magnetism

The Self is like a powerful magnet within us. 

It draws us gradually to itself, though we imagine we are going to It of our own accord:

 when we are near enough, It puts an end to our activities, 

makes us still, and then swallows up our personal current,

 thus killing our wrong personality. 

It overwhelms the intellect and over floods the whole being. 

We think we are meditating upon It and developing towards It, 

whereas the truth is that we are iron filings and It is the Atman-magnet 

that is pulling us towards Itself. Thus the process of finding 

the Self is a form of Divine magnetism.

~ Ramana Maharshi

in succession, in division

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. 

Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence;

 the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; 

the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, 

and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing

 and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, 

the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. 

We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree;

 but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

from the essay The Over-Soul

art by gene kloss

on friendship and love

Such a friendship has no model but itself, and can only be compared to itself. It was not one special consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a thousand; it was some mysterious quintessence of all this mixture which possessed itself of my will,  and led it to plunge and lose itself in his, which possessed itself of his whole will, and led it, with a similar hunger and a like impulse, to plunge and lose itself in mine.  I may truly say lose, for it left us with nothing that was our own, nothing that was either his or mine.

~ Montaigne

from Essays of Michel de Montaigne

In any true love - a mother's for her child, a husband's for his wife, a friend's for a friend - there is an excess energy that always wants to be in motion.  Moreover, it seems to move not simply from one person to another but through them toward something else.  ("All I know now / is the more he loved me the more I loved the world" - Spencer Reece.) That is why we can be so baffled and overwhelmed by such love (and I don't mean merely when we fall in love; in fact, I'm talking more of other, more durable relationships): it wants to be more than it is; it cries out inside of us to make it more than it is.

~ Christian Wiman

from My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

we say

We say release, and radiance, and roses,

and echo upon everything that's known;

and yet, behind the world our names enclose is

the nameless: our true archetype and home.

The sun seems male, and earth is like a woman,

the field is humble, and the forest proud;

but over everything we say, inhuman,

moves the forever-undetermined god.

We grow up; but the world remains a child.

Star and flower, in silence, watch us go.

And sometimes we appear to be the final

exam they must succeed on. And they do.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Stephen Mitchell

photo by Carsten Meyerdierks

well of darkness

If each day falls

inside each night,

there exists a well

where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim

of the well of darkness

and fish for fallen light

with patience.

~ Pablo Neruda

from The Sea and the Bells

translated by William O'Daly

with thanks to Love is a Place

that crookedness is straightness itself

They asked al-Hallaj, "To which religious School do you belong?

he answered, "God's own."

He who limned 

a thousand worlds with paint-

you layabout! - do you expect

He'll use your color or mine?

Our paints and tints

are but opinions and fantasy,

He is colorless

and we must adopt His hue.

Look: a shadow lies crooked upon the ground because the very earth is laid rough; but no, 

that crookedness is straightness itself, for the perfection, the "straightness" of the eyebrow is in its 

sinuous curve.

Only because it is bent

is this piece of wood a bow.

Reality is a sphere: wherever you place your finger,

there is its dead center.

~ Fakhruddin Iraqi

from Divine Flashes