Step out of your house
Turn left
Or right
Then left again
Or maybe right
What does it matter really
You’re one with it all
Then enter the nearest wood
See how it is enchanted
And don’t forget
This is all you
You’re not walking anywhere
Not reaching any new place
[…]
Continue wandering in search of your inner hermitage… (READ MORE…)
“yes is a world
and in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds”
~ E. E. Cummings
Really, to surrender seems the most difficult thing to do. Even in our most relaxed moments, we are unconsciously holding the show through a subtle kind of effort. And this effort is being maintained throughout our life, even more so in moments of threats and desperation. The consequences of this constant tension is visible in every aspects of our being, physically and psychologically where they shine in an obvious manner, but also in our inward, spiritual life where it has even more devastating effects, keeping us at bay, at distance of any deep understanding or realisation.
At every moment of our lives, we experience at best a subtle if not unnoticed resistance to the propositions of everyday experience. Let’s put it simply: we argue. We argue, complain, judge, evaluate, regret, hope, expect, and so many other gesticulations that we superimpose on reality. Really it sometimes feels there is a madman locked here in the room of existence. The present reality, what is taking place here and now offers nothing less, if you look at it carefully, than a quiet and smooth run. ‘What is’ flows majestically like a large river does. It bears the silence of presence, the quiet inescapability of ‘is ness’, of being just the way it is. So why does life and circumstances expose us to such amount of conflict and resistance? How did it all become such an unsolvable riddle? […]
An exploration into the meaning of true surrender… (READ MORE…)
“I’ve no problem because
I don’t mind what happens.
You understand?
I don’t mind if I fail or succeed,
I don’t mind if I have money or not money.
… I have no problem because
I don’t demand anything
from anybody or from life.
I wonder if you understand this.”
~ J. Krishnamurti
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~~~
Photograph by Elsebet Barner
Quote by J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
~~~
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This quote is excerpted from Public Talk 2, Ojai 1977 on YouTube (39:30)…
Bibliography :
– ‘Krishnamurti’s Notebook’ – by J. Krishnamurti – (Krishnamurti Publications of America, US)
Website:
– J. Krishnamurti
Suggestion:
– A Day at Brockwood Park (Homage to J. Krishnamurti)
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Other quotes from the category Beauty in Essence
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Nancy Neithercut is my newly invited guest on ‘The Dawn Within’. After many years of trying to figure out the pain of existence, Nancy has experienced a shift in her life where all sense of separation faded away and, in her own words, “the whirling center of the dream had exploded and imploded into a vast unknowable unknown.” She now writes and speaks about this ungraspable no-thing in countless poems which are direct effusions of her inner life and understanding. They have been gathered in her website, “Nancy’s posts and poems”, and in her numerous books.
I chose and gathered here a few excerpts of her poetry that came my way. My mind drifted through Nancy’s beautiful writings and picked up just what it did, sometimes arrested by the deep meaning conveyed, sometimes by a harmonious dance of words, or a striking force, or a freshness, or just a no thing elusively expressed. At the end of her last book, she wrote: “This is the end of my seventh book of songs of awakening and I have never captured even one bite of this deliciousness… Yet songs flow through me and even as these words appear my story writes itself.” We are grateful for her many attempts. I hope you enjoy reading these songs of awakening…
“Without a listener there is no song, and there is no singer.”
~~~
the rush of stillness
sings through it all
it cannot be trampled
or held
it cannot be concocted
by chanting spells
or reading books
or sitting for a thousand years
you cannot wait for it
or gain it
or throw it away
knowing this
is the dawn of love
~
I would say that the stillness that seekers long for is the end of belief in the dream. Yet this is also feared, because when the dream of this and that is seen to be made up, then it means also that they are made up! It would mean that everyone they have ever loved or known in their entire lives are also made up!
It would mean that there has never been a past and there will never be a future. A future where somehow stillness could be attained or lost.
It would mean the end of all seeking, as the seeker has disappeared. The end of all ideas of other better more or next. It’s like the Zen guy sitting there in the cartoon and one guy says to another so this is it huh? And the other guy says Yep.
[…]
Continue reading Nancy Neithercut’s Songs of Awakening… (READ MORE…)
There is a subtle waiting lingering inside us. Do you feel it? I do. Let’s have a look at it. It’s an expectation, a yearning, a feeling that says that the now, what is happening for me right now, is not quite enough. In whatever way I may look at it, that’s very clear. This is definitely not enough. Period. And off I go, keeping on living as if one day, maybe, if I’m lucky enough, if all the good stars align at last, that might descend upon me. I might get it, that feeling that I’m now complete. Cooked. Finished. Over with it. But that’s really just a fancy idea. Wishful thinking. In the meantime, did I ever look at it carefully? This subtle feeling, this buzz underlying each and every second of my existence, that something is missing? I concede that there are exceptions, fleeting moments when I suddenly find myself whole, silenced, at peace. But this is not satisfactory. So there is comfort in waiting, in not quite engaging. Staying put. Waiting on the platform of life for the next train of thought. The next occurrence. What is this waiting made of? Is it a real feeling? Or maybe just a ghost-feeling? What is here that I don’t see? Why am I waiting? […]
Continue exploring this subtle waiting lingering within… (READ MORE…)
“May you find that within you
which already lives beyond death
and begin to live out of it now.”
~ Rafe (Benedictine monk)
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Listen to it. It is now. It is taking place now. It is taking your whole world in, and it does it effortlessly. For this is it. The whole thing yes, all you have ever been, seen, heard, encountered. All you have ever thought and felt. Including that which has given a home, a birthing place to it all. The whole bunch of it, this is you. I mean really you. Don’t think that you are some part of it. There are no parts. Your life is an undivided whole. And put your two feet in it. Stand as it. Don’t escape into some dark corners. Be proud. Take it all in. Be the giant that you truly are. But first, diminish all that is small in you. All your bits and pieces. Your thoughts of grandeur and failure. Your overwhelming feelings. Your precious little person. They will get in the way. Make them dim and distant. Let them leave you. For they were never yours, never you. They were little clowns dancing, laughing, crying on the stage of your life. Asking for your applauds or your pity. Don’t involve yourself with them. Welcome them all but stay remote, untouched. Let them perform though. They need to tell you something. To warn you. But stay when they have left the stage. Don’t run away with them. Don’t forget who you are. Extend your view. Make your being whole. Encompass it. Espouse it. Listen to it. It is now. It is taking place now. It is taking your whole world in, and it does it effortlessly. For this is it. The whole thing yes……
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~~~
Text and photo by Alain Joly
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Other reveries from the blog……
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”The eye wherein I see God
is the same eye wherein God sees me;
my eye and God’s eye are one eye,
one vision, one knowing, one love.”
~ Meister Eckhart
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In the Middle Ages, in the heart of Europe and of the Christian faith, rose a voice of such richness and profusion, of such dumbfounding wisdom and precision of thought, that it is a duty for all serious seekers to be reminded of it. The name shines with a polish of spiritual mastery and authority: Meister Eckhart. Eckhart von Hochheim OP was born in 1260 near Gotha in central Germany. OP stands in Latin for Order of Preachers, which is a mendicant order of the Catholic Church — better known as the Dominican Order — of which Meister Eckhart was a monk and a leader. His teaching and sermons left a deep impression but he was so ahead of his time and of the general understanding of his pairs, that his work went into oblivion only to reappear in the 19th century. His voice and light could not possibly be left unnoticed. He is now accepted as one of the most profound and eminent theologians, philosophers, and mystics of all times.
Little is known about his family and early life. From 1295 onwards, he held many posts of responsibility in various states of central Germany, and as far as Cologne or Strasbourg. Among others, he was a Prior of the Dominicans, managing tens of convents, and was later made Provincial of Saxony. He also travelled around Europe and more specifically to Paris where he studied Aristotle and the Platonists. With the degree of Master of Arts, he later on became a professor of theology at the school of Dominicans in the French capital and was invited as a magister — equal to the doctorate — for two consecutive years. At this time in Europe, during the Avignon Papacy, Christianity was prey to many tensions and confusion, the Inquisition was blowing a wind of suspicion and terror, as a result of which many new groups and movements were forming in search of new avenues of practice and understanding. It goes without saying that Meister Eckhart was a coveted source of wise counsel in these times of darkness.
Let’s say it plainly: Meister Eckhart was a scholar, but it is as a preacher that he is most remembered. His sermons in the vernacular German were highly unusual for the time and took many a liberties with the conventional church rituals and dogmas. He stated: “When I preach, I usually speak of detachment and say that a man should be empty of self and all things.” […]
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“Blessed, supremely blessed, are they who are installed in the eternal now,
transcending time and place and form and matter,
unmoved by weal or woe or wealth or want,
for in so far as things are motionless they are like eternity.”
~ Sermon 16
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An exploration into the teachings of Meister Eckhart… (READ MORE…)
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The Dawn Within 