, personality, and spiritual seeking as parts of a single bridge the author is building from rational understanding to a more embodied, heart‑level knowing of reality.
Main ideas of the post
• The author revisits every decade of life (ages 7, 17, 27, 37, 47) to ask, “What do I want most?” and finds a consistent theme of relational love and acceptance. The specific answers move from wanting parental love, to peer acceptance, to forming a family, to receiving love from a daughter, and finally to accepting and forgiving the self.
• Memory is pictured as a “time machine” built from the brain’s vast neural connections, allowing the author to re‑enter earlier stages of life and question those selves. Yet memory is acknowledged as selective and double‑edged, capable of teaching true lessons or hiding lessons not yet learned.
• Across decades, the author notices a preoccupation with “how I fit into the social arena,” which reveals a deeper sense of disconnection and a yearning for a more profound metaphysical bond than ordinary interactions provide. Material wants are set aside so the focus can rest on questions of meaning, belonging, and the soul’s orientation to others and to reality itself.
• The Enneagram personality pattern is invoked as a framework for understanding why the author has always sought deeper connection and why relationships and coping strategies have unfolded as they have. Personality, early disposition, and ego are seen as shaping both the hunger for intimacy and the missteps in handling emotional events.
• The author describes a lifelong search for a truth that can be “felt in your entire being,” not just believed through religious doctrine or rational analysis. Mystical and experiential knowing—rather than purely conceptual faith—is presented as the missing piece, a door that has not yet fully opened.
• The Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant illustrates how limited perspectives lead to quarrels and one‑sided claims about reality. This is connected to Heisenberg’s insight that what we observe is shaped by our “method of questioning,” urging the reader to ask better questions and recognize interpretive limits.
• The “metaphysical problem” becomes how to move beyond the reasoning barrier into a shared field of perception and intention with another human being. The author suggests that a “psychic gap” can be bridged by experiences that are felt, not just thought, pointing toward a more holistic engagement with life.
• Classic spiritual and philosophical works (Tao Te Ching, I Ching, Dhammapada, Upanishads, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Gurdjieff) are re‑read in this light as potential guides to deeper experience, not just intellectual systems. The author notes that different learning styles (verbal, tactile, visual, abstract, etc.) may mean prior reading did not fully activate inner senses needed to grasp their depths.
• The post closes by emphasizing the need to “undo” conditioning that blocks awareness of being connected to everything around us. The “bridge” being built is explicitly named as “one for the heart,” a path toward discovery through lived practice rather than theory alone.

I went back through the years, like walking through a quiet, borrowed sky. .
.
A small boy counting heartbeats, just wanting his parents not to say goodbye. .
.
A teenager scanning faces, trading jokes to earn a fragile place. .
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Afraid that if the laughter stopped, it meant he could be erased. .
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A young man holding wedding rings like tiny suns that might not stay. .
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He prayed that starting his own family would keep the shadows far away. .
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A father staring at his daughter’s face, stunned that love could look back too. .
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Her trust rewrote his failures, like morning light correcting midnight’s view. .
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Years later in the mirror, he met a stranger he still called his name. .
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He finally asked for mercy on the man who carried all that blame. .
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The brain became his time machine, with sparks of memory crossing like a storm. .
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He saw how every wire of need had shaped his wanting into form. .
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He traced the threads of friendships, all the clinging, all the flight. .
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He saw a deeper hunger hiding underneath the want to “be all right.” .
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Not comfort made of objects, not the safety of a locked front door. .
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But some warm proof that soul meets soul, and both wake up as something more. .
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He read the mystics late at night, his coffee cold, his questions hot. .
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The words were like a map to lands his reasoning alone could never spot. .
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The blind men touched the elephant and argued over trunk and tail. .
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He heard his own voice in their fight, each partial truth prepared to fail. .
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Heisenberg whispered gently, “You see the world your questions choose.” .
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He realized half his heartbreak grew from what he’d asked and what he’d refuse. .
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For years he worshiped clarity, then learned that love can blur the line. .
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Sometimes the truest knowing comes when logic kneels and steps aside in time. .
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He saw his Enneagram like armor welded from his childhood fear. .
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It kept him safe from sudden loss, but blocked the touch of those who drew too near. .
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He practiced softer questions, ones that did not pin the heart to proof. .
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He let another’s trembling eyes be evidence enough of holy truth. .
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Some nights he felt a Presence move between his thoughts like quiet rain. .
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No thunderclap of doctrine, just a shared, mysterious easing of his pain. .
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The Tao, the sutras, worn-out texts, all opened like a windowed wall. .
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He sensed they were not puzzles, but invitations simply to be all. .
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He started training inner sight, like learning how to breathe again. .
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Trusting that the bridge is built by every honest, open moment with his pain. .
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Now when he meets another soul, half-hidden behind careful glass. .
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He does not rip their fortress down; he waits, and lets their courage slowly pass. .
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He offers solid footing, not a net that steals their ground away. .
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His love stands like a quiet bridge that will not beg, yet chooses still to stay. .
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The span runs from his thinking mind to where his living heartbeat sings. .
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Each step across that trembling space is stitched with ordinary, holy things. .
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He walks it not as one who’s found some final, blinding certainty. .
.
But as a human building, breath by breath, a bridge of gentle, waking discovery. .
.

