This Old House

It rests upon a gentle crest,
with stately elms embracing its breast.

Rising high above they spread their wings,
beholding in the dwelling the loved souls that sing.

At dawn they rise for the coming day’s toil,
turning the earth and cultivating the soil.

The bountiful orchards set ablaze,
attracts them there for a pause on the warm spring day.

Their flowers rise in glory, what a beautiful sight,
releasing their essence, the great breath of light.

The sun rests on the horizon in the west,
reminding them of the hard days coming rest.

The robins sing their goodnight song,
until once again the emergence of dawn.

Their souls in slumber released in flight,
This grand old house holds them dear to the night.

Kuan Gung

Dedicated to my departed grandparents who lived, loved and cared for the earth in this old house. The two most influential souls in my life...I miss them dearly...

Merry Christmas

Magic

It's in the snowflake skies of children's wishes.
It's in the music of children's laughter.
It's in the breathlessness of children's anticipation.
It's in the faith of children's embraces.

The magic of Christmas is here...
In the childlike wonder of us all.


Splendor

Ebony eve, silvered streets.
Lavender mist and icicle tears.
Visions of velvet, crimson and jade.
Golden glints in topaz thoughts.
Color it Christmas. Give it with love.


Someday

Perhaps it begins long before the first frost -
Somewhere between memory and reality.
It touches us with compassion
and whispers to us of hope.
It tiptoes into our hearts with elation
and opens our souls to faith.

Its name is Christmas and we have yet to learn
How to keep it close for more than
this one brief, shining moment.
Someday, perhaps...with love.


Come Home For Christmas

Unlock the door of your heart -
Enter the gentleness within.
Open the window of your soul -
Breathe in the season of miracles.
No matter how far you've traveled,
It's time to come home now,
Where Christmas abounds in love.

Living Reality: A New Earth

"If the history of humanity were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived "enemies"-his own unconsciousness projected outward. Criminally insane, with a few brief lucid intervals"

"The ego is not only the unobserved mind, the voice in the head which pretends to be you, but also the unobserved emotions that are the body's reaction to what the voice in the head is saying."

Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.

If you are not in the state of acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.

"Underneath the surface appearance, everything is not only connected with everything else, but also with the Source of all life out of which it came".

An essential part of the awakening is the recognition of the unawakened you, the ego as it thinks, speaks, and acts, as well as the recognition of the collectively conditioned mental processes that perpetuate the unawakened state"

All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip on an iceberg. Underneath the surface appearance, everything is not only connected with everything else, but also with the Source of all life out of which it came" "When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life" "The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality"

The collective disease of humanity is that people are so engrossed in what happens, so hypnotized by the world of fluctuating forms, so absorbed in the content of their lives, they have forgotten the essence that which is beyond content, beyond form, beyond thought. They are so consumed by time that they have forgotten eternity, which is their origin, their home, their destiny. Eternity is the living reality of who you are.

Eckhart Tolle

A New Earth

The messengers–Buddha, Jesus, and others, not all of them known–were humanity’s early flowers. They were precursors, rare and precious beings.

To sin means to miss the point of human existence. It means to life unskillfully, blindly, and thus to suffer and cause suffering.

The human mind is highly intelligent. Yet its very intelligence is tainted by madness. Science and technology have magnified the destructive impact that the dysfunction of the human mind has upon the planet, other life-forms, and upon humans themselves.

By the end of the century, the number of people who died a violent death at the hand of their fellow humans would rise to more than one hundred million.

Driven by green, ignorant of their connectedness to the whole, humans persist in behavior that, if continued unchecked, can only result in their own destruction.

Most ancient religions and spiritual traditions share the common insight–that our “normal” state of mind is marred by a fundamental defect.

The good news of the possibility of a radical transformation of human consciousness. In Hindu teachings (and sometimes in Buddhism also), this transformation is called enlightenment. In the teachings of Jesus, it is salvation, and in Buddhism, it is the end of suffering. Liberation and awakening are other terms used to describe this transformation.

Responding to a radical crisis that threatens our very survival–this is humanity’s challenge now.

A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.

Ego is no more than this: identification with form, which primarily means thought forms. If evil has any reality–and it has a relative, not an absolute, reality–this is also its definition: complete identification with form–physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms. This results in total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with every “other” as well as with the Source.

We need to understand here that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness. This is its meaning in the teachings of Jesus.

“A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm.

Quotes: A New Earth - Ekhart Tolle

Magdalena

Echoing down through the corridors of time,
Upon the lap I hear the sweet songs and rhymes,
Hands gathered in the stroll to the glorious bed,
Her passions emerge upon sight of her stead.

They wave and shimmer in the whispering breeze,
She nurtures the colors and fragrance of tease.
Gathering their seeds as the blooms slowly fade.
She dreams of spring when rebirth is gently made.

One hundred one seasons had drifted away,
She rests now beyond time in the eternal sway.
The flowers she loved do not cling to the grave,
I wondered about and found not where she lay,

Lost to the earth but not to the heart,
I hear her sweet whispers a love that never parts.


Kuan Gung

Magdalena was my Great Grandmother that at age 3,began to teach me how to read by memorizing each word.

She loved her flowers and garden.

I spent countless hours with her when I was very young upon her lap reading and listening to her stories.

She was a compassionate and strong woman whom I loved dearly as a child.

At age 101 she passed away. I was 11 years old.

Many years later I went to find her only to learn, she was no where to be found.

Her grave was unmarked with no head stone.

She had 9 children and lost three.

The cemetery has her listed, but as to where she lays, we'll never know.

Time

Time

Time and eternity are both in your mind,
And will conflict until you perceive time
Solely as a means to regain eternity.

Now is the closest approximation of eternity
That this world offers.
It is the reality of “now”,
Without past or future,
That the beginning of the appreciation
Of eternity lies.
For only “now” is here.

Look lovingly upon the present,
For it holds the only things that are forever true.
All healing lies within it.

When you have learned to look on everyone
With no reference to all to the past,
Either his or yours as you perceive it,
You will be able to learn from what you see now.

To be born again is to let the past go,
And look without condemnation upon the present.

The present is before time was,
And will be when time is no more.
In it are all things that are eternal,
And they are one.

Fear is not of the present,
But only of the past and future,
Which do not exist.

Why wait for heaven?
It is here today.
Time is the great illusion it is past
Or in the future.

Here in the present is the world set free.
For as you let the past be lifted
And release the future from your ancient fears,
You find escape and give it to the world.

What time but now can truth be recognized?
The present is the only time there is.

The past is gone;
The future but imagined.
These concerns are but defenses
Against present change.

Unless the past is over in my mind,
The real world must escape my sight.
For I am really looking nowhere;
Seeing but what is not here

A Course in Miracles

ACIM: Miracles

Miracles are natural.

When they do not occur,

something has gone wrong.

Miracles are merely the translation

of denial into truth.

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.

The real miracle is the love that inspires them.

In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

The miracle comes quietly into the mind

that stops an instant and is still.

The miracle of life is ageless

born in time but nourished in eternity

What Will Matter

What Will Matter

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.

All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten
will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.

Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.
So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won't matter where you came from or what side of the tracks
you lived on at the end.

It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter?

How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought but what you built,
not what you got but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage,

or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew,
but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.

What will matter is not your memories but the memories
that live in those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered,
by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.

It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

Michael Josephson

http://www.josephsoninstitute.org/movie_whatwillmatter.html

The Seat of the Soul

"You cannot find your soul with your mind, you must use your heart. You must know what you are feeling. If you don't know what you are feeling, you will create unconsciously. If you are unconscious of an aspect of yourself; if it operates outside your field of awareness, that aspect has power over you.""An intention is a quality of consciousness that you bring to an action."

"Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality."

"Do not insist that the universe complywith your understanding of it."

The journey may take many lifetimes, but you will complete it. It is impossible not to complete it. It is not a question of if but of when.

~ Gary Zukav ~

The Chariots Go Forth to War

The Chariots Go Forth to War

The chariots go forth to war,
Rumbling, roaring as they go;
The horses neigh and whinny loud,
Tugging at the bit.
The dust swirls up in great dense clouds,
And hides the Han Yang bridge.
In serried ranks the archers march,
A bow and quiver at each waist;
Fathers, mothers, children, wives
All crowd around to say farewell.
Pulling at clothes and stamping feet,
They force the soldiers' ranks apart,
And all the while their sobs and cries
Reach to the skies above.

"Where do you go to-day ?" a passer-by
Calls to the marching men.
A grizzled old veteran answers him,
Halting his swinging stride:
"At fifteen I was sent to the north
To guard the river against the Hun;
At forty I was sent to camp,
To farm in the west, far, far from home.
When I left, my hair was long and black;
When I came home, it was white and thin.
Today they send me again to the wars,
Back to the north frontier,
By whose gray towers our blood has flowed
In a red tide, like the sea--
And will flow again, for Wu Huang Ti
Is resolved to rule the world.

"Have you not heard how in far Shantung
Two hundred districts lie
With a thousand towns and ten thousand homes
Deserted, neglected, weed-grown?
Husbands fighting or dead, wives drag the plow,
And the grain grows wild in the fields.
The soldiers recruited in Shansi towns
Still fight; but, with spirit gone,
Like chickens and dogs they are driven about,
And have not the heart to complain."

