friendship with oneself

 

 

 
Despite what we might think much of the time and what the news programs imply,
 we all wish to be sane and open-hearted people. We could take our wish to be
 more sane and kind and put it in a very large context. We could expand it into
 a desire to help all other people, to help the whole world.

 But we need a place to start. We can’t simply begin with the whole world.
 We need to begin by reaching out to the people who come into our own lives
 our family members, our neighbors, our coworkers.

We need to work on ourselves. When we do this work on ourselves, however,
 we can still think of it in the wider context of our community, our nation,
and our world. Viewing the work we do on ourselves in this larger context
 is very important. I don’t mean to be harsh, but I have to say that a lot of people
 who do so- called spiritual work can be somewhat selfish. Their spiritual path
 is all about taking care of themselves, and they may not notice that what makes
 them feel comfortable and secure is actually at the expense of other people.

When we look at the world around us — our immediate world and the bigger world beyond —
we see a lot of difficulty and dysfunction. The news we hear is mostly bad news,
 and that makes us afraid. It can be quite discouraging. Yet we could actually
 derive inspiration, from these dire circumstances. We could recognize the fact,
 and proclaim the fact, that we are needed.

A lot of the most painful conditions in the world are initially motivated by fear.
 Fundamentalism, for example, comes about when we feel we need something
 definite and solid to protect ourselves from those who are different from us.
 That arises from the fear of losing control. Likewise, our addictions come from
 trying to assuage the discomfort we feel inside, the fear that things are out of our control
 and we have no secure ground under our feet. Whatever form fear hardens into,
 it continues to escalate and results in actions that can do great damage.
 It escalates into wars and riots. It escalates into violence and cruelty.
 It creates an ugly world, which breeds more fear.

Yet the raw fear initially emerges as a dot in space, as a doorway that can go either way.
 If we choose to take notice of the actual experience of fear, whether it’s just
 a queasy feeling in our stomach or actual terror, whether it’s a subtle level
 of discomfort or mind-numbing dramatic anxiety, we can smile at it,
believe it or not. It could be a literal smile or a metaphor for coming to know fear,
 turning toward fear, touching fear. In that case, rather than fear setting off
 a chain reaction where you’re trying to protect yourself from it,
 it becomes a source of tenderness. We experience our vulnerability,
 but we don’t feel we have to harden ourselves in response.
This makes it possible for us to help ourselves and to help others.

So the very first step, and perhaps the hardest,
 is developing an unconditional friendship with oneself.

Developing unconditional friendship means taking the very scary step
 of getting to know yourself. It means being willing to look at yourself clearly
 and to stay with yourself when you want to shut down. It means keeping
 your heart open when you feel that what you see in yourself is just
 too embarrassing, too painful, too unpleasant, too hateful.

If you do stay present with what you see when you look at yourself again and again,
you begin to develop a deeper friendship with yourself. It’s a complete friendship,
 because you are not leaving out the parts that are painful to be with.
 It’s the same way you would develop a complete friendship with another person.
 You include all that they are. When you develop this complete friendship with yourself,
 the parts you’re embarrassed about—as well as the parts you’re proud of—
manifest as genuineness. A genuine person is a person who is not hiding anything,
 who is not conning themselves. A genuine person doesn’t put up masks and shields.

When we wall ourselves off from uncertainty and fear,  we develop an “iron heart.”
 When someone develops a true friendship with themselves, the iron heart softens
 into something else. It becomes a vulnerable heart, a tender heart.
 It becomes a genuine heart of sadness, because it is a heart that is willing
 to be touched by pain and remain present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ Pema Chödrön

excerpts from talks given in the Bay Area in October 2010

 with thanks to Lions Roar

 

 

 

 

thousands of voices

 

 

 

 

 

 Do you bow your head when you pray or do you look
up into that blue space?

Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.
And don't worry about what language you use,
God no doubt understands them all.

Even when the swans are flying north and making
such a ruckus of noise, God is surely listening
and understanding.

Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.
But isn't the return of spring and how it
springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?
Yes, I know, God's silence never breaks, but is
that really a problem?

