lightening the burden

 

The siren's song -

"Be more than you are,

be everything you're not."

.

The sages say,

"Be less, not more,"

because all that we're not

lightens the burden,

delighting without hope

our desiring hearts.

.

~ Joseph Goldstein

from Dreamscapes of the Mind,

Poems and Reflections

the world is myself

 

In the mirror of your mind images appear and disappear.

 The mirror remains.

 Learn to distinguish the immovable in the movable,

 the unchanging in the changing,

 till you realise that all differences are in appearance only

 and oneness is a fact.

 This basic identity -- you may call God,

 or Brahman, or the matrix (Prakriti),

 the words matters little -- 

is only the realisation that all is one.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience:

 'I am the world, the world is myself','

you are free from desire and fear on one hand 

and become totally responsible for the world

 on the other. 

The senseless sorrow of mankind

 becomes your sole concern.

~ Excerpts from I Am That 

by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

may all beings be happy

 

Perhaps nothing more fully expresses the spirit of Jennifer’s lifework

 than the recent performances of “Song For All Beings." 

A large-scale multimedia cirque de spirit, 

these events featured over 100 artists

 and included Bruce Cockburn, Joanna Macy,

 Ferron, Jack Kornfield, Anam Thubten Rinpoche, 

Sarah Dugas, Raz Kennedy, and many others. 

Song For All Beings Live!

 was released as a DVD/video recording of the 2017 show.

In these Arms A Song for all Beings © (p) Jennifer Berezan I cannot turn my eyes, I cannot count the cost Of all that has been broken, all that has been lost I cannot understand, the suffering that life brings War and hate and hunger And a million other things When I've done all that I can And I try to do my part Let sorrow be a doorway Into an open heart And the light on the hills is full of mercy The wind in the trees it comes to save me This silence it will never desert me I long to hold the whole world in these arms May all beings be happy May all beings be safe May all beings everywhere be free

~ Jennifer Berezan

with thanks to When I was 69

fall with me here

So it came time
for me to cede myself
and I chose
the wind
to be delivered to

The wind was glad
and said it needed all
the body
it could get
to show its motions with

and wanted to know
willingly as I hoped it would
if it could do
something in return
to show its gratitude

When the tree of my bones
rises from the skin I said
come and whirlwinding
stroll my dust
around the plain

so I can see
how the ocotillo does
and how saguaro-wren is
and when you fall
with evening

fall with me here
where we can watch
the closing up of day
and think how morning breaks

~ A. R. Ammons

photo by R Christopher Vest

 

where amazement and clear thought twine their slow growth into us

.

.

The most living moment comes when

those who love each other meet each

.

other's eyes and in what flows

between them then.  To see you face

.

in a crowd of others, or alone on a 

frightening street, I weep for that.

.

Our tears improve the earth.  The

time you scolded me, your gratitude,

.

your laughing, always your qualities

increase the soul.  Seeing you is a 

.

wine that does not muddle or numb.

We sit inside the cypress shadow

.

where amazement and clear thought

twine their slow growth into us.

.

~  Rumi

.

I would cease to be

 

God

dissolved

my mind - my separation.

I cannot describe now my intimacy with Him.

How dependent is you body's life on water and food and air?

I said to God, "I will always be unless you cease to Be,"

and my Beloved replied, "And I

would cease to Be

if you

died."

~ St. John of the Cross

from Love Poem from God

translation by Daniel Ladinsky

art by Daniel Taylor

beneath the ancient mountains tears

 

~ Tania

with thanks to Barbara @ When I was 69

losing yourself in love

 

 

 

 

Meditation provides a deeper appreciation 

of the inter-relatedness of all things

 and the part each person plays.

 The simple rules of this game are honesty

 with yourself about where you are in your life

 and learning to listen to hear how it is. 

 

Meditation is a way of listening more deeply,

 so you hear from a deeper space, exactly how it is.

 

 Meditation will help you quiet your mind, 

enhance your ability to be insightful and understanding

 and give you a sense of inner peace.

If you meditate regularly, even when you don’t feel like it, 

you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see

 how your thoughts impose limits on you.

 Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature.

When I asked Maharajji how to meditate, he said, 

“Meditate like Christ.” 

I said, “Maharajji, how did Christ meditate?”

