Saturday, March 30, 2013

"Go Forth and Bathe Yourself in that Rain..." - Kabir

“ There the Clouds Do Not Cover the Sky, ...Yet the Rain Falls Down in Gentle Showers… ”          - Kabir


Take me back to the beginning

Where no song but Yours reaches me

In that Garden of Truth
I feel Your freedom
In that peace
Your beauty
I feel You alive again
No more madness 
No more pain
No more hoping
There in all assurance
Your Music eternally plays
Filling this life with songs
Overflowing my world 
With jubilation
Spilling over everywhere…



©Ganga Fondan, 2013


Blog Entry March 29, 2013

Our brains are constantly being spoon-fed information every day.  What used to be local news is now global.  What used to be 3 channels of TV is now 24/7 hours of streaming entertainment on demand and what used to be a local gathering of friends turns into keeping up with an endless list of each other's posts on various computer devices.  Can we really emotionally digest this impulsive gorging and expect to stay calm, healthy and clear thinking in our day to day lives?


The self-help industry has never flourished more with answers and yet there are more and more people needing help just to make it through the day, just to get a night of sleep, just to keep their thoughts from racing in all directions.  More and more people struggle with addictions, weight, finances and a long list of health issues.  How do we deal with a society struggling with monumental insecurity?  Over 500 years ago, a wise poet named Kabir told us that there is no place to run to that is away from all our worries but there is a place within that promises peace and limitless abundance.  He cautioned others that this place is not in palaces, temples, sacred rivers, statues and books.  If we listen closely enough, our own heart opens and shows us the way through the storms of existence. 


 The ancient Masters from all walks of life led the ways to realize and distribute the resources that well up from inside each of us.  It is worth everything to find them and to revel in that land.  Then we can see through the haze of what happens in our outer world as related to the centered and powerful daily choices we make.  We begin to recognize our own relationship to Consciousness which is the Creator, Creating and Created aspects of all Life.  Keeping these teachings alive through art and song has been my greatest gift from studying Ancient Secrets of Success with my Teacher.  New ideas and innovations flow through me and these pass through to my outer experience.  We become That which we most ache to behold.  I found the following words in a library book years ago and wrote them into my notebook.  They encapsulate the essence of this whole posting today.   


Jesus said: 

If you bring forth what is within you, what you will bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. (According to the Gospel of Thomas)







  

Monday, March 18, 2013

Let Me Color the World with Your Love and Peace...

The Quintessential Question: Who is this I?


I look into your eyes
Feel myself
Reflected
Exactly to the extent
I know myself
No more
No less
Your life offers
Another chance
To make the love bond
To console
To understand
To Be That
Emptied
Fulfilled
©Ganga Fondan, 2013
Blog Entry: March 18, 2012
A multitude of ideas are layered into this posting today.  It all starts when reciting the St. Francis prayer while walking towards a busy street intersection.  When I reach the words:
"O Master grant that I may never seek so much to be consoled as to console / To be understood as to understand /   To be loved as to love with all my Soul..."
A beautiful feeling sweeps over me, an elated considering that the subject entirely disappears into its ideal.  Observing all the people scurrying about in their busy lives,  I imagine love pouring out of this intention that St. Francis affirmed so many years ago.  There is nothing to do to become this instrument of peace, merely ask and allow it to happen.
Later, while leafing through a book about famous people who passed from this earth at a young age,  I find a picture of Rudolph Valentino with the following quote beside it:
"Women are not in love with me but the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams."
I read this sentence over and over.  Again excited exhilaration stirs my imagination as I think of a person becoming a canvas, a mirror, a projection of a desired ideal.  These two quotes have entirely different contexts, but there is a bridge worth seeking out.  
Later at home, I can not wait to entertain this question with inner experimentation.  Often times, the art screen works like a mirror and shapes appear and disappear, as do ideas.  Using an image of my own face adds intensity to the process and I explore the idea of a human being a canvas on which others paint.  How do I see others?  How do others see me?  How do I see myself?  What kind of an instrument am I?  Consciousness creates my Reality.  How can I see further than my Consciousness?  These questions echo through me as the images form and dissolve again.  The words of St. Francis and Valentino keep me centered on the quest.  No distractions.  When Consciousness is free, there is no limitation to what is projected.  We are at once the Sublime Canvas and the Uninhibited Instrument of Expression:  We  enter the dance of Love's immediate intention and fulfillment.  All sense of separation drops away.  A place of infinite compassion, consolation and understanding pours everywhere.

