we all have the clear bright field
A horse strays
into a cave of lions. You move
deeper into your desire for sex, for art
and wealth. There will come a time when your
life is a blank, but has there ever really been a time
when human beings were not cared for? For thousands
of years we had no identity, yet we managed to arrive
in this amazing moment, this brightly conscious
lifespan. Who gave us such restlessness
to know and be?
Thought of worldly things
is an enemy to the sweetness of spiritual
consciousness. Silence your thoughts. Bewilder
yourself with God. Your mind will fall away
and your heart will open.
Forwardness in worldly
ways is backwardness in reality.
When the herd turns back toward God,
its leaders end up in the rear! The lame goat
that was hindmost finds herself in front, and the
ones who worried about her are ecstatic now.
How do saints and prophets get to
be that way? By breaking
their own legs.
They make themselves
lame by renouncing expertise in
the ways of the world. Understanding that
it’s not the way home, they wash their hearts clean
of such knowledge. If you want to reach heaven,
follow the branches that lead to that root.
Be the lame goat here, and
lead the herd home.
While you are eating
a piece of bread, try to recall
the events that collaborated to let
this take place. The ovens heat that baked
the bread, the plowed earth before that, sunlight,
rain, harvest, the winnowing, the being carried to and
from the mill, the complex idea and the building of the mill
itself. The many motions of weather in the turning of four seasons.
And don’t forget the knife that cuts the bread, the metallurgy and the skill of
forging that blade, and your teeth, those original grinding devices. Then there’s
your stomach digesting the crust and there’s the rest of your body being
nourished, each part in unique ways. Two hundred and forty-eight
bones, five hundred and thirty muscles, three hundred
arteries, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, your organs
and limbs, your brain. As the bread dissolves,
many intelligences within you are deciding
and peacefully agreeing on how to
divide the benefits. If there were
discord, you would feel pain
and cry out, but
you don’t.
Now notice the unified
human awareness thoughtfully
living inside your body with a soul
in communion with other spirit-intelligences.
Observe how it sits at the junction of two worlds as
a human being looking with kindness on other human
beings. Some say this is the culmination of the body’s long
development and the beginning of the next transformation,
that you that live with gratitude for food and thankfulness
also for any difficulty, pain, or sudden disappointment,
seeing those too as grace, that you live inside and
outside time as an angelic breadeating witness
taking in this myriad convergence of
providential motions and that you
are in yourself an individual
soul being made from
divine wisdom.
The place
that Solomon made
to worship in, called the Far Mosque,
is not built of earth and water and stone,
but of intention and wisdom and
mystical conversation and
compassionate
action.
Every
part of it is intelligent
and responsive to every other.
The carpet bows to the broom. The door
knocker and the door swing together
like musicians. This heart sanctuary
does exist, though it cannot
be described.
Solomon
goes there every morning
and gives guidance with words,
with musical harmonies, and in actions,
which are the deepest teaching. A prince
is just a conceit, until he does
something with his
generosity.
One person comes into
a country with a little cold or influenza
and it spreads. If such a bad thing can spread,
can not an elevated thought of love, kindness and goodwill
towards all men spread? See then that there are finer germs,
germs of goodwill, of love, kindness, and feeling, germs of
brotherhood, of the desire for spiritual evolution,
which can have greater results than the other
ones. If we all have that optimistic view,
if we all work in our little way,
we can accomplish
a great deal.