A Christmas Thought from St Catherine of Sienna

CONSECRETED

All has been consecretad.
The creatures in the forest know this,

The earth does, the seas do, the clouds know
as does the heart full of
love.

Strange a priest would rob us of this
knowledge

and then empower himself
with the ability

to make holy what
already was

Merry Christmas to Everyone Dec 25, 2009

 

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to wish eeveryone a merry Christmas. I had to walk the dog in the blizzard last week and this is what I look like when I came back. The Picture makes us all laugh hysterically.

My best wishes for all of you, irregardless of nationality, race or religion [and any other adjective ]

Ya Haqq

Dave

Mirabai: The Voice of a Female Mystic

Hey Friends

I have been really moved by the poems of Mirabai lately. Let me share some with you tonight. here is a brief blurb on Mirabai

Dave

Mirabai is one of India’s most beloved poet-saints. Her devotional poetry — directed toward Giridhara, a form of the great God-man Krishna — is so intensely personal that it borders on the erotic while, at the same time, it remains transcendentally spiritual. Mirabai was born into a noble Rajput family in Northern India. She was married to the crown prince of Mewar, but she made it clear that her love was for Giridhara alone. Many of the tales of Mirabai’s life focus on her struggles with her husband’s royal family. They apparently did not approve of her constant devotion to God to the neglect of her husband and family. And her preference for the company of wandering holy men was not considered proper for a princess. These conflicts grew to such a point that it is said they attempted to kill her, once with a deadly snake, another time by poison, but she was miraculously saved both times. When her husband died, Mirabai refused to throw herself on his funeral pyre and eventually took up the life of a wandering mendicant and poet, immersing herself in her love for God alone.–

————————————–

 

God has
a special interest in women
for they can lift this world to their breast
and help Him
comfort

———————————————–

I
want
you to have
this,

all the beauty in my eyes, and the grace of my mouth,
all the splendor of my
strength,

all the
wonder of the musk parts
of my
body,

for are we
not talking about real love, real
love?

———————————————–

One night as I walked in the desert
the mountains rode on my
shoulders

and the sky became my heart,
and the earth – my own body, I explored.

Every object began to wink at me, and Mira wisely
calculated the situation, thinking:
My charms must be at their height

now would be a good time to
rush into His
arms,

maybe He won’t drop me
so quick.

Many Lives Ago — A Poem By Hafez

MANY LIVES AGO

 

Your tastes have become refined.

It used to be
If someone stole all your coins

Or locked your sexual pleasure in a room
You could not reach

This world would have no meaning
And a thirst for a hemlock brew
Might arise.

But that was many lives ago.

Now look at yourself:

You are often still a mess
Through these days,
At times,

You weep because
You miss
Him.

The Unity of Paths: a look at Sufism and Yoga through the work of Paramahansa Yoganada and Irina Tweedie (2)

In the Wine of The Mystic Paramahansa Yogananada stanza gives commentary on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, an 11th century sufi mytic. His spiritual interpretation clearly point to the mystical essence of Khayam’s work which has been for atime much debated. I quote from the forward

“Sri Yogananda perceived that the underlying doctrines and practices of the various religions is one Truth one transcendant Reality. It was this  universal outlook and breadth of vision that enabled him to elucidate the profound kinship between the teachings of India’s ancient science of Yoga and the writings of one of the greatest and misunderstood mystical poets of the  Islamic World.

I would rather than gie you an example of  his spiritual interpretation of some of Khayam’s stanza’s I would rather quote from the composition of Yogananda’s made during the 1930’s while working on the spiritual interpretation of Khayyam’s work.

Sri Daya Mata president of the SRF (Self Realization Fellowship) and one of his closest disciples sicne 1931 recalls that at the time of this composition Paramahansaji was in  a state of samadhi  when these words flowed from his soul. He speaks of first his own spiritual search ( and that over every devotee who has sought and found the Divine, including the God-intoxicated Khayyam), and then from his at-one-ment with God as Love.

 

Omar’s Dream-Wine of Love

 

I sought love in many lives. I shed bitter tears of separation and repentance to know what love is. I sacrificed everything, all attachment and delusion, to learn at last that I am in love with Love – with God – alone.

Then I drank love through all true hearts. I saw that He is the One Cosmic Lover, the One Fragrance that permeates all the variegated blossoms of love in the garden of life.

Many souls wonder wistfully, helplessly, why love flees from one heart to another; awakened souls realize that the heart is not fickle in loving different ones, but is loving the one God – Love that is present in all hearts.

The Lord ever silently whispers to you:

I am Love. But to experience the giving and the gift of love, I divided Myself into three: love, lover, and beloved. My love is beautiful, pure, eternally joyous; and I taste it in many ways, through many forms.

