Tripping over Joy

Posted on by Alain Joly

BD266EB8-3B13-4016-A613-8F7742E48D91What is the difference
between your experience of existence
and that of a saint?

The saint knows
that the spiritual path
is a sublime chess game with God
and that the Beloved
has just made such a fantastic move
that the saint is now continually
tripping over joy
and bursting out in laughter
and saying, “I surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
you have a thousand serious moves.

~ Hafiz

 

~~~

Text from Hafiz, a 14th Century Persian poet

Picture from Alain Joly

~~~

 

Bibliography:
– ‘I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy’, by Hafiz (translation by Daniel Ladinsky) – Penguin Books

Website:
– Hafiz (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Voices from Silence (other poems from the blog)

 

The Aloneness of Being

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘The Aloneness of being’ is a phrase borrowed from Krishnamurti. Here are a few quotes to celebrate Aloneness…

.

“Aloneness is the purgation of all motives,
of all pursuits of desire,
of all ends.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

.

“We walked up the steep bank of the river and took a path that skirted the green wheat-fields. This path was a very ancient way; many thousands had trodden it, and it was rich in tradition and silence. It wandered among fields and mangoes, tamarinds and deserted shrines. There were large patches of garden, sweet peas deliciously scenting the air. The birds were settling down for the night, and a large pond was beginning to reflect the stars. Nature was not communicative that evening. The trees were aloof; they had withdrawn into their silence and darkness. A few chattering villagers passed by on their bicycles, and once again there was deep silence and that peace which comes when all things are alone.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

~

“One must be willing to stand alone — in the unknown, with no reference to the known or the past or any of one’s conditioning. One must stand where no one has stood before in complete nakedness, innocence, and humility. One must stand in that dark light, in that groundless embrace, unwavering and true to the reality beyond all self — not just for a moment, but forever without end. For then that which is sacred, undivided, and whole is born within consciousness and begins to express itself.”
~ Adyashanti

~

“Aloneness is indivisible and loneliness is separation. That which is alone is pliable and so enduring. Only the alone can commune with that which is causeless, the immeasurable. To the alone, life is eternal; to the alone there is no death. The alone can never cease to be.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

~

“Walking, surrounded by these violet, bare, rocky mountains, suddenly there was solitude. Complete solitude. Everywhere, there was solitude; it had great, unfathomable richness; it had that beauty which is beyond thought and feeling. It was not still; it was living, moving, filling every nook and corner. The high rocky mountain top was aglow with the setting sun and that very light and colour filled the heavens with solitude.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

.

635AFFA2-05B7-486F-8D19-46C78D56DD67

.

– J. Krishnamurti’s excerpts are from ‘Krishnamurti’s Notebook’ and ‘Commentaries on Living: First Series’.

– Adyashanti’s excerpt is from: ‘An Inner Revolution’, by Adyashanti

– Picture by Alain Joly

Bibliography:
– ‘Commentaries on Living: First Series’, by J. Krishnamurti – (Quest Books,U.S.)
– ‘Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering’, by Adyashanti – (Sounds True Inc)

Websites:
– J. Krishnamurti
– Adyashanti

Suggestion:
– Fleeing to God (other pointers from the blog)
– A Day at Brockwood Park (Homage to J. Krishnamurti)

.

Swift as a Bird

Posted on by Alain Joly

Birds, especially the smaller ones, are the most awake creatures of the world. Have you noticed? Their way of quickly moving their head down, and up, up and down, on the sides, pecking with extreme precision, addressing their acute little glance in all corner of life, observing, registering everything, hopping around, ready, for anything, not minding, alert, and gone, swiftly gone, at a lightning speed.

