summer

Happiness is a butterfly which,
when pursued, is always
beyond our grasp, but which
if you sit down quietly,
may alight upon you.

Birth is a miracle in every germinating seed.

A fish cannot drown in water,
A bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of creation,
Gold doesn't vanish:
The fire brightens.
Each creature God made
Must live in its own true nature;
How could I resist my nature,
That lives for oneness with God?

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only they who see
take off their shoes.

For, the soul tastes the supreme joy of being, not only in the cave of the heart, but also in the endless multiplicity of her contacts with the world and nature of which she is part. Every moment is a sacrament of eternity; every event a sign and a sacrament of the perfect Bliss; for nothing in the universe can escape being transformed by Divine Love at every moment of time. In the crucible of faith and love, all our joys, the greatest as well as the least, and our sorrows, too, are taken up into the one eternal Joy in the heart of God and in the hearts of saints.

Joy is a gift from Universe and Divinity.
Sorrow and Pain are there for the healing.
Through touching of the heart,
the Heart is Opened.
Then the Knowledge may enter,
To return the seeker to Balance.
Watch now, for the Joy and Sorrow
dance together,
And in that is their dissolution,
Leaving nothing to perceive by Truth.
Embrace the Truth, for always it is precisely
who you are in your Eternal Being.

Give up winning and losing- and then, find joy!

When you live life from your center, you operate from the indwelling spirit outwards into the visible world, like the spokes of a wheel, radiating God's love, wisdom and power. This is what is meant by being in the world but not of it. You remain calm in a crisis. You carry this calmness with you through the ordinary activities of the day, even when things go wrong... Centered in peace, you experience JOY... This is the culmination of growth in being. What you ARE, far more than what you say or do, will be the witness of your faith.

When selfishness vanishes, all you want from life is to give. It is a constant source of joy. Not that you are blind to sorrow. Personal suffering is gone, but for that very reason there is no barrier separating you from the suffering of others. And that immense empathy releases intense action. "What one takes in by contemplation," Eckhart says, "one pours out in love." You live to give, to alleviate the sorrow and improve the lives of those around you, and in that giving is more joy than the world knows. It is the perfect fusion of the inward and outward currents of life, of meditation and action.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!