Your ego’s tendency is to keep things as they are, no matter how bad they may be. God says: “let go of the past and make room for something that honours you more deeply.” You are afraid to do that because there is no guarantee that the new will be any better than the old. You’d rather hold onto the old and invite the new in at the same time. That is the inevitable Catch-22. The new cannot come in until the old is released. When you are attached to the past, you cannot move forward toward the future. And your experience of the present is one of deadlock.
Letting go of the past is never easy. Yet it is the only act that brings the presence of God (substitute grace, if you need to) into your life. When you let go of what used to be and accept what is, the universe instantly moves to support you. The deeper your let-go is, the more resources rush to your side.
It is the nature of the ego to become attached to the past. It is the nature of the ego to project the past forward into the future, to meet the new with the conceptual nets that would tame it and make it conform to yesterday’s experience. There is nothing new in this. It is simply the movement of fear which resists anything new.
It is important to see how that fear operates in your life. It is important to realize how you have become attached to your previous experience and resist anything new that wants to come into your life.
When you hold onto your experience or use it to interpret the present experience, you “take control” of your life, and push God (grace) away. When you surrender your ideas about the way things should be, let go of the past, and open to the future, you invite God back into your life.
That hurt we embrace becomes joy.
Call it to your arms where it can change.
A silkworm eating leaves makes a cocoon. Each of us weaves a chamber
of leaves and sticks.
Like silkworms, we begin to exist
as we disappear
inside that room.
Without legs, we fly.
When I stop speaking, this poem
will close in silence more magnificent…
I don’t regret how much I love,
and I avoid those who repent their passion.
Hundreds of sweethearts!
I am the lover and the one
lovers long for. Blue, and a cure
for blues, sky in a small cage,
badly hurt but flying.
Everybody’s scandalous flaw is mine.
The world is fast losing its soul
but you don’t have to surrender yours.
You don’t have to live in a mechanical globe.
You don’t have to tame your deep-forest passions.
You don’t have to suppress your radiant beauty.
Live your joy,
Go against the grain.
Don’t be made timid by worried rejection.
Let nature’s curious wisdom fill you.
Let the world’s mystical heritage guide you.
Paint your canvasses,
play your tunes.
Give your all to the words that are born from you.
Your father and your father’s heaven
will never abandon you
but always love the scintilla of your spirit.
But it’s always worth another viewing. After 52-million views and counting, this video has put smiles and joy on everyone who has invested the 5-minutes required to see it through to the end. Click on the full screen option, turn up the volume, sit back and enjoy. Bring Kleenex.
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow -
even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that are alive.
I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am a bird which, when Spring comes,
arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay his
“debt of blood” to my people
and dying slowly in a forced labour camp.
My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
Beautiful are the youth
whose rich emotions flash and burn,
whose lithe bodies filled with energy and grace
sway in their happy dance of life;
and beautiful likewise are the mature
who have learned compassion and patience, charity and wisdom, though they
be rarer far than beautiful youth.
But most beautiful and most rare is a gracious old age
which has drawn from life the skill to take ts varied strands: the harsh advance of age, the pang of grief,
the passing of dear friends, the loss of strength,
and with fresh insight weave them
into a rich and gracious pattern all its own.
This is the greatest skill of all,
to take the bitter with the sweet and make it beautiful,
to take the whole of life in all its moods,
its strengths and weaknesses,
and of the whole make one great and celestial harmony.
“I wish I could show you
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!”
I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.
But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.
You can stay that way
And even bloom!
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter.
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.
You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.
Whenever you say God’s name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!
O keep squeezing the drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Now, sweet one,
Be wise,
Cast all your votes for Dancing!
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.
Quickly, in the rose
garden at noon
or nearly tea time,
my basket full
of pink flowers,
I will drop
to the ground
and the fall will take
a lifetime
and when it is
complete, my still
head on the Earth,
that essence that will be
what I am will be saying
for the universe to hear,
“Thank You”
Empower me
to be a bold participant,
rather than a timid saint in waiting,
in the difficult ordinariness of now;
to exercise the authority of honesty;
rather than defer to power,
or deceive to get it;
to influence someone for justice,
rather than impress anyone for gain;
and, by grace, to find treasures
of joy, of friendship, of peace
hidden in the fields of the daily
you give me to plow.
Life is intentional, not accidental. I bless this central fact. Consciousness instigates shifts in outer reality. Recognizing that I have the power to change my world by changing my thinking, I set for myself a gentle vigilance towards negative thoughts. When I fear abandonment, I remind myself that the universe itself is my loving companion. When I fear stagnation, I surrender into the deeper flow of life rather than willfully forcing artificial solutions. Constantly partnered by an interactive universe, I do my part by reminding myself that I am part of a larger plan, partnered by infinite intelligence. In its perfect pink blossoming, the bloom of the apple tree does not concern itself whether a bee will appear. The blossom does its job just by blossoming. The bee is drawn to do the rest. Rather than imagine that my yearnings are self-centred or counter to the flow of life, I practice simply blossoming in the faith that I attract what I need simply by following and blessing my true nature.
I know nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in bed at night with anyone I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer afternoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring.
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles.
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with miracles,
Every foot of the interior swarms with miracles.
Eva Markvoort inspired an international following through her online diary about her lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis — finally succumbing to death on March 27th.
Her website, called “65 Red Roses,” inspired an award-winning documentary of the same name.
On March 25, Markvoort wrote her last post. “I am not managing, not managing at all. I’m drowning in the medications. I can’t breathe. Every hour. Once an hour. I can’t breathe. Something has to change.”
In her dying moments, Eva summoned what little strength she had to record this little song for all the friends and loved ones she was leaving behind. love is something
Whose blood runs the rivers of the world? Whose breath sings the sorrow of the universe? In the eye of the enemy, can you see your own soul? When a baby cries in the the outcasts’ camp, do you long to hold her? Can you comfort and soothe and rock her like the rhythm of the waters of the world?
all children
are our
children
may we embrace all human bodies
may we not collapse in our suffering
may we yearn to comfort and share the sacred
may we celebrate all ways of worship
may we throw back our heads in wide human laughter
let the colours and the fear mingle and disperse
all rivers are blood rivers. all blood is all blood.
Ensō (円相) is a Japanese word meaning “circle” and a concept strongly associated with Zen. Ensō is one of the most common subjects of Japanese calligraphy even though it is a symbol and not a character. It symbolizes enlightenment, strength, elegance, the Universe, and the void; it can also symbolize the Japanese aesthetic itself. As an “expression of the moment” it is often considered a form of minimalist expressionist art.
In Zen Buddhist painting, ensō symbolizes a moment when the mind is free to simply let the body/spirit create.
Roll away from me the weight
of dead and frozen thoughts.
Clear away from me the fogs
of falsely sweet illusions.
Ignite in my heart
the warmth of true love
That with my new eyes of new love
And my angel at my back
I may see the Truth of the World
I may feel the Beauty of the World.
And I may act with courage for the good
One great question underlies our experience, whether we think about it consciously or not: What is the purpose of life?
I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering. Neither social conditioning nor education nor ideology affects this.
Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness.
For a start, it is possible to divide every kind of happiness and suffering into two main categories: mental and physical.
Of the two, the mind exerts the greatest influence on most of us. Unless we are gravely ill or deprived of basic necessities, our physical condition plays a secondary role in life.
Hence, we should devote our most serious efforts to bringing about mental peace.
From my own limited experience, I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquillity comes from the development of love and compassion.
The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others puts the mind at ease. This gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter.
It is the ultimate source of success in life.
We can strive gradually to become more compassionate, we can develop both genuine sympathy for others’ suffering and the will to help remove their pain.
As a result, our own serenity and inner strength will increase.
The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another.
Some of my friends have told me that, while love and compassion are marvellous and good, they are not really very relevant. Our world, they say, is not a place where such beliefs have much influence or power. They claim that anger and hatred are so much a part of human nature that humanity will always be dominated by them. I do not agree.
We humans have existed in our present form for about 100,000 years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever.
This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world.
True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason.Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively.
Of course, developing this kind of compassion is not at all easy! As a start, let us consider the following facts:
Whether people are beautiful and friendly or unattractive and disruptive, ultimately they are human beings, just like one’s self. Like one’s self, they want happiness and do not want suffering.
Now, when you recognize that all beings are equal in both their desire for happiness and their right to obtain it, you automatically feel empathy and closeness for them. Through accustoming your mind to this sense of universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others: the wish to help them actively overcome their problems.
Let me emphasize that it is within your power, given patience and time, to develop this kind of compassion. We should begin by removing the greatest hindrances to compassion: anger and hatred.
As we all know, these are extremely powerful emotions and they can overwhelm our entire mind. Nevertheless, they can be controlled and replaced by an equally forceful energy that stems from compassion, reason and patience.
I must also emphasize that merely thinking about compassion and reason and patience will not be enough to develop them. We must wait for difficulties to arise and then attempt to practise them.
And who creates such opportunities? Not our friends, of course, but our enemies. They are the ones who give us the most trouble.
So if we truly wish to learn, we should consider enemies to be our best teachers.
For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, an enemy is indispensable.
So we should feel grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us develop a tranquil mind. Also, it is often the case in both personal and public life, that with a change in circumstances, enemies become friends.
So anger and hatred are our real enemies. These are the forces we most need to confront and defeat, not the temporary enemies who appear intermittently throughout life.
In conclusion, I would like briefly to expand my thoughts beyond the topic of this short editorial and make a wider point: Individual happiness can contribute in a profound and effective way to the overall improvement of our entire human community.
Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister.
It is foolish to dwell on external differences, because our basic natures are the same.
I believe that at every level of society — familial, tribal, national and international — the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities.
In the name of daybreak
and the eyelids of the morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonour
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the utmost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,
I will honour all life -
wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell – on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.
Peace does not come through the agreement of egos, for it is impossible for egos to agree. Peace comes when love and mutual respect are present. When love is present, your enemy becomes like a friend who is not afraid to disagree with you. You do not cast him out of your heart just because he sees things differently than you. You listen carefully to what he has to say.
When you listen to your enemy the same way that you would listen to your friend, it is not your ego doing the listening. The Spirit inside you is listening to the Spirit inside of him.
May every creature abound in well-being and peace.
May every living being, weak or strong, the long and the small
The short and the medium-sized, the mean and the great
May every living being, seen or unseen, those dwelling far off,
Those near by, those already born, those waiting to be born
May all attain inward peace.
Let no one deceive another
Let no one despise another in any situation
Let no one, from antipathy or hatred, wish evil to anyone at all.
Just as a mother, with her own life,
protects her only son from hurt
So within yourself foster a limitless concern
for every living creature.
Display a heart of boundless love for all the world
In all its height and depth and broad extent
Love unrestrained, without hate or enmity.
Then as you stand or walk, sit or lie
until overcome by drowsiness
Devote your mind entirely to this,
it is known as living here life divine.
Spiritual unity is always followed by actual or personal unity; that is, what we enter into conscious possession of in the spiritual life we will, ere long, gain actual possession of in the physical life. Believe that you have already received in the spirit what you desire to receive in the person, and you will receive it in the person in a very short time. This is a law that positively cannot fail. Claim your own in the real world and you will receive in the real world.
This law gives rise to the practice of affirmations, but affirmations as usually employed do not comply with all the elements of the law. To simply affirm that we are what we wish to be or that we have what we wish to possess, is not sufficient. Our spiritual possessions do not express themselves unless there is a strong, positive, personal desire for expression. We must pray for that which we wish to realize, but our prayer should not be mere asking. The prayer that asks in the feeling of uncertainty as to whether the thing prayed for is for us or not, is not a prayer of faith; and it is only the prayer of faith that is answered.