There are thousands of voices, after all.
And furthermore, don't you imagine (I just suggest it)
that the swans know about as much as we do about
the whole business?

So listen to them and watch them, singing as they fly.
Take from it what you can.

~ Mary Oliver

from  Devotions: The Selected Poems 

 

 

empty of a separate self

 

 

 

 

We too are full of so many things and yet empty of a separate self.
Like the flower, we contain earth, water, air, sunlight, and warmth.

We contain space and consciousness.
We contain our ancestors, our parents and grandparents,
education, food, and culture.

The whole cosmos has come together
to create the wonderful manifestation that we are.

If we remove any of these “non-us” elements,
we will find there is no “us” left. 

 

 

 

 

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 from The Art of Living

 Photo by Paul Kozal

 

 

 

still

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

 

 

 

 ~ A. R. Ammons

from Selected Poems

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

 

 

 

 

not knowing

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would not sacrifice my soul
for all the beauty of this world.

There is only one thing
for which I would risk everything:
an I-don’t-know-what
that lies hidden
in the heart of the Mystery.

The taste of finite pleasure
leads nowhere.
All it does is exhaust the appetite
and ravage the palate.
And so, I would not sacrifice my soul
for all the sweetness of this world.

But I would risk everything
for an I-don’t-know-what
that lies hidden
in the heart of the Mystery.

The generous heart
does not collapse into the easy things,
but rises up in adversity.
It settles for nothing.
Faith lifts it higher and higher.

Such a heart savors
an I-don’t-know-what
found only in the heart of the Mystery.

The soul that God has touched
burns with love-longing.
Her tastes have been transfigured.
Ordinary pleasures sicken her.
She is like a person with a fever;
nothing tastes good anymore.

All she wants
is an I-don’t-know-what
locked in the heart of
the Mystery. . . .

I will never lose myself
for anything the senses can taste,
nor for anything the mind can grasp,
no matter how sublime,
how delicious.
I will not pause for beauty,
I will not linger over grace.
I am bound for
an I-don’t-know-what
deep within the heart of the Mystery.

~ John of the Cross

from Glosa á lo Divino 

 translated by Mirabai Starr
photo by Jeremy Thomas

the nativity

 

 

 

 

 

No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her.
A face deciphers itself from water
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first.
Fresh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth. 

 

 

 

 

~ John O'Donohue

from  Conamara Blues

art by Gustav Klimt 

mother

 

 

 

 

 The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word “Mother,”
and the most beautiful call is the call of “My mother.”
It is a word full of hope and love,
a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart.

The mother is everything –
she is our consolation in sorrow,
our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness.
She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness….

Everything in nature bespeaks the mother.
The sun is the mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of heart;
it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep
to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks.

And this earth is the mother of trees and flowers.
It produces them, nurses them, and weans them.
The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds.
And the mother, the prototype of all existence,
is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love.

 

 



 ~ Kahlil  Gibran

on the hill late at night

The ripe grassheads bend in the starlight

in the soft wind, beneath them the darkness

of the grass, fathomless, the long blades

rising out of the well of time.  Cars

travel the valley roads below me, their lights

finding the dark, and racing on.  Above

their roar is a silence I have suddenly heard,

and felt the country turn under the stars

toward dawn.  I am wholly willing to be here

between the bright silent thousands of stars

and the life of the grass pouring out of the ground.

The hill has grown to me like a foot.

Until I lift the earth I cannot move.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

photo from kathleen connally

the silent articulation of a face

Love comes with a knife, not some

shy question, and not with fears

for its reputation! I say

these things disinterestedly. Accept them

in kind. Love is a madman

working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes,

running through the mountains, drinking poison,

and now quietly choosing annihilation.

A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous wasp.

Think of the spiderweb woven across the cave

where Mohammad slept! There are love stories,

and there is obliteration into love.

You've been walking the ocean’s edge,

holding up your robes to keep them dry.

You must dive naked under and deeper under,

a thousand times deeper! Love flows down.

The ground submits to the sky and suffers

what comes. Tell me, is the earth worse

for giving in like that?

