the nature of consciousness

~ Robert Spira

something else

Whatever it is hangs over us,

wants us to keep on gliding forward,

as if a compass nestled in the heart,

as if a hidden magnet were always calling to

the bits of iron which swim in the blood,

or a boat was being drawn ahead

by a canal-man, with his steady line and

unwavering eye,

not asking why, just doing it,

even on the days we awaken

amidst the ruins of the spirit,

and have nothing to offer,

except a longing for the smell of hyacinths

and something else we can't fully recall.

~ Dorothy Walters

from Marrow of Flame

who

Whoever went in

naked to the core.

Whoever cast aside

all the armor.

all the fastenings.

Who could breathe air thin as flame.

Drink water pressed from blossoms,

rose petals

or violets.

Whoever stayed in that

darkness so dark

it became a circle of seeing.

Who could hear

the silent flute note

of the stilled wind,

hold rock turning to light.

~ Dorothy Walters

from Marrow of Flame

Uzayr

  

The sons of Uzayr, were looking for their father.

They have grown old, and their father

has miraculously grown young!

They meet him and ask, "Pardon us, sir,

but have you seen Uzayr?  We hear

that he's supposed to be coming along

this road today."  "Yes," says Uzayr,

"he's right behind me."  One of his sons

replies, "That's good news."  The other

falls on the ground.  He has recognized

his father.  "What do you mean news?

We're already inside the sweetness

of his presence."   To the mind

there is such a thing as news, whereas

to inner knowing , it's all in the middle

of its happening.  To doubters, this is

a pain.  To believers, it's gospel.

To the lover and the visionary

it's life as it's being lived.

~ Rumi

Coleman Barks translation

the shiva dance image

~ Aldous Huxley

longing for the perfect

After we had loved each other intently, 

we heard notes tumble together, 

in late winter, and we heard ice 

falling from the ends of twigs. 

The notes abandon so much as they move. 

They are the food not eaten, the comfort 

not taken, the lies not spoken. 

The music is my attention to you. 

And when the music came again, 

late in the day, I saw tears in your eyes. 

I saw you turn your face away 

So that others would not see. 

When men and women come together, 

how much they have to abandon. Wrens 

make their nests of fancy threads 

and string ends, animals 

abandon all their money each year. 

What is it that men and women leave? 

Harder than wren's doing, they have 

to abandon their longing for the perfect. 

The inner nest not made by instinct 

will never be quite round, 

and each has to enter the nest 

made by the other imperfect bird.

~ Robert Bly

from Eating the Honey of Words

art by Rassouli

nothing ahead

Lovers think they're looking for each other,

but there's only one search: wandering

this world is wandering that,

both inside one

transparent sky.  In here there is

no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said

or did about the future.  Forget the future.

I'd worship someone who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not.

But if you can say, There's nothing ahead,

there will be nothing there.

Stretch your arms

and take hold the cloth of your clothes

with both hands.  The cure for pain is in the pain.

Good and bad are mixed.  If you don't have both,

you don't belong with us.

When one of us gets lost,

is not here, he must be inside us.  There's no

place like that anywhere in the world.

~ Rumi

from The Book of Love

translations by Coleman Barks

where you love from

Look inside and find where a person loves from.

That's the reality, not what they say.

~ Hypocrities

the center of the circle

Forget about knowledge and wisdom,

and people will be a hundred times better off.

Throw away charity and righteousness,

and people will return to brotherly love.

Throw away profit and greed,

and there won't be any thieves.

These three are superficial and aren't enough

to keep us at the center of the circle, so we must also:

Embrace simplicity.

Put others first.

Desire little.



~ Lao-tzu
Tao Teh Ching
Mcdonald translation

we have ways within each other

They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual? 

They wonder about Solomon and all his wives. 

In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul 

and you are that. 

But we have ways within each other 

that will never be said by anyone. 

~ Rumi

who knows what is going on

Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?

How many times the sunrise was

there, behind a mountain!

How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off

was already a golden body full of thunder!

This rose was poison.

That sword gave life.

I was thinking of a flowery meadow

at the end of a road,

and found myself in the slough.

I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,

and found myself in the divine.

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

English version by Robert Bly
with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

the door

One day you’ll see: 

you’ve been knocking on a door 

without a house. 

You’ve been waiting, shivering, yelling 

words of daring and hope.

One day you’ll see:

there is no-one on the other side

except, as ever, the jubilant ocean

that won’t shatter ceramically like a dream

when you and I shatter.

But not yet. Now 

you wait outside, watching

the blue arches of mornings 

that will break but are now perfect.

Underneath on tip-toe 

pass the faces, speaking to you,

saying ‘you’, ‘you’, ‘you’, 

smiling, waving, arriving

in unfailing chronology.

One day you’ll doubt your movements, 

you will shudder

at the accuracy of your sudden age. 

You will ache for slow beauty 

to save you from your quick, quick life.

But not yet. Hope 

fills the yawn of time.

Blue surrounds you. Now let’s say

you see a door and knock, 

and wait for someone to hear. 

~ Kapka Kassabova

with thanks to Love is a Place

magnetism

The Self is like a powerful magnet within us. 

It draws us gradually to itself, though we imagine we are going to It of our own accord:

 when we are near enough, It puts an end to our activities, 

makes us still, and then swallows up our personal current,

 thus killing our wrong personality. 

It overwhelms the intellect and over floods the whole being. 

We think we are meditating upon It and developing towards It, 

whereas the truth is that we are iron filings and It is the Atman-magnet 

that is pulling us towards Itself. Thus the process of finding 

the Self is a form of Divine magnetism.

~ Ramana Maharshi

in succession, in division

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. 

Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence;

 the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; 

the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, 

and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing

 and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, 

the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. 

We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree;

 but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

from the essay The Over-Soul

art by gene kloss

on friendship and love

Such a friendship has no model but itself, and can only be compared to itself. It was not one special consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a thousand; it was some mysterious quintessence of all this mixture which possessed itself of my will,  and led it to plunge and lose itself in his, which possessed itself of his whole will, and led it, with a similar hunger and a like impulse, to plunge and lose itself in mine.  I may truly say lose, for it left us with nothing that was our own, nothing that was either his or mine.

~ Montaigne

from Essays of Michel de Montaigne

In any true love - a mother's for her child, a husband's for his wife, a friend's for a friend - there is an excess energy that always wants to be in motion.  Moreover, it seems to move not simply from one person to another but through them toward something else.  ("All I know now / is the more he loved me the more I loved the world" - Spencer Reece.) That is why we can be so baffled and overwhelmed by such love (and I don't mean merely when we fall in love; in fact, I'm talking more of other, more durable relationships): it wants to be more than it is; it cries out inside of us to make it more than it is.

~ Christian Wiman

from My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer