Healing Prayer

Thy name is my healing, O my God,
and remembrance of Thee is my remedy.
Nearness to Thee is my hope,
and love for Thee is my companion.
Thy mercy to me is my healing and my succor
in both this world and the world to come.
Thou, verily, art the All-Bountiful,
the All-Knowing, the All-Wise

Bahá'u'lláh

Detachment

 "No man shall attain the shores of the ocean of true understanding except he be detached from all that is in heaven and on earth. Sanctify your souls, O ye peoples of the world, that haply ye may attain that station which God hath destined for you..."

(Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, page. 2)

The sword of a virtuous character and upright conduct is sharper than blades of steel.

"Say, O friends! Strive that haply the tribulations suffered by this Wronged One and by you, in the path of God, may not prove to have been in vain. Cling ye to the hem of virtue, and hold fast to the cord of trustworthiness and piety. Concern yourselves with the things that benefit mankind, and not with your corrupt and selfish desires. O ye followers of this Wronged One! Ye are the shepherds of mankind; liberate ye your flocks from the wolves of evil passions and desires, and adorn them with the ornament of the fear of God. This is the firm commandment which hath, at this moment, flowed out from the Pen of Him Who is the Ancient of Days. By the righteousness of God! The sword of a virtuous character and upright conduct is sharper than blades of steel. The voice of the true Faith calleth aloud, at this moment, and saith: O people! Verily, the Day is come, and My Lord hath made Me to shine forth with a light whose splendor hath eclipsed the suns of utterance. Fear ye the Merciful, and be not of them that have gone astray." 

(Bahá'u'lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, page 29)

(Another brilliant quote from Colin. Thanks!) 

So once more the Blessed Beauty calls us to care about what is around us, to be sensitive to others, to give the best of ourselves--to give what we often don't know we have--and make the world a better place with our passing.

irrigate the desert

"To 'debunk' the emotion, on the basis of a commonplace rationalism, is within almost anyone's capacity. In the second place, I think Gaius and Titius may have honestly misunderstood the pressing educational need of the moment. They see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda—they have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental—and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts."


Another quote from C.S. Lewis' essay "Men Without Chests", which is a call to  enhance the spiritual susceptibilities as a way to strengthen us to face untruth and treacheries, instead of beating down emotion. The phrase "irrigate deserts" particularly stuck in my mind over the past days, and I wanted to put it down here, just to remember it always.

"O SON OF DUST! Verily I say unto thee: Of all men the most negligent is he that disputeth idly and seeketh to advance himself over his brother. Say, O brethren! Let deeds, not words, be your adorning" 

(Bahá'u'lláh, The Hiddent Words, From the Persian #5)

Sensibility

"...a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head."

(C.S. Lewis, "Men Without Chests" http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm)

This is taken from a brilliant essay by C.S. Lewis on the need to cultivate in young people (and adults) sensibility, and sensitivity towards the highest values as the best means to edify the human being, and protect her and him from the base influences in materialist society. It's really a brilliant piece, and well worth reading. He analyses the content of a high-school grammar book (actually, in the British system it's not called high-school) and tackles the little side-comments that authors make on the different pieces they have included for analysis, and shows how they make off-hand statements about value judgements, and relativise them to the speaker's own experience, whereas that merely hardens the heart of the reader who may unwaringly agree, and provides no real upliftment or edification. The real edification and strengthening of the soul comes from cultivating values and emotional attachment to them. Truth as an intellectual product is not in itself complete unless it is accompanied by the love of truth.

But I am really not doing this theme justice, as Lews does. Read the essay, follow the link above.

“O my God! Grant to him, to his descendants, to his family, to his friends, to his subjects, to his relatives and all the inhabitants of the earth the light which will clarify their vision and facilitate their task; grant that they may partake of the noblest works here and hereafter!
“In truth, nothing is impossible to Thee.

(Fragment of a prayer revea by the Blessed Báb while in the prison of Mah-Kú, for Him Whom God Will Make Manifest, found at The Dawn-Breakers: Nabil's Narrative of the Early Days of the Baha'i Revelation, Pages 243-261: fn10).

 

(Image of the fortress of Mah Ku in Northern Iran, found at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/eo/2/27/Kastelo_de_Mah-Ku.jpg)

Respect

"We show respect by speaking and acting with courtesy. We treat others with dignity and honor the rules of our family, school and nation. Respect yourself, and others will respect you."

