Entries by tag: light
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
---Leonard Cohen (Anthem)
--Crazy Horse
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
- Mary Oliver
Your feeling of disconnection is not neurotic, it is intelligent. It has something to show you that oneness could never reveal. If you will practice the yoga of non-abandonment and provide safe passage – it will disclose an unmet doorway.
Your loneliness, your shakiness, and your fear are not mistakes. They are not obstacles on your path. They *are* the path. The freedom you are longing for will never be found in the eradication of the unwanted, but only in the core of the love and information it carries.
There are surges of somatic activity that contain very important information for your journey. If you will offer safe passage for the unknown aliveness, you will meet the messengers of illumination. Nothing is missing, nothing is out of place, and nothing need be sent away.
Yes, you may burn until you are translucent, but it is by way of this burning that your wholeness will be revealed.
~ Matt Licata
when a light goes out
than it would have been
if it had never shone.
--John Steinbeck
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone.
~ Mary Oliver
For Light
by John O'Donohue
Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.
In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.
That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.
That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.
When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.
That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
Glimmering in fugitive light.
When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.
When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.
When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.
As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.
And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found word.
-- from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, by John O'Donohue
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget that perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s where the light gets in.
—Leonard Cohen
A similar mechanism works in the practice of mindfulness. I found lightness to be highly conducive to mindfulness. Lightness gives rise to ease of mind. When the mind is at ease, it becomes more open, perceptive, and nonjudgmental. These qualities deepen mindfulness, which in turn strengthens lightness and ease, thus forming a virtuous cycle of deepening mindfulness.
--Chade-Meng Tan in Search Inside Yourself; The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace), (a 2012 book on meditation by an emotionally intelligent Google engineer), page 69.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Let no one fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.
But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help.
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth.
--Responsive reading by Robert T. Weston in Singing the Living Tradition
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