threading flowers for garlands, she is lost in contemplation
Here is the second in the photography series, Say I am you. I don’t know how many of you read Rumi, I find his poems irresistible and this one in particular. Rumi’s poems elegantly and consistently touch our inner being and inspire us to go beyond our limitations towards the Divine. He is expressing once more in this poem how he is in everything, and everything is in him. He ends with these few words, “Jelaluddin, You the one in all, say who I am. Say I am You.”
The Hari Krishna ladies, Bangalore
the street vender – I wonder what she is thinking?
SAY I AM YOU
I am dust particles in sunlight. I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay. To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff.
Getting Ready for xmas-Bangalore
Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel, I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches. Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute, a spark of a stone, a flickering
in metal. Both candle, and the moth crazy around it.
Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,
and the falling away. What is, and what isn’t. You who know
little boy in Andra Pradesh village. He is stepping into his home, away from me and the camera –
Jelaluddin, You the one in all, say who
I am. Say I am You.
~rumi
The poem “I am You” to soothing but apt music. Heavenly!
The photographs here are from my Indian Collection.
My thoughts for today were about weeding the garden but instead, and after a thorough search on my blogs followers, I am beginning to question the authenticity of my followers. I wish I could WEED some of them from my blog. I have well over a thousand, yet I only hear from a handful of those! Now something is dreadfully wrong here! My blog is over four years old, thus, I suspect, most of the original followers have long since left blogging. ( Makes sense due to the fast pace of today’s lifestyles. ) Then why can’t I delete them? A question I should be asking “The Happiness Word Press Team”, I suppose. Then there are those that follow and “like”, but never comment. How can anyone like a post, almost each and every one, and not comment? Beats me! I would like to suggest that there are fake “likers”, and “speedy likers”, who are hoping you will “like” them back. This is not really blogging is it? I had hoped blogging was about sharing like-minded interests and building a blogging community. Am I wrong?
The idiots Guide To blogging says:
Blogging Rules and Etiquette
Your blog is your own space on the web, and depending on your goals, you can publish the type of content you want and not publish the type of content you don’t want. That’s where blog policies come into the picture. Policies are intended to protect you and your audience as well as set expectations about the type of content that will or will not be published on your blog.
Comment Policy
As your blog grows and your posts receive more and more comments, you’ll undoubtedly receive comments you don’t want to publish on your blog or that require minor editing before you’ll publish them. For example, hateful comments that attack individuals usually aren’t welcome on blogs, and comments that include obscenities could be offensive. Similarly, comments that might be spam can hurt the user experience on your blog and should be deleted.
A comment policy allows you to define what types of comments you will delete or edit using the comment moderation tools in your account. Your comment policy also protects you, so you can refer visitors whose comments are edited or deleted to your established policy to understand why their comments were revised or not published at all.
After reading Maureen McCabe’s post, “ActiveRain – Saying Nothing At all”, I became aware of the discussion revolving around leaving GPTFS (Great Post, Thanks For Sharing) comments on a post. Is there value for anyone in doing it? Personally, I believe there is value, but that is because I think compliments are gifts. However, it did make me think — how can I write better comments myself ? I came across some good, basic advice from Meredith Farkas — 31 Day Comment Challenge. She is “Head of Instructional Initiatives” at Norwich University (VT) and teaches a class on blogging.
Comments should be as below listed. The point is most people do not receive comments or if they do, they are few and far between.
1) Relevant to the post 2) Thoughtful and insightful 3) Use your unique voice 4) Keep it civil 5) Make it short and readable, but also meaningful.
Her own personal, reflective thoughts and commitment to commenting
1) Commenting is a critical component of community-building in the blogosphere.
2) I feel more connected to others when I comment. ~ (My thoughts exactly)
3) I take commenting very seriously and that’s ok.
4) Never comment when you’re angry or frustrated. (errrr well, my mistake sometimes)
5) I need to be better about responding to comments. (Yes indeed, we all should)
Good thoughts to remember. In the future, I will try to keep her points in mind, but if I should ever slip up and just pay you a simple compliment — don’t deduct points from me. 🙂
Humour is always a great way to end on, so here’s a song and a poem. 🙂 ( I wish you all a happy blogging Sunday. 🙂 )
Music When You Say Nothing At All – for all the silent ones.
..
Could Be A Bloggers Lament? Smile. 🙂
…
Sometime when you’re feeling important; Sometime when your ego’s in bloom Sometime when you take it for granted
You’re the best qualified in the room,
Sometime when you feel that your going Would leave an unfillable hole, Just follow these simple instructions And see how they humble your soul;
Take a bucket and fill it with water, Put your hand in it up to the wrist, Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining Is a measure of how you will be missed.
You can splash all you wish when you enter, You may stir up the water galore, But stop and you’ll find that in no time It looks quite the same as before.
The moral of this quaint example Is do just the best that you can, Be proud of yourself but remember, There’s no indispensable man. –
— Saxon N. White Kessinger, Copyright 1959
Any thoughts on this topic? Merci –
The post is sticky for now. By making the post sticky, I feel, it gives an opportunity to new bloggers to get acquainted with the ups and downs of the blogoshere. There are also a number of very interesting comments posted by others on this topic. Do read. thank you.
“God is whole and constant. In himself he is motionless, yet he is self-moving… He is hidden yet obvious everywhere. His being is known through thought alone, yet we see his form before our eyes. He is bodiless yet embodied in everything. There is nothing which he is not… He is the unity of all things… He is the Whole which contains everything. He is One, not two. He is all, not many. The All is not many separate things, but the Oneness that subsumes the parts. The All and the One are identical. You think that things are many when you view them as separate, but when you see they all hang on the One and flow from the One you will realise they are united – linked together and connected by a chain of Being from the highest to the lowest, all subject to the will of God”
– the Hermetica
“The journey to God begins with the awakening to the concept that the phenomenal world is a veil which conceals the Divine. We begin the Quest by removing the veil, only to become aware that the veil and the Divine are one and the same thing. The veil is the theophany itself: the manifestation of the Divine through Its Names and Qualities. When we see the veil, we are seeing nothing but the Divine.”
– Laleh Bakhtiar (Sufi Mystic)
“The Ancient of Ancients, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a form, yet also has not any form. It has a form through which is the universe is maintained. It also has not any form, as It cannot be comprehended.”
– the Zohar
“Exalted in songs has been Brahman. In him are God and the world and the soul, and he is the imperishable supporter of all. When the seers of Brahman see him in all creation, they find peace in Brahman and are free from all sorrow.”
– the Upanishads
“There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”
– St Paul
“Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. .. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.”
– Spinoza
“All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things.”
– Heraclitus
“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness.”
– Albert Einstein
I went to the beach late this winter afternoon to see the sunset, but the clouds came over. I stood there on the wet sand hoping the sun would break through again. Then I saw a glorious Golden Light beam down from behind the clouds onto the silvery ocean and in that one second, I saw the Divine. The first photo is my photo of that mystical moment. Both photos can be clicked to see full detail. (Below. is another photo taken a little earlier….)
Children Of Light 