Saturday, April 11, 2015

Kabir - His song within you



The shadows of evening grow deep
while love comes in to soothe every mind and body.
Look out toward the last glow of sunlight
and look in to an endless sky.
Drink the nectar from the petals of your heart
and let wave upon wave sweep through your body.
What glory in that ocean!
Listen!
The sound of conches!
The sound of bells!
Kabir says, "0 brother, listen!
The Lord of all plays His song within you!"



Adi Shankaracharya - I am Shiva! I am Shiva!




I AM neither the mind, the intellect, nor the silent voice within;
Neither the eyes, the ears, the nose, nor the mouth.
I am not water, fire, earth, nor ether
I am Consciousness and Bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I am not the life-force nor the vital airs;
Not the seven components nor the five sheaths.
I am not the tongue, hands, feet, nor organ of procreation
I am Consciousness and Bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Neither attachment nor aversion can touch me;
Neither greed, delusion, pride, nor jealousy are mine at all.
I am not duty, nor wealth, nor happiness
I am Consciousness and Bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I am not virtue nor vice; not pain nor pleasure;
I am neither temple nor holy word; not sacred fire nor the Vedas
I am Consciousness and Bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I have neither death, nor doubt, nor class distinction;
Neither father nor mother, nor any birth at all.
I am not the brother, the friend, the Master, nor the disciple
I am Consciousness and Bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I am not detachment nor salvation, nor anything reached by the senses;
I am beyond all thought and form.
I am everywhere, and nowhere at all
I am Consciousness and Bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva!
 
 
 
 
Shankara's life


Rumi ♡ - Free of "we" and "I"




O Thou Soul who art free of "we" and "I,"
0 Thou who art the subtle Essence of the souls of men and women,
When a man or woman unites with Thee, 
Thou art that One; 
when their individuality is obliterated, 
Thou alone art.

Thou didst contrive this "I" and this "we" 
only so that Thou mightest play the game of worship with Thyself,
So that all "Is" and "Thous" 
should become one Soul, 
immersed at last in the one Beloved.




Friday, April 10, 2015

Alan Watts - Hypnotized by the illusion of time




We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.




Jeff Foster - Love is stronger than death



Where does a loved one 'go' when they die?

Where does a wave 'go' when it crashes onto the shore?

Nowhere. No place.

The wave was never separate from the vastness of the ocean in the first place, so it cannot 'return' there. Water cannot leave water, nor return.

Nothing happens at all, from the perspective of our true nature.

Death is simply the deepest relaxation into unborn, undying presence.

Your loved one did not 'go' anywhere, friend. They simply rested even more deeply in their own nature, which is your nature, which is presence. Not two. Never two.

They are now where they always were - in your heart of hearts. And they can never leave. 

You will carry them.

Love is stronger than death.




Exploring the Nature of Consciousness



Thursday, April 9, 2015

Jiddu Krishnamurti - You are the world



"There is only reality, the supreme without a second. There is only one humanity and one righteousness, and the way to its realization does not lie through any other path, through any other person save through yourself. Seek your own deliverance, and then you will deliver the world from its confusion and conflict, its sorrow and antagonism. For you are the world, and your problem is the world's problem. If you are clinging to your beliefs, to your petty gods, to your nationality, to your possessions, to your leaders, then you will create a world of confusion and conflict, of sects, of racial and religious prejudices, of economic and ideological frontiers, ever leading to separation,breeding ill will, multiplying catastrophes."




John Newton - Amazing Grace



Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.

T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear. And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me. His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be, As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil, A life of joy and peace.

When we’ve been here ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun.
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’ve first begun.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.




Hafiz - The Stairway of Existence



We
Are not
In pursuit of formalities
Or fake religious laws,

For through the stairway of existence
We have come to God's door.

We are
People who need to love, because
Love is the soul's life,

Love is simply creation's greatest joy.

Through
The stairway of existence,
O, through the stairway of existence, Hafiz

Have
You now come,
Have we all now come to
The Beloved's door.



Frithjof Schuon - Heart's Wisdom



It was within yourself, what Heaven brought.
What comes from God is in your heart the wine
Of Bliss and Wisdom. It will ne'er be found
By those who do not stand on sacred ground.

The singing of the flute came from Above;
The flute was in my heart; the song was Love.
It was the Ocean's endless melody:
A song of God and of Eternity.




Rudyard Kipling - If



If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! 



Octavio Paz - Between going and staying



Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause. 




Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Louis Pasteur - Catching your mind...




We desperately grab onto opinions to define ourselves and give ourselves a false sense of identity, because our minds can’t really comprehend our own existence. But our mysterious existence is amazing, and it’s valuable to engage in consciousness-expanding activities to give us even a slither of it all. It’s what makes us truly, deeply, happy.

