Translated into English: Georgeta Pop

Photos: personal archive – Janina and Daniela Flueraș

All rights reserved. Copyright © 2020

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner, printed or electronic, without permission of the author.

DEDICATION

What can you give back to someone who has given you everything?

Maybe your own becoming that which, in his/ her heart, was only a dream of your future being...

What can you give back to someone who has seen in you something infinitely more than you could have ever seen

yourself ? Nothing but trying to develop that potential, and making it become reality.

Behold my being! Still on the road, still struggling to become the future You have dreamt for me from the very Beginning...

The Author

“Whatever is in your mind is not the reality. It (reality) is beyond...” (Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, 1982) “Poetry is like moonlight and when it falls upon any matter, it enhances the beauty and gives it a charisma and the language is so beautiful that it hides all the ugliness as the moonlight hides all the detailed ugliness.” (Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, 1985) “Yes, the hour has come for serious thought. You fondly imagined it was enough to visit God on Sundays, and thus you could make free of your weekdays. You believed some brief formalities, some bendings of the knee, would recompense Him well enough for your criminal indifference. But God is not mocked. These brief encounters could not sate the fierce hunger of His love. He wished to see you longer and more often; that is His manner of loving and, indeed, it is the only manner of loving.” (Albert Camus, The Plague)

LOOKING AT OURSELVES

The Truth is so deeply hidden within us; so deeply that we can’t even remember It!

We look into ourselves as if looking into an abyss – and in its depth we couldn’t recognize our identity without Thy Light!

Reflections

THE WORDS Sometimes words are nothing but a gap between thought and speaking; a barrier between you and me; a mirror of the illusion, preventing us to grasp reality... The real meaning of the words is beyond their own meaning; When they become the form of love – fountain flowing from the depth of our

heart, with water as pure as the morning dew – then – only then – they express the Truth that enlightens, the Beauty that enchants, and the Goodness that transforms.

The Opening of the Heart

ART Only when my soul becomes an arch between me and Thou – a rainbow above the world – my voice becomes a song my look becomes the light, and my words become poetry.

Communication

POETRY

All I have to do is to put my ear to Thy lips. Words are woven out of whispers and of silence, in the night. I only listen and lay them down on paper. Then I enjoy the wonder

Thou brought into the world through my anonymous being.

The Art of Weaving

EVERYTHING HAS ITS OWN LIGHT The sky has the sun as its own light; The tree has the sap enlightening its trunk; The bird has its inner magnet as light allowing it to fly; The colour has the light – as it is a part of

light itself. But they don’t know they have the light – They simply spread it by their own nature. Man has the light, as well – but as long as he is not aware light vanishes into darkness.

It is Thou who opened our eyes so we could see the light within us, and made us spread the light like endless burning candles.

Before Sunrise

I KNOW I know that if I can love anything it’s only because Thy love is shining inside me. I know that if I can go deep into my being it’s only because Thou put the Depth inside me. I know that if I can bear the light of the Spirit it’s only because Thou are The Mirror that allows the eye and the heart see the light.

The Humble Window Enlightened...

THE ANSWER Words should remain unborn inside of me… And only smooth wreaths of love waving in my heart be the answer to Thy love calling us.

Serenity

WHEN I WATCH YOU When I watch you walking as Thou slowly leave us (I know, Thou do that just to always come

back) I simply envy the patch of ground Thou stepped on. Then I would like to lie down to the ground and press my heart against that patch wearing Thy Footprint… … till the Footprint impresses on my heart and thus becomes the pattern of my love.

Behind a Saintly Footprint

THE INNOCENCE Out of Thy Being innocence emerges in such gentle waves that humility grows in my own being secretly and boundlessly – in a way that water lilies only open their corolla in the early morning’s freshness.

The Purity of Blossoming

RESURRECTION

Thy Word is conceived in my being like in a nest and I feel I am being born alongside with It. As I grow it’s hard for me to know if I’m myself or I’m Thy Word.

Growing to Become Stronger and Stronger

THE SAINTS They are the patch of ground wearing God’s Footprint as a seal.

A Saint’s Heart

THY WORD Let me not stumble at the shore of Thy Word. Thy Word is beyond words. A word not by my mind to be understood – each of Thy Words is a gentle breeze – but by my heart to be smoothly grasped while pulsating in the rhythm of love.

A Humble Way of Understanding

THE ULTIMATE MEANING I gather myself as the flower gathers into its corolla. The ultimate meaning of the root is the sap rising through the stalk. The ultimate meaning of the stalk is the roundness of the corolla. The ultimate meaning of the corolla is the perfume…

The Secret Perfume

COMPLEMENTARITY

The mud exists only to make the purity of the flower whiter. The mountains exist only to make the horizontal of the plains larger. The shore exists only to calm down the agitated waves. But Thou make the world a circle around Thou, not for Thy core to become more of a core, but to unveil to the world its own core.

Round Forms

IT’S SUCH A JOY

It’s such a joy for me to know that the road I’m walking on, this road that melts all stinks, this road on which sometimes I stumble over the stones, this road which sometimes I’m so afraid to travel on, this – inner road sublimes my being. At its end I’ll be the perfume that devotes itself to Thy Feet.

Road in the Mountains

MOTERHOOD Is when you feel that each and every human being is nothing but a drop of the ocean of love in your heart.

The Plenitude of Giving

A SAINT NEVER CRIES… A child cries when the sand castle he built on the shore of the see is ruined away by a wave… A young woman cries when the love of her life is ruined away by her lack of chance… A man cries when his effort of building a house and a home is ruined away by a war… A wise man cries when his beliefs are ruined away by the harshness of destiny.

But a saint never cries; He is innocent enough to know that the One who is moulding our lives needs to carve deep into our being… Each carve is the place of a diamond in our crown…

The Simplicity of Life

LOVE Love does not avoid the thistles – But makes them bloom. Love does not avoid the desert – But transforms it into an oasis. Love does not avoid the rocks – But rounds their margins. Love contains in itself the seeds of all things, and makes them bear. Love makes things grow beyond themselves, making them complete.

Autumn Light Enveloping the Forest

THE MECHANICS OF FLUIDS We are rugged like geometrical forms; we reject one another like a square rejects a triangle. But in Thy light our rugged margins get round, our shapes becoming gentle circles. The geometry itself becomes now senseless for the spiral of our being secretly crossed by the sap of life, in a mysterious mechanics of the cosmic fluids.

Geometry of Man vs. Geometry of Nature

THE BIRD WITH A SINGLE WING I am a single winged bird – but Thou planted in me, the desire to fly. The light that comes up slowly inside my being – as the dip bucket that comes up through the well – is gently bringing me up. While asleep, I see my other wing is bursting into buds like the shy twigs do in spring.

This wing, My Lord, is not mine; It’s the extension of Thy wing, oh, Thou, the boundless One, who spreads, like in an unfolding fan, unseen, growing out of Thou, the other wing of the birds with a single wing.

Flight

FEELING The tumult of my still young blood bubbling into my veins; My being opening like a corolla; My eyes carrying the gentle feelings from my inner world to the outer world, like the spring that carries from the depths, the coolness of the Earth - All these – and many others – are the names of Joy, the only one which can build a bridge between me and things, between me and people, between me and Thy holy being.

The Bridge

MORNING I only have to come out of my sleep at the break of the day when the freshness of beginnings kisses the world. I only have to be awake then, my heart open wide towards Thou, so that my day may flow gently as water always runs over the rocks, as honey heavily drips, comforting the wounds, as the perfume floats above all the unclogged channels of the world, above all the unclogged channels of the soul.

Freshness

SHELTER God has come to live in my house. All of a sudden the seven lamps of the chandelier of my being turned on. They were so strongly lighting that I expected their bulbs would go off any time. The light was coming out of my being through all my pores, and I felt as if I were in the first day of Creation.

My Lord, Don’t ever leave my home! Look, I’ve prepared a warm shelter for Thou in the dipper of my heart, so Thou can rest Thy feet tired of so much walking in and out people’s houses to lighten the chandeliers left long ago turned off.

WISDOM Teach me the gentleness of the water flowing over the rocks without hurting itself, without scolding them, but understanding the meaning of them being rocks. Give me the calm of the shore that does not smash its chest against the restless waves, and that, bitten in its heart, becomes – at most – one with the earth he was made of. Show to my moment the face of present, which is not born out of the past, and does not flow towards the future,

but which is always suspended into the eternity from which it joyfully pulls its being.

