Circle Resources

November Meeting

‘Cast All Your Votes for Dancing’ by Hafiz (from I Heard God Laughing, page 8, translated by Daniel Ladinsky):

I know the voice of depression

Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life

Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now

And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way

And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun

From your prayers and work and music

And from your companions’ beautiful laughter.

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun

From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved

And, my dear,

From the most insignificant movements

Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins

That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,

But then drag you for days

Like a broken man

Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.

Learn what actions of yours delight him,

What actions of yours bring freedom

And Love.

Whenever you say God’s name, dear pilgrim,

My ears wish my head was missing

So they could finally kiss each other

And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun

From your prayers and work and music

And from your companions’ beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements

Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,

Be wise.

Cast all your votes for Dancing!

Quote by Karlfried Graf Von Dürckheim (from Ordinary Magic, page 25, edited by John Welwood):

“What” we do belongs to the world. In the “how,” the way we do it, we infallibly reveal to ourselves whether our attitude is in harmony with the inner law or in contradiction to it, in accordance with our right form or opposed to it, open to Divine Being or closed to it. What is our right “form”? It is none other than that in which we are transparent to Divine Being. And to be transparent means that we are able to experience Divine Being in ourselves and to reveal it in the world.

Let us suppose, for instance, that a letter has to be posted in a mailbox 100 yards away. If the mouth of the mailbox is all we see in the mind’s eye, then the 100 strides we take toward it are wasted. But if we are on the Way and filled with the sense of all that this implies, then even this short walk, providing we maintain the right attitude and posture, can serve to renew us from the well of inner essence.

The same can be true with any daily activity. The more we have mastered some relevant technique, and the smaller the amount of attention needed to perform the task satisfactorily, the more easily may the emphasis be transferred from the exterior to the interior. Whether in the kitchen or working in an assembly line, at the typewriter or in the garden, talking, writing, sitting, walking, or standing, dealing with some daily occurrence, or conversing with someone dear to us dash whatever it may be we can approach it “from within” and use it as an opportunity for the practice of becoming a genuine human being. When this is understood, the truth of the old Japanese adage becomes clear: “for something to acquire religious significance, two conditions alone are necessary: it must be simple, and it must be repetitive.”

And from page 27:

When essential being becomes inward knowing, we feel a sudden change in ourselves. Relaxed and free, full of strength and light, we are filled with a new and creative life. Those things that lie heavily upon us grow lighter; problems which have been causing anxiety no longer oppress us; and events that in our ordinary state would plunge us into despair now lose their potency. Where every door seemed closed, all are now open. We who in ourselves were poor now feel rich, and in the midst of clamor we are peaceful and calm. It is as though we were bathed in an invisible light which warms and shines upon us. We sense about us a radiance that shimmers through everything. But just as this radiance can dawn upon us without warning, so can it as suddenly disappear. We have no power to make it happen, nor to retain it once it is there. The most we can do is to learn to become prescient and aware of those attitudes which prepare us for such experiences and also, of course, those which prevent them