Poetry Chaikhana Sacred Poetry from Around the World

Secular or Eclectic Yoga / Hindu : Advaita / Non-Dualist Contemporary	About Ivan M. Granger Timeline (1969 - )
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Original Language English	Drink Up!
Commentary by Ivan M. Granger Themes   Garden   Sound   Wine	I can tell you how to clear your palette, but to what purpose when you will not raise the cup? The only way to taste the wine is to      Drink —      Drink up! Enough garden parties with waiters generously tipped, the wine highly praised but hardly sipped. My advice: Join the call, ringing down the darkened hall —      Drink, friend,      Drink up!   2002
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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

I can tell you
How to clear your palette,
But to what purpose
When you will not raise
The cup?

Everyone wants to know: How should I pray? How should I meditate? What should my mind focus on? What is my mantra? What should I eat? Should I fast? Give me a formula, a technique, a practice to follow.

Many spiritual practices are given in the various world traditions. And these spiritual practices can genuinely prepare the body — physical and subtle — for higher states. This is cleansing the palette.

But, while these spiritual practices are valuable purifying aids, what good are they if you do not taste the wine of Divine bliss? The chalice within must be recognized. This is done by raising the spiritual energy, the kundalini shakti. This is raising the cup.


The only way
To taste the wine
Is to
Drink —
Drink up!

Yet don't fool yourself and think that endless practice is necessary to discover this wine and taste it. The wine of God, the Golden Ocean, is all around you — right now. The wine of God is in you. It is you! It is your Self.

This wine is not something to be attained through effort. It is with you right now. All you have to do is cease your distractions and taste it.

Spiritual aspirants practice and practice, and do not taste bliss. Too often it is simply because they have not thought to drink the bliss already pooled within themselves.


Enough garden parties
With waiters generously tipped,
The wine highly praised
But hardly sipped.

Enough of the intellectual activity that keeps you distant from your goal, though you think you've understood. Too much attention has already been paid to priests and pundits, people who often mean well, but who don't really possess what they try to offer others.

Reading holy scriptures and discussing the lives of saints can be valuable to focus the mind and connect you with your tradition and with other people walking a similar path. But never be satisfied with that alone. It is the Divine wine you seek, and that is often found in solitude.

Don't talk about wine, don't theorize about its flavor, drink it and find out for yourself.


My advice:
Join the call,
Ringing down the darkened hall —
Drink, friend,
Drink up!

There is a "call," a soft sound that rings in your consciousness. This sound is most easily heard in silence, when the attention is turned inward and the body is still — the darkened hall. Hearing this beautiful sound is the first step, but don't just notice it and forget about it; join it. Merge with the sound. Let your awareness dissolve into it.

As you do this, you will notice that it joyously invites you to drink deeply of the wine of Self, forgetting everything else. Drinking, you find that the kundalini shakti in the seat has climbed to the crown — bottoms up!

Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2008 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.