Don’t take anything personally because by taking things personally you set yourself up to suffer for nothing. Humans are addicted to suffering at different levels and to different degrees, and we support each other in maintaining these addictions. Humans agree to help each other suffer. If you have the need to be abused, you will find it easy to be abused by others. Likewise, if you are with people who need to suffer, something in you makes you abuse them. It is if they have a note on their back that says, “Please kick me.” They are asking for justification for their suffering. Their addiction to suffering is nothing but an agreement that is reinforced every day.
Wherever you go, you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself. Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not believe what someone says to you.
When we really see other people as they are without taking it personally, we can never be hurt by what they say or do. Even if others lie to you, it is okay. They are lying to you because they are afraid. They are afraid that you will discover that they are not perfect. It is painful to take that social mask off. If others say one thing, but do another, you are lying to yourself if you don’t listen to their actions. But if you are truthful with yourself, you will save yourself a lot of emotional pain. Telling yourself the truth about it may hurt, but you don’t need to be attached to the pain. Healing is on the way, and it’s just a matter of time before things will be better for you.
You hunger to be touched, but deny your hunger. Allow me to love you. Permit me to teach you loving ways to treat yourself. Every hair on your head is precious to me, every inch of your skin. You are not a beast of burden. I do not intend you to work yourself to exhaustion, calling it virtue. Rest in me, my little one. Allow me to brush out your hair, to knead the sore muscles of your back. I am tender to you. Eat, sleep and refresh yourself.
When you regard your body, do so with tenderness. You are beautiful to me. You are unique and priceless. Learn to praise the beauties of your form. I have made you sturdy. I have given you health and strength. Your body is graceful to me. I am able to love an endless myriad of shapes and sizes. Do not turn a cruel eye to your body. It is the beloved vehicle for your spirit. It carries you faithfully.
Let me teach you to love yourself. Let me bathe and clothe you. You are a divine child. I find beauty in you always. It is my pleasure that you have comfort. It is my pleasure that you use your senses. I created your body for your enjoyment. Your sense of touch is sacred. Do not be cold and loveless, calling that grace. Warmth and compassion are my gifts to you. Relax and enjoy the gift of your body.
May we give birth to a new Dream of the People.
A dream that can sustain us in the new millennium.
A dream that remembers that there is no separation between spirit and matter.
A dream that infuses the life of the people with the power of the erotic.
A dream that reminds us of what is holy.
I call on a dream that remembers
the power of life giving moisture
that recognizes the smell of the sea
where it caresses the shore
in the scent of our sweat
in the salt of our tears
in the slippery wetness that pours
from between the soft thighs
of a woman well loved.
I call on a dream that reminds us
to focus on our fingertips,
on the shape and weight of our hand
on blood and bone and a thousand nerve endings
as we raise an apple
to our mouths
and let the tip of our tongues
slide on the round, smooth firmness
of the cool surface
and feel the spray of juice
as our teeth pierce the skin
and enter the softness
inside.
A dream that helps us taste
the weeks of rain and sun
the ripening on the tree
the labour of the farmer
touch of the fruit-picker
journey of the men and women
who bring fruits
from grove to table.
I call on a Dream of the People that remembers
there is no separation
that knows
each act lived fully awake
cannot help but be
both prayer and lovemaking.
We light a narrow candle
for every turn around our little sun. make a wish
and try to blow them out with a single breath.
between the near stars and the ones we take on faith
there is no middle distance, no halfway measure
of the years they say light takes to get here.
souls are said to journey from other lives to get to
this one through what we call living here then
on to the next thing we don’t have names for.
there appears to be no reason to hurry.
no need to fear we’re going too fast.
we travel in constant nearness, it is always now.
we are here, then we are here.
the farther we go the more we are home…
Now is the time
To climb up the mountain
And reason against habit.
Now is the time.
Now is the time
To renew the barren soil of nature
Ruined by the winds of tyranny
Now is the time.
Now is the time
To commence the litany of hope
Now is the time.
Now is the time
To give me roses, not to keep them
For my grave to come.
Give them to me while my heart beats,
Give them today
While my heart yearns for jubilee.
Now is the time…
The Jain flag. The swastica has existed as a symbol in India from 3000 BC and its use by Hitler in later years is not relevant to the Jains.
Friendship toward all beings,
Delight in the qualities of virtuous ones,
Utmost compassion for afflicted beings,
Equanimity toward those who are not well-disposed toward me.
May my soul have such dispositions as these forever.
Peacefulness toward all beings;
self-control and pure aspirations;
abandonment of every thought
that is tainted by desire or aversion;
that, truly, is dwelling in my Self.
I ask for forgiveness of all living creatures,
May all of them forgive me
May I have a friendly relationship with all beings
and unfriendly with none.
Why are you waiting to begin your life?
Do you think the world must care and come soliciting?
Listen to the knocking at the door of your own heart
It is only faint because you have not answered
You have fooled yourself with preparations
Time left laughing while you considered possibilities
Wake up you have slept long enough
Wake up tomorrow may be too late
When you finally dare open the door
your life will begin arriving
Cautiously at first unbelieving that the gate
So long locked against the tide
has finally been opened
Then with swells of neglected dreams
Then with waves of joyful revelation
the sea will follow
You will be swept by the full and magnificent tides
of your own longing
That no one else can give you
That no one else can claim
Every truth without exception – no matter
who makes it – is from God.
If a bird got accused of singing too early
in the morning,
if a lute began to magically play on its own
in the square
and the enchanting sounds it made drove a pair of young lovers
into a wild, public display of passion,
if this lute and bird then got called before the inquisition
and their lives were literally at stake,
could not God walk up and say before the court,
“All acts of beauty are mine, all happen on behalf of love”?
And while God was there, testifying for our heart’s desires,
hopefully the judge would be astute enough
to brave a question,
that could go,
“Dear God, you say all acts of beauty are yours,
surely we can believe that. But what of all actions
we see in this world,
for is there any force in existence greater than the power
of your omnipresent hand?”
And God might have responded, “I like that question,”
adding, “May I ask you one as well?”
And then God would say,
“Have you ever been in a conversation when children
entered the room, and then you ceased speaking because your
wisdom knew you that they were not old enough
to benefit – to understand?
As exquisite is your world, most everyone in it
is spiritually young.
Spirituality is love, and love never wars with the minute, the day,
one’s self and others. Love would rather die
than maim a limb,
a wing.
Dear, anything that divides man from man,
earth from sky, light and dark, one religion from another…
O, I best keep silent, I see a child
just entered the
room”
Dear God,
Please bless and protect this sacred jewel,
Our vulnerable planet so besieged.
May the rivers and the oceans and the sky and the land
All be repaired somehow, dear Lord.
May the barbarism end, which threatens to destroy our priceless treasure.
For surely the earth has been our home,
The home of our parents unto all generations.
For the sake of our children, Lord,
Save this earth.
Place in all minds a greater awe before her mysteries.
Shield her and heal her wounds,
Restore her to her former glory.
Save her, Lord, from us.
Amen.
The world will tell you that success is achieving what you set out to do. It will tell you that success is winning, that finding recognition and/or prosperity are essential ingredients in any success. All or some of the above are usually by-products of success. The conventional notion of success is concerned with the outcome of what you do. Some say that success is the result of a combination of hard work and luck, or determination and talent, or being in the right place at the right time. While any of these may be determinants of success, they are not its essence. What the world doesn’t tell you – because it doesn’t know – is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful. Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. And what is that? There is a sense of quality in what you do, even the most simple actioon. Quality implies care and attention, which come with awareness. Quality requires your Presence.
And with that breath arrives a new body. Notice in the desires that arise as that new incarnation approaches the dimming of the light that precedes the forgetfulness. Attempt to stay alert through the process of re-entry.
Each breath the first.
Each breath completely new.
Taking birth once again.
Born back into a body to examine what was born. And what never dies.
Taking birth for the benefit of all sentient beings.
The light body inhabiting a heavy body. Re-animating life and the possibility of an awareness so clear it obviates any potential for the kind of still birth that lasts a lifetime.
Each breath the first.
Born to serve and explore. To deepen the mercy of whatever world we find ourselves in.
Each breath so precious, allowing the light body to remain a moment more with its earthen vessel.
Taking birth into this world to discover the healing we have so long sought. And to sing the song we have been learning since we sat beneath the bo tree or hung from the cross or looked into the eyes of our dying child. No one said it would be easy, only fruitful.
Each breath the first, the last, the only breath available, to carry us beyond our forgetfulness into the scintillating centre of the living truth.
May all beings live with death over their left shoulder and kindness in the centre of their heart.
May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings know the great fortune of their great nature.
Gently, gently let yourself float free of the body. Constantly expanding outward through decreasing levels of density into increasing depths of grace. Enter the vastness of being. Rest there in your birthright, your deathright. Accept your inheritance.
Let yourself dissolve into the vastness. Edges melting, boundaries disappearing. Dissolving, dissolving into space. Uniting with the absolute joy of your absolute nature. Space dissolving into space. Light merging with light.
Let go of your knowing, let go of your unknowing, and simply be the presence expanding into the luminosity of its own great heart. Let that which is light follow its well-lit path.
Don’t ask the mind for advice, just follow your light. It knows the way by heart.
Let go of your name. Let go of your face. Let go of your reputation and float free in the vastness.
With gratitude and a single sigh leave your body behind with that life you dreamed once.
Notice, as you expand into that sense of safety, that there arises a comfort so deep and natural you wonder where it has been your whole life.
Let go of your understanding and float free in your intuition.
Enter the space in which your thoughts are floating. Let go into the light. Light dissolving into light. Space dissolving in sopace. Consciousness floating free in pure awareness.
Have mercy on yourself. Let yourself go, radiating out into space. Merging with the Great Heart that has no substance but is as real as you are.
No inside, no outside, just edgeless being in endless space. Space expanding into space. Light dissolving into light.
Rest in being. Float free in your original spaciousness.
And from the vanishing point on the most distant horizon, watch as something slowly approaches. It is the first breath of life.
Observe how each breath drawn in through the nostrils of the heavy body is experienced as sensation by the light body within. Notice how each breath connects the heavy body with the light body. Notice how each breath maintains that connection, allowing life to stay one more moment in the body.
Feel the contact between the light body and the dense body that each breath provides. Feel how each breath sustains the light body balanced perfectly within.
Take each breath as though it were the last. Experience each inhalation as though it is not going to be followed by another. Don’t try to conserve your breath to stay in the body. Let it come and let it go.
Each breath the last: Let that last exhalation go. And just go on with it. The last breath of life leaving the body behind. The connection severed between the light body and the heavy body. The end of this life. The final breath.
Don’t try to hold onto it. Let go of your last breath, let the light body float free.
Let yourself die. Let go now. hold to nothing. Trust the process.
Let yourself die into space. Leave your body behind, follow the light.
The last breath vanished into space. Leave your body where it lies and go on. That was never you. There you are shining before you. Enter that light. It is your own great nature. Do not be frightened by your immensity. Release all that holds you back from your ultimate fulfilment. Dissolve your heart into the great heart. Let who you have always been become who you are.
Go from room to room surveying the space and sensing if you were to come home to die where that might be best accomplished. Go to that place and just for the work/play of it, sit there for this meditation. Later, as the meditation sinks from the mind into the heart and becomes more your own, you will be able to die anywhere.
“Just the simple fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.” – Aldous Huxley
Sit quietly and feel the heaviness, the substantial quality of the body. Feel gravity pull this dense body toward the ground. Notice the weight of your living corpse. It often wants to lie down. It cannot support its own weight for very long. It is drawn toward the centre of the earth.
