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#4092 -
The Nonduality
Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Is the bowl empty
or is it filled with moonlight?
Oh, the midnight sun.
~Rashani
The Unbroken
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open
to the place inside
which is unbreakable
and whole,
while learning to sing.
~ Rashani ~
In Beyond Brokenness
Rashani
Réa shares the
“birth story” of her poem, “The Unbroken”
with an
silence she so relishes, trusts
and values. In the
writing of this poem’s birth has come the
tracing of
the poet’s pathless
journey through the winter
shadows of grief. “The Unbroken” pierced
through
lovingly through the unknown, into
the wholeness
that had been
within her all along. Rashani’s
glimpse of the possibility to navigate
through our
own inevitable endarkenments and disillusionments.
Beyond Brokenness shows us that such a possibility
exists. Rashani has gifted us once again
with the
comforting truth that our essential nature, no matter
how broken we may feel, is whole and unbreakable.
This book is
a chronicle and
testimony for our
capacity to enter
into the pain of
being human,
without resistance, and emerge, again and
again, into
a state of
nondual awareness. The
extremes of
heartbreak
and
profound spiritual
awakening
couldn’t be rendered more
starkly, yet they are so
close. Though the path of
being broken wide open
begins in our pain and anguish,
like all true paths, it
leads to the state of
embodied transcendence. That
the heart can
turn so quickly? This
is the real
miracle. Rashani’s poem is a wonder. In
the space of
just a few words, she takes our soul in her
hands and
shows how we can move from the
depths of despair
to a place of immutable wholeness.
This is a book from
the deep that ?nds light not by
seeking light, but by letting
go into darkness. It is a
book of miracles—not the
usual kind of miracles
like walking on water—but
the miracle of ?nding
beauty and love and transcendence in
the very heart
of life with all its
brokenness and loss. It’s a poem,
really, or a song or a sutra.
I love the way Rashani
weaves together the beautiful and the
ugly so that we
can see how
inseparable they are
and how she
conveys so much
so sparingly. This book
is a
beautiful, powerful, gorgeous song of life and death.
–JoanTollifson, author
of Bare-Bones Meditation
Beyond Brokenness
Available online at www.xlibris.com
Raised throughout childhood to appreciate
the perennial teachings at the core
of all spiritual traditions, Rashani has recorded fifteen
albums and created
more than 350 collages in celebration of the diversity of
world wisdom. She
began writing poetry at the age of seven and was published
four years later.
Raised with the motto “freedom is discipline,”
her childhood was an immersion
in artistic explorations and an ongoing inquiry into the
nature of beauty.
Since 1991, Rashani has lived simply and sustainably on the Big
Island of
Hawai‘i where she offers individual and group retreats
several times a year.
She also offers collage classes, retreats, satsangs,
individual sessions and
participatory concerts throughout the world. Rashani Réa
is a prolific artist
and musician, known worldwide for her music and greeting
cards and is a
deeply respected Dharma teacher. Her books include Welcome
to The Feast,
The Way Moonlight Touches, It's Time for a
Miracle, and The Unfurling of an
Artist.
http://www.booksbyrashani.
Visit her personal site at www.rashani.com.
