I, the Beloved, and Love

       

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We lay in the dark, breathing together. 

The deepest intimacy … 

—L. Gluck



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In those days before a trace of the two worlds,
no "other" yet imprinted on the Tablet of Existence,

I, the Beloved, and Love lived together
in the corner of an uninhabited cell.


—Fakhruddin 'Iraqi
Divine Flashes

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For this is the truth about our soul, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.


—Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway

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If a thing loves, it is infinite.


—William Blake

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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

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This place where you are right now, 

God circled on a map for you.


—Hafiz

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