Just sit there right now
Don’t do a thing
Just rest.

For your separation from God,
From love,

Is the hardest work
In this
World.

Let me bring you trays of food
And something
That you like to
Drink.

You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.

~Hafiz~

The Gift: Poems by Hafiz
Translations by Daniel Ladinsky

Yes, it’s hard work, very hard work…”your separation from God, from love is the hardest work” of the world and with such great suffering.  It matters not why we separate or even that we do, only that we wake up and remember there’s another way.  It’s a holy precious path that will ask you to leave doubt and fear behind you, like yesterday’s old news.  It will ask for your consent to hope, to faith, to belief, to knowing.  It will ask you to move your gaze ahead to the horizon of new beginnings.  It will ask only and all of this and nothing more.  Will you give that holy precious path a chance?  I will.

Love is a commonly used word, so frequently do we hear it that it’s become both under valued and over valued.  Over valued in it’s fickleness and under valued for the unexamined depth of what it really means.  I’ve sought to discover its true meaning.  It’s been a life long question and the answers change and morph as I do.  At times I’ve found love co-mingling with joy and truth.  A joy that is independent of facts or conditions and truths that remain when all else falls away.

I searched the archives of this blog and it’s over 600 posts many of which are quoting spiritual authors and poets.  Here’s a short collection of what some of them have to say on the subject of love, joy and truth.  Somewhere in there, I’ll slip in my own words.

This isn’t one of those blog posts you’ll want to hurry through and then go about flinging yourself into the day.  No, this is one you’ll want to linger with awhile and let the words melt like warm butter penetrating through the layers of being, softening as it moves deeper within, finally landing in that space that is beyond words.

* * * * *

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken;
inside “love” there is more joy than we know of;
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds;
there are whole rivers of light.

~Kabir~

* * * * *

There will come a time when images have all gone by and you will see you know not what you are.  It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound.  Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is….The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself.  ~ A Course in Miracles

* * * * *

“Abandonment,”
we call it. As in: wild, or perfect.
We abandon ourselves
to love.

~Kate Knapp Johnson~

* * * * *

This Union you want with the earth and sky
This Union we all need with love

Stay here quivering like a drop of mercury

(combined words of Rumi & Hafiz)

* * * * *

The real presence slips past our demand for spectacle. it slips past our despair. Not just like a child – sometimes it is a child. She walks down the blistered steps to where you kneel and says the simplest things. She is entertained by butterflies. She has opinions about unicorns. She does not seem to care that you are ruined and lost. She does not even seem to notice. Find an earthworm in the neglected loam and she will make you feel for a moment that your life has not been wasted. Name a flower and she will make you feel that you have begun to learn to speak. ~Tim Farrington

* * * * *

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name….

~Jane Kenyon~

* * * * *

…you must be willing to set fear aside and trust your knowing self,
the truth which lies deep within, that tells you what to do, from a
place of truth and deep connection with all that is. This truth is
beyond fear.

Quado through Carrie Hart

* * * * *

Never mind pleasure.  Search out joy.  Pleasure is
its shadow.  But joy is real, a secret splendor
running through all creation.

Like gold, it doesn’t lie about the streets waiting
to be picked up.  It has to be dug for, with diligence
and passion.  It’s in people, to be found through
the practice of love.  It’s in work, in the rigorous
exercise of powers of mind or body or spirit.  It’s a
gift the created world is perpetually offering; the
price of it is untiring attention to the present
moment.  …

Hunt it down, pursue it, track it to its lair where
it dwells.  Not in pleasures and pastimes, distractions,
piled-up satisfactions, and busyness.  It dwells in truth,
and nowhere else.

That’s why it matters.  It will show you moment by
moment where truth is for you.  And when you know that,
cleave to it, turn not aside, be given up to that.  That,
if you will will, is a way of life worth living.

~Fae Malania~

* * * * *

If you deny what is your nature
you become deeply attached to that denial.
When you accept what is there, in its truth,
then you are released.
One does not release through rejection.
One releases through love.

Emmanuel’s Book I: A manual for living comfortably in the cosmos

* * * * *

Your choice is between illusion and truth.
There is no particular formula for choosing.
There is only your intent.  Will that be enough?
It will be enough to start you on your way.

Keep asking yourselves, “Am I here now?”
Just that question
will make enormous changes in your lives.
If you ask it experientially
rather than philosophically,
you will find that it becomes a mantra
that will bring you back,
breath by breath, to this time, to this place,
for in truth there is no other.

As you set yourself free from your histories,
you will wear your costumes more lightly;
you will smile much more than usual,
and you will release your hearts
to the point where you begin to trust them.
You will, in short,
let yourselves out of prison, bar by bar.

Fear is a habit.
As you recognize it,
you will be able to loosen the viselike grip –
not that fear has upon you –
but that you have upon fear.

Fear will go away
once you give it permission
to leave.

Emmanuel Book III: What Is an Angel Doing Here?