As a father I drink reverential love from the spring of my child’s heart. As mother I drink the nectar of unconditional love from the soul-cup of the tiny baby. As child I imbibe the protecting love of the father’s righteous reason. As infant I drink causeless love from the holy grail of maternal attraction. As master I drink sympathetic love from the flask of the servant’s thoughtfulness. As servant I sip respectful love from the goblet of the master’s appreciation. As guru-preceptor I enjoy purest love from the chalice of the disciple’s all-surrendering devotion. As friend I drink from the self-bubbling fountains of spontaneous love. As a divine friend, I quaff crystal waters of cosmic love from the reservoir of God-adoring hearts.

I am in love with Love alone, but I allow myself to be deluded when as father or mother I think and feel only for the child; when as lover I care only for the beloved; when as servant I live only for the master. But because I love Love alone, I ultimately break this delusion of My myriad human Selves. It is for this reason that I transfer the father into the astral land when he forgets that it is My love, not his, that protects the child. I lift the babe from the mother’s breast, that she might learn it is My love she adored in him. I spirit away the beloved from the lover who imagines it is she whom he loves, rather than My love responding in her.

So My love is playing hide-and-seek in all human hearts, that each might learn to discover and worship, not the temporal human receptacles of My love, but My love itself, dancing from one heart to another.

Human beings importune one another, “Love me alone,” and so I make cold their lips and seal them forever, that they utter this untruth no more. Because they are all My children, I want them to learn to speak the ultimate truth:

“Love the One Love in all of us.”
To tell another, “I love you,” is
false until you realize the truth
“God as the love in me is in love
with His love in you.”

The moon laughs at millions of well-meaning lovers who have unknowingly lied to their beloved ones; “I love you forever.” Their skulls are strewn over the windswept sands of eternity. They can no longer use their breath to say, “I love you.” They can neither remember nor redeem their promise to love each other forever.

Without speaking a word, I have loved you always. I alone can truly say, “I love you”; for I loved you before you were born; My love gives you life and sustains you even at this moment; and I alone can love you after the gates of death imprison you where none, not even your greatest human lover, can reach you.

I am the love that dances human puppets on strings of emotions and instincts, to play the drama of love on the stage of life. My love is beautiful and endlessly enjoyable when you love it alone; but the lifeline of your peace and joy is cut when instead you become entangled in human emotion and attachment. Realize, My children, it is My love for which you yearn!

Those who love Me as only one person, or who imperfectly love Me in one person, do not know what Love is. Only they can know Love who love Me wisely, faultlessly, completely, all-surrendering – who love Me perfectly and equally in all, and who love Me perfectly and equally as all.

 

 

 

The Unity of Paths: a look at Sufism and Yoga through the work of Paramahansa Yoganada and Irina Tweedie (1)

Hello Friends,

I have always believed in the unity of the various spiritual paths. Outwardly there methods and approaches may differ due to the time, place, people and conditions present but beyond externals there is at the core this relationship between the beloved and Lover, between the seeker and what he is seeking.  I was exposed to yoga in some way shape or form from an early age especially through the works of Paramahansa Yogananda.

The lofty Sanathana Dharma of Vedic philosophy of ancient India is based on intuitional perceptions of the transcendental Reality. Buddhism, with its various methods of controlling the mind and gaining depth in emditation, advocated intuitive knowledge to realize the transcendenceof nirvana. Sufism in Islam anchors on the intuitive mystical experience of the soul. Within the Jewish religion are esoteric teachings based on inner experience of the Divine, evidenced abundantly in the legacy of God -Illumined biblical prophets.  Christ’s teaching are a fully experssive of that realization.

[The Quote is taken from the Book "The Yoga of Jesus" page 45 ] Whenever I have read that quote I see more and how united we all are beyong the veil of externals. Today we are looking at sufism and yoga  through two particular books I read recently. Without Further Ado

Irina Tweedies Daughter of fire

[this comes from and Interview Mrs TWeedie gave published in Yoga and Life Vol 5 - No. 5, Autumn 1990. Available here at the Golden Sufi Website: http://www.goldensufi.org/a_yoga_and_life.html]

INTERVIEWER: I’ve found in your book and in the interviews I have read, your teacher’s approach seems more linked to yoga than to Sufism—the idea of chakras, kundalini, atman.

TWEEDIE: Yes. You see Sufism and yoga are one and the same thing. They are just words, in wisdom there is no difference. All the teachings are absolutely the same. They are only different paths to the One. Our teacher used to say, “You can approach the top of the mountain from the river, from the highway, from the town, from the sea, but it will always be one top of the mountain.” It doesn’t matter, and also this wonderful Sufi saying, “The roads to God are as many as human beings, as many as the breath of the children of man.” He said that to us, it was an ancient Sufi saying and it means you don’t need to convert anybody. You don’t need to say my God is better than your God. Like in Ireland, that I will kill you if you don’t believe in my God, what rubbish is that! There is only that Infinite, Nameless, and you cannot imprison it by giving it any name at all.

