The Moment It Falls Away

~ Bela Johnson ~ 7 Comments

We spend years, decades—some spend lifetimes—
circling the same wound.
Not because it cannot heal,
but because we keep checking on it:
palpating for tenderness,
testing the edges,
reopening what the body has long been striving to seal.

Most suffering doesn’t come from the injury itself.
It comes from the reflex.
The reflex to scan.
To brace.
To adjust ourselves.
To anticipate someone else’s reactions.
To smooth what isn’t ours to correct or modify.
To carry what was never ours to shoulder.

These reflexes become identity.
We no longer see them as choices.
We see them as who we are.

And then—
in the quiet of a single night,
just before sleep—
that old reflex rises like it always has,
and our system simply
doesn’t follow it.

No effort.
No spiritual performance.
No “work.”
No mantra, no posture, no ritual can manufacture this moment.
Just a clean, calm No.
That is not me anymore.

Watch how the pattern collapses
the moment we stop collaborating with it.

Remember:
suffering requires participation.
Withdrawal of participation
is liberation.

It can be that easy.
It can be that fast.
Not because the years leading to that moment were easy—
Lord knows they weren’t—
but because, whether through desire or sheer exhaustion
with our own hamster-wheel compulsions,
truth finally outweighs habit.

The soul outgrows its old threadbare costumes.
We see the mechanism clearly
and choose not to employ it again.

Human beings can do this at any moment.
Still, many don’t.
Drama is familiar.
Pain feels like proof of existence.
Chaos masquerades as purpose.
For some, reflex is the only identity they’ve ever known—
a life of Response To
rather than response from the inner truth,
the inner compass.

They will not let the pattern fall away
because they do not know
who they’d be on the other side of peace.

That, perhaps, is the real fear—
not the suffering itself,
that warm blanket of familiarity,
but the terrifying freedom
of no longer needing it.

But the truth remains,
for anyone willing to claim it:

It can be gone.
Just like that.
Not erased—
completed.

All that’s required
is the willingness to stop feeding
what no longer fits.

Ask,
“What is true now?”
not
“Why am I like this?”

And one day,
a lifelong pattern will rise in you
and find
no place
to land.

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Rose ~ bj 2023

You Complete Me

~ Bela Johnson ~ 5 Comments

We never got enough of it.
Nobody ever does.
Perhaps it is the memory
of a more universal love,
unburdened by the shackles
of our own species—
expectations, resentments,
yearning, always yearning.

And so we gather like magnets
on a child’s toy, drawn to
and captivated by whatever it is
we feel lacking
in our own constellation
of self.

In that drawing toward
something that feels compelling,
we forget who we are, that we are,
and what we become is utterly
lost to ourselves—our essence—
in the desperate grasp for something,
anything, to help us fill the hollow
that widens within.

If we find another
with similar strivings,
we call it a match.
Jerry Maguire arriving—
you complete me—
and we lean toward,
away from ourselves.

The fly, drawn to
the heart of the spider’s web.
I am needed—call it desired—
by another equally dependent
on the oxygen of my being.
And we call it romance.

What else has a vacuous culture
conditioned us to expect?

Sovereignty, for all the word implies,
is a hard-won freedom
from such constrictions.
A self-containment rare
in a world of codependence.
A plain muslin garment
we try on from time to time,
its threads chafing tender flesh.

So what is a soul to do
on a lonely planet,
lush with natural beauty we ignore in favor of
the small rooms we build inside ourselves,
when we shrink it all down
to the tiny world
within walls
of our own construction?

Perhaps one day we long
to be free, and the awkward process,
flowers unfolding to the light,
begins.

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bj ~ 2022

What Fire Knows

~ Bela Johnson ~ Leave a comment

In winter, we burned what had to be burned.
Snow made a bowl of the world,
held the edges,
kept the woods from incinerating intention.

Chris tended the small things—
kindling, air, patience.
I stood nearby, full of heat,
ready to give the fire
what it was born to take.
I wanted the heavy pieces sooner than was sensible—
thick limbs,
trunks that endured
too many seasons, then died in place.

Fire does not like crumbs
once it knows its strength.
I ought to know,
with most of my life
now behind me.

Still, the wood was wet.
Rotten with water.
Not ready.
So I waited—
because force, to move safely,
must meet timing.
Fire teaches this
if you watch long enough.

Flames do not argue with weight,
do not persuade density.
They enter where they can—
bright tongues flicking
through openings—
exit where they must,
and stay
until form gives up pretending:
a pile of bright chunks
collapsing into itself,
days later
hot ash.
This is why we don’t
walk away for good
until it’s done.

This is not about wood.
It is about power
that knows how to wait
without dimming,
about heat
that does not scorch the house
to prove itself.

This is how force moves safely:
contained,
trusted,
timed—
and when released,
complete.

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~ bj 2022

The Leap

~ Bela Johnson ~ 4 Comments

Look — the universe is not chaos.
It is ordered beneath appearance.

The void —
a dark, voluminous fullness —
listens before it speaks.
It pulses with life, with potential,
and makes no effort to explain itself.

The quantum realm has much to teach
that way.

In the silence where thought evaporates,
where equations loosen their grip
and drift back into starlight,
only impressions remain.
Only sensation.

Here, reason insists there should be lack —
and yet there is fullness.
A humming quiet.
A sufficiency that does not argue
for its own existence.

God withdraws
so creation may proceed.

No one can be led here.
Nothing meaningful is borrowed.
Trust is the crossing.
It moves in both directions.

And if we can hold this
without flinching,
without presumption,
we may discover —
not something new —
but what it is to be
entirely, unmistakably,
ourselves.

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Upolu Pt. ~ bj 2025

Where Is Love?

~ Bela Johnson ~ 6 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?
View all responses

People are fickle.
Emotions vary.

The universe and nature know nothing
of these human fluctuations.
The mountains and the stars simply are.

Their constancy has always given me
a deep sense that I am loved beyond measure.

Why?

Because I exist.

Each day and every night, I witness
sunrise, sunset,
the moon and stars,
doing what they have done for millennia.

Despite humanity’s worst efforts—
forests cleared, air fouled, waters polluted—
the Earth endures.

Tides still come in.
Tides still go out.

And each evening,
she fans out a breathtaking palette of color
before night falls.

How could one not feel loved
in the face of that?

Inside our houses and institutions,
the dramas run rampant.

Despite the sufficiency nature grants for free,
we steep ourselves in lack—
in what we do not possess.

We work away our days,
and sometimes our nights,
striving and grasping for things
we cannot carry beyond the grave.

We love, then we hate.
We blame others for our own lack of understanding.
Our time is too valuable to sit and listen,
to try to see from another’s viewpoint.

We hold onto beliefs as though they are lifeboats,
then exclude those who do not cling
to the same rigid forms.

And the one thing we most want from another?
To feel loved.

But love is the given—
the stardust from which we are made.

The ground beneath our feet
does not ask who we are
or what we believe;
it supports us just the same.

A tree’s branches welcome
any creature without question.

And we, above all species
on this beautiful blue orb,
possess the choice
to share what is in our hearts
or to turn away,
offering reasons for exclusion.

We bow our heads, rejected,
when all we have to do
is open—
again and again—
to love’s awareness.

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Kawaihae sunset ~ bj 2017

On Self Deception

~ Bela Johnson ~ Leave a comment

We humans hold tightly to beliefs,
as if they were vital organs.
Perhaps they are.

We need to feel safe
in an increasingly unsafe world.

Fair enough.

Fundamentalist religions understand this well—
how firm boundaries,
declared holy,
can feel like shelter.

How obedience
can masquerade as peace.

Fair enough.

But something quieter—
and more dangerous—
happens
when free-thinking people
begin to believe
they are immune.

When reason
becomes the chosen refuge.

When intelligence
is tasked with protecting the heart
from what it already knows.

When logic is used
not to illuminate,
but to justify
the narrowing of our lives.

This is not stupidity.
It is often the work
of very capable minds.

We tell ourselves
we are being practical.
Realistic.
Responsible.

We say we are choosing freely,
when what we are really choosing
is familiarity.

We say we are being patient,
when we are actually postponing our place
in the shared reality we already inhabit.

We say this is temporary—
that conditions will improve,
that love will be ushered in
once the scaffolding is complete.

And because the reasons sound sensible—
even kind—
we do not notice
how much we are accommodating
what diminishes us.

Slowly,
almost imperceptibly,
separation becomes a virtue.

Endurance
becomes evidence of character.

Self-erasure—
the quiet shrinking of one’s own truth—
begins to look like maturity.

Withdrawal, mistaken for serenity, passes as peace.

At that point,
self-righteousness
need not announce itself.

It can feel gentle.
Earnest.
Concerned.

But the effect
is the same.

Justifications multiply—
for why another’s freedom
must be curtailed,
why another’s truth
is inconvenient,
why sovereignty is claimed
as a luxury
we cannot yet afford.

Safety, once mutual,
is quietly hoarded.

And we may even feel
virtuous for it.

But there is a cost.

Because when one person
is not free—
not in theory,
but in their body,
in their choices,
in their capacity
to say no—

the rest of us
are not liberated either.

We are only managing our fear
with better language.

The question, then,
is not
Who is right?
or
Who is to blame?

It is simpler.
And harder.

Where have I made a life small
so that it would feel safe?

And what truth
have I learned to live with—
as though I were its recipient,
rather than its source?

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Singled out ~ bj 2017

Is That Where It Started?

~ Bela Johnson ~ 25 Comments

(Note** This is a poem about a lie spread sixty years ago, that Beatle Paul was dead. This is not, in fact, what happened. Paul McCartney is very much alive today, as of this writing in 2025.)

Paul is dead.
A most beloved Beatle.

I was in junior high school, bussed across town like so many of us then. Against our will. It was a confusing enough time for anybody—never mind a former Mormon girl who knew the church was no longer right for her, but had no idea what might replace it. My parents’ violent drama was coming to a head—if not an end just yet. Of course I had no idea what would take its place. Church, family, blast, boom, bam. Gone.

