Pure Land

Fish out of water
Frightened child
I looked and looked outside, and trusted no one.

Least of all this one.

After many years
It came to me: You were here all along!
No need to look and look,
It was me all along.
You looking and You finding.
You’re welcome!

I can live a life of falseness,
Always trusting what I poorly see
Or I can revel in the me that is You right now.

This is it: I am the reality I seek.
All that is needed is to

Remember.

This is the Pure Land.

Too long I have walked the path along the River,

And now I return and shiver outside your door.

I am depleted

And I am embarrassed to knock.

Why would you want to see one like me?

My tone is off,

My breathe is rough,

I am empty.

I cannot find the right note,

The one I plan to sing forever.

A tiny light flickers behind my eyes,

My breath evens,

My tone improves.

The voice of godself is as the singing of bees.

I hear the sound that sings between the air and the river,

Even now.

And your footsteps coming closer behind the door.

You listen and I hear your soft breath.  

You never shout.

Snowflakes start to fall, drifting against my life.  

There is purity to be found,

And Presence.

You always wait for me, and 

I always run away,

But you keep waiting and I keep returning.

Always returning.

–Amidha Porter, ©Copyright 2023

Inspirer of my mind, consoler of my heart, healer of my spirit,
Thy presence lifteth me from earth to heaven
Thy words flow as the sacred river
Thy thought riseth as a divine spring
Thy tender feelings waken sympathy in my heart.

Beloved Teacher, thy very being is forgiveness.
The clouds of doubt and fear are scattered by thy piercing glance.
All ignorance vanishes in thy illuminating presence;
A new hope is born in my heart by breathing thy peaceful atmosphere.

O inspiring Guide through life’s puzzling ways, in Thee I feel abundance of blessing.

___________________________________________

On the occasion of his Urs, the anniversary of his return to the Beloved, I weep for my spiritual father and dance with joy in the downpour from the planes of light where he lives now.

I notice that these days, not so many people understand the “guru trip” as we termed it in our times. That may just be a phenomenon here where I live, or it may be a more universal one. These days, people don’t want to be initiated. They don’t want to join anything. They’re afraid they can’t trust, and so they don’t want to “surrender” to the guru, as we did (and learned that, painful thought it could be, surrender is the quickest path to freedom). They want to read books, see films and discuss them with other people. They’re like bees, sipping honey wherever they find it. Honey is delicious, but as Mevlana said, “the surrender to God is so hard the disciple sheds tears of blood” and the guru shows the way. I chose blood, and will never stop being thankful for that.

This is just how it seems to me, it may well not seem that way to others. And I have a long way to go, so don’t listen to me!

May all people be free.

The above sung by my dear friend Shams in the words of Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Everything is Going to be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?

There will be dying, there will be dying,

but there is no need to go into that.

The poems flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart;

the sun rises in spite of everything

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.                               

Derek Mahon

Earth, isn’t this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly
there’s nothing left outside us to see?
What, if not transformation,
is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,
I want it too. Believe me,
no more of your springtimes are needed
to win me over—even one flower
is more than enough. Before I was named
I belonged to you. I see no other law
but yours, and know I can trust
the death you will bring.

See, I live. On what?
Childhood and future are equally present.
Sheer abundance of being
floods my heart.

       – Rainer Maria Rilke, from the Ninth Duino Elegy, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy 

Such prescience from those who have paid attention is benefitting us now…or at least comforting us. Just this one is enough.

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I’ll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:
I whirled through transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

– A.R. Ammons

I started to feel worse over the weekend, and then worse…  Having not been tested for the Coronavirus, I wasn’t for sure I’d actually had it, but if I had, I was pretty sure I’d been blessed by having it lightly…until I wasn’t so sure.  So today we fashioned masks for ourselves and drove to Chapel Hill for a “drive-up” COVID-19 test and, for me, an exam, since I’d been wheezing more and more, as well as coughing.

An eerie experience it was, too, driving through deserted city streets, occasionally seeing kids out playing on their bikes (where were their parents?), and stopping at Whole Foods and Weaver Street for a few things, watching the “socially distanced” folks file in and out.  Everyone, employees and customers alike, were masked, and shopping carts of “to be delivered” stuff were being wheeled out into the parking lot.

