being

Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate department of life, the penthouse of existence. But rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being.

Die – you will have to die. But die gracefully. I am not saying die like a stoic, I am not saying die like a very controlled man. No, I'm saying die gracefully, beautifully, as if a friend is coming, knocks at your door, and you are happy. And you embrace the friend and invite him in, and you have been waiting for him so long....

If you can love death you become deathless; if you can understand non-being then your being becomes the very ground of being-hood, the very ground of God. If you can love non-being then nothing can destroy you, you have transcended time and space. Then you have become one with the total, and this is what holiness is – to become whole is to be holy.

I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.

Enlightenment is, in the end, nothing more than the natural state of being.

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.

Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points.

When we really start to take a look at who we think we are, we become very grace prone.

To posit that there might be some changeless state of final attainment, whether through the aquisition of fame or money, or being able to make all of one's own life choices without acceding to external compulsion, is deeply misleading. We would do better to remember that it is in the nature of unhappiness only to be changeless, and to see happiness as an intermittent state -- sometimes expected, most often not -- that deepens the textures of present life, rather than being a final destination in which, once arrived at, we will surely plan to stay.

Dove that ventured outside,        flying far from the dovecote:
housed and protected again,     one with the day, the night,
knows what serenity is,              for she has felt her wings
pass through all distance and fear       in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home,     never exposed to loss,
innocent and secure,               cannot know tenderness;
only the won-back heart              can ever be satisfied: free,
through all it has given up,                to rejoice in its mastery. 

Being arches itself                 over the vast abyss.
Ah the ball that we dared,     that we hurled into infinite space,
Doesn’t it fill our hands            differently with its return:
heavier by the weight             of where it has been.

I want you to be everything that's you, deep at the center of your being.