Bubbling Joy

ILLNESS First the roots get ill. Out of being transparent they become muddy, incapable of carrying life from the earth of the roots to the sky of the branches. Then, the leaves get ill – they become pale like the lips without a smile; Then, the branches – slackly hanging like helpless arms.

First the soul gets ill.

Then the saps are unable to carry the Life from itself to the Self.

Out of One’s Roots

BLINDMEN’S BUFF We should sometimes be blindfolded, like we were playing at blindmen’s buff… Let’s not get carried away into the eye’s temptation, but into the heart’s temptation, pulsating into the spring drum beats of the cosmic dance.

Let us just stretch out our arms towards the things around us, gently touching their saps, their depths, their truths.

Let us just stretch out our hands towards the sky, sipping through them – like branches sip – the light.

Hope

PREJUDICES We surround ourselves by the ideas that we make about things, about life, about ourselves – as if we were surrounded by a fence, which we find more and more difficult to jump over – as difficult as jumping over one’s shadow. My Lord, let all the walls I’ve ever – unknowingly – built around me be demolished by Thy living breath!

Beyond the Fence

FOOD “Give us this day our daily bread...” I’ve eaten enough out of the fruits of good-and-evil from the Tree of knowledge. My Lord, let the seed of the other Tree sprout – The Tree of Life – which Thou planted into the blue grounds in the depths of our being, long ago, when Thy Ghost was floating above the waters,

and planted into them the seeds of all existing things.

The Beginning: Let There Be Light!

SALVAGE You cannot hide from the world, as you cannot drive away the day you came onto this world. You cannot hide from yourself, as you cannot run away from your own shadow. But there is an unseen island – its blue grounds spread out under our soles tired of the restless running... This island is gently rising above the ocean of all our illusions – like a life buoy – only when our heart takes the form

of the wreaths of love; only when we wrap our arms around Thy Feet.

The Endless Road of Running Away

IF WE ONLY COULD SEE OURSELVES “Know thyself!” If we only could see ourselves the way Thou see us, we could see the light of the Beginning coming out of all our pores, caressing us like a gentle aura taking the shape of larger and larger circles pushing away from us – further and further – all the untruths and all the restlessness of this ocean of illusions. If we could see ourselves the way Thou see us, we could see the fine weaving filling the space between

you and me, between the sun and the moon, between day and night. Then we could come forth to the others with a warm hug; We could walk on the blue fibres of this weaving as Jesus would walk on the waters. But the Eye which says: Look at yourself as I look at you! is not at the temple, but it’s in the middle of the heart, in the middle of all things and at the same time is looking from beyond the heart, from beyond all things.

THE OPENING OF THE CIRCLE All the kisses and all the hugs which are born from ourselves, die inside ourselves, like restless and opaque waves striking again and again against the margins of our body, against the margins of our soul. We are feeding with our own selves, or with the selves of others, within the circle of our own being where we are consuming our existence. But Thy hug has no beginning, nor end, like the wreaths

which open the margins of the circle into the coils of the spiral.

The Delicate Circles

DETACHMENT You cannot see plainly unless you create a space between you and all the other things; unless you take the position of the One who is the farthest of all the things, yet the closest to all things, because It creates the distance, and, still, It fills the space with Itself.

An Iris Filled with Love Looking at the World

VIBRATION

Whenever you do not vibrate on the wavelengths of joy, you miss all the things like sand between your fingers. You find yourself beside them, as if you were playing on the edge of a circle – an eternal tangent – unable to flow, on a radius towards the centre.

Playing with Wood – Traditional Art

SUSPENSION Thou placed my being between earth and sky, between day and night, between grass and stars. Later on, I could understand that all the things are made like that – the stone, the moon, and the day... But only I can feel on the top of my head the kiss between the motherly, the sacred saps rising into my being, and the divine grace flooding me like a cooling rain.

In Between Earth and Sky

SHINING pseudo hai-ku Tiny and ephemeral piece of life – a drop of water. However – a diamond into the light. What’s its secret? Its transparency.

Light Over a Muddy Road

ODYSSEY We are so full and yet – so empty. Full of the worry of not crossing when the lights are red, of not forgetting to greet our neighbour... We fill in our day with rubble that diminish our being, so that we can’t feel Thy breath even when it is so close as if Thou want to breathe through us...

If only we were like Ulysses, to long for hearing Thy breath, become a song; to not cover up our ears with the wax of ignorance; to tie ourselves, eternally, to the mast of soul so that our heart may fill itself with Thy breath, moving away from us all the rubble – that make us so full and yet – so empty.

PRAYER I bow to Thee, O, Mother of all mothers, and love above all love. Fill in the amphora of my being, so that it becomes a spring – offering with no beginning, nor end, as the sun offers itself – like rays – to the thirsty earth; as the sea offers itself – like restless waves – to the droughty shore; as the wind offers itself – like a breeze – to the ripening spikes; as the love offers itself – without asking why

and what for – to the whole world.

The Song of the Old Mill

I WISH I COULD I wish I could tell Thou: I’m not singing hymns to praise Thy coming or leaving... Thou never come, nor Thou leave, because Thou are always in my heart... But until I can tell Thou that, I still have to learn how to come out of the waves of illusion; I still have to learn the love – which is not the form of all things but their perfume.

Out of the Forest

ADVICE My friend, Do not count on your fingers how many houses you’ve built, how many roads you’ve travelled, how many suits you’ve changed so far; Or how much money you’ve given to the poor, to how many people you’ve shaken your hand

with, how many children you’ve raised, how many things you’ve done for your wife; Or how many books you’ve read; how many minds you’ve nourished how much advice you’ve given...

Count only the ones whom you’ve loved while doing all these...

The Unconditioned Flowing of the Spring

LIFE Let there be... Life! Life is the heart that circulates the blood while pulsating in the rhythm of the drums of joy. Life is the heart that nourishes Mother Nature with the saps that make the stem burst into a delicate flower and the caterpillar become a butterfly. Life is the heart where, from deep inside, as from an unfailing root-spring, the light of love, golden and smooth like the flowing honey, is circulated through my being eternally in blossom.

Blossoming

NOTHING ELSE Let my heart be sensitive enough to feel the love, and nothing else…

Let my eyes become so thin that they see the blue sky, and nothing else… Let my nose be so smooth that it can smell the perfume of Mother Earth, and nothing else…

Let my arms be so strong and soft that they can give a hug to embrace the whole world, and nothing else…

Let my palms be so light that they can feel the breath of Life, and nothing else… Let the top of my head open like a cup to catch the Divine nectar, and nothing else…

Let my being become the valley of the river of Divine Love, and nothing else… Let the words I utter be the material form of Thy Divine vibrations, so that they turn into pure poetry praising You for ever and ever…

and nothing else…

“Because from the darkness to the sunlight you have to come out, and you’re holding

My hand so I have to tell you that be careful, it’s a very, very small road and both the sides you can fall off...

So hold My hand tightly, we have to go further,

and further, and further… “

(Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi)

The Sun Always Rises… (the first 2020 sunrise)

Looking at ourselves

The Words Art Poetry Everything has its own light I know The Answer When I Watch You The Innocence Resurrection The Saints Thy Word The Ultimate Meaning Complementarity It’s Such a Joy Motherhood A Saint Never Cries Love The mechanics of fluids The Bird with a Single Wing Feeling Morning

Shelter Wisdom Illness Blindmen’s buff Prejudices Food Salvage If we only could see ourselves The opening of the circle Detachment Vibration Suspension Shining Odyssey Prayer I wish I could Advice Life Nothing else

CONTENTS

About the author

Janina Flueraș, PhD has been a teacher of literature for nearly 30 years. Her interests and research work are in the fields of literature, education, personal development and spirituality materialized in some articles published in the national and international magazines of literature and education. She conceived the syllabus for the optional courses of the humanistic classes in her school: An Introduction into Aesthetics, Romanian Traditional Culture and Civilization, and European Cultural Paradigms. Deeply concerned about the problems teenagers face nowadays, she started to write fairy tales and short stories for children, to help them find out who and what they really are. A metaphor is not just a figure of speech, but the only form by which the inner truth and beauty can be expressed. The world in which we live is not an equation to solve; it’s a metaphor to interpret.