Surely we can find this place in ourselves, untamed, without obstacle, this quality of looking, without the past, without the past. Now. Irremediably now. It’s not that we should be hopping around, but when the mind, all the burden of it, is gone, dissolve, is it not there? This alertness, this awakeness, awareness. Is it not there? Unfettered, wide. Wide as a little bird. Is it not the same energy, the same freedom operating? It seems to me that it is…

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Artwork by Luis Seven Martins (L7m)

~~~

.

8A19330D-F6FA-43D7-A12C-AA748F24348ALuis Seven Martins – L7m, is a street art painter. Inspired by the beauty and sorrow of life, he likes to work in deserted, disarrayed places. I find his colourful and elegant paintings – mixture of realism and abstraction, exquisite and harmonious. I’m happy that I can share his work with you…
– L7MATRIX Street Art

.

Suggestion:
Other articles from the same category ‘Reveries into Oneness’

.

.

‘I am’ is the door

Posted on by Alain Joly

Here is a reminder from Nisargadatta Maharaj. It is necessary and terribly efficient to look into these matters for ourselves. This is why I like to share here the parts of a spiritual teaching that sounds like ‘something to do’, something to experiment and verify for ourselves:

‘Just keep in mind the feeling ‘I am’, merge in it, till your mind and feeling become one. By repeated attempts you will stumble on the right balance of attention and affection and your mind will be firmly established in the thought-feeling ‘I am’. Whatever you think, say, or do, this sense of immutable and affectionate being remains as the ever-present background of the mind.’
~ Nisargsadatta Maharaj

~~~

Further exploring on the subject:

“The knowledge ‘I am’ is God’s signature in the mind. It is the portal through which awareness localises itself as the mind and the same portal through which the mind passes in the opposite direction as it investigates its essential nature. The knowledge ‘I am’, or the knowledge of our own existence – awareness’s knowing of its own being – is our primary knowledge, upon which all other knowledge and experience depend. Until the nature of ourself is known, it is not possible to have correct knowledge about any other thing. Thus, there is no higher knowledge than to know the nature of oneself, the nature of ‘I’.”
~ Rupert Spira

~

“It is the simple that is certain, not the complicated. Somehow, people do not trust the simple, the easy, the always available. Why not give an honest trial to what I say? It may look very small and insignificant, but it is like a seed that grows into a mighty tree. Give yourself a chance!”
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

~

“Look at yourself steadily — it is enough. The door that locks you in, is also the door that lets you out. The ‘I am’ is the door. Stay at it until it opens. As a matter of fact, it is open, only you are not at it. You are waiting at the non-existent painted doors, which will never open.”
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

635AFFA2-05B7-486F-8D19-46C78D56DD67

.

The picture is by Thomas Mühl/Pixabay

Bibliography:
– ‘The Nature of Consciousness’, – by Rupert Spira (Sahaja Publications)
– ‘I Am That‘ – by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (Non-Duality Press)

Websites:
– Rupert Spira
– Nisargsadatta Maharaj (Wikipedia)

Suggestions:
– Fleeing to God (other pointers from the blog)
– Khetwadi Lane (Homage to Nisargadatta Maharaj)

.

Bhārata Mā

Posted on by Alain Joly

We continue here our series of texts or essays on different subjects of spiritual interest. The question here is: ‘Why is India so often such a determining factor in our spiritual life?’ Let’s explore it…

 

“For our goal was not only the East, or rather
the East was not only a country and something geographical,
but it was the home and youth of the soul,
it was everywhere and nowhere,
it was the union of all times.”
~ Hermann Hesse, “The Journey to the East”

 

India. I visited her and fell under her spell and her charm. If I look back, my spiritual journey started as a big cliche: I went to India to find truth, and I found it. Well, I didn’t find a neatly arranged package of truth, ready made and understood to be lived for ever thereafter. No, I rather found a messy bundle of bewilderment and puzzling questions about the nature of truth. But it had a lasting impression on me. Mind you, it came in the form of a big, exotic, full-fledged, but short lived awakening experience. Nothing less for this little big man who knew nothing about spirituality, and woke up to his first Indian trip burdened with a memory and experience that would take him a lifetime to understand. So why? Why does India take such a large part in shaping not only my life, but the life of so many people, when it comes to spirituality? What lives there that is so potent? Let’s find out. Let us all embark on a journey in Bharata, which the Brahma-Purana describes in this way: “The continent situated north of the Ocean and south of the Snow Mountain is called Bhârata. There resides the descendants of the tribe of Bharata. Its width is seventy-two thousand times the distance traveled by a cart. A land where deeds are fruitful for those who seek deliverance.”

