Jolt Me Into Joy
I still bask in the wonder and the beauty of meditating during Maha Shivarati - "The Great Night of Shiva," when Shiva pauses to rest after his Cosmic Dance...
I marvel at the gifts I have been given, the insight, the clarity, the bliss, and I think of Gunilla Norris' simple prayer, "Jolt me into joy!"
In the afternoon, I curl up with Gunilla Norris' simple yet divine spiritual and poetic musings - Being Home: Discovering the Spiritual in the Everyday - and I am not only jolted into joy, but into Pure Awareness and the gifts of deep sight, intuitions and realizations.
I think of a dear friend, who strives to offer ever moment and act to the Divine, and does so with both humility and grace, and I find it such a blessing, that this book falls into my hands, precisely at this time - it is such a simple testament meant for other souls in search of embodying the same experience...
Yesterday, after my evening meditation, I realized that there truly cannot be any separation between souls because Grace is everywhere, and separation is simply incompatible with a Presence that is all pervading...
Today, I realize, I have been given the incredible gift to be able to dive more deeply into spiritual practices by having a schedule that has opened up and loosened considerably. Now, with this book, I can also see, that I still have far to go into fully merging my spiritual and quotidian lives. Not only do I have the opportunity to practice in ways that I could not have done so before, I am being invited to open my eyes, and to delve deeply into each and every task, and glean the hidden messages and treasures silently being offered and disclosed in each and every one of my duties...
I certainly could not say it any better than Gunilla Norris, and I highly recommend this simple, but very moving book. I know I will be savoring it over, and over again, for its richness, and deep insights...
And so, I offer here, sentences, gathered from pages here and there, each one honoring the simplicity and the joy of everyday living...
"Prayer and housekeeping - they go together. They have always gone together. We simply know that our daily round is how we live. When we clean and order our homes, we are somehow also cleaning and ordering ourselves...How we hold the simplest of life's tasks speaks loudly of how we hold life itself.
How then do we 'come home' spiritually and dwell there? In my own life I have found no better way than to value and savor the sacredness of everyday living, to rely on repetition, that humdrum rhythm, which heals and steadies. Increasingly it is for me a matter of being willing 'to be in place,' to enter into deeper communion with the objects and actions of a day and to allow them to commune with me. It is a way to know and to be known...
If anything in this life matters, then everything matters. There isn't living and Living. The only difference is how completely we give ourselves to the living...
There is no alternative utopia running parallel to this life. This is it.
We are intended for ecstasy - each day we are meant to be steeped in mystery, and so remember our true lives.
My foot falls. The ground rises to meet it. A holy, ordinary moment is repeating itself.
Let me wear the joy that matches this day.
My life is a continuous series of thresholds: from one moment to the next, from one thought to the next, from one action to the next.
Please open me like this window to the joy that is always right here. Jolt me open to joy!
Time to dust again. Time to caress my house, to stroke all its surfaces. I want to think of it as a kind of lovemaking...the chance to appreciate by touch what I live with and cherish.
I want to be a lover of all surfaces today. Let this be my prayer: that my hands not be ashamed to give and receive a passionate exchange... to luster and be lustered...and so come to feel Your inward touch.
Help me to surrender to the growth that only comes with pain, with division, with helplessness, with waiting.
Let me enter this moment and polish it bright.
I'm always wanting my own weather...How many things do I shovel aside?
The real work is revealed and I am discovered by the work...This is grace.
The breath always returns back. Over and over again my life is returned like this because Yu are breathing me.
Like tulips I am blooming and dying. How mysterious is this.
Now the sheets. My friends slept in them last night. Let the folding of these sheets be an intercession. Fold my friends into Your tenderness. Keep us in Your love.
Help me to remember the crumpled as much as the smooth. In You they are all one.
Hoarding is a lack of trust. There is no supply outside of You.
Make in my person a place setting for You. Remind me of my true nature which is recalled only in You.
I want my layers to peel away like the onion's.
I want to be as empty and clean as the universe in a sweet green pepper with its white star seeds.
I want. I want. In the heat of Your Will help me to give up wanting!
I am so full of urgency, expectation, image, I make myself spiritually hungry. You are here, therefore, there is everything to receive.
Let the sweet taste of You become the blessing on my tongue.
As I sort and I mend, I think of the fabric of life...Teach me to be humble when the patching goes wrong, when I join parts that do not belong.
What is torn apart breathes in its own way with You, mends when it can, if it can. Let me accept the frayed.
I dwell in the home as if it were a heart. When I feel that pulse I know that all that comes to me will also go..."
And so it is...And everyone of these morsels, contains an infinite amount of insight to be unraveled and savored for a very long time to come. Indeed, all the time that we have left...
I marvel at the gifts I have been given, the insight, the clarity, the bliss, and I think of Gunilla Norris' simple prayer, "Jolt me into joy!"
In the afternoon, I curl up with Gunilla Norris' simple yet divine spiritual and poetic musings - Being Home: Discovering the Spiritual in the Everyday - and I am not only jolted into joy, but into Pure Awareness and the gifts of deep sight, intuitions and realizations.
I think of a dear friend, who strives to offer ever moment and act to the Divine, and does so with both humility and grace, and I find it such a blessing, that this book falls into my hands, precisely at this time - it is such a simple testament meant for other souls in search of embodying the same experience...
Yesterday, after my evening meditation, I realized that there truly cannot be any separation between souls because Grace is everywhere, and separation is simply incompatible with a Presence that is all pervading...
Today, I realize, I have been given the incredible gift to be able to dive more deeply into spiritual practices by having a schedule that has opened up and loosened considerably. Now, with this book, I can also see, that I still have far to go into fully merging my spiritual and quotidian lives. Not only do I have the opportunity to practice in ways that I could not have done so before, I am being invited to open my eyes, and to delve deeply into each and every task, and glean the hidden messages and treasures silently being offered and disclosed in each and every one of my duties...
I certainly could not say it any better than Gunilla Norris, and I highly recommend this simple, but very moving book. I know I will be savoring it over, and over again, for its richness, and deep insights...
And so, I offer here, sentences, gathered from pages here and there, each one honoring the simplicity and the joy of everyday living...
"Prayer and housekeeping - they go together. They have always gone together. We simply know that our daily round is how we live. When we clean and order our homes, we are somehow also cleaning and ordering ourselves...How we hold the simplest of life's tasks speaks loudly of how we hold life itself.
How then do we 'come home' spiritually and dwell there? In my own life I have found no better way than to value and savor the sacredness of everyday living, to rely on repetition, that humdrum rhythm, which heals and steadies. Increasingly it is for me a matter of being willing 'to be in place,' to enter into deeper communion with the objects and actions of a day and to allow them to commune with me. It is a way to know and to be known...
If anything in this life matters, then everything matters. There isn't living and Living. The only difference is how completely we give ourselves to the living...
There is no alternative utopia running parallel to this life. This is it.
We are intended for ecstasy - each day we are meant to be steeped in mystery, and so remember our true lives.
My foot falls. The ground rises to meet it. A holy, ordinary moment is repeating itself.
Let me wear the joy that matches this day.
My life is a continuous series of thresholds: from one moment to the next, from one thought to the next, from one action to the next.
Please open me like this window to the joy that is always right here. Jolt me open to joy!
Time to dust again. Time to caress my house, to stroke all its surfaces. I want to think of it as a kind of lovemaking...the chance to appreciate by touch what I live with and cherish.
I want to be a lover of all surfaces today. Let this be my prayer: that my hands not be ashamed to give and receive a passionate exchange... to luster and be lustered...and so come to feel Your inward touch.
Help me to surrender to the growth that only comes with pain, with division, with helplessness, with waiting.
Let me enter this moment and polish it bright.
I'm always wanting my own weather...How many things do I shovel aside?
The real work is revealed and I am discovered by the work...This is grace.
The breath always returns back. Over and over again my life is returned like this because Yu are breathing me.
Like tulips I am blooming and dying. How mysterious is this.
Now the sheets. My friends slept in them last night. Let the folding of these sheets be an intercession. Fold my friends into Your tenderness. Keep us in Your love.
Help me to remember the crumpled as much as the smooth. In You they are all one.
Hoarding is a lack of trust. There is no supply outside of You.
Make in my person a place setting for You. Remind me of my true nature which is recalled only in You.
I want my layers to peel away like the onion's.
I want to be as empty and clean as the universe in a sweet green pepper with its white star seeds.
I want. I want. In the heat of Your Will help me to give up wanting!
I am so full of urgency, expectation, image, I make myself spiritually hungry. You are here, therefore, there is everything to receive.
Let the sweet taste of You become the blessing on my tongue.
As I sort and I mend, I think of the fabric of life...Teach me to be humble when the patching goes wrong, when I join parts that do not belong.
What is torn apart breathes in its own way with You, mends when it can, if it can. Let me accept the frayed.
I dwell in the home as if it were a heart. When I feel that pulse I know that all that comes to me will also go..."
And so it is...And everyone of these morsels, contains an infinite amount of insight to be unraveled and savored for a very long time to come. Indeed, all the time that we have left...
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