Once, Truth and Falsehood met at a crossroads, and after they had greeted each other, Falsehood asked Truth how the world went with him. “How goes it with me?” said Truth. “Each year worse than the last.”

“I can see the plight you are in,” said Falsehood, glancing at Truth’s ragged clothes. “Why even your breath stinks.”

“Not a bite has passed my lips these three days,” said Truth. “Wherever I go, I get troubles, not only for myself, but for the few who love me still. It’s no way to live, this.”

“You have only yourself to blame,” said Falsehood to him. “Come with me. You’ll see better days, dress in fine clothes like mine, eat plenty, only you must not gainsay (contradict) anything I say.”

Truth consented, just that once, to go and eat with Falsehood because he was so hungry he could hardly keep upright.

They set out together and came to a great city, went to the best hotel, which was full of people, and sat and ate of the best. When many hours had gone by, and most of the people had gone, Falsehood rapped with his fist on the table, and the hotelkeeper himself came up to see to their wants, for Falsehood looked like a great nobleman. He asked what they desired.

“How much longer am I to wait for the change from the sovereign I gave the boy who sets the table?” said Falsehood. The host called the boy, who said that he had had no sovereign. Then Falsehood grew angry and began to shout, saying he would never have believed that such a hotel would rob the people who went in there to eat, but he would bear it in mind another time, and he threw a sovereign at the hotelkeeper. “There,” he said, “bring me the change.”

Fearing that his hotel would get a bad name, the hotelkeeper would not take the sovereign, but gave change from the reputed sovereign of the argument, and boxed the ears of the boy who could not remember taking the coin. The boy began to cry, and protest that he had not taken the sovereign, but as no one believed him, he sighed deeply and said, “Alas, where are you, unhappy Truth? Are you no more?”

“No, I am here, ” said Truth, through clenched teeth, “but I had not eaten for three days, and now I may not speak. You must find the right of it by yourself, my tongue is tied.”

When they got outside, Falsehood burst out laughing and said to Truth, “You see how I contrive things?”

“Better I should die of hunger,” said Truth, “than do the things you do.”

So they parted forever.

— “Truth and Falsehood”– Georgios A. Megas, Folktales of Greece (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 133-34

It’s never comfortable to be the lone voice which speaks contrarily to the group, especially the group to which one feels belonging. The hope is that in speaking truthfully, one might still be loved and accepted – even respected for the courage it takes to say the thing that others dare not.

Nearer to the earth’s heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.

If it doesn’t resonate (even if its “supposed” to be the right thing to do), I choose not to do it…
I wait for my intuition and body instinct to give me the go ahead!

This morning during my nature meditation, I became aware once again of the importance of, as Natalie Goldberg has taught, of “caressing the divine details” (seeing with the eyes of the heart). Beholding my surroundings in this way led me to a state of continuous unbroken awareness.

There was a flash of realization that  “civilized humanity” is largely at odds with Mother Nature. As we become present and aware, we naturally bring humanity back in alignment with nature. Now is the time.

We’re all indigenous now.

When a seeker experiences the bliss of his own true nature, he ignores what is seen and heard, and stills his mind like a flame where there is no wind. This is called nirvikalpa samadhi.

— Shankaracharya, Vakyasudha 26

Underneath the narrative of your life, just below the grand storyline, even beneath the colorful emotional landscape, there exists a rich, mysterious world of sensations – a somatically-organized field of intelligence and creativity. It is so alive, a timeless environment of wisdom, clarity, and majesty – but is not organized around the very compelling story of ‘me.’

Despite the vastness, it can also appear a bit disorienting to the mind that is scrambling for ground and a future moment. For within the mandala of the inner body, there are no ‘problems,” and nothing to be fixed, understood, transformed, or shifted. There is only an untamed fire of presence.

Each sensation, each surge of emotion, each wild, untamed feeling – the intelligence of the universe is here. Inside you is the erupting creativity of the sun and of the moon.

— Matt Licata

DAYS AND DAYS WITH A STORY satisfies my longing for more uncanny compassionate performances. Simple images become revelations. The landscape arises as bait for the hook of intelligence. A random event or a small detail reboots deep respect for stories to be told, before white washed editing and political or literal interpretation rests on understanding. The dream of the dream is internal awakening when met with patience and deep listening.

—Laura Simms

Book of Hours II, 16 

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing –
each stone, blossom, child –
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

-Rainer Maria Rilke from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy