Saturday, February 14, 2015

Niyazi Misri - No trace of religion now remains




I thought that in this whole world
no beloved for me remained;
then I left myself.
Now no stranger in this world remains
- I would see in every object
a thorn but never a rose.
The universe became a rose garden;
not a single thorn remains.
Day and night my heart was moaning “Ahhh!”
… I don’t know how it happened
… no “Ahhh” in me remains.
Duality went.
Unity came.
I met with the Friend in private.
The multitude left.
The One came.
Only the One remains.
Religion, piety, custom, reputation
these used to matter greatly to me.
O Niyazi, what has happened to you?
No trace of religion now remains.





Friday, February 13, 2015


Helen Slade - Non Duality



Oneness, or not two.
Accept the am-ness of being.
Embrace the concept of everything.
Grasp the cosmic scale of infinity.
Sacrifice yourself.

Don’t do—be.
Listen to the truth spoken—
just once;
and acknowledge the oneness
from which all things emanate.
There is no separateness,
but a connectedness.

Not the power and glory
of religion,
but its mysticism,
and the awesome feeling
of surrender.
The mission comes not from you
but from the external.
The realization
that nothing lasts.

Reduce understanding
to acceptance.
The God essence
includes all things
and when it strikes you—
feel humility and grace.

Do not mention—I—
free yourself, surrender, let go.
Accept, believe,
function harmoniously—
on a deeper level than understanding.
Soften the mind and open the heart.
Foster a cosmic awareness
that sows and reaps itself
in infinite forms.
Adopt am-ness
in your stages of awareness.

Realize no beginning
and no ending.
What manifests itself
in infinite beauty?
Truth.

In ultimate silence
go from intellect to being.
Reach towards the eternal.
I am the way, the truth and the light.
Be still, and know that I am God.

~~~~~~~~~~~~






Thursday, February 12, 2015

Jeff Foster - An Intimacy of One



We are all alone
Unique expressions of life
Never-to-be-repeated waves of the ocean of consciousness
Intimate with our own first-hand experience
When we reject our aloneness
When we turn from our unique perspective
We feel lonely
Even in a crowd
Even at a party
Even when surrounded by a billion waves or more
But when we embrace our aloneness
When we cherish the closeness of our own breath
We no longer feel lonely
Or isolated, disconnected, separate
For we remember our oceanic nature 


Our undivided presence
I am what you are
You are what I am
And that is love
And that is inexplicable closeness
Even at a distance
And so we are alone, together
Together, alone
Waves of the same ocean
We move as One
One can be the loneliest number
Yet it can also be
the most liberating

Mooji - Divine play



In spiritual circles, I often hear that everything which arises is perfect as it is, and what it arises from—God, the Universe, Oneness or whatever name one would like to use—is utterly complete and whole. If this is so, then why this dream, this nightmare of duality? No one sane would create such a nightmare full of suffering…

At the moment you call it a nightmare, I call it a divine play. If perfection did not appear as imperfection, you would not have even the concept of perfection. If you did not know sorrow, you could not appreciate joy. If you did not know the sense of what is bad, you would not have the sense of what is good. If you did not have the sense of being a person, you would not have the ability to have relationship with any being. If you did not have the sense of ‘I’, you could not have the sense of ‘other’. If the perfect did not manifest as diversity, there could be no experience at all.

Surely, life is to taste these varied flavors and still remember who and what you are beyond the limited sense of personal identity. Do you know who you are, really? We seem to forget our original nature and embrace a misconception about our Self which brings us pain. This misconception also gives us the sense of autonomy, of privacy, of creative pride, but it seems to eclipse the intuitive recognition of our innate harmony and wholeness. And so we must go through this game of existence using all our powers to discover our true nature. In manifesting as human beings, consciousness continues to be creative through the human instrument.

Human beings are not the owners or controllers of consciousness; we are the expressions of consciousness. We are not merely the characters in existence; we are existence itself and the witness of the existence, but if we are deeply enmeshed in the identity of being a person, the play will seem heavier, less kind, more confused. This heaviness is also the expression of consciousness. It is not possible for the perfect to become imperfect. The only way it could become imperfect is to dream it. Perhaps this is why it is called awakening—it is awakening from the sleep and ignorance of the egoic identity. As we come back to our Self, we begin to appreciate the greatness of this play.

When you wake up you see that all of this is a dream, that you have always been only this wholeness. ‘Nightmare’ is simply part of the dream and is made mostly out of egoic thoughts: ‘I want this, I don’t want that, I, I, I, me, me, mine…’ Sometimes we think, ‘If it was up to me, I could make a better world.’ But if you had the choice, even the highest choice, whatever you will create is much less than life gives now. If you could choose, you would always choose chocolate flavored experiences, and you would not grow or evolve.

Sometimes we grow in a true way through challenging experiencing, through difficulties, through pain. Ultimately we aspire for freedom, for truth, not for delicious experiences which are only momentary. Even now your life could be full of gratitude that you don’t express. There are some people who, if they had your legs, your eyes, your health, they would be full of gratitude. They don’t have these and they are still full of gratitude. And to that extent they have a joy, they have a peace within themselves. Sometimes people with far less than the worst you have, show more gratitude than you who have far more than they could aspire for. If you want to come out of this nightmare, start to say thank you. Find things to say ‘thank you’ for. They are many, far more than to say ‘no thank you’ for.

All this manifestation is still the Garden of Eden, but we don’t see this because we see with eyes cultivated in imperfection, ignorance, selfishness. When we look with the eyes of the Self everything becomes divine. When one experiences the Truth, it’s not that this world is replaced with another. The same is here but the eyes have changed from eyes of a person to eyes of presence. They become complete again and see perfection even in the apparent imperfections of life.

There’s a saying, ‘I’m not seeing the world as it is; I am seeing the world as I am.’ Whatever you conceive yourself to be, you see the world through those spectacles. There is one Earth, but billions of worlds, because in each body, a private world is created out of identity, desire, conditioning, education, habit, fantasy, attachments, projections. All of this makes a unique world each with its own preferences, favorites, desires, bias.

Only one whose mind has been cleaned free from ego, sees things as they are. And as things truly are, there is a perfection. Only such a one could be said to be a truly universal, meaning: universal in understanding and perception. Everyone else belongs to a tribe—a tribe of thinking, of culture. Only the one who is empty of concepts or free from the hypnosis of personal identity and conditioning, is liberated, is the Buddha. Such a one is free from the illusion of managing existence. They have no strategies, nor any inherent fear. They move in natural harmony with the universal Being.

This is a mortal body, but the immortal and timeless Being is dwelling inside it for a while. Find out who you truly are while your body is still warm… and be happy.


Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Hakim Sanai - Mystic Chat




My dear!
You haven't the feet
for this path --
why struggle?
You've no idea where
the idol's to be found --
what's all this
mystic chat?
What can be done
with quarrelsome
fellow travelers,
boastful
marketplace
morons?
If you were really a lover
you'd see that faith and infidelity
are one...
Oh, what's the use?
nit-picking
about such things
is a hobby for
numb brains.
You are pure spirit
but imagine yourself a corpse!
pure water which thinks
it's the pot!
Everything you want
must be searched for --
except the Friend.
If you don't find Him
you'll never
be able
to start
to even
look.
Yes,
you can be sure:
You are not Him --
unless
you can remove yourself
from between
yourself
and Him --
in which case
you
are
Him.

