Courtney Dukelow - Queen of Nature

 

I once caught a glimpse of a Light
more beautiful than a thousand Suns.
When She lifted Her veil,
I wept in the profound Sacredness of Her translucent Soul.
I was embraced by an astonishing compassion in which we are all held.
This is the Light of the World.
The dazzling Queen of Nature,
encompassing us in radiant Grace.
Each glimpse — renders my Soul speechless.
What remains is a burning prayer:
"May we once again return Life to the Sacred.
Remembering Her ancient ways which unite us all
in the absolute miracle of Love.
Here. Now.  This beautiful planet Earth." 
- See more at: http://www.onethemagazine.com/awakened-hearts-poetry-10/#sthash.N234MPTQ.6EZgEmW1.dpuf

I once caught a glimpse of a Light
more beautiful than a thousand Suns.
When She lifted Her veil,
I wept in the profound Sacredness
of Her translucent Soul.

I was embraced by an astonishing compassion
in which we are all held.
This is the Light of the World.
The dazzling Queen of Nature,
encompassing us in radiant Grace.

Each glimpse — renders my Soul speechless.
What remains is a burning prayer:

"May we once again return Life to the Sacred.
Remembering Her ancient ways which unite us all
in the absolute miracle of Love.

Here. Now.  This beautiful planet Earth." 

 
http://www.courtneydukelow.com/

Hafiz - Silence

A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself.

A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
In marvelous lute and drum.

Is not most talking
A crazed defense of a crumbling fort?

I thought we came here
To surrender in Silence,

To yield to Light and Happiness,

To Dance within
In celebration of Love's Victory!

 

Fred LaMotte - Pilgrimage

Make the pilgrimage
into your own heart.

Why travel to Mecca, Benares,
Jerusalem or Rome?

The motion of blossoming -
that golden swirl 

of Allah's most intimate gaze,
Christ's most healing gesture, 

Shyam's inebriating dance -
redounds with divine amazement 

in every atom or galaxy,
lavender frond or breath.

Is there a single infinitesimal
dot 

in all of space and time
that does not overflow 

with the nectar
you thirst for?

http://yourradiance.blogspot.gr/
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Chuck Surface - Is one “enlightened”...

Is one “enlightened”
If one has experienced the end of space, time, objects, and self,
And yet continued to exist as formless Pure Being?

Is one “enlightened”
If, upon returning from Heaven, one is Illumined with Bliss?

Is one “enlightened”
With the cessation of identification with the manifest form –
Body, mind, and the felt sensation of personal identity?

Is one “enlightened”When one feels one's self expanded as all that is?

Is one “enlightened”
When one feels one's Self to be That Great Mystery within which, from which, as which, all that is, arises?

Is one “enlightened”
With the cessation of identification even as That Great Mystery within which, from which, as which, all that is, arises?

Is one “enlightened”
When one feels one's self to be neither expanded as all that is,
Nor That Mystery within which, from which, as which, all that is, arises?

Is one “enlightened”
With the the advent of Fullness, Completion, and the cessation of grasping?

Is one “enlightened”
When one’s manifest form emanates Grace?

I would never use a word implying such lofty finality,
Or allow others to use it on my behalf.

For it seems folly at the least, and delusion at the worst,
To ever plant a flag, and declare the summit.

My experience in relationship to The Great Mystery,
Is one of...

Endless Enlightening.

 
www.GardenOfTheBeloved.com
www.facebook.com/InTheGardenOfTheBeloved

Shabistari - Atoms

Know the world from end to end is a mirror.
In each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water
from it will flow a hundred clear oceans.
If you look intently at each speck of dust
in it you will see a thousand beings.
A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant.
In name a drop of water resembles the Nile.
In the heart of a barley-corn is stored a hundred harvests.
Within a millet-seed a world exists.
In an insect’s wing is an ocean of life.
A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye.
The core in the center of the heart is small
yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there.

