Enjoy Some Contemplative Poetry & Meditating Animals
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Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. For once on the face of the earth, let's not speak in any language, let's stop for a second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead in winter and later proves to be alive. Now I'll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.
-Keeping Quiet, by Pablo Neruda |
The Guest House
By Rumi This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice. Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whatever comes. Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. Breath of Life
By Danna Faulds I breathe in All That Is- Awareness expanding to take everything in, as if my heart beats the world into being. From the unnamed vastness beneath the mind, I breathe my way into wholeness and healing. Inhalation. Exhalation. Each Breath a “yes,” Allow
by Dana Faulds There is no controlling life. Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado. Dam a stream and it will create a new channel. Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet. Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground. The only safety lies in letting it all in – the wild and the weak; fear, fantasies, failures and success. When loss rips off the doors of the heart, or sadness veils your vision with despair, practice becomes simply bearing the truth. In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes Love After Love
by Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-- over and over announcing your place in the family of things. |
Dear You
By Kaveri Patel Dear you, You who always have so many things to do so many places to be, your mind spinning like fan blades at high speed each moment always a blur because you’re never still. I know you’re tired. I also know it’s not your fault. The constant brain-buzz is like a swarm of bees threatening to sting if you close your eyes. You’ve forgotten something again. You need to prepare for that or else. You should have done that differently. What if you closed your eyes? Would the world fall apart without you? Or would your mind become the open sky flock of thoughts flying across the sunrise as you just watched and smiled. Hokusai Says
By Roger Keyes Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention, notice. He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing. He says look forward to getting old. He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are. He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it is interesting. He says keep doing what you love. He says keep praying. He says everyone of us is a child, everyone of us is ancient, everyone of us has a body. He says everyone of us is frightened. He says everyone of us has to find a way to live with fear. He says everything is alive– shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees, wood is alive. Water is alive. Everything has its own life. Everything lives inside us. He says live with the world inside you. He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books. It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish. It doesn’t matter if you sit at home and stare at the ants on your veranda or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden. It matters that you care. It matters that you feel. It matters that you notice. It matters that life lives through you. Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. Satisfaction and strength is life living through you. He says don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Love, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you. Forget About Enlightenment
by John Welwood Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be, not the saint you are striving to become, but the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You are already more and less than whatever you can know. Breathe out, touch in, let go. Enough
By David Whyte Enough. These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here. This opening to the life we have refused again and again, until now. Until now. Birthright
By Danna Faulds Despite illness of body or mind, in spite of blinding despair or habitual belief, who you are is whole. Let nothing keep you separate from the truth. The soul, illumined from within, longs to be known for what it is. Undying, untouched by fire or the storms of life, there is a place inside where stillness and abiding peace reside. You can ride the breath to go there. Despite doubt or hopeless turns of mind, you are not broken. Spirit surrounds, embraces, fills you from the inside out. Release everything that isn’t your true nature. What’s left, the fullness, light and shadow, claim all that as your birthright. |