INTERVIEWER: It is also, I suppose, that this is Indian Sufism so the terminology tends rather to be in the Sanskrit as opposed to the Arabic.

TWEEDIE: And this is also in Idries Shah’s book, in one of his later chapters. He says when Sufism spread, it spread all over the Middle and the Far East, and wherever they were for many hundreds of years they took on the culture of the place. The Naqshbandi branch of Sufism has been in India for many hundreds of years, so they use the words like chakras and mantras and all those Indian expressions.

Recently I have come across many people arguing that  idea that a lot of sufi orders in teh west are really a New Age fade thats tends to be more oriented toward Syncretism than atually the real Islamic  mystical path of sufism especially in light of the fact that its followers and adherent do not have to become muslim.

However this is my person belief/experience that whatever is sufism is the essence of all religious and mystical experience.  Sufism deals entirely with the relationship between lover and the Beloved  which  goes so far beyond our  need to divide and label. Rumi himself had followers of all religions in Konya.  But continuing on with the interview

TWEEDIE: The goal of every yoga is to lead a guided life—guided by who or what? You guide yourself, of course. But at the end of training the atman, again I use the Indian expression, the atman of the disciple is united with the atman of the teacher.

I remember reading these words echoed in a similar fashion in Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee’s Catching the Thread  where he says:

The wayfarer on the Sufi Path seeks to be in a state of continual absorption, merged within the teacher who is merged with the One. Through merging with the teacher (fanâ fî’sh-shaykh) the seeker then merges with the Prophet, not as man but as Essence (fanâ fi’rrasûl),
and then finally merges with God (fanâ fî Allâh). The whole process is the work of a lifetime.

Mrs Tweedie goes on to say

INTERVIEWER: Sufi poetry is full of the Beloved.

TWEEDIE: And the mystics. We have this state of oneness with the Beloved and it is really a condition of love. But with what are you united, in the night? With nothing—with a black hole. God is nothingness. And the word Allah means exactly that. “Al”—is the article “the”, but “lah” means nothing, and if you write the word Allah and look there is “Aaa-ooo”—and where is the last “lah”? It is hidden on top as a little squirk. Even the name!

Arabic language is wonderful, how they write Allah shows that it is “The Great Nothing”. And here comes this tremendous difficulty to explain to people we are mystics of course we Sufis. We say the lover and the Beloved they are unbelievable. But when you have the union with the Beloved alone in meditation you are united with nothingness. But this nothingness responds, it’s a feedback, it loves you absolutely and utterly, so completely everything of you because he created you like that, he can’t help loving you, and if he doesn’t love you, you will cry and you will cry and will keep crying, till the milk of his kindness boils up—I quote now Rumi—he can’t help it he has to love us, he made us. He is part of us actually, and Teilhard de Chardin said God experiences and fulfills himself in man—I quote from memory, probably not quite correct quotation—and he nearly was excommunicated for that.

So it’s not only us that say that. But nothingness, again, it is for the mind, because in this moment of union there is no mind. For the mind, God is a concept which does not exist, because it cannot prove anything, it’s not there. Because the mind by its very substance knows the things from outside itself. There is me and the knowledge, the knowledge which I have acquired, there is you and me, that is the I and the not I. The God is you—you cannot see your own eyes. How can there be no God? Never! But in the moments of oneness where I said there is a complete fulfillment, God is everything but nothingness, it is a complete fullness, like in the Isa Upanishad. Fullness, take away fullness from fullness, fullness alone remains.

INTERVIEWER: It’s like the Sunya (Emptiness) Buddhism and the “No-thing” of Zen.

TWEEDIE: Exactly. It’s all the same. And here lies this tremendous wonderful consolation, you know we are so insecure, we are so afraid. The ultimate security is . . . I am a student of comparative religion, but whatever I read, you scratch a little bit and underneath is the oneness. You call it different names, yes, according to the time, according to the place, according to the people, but it is all one. And why should we be afraid, we died so many times and we will be born so many times again. I find it so inspiring, so wonderful.

In my experience I can say that my experiences as a practictioner of Kriya Yoga really opened a door for me when I became a darvish. But I would like to leave those experiences for later on in the post.  I am running late for a dinner meeting and my wife is giving me that look sort of like Mr First Grade teacher did right before she inflicted someunholy and weird torture upon us. It seems like if I dont get ready there wont be any more post.   LOL. I will see you all later.

