You are a child of the Universe...and everything is Universe, and everything is You

http://ookaboo.com/o/pictures/noindex/picture.original/12672653/Messier_56_by_Hubble_Space_Telescope_36p

Have a long, slow look at this, it's too large to post - and scroll up and down with it, left and right:  THAT is YOUR Source.

An excerpt from one of my poems, "Cornerstone of Your Faith" (see blog, Colfax Avenue, May 2011) challenges you with:
                                 

Remembering God for His own sake
           relieves you of poverty-mind:  always let
   the majesty and dignity of your Noble Lord and Cherisher
 overwhelm you, and join it - acknowledging, after all,

                                         that He dwells within you as you.

Go now, and make yourself a fragrant gift to the world,

a reflection of Paradise Here and Now, and in Reality.

See the image on this link?  This is not God, this is a fabulous Reflection of God, because the universe, being a mental construct, is, even considering this image here, only as infinite as the mind, and God is above and beyond mind, so it is just a Reflection but a damned great one, in fact looking at this defies any words you can give it, so we won't even try.  Let's just say, to hold the impression and let it deepen in you, "this is God."  When Jesus said "I come from the Father and He and I are one," he was speaking in the language of the day, he could have said Mother, it wouldn't have mattered.  He wasn't talking about some gray bearded old bastard with a bent for sick jokes and wrathful consequences, he wasn't talking about any Sistine Chapel Deity.  He was talking about Source, YOUR Source, our Source of Origin.  A parent is a metaphor to express that, nothing more.  And Jesus also reminded us, that "not a sparrow falleth to the ground, but the Father knoweth."  Now take another look at that link and take a long, deep breath.  Got it?

Still think it's all indifferent, this vastness?  Yes, in a way, like nature is indifferent, but actually that's only a perception relative to our emotions.  It is an insult to God to say He would not have the expansion and timeless capacity, the patience, to allow for a mere several billion earth years and a big bang or two to let dinosaurs come and go, mammals develop, and primates evolve into Humans - who anyway are still not evolved.  And God is love.  Can you trust That?  Can you look at this image here and, seeing how insignificant you and your petty little dramas are, can you look without ego and trust That, can you grasp the ungraspable, that it is love which created all of this and out of love it was made?  As Paul tells us in Acts and I think in the Epistles as well, "in THAT we live and move and have our Being"... The light of all those lights, is a light which no eye can percieve, a light you cannot conceive of, and that light IS YOUR OWN SOURCE, and the only Source of your joy.  Is it getting in, am I making a dent?  So when Jesus speaks of the Father, this is a Reflection of what was meant.  The Secret Gospel of John delivers something along this line very clearly.  But I'm not here to quote all the passages, they're in there.

So here's what to do:
If you're a Jew you ought to breathe in "ha-shem echad" and breathe out "baruch ha-shem" while drawing into you the power of this link's image and radiating out love, joy, peace - in that order.  So cut the bullshit of mystifying everything so you can go on controlling others - and just get it.
If you're a Christian, period, you ought to breathe in "Christ-in-me" and breathe out "United with All" contemplating loving, serving and remembering.  I've already mentioned before, that you can only remember where you've been or what you are, so what is obviously implied is, you've already been there.  So cut the bullshit of oversimplifying everything so you can go on controlling others - and just get it.
If you're a Muslim, you ought to mind your own business instead of everyone else's, and breathe in "Allah" and out, letting God's love for all of Humankind, for once rattle your cage - and you can start by reading "Cornerstone of Your Faith" in it's entirety, as it was written to you - so just get it.
If you're a Hindu, just look at that image and scream "RAM!" You know what I'm talking about, you got it.
If you're a Sikh, say "ek ong kar sat nam siri wahe guru!"  That pretty damned well delivers what this Hubble-bubble photo is trying to tell us, you definitely got it.
If you're Buddhist, you don't have to say anything, just get it.

So once more, the link, go there:

http://ookaboo.com/o/pictures/noindex/picture.original/12672653/Messier_56_by_Hubble_Space_Telescope_36p

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Hazrat Inayat Khan, 27 Aug: “THE SOUL OF CHRIST IS THE LIGHT OF THE UNIVERSE.“

Murshid Sam Lewis, commenting: “The single expression “Nuri Muhammad“ characterizes both these terms. This light permeates the cosmos, and it is through this that man finds all love, all wisdom, all joy.“

Sam Inayat-Chisti: “Word.“

Rumi: “Atoms reel in praise of Thee.“

Kabir (Robt. Bly's): “...There is a Secret One inside us; the planets in all the galaxies pass through his hands like beads. That is a string of beads one should look at with luminous eyes. … Everything is swinging: heaven, earth, water, fire, and the Secret One slowly growing a body. Kabir caught one glimpse of that – it made him a servant for life.“

Pir Vilayat Khan: “Here our practices with breath begin: Slow down your breath. Slow down your heart beat, the vibrations of the blood, slow down the tonus of your emotions, clear your breath, clear the mind of thoughts, refine your breath, surround yourself with a zone of silence, simply be intensely aware of breathing.

