MERGE WITH THE INVISIBLE ///

Beyond the mind, on the edge of the heart’s holy precipice, I proceed, trembling. One foot grips the secure soil, the other gropes in the darkness above the abyss.

Behind all appearances, I divine a struggling essence. I want to merge with it.

I feel that behind appearances this struggle essences is also striving to merge with my hear heart. But the body stands between us and separates us. The mind stands between us and separates us.

What is my duty? To shatter the body, to rush and merge with the Invisible? To let the mind fall silent that I may hear the Invisible calling.

-  Nikos Kazantzakis, The Saviors of Gods

TURNING AND RETURNING ///

Atum creates the Cosmic Mind.

The Cosmic Mind creates the Cosmos.

The Cosmos creates Time.

Time creates Change.

The essence of Atum

is Primal Goodness.

The essence of the Cosmic Mind

is permanent sameness.

The essence of the Cosmos

is beautiful order.

The essence of Time

is movement.

The essence of Change is Life.

Atum works

through Mind and Soul.

The Cosmic Mind works

through turning and returning.

Time works

through increase and decrease.

Change works

through quality and quantity.

The Cosmic Mind is in Atum.

The Cosmos is in Eternity.

Time is in the Cosmos.

Change is in Time.

The Cosmic Mind

is permanently connected to Atum.

The Cosmos is made up of thoughts

in the Cosmic Mind.

The Cosmic Mind is an image of Atum.

The Cosmos is and image of the Cosmic Mind.

The sun is an image of the Cosmos.

Man is an image of the sun.

- The Hierarchy of Creation

The Song

So he began by singing a hymn and declaring,
Glory be to you, father.

And we circled around him and responded to him,
Glory to you, word.

Glory to you, grace.
Glory to you, spirit.

Glory to you, holy one.

Glory to your glory.

We praise you, father. We give thanks to you, light, in whom no darkness is.
Why we give thanks, I declare:

I will be saved and I will save.
I will be released and I will release.

I will be wounded and I will wound.
I will be born and I will bear.

I will eat and I will be eaten.
I will hear and I will be heard.

I will be kept in mind, being all mind.
I will be washed and I will wash.

Grace Dances
I will play the flute. Dance, everyone.
I will mourn. Lament, everyone.

A realm of eight sings with us.
The twelfth number dances on high.

The whole universe takes part in dancing.
Whoever does not dance does not know what happens.

I will feel and I will stay.
I will adorn and I will be adorned.

I will be united and I will unite.
I have no house and I have houses.
I have no place and I have places.

I have no temple and I have temples.
I am a lamp to you who see me.

I am a mirror to you who perceive me.
I am a door to you who knock on me.

I am a way to you, you passerby.

Amen

- The Round Dance of the Cross

I come home from the soaring
in which I lost myself
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain;
no more words.

To the others I was like the wind:
I made them shake.
I'd gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.

-Rilke, Love Poems to God

‘There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxication so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway… Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation.’

― Mirabai Starr, Interior Castle

‘If you’re smart or rich or lucky, maybe you’ll beat the laws of man. But the inner laws of spirit and the outer laws of nature, no man can.’

-Joni Mitchell

Yesod, the Foundation, the ninth Sephirah, the operation of the sphere of the moon. This is the airy sphere of the fourth dimension, termed in occultism the astral plane. Here we find the subtle electromagnetic substance into which all the higher forces are focused, the ether, and it constitutes the basis or final model upon which the physical world is built. It’s elemental attribution is that of air, ever flowing, shifting and in constant flux - yet because of that flux, in perpetual stability.

- The Hermedic Order of the Golden Dawn, Isreal Regardie

Mother Wisdom Speaks

Some of you I will hollow out.
I will make you a cave.
I will carve you so deep the stars will shine in your darkness.
You will be a bowl.
You will be the cup in the rock collecting rain...

I will do this because the world needs the hollowness of you.
I will do this for the space that you will be.
I will do this because you must be large.
A passage.
People will find their way through you.
A bowl.
People will eat from you
and their hunger will not weaken them to death.
A cup to catch the sacred rain....

Light will flow in your hollowing.
You will be filled with light.
Your bones will shine.
The round open center of you will be radiant.
I will call you Brilliant One.
I will call you Daughter Who is Wide.
I will call you transformed.

Poem by Christine Lore Webber

That’s the thing about great love. It elevates everything around it. You walk through a forest together and it becomes a great temple. You eat a meal together and you sit at God’s banquet table. You merge your bodies and all heaven breaks loose. That’s why we can’t stop singing about love. Every verse is a cry for wholeness.
― Jeff Brown, An Uncommon Bond

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful  

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon  

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again  

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower  

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer, at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere,

in any language,

a word billowing enough for the pleasure  

that fills you,

as the sun reaches out,

as it warms you  

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too turned from this world--  

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?      

-Mary Oliver
The Sun

When we pay attention to nature's music, we find that everything on the Earth contributes to its harmony.

-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam.

-Pablo Neruda

Landscapes of great wonder and beauty lie under our feet and all around us. They are discovered in tunnels in the ground, the heart of flowers, the hollows of trees, fresh-water ponds, seaweed jungles between tides, and even drops of water. Life in these hidden worlds is more startling in reality than anything we can imagine. How could this earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures?

― Walt Disney

Nature is not matter only. She is also spirit.

-Carl Jung

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.

-Terence Mckenna

… the sacred principles of life have never been written down: they belong to the heartbeat, to the rhythm of the breath and the flow of blood. They are alive like the rain and the rivers, the waxing and waning of the moon. If we learn to listen we will discover that life, the Great Mother, is speaking to us, telling us what we need to know.

― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul

‘The environment is not separate from ourselves; we are inside it and it is inside us; we make it and it makes us.’
— Yanomami of Brazil