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A bower, filled with flowering trees, offers privacy, secrecy, a place for lovers to meet. Like a garden, a bower is a place where things grow, a place of life. It is the opposite of death, which is the state of nonspirituality. The trees of the bower are rooted in the earth, yet they reach upward toward the sky. What grows in our spiritual bower feeds us through its "fruitfulness" and brings beauty, the awareness of harmony to our consciousness. The flowers represent the spiritual qualities that have opened within us, which in turn cause us to open to the Divine.
Like a garden, the bower is a place of contemplation and rest. It is a place where we give ourselves permission to simply be, to settle into the present moment.
This bower, then, is the space we create within ourselves, through loving devotion, through patient spiritual practice, through the cultivation of that which is best and most true within us. It comes alive within us. It becomes a space we ourselves enter -- we create it it within ourselves and then we enter into it. There we grow silent and still, we find refuge from the world. And there we wait. The perfume of the bower draws the Beloved to our side. At least that's how it appears to the limited perspective of the soul. The truth is closer to this: As we wait, the pure perfume surrounds us, we breathe it in, it finally clears our head and heart, and we see for the first time -- that the Beloved's shining "moon-like" face has been there all along.
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Ammons, A. R. Poetics |
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Attar, Farid ud-Din The Simurgh |
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Aurobindo, Sri Tree |
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ben Kallir, Eleazar Epithalamium |
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ben Yose, Yose In Praise of God (from Avoda) |
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Berry, Wendell Sabbaths 1999, VII |
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Blake, William Auguries of Innocence |
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Bradstreet, Anne There is a path no vulture's eye hath seen, (from The Vanity of All Worldly Things) |
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Chinook (Anonymous) Teach us, and show us the Way |
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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Kubla Khan |
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Colonna, Vittoria da I live on this depraved and lonely cliff |
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cummings, e. e. i carry your heart with me |
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cummings, e. e. i thank You God for most this amazing |
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Feuerstein, Georg Odin's Ordeal |
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Feuerstein, Georg Our Worded Universe |
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Feuerstein, Georg Squaring the Circle |
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Govindasvamin Holy sixth day |
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Granger, Ivan M. Lime |
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Granger, Ivan M. Adi Atman 3: 2 AM |
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Han-shan (Cold Mountain) [29] I spur my horse past the ruined city; |
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Hawaiian (Anonymous) He kanaenae no Laka / A Prayer of Adulation to Laka |
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Hayati, Bibi Is it the night of power |
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Heschel, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Intimate Hymn |
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Hirshfield, Jane Metempsychosis |
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Hirshfield, Jane Tree |
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Holderlin, Friedrich Remembrance |
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Ikkyu (Sojun, Ikkyu) Form in Void |
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Iqbal, Allama Muhammad To the Saqi (from Baal-i-Jibreel) |
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Jacobsen, Rolf Moon and Apple |
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Jacobsen, Rolf The Silence Afterwards |
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Jayadeva [3] When spring came, tender-limbed Radha wandered (from The Gitagovinda) |
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Jeffers, Robinson Rock and Hawk |
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Kerouac, Jack The Scripture of the Golden Eternity |
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Lalan The moon is encircled by moons. |
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Lee, Li-Young Praise Them |
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Leon, Luis de The Life Removed |
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Machado, Antonio Songs |
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Mahadevi, Akka You are the forest |
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Mathias, Michael The Tree of Emptiness (from The Cosmic Soul and the World Tree) |
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Mathias, Michael The Tree of the Tao (from The Cosmic Soul and the World Tree) |
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Mathias, Michael (2) Dukkha - The Cause of All Suffering (from The Cosmic Soul and the World Tree) |
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Mathias, Michael (6) Ramana Seeks out the Mountain of Arunachala (from The Cosmic Soul and the World Tree) |
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Mathias, Michael (10) The Tree of Kabbalah - The Kiss (from The Cosmic Soul and the World Tree) |
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Mathias, Michael (13) Jalal's Search for Jamal and the Mystical Tree (from The Cosmic Soul and the World Tree) |
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Merton, Thomas A Practical Program for Monks |
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Merton, Thomas Aubade -- The City |
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Merton, Thomas Stranger |
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Merton, Thomas The Sowing of Meanings |
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Neruda, Pablo [3] Tell me, is the rose naked |
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Nevins, Shawn A lake reflecting trees, |
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Oliver, Mary Can You Imagine? |
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Oliver, Mary In Blackwater Woods |
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Oliver, Mary This World |
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Po, Li You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest, |
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Pope, Alexander Solitude: An Ode |
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Reninger, Elizabeth Deer |
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Rilke, Rainer Maria The Man Watching |
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Rilke, Rainer Maria The Second Elegy (from The Duino Elegies) |
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Rosenstock, Gabriel (25) snake unwinding (from Uttering Her Name) |
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Rosenstock, Gabriel (33) I create silences (from Uttering Her Name) |
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Rosenstock, Gabriel (51) the grace showered on me (from Uttering Her Name) |
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Rosenstock, Gabriel (93) not the slaked thirst of Bayazid (from Uttering Her Name) |
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Ryokan Reply to a Friend |
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Sanai, Hakim Meditation |
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Snyder, Gary Regarding Wave |
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Soseki, Muso Beyond the World |
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Stevens, Wallace Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird |
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T'ao Ch'ien Unsettled, a bird lost from the flock -- |
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Tagore, Rabindranath He's there among the scented trees, (from The Lover of God) |
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Takahashi, Shinkichi A Wood in Sound |
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Teasdale, Sara Dew |
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Tiruvalluvar Love |
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Tukaram Can water drink itself? |
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Vaughan, Henry The Night |
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Vivekananda, Swami Kali the Mother |
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Wei, Wang Living in the Mountain on an Autumn Night |
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Wei, Wang Stone Gate Temple in the Blue Field Mountains |
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Whitman, Walt [2] Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, (from Song of Myself) |
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Yeats, William Butler Sailing to Byzantium |
