Spiritual Partners

The new female and the new male are partners on a journey of spiritual partners on a journey of spiritual growth. They want to make the journey. Their love and trust keep them together. Their intuition guides them. They consult with each other. They are friends. They laugh a lot. They are equals. That is what a spiritual partnership is: a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth.
~Gary Zukav

This body is not me
I am not limited by this body.
I am life without boundaries
I have never been born,
And I have never died.


Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
Manifestations from my wondrous mind.
Since before time, I have been free.


Birth and death are only doors through which we pass
Sacred thresholds on our journey
Birth and death are a game of hide and seek.


So laugh with me,
Hold my hand,
Let us say goodbye
Say goodbye to meet again soon.
We meet today
We will meet again tomorrow
We meet at the source every moment.
We meet each other in all forms of life.

I Got Kin

Plant
So that your own heart
Will grow.
Love
So God will think
"Ahhhh,
I got Kin in that body!
I should start inviting that soul over
for coffee and
Rolls."

Sing
Because that is a food
Our starving world
Needs.
Laugh
Because that is the purest
Sound.

Hafiz

Holy Fallout

We are often in battle.
So often defending every side of the fort,
It may seem, all alone.

Sit down, my dear,
Take a few deep breaths,
Think about a loyal friend.
Where is your music,
Your pet,
a brush?

Surely one who has lasted as long as you
Knows some avenue or place inside
That can give a sweet respite.

If you cannot slay your panic,
Them say within
As convincingly as you can,
"It is all God's will!"

Now pick up your life again.
Let whatever is out there
Come charging in,
Laugh and spit into the air,
There could be a holy fallout.

Throw those ladders like tiny match sticks
With "just" phantoms upon them
Who might be trying to scale your heart.

Your love has an eloquent tone.
The sky and I want to hear it!
If you still feel helpless
Give our battle cry again

Hafiz
Has shouted it a myriad times,

"It is all, It is all the Beloved's will!"

What is that luminous rain I see
All around you in the future
Sweeping in from the east plain?

It looks like, O it looks like
Holy Fallout
Filling your mouth and plams
With Joy!

Hafiz.

Living Life to the Full

It is good to use
best china
treasured dishes
the most genuine goblets
or the oldest lace tablecloth
there is a risk of course
every time we use anything
or anyone shares an inmost
mood or moment
or a fragile cup of revelation
but not to touch
not to handle
not to employ the available
artifacts of being
a human being
that is the quiet crash
the deadly catastrophe
where nothing
is enjoyed or broken
or spoken or spilled
or stained or mended
where nothing is ever
lived
loved
pored over
laughed over
wept over
lost
or found.

Thomas Carlisle

I am Not My Body

This body is not me.

I am not limited by this body.

I am life without boundaries.

I have never been born,

and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars, manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.

Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey.

Birth and death are a game of hide- and seek.

So laugh with me,

hold my hand,

let us say good-bye,

say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today.

We will meet again tomorrow.

We will meet at the source every moment.

We meet each other in all forms of life.

~By Thich Nhat Hanh

Problems

“It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.”
Freeman Dyson

Courage

" My mother told me that now that she was dying she regretted 99% of the things she was upset about in her life.  The crying, the upset, the anger.  She said, 'now that I am dying they are so silly.  They just took so much energy from me'.  Now I try to ask myself if this is worth taking energy from me.  She had Lou Gehrig's Disease and she couldn't move the muscles of her face and she told me the hardest thing was not to be able to laugh.  The hardest thing in her death, in her disease, was not being able to laugh.  Think about that."  Zalnab Salbi

Please Call Me By My True Names

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow --
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his "debt of blood" to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

1989

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

Laughter

"There should be great dollups of wild laughter among believers.  And that laughter in it's sense of irony should be a recognition of the helplessness and smallness of their own little projects compared to the graciousness and dignity and the wonder of the great divine calling.   Because more often than not, it's when humans really try to make it work out and get it together that they make the greatest disaster out of the whole thing.   I'm sure if we could listen to the music of the spheres that we would hear deep within it the divine laughter at the attempts of the little humans to work out all of their miriad projects which are so serious and solomn to them but in the context of the great and touching divine graciousness are very small indeed."   John O' Donahue

God

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire