Play is our contact with our love for life. It brings us back into our joy at being alive and shows us where our freedom is. Play moves us out of our fixed mindsets: it offers freedom from the tyranny of habit, freedom from the mundane and ordinary, from the rational and need to know and be in control. It's freedom from rigid identification with race, class, gender, and even species.
Often I advised parents that their children needed time to think, to just be -- picking flowers, fishing (for crabs) or admiring glorious sunsets, painting their own images in the firmament as they watch the clouds race by. Little ones are so receptive and thrive on these enriching experiences. Respect for life and every living creature can be instilled into their hearts. All the while I had been giving this good advice, I had been starving my own needy soul with a diet of too much hard work. Taking time to relax is important in our search for freedom: it’s one of the easiest and most delightful ways to feel in touch with the intelligence of the cosmos.
Being authentic is the only pathway to the deepest form of freedom. It means opening to Spirit, mustering courage to move through the challenging process of our life's conditioning. We may encounter surprises and ultimately experience astounding revelations when we uphold our vision to live authentically. Returning to my authentic self, I find freedom.
Being authentic is the only pathway to the deepest form of freedom. It means opening to Spirit, mustering courage to move through the challenging process of our life's conditioning. We may encounter surprises and ultimately experience astounding revelations when we uphold our vision to live authentically. Returning to my authentic self, I find freedom.
When you are interiorly free you call others to freedom, whether you know it or not. . . . A free man or a free woman creates a space where others feel safe and want to dwell. Our world is so full of conditions, demands, requirements, and obligations that we often wonder what is expected of us. But when we meet a truly free person there are no expectations, only an invitation to reach into ourselves and discover there our own freedom. Where true inner freedom is, there God is.
Warm Greetings, dear friends! The garden is in, flowers are growing and blooming, and summer is coming on. The seasons turn according to the music of creation, listening for the crescendos, andantes, rests, and allegros, as all of nature follows the Great Conductor in the eternal symphony of life. We, too, are part of the concert, even when we may feel a bit off-key or appear to be out of step with the rest of the instruments. At such times, especially, we must listen with the ears of our hearts for our cues, trusting, knowing that the music of the universe flows through us. We have only to enter the silence and "tune in" to pick up the beat and find ourselves back in the flow. As we listen to the strains of our own melodies, may we feel ourselves immersed in Great Music of our lives, guided and directed to perfect harmony with all of creation.
As I read the prayer I began to sense something amazing. I could hear music, as if someone were playing an instrument in the next room. Then I realized that I wasn't hearing the music with my ears, but with my heart. It was prayer. The prayer was singing itself to me. I picked up my guitar and played along. The music was beautiful, and it continued until I finished the entire song . . . When it was over I realized I had just received an amazing gift. I also knew that one is never given a gift of this magnitude unless one is meant to share it.
~ from THE SECRET OF THE BELOVED DISCIPLE by James Twyman
We have lost sight of the original harmony: If you could hear the sound that is produced by the sunflower as it keeps on turning its head toward the sun, the friction between the flower and air, and if you could hear the sound produced by the galaxies, you would hear the symphony of the spheres; and you would realize that this symphony is based upon a basic harmony, the harmony of the spheres.
Two years ago, I heard about a singing class "for people who think they can't." That described me. I mustered my courage, signed up, and found that with proper instruction, I can sing decently! Every week, the deep breathing exercises inspire me; the songs I sing make me and those around me smile. I now understand what I once read: The Australian aborigines say the world was sung into existence.
~ by Linda Tagliaferro in "Spirituality and Health," July/August 2004
Next I saw the most lucid air, in which I heard . . . in a marvelous way many kinds of musicians praising the joys of the heavenly citizens . . . And their sound was like the voice of a multitude, making music in harmony.
For some birds, songs are learned by listening to their parents and neighbors during
the first year. For other birds, songs are hardwired -- the music is scored in their
brains from the beginning. For mockingbirds, singing is a lifetime of choir practice
and talent shows, picking up new tunes and modifying old ones.
Sometimes the bird turns away. Sometimes it does not open its mouth to sing. Sometimes it is afraid of the dark. But when it forgets it is afraid and opens its mouth to sing, it fills the world with light.
Silence and music Ebb and flow: Beauty of bird-song, The silence that follows: Afterglow which warms the heart Sets us yearning For our own soul-song: Journey in silence Take the path of Mystery To the music of your heart.
I have never written the music that was in my heart to write; perhaps I never shall
with this brain and these fingers, but I know that hereafter it will be written: when, instead of these few inlets of the senses through which we now secure impressions from all without, there shall be a flood of impressions from all sides; and instead of these few tones of our little octave there shall be an infinite score of harmonies -- for I feel it, I am sure of it. This world of music, whose borders even now I have scarcely entered, is a reality, is immortal.
Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs. It was they who led me from door to door, and with them I have felt about me, searching and touching my worlds. It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt; they showed me secret paths they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart.
We will never "solve" life, crack its ultimate code, or frame it with consistency. It is forever enigmatic and resists control by words or concepts. What is left to us is the rise and fall of a songline and the vision of a Great White Rose.
~ from ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE by Marv and Nancy Hiles
As I was listening I thought about being in conversation with God, and I was struck by how much Bach's Fugue in G-Minor mirrors my relationship with God. When I first began conversing with God, it was very simple. In reply, God did not repeat my melody but responded in a harmonic way, just as Bach has his instruments do. Over time, our conversation -- the Divine and mine -- has built in richness, complexity, depth and beauty, like the fugue builds. Ebb and flow occur in the dynamics of both music and my communication with God, but my soul is constantly stirred by the heartbreaking beauty of what I hear and what I know.
Warm greetings, dear Friends! Grace abounds on this sparkling spring day. Rachel Naomi Remen, in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom, writes about the story of a poor man walking along a dusty road one day, wondering whether he would have anything to eat that evening, when suddenly the gods took pity on him and dropped a bag of gold in his path. He was not ready to receive this gift, however, and detoured around it without investigating, thinking himself fortunate to have avoided stumbling over such a large rock in his path. Our lives are full of such a "bags of gold" appearing in our path, but they rarely look like the gifts they are. Sometimes they even appear to be just the opposite, and only looking back do we perceive their value. As we meet in the Silence, let us seek the vision to recognize the many gifts of grace with which we are richly blessed every day.
Experiencing grace involves the expansion of consciousness of self to all of one's surroundings as an unbroken whole, a consciousness of awe from which negative mindstates are absent, from which healing and groundedness result. For these reasons grace has long been deemed "amazing."
You looked with love upon me And deep within your eyes imprinted grace. This mercy set me free, Held in your love’s embrace, To lift my eyes adoring to your grace.
There is no authentic and sincere spiritual life without faith, hope and love; but there is no faith, hope, and love without mystical experience or, what is the same
thing, without grace.