(Quote thanks to Colin's notes)

Attributes of perfection

"Other attributes of perfection are to fear God, to love God by loving His servants, to exercise mildness and forbearance and calm, to be sincere, amenable, clement and compassionate; to have resolution and courage, trustworthiness and energy, to strive and struggle, to be generous, loyal, without malice, to have zeal and a sense of honor, to be high-minded and magnanimous, and to have regard for the rights of others.... ”


(quote from 'Abdu'l-Bahá in Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 40)

Chalice

“The movement itself from place to place, when undertaken for the sake of God, hath always exerted, and can now exert, its influence in the world. In the Books of old the station of them that have voyaged far and near in order to guide the servants of God hath been set forth and written down.” “I swear by God! So great are the things ordained for the steadfast that were they, so much as the eye of a needle, to be disclosed, all who are in heaven and on earth would be dumbfounded, except such as God, the Lord of all worlds, hath willed to exempt.” “I swear by God! That which hath been destined for him who aideth My Cause excelleth the treasures of the earth.” “Whoso openeth his lips in this day, and maketh mention of the name of his Lord, the hosts of Divine inspiration shall descend upon him from the heaven of My name, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. On him shall also descend the Concourse on high, each bearing aloft a chalice of pure light."
This is a quote my mother often mentioned, particularly the end, the part about "the hosts of Divine inspiration" descending "each bearing aloft a chalice of pure light." The image is breathtaking, and inconturnable. I imagine a painting, no a mural of this, just bursting with color and criss-crossed with the interplay of shadow and light.
Chalices are such a symbol of hope, of goals for the future, of perseverance and tenacity. There's a saying Gaby always likes to quote "La esperanza es lo último que se pierde" Hope is the last thing to lose. The intention is, don't lose hope, if you have nothing else, you always have hope, and this hope gets you to move forward.

Quote from The Advent of Divine Justice, p. 84

Image from http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3108/2693993069_e504bea719.jpg?v=0

Awe

(Image is from the Hubble Telescope, courtesy of Wired Magazine OnLine.


http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2009/09/hubble1a.jpg)

Blessing

Who could look at the panorama above and imagine the following...

This is the row of trees on Mount Carmel from which The Blessed Beauty pointed to the spot where the Shrine of the Bab was to be built, and nearby on the same mountain revealed the following:

"All glory be to this Day, the Day in which the fragrances of mercy have been wafted over all created things, a Day so blest that past ages and centuries can never hope to rival it, a Day in which the countenance of the Ancient of Days hath turned towards His holy seat. Thereupon the voices of all created things, and beyond them those of the Concourse on High, were heard calling aloud: ‘Haste thee, O Carmel, for lo, the light of the countenance of God, the Ruler of the Kingdom of Names and Fashioner of the heavens, hath been lifted upon thee.’

I have had the blessing of being there, and saying prayers there, for my family (brothers, sisters, parents), for my wife and children (years before I had even met my wife, and before my children were even born), and for my friends.

Joy and gladness

"To chant but one verse with joy and gladness is better for you than reading all the Revelations of the Omnipotent God with carelessness."


This is about quantity over quality, right?

Might

Might is the name of the Bahá'í month that began last night at sunset.

"Erelong shall God draw forth, out of the bosom of power, the hands of ascendancy and might, and shall raise up a people who will arise to win victory for this Youth and who will purge mankind from the defilement of the outcast and the ungodly. These hands will gird up their loins to champion the Faith of God, and will, in My name the Self-Subsistent, the Mighty, subdue the peoples and kindreds of the earth. They will enter the cities and will inspire with fear the hearts of all their inhabitants. Such are the evidences of the might of God; how fearful, how vehement is His might, and how justly doth He wield it! He, verily, ruleth and transcendeth all who are in the heavens and on the earth, and revealeth what He desireth according to a prescribed measure." 

(Bahá'u'lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, Bahá’í World Centre, 2002 edition, taken from Bahá'í Reference Library, http://reference.bahai.org)

Love

“Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms. Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe.”
(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, from Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
http://bahai-library.com/books/gandhi/node35.html)

Acknowledgement

"I bear witness, oh my God, that Thous hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify at this moment to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth. There is none other God but Thee. The Help in peril, the Self-Subsisting."
(Bahá'u'lláh)

There is this feeling of awe that I get when faced with things that are great, it's a good feeling. A great feeling. Acknowledgment.

