The blue sky

The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world
.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside “love” there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.

Kabir, Ecstatic Poems

Close the book

The mind is constantly trying to figure out what page it’s on in the story of itself.

Close the book. Burn the bookmark.

End of story.

Now the dancing begins.


Ikko Narasaki, roshi, died 1996

Sunday quote: Trust

Faith requires at times marching into the waters before they part.

Walter Wink, 1935 – 2012, American Biblical scholar and theologian

Without freaking out

The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that’s happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.

Ram Dass

Be strong

The ongoing news about the pandemic activates the anxious side of our brain and leaves us feeling shaky, imagining worst-case scenarios for the future. These words from Kabir remind us that much of the time we are not grounded in where we actually are.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body; There you have a solid place for your feet. Think about it carefully! Don’t go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things,
And stand firm in that which you are.

Kabir, 15th-century Indian mystic poet

Decluttering

In the Christian tradition the season of Lent begins today, a period of simplification and an opportunity to make space for the deeper realities in our lives, creating room to see what is happening, to go deeper and see where we are being called to invest our energy.

Most people today seems to think that sacrifice means giving something up. This is how shallow our religious sense has become. Sacrifice really involves the art of drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to produce a higher form of consciousness.

Robert Johnson, Jungian Analyst, Balancing Heaven and Earth