Spiritual Spice is designed to help you "wear the world like a loose robe." Spiritual Spice is not affiliated with any particular religion, so people from all faiths, or no faith, can feel at home.

The truth is timeless and universal; these blogs and podcasts can be enjoyed over and over. As you change -- they change.

Speaking of timeless, it is Spiritual Spice's pleasure to offer four spiritual classics for sale. Each of these books has stood the test of time, and are as relevant and inspirational today, as when they were first published.

Each of these editions is a pocket-sized labor of love. They are not merely reprints, but the result of many hours of editing grammar, spelling, format, and content.

These books were designed to ensure that "value over cost" was built into each one. Each book can be profitably read many times -- for a lifetime, in fact.

You can find out more about them by clicking here: Spiritual Spice Books 

Namaste,  Jim O'Neill 

His favorite occupation seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds. It was evident that these things gave him a pleasure far beyond what they give to ordinary people.

Until I knew the man it had not occurred to me that anyone could derive so much absolute happiness from these things as he did. He was very fond of flowers, either wild or cultivated; liked all sorts. I think he admired lilacs and sunflowers just as much as roses. Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few.

All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. All sights and sounds seemed to please him. He appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men, women, and children he saw...each who knew him felt that he liked him or her, and that he liked others too.

I never knew him to argue or dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke harshly of himself or his writings.

When I first knew [him], I used to think that he watched himself, and would not allow his tongue to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy, complaint, and remonstrance. It did not occur to me as possible that these mental states could be absent in him. After long observation, however, I satisfied myself that such absence or unconsciousness was entirely real.

He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in the world's history, or against any trades or occupations, -- against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death.

He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently never was angry.

He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it.

Written by Dr. Richard Bucke regarding his friend and mentor, Walt Whitman. (Dr. Bucke coined the term "cosmic consciousness.")  The above quote and a description of Dr. Bucke's spiritual awakening can be found in The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

Energy is eternal delight.

William Blake (1757-1827)

In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

Terry Pratchett

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

 Steven Wright

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In a little while from Now
If I'm not feeling any less dour
I've promised my self to seek some help
And visit a nearby flower
I'll contemplate it's heart
Of felicity as art
'Til reality
Is so clear to me
My egoic shell is shattered
i'll meld into it All
Heed a call that Life is making
No fear or rage or temporal cage
No doubt -- it's bliss awaking
In no-time i'll be Now
This bloom'll show me how
i'm home again, naturally

It seems to me the heartaches of this world
Are meant to shake us
Free of dreaming
The ego's scheming
Burn up the dross
Burn up the dross

Felicity n. Great happiness; blessedness; blissfulness; great joy.
Temporal adj. 1.Of or limited by time. 2. Worldly.
Dross n. 1. A waste product formed on the surface of molten metal. 2. Worthless or trivial matter.

 Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

[You have] become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don't know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label.

Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it and let it be without imposing a word or mental label on it....

The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you. In this way, cleverness may be gained, but wisdom is lost, and so are joy, love, creativity, and aliveness.

Of course we need to use words and thoughts. They have their own beauty -- but do we need to become imprisoned in them?

Eckhart Tolle

Let the soul banish all that disturbs.
Let the body that envelopes it be still.
And all the frettings of the body, and all that surrounds it.
Let earth and sea and air be still, and heaven itself.
And then let the body think of the Spirit as streaming, pouring,
rushing and shining into it from all sides while it stands quiet.

Plotinus (205-270 CE)

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past.
But an eternal Now does always last.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)

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from In My Own Way by Alan Watts (1915-1973)

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a great Discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings--even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed--assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

"In some future time, there will be a continent called America. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form, to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger, and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."

And he showed himself in his true form of

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances, cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display--indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great Earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;

Wrathful but Calm, Austere but Comic, Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him,

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.

The above is an abridged version of the Smokey the Bear Sutra. To read the full text click here -->Smokey the Bear Sutra

Vajra - thunderbolt, or diamond. Strong determination or willpower -- adamantine hardness.
Purity, clarity, clear insight and strength. Invincible, indestructible.

Mudra - A symbolic hand gesture -- paw gesture in this case.

Dharma - Broadly defined as the way of righteousness or "that which holds one's true nature." The fulfillment of an inherent nature or destiny.

Kali Yuga - An era or age of the world of which there are four: Satya Yuga, (the golden age); Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga, and finally Kali Yuga, (the dark age -- which we are currently muddling our way through). The Yuga's repeat themselves in an endless cycle. Some people believe that the Kali Yuga will continue for many more years; others believe we are in the process of leaving the Kali Yuga, and entering the Dwapara Yuga (a much more benign era or age).
Regardless, as Ramana Maharishi (1879-1950) said, "A wise person lives in Satya Yuga all of the time." In other words -- any Yuga can be a "golden age" for you.

Gary Snyder's book Turtle Island won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Pine Tree Tops

In the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
The creak of boots.
Rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.

Everybody Lying on Their Stomachs, Head Toward the Candle,
Reading, Sleeping, Drawing

The corrugated roof
Booms and fades night-long to

million darted rain
squalls and

outside

lightning

Photographs in the brain
Wind-bent bamboo
through

The plank shutter
set

Half-open on eternity

Regarding Wave

The voice of the Dharma
the voice
now

A shimmering bell
through all.

Every hill, still
Every tree alive. Every leaf.
All the slopes flow.
old woods, new seedlings,
tall grasses plumes.

Dark hollows; peaks of light.
wind stirs the cool side
Each leaf living.
All the hills.

The Voice
is a wife to

him still

______________

om ah aum

To find out more about Gary Snyder click Wikpedia.org/wiki/Gary_Snyder

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From outward things, whate'er you may believe.

There is an inmost center in us all,

Where truth abides in fullness; and around,

Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,

This perfect, clear perception which is truth.

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh

Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,

Rather consists in opening out a way

Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,

Than in effecting an entry for a light

Supposed to be without.

Robert Browning (1812-1889) from Paracelsus

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Robert Browning's pet name for his wife Elizabeth was "My Portuguese." This was due to her "mediterranean" complexion, which was darker than usually seen in England in those days.

Hence the title of her most famous book -- Sonnets From the Portuguese. The above poem is from that book.

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The oak sleeps in the acorn;
the bird waits in the egg;
and in the highest vision of the soul
a waking angel stirs.

James Allen (1864-1912)

The root of a bulb which shall produce a white lily is an unsightly thing; one might look upon it with disgust. But how foolish we should be to condemn the bulb for its appearance when we know the lily is within it.

The root is perfect after its kind; it is a perfect but incomplete lily, and so we must learn to look upon every man and woman, no matter how unlovely in outward manifestation; they are perfect in their stage of being and they are becoming complete. Behold, it is all very goodâ.

It will make an immense difference with your faith and spirit whether you look upon civilization as a good thing which is becoming better or as a bad and evil thing which is decaying.

One viewpoint gives you an advancing and expanding mind and the other gives you a descending and decreasing mind. One viewpoint will make you grow greater and the other will inevitably cause you to grow smaller.

One will enable you to work for the eternal things; to do large works in a great way toward the completing of all that is incomplete and inharmonious; and the other will make you a mere patchwork reformer working without hope to save a few lost souls from what you will grow to consider a lost and doomed world.

So you see it makes a difference to you, this matter of social viewpoint. âAll's right with the world. Nothing can possibly be wrong but my personal attitude, and I will see the facts of nature and all events, circumstances and conditions of society, politics, government, and industry from the highest viewpoint; it is all perfect, though incomplete. It is all the handiwork of God; behold, it is all very good.

James Allen (1864-1912)

What you think upon grows. This is an Eastern maxim, and it sums up neatly the greatest and most fundamental of all the Laws of Mind. What you think upon grows.

What you think upon grows. Whatever you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your life. Whether the subject of your thoughts be good or bad, the law works and the condition grows.

The more you think about lack, bad times, etc., the worse will your business be; and the more you think of prosperity, abundance, and success, the more of these things will you bring into your life. The more you think about your grievances or the injustices that you have suffered, the more such trials will you continue to receive; and the more you think of the good fortune you have had, the more good fortune will come to you.

This is the basic, fundamental, all-inclusive Law of Mind, and actually all psychological and metaphysical teaching is little more than a commentary upon this. What you think upon grows. (see Phillippians 4:8)

Emmet Fox (1886-1951)

To download a free copy of Naughty Hula Eyes and other songs, go to -->PublicDomain4U.com

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Practicing the Presence is...

The pure loving gaze that finds God everywhere.

Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (1605-1691)

Finding God in all things.

Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)

Seeing through exterior things, and seeing God in them.

Thomas Merton (1916-1968)

Looking deeply at life
as it is
in the here and now.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Awareness
absorbed and amazed.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Seeing God in everything and everything in God
with complete extraordinary clearness.

Marie of the Incarnation (1599-1672)

Be still.
Look.
Listen.
Be present.
Say or think "I AM" and add nothing to it.

Eckhart Tolle

Audio

The eyes of my soul were opened, and I discerned the fullness of God, in which I understood the whole world, here and beyond the sea...everything.
My soul was brimming over with wonder and cried in a loud voice "The whole world is full of God!"

Angela of Foligno (1248-1309)

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place,
and I did not know it. ...How awesome is this place!"

Genesis 28:16,17

What do we learn from Jacob's experience? Our material lives...are linear, chronological, sensible. But there exists another level, a level in which there is no before and after, only the eternal present...Now. And we are able to experience an indelible moment. God was in this place and we did not know it!

Rabbi Mark H. Levin

To find out more about the monks of Abbe En Calcat and other Gregorian chanters
-- including chants by nuns -- click here -->DoveSong.com

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