Tag: heart

The Source is full

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Everything you see has its roots
    in the unseen world.
The forms may change,
    yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
every sweet word will fade.
    But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal–
growing, branching out,
    giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?–
That Source is within you,
and this whole world
    is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
its waters are ever-flowing;
    Do not grieve,
    drink your fill!
Don’t think it will ever run dry —
This is the endless Ocean!

Rumi, A Garden beyond Paradise

A seed

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Almost all cultures have the notion that there is a judgment when we die. Some kind of accounting has to be made of one’s life. I believe God — and to me “God” is just shorthand for the ineffable divine presence — has only one question for us at the end: “Did you become yourself?” We have a seeded self that begins to germinate at birth. Our true goal in life is to become that self.

There’s an African proverb: “When death finds you, may it find you alive.” Alive means living your own damn life, not the life that your parents wanted, or the life some cultural group or political party wanted, but the life that your own soul wants to live. That’s the way to evaluate whether you are an authentic person or not.

Michael Meade, Your Own Damn Life

 

Each moment is precious

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

One day we’ll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we’ll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn’t for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I’ll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling
more and more detail into the light
of a joint and fragile keeping.

 Li-Young Lee, To Hold (extract)

Turn towards the heart

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Open the window to the west, and disappear into the air inside you.

Near your breast bone there is an open flower.

Drink the honey that is around that flower.

Kabir

The quiet ordinary things

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Happiness is
in the quiet, ordinary things.
A table, 
a chair, 
a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages.
And the petal falling from the rose,
and the light flickering
as we sit silent.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Just so

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

A similar thought to others this week. We are always gently working on the heart’s capacity to accept life as it actually is

When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept

and he said if he were God

he would have made the world just so and no different.

Cormac McCarthy, The Road