posted January 25, 2008 04:10 PM              

but I found all things.

~ Valerian

posted January 29, 2008 01:13 PM            

I posted it in another topic, but i thought i would put it here too.

posted January 29, 2008 05:18 PM              

O man! Take heed!
What saith deep Midnight, indeed?
I lay asleep, asleep --
I waked from my deep dream --
The world is deep,
And deeper than ever day may deem.
Deep is its woe --
Joy -- deeper yet than woe is she:
Saith woe: Hence, go!
Yet Joy would have Eternity --
Profound, profound Eternity!

Thus, it is the same arrow -- "the arrow of fire, of the flame of the Eternal" -- which brings about true celibacy as well as true marriage. The heart of the monk is pierced -- and this is why he is a monk -- just as is the heart of the fiance on the eve of the wedding. Where is more truth or more beauty to be found? Who can say?

And charity, the love of one's nieghbor... what is its relationship with the love whose prototype is given by the formula "Adam-Eve"?

We are surrounded by innumerable living and conscious beings-visible and invisible. But rather than knowing that they really exist and that they are as much alive as we ourselves, it nevertheless appears to us that they have a less real existence and that they are less living than we ourselves. For us it is WE who experience the full measure of the intensity of reality, whilst other beings seem, in comparison with ourselves, to be less real; their existence seems to be more of the nature of a shadow than full reality. Our thoughts tell us that this is an illusion, that beings around us are as real as we ourselves are, and that they live just as intensely as we do. Yet fine as it is to say these things, all the same we feel ourselves at the centre of reality, and we feel other beings to be removed from this centre. That one qualifies this illusion as "egocentricity", or "egoism", or "ahamkara" (the illusion of self), or the "effect of the primordial Fall", does not matter; it does not alter the fact that we feel ourselves to be more real than others.

Now, to feel something as real in the measure of its full reality is to love. It is love, which awakens us to the reality of ourselves, to the reality of others, to the reality of the world and to the reality of God. In so far as we love ourselves, we feel real. And we do not love - or we do not love as much as ourselves - other beings, who seem to us to be less real.

Now, two ways, two quite different methods exist which can free us from the illusion "me, living-you, shadow", and we have a choice. The one is to extinguish love of oneself and to become a "shadow amongst shadows". This is the equality of indifference. India offers us this method of liberation from ahamkara, the illusion of self. This illusion is destroyed by extending the indifference that one has for other beings to oneself. Here one reduces oneself to the state of a shadow equal to the other surrounding shadows. Maya, the great illusion, is to believe that individual beings, me and you, should be something more than shadows - appearances without reality. The formula for realising this is therefore: "me, shadow -- you, shadow".

The other way or method is that of extending the love that one has for oneself to other beings in order to arrive at the realisation of the formula: "me, living -- you, living". Here it is a matter of rendering other beings as real as oneself, i.e. of loving them as oneself.” To be able to attain this, one has first to love one's nieghbor as oneself. For love is not an abstract programme, but, rather, it is substance and intensity. It is necessary therefore that one radiates the substance and intensity of love with regard to one individual being in order that one can begin to ray it out in all directions. "To be able to make gold, one has to have gold," say the alchemists. The spiritual counterpart of this maxim is that in order to be able to love everyone one has to love or to have loved someone. This someone is one's "nieghbor".

Who is one's nieghbor, understood in the Hermetic sense, i.e. meaning at one and the same time in a mystical, gnostic, magical, and metaphysical sense? It is the being nearest to one at or since the beginning; this is the sister-soul for all eternity; this is one's twin-soul, the soul together with whom one beheld the dawn of mankind.

The dawn of mankind: it is this which the Bible describes as paradise. Now, this was at the stage of existence that God said: "It is not good that Adam should be alone" (Genesis ii, 18).

To be: this is to love. To be alone: this is to love oneself. Now, "It is not good (tov) that Adam should be alone" means to say: it is not good that man loves nobody but himself. This is why YHVH-Elohim said: I will make him a helper similar (corresponding) to him. And as Eve was part of Adam himself, he loved her as himself. Eve was therefore the "neighbor", the being nearest to Adam ("bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh" -- Genesis ii, 23).

~ Meditations on the Tarot:
A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism

Meditation on the Sixth Major Arcanum of the Tarot

Letter VI
The Lover

posted January 30, 2008 12:26 PM            

You can analyze this mystery and look for reasons and
causes, but you will never do anymore that take the life out
of the experience. Just as life itself is more than the sum of
the bones and muscles and electrical impulses in the body,
love is more than the sum of the interests and attractions
and commonalities that two people share. And just as life
itself is a gift that comes and goes in its own time, so too, the
coming of love must be taken as an unfathomable gift that
cannot be questioned in its ways.

Sometimes, hopefully at least once in your life - the gift of
love will come to you in full flower. Take hold of it and
celebrate it in all inexpressible beauty. This is the dream we
all share. More often, it will come and take hold of you,
celebrate you for a brief moment, then move on.

When this happen to young people, they too often try to
grasp the love and hold it to them, refusing to see that it is a
gift that just as freely, moves away. When they fall out of
love, or the person they love feels the spirit of love leaving,
they try desperately to reclaim the love that is lost rather
than accepting the gift for what it was, then moving on.

They want answers where there are no answers. They
want to know what is wrong in them that makes the other
person no longer love them, or try to get their love to change,
thinking that if some small things were different, love would
bloom again. They blame their circumstances and say that if
they go far away and start a new life, their love will grow.

They try anything to give meaning to what has happened. But
there is no meaning beyond the love itself, and until they
accept its own mysterious ways, they live in a sea of misery.

You need to know this about love, and accept it. You need to
treat what it brings you with kindness. If you find yourself in
love with someone who does not love you, be gentle with
yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. Love just didn't
choose to rest in the other person's heart.

If you find yourself someone in love with you but you don't
love him back, feel honored that love came and called at your
door, but gently refuse the gift you cannot return. Do not
take advantage; do not cause pain. How you deal with love
is how you deal with yourself. All our hearts feel the same
pains and joys, even if our lives and ways are different.

If you fall in love with another, and he falls in love with you,
and then love chooses to leave, do not try to reclaim it nor to
assess blame. Let it go. There is a reason and there is a
meaning. You will know in time.

Remember that you don't choose love. Love chooses you. All
you can really do is accept it for all its mystery when it
comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing,
then reach out and give it away. Give it back to the person
who brought it alive in you. Give it to others who deem it
poor in spirit. Give it to the world around you in any way you can.

There is where many lovers go wrong. Having been so long
without love, they understand love only as a need. They see
their hearts as empty places that will be filled by love, and
they begin to look at love as something that flows to them
rather than from them.

The first blush of new love is filled to overflowing, but as
their love cools, they revert to seeing their love as a need.
They cease to be someone who generates love and instead
become someone who seeks love. They forget that the
secret of love is that it is a gift, and that it can be made to
grow only by giving it away.

Remember this and keep it to your heart. Love has its time, its
own season, its own reason for coming and going. You
cannot bribe it or coerce it, or reason it into staying. You can
only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it
comes to you. But if it chooses to leave from your heart or
from the heart of your lover, there is nothing you can do and
there is nothing you should do. Love always has been and
always will be a mystery. BE GLAD THAT IT CAME TO LIVE
FOR A MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE.

If you keep you heart open, it will come again..."

~unknown

posted January 30, 2008 02:27 PM            

"I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroken;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend."

~ Longfellow

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

~ Anais Nin

posted January 30, 2008 05:45 PM              

quote:

---

"I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroken;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend."

~ Longfellow

---

This is me.
This is what I'm saying.

posted February 02, 2008 09:51 PM              

~Carl Gustav Jung

posted February 09, 2008 11:09 PM            

~ Sara Paddison, Hidden Power of the Heart

Our true identity is to love without fear and insecurity. Our higher potential finds us when we set our course in that direction. The power of love and compassion transforms insecurity.

~ Doc Childre

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.

~ Christopher Morley

Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain.

~ Leo Buscaglia

posted February 09, 2008 11:36 PM              

Where there is love, there is God also.

~ Leo Tolstoy ~

posted February 10, 2008 10:52 AM              

quote:

---

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.

~ Christopher Morley

---

It's true.

If it came down to five minutes,
thats all I'd have to say to you guys.

"I love you."

And,
if there was time,

"I'm sorry."

posted February 15, 2008 07:25 PM              

if the blood of a muse
can alchemize within you
such divine poetic sustenance
for the life of Love's being

then, bite away
for your words quench
the pallid soul

posted February 16, 2008 08:58 AM              

"God's always up to something."

"Truth looks straight ahead."

posted February 16, 2008 03:25 PM              

i had a feeling you'd have a little something to say or something to add to those quotes.

posted February 17, 2008 12:04 PM            

~ Han Suyin

posted February 17, 2008 12:44 PM              

"One man's medicine is another man's poison."
~ Hippocrates, or Hermes (before him)

A spoonful of sugar helps the poison go down, too.

Sometimes the best thing to do is listen.
People often know what is best for themselves,
and in those instances we ought to let nature take her course.
The most reluctant patients are not always wrongly so.
They may refuse our prescriptions for better reasons than we know.
Many times it is our insistence on treating them which is bullheaded.
It may even be that God marks out certain people, at certain times,
and will not permit anyone else to play doctor before Himself,
though we may be called to assist at crucial moments,
as hands, to place the Surgeon's tools closer,
or to daub the patient's burning brow.