"I am greatly honored by your speech with me.
Dare I speak of my hatreds and grief ?
All this long winter, conscription goes on
Through the whole country, from the east to the west,
And taxes grow heavy. But how can we pay,
Who have nothing to give from our land ?
A son is a curse at a time like this,
And daughters more welcome far;
For, when daughters grow up, they can marry, at least,
And go to live on a neighbor's land.
But our sons? We bury them after the fight,
And they rot where the grass grows long.

"Have you not seen at far Ching Hai,
By the waters of Kokonor,
How the heaped skulls and bones of slaughtered men
Lie bleaching in the sun?
Their ancient ghosts hear our own ghosts weep,
And cry and lament in turn;
The heavens grow dark with great storm-clouds,
And the specters wail in the rain."

Du Fu

ACIM: What About You?

The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of

creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew.

Seek, therefore, not to find out Who You Are, seek to determine

Who You Want to Be.
Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know),

but to remember Who You Are. And to remember who everyone else is.

Judge not, then, the karmic path walked by another. Envy not success,

nor pity failure, for you know not what is success or failure

in the soul’s reckoning. Judge not, and neither

condemn, for you know not why a thing occurs,

nor to what end. And remember

you this: that which you condemn will condemn you,

and that which you judge, you will one day become. Rather, seek to change

those things—or support others who are changing those things—

which no longer reflect your highest sense of Who You Are.

There is perfection in the process—and all life arises out of choice.

Your own life is the way it is because of you,

and the choices you have made—or failed to make.

All that is required is to know this. For you are the creator of your reality,

and life can show up no other way for you than that way in which you think it will.

Thought is pure energy. Every thought you have, have ever had,

and ever will have is creative. The energy of your thought never ever dies.

Ever.

It leaves your being and heads out into the universe,

extending forever. A thought is forever.

The Laws are very simple. 1. Thought is creative. 2. Fear attracts like energy.

3. Love is all there is.

So—do you want your life to “take off”?

Begin at once to imagine it the way you want it to be—

and move into that.

Check every thought, word, and action that does not fall into harmony with that.

Move away from those.

The most difficult thing for people to do is hear their own soul.

And every Master has likewise had the same message: What I am, you are.

What I can do, you can do. These things, and more, shall you also do.

All attack is a call for help.

Life is a creation, not a discovery.

Enlightenment is understanding that there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and

nobody you have to be except exactly who you’re being right now.

Remember, you are constantly in the act of creating yourself.

You are in every moment deciding who and what you are.

You decide this largely through the choices you make regarding who and

what you feel passionate about.

Yet never resist anything. If you think that by your resistance

you will eliminate it, think again. You only plant it more firmly in place.

All thought is creative?

There is only now; an eternal moment of always in which you are experiencing yourself.

The point of life is therefore to create—who and what you are, and then to experience that.
This is the process of Self realization about which Eastern mystics have written.

It is the process of salvation to which much Western theology has devoted itself.

Yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.

A Master blesses calamity, for the Master knows that from the seeds of disaster

(and all experience) comes the growth of Self.

What you do for your Self, you do for another. What you do for another,

you do for the Self.

This is because you and the other are one.

So much of your present experience is based on your previous thought.

New thought is your only chance. It’s your only real opportunity to evolve,

to grow, to truly become

Who You Really Are.

True Masters are those who have chosen to make a life, rather than a living.

To change your reality, simply stop thinking like that.
Go ahead and do what you really love to do! Do nothing else! You have so little time.

How can you think of wasting a moment doing something for a living you don’t like to do?

What kind of a living is that?

That is not a living, that is a dying!

Worry is just about the worst form of mental activity there is—

next to hate, which is deeply self destructive.

Worry is pointless. It is wasted mental energy.

It also creates bio-chemical reactions which harm the body,

producing everything from indigestion to coronary arrest,

and a multitude of things in between.

Worry, hate, fear—together with their offshoots: anxiety, bitterness, impatience,

avarice, unkindness, judgmentalness, and condemnation—all attack the body at the

cellular level. It is impossible to have a healthy body under these conditions.

The world is in the condition that it’s in because the world is full of sleepwalkers.

Moonlight in You

Moonlight in You

Moonlight on your face

And I see its glow

Perhaps you could sprinkle

Shreds of flames to me

That encircles loneliness

Seizing my miseryRadiance

calms a lament heart

I see contentment in your smile

Carefree in your journeys

Every journey of yours

Shapes a meaning Humbleness

Core light of your soul

I wish I could learn

Your secret

And you wait for no success

It’s granted to you

Freedom floats within you

Moon floats in the sky

Yet there is another side to the moon

A face of youIs frighten to appear

A full circle of darkness

A burned out candle

Withholding agonies

Since when a moon spills tears!

