Rumi - A lover of God

Last night I learned how to be a lover of God:
To live in this world and call nothing my own.
I looked inward,
and the beauty of my own emptiness
filled me till dawn.
It enveloped me like a mine of rubies.
Its hue clothed me in red silk.
Within the cavern of my soul
I heard the voice of a lover crying,
“Drink now! Drink now!”
I took a sip and saw the vast ocean
wave upon wave caressed my soul.
The lovers of God dance around
And the circle of their steps
becomes a ring of fire round my neck.
Heaven calls me with its rain and thunder
a hundred thousand cries
yet I cannot hear....
All I hear is the Call of Lord, my Beloved.

art Rassouli 

Adyashanti - A script is just a script

Of course, the reason I ask you to inquire into what you are is because, at this moment, you are living the answer. Nothing that I would tell you is a substitute for that aliveness, for that living of the answer. That's why it has been said many times that only the people who don't know who they are, are the ones who are awake. Everyone else knows who he or she is. They are their script, whatever their script is, even if that script is, ''I'm not awake." Awakeness is to have no script, to know that ultimately a script is just a script, and a story is just a story.

There is a state in which the mind says, "I have no idea who I am," because it can't find the right script. Awakening is the realization that happens after the mind says, "I give up. I just have no idea who I am." When you start to understand this, you realize that if you put down your script of being someone listening, and if you put down your script of being someone saying something, and you just drop these roles for a moment, you are not who you have taken yourself to be. Coming to satsang is a very revolutionary thing for this idea of "me" to do, because the me thinks it's going to get its happiness through changing its script, its role, its identity—even if its identity is to have no identity. It will do whatever it takes to keep the ball called "me" rolling.

taken from:

 https://www.adyashanti.org/

 

Ashtavakra Gita - Infinite ocean of myself

It is in the infinite ocean of myself
that the imagination called the world takes place.
I am supremely peaceful and formless,
and as such I remain.

My true nature is not contained in objects,
nor does any object exist in it,
for it is infinite and spotless.
So it is unattached, desireless and at peace,
and as such I remain.

Truly I am but pure consciousness,
and the world is like a conjuror’s show,
so how could I imagine
there is anything here to take up or reject ?

 Ashtavakra Gita  PDF

Nirmala - The dreamer is gone

Where is absence of desire
once I dreamed there would only be bliss
now I am in awe of the ordinary
now I am content with longing or no longing
desires do not disturb the source of all desire
life and death carry on as they always have
and always will
only the dreamer is gone
behind the flow of imagination
beyond any effort to be still
dancing in the ebb and flow of attention
more present than the breath
I find the origins of my illusions
only the dreamer is gone
the dream never ends

http://endless-satsang.com/ 

 

Jeff Foster - Choice

 It's not that you have no choice.
Rather, the 'chooser' is the fiction.

It's not 'you' who chooses or doesn't choose.
It's life itself. You are inseparable from life itself.
Undivided from the totality.

A star explodes. The grass grows. A mother gives birth.
A war begins, ends, begins. A relationship breaks down.
People come together, fall apart. An old wound heals.
Hearts open, close, open.
Like breathing. Like the ocean tides.

We believe that we have choice,
or we believe that we don't.

The planets spin. The rain falls and stops falling.
Did we choose, or were we chosen?

Could it have been any different?
Can the rain fall backwards?
Can we un-say what we have said?
Can you un-read this poem?

Choice, no choice. Those thoughts fall away too.
Into silence. Into stillness.
Into the vastness of Being.
Into...

Beyond choice or lack of it, you are.

And you take the next step, or you do not.

Or you take the next step
of not knowing which next step
you will take.

And out of the not knowing,
the path becomes clear
if only
for a moment.

