seeing "the deep world"

Leonid Afremov

There is a portion of reality which is offered to us without our making any special effort beyond opening our eyes and ears, and this we call the world of pure impressions.  But there is another world built of structures of impressions, which, though hidden, is none the less real.  If this other world is to exist for us, we need to open something more than our physical eyes, and to undertake a greater kind of effort.  But the measure of our effort neither confers any reality on that world, nor takes it away.  The deep world is as clear as the surface one, only it asks more of us.

~ Jose Ortega y Gasset

from Meditations of Quixote, 1914

adapted from a translation by J.W. Jeaffreson

Picasso

These Things whose essential life you want to express first ask you, "Are you free? Are you prepared to devote all your love to me...?"  And if the Thing sees that you are otherwise occupied with even a particle of your interest, it shuts itself off; it may perhaps give you some slight sign of friendship, a word or a nod, but it will never give you its heart, entrust you with its patient being, its sweet sidereal constancy, which makes it so like the constellations in the sky.  In order for a Thing to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon which, through your laborious and exclusive love, is now placed at the center of the universe, and which, in that incomparable place, is on that day attended by angels.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from a letter sent to Baladine Klossowska

translation by Stephen Mitchell

both excerpts found in the essay Poetry and the Mind of Indirection

by Jane Hirshfield

hope is as hollow as fear

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
Your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
You will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
That arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
What do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
Then you can care for all things.

~  Lao Tzu

burning

                                       

What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the
soul and the outside world. 

Where passion dominates, that does not
signify the presence of greater desire and ambition, but rather the
misdirection of these qualities toward an isolated and false goal, with
a consequent tension and sultriness in the atmosphere. Those who direct
the maximum force of their desires toward the centre, toward true being,
toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the
flame of their fervor cannot always be seen. In argument, for example,
they will not shout and wave their arms. But I assure you, they are
nevertheless burning with subdued fires.



~ Hermann Hesse
from The Glass Bead Game 

our broken love

One of the great powers of love is balance;
it helps us move toward transfiguration.
When two people come together, an ancient circle closes between them.
They also come to each other not with empty hands,
but with hands full of gifts for each other.
Often these are wounded gifts;
this awakens the dimension of healing within love.
When you really love someone,
you shine the light of your soul on the beloved.
We know from nature that sunlight brings everything to growth.
It you look at flowers early on a spring morning,
they are all closed.
When the light of the sun catches them,
they trustingly open out and give themselves to the new light.

A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness 

for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved 

and the beloved’s love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth 

of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. 

 

Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate, 

to those who are starving, to those who are trapped in prison,

 in hospitals, and into all the brutal terrains of bleak and tormented lives. 

 

When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, 

it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer. . . .

 

 When there is love in your life, you should share it spiritually 

with those who are pushed to the very edge of life. 

 

There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness

 from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, 

it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara 

"love me."

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise

someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a

full moon in each eye that is 

always saying,

With that sweet moon language,

what every other eye in 

this world is

dying to 

hear?

~  Hafiz

. 

finding out what love is

.

Love is the unknowable. It can be realized only when the known is understood and transcended. Only when the mind is free of the known, then only there will be love. 

So, we must approach love negatively, not positively.

What is love to most of us? With us, when we love, in it there is possessiveness, dominance, or subservience. From this possession arises jealously and fear of loss, and we legalize this possessive instinct. From possessiveness arise jealousy and the innumerable conflicts with which each one is familiar. Possessiveness, then, is not love. Nor is love sentimental. To be sentimental, to be emotional, excludes love.Sensitivity and emotions are merely sensations.

. . . Love alone can transform insanity, confusion, and strife. No system, no theory of the left or of the right can bring peace and happiness to man. Where there is love, there is no possessiveness, no envy; there is mercy and compassion, not in theory, but actually for your wife and for your children, for your neighbor and for your servant. . . . Love alone can bring about mercy and beauty, order and peace. There is love with its blessing when "you" cease to be.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life