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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3163, Sunday, May 11, 2008, Editor: Mark
Nature does not know or care about the world or man-made
opposites.
Nature is perfectly satisfied and happy to produce a world of
infinite, rapturous variety that knows nothing about pretty or
ugly,
ethical or unethical. Nature never apologizes for anything, nor
does
it see or acknowledge anything of man's misconceived errors of
opposition.
-Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
God-communication is the best communication that true
spiritualism can teach us.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
The most profound inspiration comes always from the divine mind,
and
to God alone the credit is due. Even if an inspiration comes
through
the mind of a person living on earth or through a soul who has
passed
on to the other side, it still has come from God, for all
knowledge
and wisdom belong to God.
It is a fault on the part of mankind to attribute inspiration to
some
limited being who is nothing but a shadow covering God. When a
person
believes that an old Egyptian comes from the other side to
inspire
him or that an American Indian comes to lead him on his way, he
builds a wall between himself and God. Instead of receiving
directly
from the source that is perfect and all sufficient, he is
picturin
his limited idea, making it a screen between himself and God.
Is not God enough for our souls, and is He not sufficient to
inspire
us and to illuminate our wills and guide our souls? Is he any
less of
a friend here or in the spirit life? He is the great well-wisher.
In
Him mercy is complete. He is the Soul of all souls. When we
devote
ourselves to the thought of Him, all illumination and revelation
are
ours. God-communication is the best communication that true
spiritualism can teach us.
Thus the ultimate purpose, for which the soul is seeking every
moment
of our life, is our spiritual purpose. And you may ask how to
attain
to that purpose. The answer is that what you are seeking for is
within yourself. Instead of looking outside, you must look
within.
The way to proceed to accomplish this is for some moments to
suspend
all your senses such as sight, hearing, smell, touch, in order to
put
a screen before the outside life. And by concentration and by
developing that meditative quality you will sooner or later get
in
touch with the inner Self which is more communicative, which
speaks
more loudly than all the noises of this world. And this gives
joy,
creates peace, and produces in you a self-sufficient spirit, a
spirit
of independence, of true liberty. The moment you get in touch
with
your Self you are in communion with God. It is in this way, if
God-
communication is sought rightly, that spirituality is attained.
- posted to SufiMystic
Two Kinds of Deliverance
1
Last night the geese came back,
slanting fast
from the blossom of the rising moon down
to the black pond. A muskrat
swimming in the twilight saw them and hurried
to the secret lodges to tell everyone
spring had come.
And so it had.
By morning when I went out
the last of the ice had disappeared, blackbirds
sang on the shores. Every year
the geese, returning,
do this, I don't
know how.
2
The curtains opened and there was
an old man in a headdress of feathers,
leather leggings and a vest made
from the skin of some animal. He danced
in a kind of surly rapture, and the trees
in the fields far away
began to mutter and suck up their long roots.
Slowly they advanced until they stood
pressed to the schoolhouse windows.
3
I don't know
lots of things but I know this: next year
when spring
flows over the starting point I'll think I'm going to
drown in the shimmering miles of it and then
one or two birds will fly me over
the threshold.
As for the pain
of others, of course it tries to be
abstract, but then
there flares up out of a vanished wilderness, like fire,
still blistering: the wrinkled face
of an old Chippewa
smiling, hating us,
dancing for his life
. Mary Oliver
From Unseen Rain
Don't let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night. Before death
closes your mouth.
There's no love in me without your being,
no breath without that. I once thought
I could give up this longing, then though again,
But I couldn't continue being human.
- Rumi
Two Kinds of Intelligence
There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world
. You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
Rumi, Mathnawi IV:1960-1968
Drop asking "why" and simply become totally
involved in the absolutely wonderful miracle of
life just as it is, right here, right now. Can you
not see that whatever has just happened for you
at this moment has never happened before and
will never happen again? It is totally unique and
fresh and innocent, and it is here and then it isn't.
Isn't that just great?
- Tony Parsons, from As It Is - The Open Secret of Spiritual
Awakening, posted to AlongTheWay