SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty-nine

31 March

C S Lewis is a joy to read.

M

A FINAL WORD FROM ASLAN

"Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there.  That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters”.

(The Silver Chair. Chapter 2)

C S Lewis

SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty-eight

Emerson came to me through another student who loved him and carried a book of his writings most of the time and was eager to read and share Emerson at every opportunity.  I grew to appreciate Emerson through this gift. 


M.K.

“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”

“Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old”.

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself”.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty-seven

This Helicoidal Stairway is in the Vatican Museum and was designed by Michelangelo.

I discovered Rainer Maria Rilke about 15 year ago through his book “Letters to a Young Poet”.   It became my bible and often is still found in my handbag.  Whatever is happening in life, it seems one of these letters gives the perfect inspiration, comfort or wisdom.  Beneath the words beats the wonderful pulse of Rilke’s being.

M

Rome, October 29 1903

“………………………….Waters infinitely full of life move along the ancient aqueducts into the great city and dance in the many city squares over white basins of stone and spread out in large, spacious pools and murmur by day and lift up their murmuring to the night, which is vast here and starry and soft with winds.  And there are gardens here, unforgettable boulevards, and staircases designed by Michelangelo, staircases constructed on the pattern of downward gliding waters and, as they descend, widely giving birth to step out of step as if it were wave out of wave.  Through such impressions one gathers oneself, wins oneself back from the exacting multiplicity, which speaks and chatters there and one slowly learns to recognize the very few Things in which something eternal endures that one can love and something solitary that one can gently take part in”.

Rainer Maria Rilke

academyofeuropeanarts.com 

SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty-six

Dear Friends of the Soul,

It is such a pleasure to share with you some words from close companions who have guided, comforted and inspired and indeed continue to do so. Some years ago I carried this quote with me for many weeks and it was interesting to see how this related to life when one puts the effort to be present as the first priority. 

Marie x

Love Nothing

But that which comes to you

Woven in the pattern of your destiny.

For what could more aptly fit your needs.

~ Marcus Aurelius

SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty-five

Beloved Soul:

About Love, Shakespeare's Love Sonnet 116 sings that “Love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds ... it is an ever-fixed mark
that looks on tempests and is never shaken.”

D H Lawrence’s Women In Love hints:

“How can I say that I love you when I have ceased to be; you have ceased to be.

We are both caught up, and transcended into a new oneness where everything is

silent because there is nothing to answer, all is perfect and at one.

Speech travels between the separate parts but in the perfect one there is perfect

silence of bliss.” 

MERVYN BRADY shows us and advises us:

Love each other as I have loved you. Love is a state.

Stay there whatever the friction.  

Whatever the friction, Beloved Soul, stay there.

Wishing you Grace,

N

academyofeuropeanarts.com 

SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty-four

Beloved Soul:

We can so easily get lost in words. So easily!

But words can launch and rocket us off into SPACE, still grounded.

Our friend Walt Whitman, a man of words, here tells us to watch.

Wish you Grace,

N

WALT WHITMAN

When I heard the learn’d astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in

the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty-three

Rembrandt: The Risen Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene

Beloved Soul:

William Blake is a good old friend whom I did not know
was speaking to me until another good friend, 
Mervyn Brady, pointed him out to me, and I began to 
hear him and feel his friendship, and kinship, with me.
Please allow this good old friend to feed you 
a two-course breakfast, an appetizer and a main course 
if you will, or a main course and desert. Remember: 
The word, orange, is not orange; 
the word is not the thing actually.

Wishing you Grace,

N 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

William Blake (1757-1827):

A truth that's told with bad intent

Beats all the lies you can invent

It is right it should be so.
Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Through the World we safely go,
Joy and Woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul divine,
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Men are admitted to heaven,

not because they have curbed and govern their passions.

The treasures of heaven are not negations of passions,

but realities of intellect from which the passions emanate

uncurbed in their eternal glory.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

academyofeuropeanarts.com

SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty-two

Beloved Soul: A lovely poem that you can resonate to is good breakfast. Here is one from Rumi. Relax and allow this friend to help; it is his joy. Wishing you Grace, N The Call Of Love by Rumi At every instant and from every side,  resounds the call of Love:  We are going to the sky,  who wants to come with us?  We have gone to heaven,  we have been the friends of the angels,  And now we will go back there,  for there is our country.  We are higher than heaven,  more noble than the angels:  Why not go beyond them?  Our goal is the Supreme Majesty.   What has the fine pearl to do  with the world of dust?  Why have you come down here?  Take your baggage back.  What is this place?  Luck is with us, to us is the sacrifice!...  Like the birds of the sea,  men come from the ocean-- the ocean of the soul.  Like the birds of the sea,  men come from the ocean-- the ocean of the soul.  How could this bird,  born from that sea,  make his dwelling here?  No, we are the pearls  from the bosom of the sea,  it is there that we dwell:  Otherwise how could the wave succeed  to the wave that comes from the soul?   The wave named 'Am I not your Lord' has come,  it has broken the vessel of the body;  And when the vessel is broken,  the vision comes back,  and the union with Him.  academyofeuropeanarts.com

SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty-one

Beloved Soul:

There is no was. There is no was. This friend speaks in the present,

to us, about I am. About I am, there is no was. 

Wishing you grace,

N 

I am the bread of life (John 6:35)

I am the Light of the world (John 8:12)

I am the gate (John 10:9)

I am the good shepherd (John 10:11)

I am the resurrection and the life (John 11:25)

I am the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6)

I am the true Vine (John 15:1)

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered,

“before Abraham was born, I am.”

academyofeuropeanarts.com 

SOULS' BREAKFAST - Day Forty

Beloved Soul: You may pause here in thankfulness.  Together you and I can feel thankful for friendship,  going very far back across worlds  and still going forward.  Thanks for all those before us, thanks for older students,  thanks for younger students, thanks for new students.  Each one counts in this work.  A BIG one to Mervyn Brady. He said: If you feed,  you have got to eliminate to stay healthy and grow.  Like Shakespeare! Wishing you Grace, N "Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, ’t were all alike As if we had them not."  ~ SHAKESPEARE academyofeuropeanarts.com