Saturday, March 30, 2019

axioms for wildness









Alive to the thrill
Of the wild.

Meet the dawn
On a mountain.

Wash you face
In the morning dew.

Feel the favor of the earth.

Go out naked in the wind,
Your skin
Almost Aeolian.

With the music inside,
Dance like there is no outside.

Become subtle enough
To hear a tree breathe.

Sleep by the ocean,
Letting yourself unfurl
Like the reeds that swirl
Gradually on the sea floor.

Try to watch a painting from within:
How it holds what it never shows.

The mystery of your face,
Showing what you never see.

See your imagination dawn
Around the rim of your world.

Feel the seamless silk of the ocean
Worm you in ancient buoyancy.

Feel the wild imprint of surprise
When you are taken in by your lover's eyes.

Succumb to warmth in the heart
Where divine fire glows.




~ John O'Donohue
from To Bless the space Between Us




Friday, March 29, 2019

our hearts are held










That by which our hearts are held,
whole worlds love it too.
I can't deny the truth --
many ways lead to the One.

Those whom the Beloved loves,
we must also love.
If someone is a friend to the Friend,
how can we afford not to be friends?

If you would be a lover,
befriend him who loves your Friend;
and if you cannot,
don't call yourself a friend of mine.

Whomever you tend to despise,
hold dear instead.
Don't belittle others, respect them.
This is where the path leads.

If your heart is filled with love,
your way is sacrifice.
Through sacrifice you will find your place
in the ranks of Love.

Hearts which truly love the Truth,
Truth will open a door wide.
Dismantle the house of selfishness.
Put away your self-regard.

High and low, enemy, neighbor,
the Friend serves them all.
Whoever wants to spread this word
must first go out of his home.

This counsel that Yunus gives
is like buried gold.
Those who love the Friend
find peace in both worlds.

 
 
 


By Yunus Emre
(1238 - 1320)
Translated by Kabir Helminski / and Refik Algan
 art by Van Gogh

 
 

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

unveiling ourselves








~ Rupert Spira

leave our selves behind







Essence and form don't mean we are apart:
Water unites with soil in a plant's heart;
Wind joins with fire in substance like its food;
Wine joins with humans and affects our mood.
Since we're not of the King's class or His kind,
To reach Him we must leave our selves behind.
The Lord remains alone once He removes
Our 'I'-ness, dust beneath His horse's hooves;
Souls turned to dust in which His signs are found
As hoof-prints which His horse left on the ground.
If you become the dust beneath His feet,
Then you will be the crown of the elite.

Lest my appearance drive you far from me,
Eat sweets before you hear my homily!
Form has caused many men to fall astray,
Though some chased form and reached God anyway.
Body and soul are joined to some degree,
Although they have no similarity:
The eyeball fills with light which gives it sight;
And drops of blood contain the heart's pure light;
Kidneys house joy, the liver grief and pain;
Intellect, candle-like, lives in the brain.
Of how they're all joined we are ignorant,
 To work out why our brain is impotent.
With human souls the Absolute's connected-
From Him, rare pearls each human heart collected.
Like Mary, we're make pregnant, through that touch,
With the Messiah we adore so much!
Not the Messiah who walks in this place, 
But that Messiah who's beyond all space.
The soul, once pregnant with the Holy One,
Then makes the whole world pregnant too,in turn.
Thus to a second world this world gives birth,
So resurrected souls see that world's worth.
If I discuss this till the Final Day,
There would remain a lot more left to say.
These words themselves are really just a prayer,
Which aims to catch a sweet breath He might spare.
Who can stay silent and not give his all
When 'Here I am!' He answers to Man's call?
This 'Here I am!'  you cannot hear, although
You can still taste it clearly, head to toe! 



 ~ Rumi
from The Masnavi - Book Two 
translation by Jawid Mojaddedi
art by Picasso, Fernande Olivier (Amélie Lang) his first muse.




letting each other go






For this is wrong, if anything is wrong:
not to enlarge the freedom of love
with all the inner freedom one can summon.
We need, in love, to practice only this:
letting each other go.  For holding on
comes easily; we do not need to learn it.


~ Rainer Maria Rilke

attachment to matter







Attachment to matter
gives birth to passion without an Image of itself
because it is drawn from that which is contrary to its essence.

The result is that confusion and disturbance
resonate throughout one's whole being.

It is for this reason that I told you to find contentment
at the level of the heart, and if you are discouraged,
take heart in the presence of the Image of your true nature.



~ from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene
art by J M Culver

you who want knowledge






You who want 
knowledge, 
see the Oneness 
within. 

There you 
will find 
the clear mirror 
already waiting. 




~  Hadewijch II
(Antwerp, 13th century) 
translated by Jane Hirshfield
from Women in Praise of the Sacred



the pearl and the muddy river











The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance.


The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price.
If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever
I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts
after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found,
it may not be sought.

The literature of illumination reveals this above all:
although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always,
even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise…

I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.
It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave,
has force: you rig a giant sail and go.

The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.
Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail,
whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.






~ Annie Dillard
from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
art by Peter Jendro
with thanks to Love is a Place
 
 
 
 

Monday, March 25, 2019

who we believe we are


.
 

