Like an Inheritance

“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Only in Our Doing

Only in our doing can we grasp You

Only with our hands can we illuminate You

The mind is but our visitor

It thinks us out of our world.

Each mind fabricates itself

It sets its limits, for we have made them.

And just when we would flee them, You come

and make Yourself an offering.

I don't want to think a place for You

Speak to me from everywhere

Your gospel can be comprehended

without looking for its source

when I go towards You

it is with my whole life.

Rainer Marie Rilke

The Day Sky

Let us be like

Two falling stars in the day sky.

Let no one know of our sublime beauty

As we hold hands with God

And burn

Into a sacred existence that defies -

That surpasses

Every description of ecstasy

And love.

Hafiz

Compassionate Towards Yourself

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,

you reconcile all beings in the world." 

Lao Tzu

Break out of this Prison

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.

Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?

I have no idea.

My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,

and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.

When I get back around to that place,

I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,

I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? 

I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.

Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.

I don't plan it.

When I'm outside the saying of it,

I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Rumi

Am I a Falcon

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

Rainer Marie Rilke

Quietness

"Inside this new love, die. 

Your way begins on the other side. 

Become the sky. 

Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. 

Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now. 

You’re covered with thick cloud. 

Slide out the side. 

Die, and be quiet. 

Quietness is the surest sign that you’ve died. 

Your old life was a frantic running from silence. 

The speechless full moon comes out now."

Rumi

True Love

"Love is essentially self-communicative : those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. 

Those who receive love from others cannot be its recipients without giving a response, 

which, in itself, is the nature of Love. 

True Love is unconquerable and irresistible. 

It goes on gathering power and spreading itself until eventually it transforms everyone it touches."

~Meher Baba

 

Love Itself

'Whether you have loved a human being or whether you have loved God, if you have loved enough you will be brought in the end into the presence of the supreme Love itself.'

Rumi

Death of Beatrice

Beyond the sphere that circles most widely

passes the sigh that issues from my heart:

new intelligence, that Love

weeping instills within it, drives it upwards.

When it is near where it desires,

it sees a lady, who receives honour,

and is a light, that by its splendour

the pilgrim spirit can gaze upon her.

Seeing her such, when it says so to me,

I do not understand, it speaks so subtly

to the grieving heart, which makes it speak.

I know it speaks of that gentle one,

since it often  mentions Beatrice,

so that I know it truly, ladies dear to me.

After writing this sonetto a miraculous vision appeared to me, in which I saw things which made me decide to write nothing more of this blessed one until such time as I could treat of her more worthily.

    And to achieve this I study as much as I can, as she truly knows. So that, if it pleases Him by whom all things live, that my life lasts a few years, I hope to write of her what has never been written of any woman.

    And then may it be pleasing to Him who is the Lord of courtesy, that my soul might go to see the glory of its lady, that is of that blessed Beatrice, who gloriously gazes on the face of Him qui est per omnia secula benedictus: who is blessed throughout all the ages.