I was scheduled for a “drive up test,” and an exam, as well, and we wove our way through an intricate pattern of parking areas to get to where we were going.  Hospital staff were all over the place, masked and suited up, directing us to where we needed to be, and I was duly screened by the folks doing the screening, and then by a young doctor who I would guess was probably a resident, who literally examined me in my car and said I’m fine as far as oxygen goes and prescribed an inhaler for temporary use.  I won’t know for a day or two if I actually have “it” or not, but I’ve definitely got something, and it would be just fine with me if it wasn’t “it.”  Stay tuned.

Here’s the thing:  every single person we met today was kind and helpful and gracious to us.  I would have thought that hospital personnel at this time would have been a bit cranky with all that’s going down, but they weren’t:  they couldn’t have been more helpful, and may I just say:  it was HOT, and they were all bundled up in hospital gowns, rubber gloves, masks, the works.

So where are all the jerks these days?  Any guesses?

May all people know love.

This morning, my beloved younger daughter, who is an academic librarian in Connecticut–right next door to one of the worst sections of the country for COVID-19–said that she had had a dream that her father had died and she was driving South to be with me.  She seemed pretty upset about the dream, and of course we all worry about each other, but I was reminded of some studies I’d read about earlier in my life, studies about the kinds of dreams pregnant women have, terrible dreams of having a baby that is disfigured or terribly ill…and in fact, these studies showed that women who had those dreams (are there any of us who haven’t?) tended to have shorter labors and easier birthing experiences.  It seems that these horrific dreams help us to cope with our fears, in some way.  So I told my daughter about that, and I think it helped some…

It often seems to me that the happiest people have the greatest fears.  My daughter is among these, because she is in love, looking forward to marriage, and she loves her job and her family.  She is afraid of losing it all!  Life can certainly be horrifying, but what can we do but live it and hope for the best?

I have noticed, over many years, that somehow things do tend to work out, but I also notice that they certainly don’t seem to for everyone…or do they?  It is all in the perspective, perhaps.  What can we learn from this?  The conservatives among us would say that if our lives are not optimum–if we are poor or otherwise lacking–it is because we deserve what we get.  They, of course, deserve all their money and good fortune, because they are, in some way, among the righteous.  To my way of thinking, this is leftover dreck from the Judeo-Christian era that is connected with those religions in their organized forms.  In fact, it seems to me that it is very possibly quite the opposite.  We are all getting our share of the “universal thump,” that term coined by Herman Melville, and it is, perhaps, our belief, our perception of it that is really important.

Meanwhile, the Ouroborous continues in  its eternal circle, eating its own tail endlessly….

Let us side with the angels.  They too have their flaws, but we have much to learn from them.

Is the Spring coming?” he said.  “What is it like?” . . .

“It is the sun shining on the rain, and the rain falling on the sunshine” . . .

–Frances Hodgson Burnett

Every day, I ask the God of my understanding, “how can I serve?”  We are all isolated from each other at this point, and I am in a high-risk category for the Coronavirus, being both “of a certain age” and immune-compromised already, so here I am, me and my Mac, and it occurs to me that I can at least start paying attentinon to my blog, which despite my neglect of the last year or so, means a lot to me.  How may I serve, I ask myself, and it seems that at this time, just to reach out is the best way to serve.  Generally, I have no idea who reads my blog–well, I have some idea, but not much–but once a teacher of mine said to me “Amidha, you see things that few people ever see in their lifetime, and someday some lonely soul will read your words and feel that somehow, they have been understood, and they will not be so lonely.”  I’m lonely too, of course; I think loneliness is what allows us to see, and further,  I think loneliness is the inevitable condition of those who take “the road less traveled,” and the price that is paid for one’s sight…

I got up early this morning and walked out on my back porch.  My Westies were already out, playing, rolling in the grass, experiencing the joy that is available to all of us when we can get past our fear…and they galloped up onto the porch, barking joyously, and made a fuss over me (how can anyone be lonely with a well-loved dog at their side?) and the air smelt sweet and the grass needs mowed, and tulips are starting to pop up, and all this proves that despite everything, life goes on.  I look back at history, and think of World War II, as a for instance:  people not knowing, when they went to bed, whether they would wake up the next morning.  And it has always been thus.  I think that in the US, we are rather spoiled, and these last years have given us the chance to find out where we really stand, and at the same time, to not have a leg to stand on.  A devastating oxymoron!  But we can make whatever we choose of it all:  we can let it break us, or we can let it make us great.  And after all, what is life as we know it?  A dream in the mind of the Beloved.