An essay on the discovery of India’s spiritual heart (READ MORE…)

 

The livelier dances the sea

Posted on by Alain Joly

CFC3F4DF-C07D-46E3-B8F9-899813B48B8E

Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Poet’, as he is affectionately known in India, is the author of some delicate, lyrical poems, often with devotional accents. This gem comes from the lesser known ‘A Flight of Swans’:

.

My footstep
I know you hear night and day.

Your pleasure
Blooms in the purple of Autumn’s dawn,
Sparkles in the springtime shower of blossoms.

The nearer I come to you on your path,
The livelier dances the sea.

Like lotus-petals my life unfolds
From birth to birth,
And your crowding suns and stars
Circle me in wonder.

The blossom of the world woven of light
Fills your offering hands,
And your shy heaven
Unfolds its love,
Petal by petal,
In my sky.

~ Rabindranath Tagore

.

~~~

From ‘A Flight of Swans’ (Poems from Balākā) – Translated by Aurobindo Bose,
John Murray Publishers 

Picture by Alain Joly

~~~

.

Bibliography:
– ‘Gitanjali’ (Song Offerings) – by Rabindranath Tagore – CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Website:
– Rabindranath Tagore (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Voices from Silence (other poems from the blog)
– The Heart of Tagore (Homage to Rabindranath Tagore)

.

The Secret

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Open Window’ – Pierre Bonnard, 1921 – WikiArt

There is a secret. Do you want to hear it?… So come closer, because like all secrets, it must be whispered. We mustn’t scare anyone.

Are you ready? Here it is: The world is not as it was presented to you. You have been fooled. There is a misundestanding.

It is the best kept secret in the universe. Why? Simply because it is not hidden. Or rather, it is hidden in view of all, in full light. Every religion has tried to conquer it and has failed. Not by lack of believing, as they would like us to think, but by excess of belief, of fascination.

Only the most mystical of their representatives, the most courageous, the most eager to know the truth beyond all other considerations, have approached it, discovered it intimately. Because this secret requires everything, it wants the whole of you. It won’t let you know it from a distance. It wants a total union, therefore a sacrifice.

So, are you ready?

Look carefully. Become impregnated with consciousness, feel it, be ‘it’, to the exclusion of all that you have been taught about yourself. After all, do you really believe that you are your body, to which you gave a name? Do you really think that you have an age, that your thoughts describe you, model you? Do you believe yourself to be so small, so narrow? Is your life just a series of experiences that happen to you, and that will make you either beautiful or stupid, mediocre or refined?

Look again. Are you not experience itself, are you not the world? Are you not absent to the presence of the world? And therefore immense, infinite, eternal, your body marrying the outlines, the confines of the universe? Are you not the very vessel, the One of all things, of which you would be both a part and the totality?

Look. Observe.

The world is not separate from you, doesn’t stand at a distance, and you are not a small thing lost, cut off from everything. You are the experience itself, without any separation between a body, a mind, that would be yourself, and the rest of life and the world that would impose its experience on you. There is only experience, and that is ‘you’.

You are everything, the entirety of what exists. One piece. Nothing that exists is foreign to you. The world is you. Do you hear it? You are the world. Nothing is foreign to you. Nothing that would not be ‘you’. You are your own constituent, and all that, the world, is you! Do you hear it?

That is the secret, God, Love, Life, Death.

It is you !

You are that…

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

~~~

.

Website:
– Pierre Bonnard (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.