Thomas Merton - What the Contemplative has to offer

In humility is the greatest freedom.

As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart.

As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy,

because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist.

Thomas Merton

Nirmala - "Here all along"

I always thought you would come to me 

in the shape of a beautiful lover

I never dreamed you would steal my heart

with no shape at all

I always pretended I needed arms to hold me

and lips to kiss away my pain

yet I find fulfillment

in the embrace of empty space

I always wished you would speak to me

with words of tender sweetness

now I know you whisper silently

of your undying love

I always knew I would find you 

although I foolishly looked with my eyes

you were here all along

hiding just out of sight in my heart

                                                                   from " Gifts with no giver" 

Nirmala

Douglas Harding - Being Myself

Being Myself

In truth, only Nothing has room for Everything.

Only a Nothing that's awake to its nothingness is awake to its Allness.

So long as any part of me remains unsurrendered I shall never be Myself.

~ Douglas Harding ('Look For Yourself')

The Headless Way

Rumi - A Sufi was wandering the world

Jean Klein - You are really present only in your absence.

It is very difficult for us to represent space without a center and without a periphery. When you look out of the window here, you first see trees, bushes, meadows, stars, the moon. You look at objects in relation to other objects. Your looking is a kind of comparison. You know yourself only in objects because you relate with your personality which is an object too. So what is important for you is to experience the absence of all objects, including your center, your personality. Your presence is in the absence of all objects. In other words, you are really present only in your absence.

about Jean Klein

Nisargadatta Maharaj - realm of reality

David Whyte - The Opening of Eyes

The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds 

the passing light over the water

and I heard the voice of the world speak out,

I knew then, as I had before

life is no passing memory of what has been

nor the remaining pages in a great book

waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things

seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years

of secret conversing

speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert

fallen to his knees before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes

as if to enter heaven

and finding himself astonished,

opened at last,

fallen in love with solid ground.

David Whyte 

      from Songs for Coming Home 

      ©1984 Many Rivers Press

David Whyte beautiful poetry here

Jiddu Krishnamurti - What is religion