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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3316, Saturday, October 11, 2008, Editor: Mark
Kahlil Gibran on Love
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he
is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest
branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their
clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become
sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that ou may know the
secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's
pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass
out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of
your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart,"
but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it
finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your
desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the
night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wouned by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another
day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and
a song of praise upon your lips.
- posted to The_Now2
Being childlike is in essence the same as being full of Love. It
is a state of playful unity and harmony to the surroundings,
appreciating and welcoming the uniqueness of everyone in the
world. It is a state of continual transformation with no end in
sight. It is a state both of incredible fragility that comes from
vulnerability and of incredible power to affect, like what you
see in the eyes of a child. It is you.
- Matthew, excerpted from: That Childlike State, and Love at.
http://www.loving-awareness.org/2007/11/06/that-childlike-state-and-love/
and posted to The_Now2
If you know real love, you can't withhold it from anything or
anybody. When you behold the One in the other, the one Self in
the other - and not just one other, but all others - then you
start to know what love is.
- Adyashanti, posted to The_Now2
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.
Rumi, version by Coleman Barks
I have estimated the influence of Reason upon Love and found that
it is like that of a raindrop upon the ocean, which makes one
little mark upon the water's face and disappears.
- Hafiz