Basava - The beam of a lute

Make of my body the beam of a lute
of my head the sounding gourd
of my nerves the strings
of my fingers the plucking rods.

Clutch me close
and play your thirty-two songs
O lord of the meeting rivers! 

Fakhruddin Iraqi - The tavern' s secrets

In the street of wineshops, when
     should I pray? since my
drunkenness and sobriety alike
     are all the same as prayer.
There, no one accepts the coin
     of righteousness, piety and self-denial:
The only good currency in that street
     is beggary.
None but the drunkard knows
     the tavern's secrets --
how could the sober unveil
     the mysteries of that street?
As soon as I met those
     cunning haunters of the wineshop
I realized that other work than theirs
     is nothing but a fable.
Do you want a guided tour
     of the Mecca of Love?
Come, sit in the tavern, for the trip
     to Arabia is long and tedious.
They refused me entrance at first
     at the wineshop
so I went to the monastery
     and found an open door -- but
I heard a voice from within the tavern
     crying, "'Iraqi!
Open the door for yourself, the gates
     of drunkenness are always agape!" 

Chuck Surface - The Great Mystery in a jar

Gautama experienced a profound shift,
In the nature of his Experience of Being,
And, responding to questions about it...

Gave birth to Buddhism.

But when Gautama died, in no time at all,
There arose debate and disagreement,
About this, that, and the other...

About "true" Buddhism...

And there arose, from one View, many.

So it seems, with all great teachings,
The Master's passing, and in no time at all,
Disagreement and debate...

And the arising, from one View, of many.

How vast and varied, expressions of "truth".
Each indicative of the utter futility,
Of describing the Indescribable...

Of capturing The Great Mystery in a jar.

All in the nature of things, it appears,
But oh, so very wearying,
Wearying enough to drive one...

Within.

Within... where long ago in distant lands,
In the experiences of those long dead,
All of this nonsense began...

Within.

Perhaps, instead of wandering without,
You and I will Venture Within,
And enjoining both Heart and Mind...

Find out what all this nonsense is about.

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

Susanne Marie - Dance of the beyond

As the personal sense of self unravels, oftentimes

 the feeling that emerges is one of extreme vulnerability. 

This is normal and actually a very good and healthy sign. 

The vulnerable self like a newborn hatchling lies intimately close to the heart of matter. 

It lies just a hair breaths away from nothingness. 

It teeters at the edge of unconsciousness all the while remaining awake 

in the most alive way possible. 

It doesn't quite have a sense of being a personal 'me' 

and it also isn't pure undifferentiated awareness. 

It skirts the edges of the two worlds; here and not here, you and not you. 

But without a doubt vulnerability exists because you are here. 

Without you there would be no feeling self, no awareness of this dance of the beyond 

revealing itself as a tree, as a bug, as a thought or sensation. 

This is the cutting edge of reality, this dance of you being you and you dissolving into the beyond. The Shiva Shakti dance of creation is playing itself out over and over in and through us.

Reality bites by Susanne Marie

http://transformationthroughpresence.org/

Amata Natasha Goldie - I Shall Find You There

art Rassouli

In the prism of an atom,

In the heart of the Beloved,

You shall find me there


In the eyes of wakefulness,

In the purity of the eternal,

You may follow my footsteps,

My longing, my voice,

My cry for the soul of life,

To sing of the beauty,

The transcendent, our heritage,


Of Love


Join me,

Come and seek this sacred longing,

This undeniable power,

That gives voice to soul,

And divinity to being


Let not the angst and ties of this reality bind you,

For you were born to be free


You are the rainbow,

In a butterfly’s’ wings,

And the ever-changing expanse,

Of the distant horizon


I see you in the omnipresence of infinity,

In the eyes of an owl,

In the journey of a river,

And the embrace of the wind


You dwell within everything


In the heart of the Beloved,

In the quivering of timelessness,

Deep within the ever-present pulse of love


I shall find you there


© Amata Natasha Goldie 2015 – All rights reserved.

Ashram of the Ethers 

The Golden Thread 

Love Consciousness - facebook 

Amata - facebook 

 

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj - Prior to Consciousness

Everyone has a sense of “I am,” a sense of existing, a sense of being conscious.  And we are taught from our earliest days that this “I am” is a body/mind, separate from all others, separate from life, separate from the world, separate from the Whole.  We are taught to think of the fluid functioning of the physical form and the continually changing thought-forms and feeling-forms that arise with perception, experience, memories, judgments and interpretations as “me.”  In other words, Consciousness seems to attach and identify its own sense of being with an “I-thought” called “me,” and generally, it is a “me” who needs to be different in one or many ways, depending on the conditioning of mind.

Our own innate consciousness is known, observable, but by what?  By something that cannot be looked upon as an object; that cannot be looked into by a mind; that cannot be thought, described, controlled, manipulated, or written about.  Some have called the source of body-mind consciousness Nondual or undivided Awareness, beyond being or non-being, beyond you or me, beyond sacred or profane.  But whatever name we give it, that is not it.  When we make a “something” that is “beyond” a something else, we have created division.  We have created another “object.” How can what we most deeply are be made into an object?  Can the Eye behold itself?  No, it only sees its reflection.

What happens when we stop trying to label ourselves? That which IS does not have a name.  That which recognizes and illuminates the stillness or the movement of mind does not need a name. We can be conscious of many things, but what is aware of consciousness?