Then there is the other end, acknowledgment of my limitations, my imperfections. That is another good feeling. Humility. The ocean is humble. I read somewhere that the ocean's greatness is that it places itself below all the other bodies of water, and then they all flow to it. So there is a kind of power in humility too.

Acknowledgment is the first movement of John Coltrane's masterpiece "A Love Supreme" a piece that is hard to listen to at first in light of its complexity and energy. But it has become one of my all time favorite albums, and I have the studio version and the live version. It is Coltrane's personal prayer of thanks to our Creator for having touched him in his time of need. It is really timeless and as overpowering as watching the stars move accross the clear nocturn sky, or watching the sun rise in the early morning, or watching the tide come in. It's monumental. It's awesome. It's humanity touching something that is greater than oneself, and emanating energy that is more than what is within.

Gratitude... again

"Gratitude is the essence of genuine happiness. It is a virtue we can never have too much of. Gratitude is a continual celebration of life."
(Quote thanks to Colin's Notes!)

"Where there is no vision, the people perish."

"Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." 
(Proverbs 29:18)

Vision

“Soon,” Bahá’u’lláh’s own words in (1890) proclaim it, “will the present day Order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead. Verily, thy Lord speaketh the truth and is the Knower of things unseen.” “By Myself,” He solemnly asserts, “the day is approaching when We will have rolled up the world and all that is therein, and spread out a new Order in its stead. He, verily, is powerful over all things.” “The world’s equilibrium,” He explains, “hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this Most Great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System, the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.” “The signs of impending convulsions and chaos,” He warns the peoples of the world, “can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing Order appeareth to be lamentably defective.”
(from http://www.iranian.com/main/node/79130 First In Depth BBC Persian Interview with Baha'i International Community's Spokesman)

(Some things cannot be commented in a brief, fifteen second soundbite. This is a long post. Bear with me.)


These quotes, so well-knit in the text of the interview of Bahá'í spokesman Farhad Sabetan (many blessings for himself and his family), drive home the Blessed Beauty's Glad Tidings, which had been promised centuries before in previous divine dispensations. It has to do with our reality. What we are and what we are destined to be.


We are not merely figments of our own imagination, as modern psychologists, philosophers, and marketing-specialists would have us believe. We are much more. And when we align ourselves with the true order, the natural and spiritual order of things, then we give way to a whole new level of existence. 


I imagiine that it must be like the layers of a computer. The hardware works at a basic level transferring electrical impulses in certain logical sequences, which we have discovered, make it possible to create layers of information which then enable us to represent text, images, video, and sound. It would seem that the computer is merely a bunch of circuits and condensers, and stuff... but in fact, once the software is up and running, the computer is so much more. 
 So it must be with our spiritual selves. The mind gives the base, but there is so much more to us than our basic mental faculties. The superior faculties, that give rise to genius and creativity, morality and spirituality! And then when these are aligned, ordered and structured in the light of our Creator's intention for us, the results are much more than we can conceive!

A case in point. An early believer and martyr, Ashraf, was born during the siege of the fort of Sanjan. Later on, as a young man, he was martyred and beheaded. His head was callously thrown through the window of his mother's home. She instantly flung it back saying, "What we have given to God, we do not accept back."
Now, who could reach that level of understanding?
 This mother could see that her son's body, the temporal vessel that bears us in our journey through this world, had served its use, but in no way severed the real link between her and her child. And that his soul's severance from the body only served to bring him closer to his Creator.
 More than that, she had seen him the way Abraham saw his own son, as the ultimate sacrifice a parent can make. Because a parent is willing to sacrifice him or herself without hesitating for their children. But she had seen her son's martyrdom as a sacrifice... in its ultimate, and truest form; and refused to see it any other way. And she elevated the exchange with the throng, to its highest expression. Where the bloodthirsty crowd sent her a base, morbid message of hate, she responded with wisdom and courage.

That is a whole other level of vision.

 

Stars in the heaven of understanding

"O friends! Be not careless of the virtues with which ye have been endowed, neither be neglectful of your high destiny. Suffer not your labors to be wasted through the vain imaginations which certain hearts have devised. Ye are the stars of the heaven of understanding, the breeze that stirreth at the break of day, the soft-flowing waters upon which must depend the very life of all men, the letters inscribed upon His sacred scroll. With the utmost unity, and in a spirit of perfect fellowship, exert yourselves, that ye may be enabled to achieve that which beseemeth this Day of God." (Bahá'u'lláh--Gleanings page 90)

Image at www.commons.wikimedia.org by Vincent Van Gogh Starry Night Over the Rhone, painted in September 1888 at Arles. Oil on canvas 72.5 × 92 cm (28.53 × 36.21 in) Musée d'Orsay

My mother used to sing part of this quote. I can still hear her beautiful, clear voice ringing in my ears. I wish I had a recording I could share here. I had not read the quote in its entirety for a long while though. It is interesting to note that it is a call to action, and to continue action in the face of criticism or derision. Who was this quote originally addressed to? What could have been the "...vain imaginations that which certain hearts have devised...?" Anyway, in a broader sense it is addressed to us all, and we have all faced criticism, scorn and lack of understanding at some point or another. This leads back to the quote on "faithfulness" from a few days ago, and the need to continue in what we know is right, and this lends a special energy to what we do, that is beyond what we can produce ourselves.

When I think of stars, I think of a quiet night, over the pond, sitting and gazing up at the starry sky. I usually think of stars as something static, quiet. But far from it, they are in constant movement, and generating great amounts of energy! Gaby was telling me the other day that in Stephen Hawking's book on the Universe it talks about how the actual light that we see from the starts has been traveling immense distances. Some distances are so great that although we may see them, those stars may not actually be there anymore, however, their energy is still reaching us.

Is it, then, that the things we do, the movements we make, the energy we expend... all continues to travel, touching the lives of others, even after we are gone? Gee, that makes me want to make sure every action counts!

Stars

 This post is dedicated to Gaby, who started it.

"...when the hour draweth nigh on which the Day-star of the heaven of justice shall be made manifest, and the Ark of divine guidance shall sail upon the sea of glory, a star will appear in the heaven, heralding unto its people the advent of that most great light. In like manner, in the invisible heaven a star shall be made manifest who, unto the peoples of the earth, shall act as a harbinger of the break of that true and exalted Morn. These twofold signs, in the visible and the invisible heaven, have announced the Revelation of each of the Prophets of God, as is commonly believed."(Bahá'u'lláh, The Kitáb-i-Iqán, pages 20 to 22 for full text)





So, the Blessed Beauty confirms that when a Manifestation appears, so does a star in the physical heaven. This peaked my curiosity to find out if there was a record of which star may have been discovered around the time of the Twin Manifestations and I found the following:


     "As astronomers further refined their measurement techniques, they made other discoveries. Between the years 1834 and 1844, Bessel* performed observations of the bright, nearby star "Sirius", also known as the "Dog Star" because it is found in the constellation "Canis Major (Big Dog)". Bessel found that its motion through the sky undulated, as if it were a binary in orbit around another star. However, no other star was visible.
      Bessel speculated that the other star was a "hidden companion" that was invisible using the telescopic technology available to him. This speculation inspired other astronomers to search for the hidden companion of Sirius. In 1862, the American astronomer Alvan Graham Clark (1832:1897) was testing a new telescope when he discovered the hidden companion as a tiny, faint star. The companion became known as "Sirius B", or just the "Pup", while the Dog Star itself became technically known as "Sirius A". 

Text quoted from an article at www.vectorsite.net called "The Discovery of Stars," v3.0.1 / chapter 1 of 10 / 01 feb 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) was a German mathematitian, and astronomer. (from wikipedia.org) 

Isn't that amazing! A twin star system was discovered around 1844!

"Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky with a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The name Sirius is derived from the Ancient Greek Σείριος. The star has the Bayer designation α Canis Majoris (α CMa, or Alpha Canis Majoris). What the naked eye perceives as a single star is actually a binary star system, consisting of a white main sequence star of spectral type A1V, termed Sirius A, and a faint white dwarf companion of spectral type DA2, termed Sirius B."


Image from www.atlantis-motherland.com

Text from the article at www.wikipedia.org

Satisfaction

"Say, God sufficeth all things above all things, and nothing in the heavens or the earth or whatever lieth between them but God, thy Lord, sufficeth."

Satisfaction has to do with needs, perceived or real. These days advertising is in charge of convincing us that we have needs. Advertising is a relentless, nagging element, that almost seems ubiquitous, until we look inside. Inside myself there is no advertising. There I can come in touch with my real needs.

Gaby and I have a policy of not looking at billboards anymore. We just don't look at them, don't comment them. They aren't part of the landscape. It's kind of like having the AdBlock activated in your web-browser. Just a blank space.

Actually, in my mind, the billboard isn't there either,
just the air, the sky,... which are very satisfying in themselves!