Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal. —Carlos Fuentes

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You know, all mystics - Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion - are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.


—Anthony de Mello

Your thinking that you have to make an effort to get rid of this dream of the waking state, and your making efforts to attain jnana (realization of Self) or real awakening, are all parts of the dream.


—Ramana Maharshi

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oceanoflove

... his little lips!
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... it is all a great strange dream. —Jack Kerouac

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Perhaps a god is deceiving me.

Perhaps a god has sentenced me to time, that lasting illusion. 

I dream the moon and I dream my eyes perceiving the moon.

—Jorge Luis Borges

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We live by waters breaking out of the heart. —Anne Carson

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Meditate.
Live purely.
Be quiet.
Do your work with mastery.
Like the moon,
Come out from behind the cloud.


—Dhammapada

See how the past is not finished
here in the present
it is awake the whole time
never waiting
it is my hand now but not what I held
it is not my hand but what I held
it is what I remember
but it never seems quite the same
no one else remembers it
a house long gone into air
the flutter of tires over a brick road
cool light in a vanished bedroom
the flash of the oriole
between one life and another
the river a child watched


—W. S. Merwin
my hand

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wait - what ?
andy goldsworth

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a story of the heart, a story of the breath, a story of the mind

Laniakea, the immeasurable heaven



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Each quantum event, each of the trillions of times reality’s particles interact with each other every instant, is like a note that rings and resonates throughout the great bell of creation. And the sound of the ringing propagates instantaneously, everywhere at once, interconnecting all things.

This is a truth of our universe. It is a mystical truth, that reality at its deepest level is an undivided wholeness.


—David Zindell 

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in praise of mortality, excerpt

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Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move along side our real life
with steps that are ever the same.

Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.

Pure attention, the essence of the powers!
Distracted by each day's doing,
how can we hear the signals?

Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives.

—Rainer Maria Rilke 
Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XII
Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy version

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13 ways of looking at a blackbird

  

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I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections,

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

—Wallace Stevens

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question

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Why do you insist the universe is not a conscious intelligence,

when it gives birth to conscious intelligence?


—Cicero
c. 44 BCE

... 

It must be obvious...that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

...

To Taoism that which is absolutely still or absolutely perfect is absolutely dead, for without the possibility of growth and change there can be no Tao. In reality there is nothing in the universe which is completely perfect or completely still; it is only in the minds of men that such concepts exist.

—Alan Watts

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open secret

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Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.


—Nikola Tesla

...

Directly opposite to the concept of a universe as machine built on law is the vision of a world self-synthesized. On this view, the notes struck out on a piano by the observer participants of all times and all places, bits though they are in and by themselves, constitute the great wide world of space and time and things.


—John Wheeler

...

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.


—Nikola Tesla

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The body is our general medium for having a world. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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Autopoiesis = Self-Creation
(from Greek auto = “self” and poiesis = “creation)

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Nothing is lost,

nothing is created,

everything is transformed.


—Antoine Lavoisier
1743–1794

...

When the beetle sees, it is I that am looking,

When the nightingale sings, it is I that am singing,

When the lion roars, it is I that am roaring. 

But when I look for myself, I can see nothing --

for no thing is there to be seen. 

Síle cannot see me either, for when she tries to see me it is 

I who am looking: she can do nothing -- for only I can do anything.

The beetle can say that also, and Síle, for we are not three, 

nor two, nor one. 

I am the sea too, and the stars, the wind and the rain,

I am everything that has form -- for form is my seeing of it.

I am every sound -- for sound is my hearing of it,

I am all flavours, each perfume, whatever can be touched,

For that which is perceptible is my perceiving of it,

And all sentience is mine. They have no other existence, and neither have I -- 

for what they are I am, and what I am they are.

What the universe is I am, and what I am the universe is.

And there is no other at all, nor any one whatsover. 

—Wei Wu Wei

Open Secret

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If we were on a star, what would we see of that which exists on the earth?

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If we found ourselves on a star, and if, from there we could see the life on our planet, we should not see modern civilization. We should for example see the events occurring in Egypt in the time of the Paraohs. 

—Alexander Ananoff

...

Although the interval of time that ... elapses between the moment when we perceive the image of an object and that at which it "left" may be infinitely short, the principle involved is the same as that which relates to the thousands of years taken by the image of the star to reach us.

In both cases the conclusion is: "those things we see are images of the past".

...

Is there any reason for lingering to discuss problems of this kind? –The Masters who inculcate the Secret Teachings do not think so ... the objects providing the subject on which our cleverness is exercised have no real existence.

What has to be understood is that theories and doctrines of all kinds are the fabrication of our mind.

—Alexandra David-Néel
The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

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If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is - infinite. —William Blake

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If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein

...

What if I came down now out of these

solid dark clouds that build up against the mountain

day after day with no rain in them

and lived as one blade of grass

in a garden in the south when the clouds part in winter

from the beginning I would be older than all the animals

and to the last I would be simpler

frost would design me and dew would disappear on me

sun would shine through me

I would be green with white roots

feel worms touch my feet as a bounty

have no name and no fear

turn naturally to the light

know how to spend the day and night

climbing out of myself

all my life

 

—W. S. Merwin
a contemporary

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merwinconservancy
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