At this old street corner where our paths first crossed, Where twilight rains would drape our shoulders in silver, Where we dreamed of tomorrows yet to come, And vowed to love forever, our footsteps intertwined. Then came a day I never returned, Drifting farther, ever farther from your world, As passing seasons turned to shades of longing, And those distant streets fell silent, forgotten by time. - Art: @kaoru_creation

Do not think that spring has faded, And every blossom has fallen away; For last night, in the courtyard, A single plum branch bloomed anew. - Art: @kaoru_creation

ANOTHER FORM OF LOVE ​​Q: Most people say that God is omnipresent, God is everywhere, and God reaches from the highest heaven down to the deepest hell. God is present in all the beauty of life, when miracles happen. God is also present when everything is dark in our lives, when nothing is going right. Since God is omnipresent, then the qualities of God must also be omnipresent, such as the quality of love. What's happening with the quality of love, when God is in the deepest hell, when everything is going wrong in life? SM: That's another form of love, to remind us to go back to the more noble side of the scale. It's like a staircase. If we go a little bit up, then we can see more sunlight; it's higher. If we stay down, it's darker, down in the cellar; it's like that. But it still belongs to the house. ​The darker side of God is hell; it's our own conscience. When we deny God, then we don't see Hirm. It's not that God doesn't exist at that time, but just that we turned our face away, because we did something ungodly. So hell is our own creation. Hell is just a place where our conscience faces it's own retribution, it's own judgment. There's no God who created it. We've chosen many ways to exercise our power, even the power to be dark, to be negative, to be wicked, to be very ungodly. We chose to play around, we chose to explore the universe. We chose to learn, to know what else we could do, except just to be God as Hes is. We chose to do many things, many corners to explore for ourselves. When we chose to do something ungodly, then we had to face the so-called hell. ​That's when we denied the noble quality of God. We chose to turn our back away, just to see what it felt like. This is the soul level, the mind is not conscious of it. If the mind was conscious of what it was doing, it wouldn't do it. The mind is just an instrument of the soul.  The soul wants to experience something new, wants to explore its own power, wants to go into the deeper corners of the universe and back, wants to go to the farther side of the cosmos to see what's there, wants to do something terribly wicked to see what it feels like, and then relearn to be God, and noble again. It's just another form of love. Hell is there to remind you not to be like that. Not to be wicked, not to be negative, not to be dark. Return! Return! Return! That's it. When you feel terrible, already you're facing a corner of hell, you're facing the wall. You face corners and a dark and terrifying atmosphere, and then sooner or later you have to return. So that's another form of love. God is there in that darkness to remind you to go back to the Light. --- *The image is unrelated to the content of this post. Art: Oscar Droege (1898-1983)

The road home, in the late hours of the night, Deep midnight lanes, stripped of all their light, Through the crooked bamboo screen, heads huddle close within, A lonely golden glow from electric lights, faint and clear … Art: Kaoru Yamada

Have you heard the autumn rain, spreading, leaves falling down? Have you heard the golden deer singing a love song? And have you heard when autumn arrives, bringing affection, bringing love to us? Have you heard, have you heard the soul of autumn whisper: Let us love each other, shall we? - Art: Kaoru Yamada

Which city was it, do you remember, my love? The place where we found a few peaceful moments. Which city was it, where we grew tired after just a little walking, and lingered awhile, side by side, along winding roads wrapped around old pine trees? In the afternoon, hand in hand, listening to the sunlight pour over us, the sun gently kissed your lips, turning them rosy. Your eyes looked sad in the evening mist, and I thought you looked even more beautiful. Art: @kaoru_creation

The old path is still here, but the familiar figure is no longer. Art: @kaoru_creation

I’ve seen this image countless times and still did nothing about it until yesterday I’ve read and bookmarked far too much, yet I never took the time to write down the contradictions in my own head Yesterday, I finally started writing them down And I was surprised to see how many connections emerged between things I’d read from completely different sources