DCG

When a soul touches another

When two voices meet, something more can arise.
The heart softens gently, stripped of disguise.
We speak not to win, but to understand.
A bridge takes shape, unplanned by the hand.
In the hush between words, meaning breathes anew.
It’s there love enters—only passing through.
I saw your eyes searching for a place to rest.
I gave them silence, and you felt blessed.
No shield, no mask, just a fragile tone.
Your story unfolded, and I felt my own.
The pain you carried was mine in part.
I listened not with ears, but the heart.
You spoke of loss that time couldn’t mend.
I met you there—listener, not friend.
And in that stillness, the world grew wide.
We both disappeared in the tide.
Words were few, yet something survived.
The space between us softly revived.
A sigh, a nod—the language of care.
A sacred knowing lingered there.
Sometimes the cure is not to speak.
But to stay when another feels weak.
You don’t have to fix what’s torn apart.
Just offer presence, soul to heart.
Such moments make the unseen heard.
A truth far deeper than any word.
Each voice we honor shapes our own.
Connection seeds the love we’ve grown.
So when you listen, do it whole.
Let empathy guide, let patience console.
For every answer begins with care.
Every healing breath needs air.
The art of hearing is seldom learned.
But when mastered, the heart is turned.
I write these words as a mirror call.
To remind the listener within us all.

DCG

My soul compass 

Lost in the turning, I wander the haze.
The heart keeps seeking a brighter blaze.
The compass trembles, unsure where to steer.
The voice inside whispers, “You’re still near.”
Shadows of failure cling to the skin.
Yet dawn reminds me I’m born to begin.
Faith is fragile, a flicker in bone.
Still, grace leans close — I am not alone.
I walk through tempests with tethered eyes.
Truth unveils how the broken rise.
Love feels distant, its outline torn.
But scars are the proof of a soul reborn.
Attachment wavers, the self unsure.
Yet grace repairs what grief can’t cure.
The mind replays what the heart conceals.
But prayer unmasks what pain reveals.
I falter often, lost in despair.
Then Christ reminds me to cast my care.
The map I drew has burned away.
Still, light breaks through the ash and clay.
Each aching step rewrites my name.
The Lord restores the will to flame.
I gather lessons from every fall.
For bruises can be our greatest call.
Confusion whispers, “You’ve lost your place.”
Yet mercy meets me, face to face.
Bowlby spoke of longing’s chain.
God reshapes it through healed pain.
The insecure heart learns to trust.
When love is rooted beyond the dust.
The anxious soul yearns for hold and keep.
But heaven’s arms embrace so deep.
Each wound a teacher, each loss a friend.
They guide the soul toward its true end.
The chaos swirls, and yet I stand.
For faith was never a steady land.
It’s forged in fire, tested by cost.
Found in surrender, never lost.
The world instructs through loss and strain.
No tear is wasted, no effort vain.
Confusion yields what pride denies.
That wisdom blooms where the ego dies.
The compass spins, yet still aligns.
With truths the heart in silence finds.
We learn by falling, rise by grace.
Reborn, renewed, we find our place.
Every storm becomes a scroll to read.
A script of growth our hearts still need.
The path to light is rough and long.
But the weary soul grows strong through wrong.
So let the tempests bruise and bend.
For they are means, not the end.
In every loss, a sacred clue.
The world refines what is most true.
The compass turns — the heart obeys.
And faith becomes the soul’s new blaze.
We walk through shadow, anchored in day.
For God Himself lights up our way.