* * * * *

I want to linger inside the silence
void of sound and distraction

long enough to see for myself that love’s only obstacle
fear, really is just a paper dragon

I want to let every barrier to love fall away

I want to liberate what sleeps within me

and awake resplendent in all that remains:
your pure and perfect love

~Bethie~

* * * * *

“In this,” she says (this vision or, as she always calls it, shewing)–”In this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my understanding it was as round as any ball. I looked thereupon and thought: ‘What may this be?’ And I was answered in a general way, thus: ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled how it could last, for methought it might fall suddenly to naught for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: ‘It lasts and ever shall last because God loves it, and so hath all-thing its being through the love of God.”  -Fae Malania, The Quantity of a Hazelnut

* * * * *

And now finally and ultimately we come to the end of describing something that really is beyond description.  Though it can be experienced, it is formless and cannot be held nor heard nor seen.  With a twist of paradox, I leave you with this from Suzanne Vega:

I won’t use words again …

They’re just the crust of the meaning
With realms underneath
Never touched
Never stirred
Never even moved through

If language were liquid
It would be rushing in
Instead here we are
In a silence more eloquent
Than any word could ever be

* * * * *

Image props in order posted:

1. artstyleonline.com
2. freefoto.com
3. worldphotographicarts.com
4. digitalcribs.net
5. flickr.com
6. kids-fun-and-games.com

Image by Rassouli

Come close to me,
I will whisper in your ear

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes
around in another form.

For there is so much More to this life
Than you now understand

Observe the wonders as they occur around you
Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent

For the Truth has been Divinely Conceived
Deeply within each of us

Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way

This Union you want with the earth and sky
This Union we all need with love

Stay here quivering like a drop of mercury

I thought I would let you read that poem through before I told you that
until now this poem never existed and yet it was written by two poets
a century apart.  They are the words of Rumi and Hafiz, as translated
by Coleman Barks and Daniel Ladinsky respectively.  What I have done
is create a found poem.  Each verse is excerpted from a different poem
starting with Hafiz and followed with Rumi.  This pattern repeats throughout.
This is now my fourth found poem.  The first was combining Mary Oliver and
Wendell Berry, the second was Rumi and Rilke and the third was a compilation
of eight Mary Oliver poems.  Below I cite the poems used in this creation.

Hafiz – Turn Left A Thousand Feet From Here
Rumi – Unmarked Boxes
Hafiz -  I Will Hire You As A Minstrel
Rumi -  Body Intelligence
Hafiz -  Of Course Things Like That Can’t Happen
Rumi -  Elephant in the Dark
Hafiz -  This Union
Rumi -  The Waterwheel

]]> http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/07/05/this-union/feed/ 2 Beth/Bethie melodiesofdivineunity2 http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2009/05/23/it-felt-love/ http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2009/05/23/it-felt-love/#comments Sun, 24 May 2009 04:04:12 +0000 heartsdeesire http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/?p=1882 ]]> Image Locale

How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart

And give to this world
All its
Beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,

Otherwise,
We all remain

Too

Frightened.

~Hafiz~
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz
Translations by Daniel Ladinsky

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

How are you?

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

What is God?

If you think that the Truth can be known
From words,

If you think that the Sun and the Ocean

Can pass through that tiny opening
Called the mouth,

O someone should start laughing!

Someone should start wildly Laughing –
Now!

~Hafiz~

I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy
Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky

I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height
of their arc of anger
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound
and it is His – the Christ’s, our
Beloved’s.
I have come into this world to see this: all creatures hold hands as
we pass through this miraculous existence we share on the way
to even a greater being of soul,
a being of just ecstatic light, forever entwined and at play
with Him.
I have come into this world to hear this:
every song the earth has sung since it was conceived in
the Divine’s womb and began spinning from
His wish,
every song by wing and fin and hoof,
every song by hill and field and tree and woman and child,
every song of stream and rock,
every song of tool and lyre and flute,
every song of gold and emerald
and fire,
every song the heart should cry with magnificent dignity
to know itself as
God:
for all other knowledge will leave us again in want and aching -
only imbibing the glorious Sun
will complete us.
I have come into this world to experience this:
men so true to love
they would rather die before speaking
an unkind
word,
men so true their lives are His covenant -
the promise of
hope.
I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men’s hands
even at the height of
their arc of
rage
because we have finally realized
there is just one flesh
we can wound.

~ Hafiz ~

]]> http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2009/02/11/i-have-come-into-this-world/feed/ 2 Beth/Bethie cliffs http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2007/12/31/we-have-not-come-here-to-take-prisoners/ http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2007/12/31/we-have-not-come-here-to-take-prisoners/#comments Tue, 01 Jan 2008 04:46:51 +0000 heartsdeesire http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2007/12/31/we-have-not-come-here-to-take-prisoners/ ]]> We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
“O please, O please,
Come out and play.”

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom and
Light!
~ Hafiz
The Gift-Versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky