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Issue
#2774, Saturday, March 31, 2007, Editor: Mark
POEM
The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,
shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning
in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather
plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,
lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct
and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,
to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --
so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;
and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.
- Mary Oliver, from Dream Work
You make a hundred resolutions to journey somewhere:
He draws you somewhere else.
He turns the horse's bridle in every direction
that the untrained horse may gain knowledge of the rider.
The clever horse is well-paced
because it knows a rider is mounted upon it.
He fixed your heart on a hundred passionate desires,
disappointed you, and then broke your heart.
Since He broke the wings of your first intention,
how do you doubt the existence of the Wing-breaker?
Since His ordainment snapped the cord of contrivance,
how can you remain blind to His Command?
- Rumi, Mathnawi III: 4456-4461, version by Camille and
Kabir Helminski, Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance - posted to
SufiMystic
Q: What is this big talk about elimination of the self? How can
the self eliminate itself? What kind of metaphysical acrobatics
can lead to the disappearance of the acrobat? In the end he will
reappear, mightily proud of his disappearing.
M: You need not chase the "I am" to kill it. You
cannot. All you need is a sincere longing for reality. We call it
atma-bhakti, the love of the Supreme: or moksha-sankalpa,
the determination to be free from the false. Without love, and
will inspired by love, nothing can be done. Merely talking about
Reality without doing anything about it is self-defeating. There
must be love in the relation between the person who says "I
am" and the observer of that "I am." As long as
the observer, the inner self, the 'higher' self, considers
himself apart from the observed, the 'lower' self, despises it
and condemns it, the situation is hopeless. It is only when the
observer (vyakta) accepts the person (vyakti) as a projection of
manifestation of himself, and, so to say, takes the self into the
Self, the duality of 'I' and 'this' goes and in the identity of
the outer and the inner the Supreme Reality manifests itself.
This union of the seer and the seen happens when the seer becomes
conscious of himself as the seer; he is not merely interested in
the seen, which he is anyhow, but also interested in being
interested, giving attention to attention, aware of being aware.
Affectionate awareness is the crucial factor that brings Reality
into focus.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That: Talks with Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Understand the obstructions you are putting in the way of love,
freedom, and happiness and they will drop. Turn on the light of
awareness and the darkness will disappear. Happiness is not
something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is
not something you have; love is something that has you.
- Anthony de Mello
speaking of love...
Once
I started
To speak
About love
Drawing out words
And images
Which, slow at first
Kept welling up
Flowing faster
Than I could draw -
And then they burst out
Gushing
Like a fountain.
So
I fell silent
Just watching
This endless spring
Unconcerned.
When thirsty,
I drink.
Tired, I doze off.
All is
As it should
Be.
- Yosy Flug, from Allspirit
Whenever Love speaks to Love, speaks of Love, whenever something
is spoken about Love that is true, there’s an igniting that
happens, this delirious wild party of celebration when it hears
itself praised or even spoken of. And gratitude, the speaking of
it, from it, brings it here to earth, brings it alive, in us,
with us, to us, builds it an altar here. This is what these hands
are for, these eyes are for, this heart is for--a perpetual
building of an altar for Love.
Give ownership of yourself over to Love. Let Love have you. Let
Love have everything. Let yourself sit tall in this room, filled
with your own beauty and grandeur. As though you are wearing the
crown of Love. I don't care what you were doing, thinking or
feeling ten minutes ago, in this moment you can enter the fire.
Everything is burned, and you emerge clean. You emerge as Love.
- Jeannie Zandi