The following are some of my favorite poems and passages. They are in no particular order.

Fields - Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
does not make any sense.

Tilicho Lake - David Whyte

Forget Safety by Rumi

Conventional knowledge is death
to our souls, and it is not really ours.

We must become ignorant
of what we've been taught,
and be, instead, bewildered.

Run from what's profitable and comfortable.
If you drink those liqueurs, you'll
spill the springwater of your real life.

Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

I have tried prudent planning
long enough. From now on,
I'll be mad.

The Question by Rumi

One dervish to another, What was your vision of God's presence?
I haven't seen anything.
But for the sake of conversation, I'll tell you a story.

God's presence is there in front of me, a fire on the left,
a lovely stream on the right.

One group walks toward the fire, into the fire, another
toward the sweet flowing water.

No one knows which are blessed and which not.

Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly in the stream.

A head goes under on the water surface, that head
pokes out of the fire.

Most people guard against going into the fire,
and so end up in it.

Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion
are cheated with this reversal.

The trickery goes further.

The voice of the fire tells the truth, saying I am not fire.
I am fountainhead. Come into me and don't mind the sparks.

If you are a friend of God, fire is your water.

You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets of mothwings,
so you could burn them away, one set a night.

The moth sees light and goes into fire. You should see fire
and go toward light. Fire is what of God is world-consuming.

Water, world-protecting.

Somehow each gives the appearance of the other. To these eyes
you have now what looks like water burns. What looks like
fire is a great relief to be inside.

Solomon to Sheba by Rumi

Solomon says to the messengers from Sheba, I send you back as messengers to her.

Tell her this refusal of her gift of gold is better than acceptance,
because with it she can learn what we value.

She loves her throne, but actually it keeps her from passing through the doorway that leads to a true majesty.

Tell her, one surrendering bow is sweeter than a hundred empires, is itself a kingdom.

Be dizzy and wandering like Ibrahim, who suddenly left everything.

In a narrow well things look backward from how they are.
Stones and metal objects seem treasure, as broken pottery does to
children pretending to buy and sell.

Tell her, Joseph sat in such a well, then reached to take the rope that rose
to a new understanding.

The alchemy of a changing life is the only truth.

Enigmas by Pablo Neruda

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

The Opening of Eyes by David Whyte

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
The passing light over the water
And I heard the voice of the world speak out
I knew then as I have before
Life is no passing memory of what has been
Nor the remaining pages of a great book
Waiting to be read

It is the opening of eyes long closed
It is the vision of far off things
Seen for the silence they hold
It is the heart after years of secret conversing
Speaking out loud in the clear air

It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees
Before the lit bush
It is the man throwing away his shoes
As if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished
Opened at last
Fallen in love
With Solid Ground

e.e. cummings

may my heart always be open

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

Escape By D. H. Lawrence

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

Two Wolves

An old Cherokee chief is teaching his grandson about life:

  A fight is going on inside me, he said to the boy. It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

  One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.

  The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

  This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too.

  The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, Which wolf will win?

  The old chief simply replied, The one you feed.

Go through the ear to the center
where sky is, where wind,
where silent knowing.

--Rumi

Put seeds and cover them
Blades will sprout
where you do your work.
--Rumi

From The Velveteen Rabbit
by Margery Williams

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer,
it sings because it has a song.
~ Maya Angelou

Keep the company of those who seek the truth,
and run from those who have found it.
~ Vaclav Havel

Trust those who seek the truth.
Beware of those who have found it.
~ Andre Gide

Grant me the company of those who seek the truth.
And God deliver me from those who have found it.
~ Isaac Newton

Some quotes by Rumi:

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.

If
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
and treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and -toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breath a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

-- George Orwell

There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.

-- Bob Dylan from All Along the Watchtower

Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.

-- William Shakespeare

I may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

Walt Whitman

The Way It Is
by William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow.
It goes among things that change.
But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

- Unknown Inuit