To presume to write to someone about courage
and not complaining, don’t importune or make dying people cry.
I’ve always said Leave me alone with autumn.
Don’t stand around my bed, I won’t be in it.

Over 7 years after he died, I finally looked
through my father’s papers. Couple of unclaimed insurance policies,
savings bonds, our genealogy and on graph paper in an engineer’s
block lettering quotations from The Seat of the Soul.

Reincarnation and karma are the chicken soup of the soul,
the after life is the reward for our colossal imperfections.
Along with banking instructions, he’d underlined
this: Your soul is immortal. It exists

outside of time. It has no beginning and no end.
Every time you ask for guidance you receive it.
If we are not at home in the world, contributing purpose,
we lose our desire to stay here—and we die.

The physical world is an unaccountable given in which we unaccountably
find ourselves and which we strive to dominate to survive
or it is a learning environment created jointly by the souls that share it
and everything that occurs within it serves our learning.

Sin is activity directed toward self rather than toward service
to others. Sickness is sin. Almost any condition can be corrected.
You are part of God, therefore, think in a godly manner.
If you cannot accept this, forget it all. Do not even begin.

The first act of free will: How do I wish to learn?
If we participate in the cause, it is impossible not to participate in the effect.
We shall come to honor all of life sooner or later.
Until you become aware of the effects of your anger, you will continue to be an angry person.

Walking is the most commonly suggested exercise. Also, breathing.
“Thy will be done.” Concentrate on that!
These expressions of certainty, conjectures and guesses
were inscribed by him in block letters on graph paper.

Source texts: Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul (Free Press, 1990); William A. McGarey, The Edgar Cayce Remedies (Bantam Books, 2006)

Robert Ronnow‘s most recent poetry collections are New & Selected Poems: 1975-2005 (Barnwood Press, 2007) and Communicating the Bird (Broken Publications, 2012). Visit his web site at www.ronnowpoetry.com.