It is a place where love and light fill every crevice and then spill over the top into the real world.Actually, what more needs to be said? One could just rest in that image. But it did get me thinking about that term, "the real world."
There were years when I'd go on the AMA Samy retreat at Grailville and experience it as a place of love and serenity. Arriving home after all the goodbyes had been said, I'd feel my responsibilities descend on me like big gray backpacks full of cement. The world I lived in was populated by difficult people and too many things to do (that is, things I thought I had to do). My need for creative time always felt squeezed. Play time, forget it. These problems stood waiting for me like a home invader behind the kitchen door.
Here I am using that interesting word again: problem. It seemed clear at those times that the sunny silence of retreat was time spent with the absolute, and real life was a mess.
Depends on what you mean by a mess. Yes, much of life, lots of it, is out of your control, and some of it involves conflicts. People let you down or undermine you, other people don't return calls, important meetings are cancelled, you fall and your life is changed. You are an organic life form that ages, gets sick, dies, and so does everyone else. So does the siding on the house. Everything keeps changing out there. The sunflowers from the wedding die.
I am remembering a line from Robert Frost's Birches , which is, now that I think about it, about this - bliss, grief, nirvana, samsara.
| Earth's the right place for love: | |
| I don't know where it's likely to go better. |
The photo at the top reminded me of this scene:
ReplyDeletehttp://vimeo.com/2592737
Beautiful. Always appreciate your writing.
Thank you. It's always nice to be appreciated.
DeleteI did look at the video and it seemed incomplete, or was that just me?
Knowing is Boundless
ReplyDelete"If life is movement, newness each moment,
Knowing, too, has the same quality;
Boundlessness envelops both,
They are closely connected, expanding the being into Infinity.
Through every contact with the existence in movement,
We encounter Eternity, in the dying moment;
Leaving the path open for the next moment,
We are always in a state of Timelessness.
If the Eternal wasn’t already within us, we would not know Eternity,
It is always present, when we are in harmony;
Attention is the instrument, the divine tool,
With its ray of light, it dissipates all the chaos.
Each such encounter with the limited “ego”
Transcends us, without effort, into the great Infinity;
Therefore, knowing takes us eternally into Boundlessness,
This is its purpose, as a natural fulfillment.
Finally, the “ego” perishes – the Sacred becomes free,
It returns to the Source, where it becomes integrated;
Thus, “self-knowing” loses its purpose,
Without “self”, what is there to know?
All that was has disappeared.
Watching thus, it all comes to an end by itself, effortlessly,
The road is long, the path is narrow.
Our duty is to meet the boundless in the moment,
To disintegrate the “ego”, with its deceitful fantasies.
This is our fate, as long as we live on this Earth,
To destroy, ceaselessly, our ties to the “ego”,
Which holds us prisoners from times immemorial
And to embrace the rhythm of life, integrated in the moment.
“Self-knowing” is based only on certain and real facts, accessible to any human being in his natural capacity of understanding. Here is a first fact related to this subject: Life manifests itself as reality in perpetual movement and, as such, newness from one moment to another. Therefore, the aliveness, through its very existence, is, in its nature, movement and freshness which never repeats itself. Knowing this aliveness can only have the same characteristics; both melting together within the essence of the Infinite."
Cioara, Ilie (2011-10-16). The Silence of the Mind (pp. 30-31).