The Bliss of Being

Logos

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into the many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it was all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.

–Mary Oliver

Fire
I look into the flames
Those bright orange flames
All jumping dancing, reaching, together
And singing too, yes
But their beautiful singing needn’t any voice
It’s the crackling, sputtering, swishing of the fire
They give, they get
They live, they die
Each flame is part of another
Each curling, embracing the other

I look into the dream of orange, yellow, gold, and blue on the edges
I see happiness, sadness, excitement, depression
It’s all a dream you see?
You fall into it
Nothing makes sense
Like a puddle, you fall into it and drown
Just a small puddle
You feel warm and drowsy
You think of nothing… yet something
You become one with the flame
The power of the flame
It swallows your thoughts
Your thoughts almost are its power

To me the flame is one of an everything
It is weak, it is strong
It is bright, it is dull
It is everything it can be

–By Yuli

Opposites
Yin and Yang sit together on the garden wall
Like bird and cat
Yin lies on your friend’s forehead
And Yang rests on your own

–By Yuli

Taking a break from the normal quote of the day, is poetry of the day!

the moon rises
threads of twinkling stars
lead her luminescence
across the sky.
the earth watches
and so do i, silent,
bewitched by her spell
and waiting.
in the space of a moment,
magic catches like wildfire
transforming and casting
illusions into the swirling midnight.

when our mother cries
ENOUGH!
and the complacent drone
of civilization is cut short
when the cogs of mind
are forced to grind to a halt
leaving only conscious awareness
how then shall we live?

– both by Alexis

If your into old time underground personal development classics check this out:

The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Gracian.

But probably the best translation can be found here:

A random quote from this treasure:

Always leave something to wish for; otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness.

–Baltasar Gracian

inspried by 43F

Meditating means bringing the mind back to something again and
again.Thus, we all meditate, but unless we direct it in some way, we
meditate on ourselves and on our own problems, reinforcing our
self-clinging.

-Lama Yeshe Dorje

What we are looking for is what is looking.

-St. Francis of Assisi

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep.

Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

–Rumi in rubaiyat

True education is not pumped and crammed in from outward sources, but aids in bringing to the surface the infinite hoard of wisdom within.

–Tagore in Autobiography of a Yogi p. 306

There is nothing of which [the soul] has not gained the knowledge; no wonder that she is able to recollect… what formerly she knew…For inquiry and learning is reminiscence all.”

–Emerson in Representative Men

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

Plato in Meno

M: In the light of consciousness all sorts of things happen and one need not give special importance to any. The sight of a flower is as marvelous as the vision of God. Let them be. Why remember them and then make memory into a problem? Be bland about them; do nat divide them into high and low, inner and outer, lasting and transient. Go beyond, go back to the source, go to the self that is the same whatever happens. Your weakness is due to your conviction that you were born into the world. In reality the world is ever recreated in you and by you. See everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your own being. You will find that in that light there is love and infinite energy.

Q: If I am that light , why do I not know it?
M: To know, you need a knowing mind, a mind capable of knowing. But your mind is ever on the run, never still, never fully reflecting. How can you see the moon in all her glory when the eye is clouded with disease?
…
Q: Must I see, to be?
M: See what you are. Don’t ask others, don’t let others tell you about yourself. Look within and see. All the teacher can tell you is only this. There is no need of going from one to another. The same water is in all the wells. You just draw from the nearest. In my case the water is within me and I am the water.

–p. 198 I AM THAT Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj