Paul Golman - ​Removing Your Self

Imagine now setting aside
everything you think is you.

See yourself from outside
yourself. Do you like

this self you see? Aha!
That is the pivotal question.

From this outer vantage
point, removed from thought,

judgment and self-deception,
the authentic truth of you,

at a depth unparalleled,
is revealed. You discover

that you are not at all
who you think you are.

No, indeed you are yet
more than you could have

ever imagined in wildest
dreams. Go ahead,

remove yourself and see
you are truly what you

have so long
been waiting for. 

https://www.ecstaticpoet.com/

Mary Oliver - When Death Comes

Mary Oliver, beloved poet and bard of the natural world, died on January 17 at home in Hobe Sound, Florida. 

She was 83.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

facebook

Lao Tzu - The ego says

The ego says
that the world is vast, and
that the particles which form it are tiny.
When tiny particles join, it says, the vast
world appears. When the vast world
disperses, it says, tiny particles
appear.

The ego
is entranced by
all these names and ideas,
but the subtle truth is that world and particle
are the same; neither one vast, neither one tiny. Every
thing is equal to every other thing. Names and
concepts only block your perception
of this Great Oneness. Therefore
it is wise to ignore
them.

Those
who live inside
their egos are continually bewildered:
they struggle frantically to know whether things
are large or small, whether or not there is a purpose
to joining or dispersing, whether the universe is blind and
mechanical or the divine creation of a conscious being.
In reality there are no grounds for having beliefs
or making comments about such things. Look
behind them instead, and you will discern
the deep, silent, complete truth
of the Tao. Embrace it, and
your bewilderment
vanishes. 

PDF

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi - What's all this noise about?

art Mahmood Farshchian

You are the world –
But how can You be seen?
Are you not the soul as well?
Yet how can You be hidden?
How can You be manifest?
For You are occult always.
Yet how can You be hidden
When You are eternally seen?
Hidden, manifest,
Both at once. . . .
You are not this, not that –
Yet both at once.
If You are Everything
Then who are all these people?
And if I am nothing

What's all this noise about?

~~~

Listen, riffraff,
Do you want to be All?
Then go,
Go and become Nothing...
Don't dream this thread
Is double-ply:
Root and branch
Are but One.
Look close: all is He –
But He is manifest through me.
All me, no doubt –
But through Him.

Rūmī - This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!

 Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.

 Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.

 Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.

 Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

 The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

 These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

 Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.