Open-Secrets

Tag: kabir

  • The Value of Suffering

    Suffering Serves the Soul’s Journey

    Between flights the other day in Detroit, I picked up the latest issue of Rolling Stone with Louis CK on the cover and read this gem:

    The worst thing happening to this generation is that they’re taking discomfort away from themselves… Louis Ck

    Meher BabaIt reminded me of some ending comments and observations in this video about sociopaths – that our culture, more and more, supports moving away from emotional conflict through drugs. Feeling anxious, feeling depressed, feeling forlorn – take a pill. I’m not knocking the pills or that some people certainly need the support, but the point in the film and what I hear Louis CK noting is that average people are being seduced by big pharma that any emotional suffering is a good reason to pop a pill. Their message is quite a bit different from Meher Baba‘s – Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

     

     What do those that look beyond the suffering or those that understand the deeper nature of suffering say?

    Until you’ve found pain, you won’t reach the cure
    Until you’ve given up life, you won’t unite with
       the supreme soul
    Until you’ve found fire inside yourself, like the Friend,
    You won’t reach the spring of life, like Khezr (the green man) – Rumi

    So to really deal with the issue of suffering, we need to understand reality. We need to go all the way through the process of realization. The process of realization, of understanding the truth, is a process of understanding and relieving oneself from suffering. There is no shortcut; there is only one way. What’s causing suffering cannot be surmounted, cannot simply be dropped, cannot be ignored, cannot even be erased by some essential awakening or realization. Suffering is a fundamental factor in our lives that has to be dealt with. We need a lot of study and understanding; we need to go through all the dimensions before we can exit the realm of suffering. Many of us hope we can exit right away, hope we can transcend our problems through spiritual experience. But unless we actually penetrate our beliefs and identifications, our life will always involve suffering. – A. H. Almaas

  • The Guest

    Too dark the night

       Too bright the sky

    To lean upon

       The human eye

     

    Eye sees this world

       Eye says it’s so

    I fool myself

      And claim to know

     

    Know subtle truths

       Know what’s most dear

    No words I mouth

       The heart can hear

     

    Hear gentle breeze

       Hear call of soul

    Here the longing

       Is an empty hole

     

    Hole in the body

       Hole in the chest

    Whole human hearts

       Graced by the Guest

                                          J Harper

     

     

     

    When the Guest is being searched for,
    it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
    Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

    Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
    Jump into experience while you are alive!
    think…..and think…..while you are alive.
    What you call ‘salvation’ belongs to the time before death.

    If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
    do you think ghosts will do it after?

    The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
    just because the body is rotten — that is all fantasy.
    What is found now is found then.

    The Guest is inside you, and also inside me;
    you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
    We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
    Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

    The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
    the daily sense of failure goes away,
    the damage I have done to myself fades,
    a million suns come forward with Light,
    when I sit firmly in that world.

    I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
    inside “love” there is more joy than we know of,
    rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds, there are whole rivers of Light.
    The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.

    Kabir

Open-Secrets