An invitation and a promise

Though we know one another's names and recognize one another's faces, we never know what destiny shapes each life. The script of individual destiny is secret; it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for us. Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind's light or questions. That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be.

Tripping Over Joy

What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?
The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, 'I Surrender!'
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves

Look in the places you look away from

You have to allow disruption in your life. You have to take account of the parts of yourself you would throw out. You have to look in the places you look away from. And this is so the divine comes into birth. The divine wishes to come into birth in every moment.

True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossible, and the heart has turned to stone.

Never the Same

Sometimes a person wakes
believing they are a storm.
It is hard to deny it, what,
with all the rain pouring out
of the gutters of the mind,
all the gusts blowing through,
all the squalls, all the gray.
But by afternoon, it seems obvious
they are a garden about to sprout.
By night, it is clear they are a moon—
luminous, radiant, faithful.
That's the danger, I suppose,
of believing any frame.
Let me believe, then, in curiosity,
in wonder, in change.
Let me trust how essential it is

The outer work

The outer work can never be small if the inner work is great. And the outer work can never be great if the inner work is small.

The cause of our wonder

We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.

A consequence of what we have become

We change the world not by what we say or do but as a consequence of what we have become.

The truth of one's Self can be discovered in everyday life. To live with care and kindness is all that is necessary. The rest reveals itself in due time. The commonplace and God are not distinct.

Twilight of the Self

My heart is solitary now.
It finds no companionship anywhere
And no wish to find any.

My sole desire is You,
And You are always absent.

Can one love absence so intensely
That even your presence
Seems like an intrusion?

I move around in aimless circles.
Rituals and sacred symbols,
Once treasured symbols of relating to You
Are meaningless to me now.

They communicate nothing of You,
Who are everything to me
But for whom and from whom I feel no love,
Nor hope of fulfillment.

The stream of events both inside and outside

The Witness is that which is capable of observing the flow of what is—without interfering with it, commenting on it, or in any way manipulating it. The Witness simply observes the stream of events both inside and outside the mind-body in a creatively detached fashion, since, in fact, the Witness is not exclusively identified with either. In other words, when you realize that your mind and your body can be perceived objectively, you spontaneously realize that they cannot constitute a real subjective self. As Huang Po put it, "Let me remind you, the perceived cannot perceive."

Room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.