water set in beauty often remind me of life, spring, eternal wisdom... find more on this lake at end of post...How easy to see how the wise with eyes well beyond their time rejoiced in the lessons of nature. Here's for example Rumi: I can't stop pointing to the beauty. Every moment and place says, "Put this design in your carpet!"
Today is an especially perfect day here in our lovely, small town of gentle mountains and wild waterfalls. My thoughts have been filled with anguish over many weeks due to the sadness and despair of so many. However today, after some refreshing meditation and lots of SPRING work, I once again turn to certain Wise Men for guidance - especially when spring has entered some of our cities and yet when we know that the hearts and lives of MANY are far from such a place of heavenly atmosphere...
The poet-visionaries whom I will feature from day to day this week - especially Rumi, Rilke and Jesus (who all were MUCH more - especially, I believe, Jesus) had plenty to say observing nature, human kind and their experience of God who is Love. The following pieces of wisdom - from these three great ones - strike me as especially pertinent and illuminating for Spring in our day and time as well as in their time walking among us.
First Day of Spring: Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi or مولانا جلال الدين محمد بلخى Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273) was a Persian philosopher, theologian, poet, teacher, and founder of the Mevlevi (or Mawlawi) order of Sufism; also known as Mevlana (Our Guide), Jalaluddin Rumi, or simply Rumi.
Here are some of his most beloved words to women, men and children of all ages and times:
Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.
Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.
Come, worshipper, agnostic, lover of leaving - it doesn't matter who you are....
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.
Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it...This discipline is a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.
The idol of your self is the mother of all idols.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo. You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate. There are wheatfields and mountain passes, and orchards in bloom. At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding."
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up in the dark with eyes closed.
To Him we shall return.
You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?
God teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.
The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks
is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
If you are wholly perplexed and in straits,
have patience, for patience is the key to joy.
If you are irritated by every rub,
how will your mirror be polished?
Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being.
Every object and being in the universe is a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin.
God's lion did nothing that didn't originate from his deep center.
Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round again...
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.
Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent.
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I found the lake in the photo above here This scene is of Loughrea Lake ~ in Loughrea Baile or Loch Riach: the town of the grey or dappled lake - takes its name from the beautiful lake, on the northern shore of which the town stands. Lough Rea, a large limestone lake, covers an area of c.260 hectares which was most likely formed by erosion during the last Ice Age which ended about 9000 BC. In addition to providing the town's water supply, this attractive waterscape is Loughrea's most valued amenity. It is also of value in terms of its ornithology and archaeology.
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