Don’t put blankets over the drum!

Open completely. Let your spirit-ear

listen to the green dome’s passionate murmur.

Let the cords of your robe be untied.

Shiver in this new love beyond all

above and below. The sun rises, but which way

does night go? I have no more words.

Let soul speak with the silent

articulation of a face.

* * *

~ Jelalludin Rumi 
(1207 – 1273)

 translated by Coleman Barks

everything has two endings

Everything has two endings -

a horse, a piece of string, a phone call

Before a life, air

And after

As silence is not silence, but a limit of hearing.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

formless and perfect

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was something
formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
.

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.
.
It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.

 

 

 

 

 ~ Lao-tzu

Tao Te Ching

an empty boat

 

 

 

 

 

 

If a man is crossing a river

And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,

Even though he be a bad-tempered man

He will not become very angry.

But if he sees a man in the boat,

He will shout at him to steer clear.

If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,

And yet again, and begin cursing.

And all because there is somebody in the boat.

Yet if the boat were empty,

He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat 

Crossing the river of the world,

No one will oppose you,

No one will seek to harm you.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

 

 

 

stop chasing so many things

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy grows long.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of the woodcutter.

The sun shines and I mend my robe.
When the moon comes out, I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing so many things.

~ Ryokan

love and kindness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christian mysticism read by Rupert Spira

 

in abundance

 

 

 

 

 

I am who I am.

A coincidence as inscrutable

as any other.

 

Other ancestors

might have been mine, after all,

then from some other nest

I would have flown,

from some other stump

I would have crawled in my shell.

 

In nature's wardrobe

there are many costumes-

spider, seagull, field mouse.

Each fits like a glove from the get-go

and is loyally worn

until it wears out.

 

I, too, had no choice,

but I can't complain.

I could have been someone 

much less singular.

Someone from a school of fish,

from an anthill, from a buzzing swarm,

 a piece of landscape thrashed by the wind.

 

Someone much less lucky,

bred for fur

or for a holiday meal,

something swimming under a cover glass.

 

A tree stuck in the earth,

with a fire approaching.

 

A blade of grass trampled by a run 

of incomprehensible events.

 

One born under a dark cloud

whose lining gleams for others.

 

But what if I had awakened fear in people,

or merely revulsion,

or merely pity?

 

 If I hadn't been born 

into the right tribe and

paths closed before me?

 

Fate has proved

benevolent so far.

 

The memory of good moments

 might not have been granted me.

 

A penchant for comparisons

might have been withheld from me.

 

I might have been myself-though without the wonder,

but that would have meant

being someone else.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Wislawa Szymborska

from miracle fair

 Nasa photo

 

 

water

 

 

 

 

 

A raindrop fell on my hand,

crafted from the Ganges and the Nile,

 

from the ascended frost of a seal's whiskers,

from water in broken pots in the cities of Ys and Tyre.

 

On my index finger

the Caspian Sea isn't landlocked,

 

and the Pacific flows meekly into the Rudava,

the one that flew in a cloud over Paris

 

in seventeen sixty-four

on the seventh of May at three in the morning.

 

There are not enough lips to pronounce

your transient names, O water.

 

I would have to say them in every language

pronouncing all the vowels at once,

 

at the same time keeping silent-for the sake of a lake

that waited in vain for a name,

 

and is no longer on earth-as it is in the heavens,

whose stars are no longer reflected in it.

 

Someone was drowning; someone dying 

called out for you. That was long ago and yesterday.

 

You extinguished houses; you carried them off

like trees, forests like cities.

 

You were in baptismal fonts and in the bathtubs of courtesans,

in kisses, in shrouds.

 

Eating away at stones, fueling rainbows.

In the sweat and dew of pyramids and lilacs.

 

How light all this is in the raindrop.

How delicately the world touches me.

 

Whenever wherever whatever has happened

is written on the waters of Babel.

 

 

 

 

~ Wislawa Szymborska

from miracle fair

 

 

 

water / life

 

 

 

 

 

Over 95% of our body is water. 

In order to stay healthy you've got to drink good water. ... 

