there are moments in moist love when heaven is jealous of what we on earth can do. —Hafiz

 

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A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here. 

Or perhaps memory. Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion. 

He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

—Czesław Miłosz

This Only
Robert Hass version

 

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This world is just a little place, 

just the red in the sky, before the sun rises, 

so let us keep fast hold of hands, 

that when the birds begin, 

none of us be missing.

—Emily Dickinson

 

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I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

  

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I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -

—Emily Dickinson

 

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live roots and rising airships

  

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[...] he would see that birth and death were only two tremendous moments in an eternal waking, and his face would glow with amazement as he understood this; he would feel - gently he grasped the copper handle of the door - the warmth of the mountains, woods, rivers and valleys, would discover the hidden depths of human existence, would finally understand that the unbreakable ties that bound him to the world were not imprisoning chains and condemnation but a kind of clinging to an indestructible sense that he had a home; and he would discover the enormous joys of mutuality which embraced and animated everything: rain, wind, sun and snow, the flight of a bird, the taste of fruit, the scent of grass; and he would suspect that his anxieties and bitterness were merely cumbersome ballast required by the live roots of his past and the rising airship of his certain future, and, then - he started opening the door - he would finally know that our every moment is passed in a procession across dawns and day's-ends of the orbiting earth, across successive waves of winter and summer, threading the planets and the stars. 

Suitcase in hand, he stepped into the room and stood there blinking in the half-light.


―László Krasznahorkai
The Melancholy of Resistance

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Give us courage, gaiety and the quiet mind.
Spare us to our friends, soften to us our enemies.
Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors.

If it may not, give us the strength to encounter
that which is to come, that we be brave in peril,
constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath,
and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates
of death, loyal and loving to one another.


—Robert Louis Stevenson 

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LOVE is anterior to life,

Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.

—Emily Dickinson

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will there really be a morning?

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101

Will there really be a "Morning"?
Is there such a thing as "Day"?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Men from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called "Morning" lies!


—Emily Dickinson

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Outside, the freezing desert night.
This other night grows warm, kindling.
Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.
We have a soft garden here.

The continents blasted, cities and little towns,
everything become a scorched blacked ball.

The news we hear is full of grief for that future,
but the real news inside here is 
there is no news at all.


—Rumi

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the Bravest - grope a little

  

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We grow accustomed to the Dark -
When light is put away -
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye -

A Moment - We uncertain step
For newness of the night -
Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -
And meet the Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darkness -
Those Evenings of the Brain -
When no a Moon disclose a sign -
Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead -
But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.


—Emily Dickinson

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Here in the centre stands the glass. Light 

Is the lion that comes down to drink. 


—Wallace Stevens
The Glass of Water

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The soul should always stand ajar. —Emily Dickinson

  

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Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” 

There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. 

I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.




Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock - more than a maple - a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon.
You can’t take it with you.

—Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the roses.


—Louis MacNeice

snow

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Friday I tasted life. 
It was a vast morsel. 

A Circus passed the house —- 
still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out. 

The Lawn is full of south and the odors tangle, 
and I hear to-day for the first time 
the river in the tree.


—Emily Dickinson

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all good things

  

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All good things approach their goal crookedly.

Like cats, they arch their backs,
they purr inwardly over their approaching happiness: 
all good things laugh.


—Friedrich Nietzsche

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Tell all the Truth but tell it slant …

Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise!

The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.


—Emily Dickinson

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Let your beauty manifest itself without talking and calculation.​

You are silent. It says for you: I am.

And in comes meaning thousandfold​, comes at long last over everyone.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

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March is the month of expectation —Emily Dickinson

 

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III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.

—e. e. cummings
Spring is like a perhaps hand

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i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened


—e.e. cummings

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hello

 

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Sawubona, a Zulu word for hello, literally translates to 
"I see you, and by seeing you, I bring you into being."


—Susan David

TED talk

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A Word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day. 

—Emily Dickinson

LXXXIX

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in your body lies a priceless gem —Rumi

  

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Grace is always present. 

You imagine it is something somewhere high in the sky, far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your Heart, and the moment you effect subsidence or merger of the mind into its Source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you.


—Ramana Maharshi

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Images, however sacred they may be, retain the attention outside, whereas at the time of prayer the attention must be within - in the heart. 

The concentration of attention in the heart - this is the starting point of prayer.


—Saint Theophan the Recluse

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Parting is one of the exactions
of a Mortal Life.
It is bleak - like Dying
but occurs more times.

To escape the former,
some invite the last.
The Giant in the Human Heart
was never met outside.


—Emily Dickinson
New poems of Emily Dickinson

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the brain is a universe unto itself

  

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Our eyes are not transparent windows to the outside world, despite evolution’s brilliant illusion. 

When we think we’re walking the streets of a city, we’re really strolling the neural paths of our brains. Everything that appears to be outside is really inside. For all intents and purposes, there is no outside. 

The brain is a universe unto itself: billions of twinkling neurons, dendrites splayed like fingers reaching for the beginning of time, chemical messengers leaping across the mindless darkness of deep intracranial space.

—Amanda Gefter

Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn

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The Brain—is wider than the Sky—

For—put them side by side—

The one the other will contain

With ease—and You—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—

For—hold them—Blue to Blue—

The one the other will absorb—

As Sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—

For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—

And they will differ—if they do—

As Syllable from Sound—


—Emily Dickinson

 

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little universes

—Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadences, —
Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.


—Emily Dickinson

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you are that

 

Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven —Anselm Kiefer
Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on joined paper

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There is a concept that a person can create their own reality. 

This concept is only partially correct because it is generally discussed in a one-way manner i.e., a person sending a message to the field with a request/intention/prayer desiring an outcome.  

This is only ½ of the loop. 

The wave you’re sending is the feed-forward part of the loop. You need to realize that the wave coming back is the feed-back which is the rest of the universe creating its reality and responding to you. The universe (Planck Field or ”the Divine”) interacts with the rest of humanity and your creation and the universe gives you a result that is a combination of everyone’s feed-forward waves. 

If a person could create a reality exactly the way they wanted it, a few things would happen: 

1) you would be the only one in it because everybody else would be creating their own. It would be very lonely. 

2) you would also be bored within seconds since you had everything you wanted.  

What happens is that you put your intention out into the field and you stay open to what comes back, realizing it’s going to get modified for the highest evolution of the whole. 

This unexpected feed-back gives you empathy for yourself and others. You might not get exactly what you expected but now you’re learning from the experience. The totality of everyone’s learning is how the universe learns about itself.

—Nassim Haramein

allchannels

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'Being a realized immortal for a breath’ is an interesting expression. 

Usually one considers immortals to be permanently immortal. When one`s original spirit awakens, even if only for a breath, that moment is out of time and can be called immortal. At one time when I had an experience like this about 15 years ago, a connection with an experience I had when I was 5 or 6 years old occurred. 

I had completely forgotten about this experience and suddenly it returned and felt very vivid and alive, and I understood that this experience had been a deep moment of awakening. These moments are eternal moments that time cannot erase, although one can become disconnected from them.

Forever is composed of Nows.

—Emily Dickinson

wait - what

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You have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and you have imprisoned yourself in it. 

Break the spell and be free.

—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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707

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The Grace–Myself–might not obtain–

Confer upon My flower–

Refracted but a Countenance–

For I–inhabit Her–


—Emily Dickinson

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