Notice within this heavy body a flickering field of sensation. A vibratory fluxing full of your relationship to the external world. Feelings of hot and cold, of roughness or smoothness, even of up or down, which have long supported the misconception that we are of the body rather than just in the body. We imagine we own this body but it is ours only on consignment. Notice that the sensations in the heavy body are received by something lighter within. Watch how awareness illuminates each incoming sensation and reports on its existence.
Within the heavy body is a body of awareness, a light body that produces consciousness of the external vessel and the world about it. It is that which experiences life in or out of the body.
Sense the lighter body within. Experience its presence as presence itself. Notice that the sense of being present drifts in a timeless awareness that can never be defined but can always be experienced. Only that which can be named dies, the truth in which it floats has no beginning and no end.
Life is being wasted. The human family is not having half the fun that is its due, not making the beautiful things it would make, and each one is not as good news to the other as he might be, just because we are educated off our natural track. We need another form of education.
The great revolution in the world which is to equalize opportunity, bring peace and freedom, must be a spiritual revolution. A new will must come. This will is a very personal thing in each one.
Our education has led us away from the realization that the mystery of nature is in each man. When we are wiser we will not assume to mould ourselves, but will make our ignorance stand aside – hands off – and we will watch our own development. We will learn from ourselves. This habit of conducting nature is a bad one.
My head is bald…but hatted. My coat is warm. “Brave travelers dream time, hoist hope like a flag on a staff.” Green hills meet indigo sky. The wind pushes me on. “Clouds tell no stories.” The moon is bright. Prayer hurts. The sight of God is fatal. “Keep moving.”
Consciousness is already conscious. It is the unmanifested, the eternal. The universe, however, is only gradually becoming conscious. Consciousness itself is timeless and therefore does not evolve. It was never born and does not die. When consciousness becomes the manifested universe, it appears to be subject to time and to undergo an evolutionary process. No human mind is capable of comprehending fully the reason for this process. But we can glimpse it within ourselves and become a conscious participant in it.
Consciousness is the intelligence, the organizing principle behind the arising of form. Consciousness has been preparing forms for millions of years so it can express itself through them in the manifested.
Although the unmanifested realm of pure consciousness could be considered another dimension as awareness, inner space, Presence. How does it do that? Through the human form that becomes conscious and thus fulfils its destiny. The human form was created for this higher purpose, and millions of other forms prepared the ground for it.
I am music waiting to be heard. I am a song unfolding. My notes are the voice of Life singing through me in majesty. I open my throat to the word of creation. I speak my truth and build my life upon it. I open my mouth to exclaim the glory that I feel within me. I give voice to God and God’s plan for me. I refuse to be small when God intends for me to be large. I expand without pride, without arrogance. I expand through love. I open my heart and mind to the brighter, clearer and more joyous vistas Life intends for me. I allow Life to create through me the better life which I speak and see.
When I was the stream, when I was the
forest, when I was still the field,
when I was every hoof, foot,
fin and wing, when I
was the sky
itself,
no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever
wondered was there anything I might need,
for there was nothing
I could not
love.
It was when I left all we once were that
the agony began, the fear and questions came,
and I wept, I wept. And tears
I had never known
before.
So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,
I begged – I begged to wed every object
and creature,
and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
And He did not say,
“Where have you
been?”
For then I knew my soul – every soul
has always held
Him.
It’s the old rule that drunks
have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad:
he falls into a hole.
But down in that hole he finds
something shining,
worth more than any amount
of money or power.
Last night the moon came
dropping her clothes
in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks.
Everywhere is falling
everywhere.
Nothing else to do.
Here’s the new rule:
break the wineglass, and
fall toward the glassblower’s
breath.
Look to this day, for it is Life, the very life of Life;
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence…
the bliss of Growth, the glory of Action, the splendour of Beauty.
For Yesterday is but a dream,
and Tomorrow only a vision;
But Today well lived makes Yesterday a dream of Happiness
and Tomorrow a vision of Hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Such is the salutation to the Dawn.
“If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, we can transform them into the kind of energy that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
In times of loss and difficulty, I choose to consciously deepen my strength through actively seeking the blessing hidden in my adversity. I do not deny my painful feelings or run from them but I do choose to move through them seeking the opportunity for insight that lies for me on the other side. I do not suffer for the sake of suffering or mistake pain as the only soil for my spiritual growth. Instead, I remind myself that suffering and pain are temporary while my spiritual comfort is eternal. Knowing this, I open my heart to the timeless comforts which Spirit provides. I take comfort in the moistening rain, in the scent of flowers, in the tall oak offering me its shade. Even when deeply troubled, I seek to find Spirit in the midst of my suffering. I soften my heart to the gentle touch of comfort. I allow Spirit to touch my grief.
National Newspaper Award and Amnesty International Award for Human Rights Reporting winner Stephanie Nolen is The Globe and Mail’s current India, and formerly Africa, correspondent. She just received an honorary Doctorate in Civil Laws from King’s and this is part of her address to students:
Sometimes bad luck turns out not to be so bad.
That you learn the most from the hardest things.
That opportunities come in places where you’re not looking.
And, as Amelia Earhart said (words I later took as my own motto when I was learning to fly), “Courage is the price that life demands for granting peace.”
Something else happened to me along the way in those early years of working overseas: I think it began the first time I went to a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and really spent some time there. I came away with a whole new understanding of my privilege, as a Canadian, and of the fact that really, I didn’t know anything about anything in the world. I didn’t know what life was really like for — as I would soon start to realize — the great bulk of people in the world.
And here’s something I only started to figure out even later: that even if you spend the rest of your life right here, you are responsible for much of what happens elsewhere in the world.
For how those other people live.
Regardless of what you choose to do with your new degree, your new skills, you will be responsible.
If you have an iPod like mine, or a cellphone, or a Wii, you are connected to the 14-year-olds I have met who are enslaved by rebel groups in the Congo and who dig for coltan, the mineral that is the essential ingredient in our gadgets.
If you have a Gap T-shirt like I do, then you are connected to the Bangladeshi women who stitched it for five bucks a day, and who cannot develop their textile sector into better-paying jobs because of our trade restrictions.
If, like me, you are a Canadian citizen, you are connected to the children in Swaziland who cannot go to school today, who will never have the moment you are having today, because Canada, as a voting, policy-setting member of the World Bank, forces the Swazi government to charge school fees for their primary schools — even though ours are free.
And if, like me, you enjoy the occasional Starbucks latte, you are connected to the women in Ethiopia who earn 70 cents a day sorting their coffee beans. Ah-hah, you think. I always order the fair trade blend. Well, great. The women in the fair trade factory earn 96 cents a day. I know — I spent an afternoon on a Starbucks factory line in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a couple of years ago.
So I can tell you that those women are glad to have their jobs.
I’m not sure that’s good enough.
You are connected to these people. And you decide how much responsibility you will take for that.
On the acorn side of surrender, freedom almost always means what Thomas Merton calls “choice freedom.” It’s about having the means to do what I want, go where I want, say what I want, buy what I want. What the acorn usually doesn’t see is how much these apparently “free” choices are actually dictated by cultural conditioning and the hidden agendas of the lower self, with its compulsive wanting and needing.
Real freedom, according to spiritual teaching, does not mean “choice freedom” but rather “spontaneity freedom,” in Merton’s words. A modern Sufi master, Sara Sviri, cuts to the heart of this with powerful words: “When the heart surrenders willingly to the Divine hold, it becomes free of the manipulations of the lower self. Paradoxically, such freedom is reflected by a letting go of choices.” Quoting an 11th Century Sufi master, she summarizes the classic spiritual teaching: “Man does not become a true servant until he becomes free of all but God.”
What a luxury to have a year to live! With 250,000 people dying each day and knowing we are somewhere down that line, who has time to put life aside? We prepare for death by living every second, living life minutely, exploring our body and mind with a merciful awareness. To be this close to the moment in which our life is unfolding we need to cultivate a deeper awareness through the development of a meditation practice.
Awareness is itself a healing quality. Where awareness is focused the deepest potentials for clarity and balance present themselves. Though what we are aware of may be incessantly changing, awareness itself remains a constant, a luminous spaciousness without beginning or end, without birth or death. It is the essence of life itself. It is what remains when all that is impermanent falls away. It is the deathless.
A rich man asked Sengai to write something for the continued prosperity of his family so that it might be treasured from generation to generation.
Sengai obtained a large sheet of paper and wrote: Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.”
The rich man became angry. “I asked you to write something for the happiness of my family! Why do you make such a joke as this?”
“No joke is intended,” explained Sengai. “If before you yourself die your son should die, this would grieve you greatly. If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would be broken-hearted. If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the orfer I have named, it will be a natural course of lfe. I call this real prosperity.”
O my Father, Great Elder,
I have no words to thank you,
But with your deep wisdom
I am sure you can see
How I value your glorious gifts.
O my Father, when I look upon your greatness,
I am confounded with awe.
O Great Elder,
Ruler of all things earthly and heavenly,
I am your warrior,
Ready to act in accordance with your will.
Return me, oh sun
to my wild destiny,
rain of the ancient wood,
bring me back to the aroma and the swords
that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river-margins,
the smell of the larch tree,
the wind alive like a heart
beating in the crowded restlessness
of the towering araucana.
Earth, give me back your pure gifts,
the towers of silence which rose
from the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I have not been,
and learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all natural things
I could live or not live; it does not matter
to be one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone which the river bears away.
like my Beloved
who knew such fullness
of being alive
that he simply grew out
of himself, radiantly
shed his small mortality,
let the bright shell
around his being die back
into Earth so he, unimpeded,
could go on growing on
and on and on, and
let the growing on of God
inhabit that being
that once was alone
in its flesh and
now is all One.
Forgiving one’s enemies can make a difference to one’s spiritual progress. It’s crucial. It’s the one important thing. It can change one’s life. To reduce hatred and other destructive emotions, you must develop their opposites – compassion and kindness. If you have strong compassion, strong respect for others, then forgiceness much easier. Mainly for this reason: I do not want to harm another. Forgiveness allows you to be in touch with these positive emotions. This will help with spiritual development.
I use a meditation technique called giving and taking. I make visualization: send my positive emotions like happiness, affection to others. Then another visualization. I visualize receiving their sufferings, their negative emotions. I do this every day. I pay special attention to the Chinese – especially those doing terrible things to the Tibetans. So, as I meditate, I breathe in all their poisons – hatred, fear, cruelty. Then I breathe out. And I let all the good things come out, things like compassion, forgiveness. I take inside my body all these bad things. Then I replace poisons with fresh air. Giving and taking. I take care not to blame – I don’t blame the Chinese, and I don’t blame myself. This meditation very effective, useful to reduce hatred, useful to cultivate forgiveness.
“You are the light of the world.” Do not hide your spirituality in your feelings or your emotions. There is power in the spirit. Live this power and give personal expression to everything that the spirit may contain. Then you will demonstrate to the world that the way of the spirit is the true way. When you are lifted up, hundreds and even thousands will come and go where you are going. Therefore, let the full glory of the spirit shine in your life; let power from on high manifest itself in everything that you may think or say or do, and great shall be your reward, both in this world and in the world to come. The spiritual life deprives you of nothing that has real worth and gives you more and more of everything that has high worth.
“Agree with thine adversary quickly.” There is a spiritual side to everything; enter into harmony with this spiritual side and the discord that seems to exist on the personal side will disappear. Forget those elements that are at variance and think only of those states that are perfectly at one with each other. You can easily find them; we find everything we seek, and whoever goes out to find harmony will discover that there is more harmony in the world than anything else, excepting life itself.
Dear God,
May I have meaningful work and meaningful
activity in my life.
I desire to wake up each morning and feel that I
am used on behalf of something glorious.
I want to feel, no matter what my work, that I
dispense blessing, love, forgiveness and
kindness there to all I meet.
Help me remember that You are the power.