Water is sacred, air is sacred. Our DNA is made out of the same DNA

 as the tree, the tree breaths what we exhale, we need what the tree exhales.

 So we have a common destiny with the tree. We are all from the earth, 

and when earth, the water, the atmosphere is corrupted

 then it will create its own reaction. 

The mother is reacting. 

 

 

 

~ Floyd Red Crow Westerman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 https://water.org/

One of the major barriers to safe water and sanitation is affordable financing. 

We created the WaterCredit Initiative® to address this barrier head-on. 

WaterCredit brings small, easily repayable loans to those who need access

 to affordable financing and expert resources to make household

 

 We are fortunate to work with partners – foundations, financial institutions,

 and brands – who share our passion and vision. Together, we are changing lives

 with safe water in 11 countries around the world.

 

 Water.org is among the 2% of charities that have received 4-star ratings

 from Charity Navigator for 11 years, demonstrating our commitment

 to transparency and financial accountability.

 

 

 

 

 

to clear violence from ourselves

.

...is it possible to eradicate violence in ourselves?

I am asking whether it is possible for a human being living psychologically

 in any society to clear violence from himself inwardly? 

 If it is, the very process will produce a different way of living in this world.

Some of us, in order to rid ourselves of violence, have used a concept, 

and ideal, called non-violence, and we think by having an ideal of the opposite

 to violence, non-violence, we can get rid of the fact, the actual - but we cannot.

  We have had ideals without number, all the sacred books are full of them,

 yet we are still violent - so why not deal with violence itself

 and forget the word altogether?

If you want to understand the actual you must give your whole attention,

 all your energy, to it.  That attention and energy are distracted when you create

 a fictitious, ideal world.  So can you completely banish the ideal?  

The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, 

what love is, has no concept at all. 

 He lives only in what is. 

To investigate the fact of your own anger you must pass no judgement on it,

 for the moment you conceive of its opposite you condemn it and therefore

 you cannot see it as it is.  When you say you dislike or hate someone,

 that is a fact, although it sounds terrible.  If you look at it, go into it completely,

 it ceases, but if you say, "I must not hate; I must have love in my heart,"

 then you are living in a hypocritical world with double standards.  

To live completely, fully, in the moment is to live with what is,

 the actual, without any sense of condemnation or justification -

 then you understand it so totally that you are finished with it.  

When you see clearly the problem is solved.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from Freedom from the Known

peace is letting go

 

 

 

 

 

The power of quiet is great.
It generates the same feelings in everything one encounters.
It vibrates with the cosmic rhythm of oneness. 

 
It is everywhere, available to anyone at any time.
It is us, the force within that makes us stable, trusting, and loving.
It is contemplation contemplating. 

 
Peace is letting go 

 
– returning to the silence that cannot enter the realm of words
because it is too pure to be contained in words.
This is why the tree, the stone, the river, and the mountain are quiet.

 

 

 

 

~  Malidoma Patrice Some

 with thanks to No Mind's Land

 

 

act great

What is the key

To untie the knot of your mind’s suffering?

What

Is the esoteric secret

To slay the crazed one whom each of us

Did wed

And who can ruin

Our heart’s and eye’s exquisite tender

Landscape?

Hafiz has found

Two emerald words that

Restored

Me

That I now cling to as I would sacred

Tresses of my Beloved’s 

Hair:

Act great.

My dear, always act great.

What is the key

To untie the knot of the mind’s suffering?

Benevolent thought, sound

And movement.

~ Hafiz

the flight of language

Some of the leaves stay on all winter

and spring comes without knowing

whether there is suffering in them

or ever was

and what it is in the tongue they speak

that cannot be remembered by listening

for the whole time that they are on the tree

and then as they fly off with the air 

that always through their lives was there

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

 

 

we can receive

What I’m coming to lately is an end-of-life conviction that there is more

 to consciousness than what is produced in my little head, or yours.

 Both of us have the capacity, at times, mysteriously, to get beyond 

whatever this small consciousness is doing and telling us. 