In the middle of the night, after everything is processed, my head rests on the pillow and looks out the window at the endless open sky.  I can feel tears coming as I wonder just how limitless this "Limitlessness" of Consciousness really is.  I feel hope for mankind in all the struggle because there is always a higher expression of Love to discover and become.  Gratefulness pours out to one single star that seems to twinkle especially bright.  It reminds me that I have not yet begun to embrace the deep value of tonight's revelation.  I feel tears run down my cheek.  What fantastic Mystery guides this life?  I only know  I love You.  I love You.  I love You. 

                                                                                



Wednesday, March 13, 2013

It is By Asking That We Truly Love...

“Some Contemplate the Formless While Others Meditate on Form But the Wise Man Knows that Brahma is Beyond Both.” – Kabir


Have we not felt the Presence in the arms of a Lover?
Have we not inhaled the Fragrance of the most exquisite flower?
Have we not basked in the Smile of a child’s eyes beaming pure Love?
Have we not rejoiced in the Thrill of flying thousands of feet above birds?
Have we not intuited the Whisper of a most excellent idea rising within us?
Have we not met the Love-Soaked stranger who generously passed on to us
exactly what we most needed today?
Why do we keep searching outside ourselves for permission
to live as joyous children of the Divine Life?
Why do we seek the Creator everywhere but within the heart?
In this holy meeting place
We freely honor the journey as only each of us can live it:
Experience our own mountaintop
Until every drawing, every song, every dance declares:
We are One.
We are One.
We are One.
©Ganga Fondan, 2013

Blog Entry: March 13, 2013
It is so easy to get caught up in the illusion that the world is spinning faster and faster.  Our constant growth spurts of technology and information makes it more challenging to stay centered and calm.  Every day I still meet people who feel like they are drowning in a sea of circumstances beyond their control and they lose confidence in their own ability to keep up with what life seems to expect of them.  Our Teacher would often challenge us to discover what we expect of ourselves and to aspire to impossible heights in order to stay on course living a fulfilled life.  His words ring inside me over and over when I study the political and geological maps of the world.  His message echoes inside me as I speak with a man about his fear of never meeting the love of his life, the woman who has a story to tell and cannot find her voice, the girl who stopped eating a full meal because she will not look like other girls, the man who shies from social activity because most chairs are much to small for him and the woman who cannot bring herself to trust anyone.  These people entered my life this week and I sensed the anxiety in their bodies.  
Who or what is the real voice of authority in our lives?  

How can we find what is true and live a powerful and abundant life.  Its a long road to discover how absolutely misinformed and misguided most of our role models are.  When we seek stillness within ourselves, an answer always stirs.  With patience and persistence, the desires of the heart make themselves known.  We discover what truly makes us happy.  We reach our own mountaintop in Unity with the Creator.  When we can move in a world of formlessness and form, we recognize our Divinity and Joy.  In our Unity, all deep self-expression becomes genuine and harmonious.  We begin to love the Divine Being within.  We no longer need external assurance.  The Heart always knows.  The Heart finally regains its vitality and romance in Limitlessness.  We give ourselves permission to dream and experience this dream's fulfillment.  We realize what it means to ask and to receive.   
"Some contemplate the formless while others meditate on form but the wise man knows that Brahma* is beyond both."   - Kabir
*Sanskrit word meaning "The Creator".