Smile!

Peace begins with a smile

- Mother Teresa

To Be Misunderstood

"Is it so bad to be misunderstood?

Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton,and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

True Strength

Intelligent people know others.
Enlightened people know themselves.
You can conquer others with power,
But it takes true strength to conquer yourself.

...
- Lao Tzu

Wood for His Fire

If you don’t have the Beloved why aren’t you looking for Him?

If you have the Beloved why aren’t you rejoicing?
If the Friend is truly your friend. Why not stay with Him?

If the rebec does not wail,Why not teach it how to sing?

If someone bars you from the truth, Why not fight him and his brother as well?
You sit quietly and say to yourself, “Something strange is going on.”The only thing strange is that your best friend is a stranger.

You are the Sun of the world -Why is your heart so black?Why do you fall back on your drab and stagnant ways?Don’t stay melted like gold in a furnace -Become a piece of jewelry!

The treasure of Unity is found by those who look within.Why not join your spirit to the onewho sits inside your heart?

Did Majnun ever love two Laylas? Why seek more than one face and one cheek?

There is such a glorious moonhiding in the shadows of your being.Why not make it rise with the power of a midnight prayer? You have danced in the tavern for ages, Love’s wine never slips from your hand,Yet with each new sipyour soul is ravished like never before.

The wine I drink is the fire of love and God Himself pours it into my mouth!
What use is your life If your bones are not used as wood for His fire?
I’ll leave you with that.I could go on,I could fill pages with these elegant verses

But this is a tale for the heart and soul, not the lips.

...

Rumi– Version by Jonathan StarFrom “Rumi - In the Arms of the Beloved”Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York 1997

Thou and I

“Happy the moment when we are seated in the Palace, thou and I,

With two forms and with two figures but with one soul, thou and I

The colours of the grove and the voice of the birds will bestow immortality at the time when we come into the garden, thou and I.

....

The stars of heaven will come to gaze upon us; We shall show them the Moon itself, thou and I. Thou and I, individuals no more, shall be mingled in ecstasy, Joyful and secure from foolish babble, thou and I.

...

All the bright-plumed birds of heaven with devour their hearts with envy. In the place where we shall laugh in such a fashion, thou and I.

...

This is the greatest wonder, that thou and I, sitting here in the same nook, are at this moment both in Iraq and Khorasan, thou and I.”

(Jalaluddin Rumi)

Love and Forgive

~
If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.

- Mother Teresa
~

The Secret of Life

The principal teaching is that the heart of man is the shrine of God, to recognize God in one's own heart, to feel His existence, presence, virtue, goodness, all manner of beauty.

It must be remembered that the whole life around us is a life of falsehood.

The more you see and experience the more you see how very false it is, how much disillusionment there is.

The only way of getting over it is to light the lamp in the darkness of night, and all will be cleared. The secret of life is this: to produce beauty in ourselves.

When beauty is produced in the heart, then all that breaks the heart vanishes and the whole universe becomes one single vision of the sublimity of God.

-Religious Gatheka 13, Message of Christ, Hazrat Inayat Khan