Attention
To pay attention
means we care,
which means
we really love.
~Jiddu Krishnamurti
(1895-1986, Indian philosopher)
Loneliness
Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly.
Let it cut you more deeply.
Let it ferment and season you
as few humans
and even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
has made my eyes so soft,
my voice so tender,
my need for God absolutely clear.
~Hafiz
(1315-1390, Sufi Mystic
Poet of Shiraz, Persia)
Witness
You are not to get emotionally involved
with the phenomena
you are perceiving through the mind.
We all know it is an impermanent field.
Resist identifying here.
Everything is passing,
moving according to their own law.
Be quiet.
Don’t judge or interpret anything personally.
Here there is total silence,
emptiness—be one with it.
If there is a tendency to judge
or interpret anything,
it is also observed.
Just stay as the witnessing of all.
Gradually you come to recognize
the still and silent background to all that arises
as movements in that conscious field.
This background is not the observer
but observing occurs in it.
Simply observing happens naturally
in that space of neutrality.
You are just looking
in a very passive and neutral way.
Keep looking and see what lasts.
Does the observable last or do you last?
Look and see.
Two kings cannot sit on one throne.
Either presence will be there and person not.
Or person will be there and presence not.
~ Mooji
(AKA Anthony Paul Moo-Young,
1954 to pres., Jamaican spiritual teacher)
In Praise of the Earth
Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth,
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.
And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.
When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.
Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.
Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.
The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed’s self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.
The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.
The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.
Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.
Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.
That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.
~John O’Donohue
(1956-2008, Irish Poet, Priest, Philosopher
from To Bless the Space Between Us:
A Book of Blessings)
Mythic Moment
There’s nothing “ordinary”
about decency,
courage under fire,
compassion, tenacity,
lion-heartedness,
and that is what is being called forth
in a moment –
a deeply mythic moment –
like this.
~Martin Shaw
(Storyteller and mythologist)
Gratitude
When forgiveness is your path,
and love is your reason
for being alive at all,
and awakening
is burning in your heart,
then gratitude is never far away.
~Jeff Foster
(1980 to pres., Astrophysicist and spiritual teacher)
Hope
Hope locates itself in the premises
that we don’t know what will happen
and that in the spaciousness
of uncertainty
is room to act.
~Rebecca Solnit
(1961 to pres., American Writer)
