Here are some sample texts for trying out Spiritual Reading:
“Throw Yourself Like Seed”
By Miguel de Unamuno1
Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.
Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.
Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don’t turn your face for that would-be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.
Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.
“A Poor Man Taken Far”2
I am a poor man from the fruit.
They took me from far away. I am far.
I am a poor man whom life spoke to.
I am far. The light beings took me away.
They carried me away here from the good
to where the wicked live.
They installed me in the world of the wicked
where all is malice and fire.
I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t want to come
to this awful place.
By my strength and light I suffer through
this misery. By illumination and praise.
I remain a stranger in their world.
I stand among the wicked like a child without a father.
Like a fatherless child, an untended fruit.
I hear the voice of the seven planets.
They whisper. They say among themselves,
“Where does this alien come from?
He doesn’t speak like us.”
I didn’t listen to their speech raging against me.
Tao te Ching #93
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval
and they will be your master.
Do your work, then step back
The only path to serenity.
- Found commonly online. For example, here and here. [↩]
- An excerpt from the Song of the Poor Man, a Mandaean liturgical text. Translation from The Gnostic Bible, edited by Barnstone and Meyer. [↩]
- From the Stephen Mitchell translation. [↩]
