There Must Be More

Bright but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart. Everything that moves, breathes, opens, and closes Lives in the Self. He is the source of love And may be known through love but not through thought. He is the goal of life. Attain this goal!   The shining Self dwells hidden in the heart. Everything in the cosmos, great and small, Lives in the Self. He is the source of life, Truth beyond the transcience of this world. He is the goal of life. Attain this goal!   Take the great bow of the sacred scriptures. Place on it the arrow of devotion; Then draw the bowstring of meditation And aim at the target, the Lord of Love. The mantram is the bow, the aspirant Is the arrow, and the Lord the target. Now draw the bowstring of meditation, And hitting the target be one with Him. The Mundaka Upanishad, translated by Eknath Easwaren Being human is not a simple thing. We come into these bodies, into this world, with no skills whatsoever. Anything we may have picked up in past lives are of necessity forgotten. Many of us end up with parents who know next to nothing about child-rearing, and whose own life skills may be lacking, who parent by trial and error, or simply by expediency and happenstance (for when you're struggling to figure it out yourself while making enough money to support a family and building a career and "working on" your marriage/relationship, much subtlety can fall by the wayside).    Then we go to school, to be taught and socialized, and what they teach us is not how to be in the moment, how to be present to each other and to the world; rather they teach us, mainly, to memorize, to speculate, to break things down into their constituent parts and leave our understanding of the movement and operation of the whole to someone or something else. We are taught to follow orders, often without knowing the "why" of things; we are taught to conform, all of us saying the pledge of allegiance together (do they still do that?), often dressing alike, being asked to "behave" alike; we are taught to see what's wrong with things: remember those puzzlers? "What's wrong with this picture?" and there'd be someone riding a bicycle that is upside down, and someone with three hands, and you'd go through and circle all the "wrong" things?   Then we're sent out into the world and told to thrive.   It's no one's fault. We can teach only what we know, and what most know is only what they were taught by others who didn't know.   Eventually, though, we realize there must be more. We begin to seek. And eventually that seeking leads us back to ourselves and we must find the way to transcend this relative world, transcend our limited thinking, transcend our narrow experience of life; somehow finding our way to experience the wholeness of life and our place in it, rather than our felt separation from it..   Our meditation is one way. One way to have an actual experience of Being. An experience of our true Self. It is not the only way, but it is a way that works, consistently, and that consistently leads us in the direction of the joy and bliss of Being that is our birthright. And as we embrace this practice and the world view from which it comes, we become able to pass on to our own children some ideas and some tools--of wholeness and peace, joy and compassion, endless possibility--the sum of which will grow in them the ability to find for themselves a meaningful life, a joyful existence. And that makes the first part of all this worth going through.   Today I will have compassion for myself, and others like me, for those learned beliefs and behaviors that have ceased to work, and that have kept me separate from the world and from my fellows. I will dedicate myself at least once today to knowing what I am beyond these beliefs and behaviors.   All original material copyright © 2015 Jeff Kober

Don't

Surrender

Your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more

Deep.

 

Let it ferment and season you

As few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

 

Something missing in my heart tonight

Has made my eyes so soft,

My voice so

Tender,

 

My need of God

Absolutely

Clear.

Hafiz,

My Eyes So Soft

Questioner:  How are we to treat others?

Ramana Maharishi:  There are no others.

I have been thinking of the difference between water

         and the waves on it.

Rising, water's still water,

            falling back,

                     it is water,

will you give me a hint

         how to tell them apart?

 

         Because someone has made up the word

                     wave, do I have to distinguish it from water?

 

         There is a Secret One inside us;

         the planets in all the galaxies

                     pass through his hands like beads.

 

         That is a string of beads one should look at with luminous eyes.

    Kabir

I have been in love in numberless forms, numberless times.
     In life after life, in age after age, forever.

My spellbound heart has made and remade itself.

I take you a gift, which you wear in your many forms,
     In life after life, in age after age, forever.

This past few days I finally knew 
what I had to do. 
Voices around me kept
kept promoting their bad advice.
But I did not stop. 

The wind pried with stiff fingers 
at the very foundations
of my resolve. 
It was already late. 