Rafael Stoneman - Empty Space

art scartissue69

 The voice in my head
has a lot to say about
the past and the future
the voice in my Heart
has nothing to say at all
In fact, there is no voice
Here
There is what many call love
But I have no name for
what IS
When I enter the Heart,
I disappear
I become nothing
Its as if the person falls asleep
And the Empty Space
Wakes Up

Wu Hsin - Drinking tea with a fork

You want to use your intellect to understand,
but this is like drinking tea with a fork.
You want to escape your prison,
but haven’t discerned that the thinking
you’re in prison is the prison.

You have failed to realize
that all your running after is,
in fact, running away.

Any reinforcement of the idea of a searching entity
is movement away from what you claim you want.

As a person, your existence is momentary.
In another moment, you might easily become
what amounts to another person.

Remove the attention from what is personal
and what reveals itself is The Source,
without which neither light nor darkness
could be cognized.

 

David Haas - In the silence

I will come to you in the silence,
I will lift you from all your fear.
You will hear my voice,
I claim you as my choice,
be still and know I am here.
I am hope for all who are hopeless,
I am eyes for all who long to see.
In the shadows of the night
I will be your light,
come and rest in me.

~ from "You Are Mine," Sheet Music by David Haas, arr. by Mark Hayes, 

Hope Publishing Company 

 

 

 

John O' Donohue - the silence of stone

art Martin Stranka

 

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.

~ from TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US 

 

 

 

Mahadevi - O Lord, White as Jasmine!

Locks of shining red hair, a crown of diamonds, 

small beautiful teeth and eyes in a laughing face 

that light up fourteen worlds

—I saw His glory, and seeing, I quell today the famine in my eyes.

I saw the haughty Master for whom men, all men, are but women, wives. 

I saw the Great One who plays at love with Shakti, original to the world. 

I saw His stance and began to live.

The bee that was engaged all along in drinking the nectar 

from the White Jasmine is consumed totally in that very process. 

Not even the Symbol remains!

You are the forest; You are all the great trees in the forest; 

You are bird and beast playing in and out of the trees. 

O Lord White as Jasmine filling and filled by all, 

why don’t You show me Your face?

When I didn’t know myself, where were You? 

Like the color in the gold, You were in me. 

I saw in You, Lord White as Jasmine, 

the paradox of Your being in me without showing a limb.

People, male and female, blush when a cloth covering their shame comes loose.
 When the Lord of lives drowned without a face in the world, 

how can you be modest? 

When all the world is the eye of the Lord, onlooking everywhere, 

what can you cover and conceal?

It was like a stream running into the dry bed of a lake, 

like rain pouring on plants parched to sticks. 

It was like this world’s pleasure and the way to the other, 

both walking towards me. 

Seeing the feet of the master, O Lord White as Jasmine, I was made worthwhile.

Listen, sister, listen. I had a dream. 

I saw rice, betel, palm leaf and coconut. 

I saw an ascetic come to beg, white teeth and small matted curls. 

I followed on his heels and held his hand, 

He who goes breaking all bounds and beyond. 

I saw the Lord, White as Jasmine, and woke wide open.

 Sunlight made visible the whole length of a sky, 

movement of wind, leaf, flower, all six colors on tree, bush and creeper: 

all this is the day’s worship. 

The light of moon, star and fire, lightnings and all things 

that go by the name of light are the night’s worship. 

Night and day in your worship. 

I forget myself, O Lord White as Jasmine.

