unfurling

“I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.”




Eckhart Tolle
Photo:  Peter Bowers

nothing other than this

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.




 Hermann Hesse
from Trees, Reflections and Poems

one breath

When my mother was dying

We made a agreement that when she passed

I would have to find her in new ways

She said,

You can find me in the wind

Or in the scent of a rose..

You will find me in the decisions you make…

Help each other

We are all children of the Gods

And we all share one language

And we all share one breath

Lisa Kristine
Photo:  Peter Bowers

the greatest of these

Though I speak with the tongues of angels,

If I have not love...

My words would resound with but a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophesy...

And understand all mysteries...

and all knowledge...

And though I have all faith

So that I could remove mountains,

If I have not love...

I am nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind;

Love tolerates all things,

Aspires to all things.

Love never dies.

While the prophecies shall be done away,

tongues shall be silenced,

knowledge shall fade...

thus then shall linger only

faith, hope, and love...

but the greatest of these...

is love.

1 Corinthians 13
Photo:  Peter Bowers

The Swan

This clumsy living that moves lumbering

as if in ropes through what is not done,

reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is the letting go

of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,

is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down

into the water, which receives him gaily

and which flows joyfully under

and after him, wave after wave,

while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,

is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,

more like a king, further and further on.

Rainer Maria Rilke 

Translated by Robert Bly

Photo:   Peter Bowers

home

Be ordinary. 

Every place is a place of arrival,

every place is a true home for the practitioner.

There is nothing that is not deep and wonderful,

there is nothing that is not liberated.

The most noble person is the person who has nothing to do. 

The only thing you should avoid is thinking about what

you are going to do.

All you need to do is be an ordinary person,

be sovereign wherever you are and use 

that place as your seat of awakening.

You should live your lives in a very natural way. 

Do not put on airs. 

When it is necessary to walk, walk. 

When it is necessary to sit, sit.

Ramana Maharshi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

with thanks:  Love is Place

home

The act of trying to find the way home is what convinces us we are lost.

We’re not lost, we’re not alone, and we’ve never even left home.

Rumi

a thousand ways

Let the beauty we love be what we do

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground 

~

There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground, 

there are a thousand ways to go home again.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

The Altar of This Moment

Place everything you can perceive—

everything you can

see,

hear,

smell,

taste,

or touch,

upon the altar of this moment

and give thanks.

It is over so soon—

this expression,

this single moment of your precious life,

this one heart

pounding itself open

with fear or wild joy,

this one breath rising

in the cold winter air

smoothly and gently

or coughing and sputtering.

Bow, while you can, before

this one taste

of afternoon tea

warming its way to your belly,

or the fragrant orange

exploding its sweet juice

in your grateful mouth.

You have to love

the antics of your mind,

imagining life should only be sweet.

The bitter makes the sweet; and life is both.

It is whole, like you,

before you think yourself to pieces.

Place this moment’s pain and confusion on the altar, too,

and give special thanks for such grace

that wakes you up from sleeping through your life.

Pain is greatly under-rated as a pointer to Unknowing,

yet greatly over-rated when taken as identity.

In this one moment,

your eyes meet mine and there is

a single looking.

What is peering from behind our masks?

Can it touch itself across the room?

Place your palms together;

touch your holy skin.

In another moment it will shed itself.

What will you be then?

What were you before you had two hands?

What are you now?

You cannot capture That

and place It on the altar of this moment.

It is the altar,

and this moment’s infinite expressions,

and the Seeing,

and its own devotion to itself.

You are That.

 Dorothy Hunt

Photo:  Peter Bowers

With thanks: science and non-duality website

The Mother

The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word “Mother,” and the most beautiful call is the call of “My mother.” It is a word full of hope and love, a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart. The mother is everything – she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness….
Everything in nature bespeaks the mother. The sun is the mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of heart; it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks. And this earth is the mother of trees and flowers. It produces them, nurses them, and weans them. The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds. And the mother, the prototype of all existence, is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love.






Kahlil Gibran
Photo:  Peter Bowers

What is There Beyond Knowing

What is there beyond knowing that keeps

calling to me?  I can't

turn in any direction

but it's there.  I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's

silk song, but the far off

fires, for example,

of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind

playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,

or standing still

in the same - what shall I say -

moment.

What I know

I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it

on one shoulder,

important and honourable, but so small!

While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable.  How wonderful it is

to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end. 

I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,

in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out.  Life so far doesn't have any other name

but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet. 

I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass

and the weeds.

Mary Oliver

We Are Here

It is a strange and magical fact to be here,

walking around in a body,

to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you.

It is an immense privilege,

and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here …

It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us

so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed.

We are here.

We are wildly and dangerously free.

John O'Donohue

From Anam Cara

image:  Peter Bowers