The real life within

You know that the seed is inside the chestnut tree and inside the seed there are blossoms of the tree and the chestnuts and the shade. So inside the human body there is the seed, and inside the seed there is the human body again

Thinkers, listen…. tell me what you know of that which is not inside the soul: Take a jug of water and set it down on the water – now it has water inside and water outside. We shouldn’t give it a name, in case silly people start talking again about the body and the soul.

If you want the truth, I’ll tell you the truth: Listen to the secret sound, the real sound which is inside you.   The One nobody talks of  speaks the secret sound to himself, and he is the One who has made it all.

Kabir

What are you letting go of?

I was walking again
in the woods, 
a yellow light
was sifting all I saw.

Willfully,
with a cold heart,
I took a stick,
lifted it to the opposite side
of the path.

There, I said to myself,
that’s done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.

Jane Hirshfield, Changing Everything

Just start

I don’t think that you have to get all your inner stuff together and totally integrated before you can actually be what you’ve realized. You’re going to wait forever if you wait for that.

Just start being what you know now.

Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing.

Soil

Inside each of us, there’s continual autumn.
Our leaves fall and are blown out over the water…..
There’s a necessary dying,
and then Jesus is breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers
will come up where you are.
You’ve been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender.

Rumi, A Necessary Autumn inside Each

Sunday Quote: Wilderness

 

No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land

Annie Dilliard

Demented gardeners

[Even some] lovely people feel that their real identity is working on themselves, and some work on themselves with such harshness. Like a demented gardener who won’t let the soil settle for anything to grow, they keep raking, tearing away the nurturing clay from their own heart, then they’re surprised that they feel so empty and vacant. Self-compassion is paramount. When you are compassionate with yourself, you trust in your soul, which you let guide your life. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny better than you do.

John O’Donoghue, Anam Chara