Hidden Blessings

It has been days since I last made an entry. The days have been full and busy. I taught 8 yoga classes this week - which is twice the number I usually teach, and I will be teaching every weekend except for one, through the end of December...

Life has been busy, but as a friend noted recently - it is a good sort of busy. So many wonderful experiences have occurred, many connections have been made, and life has unselfishly dispensed blessings - some unexpected, and some which were initially hidden...

I've been reviewing the book, Falling into the Arms of God: Meditations With Teresa of Avila, by Megan Don, which I read a couple of years ago or so. Here are a number of excerpts from Teresa's writings that have spoken to me once again...

"Soul, you must seek yourself in Me
and in yourself seek Me...

Soul, since you are My room,
my house and dwelling,
if at any time,
through your distracted ways
I find the door tightly closed,
outside yourself seek Me not...

With such skill, soul,
love could portray you in Me
that a painter well gifted
could never show
so finely that image...

For love you were fashioned
deep within me...

It is all a union of love with love...
entirely pure, and so delicate and gentle...
there is no way of describing it...

Lord, how You afflict Your lovers!
But everything is small in comparison
with what You give them afterward...
it is a small drop of water in the sea...

What a wonderful thing it is for two souls
to understand each other,
for they neither lack something to say
or grow tired...

As this heavenly water begins to flow
from this source of which I am speaking -
that is, from our very depths - it proceeds
to spread within us and cause an interior expansion
and produce ineffable blessings...

To this life
worldly love adheres;
Love divine
for the other sighs.
Eternal God, without You,
who can live?

Let nothing disturb you,
let nothing frighten you
everything passes,
God does not change,
patience
everything does obtain."