There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.

We are lutes, no more, no less. If the sound box 
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean 
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.

The fog clears, and new energy makes you 
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.

When you’re full of food and drink, Satan sits 
where your spirit should,
an ugly metal statue 
in place of the Kaaba.
When you fast,
 good habits gather like friends who want to help.

Fasting is Solomon’s ring.
Don’t give it 
to some illusion and lose your power,
 but even if you have, if you’ve lost all will and control, 
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing 
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.

A table descends to your tents, 
Jesus’ table. 

Expect to see it, when you fast, this table 
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

 -Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207-1273)

"It's like this my friend -
If nothing that you didn't want
Should ever fall upon you,
It would be impossible
For what you want to manifest.
When the wise have finished,
Everything they didn't want
Becomes the source of all they want;
So take it on, with pleasure!"

 -Walking Through Fire, Jamyang Shepay Dorje 1648- 1721

'It is this beggar's play, his lila, not work.' 'When there is activity which is motivated by self-interest and ends with pleasure or pain, we may call it work.  It requires exertion.  But when we live outside the reach of pleasure or pain, a realized man is untouched by these.  Our activities are effortless.  Our work is really our play.'

-Yogi Ramsuratkumar 

The Work wants your life--but only when you are in a love affair with life itself, only when you are bright, strong, confident, capable, in short: ALIVE.  the Work does not want some kind of dull, dispassionate, struggling, agonizing humanoid.  To give your life to the Work is to give breath and activity to the Work everyday; to give passion to the Work everyday. You have to have a childlike, eternal beginner's mind, a belief in miracles, like, 'Any day anything can happen!'

It is the nature of this Work that a revelation, a breakthrough, could happen at any time, and has many times!  But, how easily we forget.

-Lee Lozowick - The ALCHEMY of love and sex.

The problem with you is not that you have desires but that you desire so little. Why not desire it all? Why not want complete fulfillment joy and freedom?

-Sri Nisargadatta

Both good (shreya) and pleasant (preya) present themselves to a man. The calm soul examines them well and discriminates. He prefers the good (shreya) to the pleasant (preya); but the fool chooses the pleasant (preya) out of greed and avarice.

-Katha Upanishad - 1.2.2

Man has little needs and deeper needs. We fall into the mistake of living from our little needs till we have almost lost our deeper needs in a sort of madness. Let us prepare now for the death of our present little life and reemergence in a bigger life in touch with the moving cosmos.

-D.H. Lawrence – Lady Chatterly's Lovers