Pain

Pain is part of growth. And remember, whenever something hurts, something inside you is repressed. So rather than trying to avoid the pain, move into it. Let it hurt like hell. Let it hurt totally so the wound is opened completely. Once it is opened completely, it starts healing. If you avoid the spaces when you feel pain, they will remain inside you and you will come across them again and again.
- Osho

Single Whip Part 1 and 2

What dwells in the head of the blind person is the light. Should we say in his head, or in his heart ? Or perhaps even in his eyes ? What difference does it make ? The light is neither within or without, but encompasses the whole being and wipes out the barriers we have created out of habit. The light is here ! That is the only certainty.
Jacques Lusseyran ( from Against the Pollution of the I )

I agree with Jacques Lusseyran the light is within and without and our work is to clear the barriers that prevent us from experiencing it fully. To allow ourselves to relax into the light and trust it to dissolve our blocks. To breathe more softly, easily, and feel the light (love) that surrounds and permeates us at all times.

Mini Form for the Blackrock class

And all is light in this blindness, and what is more, this manifest luminosity contains a magnificent lesson. Since my childhood I have been impressed with a phenomenon of surprising clarity. The light I saw changed with my inner condition.
Partly it depended on my physical condition, for instance fatigue, restfulness, tension, or relaxation. Such changes however, were relatively rare. The true changes depended on the state of my soul.
When I was sad, when I was afraid, all shades became dark and all forms indistinct. When I was joyous and attentive , all pictures become light. Anger, remorse, plunged everything into darkness. A magnanimous resolution, a courageous decision, radiated a beam of light. By and by I learned to understand that love meant seeing and that hate meant night.
Jacques Lusseyran ( from Against the Pollution of the I )

Miracles

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of
the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so
quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with
the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—
the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

by Walt Whitman

    Seeing hearing feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me

       is a miracle.

    Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch  or

      am touch'd from

        . . .

   I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four and,

      each moment then,

   In the faces of men and women I see God and in my own 

     face in the glass . . .

                Walt Whitman

Lesson 2 of the Short Form : Ward off left

When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition.
If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best.
Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey.
When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point.
And exactly the same thing is true in meditation (T'ai Chi) .
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

- Alan Watts ( in Commuting to Inner Peace )

Life is Baeutiful

Do you remember the name of your kindergarden teacher? I do, mine. Her name was Mrs White. And I remember thinking she must be some older relation of Walt Disney's Snow White, because she had the same bright blue eyes, short dark hair, red lips and fair skin.

I don't remember much about what we learned in her class, but my mother once told me that we used to write a lot. And I would bring back what I wrote and she would look at it and see there were so many mistakes. But no red corrections. And always a star. Sometimes even a Good! scrawled in that would make my heart soar with happiness. But it worried my mother, so one day when she went in to meet Mrs White for one of those Parent-Teacher meetings, she asked her why she never corrected my mistakes. Why she never red-pencilled in the right spellings of words or pointed out grammatical errors.



And my mother says Mrs White said-The children are just beginning to get excited about using words, about forming sentences. I don't want to dampen that enthusiasm with red ink. Spelling and grammar can wait. The wonder of words won't... And maybe she didn't say it Exactly like that. It was a long time ago. And what my mother gave me was the gist of what she could remember. The rest I added in. Because I grew up learning to use words with loving confidence like that.

And it occurs to me that if Mrs White had used her red pen more precisely I probably wouldn't be telling you about this now. Which is kind of obvious but also kind of not. I look back now and think she must have been a rather extraordinary teacher- to exercise such red-pen-restraint. To allow the joy, wonder and excitement of expression flower- however faultily- like that. Because to bloom is better than not to bloom. And a bud once nipped never opens. May we all be so kind...
I used to misspell beautiful a lot. Never could quite remember that the e went before the a. It exasperated my teacher in high school no end. If I was going to employ the word with such lavishness she figured the least I could do was spell it right. Eventually the e's and a's settled into their right places of their own accord. Am glad I didn't wait on them though. Pretty is easier to spell but it doesn't hold as much as you mean sometimes.

And thanks to Mrs White I had no qualms about writing what I meant even if couldn't quite spell it out. Because Life isn't Pretty. It's Baeutiful.

Unfortunately I can't credit the author as this is anonymous but wanted to share it because I love the sentiments.


Left side lesson for Sara.