Become conscious of the convergence of the whole universe into the center of your Being, your solar plexus, as you inhale. Consciousness is just a focal center in the totality, an eddy in the sea of cosmic consciousness, an egg in the totality. Concentrate the totality in the center, as you inhale.

The solar plexus is a receptive center, it is the depth of your Being, almost like a pit, a deep sea, a sea of fire. Inhale deep within the solar plexus, imagine that you are rolled within and that you are walled in, so that there is no exit to the outside, and then you discover this vast empty space, an infinity of space within.

The heart center is a center of expression, of radiation, in fact it is very much like the sun, it is the center of the etheric body. As you breathe out you go out from the center, radiating into the totality, broadcasting magnetism, warmth, love, understanding, energy, like the sun.

You begin to be conscious of an emanation, which you feel precisely around the shoulders, a mantle of light -- but to start with simply a magnetic field that seems to be carrying light at its edge. A magnetic field can give out light, light is an electromagnetic phenomenon, and in fact: the aura is born. It emanates from the magnetic body. Experience expansion, to the point of merging with the totality, disidentify with the denseness of the physical body. Experience yourself as empty and light, indeed etheric, like steam. The physical body seems to be the condensaion and crystalization of that steam, static and fossilized, as compared with the pulsation of the magnetic field, which is breathing all the time. As it breathes in it contracts, as it breathes out it expands. And the same thing with the light which issues forth: it is like a pulsating star.“

Moreover, I was sitting next to Sheikh Muzaffer Effendi of the Halveti-Jerrahi Order that evening in Manhatten when he said, “If you're out walking and come upon a pile of dog shit in the road you say to yourself, logically, 'Oh, a dog was here.' Why then, when we look at the vast nature all around us, don't we observe likewise, 'Ah, God was here.'?“

One last note:

"Entre les étoiles, le Seigneur a écrit ton nom, entre les étoiles, tous la-haut dans sa maison; entre les étoiles, le Seigneur a posé ta vie, entre les étoiles, près de lui en paradis..." Now that's the refrain to a lovely song by the Singing Nun from the '60s, it's telling us, as I often sang it to my children at bedtime: "Among the stars the Lord has written your name, high up in His abode; among the stars the Lord has placed your life, near to Himself in paradise."

The first of the three verses, which I'll just translate for space, is so precious, such a stroke of genius, it runs: "The night when the Lord desired you into existence, the night; the night when He created your life from two lumps of flesh, the night; the night when his primordial love smiled on you: ah, blesséd, the night!"

NOW THAT WAS A NUN WE COULD ALL STAND TO HAVE A LOT MORE OF!

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2012/08/for-my-children-and-grandchildren-trust.html 

Faith is like . . .

Faith is like this: if you can explain it, that's not it. And if you cannot explain it, you're just complicating the matter. Religion is a house which had seven sides, each with a door. Someone stood before each door, claiming that through this door alone one would enter into direct knowledge of God. And comers were prevented from checking the other doors. The weird thing was, those guarding each door had personally never gone through it themselves, but blocked others from doing so. What nobody got to discover for themselves was that inside this house with seven sides and seven doors was one single huge room, and had they gone through their respective doors they would have met in there. So how shall this parable end?

For My Children and Grandchildren: Trust Me On This

You might wonder what religion is, is there a use for it, which do you choose, where's the point, does "God" exist.  I am giving you, once and for all, the five essential things you will ever need to guide you on this, as it will affect your life and direction whether you accept this or reject it, take it to heart or let it go.  Call it: Religion without ego.  Trust me on this.

1. God is the source of all existence, and the source of yours, entirely.  By whatever name you relate to "him," for starters relate - as everything exists in God and God alone is existent.  So relate to it and celebrate and be grateful that you're here.

 2. Belief isn't faith but can get you there, and faith isn't experience but can mature and prepare you for it.  You could say - belief is a desire, faith is a trust, experience is a knowing.

3. Place two fingers on your carotid artery, left or right at your neck, feel the clear pulse coursing:  God is closer to you than that.  Take a long, deep breath through the nostrils into the lungs, and down into the belly, hold it, let it out slowly and consciously:  God is closer to you than that as well.  Trust me on this.

4. God is love, and loves you more than a mother loves her own child, and that's pushing the envelope.

 5. Your most profound expression of God or faith is, and will ever be:  love.  So keep in the heart and trust that.  Don't let big talkers mow you down.