And then the Universe
begins again.

facebook

http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/

Viktor Frankl - the greatest secret

Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret
that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart:
The salvation of man is through love and in love.
I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still knows bliss,
be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action,
when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way
— an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation
of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words,
“The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”

http://www.viktorfrankl.org/e/lifeandwork.html

 

Jane Hirschfield - A blossoming without end

In this place where the hidden treasure is made manifest,
there is nowhere to go that is not also welcoming, also home;
yet even here, glimpsed as if from the corner of the eye,
another path leads on, further into the hidden—
for the sacred is not a destination, but an unfolding,
an unscrolling, a blossoming without end.

 

Franklin Merrell-Wolff - Compassion

art Yongsung Kim

O Compassion! More than the other loves of men, less than the High Indifference;
Calmly standing by and waiting; years, centuries, millennia;
Taking to Thyself the suffering of all; transforming toward Joy;
With Light restraining Darkness; with good, evil;
Refusing release while others are bound; melting differences;
Accepting impurity, giving purity,
Bound by no law, yet acquiescing in bondage;
Available for all as the light of the sun, yet forced on no man against his will;
Needing nought for Thyself, though giving to all need;
The Base of all hope for this humanity so low;
Pure Radiance Divine.
Sweet art Thou, unutterably sweet; melting within me all hardness;
Stirring inclusion of the low as the high; the evil as the good; the weak as the strong;
the unclean as the pure; the violent as the considerate; none left out;
Awaking new understanding and patience beyond Time;
Arousing forgetfulness of the petty in the grand sweep of the noble;
Equalizing regard, yet exalting true worth;
Reaching beyond all contradiction.
To Thee I sing, glorious Spirit; grandest God mankind can know.

of  Poetry from
Pathways Through to Space

PDF 

http://www.merrell-wolff.org/ 

 

D.H. Lawrence - Go deeper than love

Go deeper than love, for the soul has greater depths,
love is like the grass, but the heart is deep wild rock
molten, yet dense and permanent.
Go down to your deep old heart, and lose sight of yourself.
And lose sight of me, the me whom you turbulently loved.
Let us lose sight of ourselves, and break the mirrors.
For the fierce curve of our lives is moving again to the depths
out of sight, in the deep living heart.

Excerpted from Know Deeply, Know Thyself More Deeply

 

A Sufi Poem by Muhammad Shirin Maghrebi

 

Smash the jug;
you’re the water, not the jug.

Let go of yourself;
you are the ocean,
not the stream.

Take a journey beyond your self;
you will see Oneness.

Leave behind “I” and “you”;
you will see you are Him.

How long do you continue to travel around the world?
Start your journey from your self,
and travel within.

Though you have been a seeker for years,
you have never sought Him
in yourself.

Take a step beyond your self,
and you will find the crown of spiritual poverty
on your head.

How could you travel towards His District?
You are still a child chasing the bat and the ball.

Become polished like a mirror
to reflect the Friend;
don’t be a hypocrite with two sides,
like a piece of paper,

Oh Meghrebi, you will not gain the bounty of His union
until you let go of your self,
…completely.

 

Milarepa - Listen dear

1
listen dear
listen up rechungpa
yr old man milarepa here
I sleep sometimes
& sleeping. . . meditate
sleeping & sleeping
just that is meditation
the murky fog turns clear
there’s a way
& I’m the guy who knows how
others don’t
but if they did, I’d be happy

2.
old man milarepa here
I eat sometimes
& eating. . . meditate
eating & eating,
just that is meditation
food & drink a sacred feast
there’s a way
& I’m the guy who knows how
others don’t
but if they did, I’d be happy

3.
old man milarepa here
I move about sometimes
& moving. . . meditate
moving & moving
just that is meditation
moving & or sitting a sacred thing
there’s a way
& I’m the guy
who knows how
others don’t
but if they did, I’d be happy

4.
old man milarepa here
I work sometimes
& working. . . meditate
working & working
just that is meditation
this way of acting is truly freedom
there’s a way
& I’m the guy who knows how
others don’t
but if they did, I’d be happy

5.
my dear Rechung, practice like this
& you too Megom—wake up!
it’s time to make the soup!

source text here