“I am” is a portal; feeling is a portal; this moment’s experience is a portal.  Since the Unknown is never separate from its own dreaming, everything points; everything expresses; everything manifests the All in All.  How do you keep yourself separate?  You can’t really.  Only a thought creates an illusion of separation, and yet thoughts come and go as expressions of the Mystery, also.  Can we stop searching for a place to land, to name, to “know,” and just relax as we face into the Unknown?  The Unknown is not frightening; it is simply unknowable as an “object.”

First you identify with the body; then you identify with consciousness. Even consciousness is time-bound.  The original state is before consciousness came upon you.  
~~ The Absolute is prior to consciousness yet “I am” and the Absolute are not two.
  ~~ Whatever you have understood, you are not. . . .  
~~ You are prior to consciousness.

Excerpts from Nisargadatta, Prior to Consciousness

Eja - Anam Cara

Will you be my anam cara
Will you be my soul friend
I want the kind of love
That even death cannot end

I will be your anam cara
I will be your soul friend
I will give you the kind of love
That even death cannot end

Will you be my candle of faith
Will you be my eternal flame
I want the kind of love
That the poets divinely claim

I will be your candle of faith
I will be your eternal flame
I will give you the kind of love
That the poets divinely claim

Will you be my heart's home
Will you honor my sacred place
I want the kind of love
That lives beyond time and space

I will be your heart's home
I will honor your sacred place
I will give you the kind of love
That lives beyond time and space

Will you be my anam cara
Will you be my soul friend
I am your anam cara
And I am the love that death cannot end

 

Eja (Eamon Zicker) on  facebook

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee - No longer two

".....Our Beloved whom we have longed for is in our heart in such intimacy that there is no longer two, but ONE. We are in our Beloved in complete oneness. This is when the love affair becomes fulfilled, a fulfillment that is tangible, that lives inside of us with every breath- it is intimate, it is oneness and it is love.
The Beloved is our friend, our companion, our lover and always with us. It is a meeting, a merging of lovers such as we long for in sexual union, in which we forget our self completely; we die and are dissolve in love. And yet the intensity and the sweetness of this inner meeting make sexual intimacy seem shallow. It is not a meeting of bodies, but merging within the heart, within the substance of our own soul."

-Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee 
From: Fragments of A Love Story

more about Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee  here

The Greatest Healing ~ Mooji

Naomi Shihab Nye - So Much Happiness

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…..

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known. 

Guanyin of the Southern Sea,

Liao (907-1125) or Jin Dynasty(1115-1234) Chinese  Housed in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Kwan Yin - also Quan Yin, Guan Yin or Guanyin - is the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Her name in Chinese is roughly translated to One Who Hears the Cries of the World. She is the goddess of compassion, the embodiment of loving kindness.

Rabindranath Tagore - Losing myself, I find Him

I wonder if I know him
In whose speech is my voice,
In whose movement is my being,
Whose skill is in my lines,
Whose melody is in my songs
In joy and sorrow.
I thought he was chained within me,
Contained by tears and laughter,
Work and play.
I thought he was my very self
Coming to an end with my death.
Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him
In the sight and touch of my beloved?
This 'I' beyond self I found
On the shores of the shining sea.
Therefore I know
This'I' is not imprisoned within my bounds.
Losing myself, I find him
Beyond the borders of time and space.
Through the Ages
I come to know his Shining Self
In the Iffe of the seeker,
In the voice of the poet.
From the dark clouds pour the rains.
I sit and think:
Bearing so many forms, so many names,
I come down, crossing the threshold
Of countless births and deaths.
The Supreme undivided, complete in himself,
Embracing past and present,
Dwells in Man.
Within Him I shall find myself -
The 'I' that reaches everywhere.

Anandamayi Ma - Every form Thy Form indeed

Thou art Mother, Thou art Father,
Thou art Friend and Thou art Master,
Truly, Thou art all in all.
Every name is Thy Name,
Every quality Thy Quality,
Every form Thy Form indeed.

Rumi - How much more union can there be?

look at love...
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life

why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how unknown merges into the known

why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together

look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don't get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be?


–Rumi
Nader Khalili translation

Wu Hsin - Full with Emptiness

Whatever Happens
Whatever will happen will happen.
Just be clear: whatever happens doesn’t happen by you
as much as it happens through you.
Practices are ineffective in dissipating the illusion
because all practices take place within the illusion.
Thinking that you can remove your confusion
is symptomatic of the confusion.
Empty yourself of all ideas, all beliefs, and all concepts.
Then, make yourself full with emptiness and
see if there remains anything else to be done. 

John O'Donohue - Anam Cara

art Janet Balboa

“Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. 

Friendship is always an act of recognition. 

This metaphor of friendship can be grounded in the clay nature of the human body. 

When you find the person you love, an act of ancient recognition brings you together. 

It is as if millions of years before the silence of nature broke, your lover’s clay and your clay lay side by side. 

Then in the turning of the seasons, your one clay divided and separated. 

You began to rise as distinct clay forms, each housing a different individuality and destiny. 

Without even knowing it, your secret memory mourned your loss of each other. 

While your clay selves wandered for thousands of years through the universe, your longing for each other never faded. 

This metaphor helps to explain how in the moment of friendship two souls suddenly recognize each other. 

It could be a meeting on the street, or at a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is the flash of recognition and the embers of kinship glow. 

There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing.

 Love opens the door of ancient recognition. 

You enter. 

You come home to each other at last. 

As Euripides said, “Two friends, one soul.” 

John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom