You are the Tree of Life

You are the tree of Life. Beware of fractioning yourselves. Never set fruit against fruit, a leaf against a leaf, or a bough against a bough, the stem against the roots, or the tree against the mother - the soil. But that is what you do when you love one part more than the rest, or worse yet, to the exclusion of the rest.

You are the Tree of Life. Your roots are everywhere. Your boughs and leaves are everywhere. Your fruits are in every mouth. Whatever the fruits on that tree may be … whatever its boughs and leaves may be … whatever the roots may be … they are your fruits; they are your leaves and boughs; they are your roots.

If you want the tree to bear sweet and fragrant fruit, and if you want it to be strong and green, pay attention to the resin – the life-blood of the tree. Love is the resin of Life. Love is the blood that must circulate unhindered in the veins. If you repress the blood, it becomes a plague. Hate is Love repressed or Love withheld. […]

You do not know the Joy of Love if there is any hatred in your hearts. That which you hate is bound up inseparably with that which you love, like the head and tail of the same coin. If you are truly honest with yourself, then you must Love what you hate and what hates you before you can Love what you love and what loves you.

Love is not a virtue … it's a neccessity of greater importance than bread and water, and more important than even light or air. Let no-one have pride in their loving. Inhale and exhale Love just as unconsciously as you breathe in and breathe out air. Love needs no-one to exalt it. Love will only exalt the heart that it finds worthy of itself. Don't seek out rewards for Love. Love is rewarded sufficiently with Love, just as hate is a sufficient punishment for hatred. Love accounts to no-one but itself. Love neither lends nor borrows; Love doesn't buy or sell.

But when Love gives, it gives all; when it takes, it takes all. Its very taking is giving. Its very giving is taking. Therefore is it the same to-day, to-morrow and forevermore.

–Mikhail Naimy, From “Book of Mirdad”

Good Music: The Polyphonic Spree

"I'm projecting and reflecting a desire for you to come into my life..."

Isn't that a glorious lyric?

The Polyphonic Spree just released their new album, The Fragile Army. It's positively wonderful. I love their positivity and their tremendous symphonic sound. They're sound is so big it fills me up in a way I can't describe. It's soul music. I get goosebumps and/or tears sometimes, especially if I can listen to them on a loud stereo system or when I watch them performing live. You can see that these are people living their bliss, tuned into their Divine expression, and I think it's so overwhelming to me because there are so many of them expressing their Godness at once.

I love that even though this album is a response to the era of war that we are living in, it's still so lovely to listen to. It's not preachy. It's a little darker than their previous albums, but still witty and extremely joyful.

This link is the first video from the album for the song Running Away. The video is made up of 70,000 still images--it's pretty amazing.

Most people know The Polyphonic Spree by their song "Light and Day" which was featured both in the show Scrubs and the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (one of my favorite movies of all time!). Here is a video of a live performance of that song (so you can see their blissful performing). It's very sad that so many commenters on their videos think that people have to be on drugs to be so joyful.

What Blessing Means

"To bless means to wish, unconditionally and from the deepest chamber of your heart, unrestricted good for others and events; it means to hallow, to hold in reverence [...] To bless is to invoke divine care upon, to speak or think gratefully for, to confer happiness upon, although we ourselves are never the bestower, but simply the joyful witnesses of life's abundance.

To bless all without distinction is the ultimate form of giving, because those you bless will never know from whence came the sudden ray that burst through the clouds of their skies, and you will rarely be a witness to the sunlight in their lives." Pierre Pradervand, from "The Gentle Art of Blessing"