to the King of Hearts Aude Gotto
|
|
|
|
|
|
Today Your gifts to me, Oh Beloved, are a pain in my head, a cramp in my gut and an overwhelming exhaustion. May I accept them graciously knowing that Your Compassion is as infinite as Your Knowledge of what I need. It is a long apprenticeship to loosen my attachment to my body; to learn that this physical frame is not my identity, that I have a Soul - that I am a Soul, - undisturbed and free of pain, though, God knows, I don't feel it! It is hard to receive gratefully when Your gift is suffering, and to offer my helplessness to You, my Creator and Sustainer. Absorbed in my body's clamours for attention, I fail to notice Your other gifts: the sun has come out and a gentle light shimmers on wet leaves; the house is quiet, the flowers I picked yesterday are still bright; the morning is clear and clean and expectant, and Your smile says: Take heart, have courage, I am giving you another day. |
|
Oh Beloved, here I stand, discouraged and crestfallen: I strive so much to be good, helpful, caring and efficient; to succeed in my efforts towards spirituality, service and discipleship. Yet when I have finally exhausted myself with striving I must grudgingly recognise that this is still the old bondage of "I, my, me and mine". Oh Meher, what a life change it would be if I shifted my vision onto You instead of me; if I used the same energy, the same stubborn perseverance, in just trying to please You remember You and obey You without a thought for the results. If all action and every moment was an occasion to find You, instead of this obsession with myself: my achievements or my failures, my talents or my faults. Oh friends, what a beautiful picture I can see when I imagine myself out of the way: the horizon no longer obstructed by my self-centred concerns, my life becomes free, wide open like sea and sky to the Beloved's unbounded Presence. Oh Namo, you still stand outside this beautiful picture, looking at it with longing. Don't sigh, let it inspire you, and remind you that the Ocean is your ultimate destination. |
|
Oh Meher, how often I reduce the world to the inside of my head and then complain of feeling hemmed in! I walk across the wide green fields, the autumn sky pale and tender, silvery reflection in the glass-like pond; The birchtrees stand graceful and poised, gently shedding their golden leaves with a soft whisper. The countryside is a vast and peaceful offering. Yet I see nothing but the tips of my muddy shoes and I hear nothing but the jagged noise of my on-going inner quarrel. Though I appear to be walking along a country path in a God-given landscape in reality I am going round in circles on a treadmill of my own making. "Stop-Look-Listen" says the signpost by the railway track. Oh friends, how about this for an undertaking? To stop the inconsequential chatter of our overwrought minds (not to argue, just to STOP); to look up, and out, and receive the beauty of God's world as His gift to all of us; to listen to the inner voice of His guidance speaking in the newly found Silence. What about it, my friends? Oh Namo, your mind is a stuffy cinema where the same old movie has been showing for years. It is time to stop the projection and throw open the windows. Then who knows what might happen? |
|
Oh Meher, You tell us that happiness is our birth right, and You work to help us receive it. But Your idea of happiness is not the same as ours. Oh friends, the happiness we have in mind is a pain-free life full of beautiful things and pleasant people; a life without sorrow, struggle or conflict where we get what we want effortlessly and never lose it. Oh Lord,You know how ephemeral are the objects of desire; You know (as we forget) that happiness is an inner treasure not to be found in the outside world. So You work to break our attachments to unreliable wants which prevent us from discovering the imperishable sweetness within. Oh friends, we complain that the Lord's methods are harsh when He shapes the events of our lives to reveal the poverty of wordly pleasures and the limitations of human love. We cannot see that in order to give us a taste of Real joy He must first remove the illusions on which we set our heart and hopes. Oh Beloved, the happiness You have in mind is not an absence of pain but a freedom from desire. Independent of ties and possessions it endures like a rock when the waves of sorrow and loss crash over us. Because it lies deep within ourselves, beneath our tears and fears, it can never be taken away. It is the knowledge of God's Love when all that we treasured is lost. Oh Namo, when you are deprived of what you most desire, and stripped of your dearest hopes, you cry out that the Lord is cruel! But look deeper and you will know that His strong hand, peeling off your snake-skin despite your cries, is moved by nothing but compassion. |
|
Oh Beloved Meher, the world doesn't understand that my love story with You is a story of destruction. How can I explain that I am bleeding joyfully under Your arrows? Oh friends, it is true that I talk about struggles a lot, and often I groan with pain; my body suffers, my mind rebels, but beneath all this turbulence my heart treasures a happiness beyond words. Oh dear Lord, Your loving hand tears me apart and throws the pieces away; grinds me down between sharp stones; cleans me with such thoroughness that I fear nothing will be left. This is what You want, is it not: fine dust blown by the wind, a clean and empty pipe for water or music, a clear and transparent glass pane, no obstacle to the sun. Of course it hurts. But I know so well and so deeply that Your hand is the hand of Love, and beneath my fear and pain my heart cries out: "Yes, yes, dear Lord, do Your work, do with me what You will, I trust You, and Love You, and am Yours." Oh Namo, when you reveal what is in your heart, you appear mad to others and even to yourself. But this madness is more precious than any wisdom. |
|
Behind the solemn features of a Byzantine Christ the blue-faced Krishna in a Radjput miniature the enigmatic smile of the Angkor Buddha and behind the familiar mustache and deep eyes of the Man who said: "Don't Worry, Be Happy": the same One God whom, try as I may, I cannot see, grasp or conceive. The face of Power, the face of Joy. the face of Peace and the face of Compassion: behind all these Forms, beloved and worshipped in different places and different times, the Formless One both hides and reveals Himself. While I live in this world of garments and veils I cannot see the true Essence of the One I seek and yearn for. So I close my eyes and there, in the darkness the eye of my Soul is given a glimpse. |
|
The stopped jar must be broken for the captive perfume to escape. When the Beloved breaks my will and shatters my pride the fragrance of His Presence suddenly fills my heart with overwhelming sweetness. Standing among the wreckage of my proud personality, at this moment I discover the Beloved's gift: the song of a free bird who knows dawn always comes. |
|
Never weep for grief Or self-pity or shame; Only weep for Love.