This Glory of Emptiness from Bahauddin Veled

Where is the wellspring of joy and grieving, of being and nonbeing? Does anything satisfy without a contrary pull the other way, toward deprivation? We want what we do not have. From the region of nonentity comes a cure for our longings for enternity, enlightenment, long life, the beauty of women, recognition, and dignity.

You are there in nothingness. I annihilate myself in your qualities. Consciousness dissolves beyond time and space. I watch the growing and the decay. In this glory of emptiness, where will I live? There is nowhere to land.

Some Words to Ponder on from Inayat Khan on The Purpose of Life

The first thing that a seeker after truth must realize, is the purpose of life. No sooner does a soul begin to feel sober from the intoxication of life, than the first thing it asks itself is, ‘What is the purpose of my life?’ Each soul has its own purpose, but in the end all purposes resolve into one purpose, and it is that purpose which is sought by the mystlc. For all souls, by the right and the wrong path, either sooner or later, will arrive at that purpose, a purpose which must be accomplished, a purpose for which the whole creation has been intended; but the difference between the seeking soul and the soul who blindly works towards that purpose is like that between the material and the maker of it. The clay works towards the purpose of forming a vessel and so does the potter; but it is the potter’s joy and privilege to feel the happiness of the accomplishment of the purpose, not the clay’s; and so it is with the beings who are unconsciously striving towards that purpose and the souls who are consciously striving towards it, both in the end corning towards the same accomplishment; the difference is in the consciousness.

When I initially read this I thought about the tortoise and the hare. Why you ask? The single-pointedness of thee tortoise, his strong desire to win brought him to the finish like first, as he alwaysconsciousl kept his goal before his minds eye.Whereas, the rabbit was everwhere, like the unconsious mind. These are just my thoughts. Tell me what you think

Here are two quotes that also came to mind:

1. There is a great difference, A mystic lover flies moment to moment. The fearful ascetic drags along month to month.
2. Rule keeper run on foot along the surface, lovers move like lightning and wind

 

Yunus Emre on Why You cant be a Darvish

Hey Friends

I have been reading and loving some Yunus Emre. I came across today some words of his  that I have included here. But who was Yunus Emre?

Yunus Emre (1240?–1321?) was a Turkish poet and Sufi mystic who exerted a great in influence on Turkish literature, from his own day until the present due to the fact that he was one of the first to have composed works in the spoken Turkish of his own age and region rather than in Persian or Arabic. His diction remains very close to the popular speech of his contemporaries in Central and Western Anatolia. This is also the language of a number of anonymous folk-poets, folk-songs, fairy tales, riddles, and proverbs.

What interests me the most though, is the fact that he was a contemporary of Rumi who lived in the same region. From what I have read  many people say that while Rumi composed his collection of stories and songs for a well-educated urban circle of Sufis, writing primarily in the literary language of Persian Yunus on the other hand, traveled and taught among the rural poor, singing his songs in the Turkish language of the common people.

This reminds me of this quote long ago was seared into my mind, that said”

Don’t say that the Beloved has left
And the City of Love is empty
The world is full of perfect Masters
But where are the sincere disciples

There is a story that talks of his meeting with Rumi It goes that one day Rumi asked Yunus Emre what he thought of his great work the Mathnawi. Yunus Emre said, “Excellent, excellent! But I would have done it differently.” Surprised, Rumi asked how. Yunus replied, “I would have written, ‘I came from the eternal, clothed myself in flesh, and took the name Yunus.’” That story perfectly illustrates Yunus Emre’s simple, direct approach that has made him so beloved.
Here are some words from Yunus:

Dervishood tells me, you cannot become a dervish
So what can I tell you? You cannot become a dervish.
 
A dervish needs a wounded heart and eyes full of tears.
He needs to be as easy going as a sheep.
You can’t be a dervish.
 
He must be without hands when someone hits him.
He must be tongueless when cursed.
A dervish needs to be without any desire.
You can’t be a dervish.
 
You make a lot of sounds with your tongue, meaningful things.
You get angry about this and that.
You can’t be a dervish.
 
If it were all right to be angry on this path,
Muhammad himself would have gotten angry.
Because of your anger, you can’t be a dervish.
 
Unless you find a real path, unless you find a guide,
unless Truth grants you your portion,
you can’t be a dervish.
 
Therefore, dervish Yunus, come,
dive into the ocean now and then.
Unless you dive in the ocean, you cannot be a dervish.

Inspiring thoughts for Christmas 2009

<Hey Friends – Everytime without fail I start a series I get rather sick, here is to hopping that it doesnt happen.>

Split wood, I am there.  Lift up a rock, you will find me there.

 

His disciples said to him:  When will the Kingdom come?  Jesus said, “It will not come by waiting for it.  It will not be a matter of saying, ‘Here it is’ or ‘There it is.’  Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.”