Reading, music, art, being in nature, meditation, as a few examples, aren’t always seen as particularly valuable things. It’s so easy to not to give any time to this kind of thing, but it’s so important because they are what make the difference between existing and living.

The feeling of losing yourself is something that doesn’t happen enough in our world. I think there are a lot of people who have no experience of it at all. There’s not much better, in my eyes, than feeling plugged into the world. It gives insight and fulfilment. It fills you with love for people and it makes your thoughts more efficient, creative, and intuitive.

I’ll do a circle and go back to my first point. Something that tends to trip me up is when I have an amazing experience and then my mind latches onto the thing I had the experience with. ‘I love that’ leads to defining myself again. And then the next time I listen to the track or whatever, I am having to assert my opinions of it. 'I love this song but why aren’t I having the amazing experience I did with it last time oh no.'

Catching your mind in the act can be a spiritual experience in itself. One example I give is when you are kind to somebody. Don’t gratify yourself by now thinking of yourself as a person who is kind. Instead, stay out of the box and keep on fighting the things your mind tries to cling to. When you are content with just being, you feel no need to give yourself labels. It is often a challenge to identify yourself with non-identity, but it is so very worth it. 
 




The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the hidden side of things. They bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language—the word ‘enthusiasm’—en theos—a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.
 





Charles Bukowski - Lost



they say that hell is crowded, yet,
when you’re in hell,
you always seem to be alone.
& you can’t tell anyone when you’re in hell
or they’ll think you’re crazy
& being crazy is being in hell
& being sane is hellish too.

those who escape hell, however,
never talk about it
& nothing much bothers them after that.
I mean, things like missing a meal,
going to jail, wrecking your car,
or even the idea of death itself.

when you ask them,
“how are things?”
they’ll always answer, “fine, just fine…”

once you’ve been to hell and back,
that’s enough
it’s the greatest satisfaction known to man.

once you’ve been to hell and back,
you don’t look behind you when the floor creaks
and the sun is always up at midnight
and things like the eyes of mice
or an abandoned tire in a vancant lot
can make you smile
once you’ve been to hell and back.



Huang-po - Natural Mind



People perform a vast number of complex practices
hoping to gain spiritual merit as countless as the grains of sand on the riverbed of the Ganges:
but you are essentially already perfect in every way.

Don’t try and augment perfection with meaningless practice.
If it’s the right occasion to perform them, let practices happen.

When the time has passed, let them stop.

If you are not absolutely sure that mind is the Buddha, and if you are attached to the ideas of winning merit from spiritual practices, then your thinking is misguided and not in harmony with the Way.

To practice complex spiritual practices is to progress step by step:
but the eternal Buddha is not a Buddha of progressive stages.
Just awaken to the one Mind,
and there is absolutely nothing to be attained.

This is the real Buddha.


source text  Here/

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi - He whom I love is I.



I sought solitude with my loved one,
Yet find there is no one here but myself.
And if there were a "someone else," then, truly,
I should not have attained her.

When I clutched at His skirt,
I found His hand in my sleeve.

I am the one I love;
He whom I love is I.
Two, yet residing in a single body.

If I have become the Beloved,
Who is the lover?
Beloved, Love and lover-three in one;
There is no place for union here,
So, what is this talk of "separation?"

What He takes,
He takes with His own hand from Himself;
What He gives,
He gives from Himself to Himself.

Hunter, prey, bait, and trap;
Candle, candlestick, flame, and moth;
Beloved, lover, soul, and soul's desire;
Inebriation, drinker, wine, and cup.
All is He!

Is it You or I this reality in the eye?
Beware, beware of the word, "two."

"I" and "You" have made of man a duality;
Without these words, You are I and I am You.






Sunday, April 5, 2015

Amata Natasha Goldie - It is you, my friend



It is you, my friend,
Whose presence in the divinity of awareness
Seeps into mine

It is you,
Whose words resonate in the joy of understanding
Carving into mine

It is you, my friend,
Whose soul opens in the vulnerability of truth
Meandering into mine

It is you,
Whose love enflames the tender core of living
To nestle within mine

© Amata Natasha Goldie 2009 – All rights reserved.




Dorothy Hunt - The Intimacy of Silence



Silence—may it not be a concept.  Make it palpable; feel its substance; experience its current and flow, its aliveness and living presence.  Notice how it permeates nature, how everything has its own quality of Silence.  The immense and immovable silence of high mountains, the utterly surrendered and peaceful silence of a sleeping infant, the dark silence of a forest, the silent depths of the ocean, the playful silence of a meandering brook, the towering silence of a gothic cathedral, the naked silence of a bare branch in winter, the vast, spreading silence of the sky.  In the body, feel the vertical depth of silence, and the way it bathes the body inside and out, connecting us to the silence of all things.  Pay attention to the felt-sense of silence, how it dissolves barriers, soothes, nurtures, simultaneously both relaxes and enlivens the body.



To experience Silence is to experience intimacy—with the world, and with whatever or whomever we are seeing or meeting experientially.  Such an intimate silence is very present to what is at hand.  Perceiving, thinking, and feeling are available but we feel more alert, more intimate, more present than our ordinary mode of experiencing.  This silence is not a spaced-out, trance-like, dimmed or static state of consciousness, but our natural state, totally open to and intimate with the moment as it is.

In our daily lives, we may realize how incessantly we use noise to distract us from silence—the noise of our inner talking, the stories we tell ourselves that keep emotions churning, the lies we live with that perpetuate fear, the ways we continually trade the alive silence of our unborn nature for conditioned thoughts and judgments.  Anxiety and fear may seem to guard the gate to Silence, but eventually these will give way when we are ready to enter the Unknown, when we are more interested in being than improving, when we prefer listening to knowing, when we are more intrigued by “now” than by “then” or “when.”


Soaking in silence is like being bathed from the inside out. Whatever needs attention, warmth, love, purification, liberation, is invited forth from the shadows to be seen, felt, drawn back into the wholeness that belongs to our Being.

As Silence drenches us inside and out, we experience its intimacy, freshness, and responsiveness.  We can sense the difference between words and actions that come directly from Silence and those that feel stale, packaged, conditioned. We feel the subtle currents of Silence more readily; and we begin to feel a tender love for life in all its distinct expressions–not because we should, or because we have become saints, but because we have been transformed by Silence.


Barbara Denempont - I Am in Love


I am mute.
Humbled by a blade of grass.
My eyes marvel at the soft pink,
Gracing the morning's clouds.
My breath surrenders to rhythm.

How can I shout "hallelujah" loud enough?
How can I bow deeply enough?
Simply said, I am in love.
Drowning in the grace of non-existence.

I cry and laugh
And shout and tremble
In the wake of this endlessness.
Joy floods my senses and washes away desire.

I yearn to expose this whole heart.
To speak truly of true love.
This sacred intimacy,
This exquisite tenderness,
Pure and uncompromised.
All embracing All
In unimaginable finality.

That which is ever-unspeakable
Speaks in colors and moments and mountains.
That which is ever-unthinkable
Gives rise to thoughts and rivers and heartbeats.
The known and the unknown.

That which is truly unseeable,
Reveals itself in nothing and No One.
And That which is absolutely unfeelable,
Voices the inexpressible depth of being
That repeatedly brings me to my knees.

And still there is more.
Beyond sublime experiences and revelations,
Deeper than any particularity,
There is more.

I am this blade of grass,
This cloud, this breath, this thought,
This bow, this desire, this grace,
This color, this moment, this mountain,
This absolute endlessness.

I am more and less.
No One and No thing.
I am This that is,
And I am yours.
Always.


The Gangaji Foundation.

source text One the magazine
I am mute.
Humbled by a blade of grass.
My eyes marvel at the soft pink,
Gracing the morning's clouds.
My breath surrenders to rhythm.
How can I shout "hallelujah" loud enough?
How can I bow deeply enough?
Simply said, I am in love.
Drowning in the grace of non-existence.
I cry and laugh
And shout and tremble
In the wake of this endlessness.
Joy floods my senses and washes away desire.
I yearn to expose this whole heart.
To speak truly of true love.
This sacred intimacy,
This exquisite tenderness,
Pure and uncompromised.
All embracing All
In unimaginable finality.
That which is ever-unspeakable
Speaks in colors and moments and mountains.
That which is ever-unthinkable
Gives rise to thoughts and rivers and heartbeats.
The known and the unknown.
That which is truly unseeable,
Reveals itself in nothing and No One.
And That which is absolutely unfeelable,
Voices the inexpressible depth of being
That repeatedly brings me to my knees.
And still there is more.
Beyond sublime experiences and revelations,
Deeper than any particularity,
There is more.
I am this blade of grass,
This cloud, this breath, this thought,
This bow, this desire, this grace,
This color, this moment, this mountain,
This absolute endlessness.
I am more and less.
No One and No thing.
I am This that is,
And I am yours.
Always.
- See more at: http://www.onethemagazine.com/awakened-hearts-poetry-10/#sthash.VW3F5eCe.dpuf