Justice
Justice at its best
is power correcting
everything that stands
against love.
~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
(1929-1968, Minister and Activist)
Soul’s Real Nature
The soul’s real nature is pure joy.
It is, in fact, bliss itself.
It is only when we identify with our real self
that we become moving drops of bliss on earth.
We are moving about on the desert of the earth,
becoming more and more parched,
looking for the ocean.
We need to realize that a reservoir
of refreshing waters is lying within.
The way to tap into this pool is so simple.
It is only a matter of attention.
We can direct our attention wherever we wish.
We can place it on the body.
We can focus on our mind.
Or we can concentrate our attention our soul.
~Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj
(1946 to pres., Author, Scientist, Mystic,
Leader of Science of Spirituality and
International Movements for World Peace)
See Us Fly
What will our children do in the morning?
Will they wake with their hearts
wanting to play,
the way beings with wings should?
Will they have dreamed
of flight and gathered the strength
from the planets
that all men and women need
to balance the wonderful charms
of the earth so that her power and beauty
does not make us forget our own?
I know all about the ways of the heart –
how it wants to be alive.
Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything,
even abuse, just to flicker for a moment.
But the sky’s mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you,
for I sing those words.
What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us fly?
~Mavlana Jalaladin Rumi
(1207-1273 Persian Poet and Mystic)
Love is Natural
Love is natural.
It’s what makes you respond with kindness,
compassion, openness, and from understanding
rather than with fear and defensiveness.
It heals division.
Shifting our attention away from
the agitated feelings coming and going,
we immediately and effortlessly
relax into this open spaciousness
that’s right there at the heart
of every moment.
This is love,
experienced outside of thought
when the barriers of separation fall away.
~Gail Brenner
(Psychologist, Author, Spiritual Teacher)
WHAT I LEARNED FROM TREES
WHAT I LEARNED FROM TREES
by Herman Hesse
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves.
Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
Herman Hesse (1877-1962, German poet, novelist, painter, 1946 Nobel Laureate in Literature)
Change
We resist change.
We fear the unknown.
But everything is changing all the time—
the waves, the clouds, and us.
If we are quiet and still in the moment,
we can witness change
and accept it as inevitable.
We can learn to surrender into it,
become friends with it.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t work
to relieve suffering within that change—
we might, for example, do everything we can
to heal ourselves or others from cancer,
but we try not to deny or become angry
that the cancer is there.
We can acknowledge it,
look at the choices we have,
and then act in a loving way.
~Ram Dass
(1931-pres., Mystical Bhakti Spiritual Teacher;
From: Walking Each Other Home:
Conversations on Love and Dying)
Faith and Surrender
The Road Ahead
(A Prayer of Faith and Surrender)
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain
where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think
that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire
in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this,
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.
Amen.
~Thomas Merton
(1915-1968, Trappist Monk)
