Why don't we just expand ourselves into our perfect form

Why don't we just expand ourselves into our perfect form, our perfect being? We have perceptions and energies and inspiration. We have everything. We have a spiritual friend, we have the teaching. We have everything. What more do we want? We have everything in this whole universe. We have everything there. We have intelligence and understanding and the materials to understand. We have everything.


~ Chogyam Trungpa

from 'Fez'

...

They love the sound of a fountain splashing in the courtyard; on the coals of their braziers they sprinkle sandalwood and benzoin; they have a passion for sitting on a high spot of ground at twilight and watching the slow change of light, color and form in the landscape. Outside the ramparts are innumerable orchards, delightful little wildernesses of canebrake, where olive and fig trees abound. It is the custom of families to go out there on a late afternoon with their rugs, braziers and tea equipment. One discovers groups of such picnickers in the most secluded corners of the countryside, particularly on the northern slopes above the valley. Not long ago on one of my walks I came across a family spread out in the long grass. They were sitting quietly on their reed mats, but something in their collective attitude made me stop and observe them more closely. Then I saw that surrounding them at a radius of perhaps a hundred feet was a circle of bird cages, each supported by a stake driven into the ground. There were birds in all the cages and they were singing. The entire family sat there happily, listening. As urbanites in other places carry along their radios, they had brought their birds with them from the town, purely for entertainment. 

...

~ Paul Bowles

.

from 'It's a Wonderful Life'

...
George Bailey: Now, will you do something for me?
Zuzu Bailey: What?
George Bailey: Will you try and get some sleep?
Zuzu Bailey: I'm not sleepy. I want to look at my flower.
George Bailey: I know-I know, but you just go to sleep, and then you can dream about it, and it'll be a whole garden.
Zuzu Bailey: It will?
George Bailey: Uh-huh. 
...
~ Francis Goodrich and Allen Hackett

.

I Sing the Body Electric

...

This is the female form;
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot;
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction!
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor—

...

~ Walt Whitman

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

 Live the life you have imagined.

~ Henry David Thoreau

O You Whom I Often and Silently Come

...

O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you; 

As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, 

Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.

...

~ Walt Whitman

.

from 'A Streetcar Named Desire' (1951)

...
Blanche: You're married to a madman.
Stella: I wish you'd stop taking it for granted that I'm in something I want to get out of.
Blanche: What you are talking about is desire - just brutal Desire. The name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.
Stella: Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?
Blanche: It brought me here. Where I'm not wanted and where I'm ashamed to be.
Stella: Don't you think your superior attitude is a little out of place?
Blanche: May I speak plainly?... If you'll forgive me, he's common... He's like an animal. He has an animal's habits. There's even something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is. Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you - you here waiting for him. Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you, that's if kisses have been discovered yet...
...
~ Tennessee Williams


.

Beagle Diary, February 29th 1832

...

The day has passed delightfully: delight is however a weak term for such transports of pleasure: I have been wandering by myself in a Brazilian forest: amongst the multitude it is hard to say what set of objects is most striking; the general luxuriance of the vegetation bears the victory, the elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers. ...the glossy green of the foliage, all tend to this end. ... A most paradoxical mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady parts of the wood, ... the noise from the insects is so loud that in the evening it can be heard even in a vessel anchored several hundred yards from the shore. ... Yet within the recesses of the forest when in the midst of it a universal stillness appears to reign. ... To a person fond of natural history such a day as this brings with it pleasure more acute than he ever may again experience.

...

~ Charles Darwin

.

Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams,

You dreamer,

Bring me all your

Heart melodies

That I may wrap them

In a blue cloud-cloth

Away from the too-rough fingers

Of the world.

~ Langston Hughes

 

Granite and Wineglass

.

You are granite.

I am an empty wineglass.

.

You know what happens when we touch!

You laugh like the sun coming up laughts

at a star that disappears into it.

.

Love opens my chest, and thought

returns to its confines.

.

Patience and rational considerations leave.

Only passion stays, whimpering and feverish.

.

Some men fall down in the road like dregs thrown out.

Then, totally reckless, the next morning

.

the gallop out with new purposes.  Love

is the reality, and poetry is the drum

.

that calls us to that.  Don't keep complaining

about loneliness! Let the fear-language of that theme

.

crack open and float away.  Let the priest come down

from his tower, and not go back up!

.

~ Rumi

~ from - ' I AM THAT'

...

"Wisdom says, 'I am nothing'.

 Love says, 'I am everything'.

.

 Between the two my life flows."
...
~ Sri Nisargadatta 

As a result of a thousand million
years of evolution, the universe
is becoming conscious
of itself.


~ Julian Huxley

This we have now

.
This we have now
is not imagination.
.
This is not
grief or joy.
.
Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness.
.
Those come and go.
This is the presence that doesn't.

.

~ Rumi

lady, i will touch you with my mind

...
lady, i will touch you with my mind.
touch you and touch and touch
until you give
me suddenly a smile, shyly obscene

(lady i will
touch you with my mind.) Touch
you,that is all,

lightly and you utterly will become
with infinite care

the poem which i do not write. 

...

~ e.e.cummings



.

2 little whos

2 little whos

(he and she)

under are this

wonderful tree

smiling stand

(all realms of where

and when beyond)

now and here

(far from a grown

-up i&you-

ful world of known)

who and who

(2 little ams

and over them this

aflame with dreams

incredible is)


~ e.e.cummings