Saturday, June 4, 2016

Rumi - Two kinds of intelligence



I see so deeply within myself.
Not needing my eyes, I can see everything clearly.
Why would I want to bother my eyes again
Now that I see the world through His eyes?

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.


With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.


There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.


This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.


 


 Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.

Having died of self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.



Thursday, June 2, 2016

Rumi ♡ - Deep listening




What is deep listening?
Sema is a greeting from the secret ones
inside the heart, a letter.
.
The branches of your intelligence
grow new leaves in the wind of this listening.
.
The body reaches a peace.
Rooster sound comes,
reminding you of your love for dawn.
.
The reed flute and the singer's lips.
The knack of how spirit breathes into us
becomes as simple and ordinary as eating and drinking.
.
The dead rise with the pleasure of this listening.
If some cannot hear a trumpet melody,
sprinkle dirt on his head and declare him dead.
.
Listen and feel the beauty of your separation,
the unsayable absence.
.
There is a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it.
Give more of your life to this listening.
.
As brightness is to time, so you are 
to the one who talks to the deep ear in your chest.
.
I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears
when that one steps near and begins to speak.
.

~ Rumi
from The Big Red Book
translations by Coleman Barks
 
 
 

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Taya Malakian - Learning to fly



I am rising up
In this moment
Above all the sorrows and joys
Of my small world
Raising myself
Up
To a place above it all
Where I become
It All.
Suddenly there is no fear
Of the future
For I can see it all in this
Moment
And understand not how
but that the pieces of my life all fit together.
The past looses it’s grip on me
As well
As I can see what bridges need to be burned
so that there will be no going back.
I have no need for bridges as
I am learning to fly.
And as I take to the air
I can take with me the only real treasure I have found-
breath-
The fuel of my soul
Which keeps me aloft
Regardless of my earthly altitude.


 in the book Sutra Of Stars Available Here 


Sri Aurobindo - The Inconceivable




A STILLNESS absolute, incommunicable,
Meets the sheer self-discovery of the soul;
A wall of stillness shuts it from the world,
A gulf of stillness swallows up the sense
And makes unreal all that mind has known,
All that the laboring senses still would weave
Prolonging an imaged unreality.
Self’s vast spiritual silence occupies Space;
Only the Inconceivable is left,
Only the Nameless without space and time:
Abolished is the burdening need of life:
Thought falls from us, we cease from joy and grief;
The ego is dead; we are freed from being and care,
We have done with birth and death and work and fate.
O soul, it is too early to rejoice!
Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,
Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;
But where hast thou thrown Self’s mission and Self’s power?
On what dead bank on the Eternal’s road?
One was within thee who was self and world,
What hast thou done for his purpose in the stars?
Escape brings not the victory and the crown!
Something thou cam’st to do from the Unknown,
But nothing is finished and the world goes on
Because only half God’s cosmic work is done.
Only the everlasting No has neared
And stared into thy eyes and killed thy heart:
But where is the Lover’s everlasting Yes,
And immortality in the secret heart,
The voice that chants to the creator Fire,
The symboled OM, the great assenting Word,
The bridge between the rapture and the calm,
The passion and the beauty of the Bride,
The chamber where the glorious enemies kiss,
The smile that saves, the golden peak of things?
This too is Truth at the mystic fount of Life.

 Sri Aurobindo – Savitri







Monday, May 30, 2016

Chuck Surface - When


 When the perceiver vanishes,
The perceived vanishes, as well,
And yet, perceiving remains.

But… of what?

When the experiencer vanishes,
The experienced vanishes, as well,
And yet, Experiencing remains.

But… of what?

When all Duality vanishes,
Lover and Beloved vanish, as well,
And yet, Love remains.

Words, tragically inept to describe,
The Nature of that which we are,
When we are not.

What Unfathomable Mystery is this,
To cease, yet remain,
As Heaven.

What greater Mystery still,
To discover Heaven,
The Vanishing of all things...

Shining in the Experience of all things.

To feel one's self formless in form,
Alive in the Dream of space and time,
As.. Life Itself.

Existing... as Existence.




Sunday, May 29, 2016

Chuck Hillig - Imaginary ladder

Ladder of Divine Ascent Monastery of St Catherine Sinai 12th century


 In truth, there are no real “levels” to Consciousness. How could there be? Consciousness is One, simple, pure, whole, indivisible and absolutely seamless. It has no boundaries, no edges and no moving parts. Consciousness, however, can (and does) PRETEND to have a separated “mind” which can, then, PRETEND to have these different “levels” that it can, seemingly, “grow into.” But this persistent belief only feeds into the narrative that you’re currently trapped somewhere on a “spiritual hierarchy” and must, consequently, struggle hard to climb some imaginary ladder in order to, hopefully, attain these higher viewpoints. In the end, though, ALL of these “levels” are discovered to be as illusory as is the, apparently, “separated one” who’s trying so hard to achieve them. As Maharshi often said, “It’s all a great game of pretending. The biggest obstacle to awakening is getting past your belief that you’re not already awake.”