In God’s House

The title of this blog post is taken from a really great song by Bat for Lashes - 1000% recommend you should check it out. I want to quote Hafiz. Hafiz says

“We can come to God,

Dressed for Dancing,

Or

Be carried on a stretcher

To God’s Ward.”

This hits way too hard 

Firstly I am a dancer. And there’s nowhere I like to dress up more than on the dancefloor. What I wear when I dance influences how I dance and I am always on the lookout for new outfits

Secondly I have been on a lot of stretchers

So the second part hits deep

Rupert Spira once said in a meditation room I was in: everything is happening to draw us in.

The good stuff and the bad staff. When I have a seizure and the paramedics misunderstand it and I am left crying by the side of a road - it opens my heart and I have to try and look inside and understand myself and therefore God deeper

But when I get an amazing new job offer - something which has happened to me a LOT recently - and something which I seem to be surprisingly good at - it draws me into God even more. I mean above all I want to say - the theme of “I am always I” continues. I made a beautiful gesture and donated something and I felt like a fluttering angel. A glittering angel. Then I collapsed two hours later - maybe less - and was treated like a problem and a burden etc. One hour apart really. How can the same person have the same experience like that an hour apart? But I am always I

Whether I am a glittering angel or crying on the floor

I am always I

“Everything changes 

So what can I be? 

I cannot be anything

But I am always me.”

So it’s all happening to pull us in.

If we focus on the positives? Will we get more of the positives pulling us in? Or is it best to just choose to turn to God anyway? I have been long since trying to turn to God. And give it all up. Give up my attachments to my job and my status and my family and my seizures. It all has to go. It doesn’t mean we lose it all. It means we give it all up and give it all back to God

“Turn towards me and I will take you into myself” - as Rupert Spira always says 

The Whitworth Gallery in Manchester 

Rupert Spira has one more great quote about the Self. I mean he has countless. But here’s one I love 

Well I’m going to copy the whole snippet although the poem “Lockdown Nights in Oxford” which is so so amazing and so so powerful is much longer

“

I leaned with Primo Levi against a wall
Watching friends and lovers and strangers
‘Each of us’, he said ‘bears the imprint
Of a friend met along the way;
In each the trace of each’

Yeats joined us
‘There are no strangers here’, he said
‘Only friends we haven’t yet met’

And Rembrandt agreed
‘If you look at anyone for long enough’, he said
They will eventually become your friend’

“

But it’s especially the line

“If you look at anyone for long enough,” he said

They will eventually become your friend.”

That really gets to me. Because this is so true. Think of the most annoying person in your life. Somebody really loves them

Somebody really loves them like you love your most loved person.

The seemingly most unpleasant people are dearly beloved. So straight away they cannot be the problem.

I have met countless people who I thought were mean and annoying who turned out to be my best friends. You don’t have to like everyone

But you do have to love everyone. As yourself

Because they are your very own self

Anyway

I have a blog post on the body to read. Quite. Fitting. I have been a naughty girl and I have been neglecting to read my Ramana Maharshi. All in good time. I forget about themes and then they come up again. Time and time again. 

God gives us what we need to grow. Time and time again

And all I can do is keep on saying “I am”. But for now I am in God’s house. One of the most beautiful galleries in the world

And while my trip up north has been a rocky one I feel closer to God than ever before

Thank you