Beloved Swami tells us:  See God in everyone.  And that the best form to worship God is every form.  This will make you strong and resistent to all poisonous influences.  Let the God-in-you love everyone, serve everyone and remember God.  And Beloved Swami assures us:  "Understand your Self, seek your Self and find your Self; all the sacred names or forms from East or West, all dwell within you; kneel to your own Self, honor and worship your own Being. Chant the mantra always going on within you, meditate on your own Self: God dwells within you as you."  Trust him on this, take it and go with it!

Wailing Wall Address

The speech I'd like to - but dare not - deliver at the “Wailing Wall“:

People of Jerusalem! I come to your fair and ancient City, so steeped in traditions, so laden with history, so riddled with bullets - and am immediately struck by two things, neither of which are bullets:

The Dome of the Rock may be a lovely piece of work, but do we need it? Hey, Muslims, you have Mecca, you have Medina. You don't need al-Quds, namely Jerusalem, give it up!

And this chunk of temple siding takes up way too much attention, you Jews are so fixated on the Temple Mount, take a note from the Christians and acquaint yourselves for once with the Sermon on the Mount.

Excessive zeal for a religious form has nothing to do with love of or toward God, still less with any experience of God, and therefore does no favors for Humankind. Please, someone prove me wrong. You can't.

So in conclusion, to those Christians running the Church of the Tomb: teamwork, fellas, teamwork. To the Muslims in the City: hey, the Jews were already here before you had your religion, they got driven out, you rode in and conquered, they came back and reconquered, deal with it – cut your losses, take what you had pre-'67, leave them in peace and build something for yourselves. Everyone here please stop playing the goddamn victim, and everyone stop being each other's aggressor.

And as to the City's Jews, ship the Haredi all back to Europe, they don't believe in your State anyway, they won't pay taxes, serve in your forces, get a job, get a life; they just take your bread and social, crank out kids as if they were discount. Dump them, dump the settlements, dump the dead weight and develop something that'll shut the Arabs and the UN up.

And finally - Mr. Netanyahu: TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

Levi

(16 Jan 2012)

Like a levee overlooking a great river in winter -

this child will grow to give refuge and succor and comfort

to many who are drawn over vast waters to her shore.

Khadija's daughter, she will teach faith to the doubting,

the desperate, the anguished: Rock of Compassion!

She will know what to provide and in what measure,

and to whom.

The lost will find her,

she will raise them up.

Now she is but a child, infant unknowing,

beloved breath of a beauty -

then she will be mature in vision,

on her breath will many be guided

over the impassable rivers of coming times,

through the severe winters approaching.

Some may call this the vacant wishes

of some distant unknown grandfather -

or God may just confirm him as it is spoken.

God who is neither distant nor unknown,

who draws near whom He will

and makes known what was not.

Levi, even as I breathe,

on every pulse beat I know you are there,

and you are real to me.

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2014/06/there-is-river.html
http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2014/05/schwester-des-flusses.html
http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2012/04/source.html
http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2012/08/for-my-children-and-grandchildren-trust.html

Loving, Serving, Remembering

Love, serve, remember:

Love everyone, serve everyone, remember God.

There is only one way one actually can love everyone, serve everyone – that is to remember God, there is absolutely no other possibility. Otherwise one is “trying to“ and that is either helper-syndrome which is based on a need of one's own, or social concern which is admirable but greatly limited and frustrating – because in both there is only ego. It is in remembering God that the inner movement comes, and from which the grace may come to indeed love everyone, serve or feed or nourish everyone.

One isn't at all distanced from the human side of giving, of being available, attentive, or generous – one's humanity and warmth is not forgotten but enhanced, empowered and rendered conscious. Remembering God is not like "remembering to believe in," this would be to remain trapped in the external, like remembering "someone else". One can only remember what one has experienced, where one has been. That's why we're instructed to remember. God is your Origin and your Source, That's where you came from, so buy it or not, That's where you return to and Remember, because That never “left or abandoned“ you (for where?), because That Alone exists and not your ego. And That, therefore, is Who actually loves, Who actually serves and nourishes – and Who actually Remembers, in you and as you when you are in the act of Remembrance. The practice and the mastery and the conscious absorption in Remembrance is 24/7 on every breath. That is serving everyone, that is nourishing the planet and all those around one. Any outward "form" of service or generosity will come from this and will make its mark in the world.

The surest way of becoming acquainted with all this is through love, in falling in love. When one meets, directly in-person or indirectly, a Being who thoroughly embodies this, one will be smitten with love for that Being – who is both mirror and enabler – who is worthy of all love and reverence. Through such a one will one grasp Remembrance of God.