May I not overglorify merchandizing or money
or business.
May my work be Yours.
May my work be love.
Help me to remember that as I focus on the
realm of heaven, everything else will take care
of itself.
Help me have faith, to know that the universe shall
take care of me as I take care of it.
In this moment, I am willing to put aside all
small and worthless values.
In this moment, I am willing to let go my
attachment to money, popularity, power, prestige,
the things of the world that I do not need.
For I know that they are all illusion, and except
as they are sent by You, they lead me
nowhere.
Thus I shall shine.
And as I shine, I shall radiate a
power in this world, not of this world, and
people will not fail to notice.
For I shall be as a star in a darkened sky.
I shall go to sleep knowing that I did as I have
come here to do.
I shall be repaid by gratitude, shining in the eyes
of my brothers.
Please shine in my heart.
Welcome O Supernatural One, O Swimmer
who returns every year in this world
that we may live rightly, that we may be well.
I offer you, swimming salmon, my heart’s deep gratitude.
I ask that you will come again,
that next year we will meet in this life,
that you will see that nothing evil should befall me.
O Supernatural One, O Swimmer,
now I will do to you what you came here for me to do.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
When your brother attacks you, realize that he is not feeling loved. If he felt love, he would not attack you. Do not react to his attack. Find a way to remind him that he is loved.
Do this again and again.
Here is a simple walking meditation.
One day, when you are feeling cheerful, go out into your community and when you see someone who is sad or angry, find a simple way to remind him that he is loved. Give him a smile, a flower, a balloon, a sandwich or a cup of coffee. Sing him a song or recite a poem. Say: “This is just for you. Please have a nice day.”
Another time, when you are feeling depressed, do the same thing. Do this again and again. You will be amazed at the results. There is nothing more ecstatic than reminding others and yourself that you are loved.
Remember, no one can give love if he does not feel loved. Therefore you have only one responsibility: feel the love that is there in your heart. And help others to feel it too. Can you imagine a world in which each person understood that his only responsibility was to give and receive love?
With
passion pray. With
passion work. With passion make love.
With passion eat and drink and dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish
in this ocean
of
God?
The earth is all that lasts.
The earth is what I speak to when
I do not understand my life
Nor why I am not heard.
The earth answers me with the same song
That it sang for my fathers when
Their tears covered up the sun.
The earth sings a song of gladness.
The earth sings a song of praise.
The earth rises up and laughs at me
Each time that I forget
How spring begins with winter
And death begins with birth.
Faith is so important because it is the force that gives life to every word, to every concept that we store in our mind. We can say that life manifests through faith, and that faith is the messenger of life. Life goes through our faith, and then our faith gives life to everything we agree to believe in. Remember, we invest our faith by making an agreement. When we agree with a concept, we accept the concept without any doubt, and the concept becomes a part of us. If we don’t agree with a concept, our faith is not there, and we don’t keep it in our memory. Every concept is alive because our faith is there, just because we believe in the concept. Faith is the force that holds all these symbols together and gives sense and direction to the entire dream.
After a while you learn
The subtle difference
Between holding a hand
And chaining a soul.
And you learn
That love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn
That kisses aren’t compromise
And presents aren’t promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman or a man
Not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build all your loads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in midflight.
And after a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you ask too much.
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting for someone to buy you flowers.
And you learn
That you really can endure
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth.
And you learn.
And you learn.
With every failure you learn.
4 cups of Love
3 cups of Loyalty
3 cups of Forgiveness
5 tsp.of Hope
2 tsp. of Tenderness
4 quarts of Faith
1 cup of Friendship
1 barrel of Laughter
Take Love and Loyalty, mix thoroughly with Faith. Blend it with Tenderness, Kindness and Understanding. Add Friendship and Hope. Sprinkle abundantly with Laughter. Bake it with Sunshine. Serve daily with generous helpings.
O Lord,
open my eyes that I may see the needs of others;
open my ears that I may hear their cries;
open my heart so that they need not be without succor;
let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the
anger of the strong,
nor afraid to defend the poor because of the
anger of the rich.
Show me where love and hope and faith are needed,
and use me to bring them to those places.
And so open my eyes and my ears
that I may this coming day be able to do some work of
peace for thee.
Amen.
I will nurse this autumn carefully,
treat its brittleness gently,
smooth its crumbling edges, its weeping afternoons.
I will rise early and go to it,
wrap it in a soft cloth
and watch it’s breathing.
I will nurture this autumn knowing
it is myself
in a pure and golden form,
and that childlike
soft words will be brought bubbling up
to be recorded in the patterns of leaves
and the low fog coming across the bay.
I will accept this death
and be content with its coming and watch
its coming
and speak of its coming in slow poems
until at last
there will be no more words,
you will hear only the sound of rain as you sleep.
What is laughter? What is laughter?
It is God waking up! O it is God waking up!
It is the sun poking its sweet head out
From behind a cloud
You have been carrying too long,
Veiling your eyes and heart.
It is Light breaking ground for a great Structure
That is your Real body – called Truth.
It is happiness applauding itself and then taking flight
To embrace everyone and everything in this world.
Laughter is the polestar
Held in the sky by our Beloved,
Who eternally says,
“Yes, dear ones, come this way,
Come this way toward Me and Love!
Come with your tender mouths moving
And your beautiful tongues conducting songs
And with your movements – your magic movements
Of hands and feet and glands and cells – Dancing!
Know that to God’s Eye,
All movement is a Wondrous Language,
And Music – such exquisite wild Music!
O what is laughter, Hafiz?
What is this precious love and laughter
Budding in our hearts?
May we discover through pain and torment,
the strength to live with grace and humor.
May we discover through doubt and anguish,
the strength to live with dignity and holiness.
May we discover through suffering and fear,
the strength to move toward healing.
May it come to pass that we be restored to health and to vigor.
May Life grant us wellness of body, spirit, and mind.
And if this cannot be so, may we find in this transformation and passage
moments of meaning, opportunities for love
and the deep and gracious calm that comes
when we allow ourselves to move on.
When the ripe fruit falls
its sweetness distills and trickles away
into the veins of the earth.
When fulfilled people die
the essential oil of their experience enters
the veins of living space, and adds a glisten
to the atom, to the body of immortal chaos.
For space is alive
and it stirs like a swan
whose feathers glisten
silky with oil of distilled experience.
Earth is stardust-come-to-life, a magic cauldron where the heart of the universe is being formed. In me, the Earth and its creatures find their voices. Through my eyes the stars look back on themselves in wonder. I am the earth. This is my body.
We are the air.
Air is the breath of the Earth, the movement of life, the quick violent storm, and the slow, caressing breeze. In my breathing, life is received and given back. My breath unites me to all things, to the creatures that make the oxygen, and to the people that share the same breath: yesterday, a victim of AIDS; today a soldier in the Middle East; tomorrow, a poor woman in the Third World. I am air. This is my breath.
We are fire.
Fire is the energy of the universe, the source of power and new life. In my thoughts burn the fires of the original eruption of life; in my emotions, lightning flashes; in my love, new life is conceived. I participate in power. I share in the energy of the universe, to keep warm, to fuel my body, to create my relationships. I am fire. This is my power.
We are water.
Water is the womb of the earth, from which all life is born. The oceans flow through the Earth, bringing abundance; the oceans flow through me, carrying food, recycling waste, expressing emotions. I am water. This is my life.
At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains , the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time, you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world’s word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum is the silence…
The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God’s brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to “World.” Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.
I quietly gaze into the depths of a forest
and see nothing save beauty and peace.
Birdsong fills my ears.
A gentle breeze brushes against my cheek.
Seeing from inside the seeing.
I drink the dark riches of the woods.
Would it be that every day
I could see my own face so clearly in these still waters,
And meet the emptiness which is also my very own heart -
that is carried in the boughs of pines and in the gentle
music of crickets.
Individual happiness can contribute in a profound and effective way to the overall improvement of our entire human community.
Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress and behaviour, there is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on external differences, because our basic natures are the same.
Ultimately, humanity is one and this small planet is our only home, If we are to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism. It is only this feeling that can remove the self-centered motives that cause people to deceive and misuse one another.
If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel self- worth and confidence, and there is no need to be fearful of others.
I believe that at every level of society – familial, tribal, national and international – the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities.
I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the practice of compassion.
May those
whose lives are gripped in the palm of suffering
open
even now
to the Wonder of Life.
May they let go of the hurt
and Meet the True Self beyond pain,
the Uncarved Block
that is our joyous Unity with Wholeness.
May they discover through pain and torment
the strength to live with grace and humour.
May they discover through doubt and anguish
the strength to live with dignity and holiness.
May they discover through suffering and fear
the strength to move toward healing.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
A female humpback whale had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth.
A fisherman spotted her just east of the Faralon Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed for help.
Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her – a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.
They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.
When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, nudged them and pushed gently, thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time and he will never be the same.
May you, and all those you love, be so fortunate…To be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude.
Life is short. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably…and never regret anything that made you smile.
When I die if you need to weep
Cry for your brother or sister
Walking the street bedside you
And when you need me to put your arms around anyone
And give them what you need to give me.
I want to leave you something
Something better than words or sounds.
Look for me in the people I have known or loved
And if you cannot give me away
At least let me live in your eyes and not on your mind.
You can love me most by letting hands touch hands
By letting bodies touch bodies
And by letting go of children that need to be free.
Love doesn’t die; people do
So when all that’s left of me is love
Give me away.
We are living in a world of continual change, a world in which thought, thing, and experience are all in a constant state of flux. It is the very nature of the universe that there should be continual change and variation. It is a living world, the creation of a living creative Intelligence, not a static world created by a God now dead or departed who has left it to decay. No. It is vital and alive. The Mind that created it is not apart from it, but is always active in and through it.
But behind that which changes, behind that which causes the change, we have found that there is something stable and changeless, something eternal upon which all external events depend for their very existence. Behind the endless process of change and the infinite variety of experience and expression there is That which does not change.
We should never be afraid of change, never fearful of what will come. Instead we should bring to bear on each new event the influence of the creative nature of our thought—an influence that is founded on an inward calm, a sense of certainty and peace, which will reflect itself in the changing scene of our everyday lives.
As we look for and discover the nature of the Infinite which does not change, we find that we develop a complete trust in Its integrity. We are again reminded of Einstein’s remark that “God does not play dice with the cosmos.” And we then come to possess a feeling of security which is enhanced by the knowledge that each of us has a personal and intimate relationship with the Infinite. It is from this inward basis of certainty—this sense and awareness of our relationship to God, who is changeless but from whom flow infinite expressions—that all our thoughts should flow.
In our daily living we encounter infinite variety in all things. But behind the expression there is a pattern or form which is the foundation. There is a unity, but not a uniformity, that exists between all similar expressions, a unity that resides in the ultimate creative nature of the Universe, a unity that allows freedom of individual expression.
An obvious lesson can be learned if we look at ourselves, our families, our friends. We discover that we are all human beings, all pretty much the same. A head, two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, a body, arms, and legs. And as we look farther afield at the entire human race, we find some races are tall, others short—some white, others black, yellow, or red. But behind every person, every race, there is the basic pattern, a pattern that is individually expressed. If there were not the possibility of variation of expression, life could never have developed its infinite variety. And if there had not been a basic pattern behind the development of humankind, there never would have been any way for it to develop.
One of the most amazing events in the development of humankind into its present physical form occurred in the early stages of its existence. According to anthropologist Loren Eiseley, humans at that time, in physical structure and general appearance, gave evidence of the people to come. The pattern existed. But through infinite changes and variations, a fuller and more perfect expression occurred. Then an amazing thing happened. For no reason that scientists have been able to determine, humans developed an enlarged brain—a brain far beyond the capacity needed for the containment of cells necessary for the operation of the senses for survival and the automatic functioning of the physical body. Without any previous indication, without any comparable thing occurring elsewhere in any living thing, humans suddenly (in terms of geological time) possessed a brain that was capable of functioning far beyond any demands that could ever be made on it by the physical body. It was an elaborate instrument that was capable of being a channel for thought, creative thought.