Whenever you feel sadness
Never blame yourself, my dear:
Never complain, my dear:
So always weep for Love, my dear, |
|
When we fall into the same pothole For the hundredth time? No. He just says: "Here, give us a hand!" Helps us up, dusts us down And adds: "Next time, why not look where you put your feet." Does God exclaim: "You fool, you've done it again!" When we have got stuck, waist high in the mud, By taking a path we knew was unsound. No. He waits Until we've finished cursing Ourselves, all the muddy places on earth, And God for creating both. When we finally look round And reach for His hand, He pulls us out, Washes us down; "Next time, try another way" He says, With a friendly shove. |
|
Of toil and trouble Striving to better myself Finally Your Message Penetrates through my thick skin: You love me just as I am. So I have decided To give up trying to change myself: I shall leave this job to You And just enjoy Your Company. |
|
Oh Beloved, we seek peace and tranquillity. But we cannot find them in this world or in our minds filled with noise and anger. Peace lives, undisturbed, in the eye of the storm. In the circles of illusion rage the fires of desire, the bitter tears of disapointment quench them with a hiss and the billowing smoke of worry obscures our vision. The clamours of battle rise, as the armours of selfishness clash; in the circles of illusion all is chaos and conflict, and peace cannot be found there. We must cross through to the centre, to the still place, the quiet place, where from the pool of Silence the source of Life springs eternally. The stillness, the sweetness, is there always, unmoved, unpolluted, perennial, waiting for us to come and kneel by the pool to drink. The still point at the centre has no dimension, no duration; in the circles of illusion time and space make a great show: universes and galaxies explode and expand, centuries and light years fly past, for the enjoyment of scientists. Yet all this excitement would not exist without that stillpoint, immaterial and Real, the Eye of the Storm. In the kingdom of illusion rules the tyranny of results; its ministers are fear and guilt. But in the centre, where all striving ceases, there is no success or failure only the certainty of Being. |
|
I look up to the brilliant blue space of a clean swept sky: pure, unsullied, infinite emptiness; You are here. I look down to the damp carpet of rotting leaves, thick, dark, crowded with small crawling creatures; life incessantly devouring and devoured, to perpetuate its myriad separate forms; dirt, death and decay: You are here. Is there anything that God isn't? I look far, out onto the sea, vast expanse of ceaseless movement, eternally changing and forever the same; stretched out naked to the horizon, revealing nothing of its unfathomable depths, teeming with unseen life. You are here. I gaze into the fire: leaping flames, fascinating and wild, insubstantial but so powerful, warm comforter on winter nights, deadly destroyer if I come too close: You are here. Air, Earth, Water and Fire: the elements of our visible world, a multiplicity of forms pointing to the Oneness beyond; fleeting clouds, seasons, waves and flames: everchanging impermanence which speaks of eternity; movement and repose, life and death, energy and substance: there isn't anything that God isn't. On a bright morning, when hope sparkles and we stride into the world with confidence, when life is a great adventure and we feel strong, You are there. In a quiet moment of peace, when the whispers of expectations and the clamours of desire have ceased, and we hear the small voice in the centre, You are here. In the agony of physical pain or the throes of mental turmoil, when worry and guilt tighten their grip, when tears of shame and frustration roll, burning, down our cheeks, You are here. In the dullness of boredom or the darkness of despair, the pangs of loss, the nameless fear, You are here, You are here! There isn't anytime, anywhere, anything that God isn't. |
|
The real nature of the flute is emptiness just as the real nature of the mirror is emptiness. Make me empty as a flute so You can fill me with Your music; make me clear as a mirror so I can reflect Your beauty. |
| Back to HeartMind | | Anthology | | Main Page Norway | | AvatarMeherBaba USA | | HeartMind |