Saturday, April 4, 2015

Chuck Surface - Only Heaven remains




If you're thinking of all you've read,
The many Paths to God,
Or realization of the Self,
All the many fingers...

Pointing to Heaven...

Think until thinking does no good,
Until the tepid water of "knowledge",
Fails to satisfy the Heart's Desire,
For Divine Intoxication...

And the Thirst for Wine consumes you.

Then Feel...
Feel what it is,
That cannot be found by thought,
Cannot be found in any location...

Cannot, as an object, be described.

And along this Path of Feeling,
Never stop and declare, “This is it!”
Opening a stall in the spiritual marketplace,
And speaking with certitude and authority...

The Way, the "truth", and the Light.

Rather... wait…
Wait...
Until the one who would declare,
Vanishes, along with… Everything.

And only Heaven remains.

And when you and the world return,
Rest in the ever available Presence,
Of Formless Pure Being,
Shining from the Sun of your Heart...

Into your Manifest Experience.

Then... if you would do the world a favor,
Resist the temptation,
To pour the Inexpressible,
Into an existing mold...

Or a new one of your creating.

If you must speak of it,
Do so in Love and Compassion,
And, from a Vessel empty of yourself...

Let... Her... pour.





Friday, April 3, 2015

William Blake - The Divine Image


To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.




Rafael Stoneman - Heart of Advaita




Like the fangs of a wild beast
dug into the meat of prey
this mind has clutched onto
shadows of its own image

empty this vessel of mind
leaving only the urge to pray
for the love that is pure Heart
free of comparative forms

to spend a moment defending
what is True is untruth
for Truth is Self-evident

rather than argue for or against
the Reality that Is
simply be what is Real
and let It speak for Itself

draw not attention to this form
rather let all praise be for That
the One that we ecstatically call
Krishna, Allah, Jesus, or Buddha

let not a contest repeat for it is
no different than war
and the center of competition
is division, the cornerstone of duality

devotion is not a means to an end
for it is not a process of joining two
or remaining separate but rather
devotion is the fruit of non-duality
for where there is One without another
there is the sweet totality of Self-love

who else but the One that understands
and knows It’s own Absolute Oneness
could selflessly embrace and love
all that appears as Its own Self

this Supreme Devotion is not the
devotion of duality, where there is
a sense of a lover over here and the
Beloved over there, but rather the
non-dual devotion where only the
Beloved remains Alone, this is the
Heart of Advaita

it is folly to imagine that separation
can exist in the One. That One is All
and All is That One. to quibble about
It being personal or impersonal is the
mark of duality, the essence of ignorance

Krishna whispered in my innermost ear
just now: “Hey friend, I am not a person
and neither are you. All is pure consciousness.
And guess what? That means there is only
Krishna Consciousness, not a You and a Me.
Feel free to call it Christ Consciousness
or Shiva Shakti or Buddha Mind or Allah Awareness.
It makes no difference what you call It
because It is prior to all descriptions of It.
Now realize that this is your very own voice whispering
to you and enjoy the appearance of dualistic
relationships as the play of One consciousness.”




Thursday, April 2, 2015

Farid ud-Din Attar - A reason to live and love

art: DaniaArts

Whoever received an atom of this pain of Love
For him both yesterday and tomorrow become today

Everything we see is really One
The months, the years are all just a day.

A thousand centuries have passed us by
Yet this pain forever haunts us in the same way

Whoever embarks on the search for a friend
Must burn in this fire and wait;
But each day he burns, is his day to celebrate
I see only an atom of this pain
Whose sweet sting
Has reached the depth
Of everything

This pain is nothing else
That the one that stokes the fire of Love;
This is the pain of that secret
That offers us a reason to live and love



Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Jacopone da Todi - Made one with the Lord.



As air becomes the medium for light when the sun rises,
And as wax melts from the heat of fire,
So the soul drawn to that light is resplendent,
Feels self melt away,
Its will and actions no longer its own.
So clear is the imprint of God
That the soul, conquered, is conqueror;
Annihilated, it lives in triumph.

What happens to the drop of wine
That you pour into the sea?
Does it remain itself, unchanged?
It is as if it never existed.
So it is with the soul: Love drinks it in,
It is united with Truth,
Its old nature fades away,
It is no longer master of itself.

The soul wills and yet does not will:
Its will belongs to Another.
It has eyes only for this beauty;
It no longer seeks to possess, as was its wont --
It lacks the strength to possess such sweetness.
The base of this highest of peaks
Is founded on nichil,
Shaped nothingness, made one with the Lord.
English version by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes


Monday, March 30, 2015

Amrit Desai - I am That



"I have no plan for my life
I accept the plan life has for me.
I follow that plan and what it provides me moment to moment.

I am not the roles I play in following the plan.
I am the witness of all that I interact with in my life.
I was a child, an adult, and will soon be an old man.
I was a son, a brother, a huband, a father and a grandfather.
I was an artist, a businessman, a yogi, a guru and a friend.

I have been healthy, sick, successful, a failure, awake and asleep.
Behind all those changing experiences, I am the changeless consciousness that is constantly present.
I am that I am, in spite of the changes that "I am" experiences.
I am That.

My present is pregnant with all my past.
My future unfolds from the way I live my present.
My being manifests in the present.
I am present.
I am at home in the eternal now, living the plan life has for me.



— Amrit Desai (from In the Presence of a Master: Amrit Desai, by Christine (editor) Deslauriers)


Naomi Stone - Song of Creativity



the creative flow of energy
welling up
overflowing
from the heart
expressing
through caressing palms
flights of the soul
on wings of color
sweeping tender strokes
brushing by
touching
melting and mingling into music
sweet sighs scattering seeds
seeking a place to blossom
and become
an eternal spring


a radiant light in the womb
deep
in a mystical night
beyond sight
streaming into
an aching softness
a sacred
surrendering
melting
in a glowing cloud
of unknowing
swirling and flowing
as
revelations
of love
creating a universe
of a pure
unimaginable
beauty


art  Rassouli


Rumi - Sheba's Hesitation



Lovers of God, sometimes a door opens,
and a human being becomes a way
for grace to come through.

I see various herbs in the kitchen garden,
each with its own bed, garlic, capers, saffron,
and basil, each watered differently to help it mature.

We keep the delicate ones separate from the turnips,
but there's room for all in this unseen world, so vast
that the Arabian desert gets lost in it like a single hair

in the ocean. Imagine that you are Sheba
trying to decide whether to go to Solomon!
You're haggling about how much to pay

for shoeing a donkey, when you could be seated
with one who is always in union with God,
one who carries a beautiful garden inside himself.

You could be moving in a circuit without wing,
nourished without eating, sovereign without a throne.
No longer subject to fortune, you could be luck itself,

if you would rise from sleep,
leave the market arguing, and learn that
your own essence is your wealth.




— Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi


Nisargadatta Maharaj - Divine vision



The divine vision eliminates individuality; the manifest is clearly distinguished from the unmanifest. When the sense of individuality is replaced by that of impersonal consciousness the devotee knows that he is pure consciousness.
Manifestation is pure consciousness manifesting itself in all the different names and forms; the spiritually enlightened take part in it sportily, knowing that it is only the play of universal consciousness.
The name and form of the spiritually enlightened Saint experiences the pangs and sorrows of life, but not their sting. He is neither moved nor perturbed by the pleasures and pains, nor the profits and losses of the world.


 He is thus in a position to direct others. His behavior is guided exclusively by the sense of justice.
The temporal life must continue, with all its complex interactions, but the Saint is ever aware that it is only the pure consciousness that is expressing itself in different names and forms, and it continues to do so, in ever new forms. To him, the unbearable events of the world are just a tame and harmless affair; he remains unmoved in world-shaking events.


- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,
      'SELF KNOWLEDGE AND SELF REALISATION'

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Sadhguru - Different types of yoga



Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru answers a question on the different types of yoga and explains that any yoga that you do comes under four essential paths.


Questioner: Sadhguru, there are so many different types of yoga. How do I know which kind of yoga is best for me?

Sadhguru: Right now, the only things which are in your experience are your body, your mind, and your emotions. You know them to some extent, and you can infer that if these three things have to happen the way they are happening, there must be an energy that makes them happen. Without energy, all this cannot be happening. Some of you might have experienced it. Others can easily infer that for these three things to function, there must be an energy behind them. For example, a microphone amplifies a person’s voice. Even if you don’t know anything about the microphone, you can infer that there is a source that powers it.

