Adyashanti - Naming the Unnamable

The great spiritual teacher Krishnamurti once said, 

“When you teach a child that a bird is named ‘bird,’ the child will never see the bird again.” 

What they’ll see is the word “bird.” 

That’s what they’ll see and feel, and when they look up in the sky 

and see that strange, winged being take flight, 

they’ll forget that what is actually there is a great mystery. 

They’ll forget that they really don’t know what it is. 

They’ll forget that the thing flying through the sky is the beyond all words, 

that it’s an expression of the immensity of life. 

It’s actually an extraordinary and wondrous thing that flies through the sky. 

But as soon as we name it, we think we know what it is. 

We see “bird,” and we almost discount it. 

A “bird,” “cat,” “dog,” “human,” “cup,” “chair,” “house,” “forest”

–all of these things have been given names, 

and all of these things lose some of their natural aliveness 

once we name them.

https://www.adyashanti.org/ 

Mark Nepo - Sitting on a bench

It was a sunny day
and I went to the park
and sat on a bench. I was
one of many coming out
from under our rocks
to warm and lengthen.

He was two benches down,
a gentle older man
staring off into the place
between things, beyond
any simple past, staring
into the beginning or the end,
it was hard to say.

When he came up
our eyes met
and he knew I’d seen him
journey there and back.

There was no point in looking away.
And so, he shuffled over
and sat beside me. The sun
moved behind the one cloud
and he finally said
in half a quiver, “How
can we go there together?”

I searched my small mind
for an answer. At this,
he looked away and the sun came out
and I realized this is what the lonely
sages of China were talking about,
what the moon has whispered
before turning full for centuries,
what dancers leap for, what violinists
dream after fevering their last note.

But I was awkward and unsure.
He stared, as if to search my will,
and after several minutes,
he just patted my knee
and left.

I watched him
darken and brighten in the sun,
and vowed to look
in the folds of every cry
for a way through,
and hope someday
to meet him there.

 http://marknepo.com/

Yolande Duran - ‘The Power of Silence’

"My experience is that Silence
is the power that makes us and everything else move.
It is pure Energy that cannot be comprehended,
felt or looked at.
It is that marvelous intensity of love that makes us love.
It is perfection.
It is the light that gives life to darkness.
It is the shapeless void,
the nothingness that contains it all.
It is the Stillness that contemplates movement;
the Witness that contemplates the world.
That is Silence for me.
That is what I am and what we all are.
It is the only existing Reality."

Silence heals PDF

What has changed in Yolande is not what she sees. Yolande still sees the contents of the world just like any other individual holding on to their belief of being a person. What has changed in Yolande is her point of view. Her look is no longer focused through her physical eyes or through the limited sense perception based on fear of pain and search for pleasure. Yolande looks out from eternity, free from time and space, from birth and death.

As the Presence – the Witness – that I am, I see that the world, and all that it contains, spinning around to the beat of day and night, night and day, and I see how Yolande’s body appears in it. I watch Yolande eating, working, and resting. I see her getting happy or sad. I see her thinking or feeling moved. I see her rising in the morning, sleeping and dreaming, but I don’t move – I am just that witness watching. My experience is that the wake, sleep and dream states are just part of a great dream – the dream of life.

Just as the different levels of sound are nothing but expressions of Silence, the multiple, more or less subtle manifestations of global Awareness spring from and subside in Nothingness.

I am pure Energy. I am both Silence and the dot of light that illumines movement. I don’t perceive through my sense organs – I am perception itself. I don’t look out through my eyes – I am that looking. I am the Witness, the light that brings life into all names and forms, but I am beyond seeing and witnessing.

Each one of us believes themselves to be an individual isolated in their physical body and limited by their mind. But the truth is that we are all part of one single act of looking. We are the audience in life’s movie theater, watching the film of our lives. However, simultaneously, we are also that light that makes it possible for the movie to be seen on the screen.

From that one View, from that Light that we all are, what I see is this supreme balance between dynamic energy and Silence happening in a natural way. When the situation calls for action, action itself takes place. It’s no use trying to control or direct our lives – life lives itself.

http://yolandeduran.com/en/ 

Marguerite Porete - He is, and I am not

 

Leonardo da Vinci  Annunciazione

Thought is no longer of worth to me,
nor work, nor speech.
Love draws me so high
(thought is no longer of worth to me)
with her divine gaze,
that I have no intent.
Thought is no longer of worth to me,
nor work nor speech.
Love has made me find by nobility
these verses of a song.
It is [of] the Deity pure,
about whom Reason knows not how to speak,
and of a Lover,
which I have without a mother,
who is the issue
of God the Father
and of God the Son also.
His name is Holy Spirit,
from whom I possess such joining in the he art,
that He causes joy to remain in me.
It is the peace of the nourishment
which the Lover gives in loving.
I wish to ask nothing of Him,
to do so would be too wretched of me.
Instead I owe Him total faith
in loving such a Lover.
O Lover of gentle nature,
you are to be much prized:
generous, courteous without measure,
sum of all goodness,
you do not will to do anything,
Lover, without my will.
and thus I must not hold silence
about your beauty and goodness.
Powerful you are for my sake, and wise;
such I cannot hide.
Ah, but to whom will I say it?
Seraphim know not how to speak of it

Lover, you have grasped me in your love,
to give me your great treasure,
that is, the gift of your own self,
which is divine goodness.
heart cannot express this,
but willing pure nothingness purifies [the heart],
which makes me climb so high,
by union in concordance,
which I ought never to reveal.