~~~~

 English version by Peter Lamborn Wilson and Nasrollah Pourjavady Original Language Persian/Farsi



 
from The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry, Translated by Peter Lamborn Wilson / Translated by Nasrollah Pourjavady

Vicki Woodyard - Essential Silence




There is an essential silence that continually blesses us all. I feel it as I type words into the void. It unreels like an old movie, the kind  where no voice was able to be heard.  It breathes life into the words of this world. It animates everything. Trees know it and rocks absorb and emit it. Stars beam it down to us in the form of light.

How blessed we are to be that silence and to share it freely. We do that because it is  effortless. A strained silence is noisy whereas essential silence is a benediction on this weary world.

The silence seeps in around the cracks of suffering. Like light, it is who we are. As love, it transforms ugliness into grace and grace into miracle. I tend a piece of this silence. I am farming it so that flowers grow tall and the soul’s lushness is revealed petal by petal, word by word.

Silence is the essence of us all. The void from which we spring peppers the world with hallelujahs. It softens the suffering soul and revives the desert landscape. It also shows us the beauty of the desert and the dark valleys of loss. Lest I become overwrought, I shall stop on  a dime’s worth of words so you can feel like a millionaire within it all.




Monday, February 9, 2015

Lord Shiva - Breath



Breath flows in, breath flows out,
Traveling always the curving path of the Goddess.
Breath flows spontaneously of its own will.
Thus all breathing beings
Continually worship Her.
Be conscious of this unconscious prayer,
For She is the most holy place of pilgrimage.

She wishes for you to enter this temple,
Where each breath is adoration
Of the infinite for the incarnate form.

 Lord Shiva, Vijnanabhairava Tantra


Jackson Kiddard - Nothing in me but Love.



Today I affirm that there is nothing in me but love. 
This love comes from total acceptance of myself and the understanding that I am a perfectly imperfect human being. I will walk through today and allow myself to fully express my perfection. 
I realize that all my “faults” are actually the Universe’s unique way of expressing itself through me. 
I let go of self judgment and any projected judgments of others that I have chosen to believe and finally allow myself to just be what I truly am: infinite. 
As this is true for me, so it is true for all other beings on the planet. 
I will choose to accept everyone in my life with the same radical acceptance I have for myself 
knowing that we are all perfectly imperfect human beings simply doing the best we can. 
And so it is.


 I was a successful French entrepreneuer turned philosopher and Yogi. I died in 1901 in Amritsar, India.

Meister Eckhart - When I Was The Forest



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.


Meister Eckhart, When I Was The Forest, translated by Daniel Ladinsky