Re-Discovery - Merton & Easwaran

At the deepest level communication
is not communication but communion.
It is wordless, it is beyond words, and
it is beyond concept.

What we have to recover [re-discover] is
our original unity [within].

What we have to be is what we are...

Thomas Merton
from a speech he gave just before he died.

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Everything we have ever achieved we owe to the inexplicable
urge to reach beyond our grasp, [and] know the Unknown.
This urge is part of our evolutionary heritage, given to us for
the ultimate adventure: to discover who we are, what the
universe is, and what is the significance of the brief drama
of life and death we play out against the backdrop of
eternity.

Nothing can satisfy us but reunion with our real Self...

Eknath Easwaran

From the Introduction to The Unpanishads

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Cosmic Blanket" :)

 

Dare To Be Imperfect - Fred LaMotte

A life-coach told me,
"you're perfect right now."
So I went home and tried it,
but found it boring.

Who would be Me
if I didn't keep

[messing] things up
in my own peculiar way?
Blemishes delight me,
define me, jagged edges,
the letters of my true name.
Call me Broken Buddha,
the Half-Awake.
This universe just wouldn't
be the same without
my sins.
I am more priceless uncut,
like a ruby in the mud
that looks like a fallen berry.
What is the sign of progress?
I'm even less
perfect than I was
yesterday.
I dedicate this poem
to you, dear, who discovered
the hot mess of your body
on the kitchen floor
slobbering tears
into the linoleum
with Good Morning
America bleeding out
in the living room.
I honor the unconditional
catastrophe of your hair,
your crow's feet, the
droop of udder destruction,
the spreading warmth
of your wounded
mysterious smile
in the compost of uprooted
plans and scattered
possibilities,
when you finally realize
that no matter
how deeply you fall,
you are caught,
you have plunged
into the hug
that was always
there.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

Photo from the Internet

 

You Are A Marvel - Pablo Casals

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the
universe, a moment that will never be again.  And what do we
teach our children?  We teach them two and two make four,
and that Paris is the capital of France.  When will we also
teach them what they are?  We should say to each of them:
Do you know what you are?  You are a marvel.  You are
unique.  In all the years that have passed, there has never
been another child like you.  Your legs, your arms, your 
clever fingers, the way you move.  You may become a 
Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven.  You have the
capacity for anything.  Yes, you are a marvel.  And when you
grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you,
a marvel?  You must work, we must all work, to make the
world worthy of its children.

Pablo Casals

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo from the James Webb Space Telescope
University Today

 

Be What You Are - Hermann Hesse

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer,
then a tree has something to say to us:
Be still!  Be still!  Look at me!  Life is not easy,
life is not difficult.  Home is neither here nor there.
Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees
rustling in the wind at evening.  If one listens to them
silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel,
its meaning.  It is not so much a matter of escaping
from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so.
It is a longing for home, for new metaphors for life.
It leads home.  Every path leads homeward, every step
is birth, every step is death...

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy
before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts,
long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives
than ours.  They are wiser than we are, as long as we do
not listen to them.  But when we have learned how to
listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the
childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve incomparable
joy.  Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer
wants to be a tree.  He wants to be nothing except what
he is.  That is home.  That is happiness...

Hermann Hesse

from: Trees: Reflections and Poems

via - The Beauty We Love

~

To put it simply, let that mysterious grace move in your
spirit as it will and follow wherever it leads you.  Let it
be the active doer and you the passive receiver.  Do not
meddle with it, but let it be...  Your part is to be as wood
to a carpenter or a home to a dweller.  Remain blind
during this time cutting away all desire to know, for
knowledge is a hindrance here.  Be content to feel this
mysterious grace sweetly awaken in the depths of your
spirit.  Forget everything...

The Cloud of Unknowing

Waiting - Leza Lowitz

You keep waiting for something to happen,
the thing that lifts you out of yourself,

catapults you into doing all the things you've put off,
the great things you're meant to do in your life,

but somehow you never quite get to.
You keep waiting for the planets to shift

the new moon to bring news,
the universe to align, something to give.

Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry the dishes, the job -
it all stacks up while you keep hoping

for some miracle to blast down upon you,
scattering the piles to the winds.

Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life.
Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking.

But all the while, life goes on in its messy way.
And then you turn forty.  Or fifty.  Or sixty... [or 70] :)

and some part of you realizes you are not alone
and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom -

when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over,
it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched,

and when caterpillar turns to butterfly
if the pupa is brushed, it will die -

and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg
it's because the things is too small, too small,

and it needs to break out.
And midlife walks you into that wisdom

that this is what transformation looks like -
the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life,

the yearning and writhing and pushing,
until one day, one day

you emerge from the wreck
embracing both the immense dawn

and the dusk of the body,
glistening, beautiful

just as you are.

Leza Lowitz

Thank you to Ivan Granger at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Art by Barbara Stone

Guardians of Solitude - Rilke

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality
by tearing down all boundaries;
on the contrary,
a good marriage is one in which
each partner appoints the other
as guardian of his [her] solitude,
and thus they show each other
the greatest possible trust.

A merging of two people is an impossibility,
and where it seems to exist,
it is a hemming-in,
a mutual consent that robs
one party or both parties
of their fullest freedom and development.

But once the realization is accepted
that even between the closest people
infinite distances exist,
a marvelous living side-by-side
can grow up for them,
if they succeed in
loving the expanse between them,
which gives them the possibility
of always seeing each other
as a whole...

Rainer Maria Rilke
"Letter to a Young Poet"

~

Happy Birthday "B"!!
Always walking side-by-side with you  :)

Happy Love Day to all my blog readers!

~

Photo from the internet

Winter's Whimsies...

“Regard everything as transparent.
See through everything.

See that everything is in transition.

Liberate your concepts and beliefs.

Let go of the need for an “answer”,
a solution, a resolution…

Rest in the nature of Essence ~
The Primordial State of everything.

Be a child of fantasy.
Be curious instead of afraid…”


Quotes from Pema Chodron

When you can let yourself
really be
who and how
you are…
No one else
will have much
problem with it…

Practice letting yourself just BE!



Robyn Posin
For The Little Ones Inside

All life moves in cycles…

What has been
must often come apart
before what is to be
can come together…

Remember to honor
your courage
in the midst
of the
coming apart times.


Robyn Posin
For The Little Ones Inside

“What if we could really see the world
without a sense of separateness?

We must see what lies beyond
the perception of polarities…

Individuals are indivisible...
We are all “connected” through
our spacious Awareness…

Awareness is not about labeling different
”takes” on reality.
Awareness allows all ways of seeing to exist...
If you are rooted quietly in Awareness
you are fully aware of
the whole picture…”

Ram Dass
Be Love Now

“…..the deepest level of communication
is not communication, but communion.

It is wordless…

It is beyond words,
and it is beyond speech,
and it is beyond concept.

We discover we are already one.
But we imagine that we are not.

What we have to be
is what we already are…”


Thomas Merton

Heart Window Opening

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=BGODurRfVv4

We all need a little inspiration now and then,
and a reminder to just be who we are;

to know that we are loved the way we are...

Click on the link under the picture for a heart-opening video :)