4 types of yoga for 4 aspects

These are the only four realities in your life: body, mind, emotion, and energy. Whatever you wish to do with yourself, it must be on these four levels. Whatever you wish to do, you can only do it with your body, your mind, your emotions or your energy. If you use your emotions and try to reach the ultimate, we call this bhakti yoga. That means the path of devotion. If you use your intelligence and try to reach the ultimate, we call this gnana yoga. That means the path of intelligence. If you use your body, or physical action to reach the ultimate, we call this karma yoga. That means the path of action. If you transform your energies and try to reach the ultimate, we call this kriya yoga. That means internal action.

These are the only four ways you can get somewhere: either through karma, gnana, bhakti or kriya – body, mind, emotion, or energy. “No, no, I am on the path of faith. I don’t need to do anything else.” Is there anyone who is only head, no heart, hands and energy? Is there anyone who is only heart, not the other things? You are a combination of these four things. It is just that in one person the heart may be dominant, in another person the head may be dominant, in yet another person the hands may be dominant, but everybody is a combination of these four. So you need a combination of these four. It is just that, only if it is mixed in the right way for you, it works best for you. What we give for one person, if it is given to you, it may not work well for you because that person is so much heart and this much head. That is why on the spiritual path there is so much stress on a live Guru. He mixes the cocktail right for you, otherwise there is no punch.

Uniting the four types of yoga

It happened once. Four men were walking in the forest. The first was a gnana yogi, the second was a bhakti yogi, the third was a karma yogi, and the fourth was a kriya yogi.

Usually, these four people can never be together. The gnana yogi has total disdain for all other types of yoga. His is the yoga of intelligence, and normally, an intellectual has complete disdain for everyone else, particularly these bhakti types, who look upward and chant God’s name all the time. They look like a bunch of idiots to him.

But a bhakti yogi, a devotee, thinks all this gnana, karma and kriya yoga is a waste of time. He pities the others who don’t see that when God is here, all you need to do is hold His hand and walk. All this mind-splitting philosophy, this bone-bending yoga, is not needed; God is here, because God is everywhere.

Then there is the karma yogi, the man of action. He thinks all the other types of yogis, with their fancy philosophies, are just lazy.

But a kriya yogi is the most disdainful of all. He laughs at everyone. Don’t they know that all of existence is energy? If you don’t transform your energy, whether you long for God or you long for anything else, nothing is going to happen. There will be no transformation.

These four people customarily can’t get along. But today they happened to be walking together in the forest and a storm broke out. It grew very intense and began raining heavily. They started running, looking for shelter.

The bhakti yogi, the devotion man, said, “In this direction there is an ancient temple. Let’s go there.” He’s a devotee; he knows the geography of temples very well!

They all ran in that direction. They came to an ancient temple. All the walls had crumbled long ago; just the roof and four columns remained. They rushed into the temple; not out of love for God, but just to escape the rain.

There was a deity in the center. They ran towards it. The rain was lashing down from every direction. There was no other place to go, so they moved closer and closer. Finally, there was no alternative. They just hugged the deity and sat down.

The moment these four people hugged the idol, there was a huge fifth presence. Suddenly, God appeared.

In all their four minds the same question arose: Why now? They wondered, “We expounded so many philosophies, did so many poojas, served so many people, did so much body-breaking sadhana, but you didn’t come. Now when we’re just escaping the rain, you turn up. Why?”

God said, “At last you four idiots got together!”

If these dimensions don’t walk together, human beings will be one big mess. Right now, for most people, these dimensions are aligned in different directions. Your mind is thinking and feeling one way, your physical body is going another way, your energy another way. Yoga is simply the science of aligning these three dimensions.


Continue reading HERE

Rumi ♡ (from) Divan-I Kabir




I am like Majnun in my poor heart,
which is without limbs,
because I have no strength
to contest the love of God.
Every day and night I continue in my efforts
to free myself from the bounds of the chain of love;
a chain which keeps me imprisoned.
When the dream of the Beloved begins
I find myself in blood.
Because I am not fully conscious,
I am afraid in that I may paint Him
with the blood of my heart.
In fact, You, O Beloved, must ask the fairies;
they know how I have burned through the night.
Everyone has gone to sleep.
But I, the one who has given his heart to You,
do not know sleep like them.
Throughout the night, my eyes look at the sky,
counting the stars.
His love so profoundly took my sleep
that I do not really believe
it will ever come back.