But, gradually, I left
those voices behind.
The stars burnt 
through the clouds. 
And, I heard a new voice.

Slowly I recognized it as my own.
It kept me company 
as I ventured 
into this vivid world.

Determined to accomplish 
the only thing I knew I could do.
Determined to save 
the only life I could save.

(after Mary Oliver)

By wiilling to experience aloneness,
     connections are uncovered everywhere.

Turning to face fear,
     the warrior who lives within arises.

Embracing this loss,
     the universe envelops me.

Surrendering into emptiness,
     fullness without end finds me.

If I flee from a condition, it pursues me;
     each condition I welcome, transforms me.

And,  becomes itself transformed,
     into a radiant cosmic essence.

It does not have to be the blue irises, 

     It could be flowering herbs in a vacant lot,

          Or a few small stones. 

Just pay attention.

Then patch a few words together. 

     Do not try to make them elaborate.

           Your entering a doorway into thanks.

And, a silence from which another voice may speak.

Sometimes, it takes a reminder to breathe.

A moment of stillness, and quietly,

Everything settles, softens.

And, makes space for imperfection. 

The harsh voice of judgment drops to a whisper.



We remember again that life is not a relay race.

All of us cross the finish line.

This is why we were born: to wake up to life.

As many times as we forget, 

And catch ourselves charging forward

Without even knowing where we am going.



We can make the choice
To stop, to breathe, to be and

Walk slowly into the mystery.

Somewhere deep within,
     there exists a firmer, simpler, warmer
          human being.

This human being trusts.

This human being accepts both
     the limits that give a human dignity,
          and the talents that the world awaits.

Somewhere deep within
     there lives a purpose that cannot be shaken,
          a love that no longer fears.

And a wisdom that ennobles life.

This human being expresses both
     the instrument,
          and the profound expression of life.

Sajjad Rizvi suggests the “very notion of Abrahamic religions is arguably Islamic” – and explains how he sees the relationship between Judaism, Christian, and Islam:

The Quran presents Abraham as an adherent of Islam, but here “Islam” means the primordial faith that connects humanity to one God and leads in turn to Judaism, Christianity and then historical Islam as proclaimed by Muhammad. There are some who view Islam as a faith that supersedes the two earlier monotheistic religions. But I think it’s more useful to understand Islam as a religion that is self-conscious about its relationship to Judaism and Christianity and explicitly takes account of their scriptures and traditions. Almost all the prophets of the Quran will be familiar to those who know the Bible, and the Quran explicitly refers to parables, ideas and stories from the Bible.

The common roots — and inheritances — of the three faiths make it useful for us to think seriously in terms of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization and heritage that we all share. The development of philosophy in Islam also shows a common tradition of rationality. Anyone with a basic understanding of the categories of Aristotle’s thought employed by Christian and Jewish thinkers would find many of the arguments of Islamic philosophers and theologians familiar. The great Islamic philosopher Avicenna (10th-11th century) developed a metaphysical notion of God that had a tremendous impact on the Latin west: the idea that God is the necessary being required to explain the existence of every contingent being.

From The Dish, Andrew Sullivan. http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/10/01/the-father-of-three-faiths/  

Breathe deeply,
     Look inward,
           Center on the Truth.

The blinding light dims,
     As nothingness appears.

Solitude achieved,
     Amidst the cacophony of disruptive, emotive voices.

Truth and Love
     Unite in flight.
          Bound by the silences that bridges spoken words.

Stillness, now.
     Complete within each other.

A Manifesto....

Meditation and Mindfulness...

Recommendations on dealing with anxiety and depression through meditation...

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/let-it-be-using-mindfulness-to-overcome-anxiety-depression/

Evolving....

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed,

nothing between me and the white fire of stars

but my thoughts, 

and they floated light as moths,

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night

I heard the small kingdom breathing around me,

the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night

I rose and fell, as if in water

grappling

with a luminous doom.

By morning,

I had vanished at least

a dozen times

into something better.

Stillness...

"Water becomes clear through stillness. How can I become still? By flowing with the stream." -- Lao-tzu

A Question

Are not all Facts...Dreams as soon as we embrace Now.