 
 
The construction of who we believe we are, 
what the world is like, 
and how we should behave
 is an ongoing exercise 
that we are undertaking all the time. 
 
We are not spectators 
who have simply been thrown into a world
 that is pre-made or pre-given. 
 
We are participants
 in a continuous project 
of constructing
 and reconstructing
 the world in which we live.
 
 
 
~  Traleg Rinpoche
 
 
 
 

Monday, March 18, 2019

this is how a human being can change








This is how a human being can change:
There's a worm addicted to eating grape leaves.
SUDDENLY, he wakes up...
Call it grace, whatever, 
something wakes him,
and he's no longer a worm.
He's the entire vineyard,
And the orchard too,
The fruit, the trunks, a
Growing wisdom and joy
That doesn't need to devour.




- Rumi 
from The Illuminated Rumi

you are the poor one




You are the poor one, you the destitute.
You are the stone that has no resting place.
You are the diseased one
whom we fear to touch.
Only the wind is yours.

You are poor like the spring rain
that gently caresses the city;
like wishes muttered in a prison cell, without a world to hold them;
and like the invalid, turning in his bed to ease the pain.
Like flowers along the track, shuddering
as the train roars by, and like the hand
that covers our face when we cry - that poor.

Yours is the suffering of birds on freezing nights,
of dogs who go hungry for days.
Yours the long sad waiting of animals
who are locked up and forgotten.

You are the beggar who averts his face,
the homeless person who has given up asking;
you howl in the storm.




~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from The Book of Poverty and Death, III,18
photo by Fran Khorvat


Sunday, March 17, 2019

when







When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego, 
when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, 
we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we do not know ourselves. 

Cool, undying life will rush in, 
passion will make our bodies taut with power, 
we shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down, 
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.



~  D.H. Lawerence


Saturday, March 16, 2019

seeking security



Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.


~ from the introduction to a course in miracles







The major cause of violence, I think, is that each one of us is inwardly, psychologically, seeking security. In each one of us the urge for psychological security that inward sense of being safe -projects the demand, the outward demand, for security. Inwardly each one of us wants to be secure, sure, certain. That is why we have all these marriage laws; in order that we may possess a woman, or a man, and so be secure in our relationship. If that relationship is attacked we become violent, which is the psychological demand, the inward demand, to be certain of our relationship to everything. But there is no such thing as certainty, security, in any relationship. Inwardly, psychologically, we should like to be secure, but there is no such thing as permanent security.

So all these are the contributory causes of the violence that is prevalent, rampaging, throughout the world. I think anybody who has observed, even if only a little, what is going on in the world, and especially in this unfortunate country, can also, without a great deal of intellectual study, observe and find out in himself those things which, projected outwardly, are the causes of this extraordinary brutality, callousness, indifference, violence.





~ J. Krishnamurti
from The Book of Life



Thursday, March 14, 2019

only the Self









~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

his own enlightenment



.




On the question of his own Enlightenment
 the Master always remained reticent, 
even though the disciples tried every means to get him to talk.


All the information they had on this subject 
was what the Master once said to his youngest son
 who wanted to know what his father felt when he became Enlightened.

The answer was:  "A fool."


When the boy asked why, the Master had replied,
 "Well, son, it was like going to great pains to break into a house
by climbing a ladder and smashing a window and then realizing later
that the door of the house was open.




~  Anthony de Mello



Monday, March 11, 2019

surrender







Until you practice surrender, the spiritual dimension is something you read about,
 talk about, get excited about, write books about, think about, believe in - 
or don’t, as the case may be. It makes no difference. 
Not until you surrender does it become a living reality in your life. 

When you do, the energy that you emanate and which then runs your life
 is of a much higher vibrational frequency than the mind energy that runs our world - 
the energy that created the existing social, political, and economic structures of our civilization, 
and which also continuously perpetuates itself through our educational systems and media. 

Through surrender, spiritual energy comes into this world. 
It creates no suffering for yourself, for other humans, or any other life form on the planet. 
Unlike mind energy, it does not pollute the earth, and is not subject to the law of polarities, 
which dictates that nothing can exist without its opposite, that there can be no good without bad. 

Those who run on mind energy, which is still the vast majority of the Earth’s population, 
remain unaware of the existence of spiritual energy. 
It belongs to a different order of reality and will create a different world 
when a sufficient number of humans enter the surrendered state 
and so become totally free of negativity. 
If the Earth is to survive, this will be the energy of those who inhabit it.




~ Eckhart Tolle
from The Power of Now




Tuesday, March 5, 2019

awe is what moves us forward








The divine manifestation is ubiquitous,
Only our eyes are not open to it.
Awe is what moves us forward.

Live from your own center.
The divine lives within you.
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.
Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen,
but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today the planet is the only proper “in group.”
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
but we can choose to live in joy.

You must return with the bliss and integrate it.
The return is seeing the radiance is everywhere.
The world is a match for us.
We are a match for the world.
The spirit is the bouquet of nature.

Sanctify the place you are in.
Follow your bliss. . . .


~ Joseph Campbell 
with thanks to Love is a Place
photo - violet flower