excerpted from the book Speaking of Siva,  
translated by A. K. Ramanujan

Farid ud-Din Attar - Moths gathering

Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night
To learn the truth about the candle light,
And they decided one of them should go
To gather news of the elusive glow.
One flew till in the distance he discerned
A palace window where a candle burned —
And went no nearer: back again he flew
To tell the others what he thought he knew.
The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim,
Remarking: “He knows nothing of the flame.”
A moth more eager than the one before
Set out and passed beyond the palace door.
He hovered in the aura of the fire,
A trembling blur of timorous desire,
Then headed back to say how far he’d been,
And how much he had undergone and seen.
The mentor said: “You do not bear the signs
Of one who’s fathomed how the candle shines.”
Another moth flew out — his dizzy flight
Turned to an ardent wooing of the light;
He dipped and soared, and in his frenzied trance
Both self and fire were mingled by his dance —
The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head,
His being glowed a fierce translucent red;
And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze,
The moth’s form lost within the glowing rays,
He said: “He knows, he knows the truth we seek,
That hidden truth of which we cannot speak.”
To go beyond all knowledge is to find
That comprehension which eludes the mind,
And you can never gain the longed-for goal
Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul;
But should one part remain, a single hair
Will drag you back and plunge you in despair —
No creature’s self can be admitted here,
Where all identity must disappear.

— Farid ud-Din Attar – The Conference of Birds 

(transl. Afkham Darbandi, Dick Davis)

 

 

 

Wu Hsin - Priormost principle

The Master began:

The world springs into view simultaneously with the seer of the world.

There is no process of creation whereas there may be hypotheses of
process.

Dreams appear and disappear in like fashion.

The only distinction between the two is duration.

Recognizing the mind means that there is something apart from the mind
that has cognized it before, and now has re-cognized it.

The same applies to the body.

All phenomena are recognized by that priormost principle which cannot
be seen.

That is all for today.

 from Behind the mind

Short discourses of Wu Hsin

pdf download  HERE

Dogen Zenji - Enlightenment is like...

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.

The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, 

or even in one drop of water. 

Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water.

You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky.

The depth of the drop is the height of the moon.

Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, 

and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.

Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; 

those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.

Scott Kiloby - Unconditioned Presence

Perhaps you’ve lived your life not realizing that prior to all the conditioning and conditions, there is an unconditioned presence that is totally and vibrantly free and loving. Maybe you’ve been locked in roles, job titles, beliefs, religions, or thought-based identities. This unconditioned presence is what you are — right now — before you think about who or what you are.

Thought might respond, “There is nothing here.” The mind is so busy looking for something other than simple presence, so busy thinking about life and complicating it, that this unconditioned presence is missed.

Thought places conditions on your experience: “If my wife would stop nagging, I would be happy.” “If my boss would appreciate me more, I would be satisfied with this job.” Do you see the game the conditioned mind plays? Don’t judge these thoughts. To condemn thought is just more conditioned mind. Thought says, “If I could only quiet my conditioned mind, I would be at peace.”

Don’t make an enemy out of thought. Notice that the conditioned mind is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. It is thinking. Simply notice the space in which all of that is happening. Notice this unchanging presence that is always and already September here ‘under’ all that conditioning. This presence is unconditioned because it has no interest in placing conditions on your experience. It is naturally and effortlessly at one with what is — regardless of what the conditioned mind is doing.

~ From: Reflections of the One Life

http://kiloby.com/ 

Oriah Mountain Dreamer - "Writing"

It happens most frequently on ordinary days
Days when I leave dirty dishes in the sink
Ignore the unmade bed
Step over yesterday’s clothes on the floor
Because I cannot stop moving my pen on the page
Can barely keep up
Words spilling out from some secret source

And when I notice the sun headed for the western horizon
I pause and gasp a little, my breath catching in surprise
Sometimes I go down on my knees
Right there on the crumb-covered carpet
Offering my gritty gratitude
Bewildered by the magic
Flooded with awe

I never take it for granted-
Those moments when what I love carries me
I know it for the grace it is
I cannot make it happen
But I can let it take me when it comes
Give myself over without reservation
Let the unbridled heat ignite something raw and real 

http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/ 

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Robert Wolfe - Living Nonduality

These monographs are a selection concerning nondual realization. Some were written as a reply to letters from correspondents; others were written as a response to a specific inquiry, resulting from an in-person or telephone discussion, over the years since 1988.

The teachings of nonduality have begun to come of age in the West, recognized (at last) as the central essence of Zen, Dzochen, Tao, Vedanta, Sufism, and of Christians such as Meister Eckhart. In particular, the recorded teachings of sages (such as Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj) have paved the way for a contemporary generation of illuminating speakers and writers.

