how to fall in love

When you shift your focus

from what is absent

to what is present,

from what is missing

to what has been given,

from what you are not

to who you are,

from the ravages of linear time

to the immediacy of Now,

you are reconnecting

with love, truth and beauty,

and abundance is yours,

effortlessly.

For in truth,

nothing is lacking where you are,

nothing is missing from the present scene of the movie of your life,

and you are forever full,

and at the point of completion.

The only reason

you cannot find Oneness

is because you never left.

The day is just waiting to be lived.

So breathe in life, friend,

breathe in life.

Jeff Foster

relief

 

The only thing we know about death is the moment when the whole fear construct falls away and then rises again and the shock of me-ness occurs.  If we really pay attention to it, we will see that the me is fear.

This moment and the death process are the same. You will always meet death here.  Here is always the opportunity to surrender and to experience something that you don't know about. The relief of death is the relief from living in fear, the relief from the burden of the known. That is available here. Right now. And it will always be. And the one opportunity to take the one action that you can take will always be here and now. That is to surrender to what is. 

Steven Harrison

What's Next After Now

Photo:  Peter Bowers

the role i play

 

Life While-You-Wait.

Performance without rehearsal.

Body without alterations.

Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.

I only know it's mine, I can't exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot

just what this play's all about.

Ill prepared for the privilege of living,

I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.

I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.

I trip at every step over my own ignorance.

I can't conceal my hayseed manners.

My instincts are for hammy histrionics.

Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.

Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can't take back,

stars you'll never get counted,

your character like a raincoat you button on the run - 

the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,

or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!

But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen.

Is it fair, I ask

(my voice a little hoarse,

since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage).

You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz

taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.

I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is. 

The props are surprisingly precise.

The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.

The farthest galaxies have been turned on.

Oh no, there' s no question, this must be the premiere.

And whatever I do

will become forever what I've done. 

Wislawa Szymborska

Photo:  Peter Bowers

pride

If I claim I was a terrible, horrible,

Evil no-good person,

It would be a lie, and it would be

Wanting always to be the best or the worst.

So now I'm destined to wander,

My bag full of pride a lot lighter,

And if I say I am done

With whatever ails me,

That would also be a lie.

I am not done, will never be done

Till the day I die,

But I am content to be human,

Naked and shaking with love

At the moment, and the next moment,

I just can't say.

Noelle Kocot

Photo: Peter Bowers

next time

Next time what I'd do is look at 

the earth before saying anything. I'd stop

just before going into a house

and be an emperor for a minute

and listen better to the wind

  or to the air being still.

When anyone talked to me, whether

blame or praise or just passing time,

I'd watch the face, how the mouth

had to work, and see any strain, any

sign of what lifted the voice.

And for all, I'd know more - the earth

bracing itself and soaring, the air 

finding every leaf and feather over

forest and water, and for every person

the body glowing inside the clothes

  like a light. 

William Stafford

Photo:  Peter Bowers

practice

The world you see is just a movie in your mind.

Rocks don't see it.

Bless and sit down.

Forgive and forget.

Practice kindness all day to everybody

and you will realize you're already 

in heaven now.

That's the story.

That's the message.

Nobody understands it,

nobody listens, they're

all running around like chickens with heads cut

off.  I will try to teach it but it will 

be in vain, s'why I'll 

end up in a shack

praying and being

cool and singing 

by my woodstove

making pancakes.

Jack Kerouac

Photo: Peter Bowers

discontinuous poems

The frightful reality of things
Is my everyday discovery.
Each thing is what it is.
How can I explain to anyone how much
I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

To be whole, it is enough to exist.

I have written quite a number of poems
And may write many more, of course.
Each poem of mine explains it,
Though all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,
I don’t begin thinking whether it feels.
I don’t force myself to call it my sister,

But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,
I enjoy it because it feels nothing,
I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

At times I also hear the wind blow by
And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes
  it worth having been born.

I don’t know what others will think who read this;
But I find it must be good because I think it
  without effort,
And without the idea of others hearing me think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it as my words say it.

Once they called me a materialist poet
And I admired myself because I never thought
That I might be called by any name at all.
I am not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, it is not I who am
  valuable.
The value is there, in my verses.
All this has nothing whatever to do with any will
  of mine.

Fernando Pessoa 

(writing under the heteronym Alberto Caeiro)

translation: Edouard Roditi

with thanks: love is a place

to begin with, the sweet grass

1.

Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat

  of the sweet grass?

Will the owl bite off its own wings?

Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or

  forget to sing?

Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say - behold

the reliability and the finery and the teachings

  of this gritty earth gift.

2.

Eat bread and understand comfort.

Drink water, and understand delight.

Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets

  are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds

who are drinking the sweetness, who are

  thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.

Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.

Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star

both intimate and ultimate,

and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:

oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two

beautiful bodies of your lungs.

3.

The witchery of living

is my whole conversation

with you, my darlings

All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.

This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It's more than bones.

It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.

It's more than the beating of the single heart.

It's praising.

It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.

You have a life - just imagine that!

You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe

  still another.

4.

Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,

the dancer, the potter,

to make me a begging bowl

which I believe

my soul needs.

And if I come to you,

to the door of your comfortable house

with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,

will you put something into it?

I would like to take this chance.

I would like to give you this chance.

5.

We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we

  change.

Congratulations, if

  you have changed.

6.

Let me ask you this.

Do you think that beauty exists for some

  fabulous reason?

And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure -

  your life -

what would do for you?

7.

What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.

Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.

That was many years ago.

Since then I have gone out from my confinements,

  though with difficulty.

I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.

I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.

They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment

somehow or another.)

And I have become the child of clouds, and of hope.

I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.

I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,

I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?

Love yourself.  Then forget it.  Then, love the world.

Mary Oliver

Evidence

photo:  Peter Bowers

natural and simple

Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Photo:  Peter Bowers

with thanks: Love is a Place

first breath

As soon as she is born - she, 

he - the moment the newborn breathes

for the first time, taking, from the general

supply, some air, pulling it down

half her length, into the base of the

lobe which had first existed as a mattery

idea, and then had become the folded

lung, which lay in blue wait;

as soon as the sky

is drawn in, like a

petal expanding, in fast motion,

opening into the new being -

oxygen, where it had never been,

taking the neonate's bluish shade

back into the empyrean;

as soon as she's taken the good of one breath, 

and given back the rest - look,

she is dying. I mean she is living - for a time,

maybe ninety years - but she

is on her way, now, to that ending.

She had never died at all, until now,

never before been offered the human work.

Sharon Olds

Photo:  Peter Bowers

with thanks Love is a Place

the teachers

Owl in the black morning,
   mockingbird in the burning
      slants of the sunny afternoon
         declare so simply

to the world
   everything I have tried but still
      haven't been able
         to put into words,

so I do not go
   far from that school
      with its star-bright
         or blue ceiling,

and I listen to those teachers,
   and others too -
      the wind in the trees
         and the water waves -

for they are what lead me
   from the dryness of self
      where I labor
         with the mind-steps of language -

lonely, as we all are
   in the singular,
      I listen hard
         to the exuberances

of the mockingbird and the owl,
   the waves and the wind.
      And then, like peace after perfect speech,
         such stillness.





Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers

practice

 

Once someone asked a well-known Thai meditation master, "In this world where everything changes, where nothing remains the same, where loss and grief are inherent in our very coming into existence, how can there be any happiness? How can we find security when we see that we can't count on anything being the way we want it to be?" The teacher, looking compassionately at this fellow, held up a drinking glass which had been given to him earlier in the morning and said, "You see this goblet? For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it, I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say,  'Of course.' But when I understand this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious. Every moment is just as it is and nothing need be otherwise."

When we recognize that, just as that glass, our body is already broken, that indeed we are already dead, then life becomes precious and we open to it just as it is, in the moment it is occurring. When we understand that all our loved ones are already dead - our children, our mates, our friends - how precious they become. How little fear can interpose, how little doubt can estrange us. When you live your life  as though you're already dead, life takes on new meaning. Each moment becomes a whole lifetime, a universe unto itself.  

When we realize we are already dead, our priorities change, our heart opens, our mind begins to clear of the fog of old holdings and pretendings. We watch all life in transit and what matters becomes instantly apparent: The transmission of love, the letting go of obstacles to understanding, the relinquishment of our grasping, our hiding from ourselves. Seeing the mercilessness of our self-strangulation, we begin to come gently into the light we share with all beings. Taking each teaching, each loss, each gain, each fear, each joy, as it arises and experiencing it fully, life becomes workable...

If our only spiritual practice were to live as though we were already dead, relating to all we meet, to all we do, as though it were our final moments in the world, what time would there be for old games or falsehoods or posturing? If we lived our life as though we were already dead, as though our children were already dead, how much time would there be for self-protection and the re-creation of ancient mirages? Only love would be appropriate, only the truth.

Stephen and Ondrea Levine

Excerpt: Who Dies?

Photo:  Peter Bowers