“But the beauty is in the walking -- we are betrayed by destinations.”

― Gwyn Thomas

“to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Warsan Shire

Attachment

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
~G.K. Chesterton

The Suburbs

Complaint
Is only possible
While living in the suburbs
Of God.

Hafiz

Eternity

"He who binds himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise."  

William Blake

"The work you have done has prepared you for the next part of your spiritual journey.  Through meditation, heartfulness work and care of the body, your mind is calmer, your heart is more open, and your body is less blocked.  You are simultaneously more grounded and more sensitive; more sure of who you are, yet less attached to being 'somebody'.   You are learning to die."  Inayat Khan

Spiritual Maturity

"A growing surrender to the unknown is a sign of spiritual maturity and encourages us to give up illusions of immortality we still might have and to experience in a new way our total dependence on God's love, a dependence that does not take away our free selfhood but purifies and ennobles it...those who have learned through living that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to, are the really creative people.   The are free to move constantly away from the familiar, safe places and can keep moving forward to new, unexplored areas of life."  Inayat Khan

Love After Love

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

Attachment

"You only lose that which you cling to." Buddha

Shadow and Darkness

"When the sun disappears into the night, its light never dies. Our subconscius mind embraces what sunset represents in our lives. It is imperative that we attach ourselves to that notion firmly."   ~ Dodinsky

Time

Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche: "You are human. Time is passing."

Wholeness

"Most of us are dragged
toward wholeness
We do not understand
the breakdown of what has gone before.
We do not understand.
We cling to the familiar,
refuse to give up our habitual lives,
resist our growth.
We do not understand rebirth
do not accept the initiation rites.
Most of us are dragged toward wholeness."

What Is

"The ego neuroses that once preoccupied me haven't all gone away.  What is gone is my identification with them.  Now they are merely quaint and fascinating...a passing show...More and more I am just awareness.  Life lives itself.   I am involved with it all, yet I cling to none of it.   It is what is.  No big deal."  Ram Das

Autumn

AUTUMN

Urge me to drop every leaf I don't need
Every task or bad habit I repeat past its season
Every sorrow I rehearse
Each unfulfilled hope I recall
Every person or possession to which I cling-
Until my branches are bare, until I hold fast to
Nothing

Tutor me through straining night winds
In the passion of moan and pant
The gift of letting go
At the moment of most abundance
In the way of falling apples, figs, maple leaves, pecans.

Show me the way of dying in glorious boldness
Yellow,gold, orange, rust, red, burgundy.

Monza Naff

Love

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Kahlil Gibran

Prayer

"Prayer is not a way to get what we want to happen, like a remote that comes with a television set.  Prayer may be less about asking for the things we are attached to than it is about relinquishing our attachments in some way.   It can take us beyond fear, which is an attachment, and beyond hope, which is another attachment.  It can help us remember the nature of the world and the nature of life, not on an intellectual level but in a deep and experiential way."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Attachment

"In our instinctive attachments, our fear of change, and our wish for certainty and permanence, we may undercut the impermanence which is our greatest strength, our most fundamental identity.   Without impermanence, there is no process.   The nature of life is change.   All hope is based on process."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Attachment vs. Commitment

"While attachment has it's source in the personality, in what the Buddhists call the 'desire nature', commitment comes from the soul.   In relationship to life, just as in human relationships, attachment closes down options, commitment opens them up.  Modern life has made us people of attachment rather than people of commitment.   Attachment leads farther and farther into entrapment.   Commitment, though it may sometimes feel constricting, will ultimately lead to greater and greater degrees of freedom.   One can distinguish between the two in most situations by noticing over time whether one moves through this activity or relationship closer to freedom or closer to bondage.   Attachment is a reflex, an autonomic response which often may not reflect our deepest good.   Commitment is a conscious choice, to align ourselves with our most genuine values and our sense of purpose.   Survival in a setting of life threatening illness may involve a willingness to let go of everything but life itself."    Rachel Naomi Remen

Freedom from Attachment

"The less we are attached to life, the more alive we can become.   The less we have preferences about life, the more deeply we can experience and participate in life."   Rachel Naomi Remen