What all of these spiritual traditions have in common is a viewpoint which is different from mainstream Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

How is it different, and what are the differences? This viewpoint (generally referred to as “nonduality”) is explored in 238 brief and insightful monographs by Ojai, California author Robert Wolfe in Living Nonduality. The direct and immediate experience of universal “Oneness” is often called “self-realization” or “enlightenment”—thus the books subtitle, Enlightenment Teachings of Self-Realization.

PDF HERE

http://www.livingnonduality.org/home.htm 

Nisargadatta Maharaj - Ocean of Being

"Q: What is the purpose in reminding oneself all the time that one is the watcher?
M: The mind must learn that beyond the moving mind there is the background of awareness, which does not change. The mind must come to know the true self and respect it and cease covering it up, like the moon which obscures the sun during solar eclipse. Just realize that nothing observable, or experienceable is you, or binds you. Take no notice of what is not yourself.
Q: To do what you tell me I must be ceaselessly aware.
M: To be aware is to be awake. Unaware means asleep. You are aware anyhow, you need not try to be. What you need is to be aware of being aware. Be aware deliberately and consciously, broaden and deepen the field of awareness. You are always conscious of the mind, but you are not aware of yourself as being conscious.
Q: As I can make out, you give distinct meanings to the words ‘mind’, 'consciousness’, and 'awareness’.
M: Look at it this way. The mind produces thoughts ceaselessly, even when you do not look at them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you call it consciousness. This is your waking state—your consciousness shifts from sensation to sensation, from perception to perception, from idea to idea, in endless succession. Then comes awareness, the direct insight into the whole of consciousness, the totality of the mind. The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it: 'my thought’. All you are conscious of is your mind; awareness is the cognizance of consciousness as a whole.
Q: Everybody is conscious, but not everybody is aware.
M: Don’t say: 'everybody is conscious’. Say: 'there is consciousness’, in which everything appears and disappears. Our minds are just waves on the ocean of consciousness. As waves they come and go. As ocean they are infinite and eternal. Know yourself as the ocean of being, the womb of all existence. These are all metaphors of course; the reality is beyond description. You can know it only by being it."

 

 

Wu Hsin - The Doer

"Wu Hsin closes
In summary:
There is a single source,
The Source or
Another name of your choosing.
This world is a mere
Emanation from the Source,
The potential manifesting from
The pure Potentiality,
An appearance
Comprising tens of thousands of things.
Beings are but one of the
Tens of thousands of things.
Sentient and discriminating
Through whom
The Source functions.
This functioning,
Beings have named
Life.
Each being,
According to its nature
Performs its allotted tasks
During its time.
One’s nature is not chosen, controlled
Nor decided upon.
It is as it is intended to be.
One goes through
One’s life
Choosing between the dualities;
Good and bad
Happy and sad
Loving, hating
Interacting with a seeming other.
This is Life,
Alternating between two banks of
A flowing river.
Believing in their individuality,
Beings suffer as they strive to
Protect themselves from
A world that is in flux every moment.
How can they resist the changes of
The ever-changing?
It is a journey
Doomed to fail.
Embracing change is
Embracing What-is
In every moment.
It is saying “yes”
To Life,
Not Life as one would have it
But life as it is.
It is understanding that
There is no one
Doing anything
Other than
The Doer
And that each is an actor
On the stage.
The script is written
The sets arranged.
Watch the play,
Enjoy it.
Laugh, cry,
But never make the story
Your own."

 

PDF 
HERE

art Rassouli

Stewart Bitkoff - The Deep Stillness

art Rene Aigner

 

The deep stillness has returned.
Like a gentle wave making its way to shore;
Arriving on the early morning tide
With a sweet sea breeze
As traveling companion.


O Lord, long have I been lost
On this island of fear and desolation.
Now, you have come to rescue me.
Why did I doubt
That you would ever return?


With a loving embrace
Again, You lift me higher
Into that place
Where there is only You,
And all my fears fall away.

 http://www.stewartbitkoff.com/

Binavi Badakhshani - Mystic

art Mahmoud Farshchian

 A mystic is one
who passes away --

He abides in the essence
of that which is Real.

Such a person is pure,
clear wine without dregs.

Now whole, he displays
the Most Beautiful Names.

 English version by David and Sabrineh Fideler  
Original Language Persian/Farsi

Chuck Surface - “What” I Am...

art Mahmoud Farshchian

 

I never enquired, "Who am I?",
For I was quite familiar with "who",
The name, the image of the "person",
That... “felt sense”, and all that it entailed.

In my enquiry, it was not the "who",
But the "what" that intrigued me,
As I wondered what I was,
Before ever I’d been told, or came to know…

All that I had come to take the “who” to be.

“What” was I, before ever I knew I was human,
Man or woman, fat or thin, stupid or smart,
Desirable or not, in any of countless ways,
Before the long history of “person building”…

And the relentless concern for stature.

And so I turned Attention Inward, Within,
No longer thinking “about”,
No longer moving in concepts “of”,
And enquired with all my Heart…

In search of "what”, before "who" ever was…

Unable to turn my eyes upon myself,
To see the seer Within,
I saw, instead, that “what” I was,
Could never be found by sight...

Or by any sense revealed.

Except...
Except...
Except...
Except...

I could... Feel... myself.

I could Feel myself…
Not a thing alive, but simply,
Formless... Unlocatable…
Aliveness.

And so I Rested in the Feeling of “I”,
And as Resting deepened,
The Fragrance of Bliss began to arise,
Barely perceptible at first, soft…

Like Jasmine wafting on a gentle breeze.

And in time, “I” vanished… and yet remained,
As the Pure Essence of Jasmine, Myself,
Before space, before time, before objects ever were,
Before ever I was, as the subject-perceiver…

Before all sensations and perceptions, save one…

For Experience remained... without an experiencer,
For which there are no words adequate,
No concepts or metaphors sufficient,
No images or forms analogous…

But which the scriptures speak of as…

Unalloyed Ecstasy.
The Kingdom of Heaven.
Divine Union.
The Self…

The Great Mystery.

When the world returned,
The Heart was Blessed thereafter,
With the answer to my quest,
The Bliss of Heaven Shining...

Into the experience of manifest Being.

The mind, desperate to "know",
Remained then, and remains to this day,
Unable to comprehend or understand,
“What” it was that Is...

Before Creation appears.

“What” I Am...
Formless… and Manifest,
Nothing… and Everything,
Nowhere… and Everywhere…

Lover... and Beloved.

 www.GardenOfTheBeloved.com
www.facebook.com/InTheGardenOfTheBeloved.com

Rumi ♡ - Power of the Divine One

You are the sky and I am the earth
astonished at what you grow inside my heart.
Dry-lipped and thirsty, only the grace of your rain
can turn the earth into a rose garden.
By you it is pregnant and only you know its burden.
It twists, it turns and sighs until
it gives birth to divine longing.

The Beloved takes care of his lovers
and feeds them generously.
Sometimes he ties them with the cord of reason
and sometimes he sets them free to dance.
Look at the meadow bursting with flowers
unable to contain its joy.
Look at the power of the Divine One
turning senseless dust into a sublime painting!
All we see is a veil of this never setting Sun,
this ancient Sun that will one day silently reveal
everything that has been planted.

       -- Translation by Azima Melita Kolin
          and Maryam Mafi
          Rumi: Hidden Music
          HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001

 

           

Meister Eckhart - Empty Being

In that breaking-through, 

when I come to be free of my own will 

and of God's will and of all His works and of God Himself, 

then I am above all created things, 

and I am neither God nor creature, 

but I am what I was and what I shall remain, 

now and eternally.

... When I stood in my first cause, 

I 'then had no 'God,' and then I was my own cause. 

I wanted nothing, I longed for nothing, 

for I was empty Being and the only truth in which I rejoiced 

was in the knowledge of my Self. 

Then it was my Self I wanted and nothing else. 

What I wanted I was, and what I was I wanted 

and so I stood empty of God and every thing.