For Presence

Awaken to the mystery of being here

and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to

follow its path.

Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.

May anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of

soul.

Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek

no attention.

Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven

around the heart of wonder.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

For Presence

 

Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

 

Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

 

Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

 

Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.

 

Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.

 

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.

 

May anxiety never linger about you.

 

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.

 

Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.

 

Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

 

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.

 

~ John O'Donohue ~

 

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

Enough

Enough. These few words are enough. 
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now

David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet

The Sage

The small man builds cages for everyone he knows.

while the Sage,

who has to duck his head when the moon is low,

keeps dropping keys all night long

for the beautiful

rowdy

prisoners.

--Hafiz

The Guest

Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think...while you are alive.

What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
Just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.


Kabir

(trans. Robert Bly)

This Light Glimmers Within You

Once you have tapped your inner self,
the one has made contact with the One sitting inside;
you have met with God.
Then what kind of fear can exist?
What is there to be fearful about, and what worries are left to encounter?
When you go within, you become still, you become peaceful.
All the waves, those generate within you;
they all originate at the level of your mind.
They all come to a stop.
There is a light within you, and you are also a light.
Both lights assimilate into one.

Kabir

This Love

Hands cling to hands and eyes linger on eyes: thus

begins the record of our hearts.

It is the moonlight night of March; the sweet smell of henna

is in the air; my flute lies on the earth neglected and your garland

of flowers

is unfinished.

This love between you and me is simple as a song.

Rabindranath Tagore

What do we bring?

The wanderer does not bring a handful of earth,

the unutterable, from the mountain slope

to the valley, but a pure word he has learned,

the blue and yellow gentian.

R. M. Rilke