I used to be enclosed in the servitude of captivity,
When desire imprisoned me in the will of affection.
There the light of ardor from divine love found me,
Who quickly killed my desire, my will and affection,
which impeded in me the enterprise of the fullness of divine love.

Now has Divine Light delivered me from captivity,
and joined me by gentility to the divine will of Love,
there where the Trinity gives me the delight of His love.
This gift no human understands, As long as he serves any Virtue whatever,
or any feeling from nature, through practice of reason.
O my Lover, what will Beguines say and religious types,
when they hear the excellence of your divine song?
Beguines say I err, priests, clerics, and Preachers,
Augustinians, Carmelites, and the Friars Minor,
Because I wrote about the being of the one purified by love.
I do not make Reason safe for them, who makes them say this to me.
Desire, Will, and Fear surely take from them the understanding,
the out-flowing, and the union of the highest Light
of the ardor of divine love.
Truth declares to my heart
that I am loved by One alone,
and she says that it is without return
that He has given me His love.
This gift kills my thought
by the delight of His love,
which delight lifts me and transforms me throughout union
Into eternal joy of the being of divine Love.
And Divine Love tells me that she has entered within me,
a nd so she can do whatever she wills,
such strength she has given me,
from One Lover whom I possess in love
to whom I am betrothed,
who wills that He loves,
and for this I will love Him.
I have said that I will love Him.
I lie, for I am not.
it is He alone who loves me:
He is, and I am not;
and nothing more is necessary to me
than what he wills,
and that He is worthy.
He is fullness,
and by this am I impregnated.
This is the divine seed and Loyal Love.

The mirror of simple souls 

PDF 

Read more HERE 

Ilie Cioara -Self-knowing

art Autumn Skye Morrison

“Self-knowing” is based on the simplicity of listening and watching, both the outside world as well as the inner world – as reactions of the knowing mind. Finally, outer-inner become one single movement.

The flame of Attention is the instrument which accompanies them, as a lucid flash of pure Consciousness, characteristic of the reality of our being.

Through this wonderful contact between us and the flow of life, made directly and spontaneously, the knowing mind – as past and future – is completely excluded. Thinking becomes completely mute. The whole mind is in a state of complete passiveness, where we don’t expect anything, as a purpose or an ideal projection. The inner order, the psychological harmony from inside our being creates a natural wholeness – body and mind – an unchanging unity, able to have a direct relationship with any life phenomenon.

We can call such a meeting: the state of meditation. It can be realized in any life circumstances – when we are alone as well as, for instance, when we find ourselves among a noisy crowd.

The starting point for meditation is silence – it transcends the whole being into a timeless state.

The peace of the soul – without being desired or forced, as we have shown earlier – provides us with a new mind, integrating us into Eternity on present moments.

In this simple state of “being”, there is no center from which we look outwards and no boundaries which set our limits. We are the Infinite in constant movement, unfolding moment to moment.

Through these meetings with ourselves, the egotistic structure imprisoning us loses its resistance. Finally, a real crack appears in the shell of the “ego”, marking the phenomenon of liberation. Simultaneously with this fortunate event – which comes as an unexpected surprise, uncaused by desire or imagination – the fragmented energies of the “ego” start to leak and fade away.

From now on the whole being is led by Intelligence, acting through intuitive impulses.

We must mention that the phenomenon of liberation or Awakening from the tyranny of the personal self is irreversible. It sets us apart from the rest of our fellow beings, by giving us a new outlook on life and a new mentality.

Sooner or later, each inhabitant of this planet Earth will have to experience this fortunate phenomenon. It represents a turning point in the spiral of moral evolution reached by that particular individual.

From that moment on, his personal evolution reaches a faster and faster pace, with massive eliminations of fragmented energies, accumulated since ancient times during our association with matter.

One day, in a moment that no one can foretell, the pure Spark, absolute perfection, will return to the Source of the Sacred, from where it descended millions of years before in order to experience the duality with physical matter.

Before ending, we need to remind that any advice on spiritual evolution demands that we put it into practice. By practicing it correctly, it will create beneficial effects, both on ourselves as well as on the world in general.

The whole process of knowing starts and ends with the flash of the passing moment. Let us therefore give the moment all our respect, by encountering it with a humble mind. Only in this way it will reveal the beauty of life to us, as well as the mysteries of the Infinite.

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Excerpt from The Silence of the Mind

http://thesilencebook.blogspot.gr/