… stay at the center of the circle and let all things take their course. —Lao Tzu

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They asked al-Hallaj, "To which religious School do you belong?

he answered, "God's own."

He who limned 

a thousand worlds with paint -

you layabout! - do you expect

He'll use your color or mine?

Our paints and tints

are but opinions and fantasy,

He is colorless

and we must adopt His hue.

Look: a shadow lies crooked upon the ground because the very earth is laid rough; but no, that crookedness is straightness itself, for the perfection, the "straightness" of the eyebrow is in its sinuous curve.

Only because it is bent

is this piece of wood a bow.

Reality is a sphere: wherever you place your finger,

there is its dead center.

—Fakhruddin 'Iraqi

Divine Flashes

...

This place where you are right now, 

God circled on a map for you.

—Hafiz

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your(self

  

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Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. 

If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. 

Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father.

But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

—The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas

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origin

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Jesus said, “If they say to you, ‘Where did you come from?’,
say to them, ‘We came from the light, the place where the light
came into being on its own accord and established (itself) and
became manifest through their image.’ 

If they say to you, ‘Is it you?’, say,
‘We are its children, we are the elect of the Living Father.’ 

If they ask you, ‘What is the sign of your father in you?’,
say to them, ‘It is movement and repose.’”


–The Gospel of Thomas

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instructions

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When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner, and the above as the below,

and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female not be female,

then shall you enter the Kingdom.

...

Love one another.

—Jesus of Nazareth

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question

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What is the deep listening? Sama is
a greeting from the secret ones inside

the heart, a letter. The branches of 
your intelligence grow new leaves in

the wind of this listening. The body
reaches a peace. Rooster sound comes,

reminding you of your love for dawn.
The reed flute and the singer's lips:

the knack of how spirit breathes into
us becomes as simple and ordinary as

eating and drinking. The dead rise with 
the pleasure of listening. If someone

can't hear a trumpet melody, sprinkle
dirt on his head and declare him dead.

Listen, and feel the beauty of your
separation, the unsayable absence.

There's a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it. Give

more of your life to this listening. As
brightness is to time, so you are to

the one who talks to the deep ear in
your chest. I should sell my tongue

and buy a thousand ears when that
one steps near and begins to speak.

—Rumi
from The Glance

Coleman Barks version

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you are that

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do you know what you are?

You are a manuscript of a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you.

Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that.


—Rumi

...

Put thoughts to rest.

The real being, with no status, is always going in and out through the doors of your face.


—Lin Chi

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beautiful creature

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There is a beautiful creature
Living in a hole you have dug.

So at night

I set fruit and grains

And little pots of wine and milk

Beside your soft earthen Mounds

And I often sing.

But still, my dear,

You do not come out.

I have fallen in love with Someone

Who hides inside you.

We should talk about this problem--

Otherwise,

I will never leave you alone.

–Hafiz

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question

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You must always keep in mind that a path is only a path.
Each path is only one of a million paths.
If you feel that you must now follow it,
you need not stay with it under any circumstances.
Any path is only a path. 

There is no affront to yourself or others in dropping a path
if that is what your heart tells you to do. 

But your decision to keep on a path or to leave it 

must be free of fear and ambition. 

I caution you: look at every path closely and deliberately. 

Try it as many times as you think necessary.
Then ask yourself and yourself alone this one question.
Does this path have a heart? 

All paths are the same. They lead nowhere.
They are paths going through the brush or into the brush
or under the brush of the Universe. 

The only question is: Does this path have a heart? 

If it does, then it is a good path.
If it doesn’t, then it is of no use.


—Carlos Castaneda

...

The body is not you, the name is not you.

The body is the food you have consumed;
the taste of the food is the knowledge ‘I am’.

That is Self, the feeling ‘I am’,
that is the love to be. 

How amazing, how incredible, it has no name, but you give many names to it. 

It is the Self, the love to be. 
That love to be is all pervading. 

Before you conceptualize anything, you are. 

Even before the knowingness, you are.


—Nisargadatta

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the world is a feeling

 

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There are infinite numbers of lines that join us to things. They are real lines. You can feel them. The most difficult part about the warrior’s way is to realize that the world is a feeling. When one is not-doing, one is feeling the world, and one feels the world through its lines.

—Carlos Castaneda

...

Know yourself as Nothing.

Feel yourself as Everything.


—Alan Watts



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you where the heart begins

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Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.


—George Eliot

...

 

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins beside you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins:
You are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.


—Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, IV

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question

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It belches out breath and its name is wind. So long as it doesn't come forth, nothing happens. But when it does, then ten thousand hollows begin crying wildly. Can't you hear them, long and drawn out?

In the mountain forests that lash and sway, there are huge trees a hundred spans around with hollows and openings like noses, like mouths, like ears, like jugs, like cups, like mortars, like rifts, like ruts. They roar like waves, whistle like arrows, screech, gasp, cry, wail, moan, and howl, those in the lead calling out yeee!, those behind calling out yuuu! In a gentle breeze they answer faintly, but in a full gale the chorus is gigantic. And when the fierce wind has passed on, then all the hollows are empty again. 

Have you never seen the tossing and trembling that goes on?

—Chuang Tzu

...

Observe your own body. It breathes. 

You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity.
Who, then, is breathing? 

The collection of information that you mistakenly think is you is not the protagonist in this drama called the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening to you. 

You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot purposely keep your own life going. The expression, 'my life' is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. 

You don't possess life; life expresses itself through you. 
Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life.

—Ilchi Lee

...

The stars are like letters which inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky.

Everything in the world is full of signs. 

All events are coordinated.

All things depend on each other; as has been said:

Everything breathes together.

—Plotinus
ca CE 204/5–270

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inspir(itus

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... your breath is a bridge between you and your body. Constantly, breath is bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body.

Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe which is nearer to you.

If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the body. You move into some unknown dimension; then you can not be found in space and time. So, breath is also the bridge between you, and space and time.

Breath has two points. 

One is where it touches the body and the universe, and another is where it touches you and that which transcends the universe.

We know only one part of the breath. When it moves into the universe, into the body, we know it. But it is always moving from the body to the "no-body," from the "no-body" to the body.

There are certain points in breathing which you have never observed, and those points are the doors.

Man is trying to reach further, from earth into space, and man has not yet learned the nearest part of his life ...

—Osho
The Book of Secrets

...

Your mind is the knife that cuts the continuum of space and time into neat slices of linear experience. 

At this moment, you are seamlessly flowing with the cosmos. There is no difference between your breathing and the breathing of the rain forest, between your bloodstream and the world’s rivers, between your bones and the chalk cliffs of Dover.

—Deepak Chopra

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night writing

'This doesn't compare to the feel of your skin'

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Breathing, all creatures are 

Brighter than the brightest star 

You are by far 

You come right inside of me 

Close as you can be 

You kiss my blood 

And my blood kiss me.

—Mike Heron

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lunachild
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look at that face ...

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Be aware that the two paths of jnana (knowledge) and bhakti (devotion) are inseparably related. Therefore, without separating one from the other through the delusion that they are different, practice both simultaneously and harmoniously in your heart.

–Sri Ramana Maharshi

...

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to ocean 
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.


—Robert Frost

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