DCG

The ripple effect

The Ripple Effect” argues that every small act, attitude, and decision sends out waves into other people’s lives and into society, shaping far more than we see on the surface. In simple terms, the post says that how you speak, how you love, and how you ignore or care for others all spread outward like ripples in a pond, eventually returning to you in the kind of world you end up living in. The heart of the message is moral and existential: you cannot control the whole ocean, but you are responsible for the ripples your own stone creates, and over time those ripples help build either a more compassionate world or a more wounded one.

The stone you throw is smaller than your hand. .
Yet circles run for miles beneath the skin. .
A whisper leaves your mouth like drifting sand. .
It builds a dune of shame or grace within. .
You think your anger dies when doors are slammed. .
But echoes bloom in children down the hall. .
A single careless phrase, “You’re weak, you’re damned.” .
Becomes the script a soul reads as it falls. .
The night you turned away from someone’s tears. .
Seemed trivial, a tired, forgetful hour. .
Yet loneliness grew thick across their years. .
And spread like ivy through their trust in power. .
The kindness you once offered half‑awake. .
A seat, a smile, a patient listening ear. .
Became the unseen bridge someone could take. .
To walk back from the ledge of secret fear. .
We live as if our moments stay in place. .
But time is water, nothing stays contained. .
Each choice dissolves, then gathers into space. .
As weather in another person’s brain. .
You scroll and judge, you mock behind a screen. .
The ripples cross a fragile, breaking heart. .
Or you send one true message, calm and clean. .
That says, “You still belong, you get a start.” .
A parent hides their grief behind a joke. .
The child learns early not to show their pain. .
The pattern travels outward, spoke by spoke. .
Till no one knows why love feels laced with shame. .
But also, when a wounded one forgives. .
The ancient tide of cruelty is shocked. .
A different kind of current starts to live. .
A door long rusted through is gently knocked. .
We are not gods who rule the storm and sea. .
We cannot mend the world with one grand act. .
But every quiet “yes” to empathy. .
Rewrites the terms of one inherited pact. .
The heart you soften softens someone else. .
They go back home and speak with gentler eyes. .
Their mercy grazes wounds you’ve never felt. .
And lifts a stranger’s head toward different skies. .
The pain you choose to finally feel and name. .
No longer leaks in ways you can’t control. .
You break the chain that always shifted blame. .
And send a cleaner river through your soul. .
So when you feel invisible and small. .
Remember how the circles leave the stone. .
Your life is not a closed and private wall. .
Your smallest love is shaping worlds unknown. .
Stand in the pond and own the waves you make. .
Let every breath be honest, fierce, and kind. .
For every tender risk you dare to take. .
Becomes the tide that heals the human mind. .

DCG

Do you live on borrowed time? 

Do you live on borrowed time?

Do you let life just pass you by?

Do you live in an existential bewilderment?

You’re so choked up you  can’t even cry.

We see our lives pass

Never found your purpose?

Rich or poor you barely just get by

Don’t think about what is important

The only thing left to do is die

Right before our eyes

Did you take notice?

Or did you find yourself surprised?

Do we ask the right questions?

Do we empathize?

Do we follow nonsensical thoughts? 

Do we self hypnotize?

If you have oxytocin

But no purpose in your life to guide

You will go where the wind blows

Never knowing how to escape the imposing riptide

Kierkegaard

Netzche

Heidegger

Jasper‘s

Sattre

Camus

If “God is dead“ and “we are thrown into the world“

Then “life is absurd“ – and what can you do

Sometimes the more questions we ask, the more we find the more we don’t know

If we follow the paradigm of rational thought 

Nothing more than t our pride is shown

Borrowing breath we never own,
Measuring life by the hours that fly,
Building faith out of the unknown.