When we are able, when we are sufficiently still and relaxed—letting it happen, 

not doing it—we can receive a resonance from a greater consciousness.

Many spiritual masters I’ve known, and also eminent scientists like Carl Jung,

 echo this belief. Just before Jung died, He said: “Man cannot stand a meaningless life.

 Something in us sees around corners, knows beyond time and space, 

so may continue in that state after our physical death. 

Those who fear death as the End, die soon. 

Those who think they will go on, die old.”

Fear is constricting. In fact, so are all those self-concerns for one’s reputation,

 for one’s ideas, even for what the next association is telling me. For example,

 am I just thinking of what I should say to you now? Or am I open to something

 that could be quite new, that is not really coming so much from me 

as from this source consciousness that many traditions have called “I”?

I’m referring to the consciousness that manages to see what things are,

 what I am, and to not get caught in the next reaction or judgment or association

—because all of these are functions; and consciousness is not a function.

Without being in love with consciousness, we can’t reach it, 

and it can’t reach us while we’re preoccupied with all that is going on 

in our ordinary thought, our ordinary bodily habits, sensations, movements,

 and our ordinary emotional reactions.

These are what I am calling functions.
It’s as if we have two natures: a functional nature and what many people

 have been calling a spiritual nature or a soul. But that language

 is suspect these days because we have been so careful for the last couple

 of centuries to separate from the superstitions of the past 

that we have involuntarily cut ourselves off from the sacred,

 and even from God.

This narcissistic preoccupation with my story, my difficulty, 

which always has a kind of negative touch to it because I am complaining

 about what is wrong with me either physically or mentally. And the quiet, 

impartial, impersonal mind, consciousness, with which I 

could be connected, is blocked by that.

It is so important to understand awareness as a connector to 

something greater than me, to my source, really. My presence

 is the doorway to that, even at the moment that I acknowledge

 that I don’t know who I am and I see my lack of presence.

 But that is the beginning of a real wish for it, a wish to be.

And when I have that wish, then maybe something can reach me

 that is of an absolutely different quality. I may perceive it as an axis

 of light running down through my physical body, which has a different

origin. Gurdjieff says the physical body comes from this earth, 

and this other … my essence … comes from the stars, from the sun,

 from higher up, in a sense, closer to the source.

We have such a resistance to even the theoretical idea that we could,

 right now, you and I, be breathing an air charged with 

the omnipresence of consciousness, the omniscience of consciousness. 

We’ve all had, perhaps rarely, a direct experience of a moment when

 I knew everything at once and I was aware not just of what

 I’m calling this present moment, but of past, present, future,

 as one eternity.

These are just words at this moment. But I remember it wasn’t just a word,

 it was a flash of light, of electricity from the top of my head to my toes.

 And it changed something in my cellular structure that persists today. 

I feel that now. And everybody has this possibility for a change.

 As you say, we have to be aware of our need, in order to be receptive

 to this source consciousness, to wake up in a larger sense.

I can’t reach it, but it can reach me.

It’s not a mental conception, but a deeper conviction 

that could draw everything and everyone together in the love

 of consciousness, the faith of consciousness, the hope of consciousness.

~ James George

from To let the Light In, A Conversation with James George

in Parabola Magazine

 

 

 

the night house

Every day the body works in the fields of the world
Mending a stone wall
Or swinging a sickle through the tall grass -
The grass of civics, the grass of money -
And every night the body curls around itself
And listens for the soft bells of sleep.

But the heart is restless and rises
From the body in the middle of the night,
Leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
With its thick, pictureless walls
To sit by herself at the kitchen table
And heat some milk in a pan.

And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe
And goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,
And opens a book on engineering.
Even the conscience awakens
And roams from room to room in the dark,
Darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.

And the soul is up on the roof
In her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
Singing a song about the wildness of the sea
Until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.
Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
The way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,

Resuming their daily colloquy,
Talking to each other or themselves
Even through the heat of the long afternoons.
Which is why the body - the house of voices -
Sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen
To stare into the distance,

To listen to all its names being called
Before bending again to its labor.

  ~ Billy Collins

 art by Van Gogh