Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.

–Rumi

Last evening was the end of a clear, blue-sky day. Inside McGinley’s Pub, the Irish session was filling the atmosphere with the spirit of Ireland. It has been a year since we spent our month in the Cushendall Tower and I have been sharing with my family how much I miss Cushendall and long to return.

To my great good fortune, who should be in the pub but an Irish couple Anda had met and befriended at Snow City. Our conversation warmed my heart so that I felt like I was back in Ireland!

I was trying to tell these folks about how special the Irish people are: Irish people really listen.

I am grateful for the reminder that Ireland is still there and that what was awakened in my heart will not go away. I need to write about “genuine” conversation, and how it allows me to enter the void with the eyes open.

For now I will say that there is a “meeting place” in genuine conversation, a place mutually occupied. Sometimes it is won by hard work (we Americans are so caught up in our own thoughts and want to let everyone know what WE think, so we have to work hard at finding the meeting place). The delight is that the Irish seem to already be there and when you meet them, they invite you in. What a gift to the world!

Bhakti means love, and love is only another name for joy. Joy arises when the restlessness of the mind is stilled. Creating a still mind is called yoga. Through yoga knowledge arises.

— Baba Muktananda, Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri, p. 25

Even something that appears to have no tangible value at all (a glance, word, gesture, or paisa) can be a vehicle for the highest attainment, if it is looked at with the right understanding.

— Anonymous observation from a Siddha Yoga student

If you have time to breathe, you have time to meditate.

–Ajahn Cha

Thanks to Barbara Zuccarello

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

― Albert Einstein

…it is imperative to sharpen one’s whole sensory equipment, shake loose and free one’s self of all preconceptions, interpretations, and assumptions (if one is to solve the problem) so as to be able to make direct and fresh contact with the created environment and the objects and the people within it. When this is learned inside the theater world, it simultaneously produces recognition, direct and fresh contact with the outside world as well. This then broadens the student-actors’ ability to involve themselves within their phenomenal world and more personally to experience it. Thus experiencing is the only actual homework and, once begun, like ripples on water is endless and penetrating in its variations.

– Viola Spolin

Thanks to Kate Williams for this.

On the Path, to hide from “reality” is the only sin; again and again allow the mind to become still.

I realized this as I meditated on nature this morning. When my mind was still, I felt enrobed and penetrated by the exquisiteness of clouds, birds, wind in the trees. When the mind began to move, that state disappeared. As Yogi Bhajan used to say, “Keep up!’

“If you can’t see God in all, you can’t see God at all.”   — Yogi Bhajan

Today I am focusing on doing one thing at a time. It breaks a pattern I have of moving from one task to another in a kind of “as inspired” fashion. I require of myself that I stop at the beginning and ending of a task I have decided to do– to check in on myself. What I am already discovering is that I am more present and aware. I have taken a committed position and followed through.

Mindfulness is something I have been working on, and this really helps!

I am God’s Lion,
not the lion of passion….
I have no longing
except for the One.
When a wind of personal reaction comes,
I do not go along with it.

~ Rumi