Divine Love

Divine Love, the heart

of hearts, abounds in

every grain of being,

from atom's gleam

to starry sky, from darkest

pain to brightest joy,

unceasing love kindles life -

a royal promise sealed

with the kiss of peace.

 

~ Hildegard of Bingham

From These thousands of me's...

ʺI wonder from these thousands of ʺmeʹsʺ, 

which one am I? 

Listen to the cry, 

do not drown my voice 

I am completely filled with the thought of you.

 Donʹt lay broken glass on my path 

I will crust it into dust. I am nothing, 

just a mirror in the palm of your hand, 

reflecting your kindness, your sadness, your anger. 

If you were a blade of grass or a tiny flower 

I would pitch my tent in your shadow. 

Only your presence revives my withered heart. 

You are the candle that lights the whole world 

and I am an empty vessel for your lightʺ. Rumi

Emerson on Falling in Love

Emerson in his essay on Love recognizes that man changes when touched by Love. There is both inspiration, passion and possibility to awaken the soul. All men are privy to this rite of passage no matter what the age, character or disposition...Love is a force that comes directly from the gods as a gift to help us in our development of consciousness.


"Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks with arms akimbo; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and the lily in his veins; and he talks with the brook that wets his foot.

The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty have made him love music and verse. It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under any other circumstances.

"Alas, how many gentle thoughts, how deep a longing,

had led them to the agonizing pass!" Dante 

The like force has the passion over all his nature. It expands the sentiment; it makes the clown gentle, and gives the coward heart. Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved object. In giving him to another, it still more gives him to himself. He is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer appertain to his family and society; _he_ is somewhat; he is a person; he is a soul."

This Moment

This moment, this love, comes to rest in me
many beings in one being
In one wheat grain a thousand sheep stacks

Inside the needle's eye
a turning night of stars

There is a light seed grain inside
you fill it with yourself or it dies

I am caught in this curling energy, your hair
who ever is calm and sensible
is insane!

--Rumi

Poem by Rilke

Again and Again
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names, and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others fall: again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, lie down again and again among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

I have Learned so Much By Hafiz

I
Have
Learned
So much from God
That I can no longer
Call
Myself

A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,
A Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself
With me

That I can no longer call myself
A man, a woman, an angel,
Or even pure
Soul.

Love has
Befriended Hafiz so completely
It has turned to ash
And freed
Me

Of every concept and image
My mind has ever known.

His Golden Spindle

From the breath of my creator
I came into existence with the stars
I traversed layers of time
Slowly learning to breath in
the oxygen of His Love
Falling and getting up again
I learned to exhale His Kindness
Finally fastening my existence
to the eternal thread of His golden spindle.

To Love is to be God

To Love is to be God.


Never will a Lover's chest 


feel any sorrow.


Never will a Lover's robe 

be touched by mortals.


Never will a Lover's body 


be found buried in the earth.


To Love is to be God.

Rumi

The Only One by Meher Baba

God is Love.  And Love must love.  And to love there must be a Beloved. But since God is Existence infinite and eternal there is no one for Him to love but Himself.  And in order to love Himself He must imagine Himself as the Beloved whom He as the Lover imagines He loves.

Beloved and Lover implies separation.  And separation creates longing:  and longing causes search.  And the wider and the more intense the search the greater the separation and the more terrible the longing.

When longing is most intense separation is complete, and the purpose of separation, which was that Love might experience itself as Lover and Beloved, is fulfilled; and union follows.  And when union is attained, the Lover knows that he himself was all along the Beloved whom he loved and desired union with; and that all the impossible situations that he overcame were obstacles which he himself had placed in the path to himself.

To attain union is so impossibly difficult because it is impossible to become what you already are!  Union is nothing other than knowledge of oneself as the Only One.

Aches with Love

"I am he that aches with amorous love; 

Does the earth gravitate? 

Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter? 

So the body of me to all I meet or know. "

Walt Whitman

The Story of Love by Kabir

      The story of Love can never be told.

      It is the sherbet of the dumb man

      Who eats it and smiles silently.

      Without any earth and without any seed,

      The tree of Divine Love just grows and grows,

      Heavy with a million radiant fruits

      My Lover picks for me to taste.

      The story of Love can never be told.

      When I calmed my mind

      And entered my heart,

      The Love of the Lord

      Leapt like a flame within me.

      All my old ideas and beliefs

      Just blew away like chaff in the wind.

It wasn’t because of anything I am;

      It wasn’t because of anything I did;

      But only because of His miraculous grace

      That I learned at long last the lesson of Love.

      My coming and going have ended;

      My mind has melted in the Mind.

      Don’t ask me to speak any more—

      The story of Love can never be told.

                                          ---Kabir

On the Nature of Love

From Chaitali (1896)

The night is black and the forest has no end;

a million people thread it in a million ways.

We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where

or with whom- of that we are unaware.

But we have this faith- that a lifetime's bliss

will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.

Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs

brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.

Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:

whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.

I call that person and cry: `This life is blest!

For your sake such miles have I traversed!'

All those others who come close and moved off

in the darkness- I dont know if they exist or not.

Translated from Bengali by Ketaki Kushari Dyson.

Love Song by Rilke

How should I hold my soul

so it does not touch on yours. 

How shall I lift it

over you to other things?

Ah, willingly I’d store it away

with some lost thing in the dark,

in some strange still place, that

does not tremble when your depths tremble.

But all that touches us, you and me,

takes us, together, like the stroke of a bow,

that draws one chord out of the two strings.

On what instrument are we strung?

And what artist has us in their hand?

O sweet song.

Like a Seal over Your Heart

Song of Solomon 8:6-7

Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame.

Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot wash it away.
If one were to give
all the wealth of his house for love,
it would be utterly scorned.

The Guardians of Beauty

By Hafiz

"We are the guardians of His Beauty 
We are the protectors
Of the Sun.

There is only one reason
We have followed God into this world:
To encourage laughter, freedom, dance
And love.

Let a noble cry inside of you speak to me
Saying, "Hafiz,
Don't just sit there on the moon tonight
Doing nothing -

Help unfurl my heart into the Friend's Mind,
Help, Old Man, to heal my wounded wings!"
We are the companions of His Beauty
We are the guardians
Of Truth.

Every man, plant and creature in Existence,
Every woman, child, vein and note
Is a servant of our Beloved -

A harbinger of joy,
The harbinger of
Light."  

Be Free My Love

Be free my love, 

for you are the essence 

of the song

that has been

played in the heart of every 

man and woman seeking God.

The Lovers

By Rumi

The Lovers
will drink wine night and day.
They will drink until they can
tear away the veils of intellect and
melt away the layers of shame and modesty.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love, and you will not be separated again.

Like a Hesitant Bird

Like a hesitant bird who was born in a cage
I stand still contemplating this freedom
What lies beyond this encampment
what lies beyond these barren walls of my heart
Perhaps the possibility of flight
Or finding the current of the wind
or gliding with outstretched wings ?
The gate has long been opened
What are you waiting for ?
Take a plunge into this Limitless Love
There is nothing more to lose
This freedom is your birthright.

Friend of the Soul

Yedid Nefesh, Friend of the Soul

the work of 16th Century kabbalist Rabbi Elazar Azikri. 

Soul's beloved, source of compassion,
draw Your servant to your desire.
Your servant will run like a gazelle;
he will bow before your splendor.
Your love is sweeter to him
than the dripping of honey, or all tastes.

Splendid, Beautiful, Radiance of the Universe
My soul is sick for Your love .
Please, God, heal her 
by showing her the beauty of your radiance.
Then she will be strengthened and healed
And she will have eternal bliss.
Ancient One, arouse Your mercy,
and please have pity upon Your beloved child.
For how I have yearned
to swiftly see the splendor of Your strength.
These are the desires of my heart
so please have pity and do not hide Yourself.
Please, reveal Yourself.
beloved, spread over me the shelter of your peace.
Illumine the earth with Your glory,
that we may exalt and rejoice in You.
For now comes the time
grace us as in days of old.

Love is from the Infinite

"Love is from the infinite, 

and will remain until eternity.

The seeker of love

 escapes the chains of birth and death.

Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,

The heart that is not in love will fail the test. " Rumi

Love Flows from God

By Mechthild of Magdeburg


Love flows from God to man without effort
As a bird glides through the air
Without moving its wings --
Thus they go whithersoever they will
United in body and soul
Yet in their form separate --
As the Godhead strikes the note
Humanity sings,
The Holy Spirit is the harpist
And all the strings must sound
Which are strung in love.

Kahlil Gibran On Marriage

Let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each others cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous,

but let each one of you be alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each others keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each others shadow.

Kahlil Gibran

My Heart was Split

Odes of Solomon

King Solomon ( 1^st century)

My heart was split, and a flower appeared:

and grace sprang up;

and it bore fruit for my God.

You split me, tore my heart

open, filled me with love.

You poured your spirit into me;

I knew you as I know myself.

Speaking waters touched me

from your fountain, the source of life.

I swallowed them and was drunk with the water that never dies.

And my drunkenness was insight,

intimacy with your spirit.

And you have made all things new;

you have showed me all things shining.

You have granted me perfect ease;

I have become like Paradise,

a garden whose fruit is joy;

and you are the sun upon me.

My eyes are radiant with your spirit;

my nostrils fill with your fragrance.

My ears delight in your music,

and my face is covered with your dew.

Blessed are the men and women

who are planted on your earth, in your garden,

who grow as your trees and flowers grow,

who transform their darkness to light.

Their roots plunge into darkness;

their faces turn toward the light.

All those who love you are beautiful;

they overflow with your presence

so that they can do nothing but good.

There is infinite space in your garden;

all men, all women are welcome here;

all they need do is enter.