Jeff Foster - the One who survives

You are awake.

You feel infinite depths of loneliness and despair,
no longer your own, but all of humanity’s. 

You are now moved by the smallest of things. 

A word. A sound. A breath.

Your heart has cracked open and cannot be closed.

 

They may call you 'selfish'
but they have no idea
what the self actually is.
They have not yet plunged
into its fathomless depths.

 

Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom
to know ourselves
as the One who survives.

Sometimes it is the fall
that wakes us. 

 Both photos Enzo Perrazziello

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Rumi - Subtle degrees

subtle degrees
of domination and servitude
are what you know as love

but love is different
it arrives complete
just there
like the moon in the window

like the sun
of neither east nor west
nor of anyplace

when that sun arrives
east and west arrive

desire only that
of which you have no hope
seek only that
of which you have no clue

love is the sea of not-being
and there intellect drowns

this is not the Oxus River
or some little creek
this is the shoreless sea;
here swimming ends
always in drowning

a journey to the sea
is horses and fodder
and contrivance
but at land’s end
the footsteps vanish

you lift up your robe
so as not to wet the hem;
come! drown in this sea
a thousand times

the moon passes over the
ocean of non-being

droplets of spray tear loose
and fall back
on the cresting waves

a million galaxies
are a little scum
on that shoreless sea


-- Version by Daniel Liebert
(no ode number given)
“The Rumi Collection”
Threshold Books, 1998

Amata Natasha Goldie ~ Love’s Ecstacy ~

You are my core, my essence,
Yet I cannot hear your heartbeat,
You are my song, my hearts’ calling,
Yet, I cannot feel your soft breath,
You are my deepest yearning, my intoxication,
Yet, distance tortures us, into submission,

And now, Beloved,
We are together,
Our hands move as rapid whispers,
In the forbidden forest of Loves’ desire,

O divine ache,
You leave me unfeathered,
The memory of your scent,
Traces a path of tenderness to my soul,

O sweet lover,
Come to me, in pure nakedness,
And leave the world at my feet,
This longing can only be complete,
When our worlds meet,
As one virtuoso, one symphony

To sing Loves’ ecstasy

© Amata Natasha Goldie – All rights reserved

 

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Chuck Surface - What If

What if you knew little of the walled villages,
Of religion, of belief, of faith, and philosophy,
And then experienced, one day,
What seemed, when considered after the fact,
A loss of consciousness,
The vanishing of Everything from Awareness,
Including yourself as the one aware. and yet…

Awareness continued?

And what if the nature of that Awareness,
Pure and unsullied by space, time, and objects,
In which even you, the experiencer, had vanished,
Was so Ineffably Sublime that words did not exist,
To express its Ecstasy, its Rapture, its Perfection,
The Fulfillment of your Heart's Desire,
Fullness, Completion, Bliss, and…

Love?

And what if you found yourself, thereafter,
Imbued always with the touch of that Heaven,
Felt as a Radiance in the Locus of your Heart,
Sometimes the ambient background of experience,
Sometimes flooding the foreground, acutely,
Ever available to the mind's Attention,
Ever available to the Heart's Remembrance…

A Wellspring of Grace?

And what if you then entered the spiritual marketplace,
In search of someone, anyone, to explain the Mystery,
Wandering the rows of stalls, past the shouting sellers,
Each declaring the “Truth”, and decrying the others,
Until your eyes and ears could bear it no longer,
And your Heart, bruised, pleaded with you to leave,
The pedantry, the arguments, the profaning of Love…

And return to the Simple Experience?

The simple Experience, not yet debased by the mind,
Beyond knowledge and understanding,
Not poured into the mold of another's interpretation,
Not bound by prescription, proscription, and dogma,
Not requiring you to do this, and refrain from that,
Without cause, without condition, ever present,
A touch of Heaven ever Shining…

Grace, Unimaginable.

And what if, in time, that Presence in your Heart,
Like a Wellspring of Transmutation, within,
Diminished the terrible pain of your self,
Leaving intact all that you had taken yourself to be,
But stealing from your experience, the felt sense of “you”,
That very felt sense that had vanished that fateful day,
So long ago, in time, when time and all things Vanished…

And only The Mystery remained?

And what if, now free of the need for knowledge,
You returned to the spiritual marketplace,
Moved now only by Curiosity, Wonder, and Love,
And found yourself Dancing through the stalls,
Stealing this jewel from here, that jewel from there,
Until, your satchel full to overflowing,
You Blessed them all, and returned again…

To the Simple Experience?

And what if you then were moved by Delight,
To declare in poetic verse,
“Ah… this Most Beautiful Presence,
This Shining Radiance within,
This Exquisite Rapture,
This Fulfillment of all desire,
The Divine Thief that has stolen ‘me’…

I will call it God,
I will call it Brahman,
I will call it The Beloved,
I will call it The Holy Spirit,
I will call it Emptiness,
I will call it The Inner Light,
I will call it The Unnameable…

I will call it Love.”

And what if you were told,
To your surprise and amazement,
By some among the Friends you made,
That the ember in their Hearts,
Ignited, to their Delight and Inspiration,
In moments of Relationship with you,
Shining ever more Brightly, over time…

Until they found themselves, in time,
Imbued always with the touch of that Heaven,
Felt as a Radiance in the Locus of their Heart,
Sometimes the ambient background of experience,
Sometimes flooding the foreground, acutely,
Ever available to their mind's Attention,
Ever available to their Heart's Remembrance?

I will call that… a reason to live.

And what if these Illumined Friends were told,
To their surprise and amazement,
By some among the Friends they made,
That the ember in their Hearts,
Ignited, to their Delight and Inspiration,
In moments of Relationship with them,
Shining ever more Brightly, over time…

Until they found themselves, in time,
Imbued always with the touch of that Heaven,
Felt as a Radiance in the Locus of your Heart,
Sometimes the ambient background of experience,
Sometimes flooding the foreground, acutely,
Ever available to their mind's Attention,
Ever available to their Heart's Remembrance?

I will call that… the Transmission of The Flame.

And what if you found, in the course of your life,
No finality in the milestones come to along The Way,
No flag to be planted, no summit declared,
And that however Profound and Transmuting,
More should not be made of them,
Than should be made,
Each being merely a juncture arrived at…

On a Journey of…
Endless Enlightening.

 

 

 

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Hafiz - Now is the time (2)

art Mahmood Farshchian

 Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

  -Hafiz, from The Gift by Daniel Ladinsky