 He became very quiet and closed his eyes.

 After a few minutes,

 he had a blissful expression on his face 

and a tear trickled down his cheek. 

He opened his eyes and said, 

“He lost himself in Love.” 

Try the meditation of losing yourself in love…. 

 

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 

the weighing

The heart's reasons

seen clearly,

even the hardest

will carry

its whip-marks and sadness

and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved

eland forgives

the drought-starved lion

who finally takes her,

enters willingly then

the life she cannot refuse,

and is lion, is fed,

and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us

only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

~ Jane Hirshfield

on the nature of awareness

 

~ Rupert Spira

free 'here and now'

 

As long as there is the body and the sense of identity with the body, 

frustration is inevitable. 

All changes in consciousness are due to the "I-am-the-body" idea. 

Divested of this idea, the mind becomes steady. There is pure being, 

free of experiencing anything in particular. 

You are accustomed to dealing with things, physical and mental.

 I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor energy,

 neither body nor mind. 

While alive, it [the body] attracts attention and fascinates

 so completely that rarely does one perceive one's real nature.

 It is like seeing the surface of the ocean

 and completely forgetting the immensity beneath.

As long as you take yourself to be a person,

 a body and a mind, 

separate from the stream of life,

 having a will of its own, 

pursuing its own aims, 

you are living merely on the surface, 

and whatever you do will be short-lived 

and of little value.

When you desire and fear, and identify yourself with your feelings, 

you create sorrow and bondage. When you create, with love and wisdom, 

and remain unattached to your creations, 

the result is harmony and peace.

 But whatever be the condition of your mind,

 in what way does it reflect on you?

 It is only your self-identification with your mind

 that makes you happy or unhappy.

 Rebel against your slavery to your mind,

 see your bonds as self-created 

and break the chains of attachment and revulsion.

 Keep in mind your goal of freedom, 

until it dawns on you that you are already free, 

that freedom is not something in the distant future

 to be earned with painful efforts,

 but perennially one's own, to be used! 

Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, 

the courage to believe that you are free already 

and to act on it.

We are free 'here and now', 

It is only the mind that imagines bondage. 

Once you know your mind and its miraculous powers, 

and remove what poisoned it 

-the idea of a separate and isolated person- 

you just leave it alone to do its work

 among things for which it is well suited. 

~ Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's

I AM THAT

trauma: not what you think

 

~ Gabor Mate

listen to my silence

Listen to my silence

that murmurs through these leaves

listen to this unwritten song.

.

Much is heaped between these lines

risen without mouth

silted up in the underground.

.

Listen to my paper-thin silence

that is gone with the wind

through the trees.

.

Hear my voice

at the curve of your mouth

earthlydark.

.

~ Jos Steegstra

photo by Michael Kenna

.

stretch out

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.

Make a new water-mark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.

Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You. 

~ Hafiz

see no stranger

 

 

 

 

See no stranger has become a practice that defines my relationships. . . .

 

 Seeing no stranger begins in wonder. 

It is to look upon the face of anyone and choose to say: 

You are a part of me I do not yet know. 

Wonder is the wellspring for love. 

 

Who we wonder about determines whose stories we hear 

and whose joy and pain we share. Those we grieve with,

 those we sit with and weep with, are ultimately those we organize

 with and advocate for. 

 

When a critical mass of people come together to wonder about one another,

 grieve with one another, and fight with and for one another, we begin to build

 the solidarity needed for collective liberation and transformation

—a solidarity rooted in love. . . .

Out in the world, I notice the unconscious biases that arise in me

 when I look at faces on the street or in the news. 

To practice seeing each of them as a sister or brother or family member, 

I say in my mind: You are a part of me I do not yet know. 

 

Through conscious repetition, I am practicing orienting to the world

 with wonder and preparing myself for the possibility of connection.

 (Sometimes I do this with animals and the earth, too!) 

 

It opens me up to pay attention to their story. When their story is painful, 

I make excuses to turn back—“It’s too overwhelming” or “It’s not my place”

—but I hold the compass and remember that all I need to do is be present

 to their pain and find a way to grieve with them. 

If I can sit with their pain, I begin to ask:

What do they need?

 

 

 

~  Valarie Kaur

 Australian aboriginal art