Why did it appear? What caused it to appear? What was its purpose? There is no academic answer forthcoming through the strict limitations science places upon itself. But those who have devoted their lives to science sometimes step outside their laboratories, for a moment turn aside from their microscopes, and say what they think.
Some scientists say that with the advent of this unpredictable development in humankind, something new appears to have been injected into God’s creation. Something different had been brought into creation by the Mind behind all creation—a unique expression of Itself. Thus we were freed from many of the instinctive limitations of our physical bodies. We were aware of ourselves! We could think! Infinite Mind is the only thing that can be ascertained to have thought, consciousness, and intelligence, and now It established for Itself, in and through humankind, a means of awareness, creativeness, and consciousness of what It had created. With the development of the larger brain in humans, Mind came forth anew into Its creation, ushering in a whole new era, the future of which we but little realize. We now need to learn to free ourselves from the complete domination of the instinctive functioning of the nervous system, although it serves our physical body well and has brought it to the high degree of perfection which it now exhibits.
The physical body has always faced a threat in one of two ways: either to fight or to escape through flight. This same instinctive reaction is of value to us today, but we need to place a limitation on its action. We deal largely with ideas in our daily lives, and when we encounter one we do not like, our bodies are whipped up to engage in combat or prepared for flight. Even though the body is never able actually to do anything about either fighting or fleeing from an idea, the resulting wear and tear are most disastrous.
We now need to discover that new thing which resides within us and is ever seeking fuller expression through us, and we shall find that it is the individualization in us of the infinite conscious creative Intelligence.
We generally seem to resist change, even that which is better for us. We also appear to resist being what we really are. We need to learn carefully and surely to permit ourselves to accept the fuller expression of the Mind that is within us. Against this there must be no resistance. For in Its creative flow through us rests our entire future—the greater person we may be and the richer life we desire to enjoy.
When we establish within our thought a nonresistance to that Power which is greater than we are, we are at the same time accepting within ourselves a stability that is the stability of the universe. We find ourselves secure, for we know that we are part of That which causes change but is never affected by any of the changes. As we gradually attain this sense of security, we will find that we view the changes occurring about us in a proper perspective. We will have stopped letting ourselves be blown about like straws in the wind or tossed helplessly about in a turbulent sea whose waves are doubt and fear and anxiety.
We may liken ourselves to the atom, whose center or nucleus is relatively stable. Around it revolve the electrons in orderly, harmonious orbits. In much the same way, once we discover the stable center that resides within us, all our experiences will revolve around us in an orderly way. Once our consciousness becomes stabilized through security founded on a conviction of the nature of God, and we come to have an inner awareness that the Creative Intelligence of the universe resides at the center of us, then will our experiences take on a pattern of harmony—a natural outflowing of our inner security.
by an inner light
glowing the awareness
of the Tao,
Knowing giving
is the same as receiving,
and truth teaching
is the job of living,
In raising collective consciousness
to new levels of conduct
where compassion is spread impartially,
all inclusively, spontaneously,
to cover all possible scenarios,
Realizing the bad man is but
the good man’s opportunity
to do love’s duty,
instructing while conveying respect,
without judging,
One thought,
one action
at a time,
making the universe
a better place.
Once the wrongdoer has confessed and the victim has forgiven, it does not mean that is the end of the process. Most frequently, the wrong has affected the victim in tangible, material ways. Apartheid provided the whites with enormous benefits and privileges, leaving its victims deprived and exploited. If someone steals my pen and then asks me to forgive him, unless he returns my pen the sincerity of his contrition and confession will be considered nil. Confession, forgiveness, and reparation, wherever feasible, form part of a continuum.
We have had a jurisprudence, a penology in Africa that was not retributive but restorative. In the traditional setting, when people quarreled the main intention was not to punish the miscreant but to restore good relations. For Africa is concerned, or has traditionally been concerned, about the wholeness of relationship. That is something we need in our world, a world that is polarized, a world that is fragmented, a world that destroys people. It is also something we need in our families and friendships, for restoration heals and makes whole while retribution only wounds and divides us from one another.
Only together, hand in hand, as God’s family and not as one another’s enemy, can we ever hope to end the vicious cycle of revenge and retribution. This is the only hope for us and for making God’s dream a reality. Because God truly only has us.
“God is the shadow of man,” was commented upon by the Baal Shem as follows: just as a shadow follows the gestures and motions of the body, God follows those of the soul. If a man is charitable, God will be charitable too. The name of man’s secret is God, and the name of God’s secret is none other than the one invented by man: love. Who loves, loves God. And what is love if not a creative act, in which two beings fuse into a single consciousness scarred and healed a thousand times? Love’s mystery resides in oneness, and so does God’s. “Whatever is above is also down below.” Between the present concrete world and the other, the one to come, there is a link between source and reflection. God does not oppose humanity, and man, though vulnerable and ephemeral, can attain immortality in the passing moment. In man’s universe, everything is connected because nothing is without meaning.
All of us are only one living being, and we come from the same place. There is no difference between any of us; we are the same. You can look at your hand and see that there are five fingers. If you focus your eyes on one finger at a time, you might believe that they are different, but it’s only one hand. It’s the same thing with humanity. There is only one living being, and that being is a force that is moving each of us like a finger on a hand. But all of the fingers belong to one hand. Humans share the same spirit; we share the same soul. There is no difference between me and you – not in my eyes. I know that I am you, and I have no doubt at all because I can see that way.
Each of us has an inner compass. Its voice calls us to our highest good. Sometimes it requires that we alter a long-standing but stifling situation. It is difficult to face the severing or alteration of a relationship even when we know such change is for the highest good. Faced with a divorce or separation, faced with the need to terminate a long-standing friendship, I must remind myself that sometimes the most loving involvement is a non-involvement. It is tempting, always to try to go back, to hold onto what once was rather than face what that relationship has now become. I resolve with a loving heart to accept appropriate endings. I do not grasp at straws when the reality is difficult but clear. Instead, I release the past, bless it and turn with resolution to the future. I listen to the dictates of my conscience, knowing that it’s voice calls me home. Today, I place my humbled heart in universal care, asking for healing and direction.
Julia Cameron
“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience.” Leo Tolstoy
May you be for us a moon of joy and happiness. Let the young become strong and the grown man maintain his strength, the pregnant woman be delivered and the woman who has given birth suckle her child. Let the stranger come to the end of his journey and those who remain at home dwell safely in their houses. Let the flocks that go to feed in the pastures return happily. May you be a moon of harvest and of calves. May you be a moon of restoration and of good health.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet–
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
Don’t look back,
battered child
Time then hurt you.
Let time heal you.
Don’t look back.
Don’t look back,
beaten child.
They knew not what
they did except what
was done to them.
Don’t look back.
Don’t look back,
abandoned child,
abused, neglected child.
Denial is salt in your wounds.
Dwelling is repeating
the deliberate disappearance
of your soul.
Don’t perpetuate this harm.
Break the cycle,
wait -
stop it here.
Speak out the paralyzing secret
and begin to come back to yourself.
Cry it out to compassionate ears
and be held in the hearts of your witnesses.
The truth shall make you free
but first it will shatter you.
What was broken can be mended,
what was lost, restored.
Find yourself, then,
pure and whole, a child of God.
Look back long enough to let go.
Let my words
be bright with animals,
images the flash of a gull’s wing.
If we pretend
that we are at the centre,
that moles and kingfishers,
eels and coyotes
are at the edge of grace,
then we circle, dead moons
about a cold sun.
This morning I ask only
the blessing of the crayfish,
the beatitude of the birds;
to wear the skin of the bear
in my songs;
to work like a man with my hands.
And the priestess spoke again and said: ‘Speak to us of Reason and Passion.’
And he answered saying:
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.
Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.
But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?
Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or our rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.
I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.
Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.
Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows – then let your heart say in silence, ‘God rests in reason.’
And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, – then let your heart say in awe, ‘God moves in passion.’
And since you are a breath In God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.
The First Training: Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking and in my way of life.
The Second Training: Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing and oppression, I vow to cultivate loving kindness and learn ways to work for the well-being of people, animals, plants and minerals. I vow to practice generosity by sharing my time, energy, and material resources with those in real need. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others. I will respect the property of others, but I will prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on earth.
The Third Training: Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I vow to cultivate responsibility and learn ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families and society. I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without love and a long-term commitment. To preserve the happiness of myself and others, I am determined to respect my commitments and the commitments of others. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct.
The Fourth Training: Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord; or words that can cause the family or the community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.
The Fifth Training: Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body and my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self transformation and the transformation of society.
O Children of Nothing!
Truth can’t come in through your eyes,
Nor can speech go out through your mouth to find Him;
Hearing leads the speaker down the road to anxiety,
And if you follow your hands and feet you will arrive at confusion -
The real work is in the Heart:
Wake up your Heart! Because when the Heart is completely awake,
Then it needs no Friend.
We stood before the waving sea
and stared at vast infinity,
and praised the Life that brought us here
to take our ride upon this sphere,
for when we reach the distant shore
I know we’ll be returning,
rich from the journey
rich from the journey.
You never know what’s up ahead.
The tempest rolls and the skies are red.
But, off into the world that waits
between tomorrow and today,
to seek our fortunes and our fates,
driven by this yearning,
to be rich from the journey,
rich from the journey.
and when it’s time to leave the harbour of this dream
we’ll have a heart that’s filled with memories.
So sail away sweet soul in peace.
Hoist your sails into the breeze.
Beneath these stars so hard to read,
Godspeed the winds that carry me
and tell my friends to look for me
for soon I’ll be returning,
rich from the journey.
Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted & pieced – fold, fallow & plough;
And all trades, their gear & tackle & trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled, (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
The Great Buddha of Kamakura is a bronze statue of Amida Buddha.
The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.
Offer only lovely things on my altars -
the bread of life, and jewels, and feathers and flowers.
Let the streams of life flow in peace.
Turn from violence.
Learn to think for a long time how to change this world,
and how to make it better to live in.
All the people in the world ought to talk about it
and speak well of it always.
The it will last forever, and the flowers will bloom forever,
and I will come to you again.
The human heart craves certainty yet life is sometimes uncertain. In times of ambiguity, doubt and apprehension, I claim the certain safety of my spiritual connection. Reminding myself that even in the face of difficult change, my grounding in Spirit remains secure, I find ground on which to stand. It is timeless and serene. Spirit is the bedrock beneath all experience. When I am threatened and adrift, I remind myself Spirit is an inner fortress, constant and secure.
Today I embrace Spirit as the rock of my existence. Spirit gives my soul an earthly home.
She caught me off guard when my soul said to me,
“Have we met?”
So surprised I was to hear her speak like that
I chuckled.
She began to sing a tale: “There was once a hard working man
who used to worry so much because he could
not feed and clothe his children and
wife the way he wanted.
There was a beautiful little chapel in the village
where the man lived and one day while
he was praying, an angel
appeared.
The angel said, “Follow me.” And he did into an ancient forest.
“Now dig here,” the angel said. And the man felt strength in
his limbs he had not known since youth and with just
his bare hands, he dug deep and found
a lost treasure, and his relationship
with the world changed.”
Finding our soul’s beauty does that – gives us
tremendous freedom
from worry.
You might hear the beautiful shout of “Geronimo”
from a lover who has just dove from a
cliff and is heading full speed
into the Ocean – into the
Beloved.
