a path with heart

No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!

Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: “What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?” Assemble these revered objects in a row before you and perhaps they will reveal a law by their nature and their order: the fundamental law of your very self. Compare these objects, see how they complement, enlarge, outdo, transfigure one another; how they form a ladder on whose steps you have been climbing up to yourself so far; for your true self does not lie buried deep within you, but rather rises immeasurably high above you, or at least above what you commonly take to be your I.

Your true educators and cultivators will reveal to you the original sense and basic stuff of your being, something that is not ultimately amenable to education or cultivation by anyone else, but that is always difficult to access, something bound and immobilized; your educators cannot go beyond being your liberators... She is liberation instead, pulling weeds, removing rubble, chasing away the pests that would gnaw at the tender roots and shoots of the plant; she is an effusion of light and warmth, a tender trickle of nightly rain…

There may be other methods for finding oneself, for waking up to oneself out of the anesthesia in which we are commonly enshrouded as if in a gloomy cloud — but I know of none better than that of reflecting upon one’s educators and cultivators.






~ Friedrich Nietzsche

 with thanks to Brainpickings
art by van gogh

you seek and cannot find

That which you seek and cannot find - is the Seeker.

"By the inquiry 'Who am I?'.

The thought 'who am I?' will destroy all other thoughts,

and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre,

it will itself in the end get destroyed.

Then, there will arise Self-realization."

The thinker is the ego, 

which if sought will automatically vanish.

Reality is simply loss of the ego.

Destroy the ego by seeking its identity.

Because the ego has no real existence, 

it will automatically vanish, 

and Reality will shine forth by itself in all its glory.

This is the direct method.

All other methods retain the ego, 

In those paths so many doubts arise, 

and the eternal question remains to be tackled. 

But in this method the final question is 

the only one and is raised from the very beginning.

No practices are even necessary for this quest.

~ Ramana Maharshi

And the only practice is seeing this, 

which is Awareness, 

which is this which an eye cannot see when it looks at itself.

Practice is deepening understanding, 

for understanding is first an intuitional glimpse of the truth of this, 

then the obtaining of this intuitional glimpse at will, 

and, finally, the permanent installation of this inseeing 

when "walking, standing, sitting and lying," 
in public and in private, asleep and awake.

~ Wei Wu Wei

from All Else is Bondage
x-ray image of a rose by albert koetsier

.

another beam of light

So many blessings have been given to us

During the first distribution of light, that we are

Admired in a thousand galaxies for our grief. 

Don't expect us to appreciate creation or to

Avoid mistakes. Each of us is a latecomer

To the earth, picking up wood for the fire. 

Every night another beam of light slips out

From the oyster's closed eye. So don't give up hope

that the door of mercy may still be open. 

Seth and Shem, tell me, are you still grieving

Over the spark of light that descended with no

Defender near into the Egypt of Mary's womb? 

It's hard to grasp how much generosity

Is involved in letting us go on breathing,

When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief. 

Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for

Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat

When so many have gone down in the storm.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

art by Klimt

bad people

A man told me once that all the bad people

were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails

you need; they are really claws, and we know

claws. The sharks - what about them?

They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men

in black coats who chase you for hours

in dreams - that's the only way to get you

to the shore. Sometimes those hard women

who abandon you get you to say, "You."

A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.

It doesn't move on its own. Sometimes it takes

a lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.

Then they blow across three or four States.

This man told me that things work together.

Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas;

and a careless god - who refuses to let people

eat from the Tree of Knowledge - can lead

to books, and eventually to us. We write

poems with lies in them, but they help a little.

~  Robert Bly

Morning Poems