Repetition of mantra is not for building up points in a merit system for oneself, that's all external religion, tailored to ego. Like dhikr-allah among the Islamic-expressive dervishes, or it's silent form, fikr – the former coming from the Arabic “to remember“ and the latter "to think" or hold in thought – one is keeping in the Eternal Moment of Remembrance through the repetition, whatever the mantra - let's take om sri ram jai ram jai jai ram. (Was Rama really God or someone merged in God, is God Ram and we say Rama when referring to this guy who lived and had this adventure in the Ramayana and was there a Hanuman?) Lovely work, inspiring, multi-layered as always – but if one wants to get super-involved in all that, one can go spend 20 years with pundits in the Himalayas. Or one can practice, here and now, immersing oneself in this love-bond with the Beloved. Om is now and every-other-now. Sri isn't just some holy application, it means all forms, male or female, are of the Divine Mother. Ram is God and God is Love. Jai is victory. So: God always wins. With God is victory. God is Most Great. Allahu-akbar.

Where is this divinity? Don't look around, it's in the mantra or dhikr itself, God is there in every syllable, they are atomic and loaded. Repeat them consciously. What is their power? They will awaken in one the Memory of Origin, the faculty of Remembrance. So one can go on Remembering, ever more consciously until the only one left Remembering is God/Allah/Ram HimSelf, as the ego becomes more and more absorbed in this love and less and less in itself.

One does what one does, but dropping the ego from the doing every time the identity with it asserts itself, one stays in the Remembrance, on the breath or intoned, and remains concentrated and relaxed. As Krishna also instructs in the Bhagavad Gita.

Two big things lost through all this are pity and self-pity, which are almost the same thing. Also envy, jealousy, resentments and grudges.  Expectations and judgment will be tamed, disappointments overcome or less important. Drama and trouble will be survived and gotten through intact. One will take oneself far less seriously and remain one-pointed in love, on God. One will be present and available for others in a way never imagined, instead of breaking one's neck trying to "be there" for "others" - as the illusion of "others" is not being nourished here, through the repetition of Remembrance: that there is no "other," only the One Self - which is awakened in the atmosphere around the very one absorbed in the practice of Remembrance.

Now that is love, that is serving, that is remembering.

Conversation Over A One-sided Smoke

• Why do you always smoke that pipe?

• I once tried cigarettes, it didn't agree with me, it wasn't my...idiom.
• And you can't stop smoking the pipe?
• Certainly, in fact there's nothing like a good, pricey cigar. Except a good clean pipe tobacco.
• Why don't you quit, though?
• I started when I was 17, see...
• ...and so you're hooked. That's...40 years of your life!
• 40 years and many more to come. It's not 'hooked' if you in-joy it.
• Sure it is, you're addicted, you couldn't stop if you wanted to.
• I wouldn't know, never wanted to.
• I dare you to quit.
• Don't dare!...I don't. But I have taken long hiatuses – or hiati...ever been to Haiti?
• Make good cigars there?
• Wouldn't know, never been. I have taken long breaks from smoking, never with the 'intention' of quitting however – or rather, of no-longer-smoking, I don't much like the word 'quitting' or 'giving up' – it sounds like capitulation to all the ex-smokers.
• You're ruining your health. You're a ticking time bomb for heart failure or lung disease. Have you ever once thought of just quitting, just hanging it up?
• Thank you. I won't mention your health, though I wish you much of it of course, but yes – for one tiny little moment - I'll tell you what happened when I was about...say, 53. I had just gotten off the 120 bus at Paracelsus-Bad, where Roedernallee crosses Lindauer Allee. It was winter, I had my winter jacket on and my pipe had slipped out of my pocket onto the seat. As I reached for it and found it missing I realized what had happened, hammered on the bus window before the driver took off. But he had just edged from the curb and they can't stop once they've done that. He did understand what I was hammering about but pulled out anyway, what could he do, he had rules to follow. And I had no pipe.
  

  
  

  
• So? Dja go after 'im?
• Without having done much in the way of 'exercise' at that particular time of my life, and wearing this jacket laden with gloves and other stuff, I stopped and considered for one long quarter of a second: what if it's really a sign, a message from the universe to let it go and never smoke again. I really gave that a thought.
• And? Made sense?
  

  

   
• Hell no, I took after the bus and chased it to the next stop. He got there about a quarter of a minute before me, and actually waited for me when he saw me tearing the sidewalk up in my big jacket. He couldn't legitimately wait all too long, but he did it and I think if he had had a stopwatch he'd have been timing this. As I got to the door of the bus, which he'd held open, I saw my pipe in the driver's hand, extended to me, and his smile was classic.
• Did he say anything?
• Yeah, 'Good work' and a nod. Not out of breath but excited and relieved, I thanked him of course. He drove on and I walked back with pipe lit, picking up my fallen gloves along the way. But of course, I was 53 after all.
• So that makes it 'alright'...?
• No, it means I was less in condition than now.
• At 57?....Hright.
• Well, if it were today I'd have been waiting for him at the next stop.
• You're addicted.
• My name's not Ted. And you're being a dick-head.