And of course there will always be lots of gab
along the shore from those who are
drawn to God
but have yet to really get bare assed
and go in.
“Geronimo” may be the last word we hear
from that brave gal falling 625 mph
from a cliff,
for once beneath the sea,
once within the Water,
only fish open their mouths, still bargaining
for something.
The soul becomes quiet in ecstasy, so quiet.
Love speaks in the absence of God,
not in the heights
of passion.
Creator of the germ in woman,
Maker of seed in man,
Giving life to the son in the body of his mother,
Soothing him that he may not weep,
Nurse (even) in the womb,
Giver of breath to animate every one that he maketh!
When he cometh forth from the womb…
on the day of his birth,
Thou openest mouth in speech.
Thou suppliest his necessities.
When the fledgling in the egg chirps in the shell
Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive…
He goeth about upon his two feet
When he hath come forth therefrom.
How manifold are thy works!
They are hidden from before us
O sole God, whose powers no other possesseth.
Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart.
When sorrow comes, let us accept it simply, as a part of life. Let the heart be open to pain; let it be stretched by it. All the evidence we have says that this is the better way. An open heart never grows bitter. Or if it does, it cannot remain so. In the desolate hour, there is an outcry; a clenching of the hands upon emptiness; a burning pain of bereavement; a weary ache of loss. But anguish, like ecstasy, is not forever. There comes a gentleness, a returning quietness, a restoring stillness. This, too, is a door to life. Here, also is the deepening of meaning – and it can lead to dedication; a going forward to the triumph of the soul, the conquering of the wilderness. And in the process will come a deepening inward knowledge that in the final reckoning, all is well.
My gift for unconditional love is a great blessing in my life. I am able to manifest an inner nobility in my relationships. I accept those who love me as they are. I allow them to love me at their speed and tempo as they are able. I do not dictate or control. their love for me is a gift. I allow them the right to choose how and why they give it. Those who love me are part of God’s love for me. They are part of the larger plan of my life. I allow God to remain the whole. I root myself in God, accepting the relationships which come to me as a part of something larger that holds all of us within its scope. I find the steadfastness of divine companionship. I allow God to be my primary security, the deep soil of my heart’s safety. Rooted in God, I allow human love to gift me and grace me but I do not demand a god-like security from human love. I find perfect love, perfect security, perfect safety in God. I allow my human loves to be human and I love them in their humanity.
Commerce is supported by keeping the individual at odds with himself and others, by making us want more than we need, and offering credit to buy what refined senses do not want.
The masses become shackled; I see how their eyes weep and are desperate – of course they feel desperate – for something some remedy that a poor soul then feels needs to be bought.
I find nothing more offensive than a god who could condemn human instincts in us that time in all its wonder have made perfect.
I find nothing more destructive to the well-being of life than to support a god that makes you feel unworthy and in debt to it.
I imagine erecting churches to such a strange god will assure endless wars that commerce loves.
A god that could frighten is not a god – but an insidious idol and weapon in the hands of the insane.
A god who talks of sin is worshipped by the infirm.
I was spiritually ill once – we all pass through that – but one day the intelligence in my soul cured me.
Men are afraid to forget their minds, fearing to fall through the Void with nothing to stay their fall. They do not know that the Void is not really void, but the realm of real Dharma.
Grace — such a lovely word, so effortlessly evocative, being suggestive not only of a dimension of being ordinarily far from accessible to us, but also of a guidance and support preternaturally attuned to our deepest needs.
In Grace there is an implication or felt sense of sacred intervention, a not-by-us engineered doing that deeply serves our well-being, often in ways that are far from expected.
A serendipitous infusion of more-than-human guidance — this is Grace, however ragged or rough its delivery may be.
Grace — such a wonderfully rich word, conveying a heartfelt sense of something extraordinarily supportive arriving on our doorstep, palpably suffused with undeniable significance. It is a gift, regardless of its wrapping or reception.
In us there persists a longing for Grace, a longing to receive it and let it carry us where it may. And at the same time there may be a longing for Grace to arrive in a particular form, which of course does not necessarily happen. Sometimes what we most need is what we assume we least need, and Grace serves what we most need, which often means that it doesn’t seem to be Grace at all to us, but rather just a nasty turn of the wheel.
Grace is neither good luck nor the inevitable result of our good deeds; it is much more mysterious than that, responding as it does to more than just the obviously visible. It takes much more into account than we can see, being intimate with what is out of sight. Grace can be trusted. It won’t let us down, even if in the short term it deposits us in places or situations that we don’t like.
May Grace guide our days. May Grace flow through us. May Grace come to us. Such prayers are but confessions of intuiting or wanting to host the presence of something gloriously Other, something that is, sooner or later, recognized to be none other than what we truly are. May we not limit Grace to how we think it should manifest. May we not decide beforehand how Grace should look or behave. May our prayers for Grace reach without grabbing, ask without begging, and ready us without leaving us on hold. May we recognize Grace for what it is, and remain grateful for it.
Grace is the arrival and expression of not-by-us orchestrated direction and support, emerging without any strategy or manipulation on our part. When Grace shows up, we are guided in directions that we very likely would have otherwise overlooked or not seen. The gift of Grace is an astonishing thing, no matter how often we have witnessed it. It always feels fresh.
In the same sense that prayer is a divine personal, Grace is a divine intrusion. To the extent that prayer reaches up, Grace reaches down. The gravity of the situation demands it.
Some think of Grace as the tangible entry of our deepest dimensions into our everyday life, appearing in whatever form fits our prevailing belief system. But however we choose to conceptualize Grace, it exists. It doesn’t matter if we’re religious, agnostic, or atheistic. It doesn’t matter what our status is. It doesn’t matter how high we’ve been, or how low. When Grace shows up, we usually know it, whether we acknowledge it or not. We cannot engineer Grace, but we can deepen our receptivity to it, making room for it, knowing that we don’t know when it will show up, nor in what form it will arrive.
In the same sense that Life is the Poetry of Being, and Intimacy is the Poetry of Connection, and Beauty is the Poetry of Appearance, Grace is the Poetry of Evolution.
The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God.
When I dwelt in the ground,
in the bottom, in the stream, and
in the source of the Godhead,
No one asked me where I was going or
what I was doing.
Back in the womb from which I came,
I had no God
and merely was myself.
And when I return
to God and to the core, the soil, the ground, the stream and the source of the Godhead,
No one asks me wher I am coming from
or where have I benn.
For no one misses me
in the place
where god ceases to become.
Now the moment I flowed out from the Creator
all creatures stood up and shouted:
“Behold, here is God!”
They were correct.
For you ask me: Who is God? What is God?
I reply: Isness,
Isness is God.
Where there is Isness, there God is.
Creation is the giving of isness from God.
And that is why
God becomes
where any creature expresses God.
As swimmers dare
to lie face in the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
And a poet said, “Speak to us of Beauty.”
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say, “Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.”
And the passionate say, “Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.”
The tired and the weary say, “beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.”
But the restless say, “We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.”
At night the watchmen of the city say, “Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.”
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, “we have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.”
In winter say the snow-bound, “She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.”
And in the summer heat the reapers say, “We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.”
All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
This being human is a guest house, every morning a new arrival…a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep the house empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whomever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
In the point of rest at the centre of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
Dear God.
As I rise up, I thank you for the opportunity to be on this earth.
I thank you for my mind and body,
I thank you for my life.
please bless my body and use it for Your purposes.
May I rise up strong today, and may my body and soul radiate Your love.
May all impurities be cast out of my mind, my heart, my body.
May every cell of my being be filled with Your light.
May my body and mind be illumined for Your sake and for the sake of all the world.
Amen.
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a
living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your
heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a
fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the
centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your
fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are
telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money
you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with
whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
It is now. Right now.
You and I are facing
each other – you are
reading these words, I
within the page. May I
be so bold to offer you a
gift? If I may, read on.
I gift you with the courage
to be, to know deeply the
divine design of your life. I
gift you with passion for the
possible and the willingness to
bring this possibility into time.
You are more than you think you
are, and something in you knows
it. All the hurts and failures, all
the wanderings, losings, dyings,
and forgettings were but a part of
gaining of the rich material of your
life. By being wounded, you became
vulnerable and available; by being
lost, you were able to be found;
by dying, you learned the power
of new birth; by forgetting, you
gained the joy of remembering.
Now I call all parts of you back,
a mighty crew, seaworthy and
well stocked, to set sail for new
continents of spirit, shores of
incredible lands where the fractal
waves of many people and many
times arrive at last, and you
know that you have gained your
birthright. Welcome home, god
and goddess, no longer in hiding.
You feel fatigued. You doubt your strength. Put aside such anxieties. Count on me for your resilience. Come to me for your strength.
I am the one mind. All things are made from me. Your body is fashioned from my energy. My energy sustains its health. Come to me for your greater well-being. Come to me as infinite resource. Do not rely on your own limited resources. Rely instead on my infinite fund of energy. Allow me to restore you. Allow me to bring you vital energy. I am your stamina. I am your strength.
Do not feel fatigued. Rest in me. Allow me to work through you. Allow me to perform whatever task feels difficult for you. I am boundless energy. I flow outward to you and I am available for your use. Think of me as spiritual electricity, a unique power that flows just where it is needed. Trust my energy to flow through you now.
Ask to be a channel for my power and grace. Open yourself to me. Give me your heart and your mind. Give me your will and your life. As you give yourself to me, I give myself to you. All your prayers are answered prayers as I come to you, ready to meet your every need. Trust me as your divine source. My energy is yours to use.
Friend, you lie quiet,
watching the dawn light color your heart,
dreaming of healing for your hurt body
lying there unanswerable to your will.
You breathe deep and your breath has two sides:
inside and outside. You are on both, being breathed.
The future approaches. You will heal or
you will go back to being God.
Which will you do?
Oh by all that is beautiful -
May it be that you live!
May your body heal happy and whole!
May energy fill and delight you!
May we join the dance your presence gives!
May you live!
And if you die?
Oh dear self, by all that is beautiful,
Know you are Safe! Everything is All Right
Forever and Ever and Ever!
The most wonderful, exquisite, familiar
Truth is what is True, and welcomes you.
It will be very easy.
You lie quiet now, praying.
A great healing is coming
and you want to be ready.
The colors of your heart blend
with the light of the morning.
You are blessed.
There were times when I could not afford
to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment
to any work, whether of head or hands.
Sometimes, in a summer morning,
having taken my accustomed bath,
I sat in my sunny doorway
from sunrise til noon, rapt in a reverie,
amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,
in undisturbed solitude and stillness,
while the birds sang around.
I grew in those seasons
like corn in the night,
and they were far better
than any work of the hands would have been.
They were not time subtracted from my life,
but so much over and above my usual allowance.
Art when really understood is the province of every human being.
It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing.
When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens and he opens ways to a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it, shows that there are still more pages possible.
The world would stagnate without him, for he is interesting to himself and he is interesting to others. He does not have to be a painter or a sculptor to be an artist. He can work in any medium. He simply has to find the gain in the work itself, not outside it.
Museums of art will not make a country an art country. But where there is art spirit there will be precious works to fill museums. Better still, there will be the happiness that is in the making. Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living – very good things for anyone to be interested in.
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves…
Don’t search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.
A Perfect One was traveling through the desert.
He was stretched out around the fire one night
And said to one of his close ones,
“There is a slave loose not far from us.
He escaped today from a cruel master.
His hands are still bound behind his back,
His feet are also shackled.
I can see him right now praying for God’s help.
Go to him.
Ride to that distant hill;
And about a hundred feet up and to the right
You will find a small cave.
He is there.
Do not say a single word to him.
Bring the man to me.
God requests that I personally untie his body
And press my lips to his wounds.”
The disciple mounts his horse and within two hours
Arrives at the small mountain cave.
The slave sees him coming, the slave looks frightened.
The disciple, on orders not to speak,
Gestures toward the sky, pantomining:
God saw you in prayer,
Please come with me,
A great Teacher has used his heart’s divine eye
To know your whereabouts.
The slave cannot believe this story,
And begins to shout at the man and tries to run
But trips from his bindings.
The disciple becomes forced to subdue him.
Think of this picture as they now travel:
The million candles in the sky are lit and singing.
Every particle of existence is a dancing altar
That some mysterious force worships.
The earth is a church floor whereupon
In the middle of a glorious night
Walks a slave, weeping, tied to a rope behind a horse,
With a speechless rider
Taking him toward the unknown.
Several times with all of his might the slave
Tries to break free,
Feeling he is being returned to captivity.
The rider stops, dismounts – and brings his eyes
Near the prisoner’s eyes.
A deep kindness there communicates an unbelievable hope.
The rider motions – soon, soon you will be free.
Tears roll down from the rider’s cheeks
In happiness for this man.
Anger, all this fighting and tormenting want,
Sweetheart,
God has seen you and sent a close one.
Sweetheart,
God has seen your heart in prayer
And sent me.
We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensible if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic.
Lordess Sakthi, the Hindu divine mother of Universe
Divine Mother does not force you to love and be loved.
She merely offers you the opportunity.
She invites you to be present and accept the gift of Her love.
Once you have received this gift,
it will vibrate in your body and in your consciousness,
expanding outward to embrace your life and everyone in it.
All that you do or say will be done with this energy
and contained gently within it.
As you receive, so will you give.
The reactive cycle of fear
will be replaced by the creative cycle of love.
You will become part of a world-wide healing ministry
that will transform consciousness on the planet.
Possibly the only fear greater than death is love, real love. Finding out that you do love, that this is your nature, is the beginning of the end for everything in you that thinks it’s separate.
The great statements of Jesus Christ were never spoken from the personal, but always from the impersonal. No truth ever sprung from the personal mind because it is only the impersonal that can touch the universal, and it is only in the universal that absolute truth can be found. When the mind enters the impersonal state, consciousness comes in touch with the cosmic state of being, and in that state we realize the “I am” way of being. We discern what the “I am” actually is, and we find that the consciousness of the “I am” is the open door to the limitless vastness of the spiritual universe. “I am the door.” Enter through the door of “I am” and we pass into that immense world that is found on the upper side, or the divine side of sublime existence.
Lord I sing your praise
the whole day through, until the night.
Dad’s nets are filled; I have helped him.
We have drawn them in, stamping the rhythm with
our feet,
the muscles tense.
We have sung your praise.
On the beach there were our mammies,
who brought the blessings out of the nets,
out of the nets and into their basins.
They rushed to the market, returned and bought again.
Lord, what a blessing is the sea, with fish in plenty.
Lord, that is the story of your grace:
nets tear, and we succumb because we can not hold
them.
Lord, with your praise we drop off to sleep.
Carry us through the night.
Make us fresh for the morning.
Hallelujah for the day!
And blessing for the night! Amen
O God, you have prepared in peace the path I must follow today. Help me to walk on that path. If I speak, remove lies from my lips. If I am hungry, take away from me all complaint. If I have plenty, destroy pride in me. May I go through the day, calling on you, you, O Lord, who know no other Lord.
Guanyin, Chinese goddess of mercy, Five Dynasties (907-960)
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God’s
When mercy seasons justice.
The healing power of love does not belong to any religion.
It is not Christian, or Jewish, or Buddhist or Hindu.
It is not exclusive or protective of itself.
It spontaneously opens to bless, surround and inspire any human being
who is ready to give it and receive it.
Your willingness to feel this energy of unconditional love in and around you
will transform your life and the lives of the people you know.
It will speed up the vibration of your life
and at the same time slow down your mental activity
so that you feel bliss you have never felt before.
It will be as if you are riding in a cocoon of positive energy.
Soon you will no longer feel that you can support or participate in
the negative fear-based patterns that you encounter.
You won’t want to judge or complain, blame or shame.
You will do what resonates with the energy of pure LOVE
and stop doing what doesn’t.
There will be no force or sacrifice in this.
What no longer serves you will simply drop away
as you more deeply attune to
and vibrate with the truth of who you are.
Gentle me,
Holy One, into an unclenched moment,
a deep breath,
a letting go
of heavy experiences,
of shriveling anxieties,
of dead certainties,
that, softened by the silence,
surrounded by the light,
and open to the mystery,
I may be found by wholeness,
upheld by the unfathomable,
entranced by the simple,
and filled with the joy
that is you.
At each moment she starts upon a long journey and at
each moment reaches her end…All is eternally present
in her, for she knows neither past nor future.
For her the present is eternity.
Yet not in torpor would I find,
Awe is the finest portion of mankind.
However scarce the world may make this sense -
In awe one feels profoundly the immense.
The word Allah in Arabic begins with a strong downward mark.
Light dawns, and any talk of proof
resembles a blind man’s cane at sunrise.
Remember the passage,
We are with you wherever you are.
Come back to that.
When did we ever leave it?
No matter we’re in a prison of forgetting
or enjoying the banquet of wisdom,
we are always inside presence.
Drunkenly asleep, tenderly awake, clouded with grief, laughing like lightening,
angry at war, quiet with gratitude, we are nothing
in this many-mooded world of weather
but a single brushstroke down,
speaking of presence.
O Great Life-giving Spirit
whose commanding voice I hear in the winds
and whose warm breath gives life to all in the world
Hear me
one six-billionth of the humans on the planet earth.
I am a natural part of the universe -
as natural and necessary as the rocks,
the trees, the birds and the mice
no more important – nor any less.
Let me walk in beauty
let my spirit see the dynamic spirit of life in all that exists
with no prejudice or malice toward any creation.
May I begin to remember who I am in the natural order of things
May I come to know what time it is
in my life and in all life.
Great Spirit of Love,
Connect my heart to my head
Make me wise
that I may understand the things you have taught all people.
in every heart close or far from my own.
Make me courageous when the cold winds of life fall upon me.
Give me strength and endurance for everything that is harsh
everything that hurts
everything that makes me squint and wince.
I seek strength not to be greater or lesser than my brother or sister
but to remove the tough and slimy obstacles to equality
that have made their home inside myself.
Prepare me to move through life ready to take what comes.
Comfort me and caress me when I am tired and cold.
Unfold me
the way your gentle breezes unfold the leaves on trees.
Oh Spirit of Creation
make me always ready to come to you with clean hands
and straight eyes
so when life fades as the fading sunset
my spirit may come to you without shame.
Let me remember every day that the moment will come
when my sun will go down
my river will join the vast ocean
and this rock which has bounced along so many bumps
will finally come to rest.
Give me a great sky for setting inot
a crystal-clean ocean for flowing into
and an unpolluted earth for my final resting place.
And when it is time to for me to join the earth again
may I come steadily and with glory.
Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows – then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.”
And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the fiorest, and the thunder and lightening proclaim the majesty of the sky, – then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion.”
And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.
Sing to Life, a new song!
Sing to Life, all Creation!
Sing of compassion and temper your deeds with kindness.
Sing to all the world and tell of the miracles that sustain us daily.
Yet Wonder is greater than praise, no words can capture it’s Essence.
All words are idols, all ideas snares -
Truth is beyond opinion,
Reality lies beyond thought’s last horizon.
Splendour and majesty leave us speechless.
Strength and beauty are touched not talked.
Let your worship be acts of beauty and holiness;
Let all the world stand together in awe.
Declare among the nations: “All is God!
Maintain the world with justice!”
The heavens rejoice and the earth is glad;
the seas roar their praise.
The fields exult; the forests sing.
For all the world is rooted in righteousness.
Subhuti was Buddha’s disciple. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity.
One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.
“We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness,” the gods whispered to him.
“But I have not spoken of emptiness,” said Subhuti.
“You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness,” responded the gods. “This is the true emptiness.” And blossoms showered upon Subhuti as rain.
Dear God.
There is so much danger in the world today.
There is so much insanity, so much darkness and fear.
Our human resources are not enough to counter the evil on our streets and in our minds.
Dear God,
Please send a miracle.
Into every country and every home, into every mind and every heart, may the power of Your spirit now trigger the light, activate our holiness, remind of of the truth within.
May a great love now encompass us, a deep peace give us solace.
For Lord, we live in fearful times, and we long for a new world.
We surrender what is, to the bonfire of Your genius.
Refine this metal.
Refashion our creations.
Remind us of eternal truths.
Return us to our native grace.
Take back what we have kept and thus condemned.
For You are mighty, Lord, and can do what we cannot.
May the world be reborn.
Help us forgive and leave the past behind us, the future to be directed by You.
Hallelujah, for You have the power.
Praise and thanksgiving, as You use it to save us, to heal us, to lift us from the past.
And we accept.
Thank You very much.
Amen.
“I want to know the mind of God,” Einstein said. “The rest are details.” What is the mind of God? Consciousness. What does it mean to know the mind of God? To be aware. What are the details? Your outer purpose, and whatever happens outwardly.
So while you are still waiting for something significant in your life, you may not realize that the most significant thing that can happen to a human being has already happened within you: the beginning of the separation process of thinking and awareness.
Many people who are going through the early stages of the awakening process are no longer certain what their outer purpose is. What drives the world no longer drives them. Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they may feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them. Some feel that they inhabit a no-man’s-land between two worlds. They are no longer run by the ego, yet the arising awareness has not yet become fully integrated into their lives. Inner and outer purpose have not merged.
Let’s be clear that few people are committed to God’s work. Of those who say they are, only a handful are actively demonstrating that commitment. Don’t expect the world to support your journey to authenticity. It will not!
The world supports only what it understands. And right now all it understands is duty and sacrifice. That will change in time. But don’t expect it too soon. Don’t go into your lifework with the hope of worldly support and approval.
Those who understand my teachings and try to live them are often treated with disdain by the world. Don’t be surprised if this happens to you. It is not a sign of divine disapproval that other men and women feel envious of or threatened by you.
If this happens, bear it patiently and send love and acceptance to others. When they see that you have their highest good at heart, they will soften to you. If you are committed to the journey, your patience will be rewarded. But, if you are seeking approval or recognition, you will not find it.
Pay no mind to the religion of abundance. That is no more true nor helpful than the religion of sacrifice. God does not necessarily reward spiritual work with material success. All rewards are spiritual. Happiness, joy, compassion, peace, sensitivity: these are the rewards for a life lived in integrity.
If material success does not come, it is not important. If it seems important, and resentment develops, then more ego simply needs to be stripped away. One must learn, once and for all, to stop measuring spiritual riches with a worldly yardstick.
If material success comes, it is often a test to see if one can transcend self-interest and greed. One who is unwilling to share his material wealth with others is not spiritual.
Material wealth, like all other gifts, is given that it may be shared with others. If you are holding onto God’s gift to you, you will not reap the reward of true prosperity, which is happiness and peace.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your lifework must bring in a large paycheck. If you believe this, and your work does not meet with worldly success, you will think you have chosen the wrong work. You will feel inadequate and unworthy. You will beat yourself up and abandon your gift.
On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you must be poor to serve God. A rich person can serve God as well as one of humble means if he is willing to share his riches. It matters not how much you hold in your hands, but whether your hands are extended outward to your brother or sister. Look from the inside out, look into your heart, at your intention, and you will see things as God sees them.
All men and women are entrusted with a gift. It does not matter how one person’s gift compares to that of another. What matters is that each person comes to embrace the gift and offer it to others.
Lord, make me an
instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
I am the child of the universe.
She puts her almighty protection around me.
I am free from accidents, death, sickness.
I am now shining with golden light from top to toe.
I am her chosen protected child, and she is my shield.
The winds shall aid my progress.
Water shall cleanse me from fear,
Fire will purify my doubts.
And the earth shall nourish me to health.
All is well, all is well, all is well.
Dear God,
I have been betrayed.
Take me away from this pain.
Let me not be tempted to wrong those who have
wronged me, or hate those who hate me.
But rather, dear God, please use Your power on
my behalf,
That through Your love I might invoke the light,
That through Your forgiveness I might speed
resurrection,
That through Your grace the spirit of the Lord
might enter and make all things right.
Let me not be tempted by darkness, even
though it is all around me.
Let me continue to see the good in others,
Even when they have turned the arrows of their
fear at me.
Be my shield, dear Lord.
And please be my protector.
Awaken in others the truth in their hearts.
And awaken the same in me.
I have faith in You, dear God to right all
wrongs, to make all things clear, to bring
light out of apparent darkness.
I hold to You.
I bless those who have not blessed me.
I forgive them and I forgive myself.
Or so do I wish to do.
I ask for Your help.
I pray for comfort.
Thank You very much.
Amen.
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both men and women will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another’s will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will equally share in the Earth’s abundance
And then we will all care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all will nourish the young
And then all will cherish life’s creatures
And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again
My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.
I add my breath to your breath
that our days may be long on the Earth,
That the days of our people may be long,
that we shall be as one person,
that we may finish our road together.
Why
Just ask the donkey in me
To speak to the donkey in you.
When I have so many other beautiful animals
And brilliant coloured birds inside
That are all longing to say something wonderful
And exciting to your heart?
Let’s open all the locked doors upon our eyes
That keep us from knowing the Intelligence
That begets love
And a more lively and satisfying conversation
With the Friend.
Let’s turn loose our golden falcons
So that they can meet in the sky
Where our spirits belong -
Necking like two
Hot kids.
Let’s hold hands and get drunk near the sun
And sing sweet songs to God
Until He joins us with a few notes
From his own sublime lute and drum.
If you have a better idea
Of how to pass a lonely night
After your glands may have performed
All their little magic
Then speak up sweethearts, speak up,
For Hafiz and all the world will listen.
Why just bring your donkey to me
Asking for stale hay
And a boring conference with the idiot
In regards to this precious matter -
Such a precious matter as love,
When I have so many other divine animals
And brilliant coloured birds inside
That are all longing
To so sweetly
Greet
You!
Father-Mother Earth, We pray thee at sunrise and sunset, that you may not abandon your sacred duty of sustaining our lives. The water that quenches our thirst, the air that we breathe, the trees that provide shade, and the animals that give us company, all make life real and creation complete. We the children of the Earth pray for wisdom, that we in turn may be good custodians of these precious gifts to us and our unborn generations. For if we fail to safeguard these resources, man’s moral standing as the most intelligent animal will be questionable. Furthermore, if we fail Nature, we shall have failed ourselves and the generations that come after us. And judgement will be very harsh on us.
I honour your gods
I drink at your well
I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place
I have no cherished outcome
I will not negotiate by withholding
I am not subject to disappointment
Understand that here in this moment, there is nothing wrong with you or your life. Everything is as it should be. Right now, in this moment, you are completely loved.
Are you in pain or conflict? Okay. But that does not mean that you are not completely loved. The idea that being in pain cuts you off from love is an idea that you have imposed on the situation. In truth, nothing cuts you off from love, save your own beliefs. And that is why you are in pain in the first place. You are in pain because you think and feel that you have been cut off from love.
You invert the truth of the situation. You made a cause an effect and effect a cause. That is your fear in action. Understand this so that you can see beyond it. Let your awareness deepen. See your whole ego drama for what it is.
The soft, glowing presence of planet Earth in the black abyss had a pristine clarity uncaptured by photographs. Images on film lack the subtle shades, the brightness, and the depth of the living sphere, which bulged out of the blackness as I sailed outward on Apollo 11… From the deep blue of the Mediterranean, all of Europe and Africa sprawled away in soft pastels, innocent of political boundaries. And from the surface of the moon, where I could cover with my thumb the site of all human history, the Earth seemed fragile as a Christmas ornament, drifting like a lost balloon on the black velvet of space. The image of a living Earth, capable of extinction, disarms illusions of individual or tribal isolation. We gained more than altitude in those 66 years from Kitty Hawk to the moon. Seeing Earth not as an extension of man, but man as an extension of Earth.”
Love brings us into the right relations with all persons and all things; love removes inharmony, perverted feelings. obstacles, barriers and all kinds of unnatural conditions, and produces that one perfect oneness through which the beautiful life can come forth. He who has placed himself in oneness with man can easily find his unity with God; but no one can find God who does not love man. When we love the whole race with the whole heart, then we can enter the presence of Him who is love.
What you call thinking is the voice of knowledge making up stories, telling you what you know, and trying to make sense out of everything you don’t know. The problem is that the voice makes you do many things that go against yourself.
The voice in your head is like a wild horse taking you wherever it wants to go. Once you tame the horse, you can ride the horse, and knowledge becomes a tool for communication that takes you where you want to go.
The voice of knowledge rules your life, and it is a tyrant. If you refuse to obey that voice, it becomes quieter and quieter, and speaks to you less and less until it no longer controls you. When the voice loses power over you, lies no longer rule your life, and you become authentic again.
My life is a jewel box of precious moments. When I count and encounter my blessings, I experience a sense of fullness, safety and satisfaction. I have enough. My heart is bountiful. My life is dowried by rich companions and rewarding experiences. As I experience the power and goodness of the universe, I experience my own power and goodness. I experience that I am enough – more than enough. I experience flow and expanded flow. Opening to receive this flow, I become larger and more magnificent. I am a part of a grand and glorious design. A grand and glorious design is part of me. I celebrate the grandeur of this fact with a humble heart.
Reverently touch green and dream visions of heroes and horses, gardens and gems. They’re moments only, but we remember. Hunters leaning to embrace on ice dreams of giant-tusked beasts, white-bright and formed like snowshoes of sinew and heart. Hummingbirds flying through forests where the sun’s a heart and mushrooms tower. We are with child crying, veiling joy’s spring.
Through reluctant day we make our way toward the impatient horizon, together walking. The leader will not lead, followers follow. In the antic-strewn field empty smiles mock uncertain sorrow. Companions play the fool and laugh and home is a dream that will not return. Here where memory darkly flows and children suffer, an ancient promise. Our compact’s golden but necessity binds us to this path.
But holy ground will shrink. Man will find his place. Heaven’s a blue arc. There’s a yellow sun. Breath’s the watery world turned sky.The bluebird’s song is the dancer’s delight. Repose is good for dreaming creation. Time enough to act: for faith in sunrise, seeds and branches, wounds and hospitals. “Now” is our most ancient dream: clear water, vast silence, beyond reverie’s frame. Oh for a following breeze…and faith. Beneath our dreaming prow hope slips like froth.
The desert’s silent as night. There’s a moon at which to point. Amongst the spinning worlds, we encounter an old question, consider the indigo sky, the light and the dark. May we hear the song of one hand clapping, step from world to world without a backward glance. May we have courage in the red-rimmed day and shelter for night-time dreaming. May the pails we have mistaken for helmets protect us all the days of our life.
The sage is illumined
by an inner light
glowing the awareness
of the Tao,
Knowing giving
is the same as receiving,
and truth teaching
is the job of living,
In raising collective consciousness
to new levels of conduct
where compassion is spread impartially,
all inclusively, spontaneously,
to cover all possible scenarios,
Realizing the bad man is but
the good man’s opportunity
to do love’s duty,
instructing while conveying respect,
without judging,
One thought,
one action
at a time,
making the universe
a better place.
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate
it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a
full-time informal school called, “life.”
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a
process of trial, error, and experimentation. The
”failed” experiments are as much a part of the
process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A
lesson will be presented to you in various forms
until you have learned it. When you have learned it,
you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of
life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re
alive, that means there are still lessons to be
learned.
6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When
your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply
obtain another “there” that will again look better
than “here.”
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You
cannot love or hate something about another person
unless it reflects to you something you love or hate
about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have
all the tools and resources you need. What you do
with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to
life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do
is look, listen, and trust.
“Self-awareness alone is not enough, for this
reason: There is an incessant urge back of
everything to create, to express life, to come to
the gratification of happiness, peace, joy, and
self-expression. Self- awareness is not enough. It
is merely clearing the track for right action.
Something has to be done with self-awareness. We are
not seeking a way to escape from life or living, for
this would be the exact opposite of the whole
purpose of existence, which is to express the self.
We have hands and feet as well as a mind, and,
unless the hands and feet are employed together with
all our other faculties, we shall not come into
complete self-expression.”
I call the high and light aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspects soul.
Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys.
Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow
there. The rivers flow like warm syrup. They
empty into huge oceans of soul.
Spirit is the land of high, white peaks and
glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.
Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances.
There is soul music, soul food, and soul love…
People need to climb the mountain not simply
because it is there but because the soulful
divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.
Spreading your arms wide
throw your body forward
prepare to soar into life,
the world is yours today,
so lay down your burdens,
pick up your joy,
and fly
through the door
of opportunity,
infinity. Your spirit
will live on,
long after your body’s gone.
Your energy will touch
so many, and your soul
hovering slightly overhead
will smile all the while.
Dive! they shouted,
the water’s fine!
take all the time you need,
but dive indeed,
into cool, clear pool
of your own ecstasy.
Breathe in the fresh
crisp, scent of love,
look at the moon above,
fall backwards into the crowd
and trust that we will catch you,
And rock you gently
to the ground.
Feel that sinking, excited feeling
in your belly, that roller coaster,
parachute sensation.
Laugh out loud,
be proud and touch
the sacred inside you.
Choose love each day
and don’t delay too long
your romance
with the planet
and its inhabitants.
You have only now
so show me how
very interested you are in living.
All you big things, bless the Lord.
Mount Kilimanjaro and Lake Victoria,
The Rift Valley and the Serengeti Plain,
Fat baobobs and shady mango trees,
All eucalyptus and tamarind trees,
Bless the Lord.
Praise and extol Him for ever and ever.
All you tiny things, bless the Lord.
Busy black ants and hopping fleas,
Wriggling tadpoles and mosquito larvae,
Flying locusts and water drops,
Pollen dust and tsetse flies,
Millet seeds and dried dagaa,
Bless the Lord.
Praise and extol Him for ever and ever.
This video was produced by Mipham who records albums, runs marathons and just happens to be a Tibetan Buddhist Lama. It’s worth watching for the whole 5½ minutes.
“You are afraid of poverty. You do not trust your supply to sustain itself. Looking to the future, you project lack, not abundance. You fear I am capricious, here today and gone tomorrow, leaving you alone and destitute. What terrible imaginings! How counter to my true nature.
"The Scream" painting by Edvard Munch 1893
I am abundance itself. It is my great joy to provide for you. Wherever you have need, I have supply. It is my nature to fulfil your wants. It is my nature to be steadfast and generous. I am the great provider. Come to me with your cup half empty and allow me to fill it. Allow me to help you husband your resources. I am an expansive energy. It is my delight to expand your life. Rely on me for the flow of goodness that comes to you. I am not merely abundant. I am infinite. You cannot exhaust my resources. You cannot require too much of me.
As you have need, so shall I give to you. It is not my desire for you to count pennies hoarding your resources against hard times. Instead, trust me to buffer hard times. Trust that my substantial flow is dependable and steady. Build your life on my outflow. What I have I give to you, and I have more than enough, always, to sustain your needs. Do not fear financial insecurity. Cherish what you hold and expect it to be increased as you care for it. My abundance is your steady source.”
Comments (0)
Aug 13 2010
Paul Reps