Haunted by clocks that do not sleep,


Our worth unmeasured by their rust,


Our promise deeper than what we keep.

If time is a loan, then let us spend,
Not hoard each hour in trembling fear,


But burn our truth until the end,


And hold the fleeting moment near.

For even gods once learned to die,


Their heavens cracked with mortal flame,


Yet mortals learn to testify
Through loss, through love, through sacred shame.

We live as thieves of passing breath,


Yet our crime is holy, bold, divine,


For in defying death with death,


We prove that life itself will shine.

So let the borrowed moments fade,


And leave their ache upon the bone,


For meaning isn’t found — it’s made,


Carved fierce from what was never known.

DCG

Prologue
This poem wrestles with a deep fear many of us share but rarely voice — the sense that life is temporary, and that time isn’t ours to keep. It asks: if everything we love is fleeting, what gives our lives meaning? It challenges the reader to rise up from despair and make something sacred out of the short time we’re given. In other words, it’s about finding purpose in the face of our mortality, not by denying our limits, but by defying them.

Expectation without investigation 

Pure conviction untested

is where the true believers fail

Without practice

The intellectual motion will not prevail

Expectation without investigation

Like a road made of sand

Washed away by the elements

A road not well planned

There is more than just belief

It must be tested in practice with common sense and adversity

A formation of character to learn, earn, and return

a blueprint on how to be

Living the best possible life requires agency

A Moral compass only works with self correction

The simple resolution

Is self inspection

integrity is not an accident

It’s foundation that defies corruption

It will last longer

Than a fools presumption

DCG

Reality check 

It’s not wrong to dream

A future that you can visualize

The more detail you envision

The closer you can realize

It will not be a simple task

It will take consistent work

To manifest a better life

Is not an easy perk

Few will achieve success

Many will simply fail

If we lose our focus and discipline

Then the dream becomes stale

Like anything – if you don’t put in the effort

You may not like the result

If your focus is too narrow and vague

Then it can be only your fault

Along the way

You will face trials and tribulations

You must meet deception and treachery from those you thought you could trust – head on

Without making insinuations

The course of your actions

Are always louder than words

Anything else

Would just be absurd

There will be times

You will need to seek guidance

Go to a well trusted source

Always ask are my values in accordance?

We may box ourselves in with our logic

We wake up years later and realize 

The image in the mirror is not what we thought

This reality check we despise

DCG

I believe in you

With every day that passes

With all the time we share

I believe in your ability

Against the world that is not fair

The California sky

In OB you and I

In South Beach and Sunshine

We watched the surf in our eye

Barhopping from the harp on Newport

To the joint on cable

Such a beautiful day

Was it a dream, a date, or a fable?

Turns out there was a bike shop

Just where I said it was

Would have loved to see the look on your face

Because, because, because, because

As we talked

Throughout the day

I listened carefully

On everything you had to say

I believe in you

You know who you are

But there are times when you doubt

When you shut yourself down-You take it too far

I’ve seen how you interact with people

You are grateful, kind, and give from the heart

That is a genuine quality I admire

I also think you’re pretty smart

I’ve seen the glimpse of your character

There is much to you that bodes well

Your charms are not lost on me

And for reasons of my own it is in this way that I must tell

RSP

DCG

And walk towards what we believe

There is no rainbow in the soul

If there are no tears in the eyes

A native American proverb

Many consider to be wise

The realization of aging

Many elderly people say

They often lament over the memory of being young 

And their current body’s decay

When we are young we cannot fully appreciate

The lifecycle that we live

But overtime, it will dawn upon us

There will be one last sunset, so we have limited time and much to give

Many hard truths about ourselves

Will often escape us

And when we think and ruminate about them

We fail to connect our feelings to resolve the what was 

The path of a rewarding life

May lie ahead

The path of trips bumps and falls

Will also happen instead

Just how we manage this journey

Relies on what we perceive

We must summon the courage within us

And walk towards what we believe

DCG