If you see someone going up to heaven by his own will, grab his leg and pull him down again.
– John Kolobos, one of the desert fathers
pull him down
existence
sometimes a man – Rilke
Sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.
square water
As another sacred hadith has Allah say, “I am as my loving servant imagines me to be.” The water takes on the quality of the cup. Blue cup, blue water. Square cup, square water.
– physicians of the heart, p. 193
be careful
Until yesterday you were distracted, so although so much of the bardo state has appeared you have not recognised, and you have so much fear. If you are distracted now, the rope of compassion will be cut off and you will go to a place where there is no liberation, so be careful.
– Tibetan Book of The Dead
Hu
“Hu,” the aspirant, breathy sound made at the end of the word Allah, is a sound that is hidden as a divine Name within each recitation of Allah. The relationship that Allah and Hu have with each other describes the nature of ecstasy. It does so by conveying that there is a secret within the secret. The subtle way the sound “Hu” arises at the end of the invocation “Allah” also suggests an infinite process of essence of essence of essence…
– physicians of the heart, p. 190
if you don’t have – Rumi
if you don’t have
enough madness in you
go and rehabilitate yourself
if you’ve lost a hundred times
the chess game of this life
be prepared to lose one more
if you’re the wounded string
of a harp on this stage
play once more then resonate no more
if you’re that exhausted bird
fighting a falcon for too long
make a comeback and be strong
you’ve carved a wooden horse
riding and calling it real
fooling yourself in life
though only a wooden horse
ride it again my friend
and gallop to the next post
you’ve never really listened
to what God has always
tried to tell you
yet you keep hoping
after your mock prayers
salvation will arrive
Rumi
To say that the world…
“To say that the world is not worth anything, that this life is of no value and to give evil as the proof is absurd, for if these things are worthless what does evil take from us?
Thus the better we are able to conceive of the fullness of joy, the purer and more intense will be our suffering in affliction and our compassion for others. What does suffering take from him who is without joy?
And if we conceive the fullness of joy, suffering is still to joy what hunger is to food.
It is necessary to have had a revelation of reality through joy in order to find reality through suffering. Otherwise life is nothing but a more or less evil dream,” – Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace.
Let them know
Wisdom 13:2-5
…but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world.
If through delight in the beauty of these things people assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them.
And if people were amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is the one who formed them.
For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.
Rumi
Pale sunlight, pale the wall.
Love moves away. The light changes.
I need more grace than I thought.
Edge of Atlantic 