Category: Spiritualibus

Any original thought?
Where d’it come from
Anyone had it before
Is there such a thing
Could it really be one
Is there anything new
That is not repeated
Over and over again
Like most everyone
Reinventing the wheel
For oneself — all over
Such a big discovery
Who ever can learn
From one another
What’s been found
On the cutting edge
Of consciousness
As a new revelation
That indeed matters
How one and all build
On many insights past
Combining the present
Moments for a future
More or less genuine
Original that may be
Obvious over time
In honest efforts
To be real indeed
Attentive with love.

“मैत्री Maitrī base” — the privilege of breath

A thought of Bogachevsky, Father Evlissi, an Essene

“From the conventions with which one is stuffed subjective morality is formed, but for real life objective morality is needed, which comes only from conscience.
Conscience is everywhere the same. As it is here, so it is in St. Petersburg, America, Kamchatka, and the Solomon Islands. Today you happen to be here, but tomorrow you may be in America; if you have a real conscience and live according to it, it will always be well with you wherever you may be… a real conscience, that is, the foundation of objective morality.
Subjective morality is a relative conception, and if you are filled with relative conceptions, then … you will always and everywhere act and judge other people according to the conventional views and notions you have acquired. You must learn not what people round you consider good or bad, but to act in life as your conscience bids you. An untrammeled conscience will always know more than all the books and teachers put together.”

— Meetings With Remarkable Men, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, pp. 76-77

Original thought mirrored through an old window

Ganesha caught fire
Given enough space
To be and to look at
Noticed just in time
But one leg burned
Gave enough room
For the small turtle
Become snowed in
Too steep this hill
Requiring to tow
So first remember
An attaching hook
Not in the middle
Adding challenge
As pulled around
In slippery snow
Approached limits
Of what’s possible
With cooperation
It could succeed
Back on the road
Among red tails
Chirping merely
One leading ahead
Others all around
Down the slope
To everyday life
From a retreat
Closer to heaven
A gentle introduction
For beginners here now
Of what’s done all life
Late without lineage
But still with frames
Wishing for realization
Framing attitudes of soul
Language learned as such
Contracting and expanding
Like breathing in and out
What or who’s perceiving
Thinking, feeling, naming
But why label things at all
When it’s just pure being
All unlimited and free
Just let it be what it is
The experience’s open
For learning kindness
No need for labeling
Limiting in any way
As loving acceptance
Keeps open all doors
Always another lesson
At times bump heads
Or really need a tow
Continue present now
Embraced by the divine
Relishing life and love
Here it all is what it is!

“Ever forward into the open” — blue destination

Life as a story…

[Questioning exchange after hearing a detailed rendition of incredible past events…]

“But for the purposes of our investigation, we would like to know what really happened?”
“What really happened?”
“Yes.”
“So you want another story?”
“Uhh . . . no. We would like to know what really happened.”
“Doesn’t the telling of something always become a story?”
“Uhh . . . perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of ‘invention’ in it. We don’t want any invention. We want the ‘straight facts’, as you say in English.”
“Isn’t telling about something — using words, English or Japanese — already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?”
“Uhh . . .”
“The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?”

— Life of Pi, Yann Martel, p. 302

Ganesha caught fire to melt snow or be towed

True freedom
Why qualify?
Is there such
A big thing as
False freedom
Like any illusion
Right and wrong
Or just whatever
One makes of it
Twists ‘nd turns
Until it may fit
For one or all
One’s illusion
All is freedom
To take some
Honest effort
For tuning in
Gradually
Ever more
In time here
In space now
Consciousness
So being soul
In the human
Body ‘nd mind
Welcome thus
To this species
On our planet
Free to love!

“Pebbles in the pond” — a touch of a raga

A brief for the defense — wood and fire

“Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything…”

“We think the fire eats the wood. We are wrong. The wood reaches out to the flame. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy, the manner in which we and the world meet each new day.”

— from Refusing Heaven: Poems and Collected Poems by Jack Gilbert, Goodreads.com

Biting or chewing through obstacles to true freedom

Finish your own puzzle
It is individually yours
Or you may have to go
Rip it apart and do it over
Hopefully with all the pieces
Or else find some fallen down
When some whirlwind blew
And deep emotions reset
That may be destructive
To what needs to go
Or gracefully gentle
In moments of rage
When energies clash
Doors open and close
First is best to focus on
No point on ones closed
But opening ones for sure
Where the energies flow
And big steps are made
Forward in unfoldment
Left behind for good
Openings long past
Closed and healed
Wounds and scars
Of loving hearts.

“Tears of joy” — generations mantra with a waking toddler’s song

A lesson from Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi was boarding a train. Just as he was going inside, one of his shoes slipped off and got caught on the track. He tried to retrieve it but could not. People standing near watched him. When he was unable to pull the shoe from the track, he took off the other shoe as well and threw it on the track right at the spot where the first one was stuck.

The astonished passengers asked, “Why are you throwing the other shoe onto the track?” Gandhi replied, “The poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track will now have a pair he can use.”

Lessons from Gandhi by Rajinder Singh — The Pinoneer, Sunday Magazine, 6 October 2013

Looking out from within, to finish your own puzzle