If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is — infinite.

~ William Blake

A Christmas Blessing

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not.
But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.
Take peace!
The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.
And to see, we have only to look.
I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver.
But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as
ugly or heavy or hard.
Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you.
Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me,
that angel’s hand is there.
The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.
Your joys, too,be not content with them as joys.
They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.
Courage then to claim it; that is all!
But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

– Fra Giovanni Giocondo

A letter to a friend on Christmas Eve, 1513.
Fra Giovanni Giocondo (c.1435–1515) was a Renaissance pioneer, architect, engineer, antiquary, archaeologist, classical scholar, and Franciscan friar.

Good Night Near Christmas

And now good night. Goodnight to this old house
Whose breathing fires are banked for their night’s rest.
Good night to lighted windows in the west.
Good night to neighbor’s and to neighbors cows

Whose morning milk will be beside my door.
Good night to one star shining in. Good night
To earth, poor earth with its uncertain light
One little wandering planet still at war.

Good night to one unstarved and gnawing mouse
Between the inner and the outer wall.
He has a paper nest in which to crawl.
Good night to men who have no bed, no house.

Robert Francis (American, born 1901)

There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no
attention to itself, though it is always secretly there.
It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire
to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this
subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is welded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing.

~ John O’Donohue

• “When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner landscape.”

~ John O’Donohue- Anam Cara, p. 17

Embrace the shadow and become the light. (came to me yesterday morning)

Only one who knows what it’s like
to lift up the lyre in the shadows
is prepared to voice infinite praise.

Only one who has eaten the poppy with the dead,
their flower, will never lose
that most delicate of tonalities.

Although the reflection in the pond
is often blurry to us:

Whenever doubt arises, see it simply as an obstacle, recognize it as an understanding that is calling out to be clarified or unblocked, and know that it is not a fundamental problem but simply a stage in the process of purification and learning. Allow the process to continue and complete itself, and never lose your trust or resolve. This is the way followed by all the great practitioners of the past, who used to say: “There is no armor like perseverance.”

— Sogyal Rinpoche

To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields – these are as much as a man can fully experience.

~Patrick Kavanagh

The soul must learn to travel through the earthly world with the senses awake but under its sovereign rule.

— Rudolf Meyer, The Wisdom of Fairy Tales,  p. 25

The story used to illustrate this– Maid Maleen (Grimms)

“The expansion of one’s sakti, in contrast to its contraction, is both a practice and a state of being. Here, the yogi, directs the prana-sakti outward, through the openings of the senses. That might sound surprising. You might ask, “Isn’t that what people do all the time? Is sensory perception truly a practice that brings us to inner bliss?” It is, but only if this ‘expansion’ of the sakti happens in the right way. That is, only if the yogi perceiving exterior objects is able, at the same time, to anchor his attention on his inner center, the Self. From that perspective, the energy moving outward is seen as identical to the energy vibrating within– even though the yogi may be experiencing an invasion of sounds, smells, and other sensations.

As I’ve discovered on the occasions when this state has opened up within me, my awareness of the hustle and bustle continues; it is, however, now contained within a vast and silent cavern. This is the ‘cave of the heart’ that Gurumayi describes, a space that encompasses both inner and outer or, as she puts it, both heaven and Earth. This extremely esoteric practice, known in Saivism as bhairavi-mudra, is described in a scriptural passage quoted by Kshemaraja in his commentary:

If you project the vision and all the other powers {of the senses) simultaneously everywhere onto their respective objects  by the power of awareness, while remaining firmly established in the center like a pillar of gold, you (will) shine as the One, the foundation of the universe.”

— The Splendor of Recognition: An Exploration of the Pratyabijna-hryadayam, a Text on the Ancient Science of the Soul, Swami Shantananda

William Blake – Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.