I have a vague understanding of a quantum reality that encompasses many worlds existing simultaneously, worlds in which we have multiple existences…and then beyond all that, the worlds through which we came in order to reach this existence on the earth plane, which some believe is the farthest reach of  incarnation.  I am not of a scientific mind, so that is the best way I can evoke these memories I carry.

Where shall we live today?  There must be somewhere we’re not all running scared from some plague.  Or even better, there must be somewhere fear has been overcome in the face of inevitable joy.

Yes there is fear.

Yes there is isolation.

Yes there is panic buying.

Yes there is sickness.

Yes there is even death.

But,

They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise

You can hear the birds again.

They say that after just a few weeks of quiet

The sky is no longer thick with fumes

But blue and grey and clear.

They say that in the streets of Assisi

People are singing to each other

across the empty squares,

keeping their windows open

so that those who are alone

may hear the sounds of family around them.

They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland

Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.

Today a young woman I know

is busy spreading fliers with her number

through the neighbourhood

So that the elders may have someone to call on.

Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples

are preparing to welcome

and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary

All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting

All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way

All over the world people are waking up to a new reality

To how big we really are.

To how little control we really have.

To what really matters.

To Love.

So we pray and we remember that

Yes there is fear.

But there does not have to be hate.

Yes there is isolation.

But there does not have to be loneliness.

Yes there is panic buying.

But there does not have to be meanness.

Yes there is sickness.

But there does not have to be disease of the soul

Yes there is even death.

But there can always be a rebirth of love.

Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.

Today, breathe.

Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic

The birds are singing again

The sky is clearing,

Spring is coming,

And we are always encompassed by Love.

Open the windows of your soul

And though you may not be able

to touch across the empty square,

Sing

–https://shrinkrapradio.com/686-irish-franciscan-monk-poet-richard-hendrick-on-coping-with-the-pandemic/

Teach me to go to this country beyond words and beyond names. Teach me not to pray on this side of the frontier, here where the woods are.

I need to be led by you. I need my heart to be moved by you. I need my soul to be made clean by your prayer. I need my will to be made strong by you. I need the world to be saved and changed by you. I need you for all those who suffer, who are in prison, in danger, in sorrow. I need you for all the crazy people. I need your healing hands to work always in my life. I need you to take me, as your Son a healer, a comforter, a savior. I need you to name the dead. I need you to help the dying cross their particular river. I need you for myself whether I live or die. I need to be your monk and your son. It is necessary. Amen.” –  Thomas Merton

Places, words, poems, books, films, paintings, all evoke memories of the worlds through which the soul passes on its way to incarnation.  They become my best friends and I never become tired of them.  Sometimes when I begin an entry here, I have to do a search to find out whether I will repeat myself if I share a quote like the one above, and I am indeed repeating myself, in this case.  Yet:  “It bears repeating,” as the saying goes, and it speaks to our current miseries.  Have you ever noticed how some writers write for the ages, not just the times they live in?  They may not realize it at the time, but I suppose we always hope that if we are feeling ignored and discounted in the present,  somewhere, somehow, someone in the future will see what we have been or said–in one way or another–and be healed by it.

So here we stand, with the opportunity to be united in our misery.  Have you seen the video of Italians singing together, standing on their balconies?  What a way to keep that social distance we keep hearing about!  And what an example to set.  (https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/16/kind-triumph-spirit-locked-down-italians-singing-balconies-inspire-hope-across-world)

Here in the States, we hoard toilet paper and queue up to buy whatever we can lay our hands on, rather than considering that someone else might need it.  At the same time, we worry about our loved ones, and try to think about our neighbors who might need us to do whatever we can do for them.  What does this Pandemic mean?  It is nothing new, although we Americans seem to think that it is, and that we don’t deserve it, but history belies this attitude, and we must try to learn from it.

Meanwhile, we have put a mentally ill, angry toddler in the White House (or SOMEONE did!) and we are trying to bear up under that terrible mistake.  What does this mean?

The above miseries, of course, are just the tip of the iceberg:  climate change, wars, much more is happening, regardless of what is transpiring behind it.  Lewellyn Vaughn-Lee speaks eloquently–if sometimes darkly–of this:  we are caught at the end of one era and the beginning of another, as he speaks of in his book Darkening of the Light:  Witnessing the End of an Era.

But in this moment of darkness, in this winter solstice, when it seems we have missed every opportunity, life is recreating itself anew.We are a part of life, part of this recreation, this realignment, even if our attention is completely distracted, even if our way of life is an agent of terrible destruction and desecration, exterminating species as it pollutes the inner and outer worlds.We are both spirit and matter, and along with all of creation we are being reborn.Distracted by the images on our televisions, computer screens and now smart phones, we might not know this for generations.We are so busy, we do not have time to witness what is really happening.There is so little light left it is hard to see, the noise of our daily life is so loud it is difficult to hear.But the cycles of life and the cosmos, the seasons of the soul and the world soul, continue.And the ancient promises are always kept, the promises between heaven and Earth, the promises that give us real hope and meaning, the promises that our souls can hear, even if our senses and our minds cannot. – Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee

I look outside my window and see our beloved friends, the cardinals, gratefully enjoying each other and the food that we leave for them.  The White Crabapple is blooming, and my Japanese Cherry is blossoming amazingly as it grows out of its babyhood…and it IS growing.  It IS becoming.  Again and again it returns.  My protective army of Ents sways in the breeze, shoulder to shoulder, knowing exactly where it stands.  My Westies frolic in the sunshine.  My belongings WILL become dusty within moments are they are dusted, and what shows the continuance of time better than this?

Endings, beginnings, they never cease.

This is what I know:  there is something, someOne I am in love with.  I don’t know where It is, I don’t know what It looks like.  I have gone beyond the images of my spiritual infancy, and I only know that I will gladly live or die for what I can’t see…but am more in love with as the world soul evolves…for it is evolving.

We watched one of our favorite films tonight, John Sayles’ Matewan (1987). I happen to have been raised in a coal mining town in West Virginia not far from there, and I listened to my Dad tell stories about his days in the coal mines during the depression, when he road a bike from Wisconsin to West Virginia looking for work. Those were the days when the unions were starting to get hold in that impoverished world–impoverished because of those very same wealthy old white men who have turned the state into Trump country today. We still have some of my dad’s old pay slips from pre-and-post John L. Lewis when his pay almost doubled from a few bucks a week to a few more, and the coal company store took it all back.

I don’t know why I was born
with this belief in something
deeper and larger than we can
see. But it’s always called. Even as
a boy, I knew that trees and light
and sky all point to some timeless
center out of view. I have spent my
life listening to that center and filtering
it through my heart. This listening
and filtering is the music of my soul,
of all souls. After sixty years, I’ve run
out of ways to name this. Even now,
my heart won’t stand still. In a moment
of seeing, it takes the shape of
my eye. In a moment of speaking, the
shape of my tongue. In a moment of
silence, it slips back into the lake of
center. When you kiss me, it takes
the shape of your lip. When our dog
sleeps with us, it takes the shape of
her curl. When the hummingbird
feeds her baby, it takes the shape
of her beak carefully dropping
food into our throats.

*************************************

There is so much bad poetry out there.  In my opinion, good poetry makes the universe split open and causes me to realize that I am known, and to remember myself.  When I started doing this blog, which seems like eons ago, I wanted to create a space to keep things I didn’t want to lose and, even more importantly, to share them.  I am very neglectful (maybe) and I don’t pay attention to my stats, but I’m relatively certain that not many people notice it.  However, the ones that do are people I’d want to share these things with.

Speaking of bad poetry, there is one entry in this blog that is very bad poetry, but gets more attention than anything else here.  I refer, here, to the poem from “Smoke Signals,” about fathers.  I think there are a lot of people carrying that particular pain, and I am one of them.  But it’s a bad poem.   I thought it was important to post it, but I feel guilty that someone else’s bad work carries my blog.

My husband and I have gradually been thinking about what we will do when he retires. Our ultimate fantasy, oddly, would be to live in the Shetland Islands, or perhaps even the Aran, the accent isn’t important…  But we have another fantasy, and that would be to return to what seems like home to me, the mountains of North Carolina (we live in the Piedmont now, where it is hot and humid and largely Trump Country, although Chapel Hill is next door, which is a comfort) and after all, our forefathers and foremothers emigrated here and became the Highlanders we are descended from.

Anyway, last weekend we decided to leave the damned lawn unmowed and the last of the house-work to do (we have been renovating) and get in the car and go to the mountains and start looking around, with an eye to eventually selling this barn of a log house of ours (which we dearly love) and finding a smaller one in the mountains somewhere in the Asheville area. We decided we would base ourselves at Lake Lure, and we had such a good time we forgot to take any decent pictures, so here is a stolen one.

Anyway, highlights:

–Getting used to endless curving roads going up and down eternally. I had forgotten what it was like getting to school (I went to UNC-A) on a snowy day in the mountains.

–Our one foray into Chimney Rock, that tacky little tourist village, where we found a rather charming cafe to sit outside with the dogs, who were given their own menu, and chose to be served marrow bones, which they proceeded to get filthy, but thoroughly enjoyed. Then they had the great good fortune to meet Oliver, a Westie from Germany who had a charming accent. Oliver and Olivia. What fun. Fergus wasn’t sure what to think, but he wagged his tail and chose not to bark threateningly at that other male.

–The fresh realization that people in the Asheville area are friendly and love to chitchat, which is not so true in these parts, with the possible exception of Carrboro, which is SUCH a comfort, being next door to Chapel Hill,  but far more “aging hippie.”  Everyone we met this weekend wanted to tell us about their lives and hear about ours. It reminded me of Alaska, where people are generally starved for conversation, and with good reason, too.

–And here’s the real highlight: dinner with our dear friends Peter and An, and An’s daughters, who have only recently arrived from Vietnam, where they grew up in Hanoi. These lovely girls, who speak better English than most of us, having studied it from the age of five, seem to be becoming acclimated, although I suspect that since Peter and An live way out in the country and up the mountain, they are rather bored and are champing at the bit to get out and discover the real world. I delivered a rather stern lecture about this to the guys, who hadn’t thought to, perhaps, take them to the library or into Asheville, although the older one has taken all her college entrance exams and passed them all with flying colors, and the younger one will begin attendance at a “high school to college” program in the Fall. Then they will learn to be American teenagers, God help them!

I wanted to ask these ladies “what is it like to not only come to an entirely new country, but to find your father married to another man?” But of course, I couldn’t, and really, everyone seems to be quite happy with each other; there was a remarkable lack of tension of any kind, which I attribute to the soul-power of my dear friend Peter, who tragically lost his life-partner Rocco a few years back (https://towardtheone.org/2014/09/05/angels-among-us/), and the sweetness of An, who seems to be coming into his own, after a lifetime of pretending to be a straight married man. Everyone seems to be adjusting with great ease, and we all laughed and hugged and ate and drank a great deal. The girls were thrilled with the ice cream we brought, as Peter doesn’t seem to produce much junk food for them. Thank God for Ben and Jerry!

As for us, we tend to go to the beach when we can get away, and had forgotten our love for the Blue Ridge and Appalachians, and we do not intend to forget again. I just have a feeling there is a cottage out there for us, somewhere off the beaten path.

May all Beings have happiness, and the causes of happiness.

May all Beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

May all Beings never be without the Supreme Bliss which is free from all suffering.

May all Beings live in the Great Equanimity, free from all attachment and aversion.

And may I celebrate this aging,

Love my death more and more,

Have a wonderful vacation by the eternal Sea,

Go on to become a Boddhisattva,

Or die in this Music.

It is up to you, love.

I think some angels are sad

Because they make it their business

to hold the tears God weeps

when He fears that He has gone too far

but knows no way back.

That Aloneness

of having created that Vow

in Pre-eternity. . .

What if . . .

What if, what if, what if

Even He doesn’t know,

And She can’t contain . . .

Has the River Styx become too wide?

Are its banks overflowing and washing away the Innocents on either side?

Or will the Vow hold true?

Will all come right, at least until the next time?

Does Heaven know?

– Amidha Porter

Even a rabbit knows to take refuge in the Buddha. Perhaps all is not lost.

I just had to share this:  in these times that seem so dark, in the midst of the birth pangs of a new age, a little joy:

He still looks like a choirboy!

When I first entered the monastery, the monks gave me a small book called “The Essential Discipline for Daily Use,” written by the Buddhist monk Doc The from Bao Son pagoda, and they told me to memorize it. It was a thin book. It couldn’t have been more than 40 pages, but it contained all the thoughts Doc The used to awaken his mind while doing any task. When he woke up in the morning, his first thought was, “Just awakened, I hope that every person will attain great awareness and see in complete clarity.” When he washed his hands, he used this thought to place himself in mindfulness: “Washing my hands, I hope that every person will have pure hands to receive reality.” The book is comprised entirely of such sentences. Their goal was to help the beginning practitioner take hold of his own consciousness.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

The teachings are all around me, and so often, after a few years I forget and go on blundering through my life thoughtlessly, wondering why I don’t seem to know how to live in remembrance.  “Help me, help me, help me!” I nag God.  Here is a better way.

Today I start again:   Rising, I press my hands together over my heart and think “May all beings arise rested, to build a new and beautiful world.”

Walking through my house, I feel the cool boards beneath my bare feet and think “may all beings know shelter.”

On my back porch, rocking back and forth, I think to myself, “Feeling the fresh breeze of Spring, I wish this peace for all beings.”

May all know the peace of rocking back and forth slowly, in tune with the motion of the planets.”

Savoring my hot tea, I think “Sipping the first cup of tea today, I hope that all beings may have clean hands and a full cup.”

Leaning on the fence, looking over the fields, I think “may all beings know greeness.”

I feel little, light paws leaning on my knees.  May all beings know unconditional love.

I plug in my earbuds and close my eyes.  May all beings come home with me.

Well, you get the idea.  I don’t have a very exciting life here in my little hermitage, but if I pay attention to everything I do in the course of a day and offer my hopes to the world, then I may just get organized!

You will bless me, and I will bless you back. . .

You will do it perfectly,

And I will do it badly.

And yet your reception will be of such gladness

that I will continue to feel embarrassed,

yet unable to resist your heavenly deliciousness.

Why me?

Why this one?

Surely you should be more discerning!

But I will take what is in your hand,

Regardless of what seems to me your odd sense of judgment.

I steal into your chambers, and you do not refuse me.

Thank you for this loneliness.

— Amidha Porter

I like to put things where I won’t lose them.

GAYAN 009 – ALAPA-09 – If the Almighty God chooseth, He hath power sufficient to turn thy shield into a poisoned sword, and even thine own hand into the hand of thine adversary.

There is generally a tendency seen in those treading the spiritual path to feel discouraged at having bad impressions upon their heart of their own faults and shortcomings.  And they begin to feel that they are too unworthy to have anything to do with things of a sacred nature.  But it is a great error, in spite of all the virtue humility has in it.  When one acknowledges something wrong in oneself one gives that wrong a soul out of one’s own spirit, and by withdrawing from all that is good and beautiful, spiritual and sacred, instead of developing the spirit of rejecting all errors, in time one becomes a receptacle of what is wrong.  He goes on disapproving and yet collecting errors, so producing within himself a perpetual conflict that never ends.  When man becomes helpless before his infirmities he becomes a slave to his errors, he feels within himself an obedient servant to his adversary.

The greater the purity developed in the heart the greater becomes the power of man.  As great the power of man within himself so great becomes his power on others.  A hair’s breadth can divide power from weakness, which appear to have as wide a gulf between them as between land and sky. – Inayat Khan

Gatha III – Everyday Life – Reject the Impression of Errors and Shortcomings

This could become a yearly tradition!

David and I went to Massachusetts to visit our daughter, and on the way back enjoyed a “found” day in Harrisburg, PA.  That afternoon, we went downtown–where both of us worked at one point years ago–to wander around, have lunch, take photos, and let Fergus make friends with every homeless person he encountered. There were a lot of them, too, just as there were in the cities we explored in Massachusetts.

So I was hanging with Fergus while David went to get us some coffee, and we moseyed down toward the river. David took forever to get back to us, and when I asked him where he’d been, said he’d been talking to a seemingly homeless guy who was “meeting someone” who would give him $12 to keep his electricity on. So maybe he wasn’t homeless. I asked Dave if he’d given him some cash, and he said he didn’t have much. I didn’t have a cent (maybe we all use plastic these days?), but I laid a guilt trip on Dave and made him turn out his pockets and head back to the guy to give him what he had, which turned out to be $12.The man was delighted and thanked him and prayed for us. On the way back to me, David looked down and saw one of my gold earrings on the sidewalk–rather valuable, I don’t have many–which had evidently fallen off my ear.

Take thought tonight. Take thought tonight when it is dark, when it is raining. Take thought of the game you have forgotten. You are the child of a great and peaceful race, an unutterable fable. You were discovered on a mild mountain. You have come up out of the godlike ocean. You are holy, disarmed, signed with a chaste emblem. You are also marked with forgetfulness. Deep inside your breast you wear the number of loss. Take thought tonight. Do this. Do this. Recover your original name. – Merton

Merton, Thomas. A Book of Hours (p. 88). Ave Maria Press.

All day I have been waiting for You with my faculties bleeding the poison of unsuppressed activity. I have waited for Your silence and Your peace to stanch and cleanse them, O my Lord. You will heal my soul when it pleases You, because I have trusted in You. I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me. You have made my soul for Your peace and Your silence, but it is lacerated by the noise of my activity and my desires. My mind is crucified all day by its own hunger for experience, for ideas, for satisfaction. And I do not possess my house in silence. But I was created for Your peace and You will not despise my longing for the holiness of Your deep silence. O my Lord, You will not leave me forever in this sorrow, because I have trusted in You and I will wait upon Your good pleasure in peace and without complaining any more. This, for Your glory.

Merton, Thomas (2007-03-01). A Book of Hours (pp. 146-147). Ave Maria Press.

I have no name,
I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.
I have no shelter;
I am as the wandering waters.
I have no sanctuary, like the dark gods;
Nor am I in the shadow of deep temples.
I have no sacred books;
Nor am I well-seasoned in tradition.
I am not in the incense
Mounting on the high altars,
Nor in the pomp of ceremonies.
I am neither in the graven image,
Nor in the rich chant of a melodious voice.
I am not bound by theories,
Nor corrupted by beliefs.
I am not held in the bondage of religions,
Nor in the pious agony of their priests.
I am not entrapped by philosophies,
Nor held in the power of their sects.
I am neither low nor high,
I am the worshipper and the worshipped.
I am free.
My song is the song of the river
Calling for the open seas,
Wandering, wandering,
I am Life.
I have no name,
I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains. – Krishnamurti

You just never know what God will produce next.

There is a true poetry and there is a false poetry just as there is a true music and a false music. A person knowing many words many syllables, can fit them together and arrange something mechanically, but that is not poetry. Whether it be poetry, art, or music; it must suggest life, and it can only suggest life if it comes from the deepest impulse of the soul. – Inayat Khan

Al-Batin is the most hidden treasure, the secret of secrets. The essence of God is utterly hidden, but it is not hidden inside of something else. There is nothing for it to be hidden within.   —  Meyer, Wali Ali; Hyde, Bilal (2012-07-15). Physicians of the Heart: A Sufi View of the Ninety-Nine Names of Allah. Sufi Ruhaniat International.

The hidden One

waits in sacred longing and anticipation

in the place that can be found with close attention

in silence.

Often found in the empty space within a sound or a note,

there It is:

Yes!  I knew it all along.

Why, it’s perfectly natural.

Then the rest falls away.

It never mattered in the first place,

nor did it exist to begin with.

A great relief.