The man in you cannot set it free

Strings of me adores your strength

The desire to tangle

Within your surroundings

Despite all complicity

You take the walk of life

Akin to leaf falling with easiness

Allow me to love your moonlight


Copyright 2006 nasra al adawi

http://nasra-al-adawi.blogspot.com/

Inspired by DON of http://poeticalchemist.wordpress.com/, every day I learn something new about life and what it can bring to me as a person who lives it

Love

Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
Franklin P. Jones

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
Plato

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost

If you have it [Love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
Sir James M. Barrie

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Henry Louis Mencken

Love is a friendship set to music.
E. Joseph Cossman

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
Voltaire

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking

outward together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

You don't love a woman because she is beautiful,

but she is beautiful because you love her.
Anonymous

Love is a given, hatred is acquired.
Doug Horton

The best and most beautiful things in the world

cannot be seen or even touched -

they must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller

If you would be loved, love and be lovable.
Benjamin Franklin

Some love lasts a lifetime. True love lasts forever.
Unknown

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Mother Teresa

Hymn to the Night

I HEARD the trailing garments of the NightSweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, The manifold, soft chimes,

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight airMy spirit drank repose;

The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,

--From those deep cisterns flows.O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear

What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,

And thy complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!

Descend, with broad-winged flight,

The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,

The best-beloved Night!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out of the Valley of the West, upon their snow-white steeds,
and into ancient legends passed bright men with shining deeds.
Their heralds, made of cloth-of-gold trailed bright banners
in the seaward breeze that spoke of hoary years of old
and a history of times unseen.

Bright Kings of aeons past were they,
who ruled beyond the Western Sea and slew great daemons,
and lived with fey in years of unknown centuries.
Their look was wise, their carriage proud,
their armour held a starry sheen,
their aged trumpets echoed loud as they rode in from the Sea.

Through hanging forests, deep and cold upon a winding,
unknown trailthey rode- noble, proud and bold.
Dark were the shadows upon their mail;
bright were their eyes and deep their brows,
their hair was gold, their faces pale-
they passed through grove and under boughout of the West,
where dreamships sail.

Briseis

Osho

Life

"The beauty of facing life unprepared is tremendous.
Then life has a newness, a youth; then life has a flow
and freshness. Then life has so many surprises.
And when life has so many surprises
boredom never settles in you."

The Search

Remember one thing: meditation means awareness.
Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation.
Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action.
Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly.
Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly.
Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness.
Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation
If you remain alert and watchful.
The whole point is: one should not move in sleep.
Then whatsoever you do is meditation.

Meditation

JUST ONE QUALITY of the Buddha has to be remembered. He consists only
of one quality: witnessing. This small word witnessing contains the whole of
spirituality. Witness that you are not the body. Witness that you are not
the mind. Witness that you are only a witness. As the witnessing deepens,
you start becoming drunk with the divine. That is what is called ecstasy.

Silence

The energy of the whole has taken possession of you. You are possessed, you are no more, the whole is. This moment, as the silence penetrates in you, you can understand the significance of it, because it is the same silence that Gautama Buddha experienced. It is the same silence that Chuang Tzu or Bodhidharma or Nansen.... The taste of the silence is the same. Time changes, the world goes on changing, but the experience of silence, the joy of it, remains the same. That is the only thing you can rely upon, the only thing that never dies.
It is the only thing that you can call your very being.”

The Disappearance of the Universe

Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world,

where starved and thirsty creatures come to die.

The Dead are not alive, and the living will not die.

You have a chance of finding your ways through the veils of forgetfulness,

back to where you belong.

Perception always involves some misuse of the mind,

because it brings the mind into areas of uncertainty.

The ego is nothing more then a belief about yourself.

Fear holds the world, Forgiveness sets it free.

Enlightenment is but recognition, not a change at all.

The experience of revelation is beyond this world

and can not be captured with words.

Miracles are all the same, the benefits for your mind

when you forgive are unimaginable to you.

The only illusion is the past and the future, there is,

and will always just be the now.

"The Disapperance of the Universe"

Gary R. Renard

Anytime...Anywhere...

Life can be found only in the present moment.
The past is gone,

the future is not yet here,
and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment,
we cannot be in touch with life.

Our own life is the instrument
with which we experiment with the truth.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong.

Why not try and see positive things,

to just touch those things and make them bloom?

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness.
If you are attentive, you will see it.

The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air,
but simply walking on this earth.

The NOW: Eckhart Tolle

MLK: Wisdom

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.

Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become reality.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.

Martin Luther King