Wahiduddin - Surrender

Surrender is a moment in time when,
standing on the bridge of daily chores
watching the flow of the Great River of Life,
one suddenly realizes the true source
of all that is beautiful, and that our true destiny
is to be willfully and joyfully engulfed by the Great River.
That is the moment of giving up selfishness,
clinging and stubborn independence.

And in that moment, there is no choice
but to leap from the bridge
and plunge headlong into the Great River,
willing to be carried
wherever It may choose.

 

https://wahiduddin.net/

 

Bei Kuan-tu - Blindness

art  Mahmoud Farshchian

 As a war-weary soul
pursues some form of finality,
the Light,
that lit the hearts of men
fell prey to sadistic shadows.
There, carnality found insanity it's logical end.
And the heart—
turning diabolical, devoid of heat
became a psychological wasteland
absent of color and life.

It was here, in hopeless ruin
that Wisdom ushered in,
like a seed penetrating an unyielding surface,
rising out of disarray.

Wise ones, sages of the Light,
appeared without announcement.
Scattered amongst men
they were quickly cast as strangers
misfits of the night.
Their jagged staffs, carved by paradox,
brought penetrating expression,
of word and deed.

Using riddles and simple parables,
they confounded the teachers of their day
whose hooded heads slithered
in eerie shadows,
filled with enmity & jealous sneers.

With eyes aglow
these wise ones walked in imponderable liberty.
Onlookers witnessed this freedom,
a childlike serenity
and the power of presence.
Less observant bystanders
kept their distance
meddling in their own madness.

With leathered hands and steely eyes
these lowly sages proclaimed the light of love.
Simple ones recognized their authenticity, 
but the righteous, blinded by delusion,
found only the allure of folly
spellbound in self-imposed cells.

It was here love placed it’s shield
against the stones of ignorance and rapacity
where illusions dissolved like wax to flame,
winter gave way to spring
and life rose from smoldering ash.

People leapt with joy,
hearts caught fire.
For these wise ones were the repairers of the breach
Beings of hope
for a humanity who’d lost its way.
For the Truth,
timeless and tender,
fractured even darkest of clouds
bringing forth incompressible light
stirring many to rise from slumber
where shadows were no more.

A new day had come…

© 2014 Bei Kuan-tu All Rights Reserved

 source http://www.yin4men.com/

Jeff Foster - There is nothing wrong with you

art Rassouli

 Friend, from the very beginning, you were not broken. You were not born into sin. You were not destined for the garbage heap.

There was never anything fundamentally missing from your life. You just thought that there was. Others tried to convince you that you were not good enough, because they too felt not good enough. In your innocence, and with no evidence to the contrary, you believed them. So you spent all those years trying to fix, purify and perfect yourself. You sought power, wealth, fame and even spiritual enlightenment to prove your worth as a 'me'. You played the Build-A-Better-Me game, comparing yourself to other versions of 'me', and always feeling inferior or superior, and it all became so exhausting, trying to reach those unreachable goals, trying to live up to some image that you didn't even fully believe in anyway, and you longed for the deep rest of yourself…

But you were always perfect, you see, from the very beginning. Perfect in your absolute imperfection.

Your imperfections, your quirks, your seeming flaws, your weirdnesses, your unique and irreplaceable flavours, were what made you so loveable, so human, so real, so relatable. Even in your glorious imperfection, you were always a perfect expression of life, a beloved child of the universe, a complete work of art, unique in all the world and deserving of all the riches of life.

It was never about being a perfect 'me'. It was always about being perfectly Here, perfectly yourself, in all your divine strangeness.

"Forget your perfect offering", sings Leonard Cohen. "There is a crack in everything. 

That's how the light gets in."

- Jeff Foster (From 'Falling In Love With Where You Are')

http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/ 

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Nisargadatta Maharaj - I Am quotes (pdf)

PDF  here

miriam louisa - Well-being & being well

There’s a mindset that runs a mythical story asserting that one’s “accomplishment” of awakening, and the attendant ease of well-being, is negated or compromised by any experience of being unwell. Beware of these myths!

Awakening is never “accomplished” or attained. It is simply a system-restore to the Natural State.

The Natural State – I call it wild wideawakeness – has no preference whatsoever for what might be being experienced by the body or the mind. It remains the essential experience, enabling and infusing all others. Its impartiality – and re-cognition of this – is what dissolves suffering and enables well-being – regardless of the passing play of one’s life.

Well-being does not depend upon being well.

It’s true that the more unshakeable one’s well-being, the more sensitive the organism becomes, bringing understanding and prompting changes that may lead to less physical and mental dysfunction. But well-being remains unaffected. Period.

I have been with frail, aged folk in heart-wrenching discomfort and pain and fully aware of the approach of their end days, who were aglow with well-being.

I have been with a close friend when she received a diagnosis that would strike terror into the heart of most people; she exuded such well-being that her surgeons and friends were at once amazed and relieved. (She has now fully recovered.)

I have been with myself during debilitating illness, pain, grief. At these times the litmus test for the extent of my freedom is a little inquiry: am I suffering?

And I have to say no; I can no longer find a solid-state ‘person’ here who could own a story about suffering.

If there is illness, no problem – I’ll seek help, I’ll take the medicine, but I won’t suffer.

Well-being is unaffected.
Well-being is the Natural State.
The Natural State is what one is.

Because the Natural State is ever-present and inescapable, accepting the entire array of experience without question, I’ve come to know it as Love. Love Divine.

Whatever you call it – God, Divine Presence, Love, Suchness, The Great Perfection, Beloved – you are naming yourself and the entirety of your experience.

Along with everyone and everything else…

http://echoesfromemptiness.com/ 

Meister Eckhart - Breaking-through

In that breaking-through, 

when I come to be free of my own will and of God's will 

and of all His works and of God Himself, 

then I am above all created things, and I am neither God nor creature, 

but I am what I was and what I shall remain, now and eternally.

... When I stood in my first cause, I 'then had no 'God,' and then I was my own cause. 

I wanted nothing, I longed for nothing, for I was empty Being 

and the only truth in which I rejoiced was in the knowledge of my Self. 

Then it was my Self I wanted and nothing else. 

What I wanted I was, and what I was I wanted 

and so I stood empty of God and every thing.

art  Harry Parke