Malas

Malas.

Interconnected strands of thought. Possibly indicating a direction…part of the tittle of a book. There are things--certain ideas--that we return to again and again. Not because there is something we yet need to learn from them, but because of the feeling of something true evoked by our encounter with them. They are like good friends; as easy to slip into as old and shapeless sweaters.

Such things as we return to…they are ever fresh, ever new, ever applicable, ever refreshing and ever so deeply comforting no matter how familiar we are with them. Prophets, sages, mystics, visionaries, avatars, anointed ones, dreamers, poets, shamans. All have expressed these same ideas in countless variations. And we cannot get enough of them. How very much like these spiritual treasures, are the intimate familiarities and the sameness of our lives.

They speak of our truth. They speak with muted eloquence and understatement of that which is timeless precisely because it is renewed each moment. Not to write of the snow as it is falling. Rather, to write the falling snow. This cannot be done, and yet, only a life lived beyond the possible is truly lived We are so accustomed to the immediacy of our senses that we forget the wellspring of true contentment--namely, the refinement of a nervous system calibrated to appreciate nuance. Subtlety is the soil within which contentment finds the room to grow. Receptivity is its food.