All my dreams had culminated in this void.

Then The White Album. Second-to-last track: Revolution 9.
Play it backward.
You would hear an otherworldly voice moaning, Turn me on, dead man.

In 1969, this was enough to convince Beatles fans: Paul was dead.

I failed Critical Thinking 101 then. You could hardly blame me, given my upbringing. I was just lost. Instead of considering possibilities—as I might have ten years later—I could only feel despair. The particular existential despair of teenagers.

I remembered The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, singing No Reply.

I tried to telephone, they said you were not home,
that’s a lie, ’cause I know where you’ve been,
I saw you walk in your door.

I nearly died! I nearly died!

Insert at this point, my dad singing, I wish you had! I wish you had!

How he hated his teenage daughter’s adoration of those mop tops. He had been supplanted—though I could not have known it then. A life saver for me, I now realize.

Paul? Dead?

John Hiatt’s lyric lines creep in years later, all jumbled up.

Gone, like the shape I’m in,
gone, like a fifth of gin,
gone, like a Nixon file,
gone, gone away.

Years later, after it was determined to be a hoax, I—and many Beatles lovers like me—still wondered.

And then, sixty years later, I see the similarities.

Feed them lies.
Repeat them often.
Seed them—again and again.

And the masses are left to wonder:
what is real?
What, fiction?

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Pexels


Fairytale House

~ Bela Johnson ~ 2 Comments

It began as a modest house.
The kind you rent because it’s in your budget.
Brown floors. Plain rooms.
We needed shelter — and yet.

Even then,
I was already measuring
what I could hold.

I felt tenderness for the older man who owned it —
he could not afford to live there otherwise,
so our modest contribution mattered —
a deciding weight.

Somewhere between evening and morning
the house grew,
as if it had been given
a dose of Jack’s magic beans.

Rooms multiplied.
Floors appeared
where I did not even remember stairs.

Doors appeared —
some led to occupied rooms,
others went nowhere at all.

What a curious Wonderland.

People then began to arrive,
leaving their footprints everywhere.

By dawn I was holding a mop,
and the certainty
that the job was fruitless,
that it could never be done.

Surely not by me.
Not even with help.

The floors stayed dirty.
And I didn’t feel anger,
or even that I was a failure.

The task was simply
beyond me.

And that was finally
a boundary I could live with.

Saying no
to no one in particular
went against everything
I was raised to believe.

Yet it was the only answer.
The conclusion.
And it felt like a victory.

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Mt. Tabor park ~ bj 2023

Autonomy

~ Bela Johnson ~ 10 Comments

The garden waits,
its pulse separate from mine—
a thousand roots threading through
their own decisions.

I have pruned too much,
watered from lack of rain,
guarded what would have
done better left alone.

Too much,
even when well intentioned,
is still too much.

Now, I watch the kale bolt,
the papaya’s thin trunks leaning
toward the light, the self-seeded
oregano flowering without
a care in the world.

Everything knows what it’s doing.
Even the dying has its place.

I bow to this unmanaged wisdom,
and, after feeling at first like I could have,
should have done more, in the end,
feel the relief of not being in charge.

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Christmas cactus ~ 2025 bj

Steadier When Lived

~ Bela Johnson ~ 2 Comments

I was conditioned to hyper-attunement when young.
To notice — for how could I not — the vagaries
and inconsistencies of the humans around me.
And so I sought answers — which now seems absurd,
as if there ever were any.

Instead of realizing — a thing learned
later in life, after many experiences —
that life, by definition, requires living.
Not planned or controlled,
but stepping onto its stage,
and not without consequences.
Even when we do the best we can,
we are still wading through.
Living it.

Daunting, really, especially
in the midst of chaos.
Even if we think we know more than we do.

Fundamentalist religions attempt
to provide a container,
but it is only one container —
and a disempowering one, at that.
There are rules which, if done “right,”
insinuate themselves through repetition
and eventually land as one’s own truth.
Our inner voice.
And we learn to trust that.

In my case, that was a mistake.

I never settled, as a result
of man-made guidelines.
It took me years to discover
that the best voice of conscience was my own.
I now realize that was the voice
of intuition. My voice.
Not memorized and internalized
from another’s viewpoint.

Part of reclaiming my inner authority
was learning it was no longer
my responsibility to convey,
with missionary zeal,
what worked for me as New Truth —
a new religion, if you like.
Instead, it might empower others
to discover their own inner compass.

I had convinced myself that control
masqueraded as care,
and realized how easily
the preacher’s self-assurance
translated into something combustible
living within.

From parents to preachers,
I had no examples
of anything else to emulate.

Now. I am learning restraint — and this matters.
And because it is important to me,
I will not set myself on fire
to illuminate another’s fog,
leaving myself burned
by my own passion.

Integrity, I am discovering,
is not louder when shouted.
It is steadier
when lived.

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Mahukona ~ bj 2026