The Soul Mantra

World Prayer Day & The Lords Prayer

I felt a good beginning to World Pray Day for me was sharing the Lords Prayer as the King James version was the first prayer I ever learned. As a child of about 10, I felt smug learning this prayer from a small prayer book given to me for free by a man on a street corner in Redondo Beach, California. I can remember siting on my front porch reciting it to myself. Not having be raised in any religion, I still felt a connection to this prayer. That connection only deepened and widened as an adult when someone shared the translation from Aramaic with me.

Below are three translations of the Lord's Prayer from a wonderful site The Nazarene Way. There is a great deal of information about the evolution of this prayer plus other translations at their site.

Lords Prayer, from the original Aramaic
Translation by Neil Douglas-Klotz in Prayers of the Cosmos

O Birther! Father- Mother of the Cosmos
Focus your light within us - make it useful.
Create your reign of unity now-
through our fiery hearts and willing hands
Help us love beyond our ideals
and sprout acts of compassion for all creatures.
Animate the earth within us: we then
feel the Wisdom underneath supporting all.
Untangle the knots within
so that we can mend our hearts' simple ties to each other.
Don't let surface things delude us,
But free us from what holds us back from our true purpose.
Out of you, the astonishing fire,
Returning light and sound to the cosmos.
Amen.

Lords Prayer, from Aramaic into Old English

Translation by G.J.R. Ouseley from The Gospel of the Holy Twelve

Our Father-Mother Who art above and within:
Hallowed be Thy Name in twofold Trinity.
In Wisdom, Love and Equity Thy Kingdom come to all.
Thy will be done, As in Heaven so in Earth.
Give us day by day to partake of Thy holy Bread, and the fruit of the living Vine.
As Thou dost forgive us our trespasses, so may we forgive others who trespass against us.
Shew upon us Thy goodness, that to others we may shew the same.
In the hour of temptation, deliver us from evil.
Amun.

The Lord's Prayer Dated 1611 AD (King James Bible)

Our father which art in heauen,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heauen.
Giue us this day our daily bread.
And forgiue us our debts as we forgiue our debters.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliuer us from euill.
Amen.

"For all that has been, thanks; to all that will be, yes." Dag Hammarskjold

Nithyananda, Sweet Stories & Perspective

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How much is reality? How much our perspective?

Three small sweet stories told by Nithyananda on his blog - Nithyananda Newsletter

("We all are ready to categorize and label all that we see in our lives. In the event, we simply rob life of its spontaneity. We categorize people, places, situations, everything that comes our way.")

A man once went to a movie theatre to watch a film.
The film started with the caption(logo) of a famous International Studio, which had produced that film.
The man said to himself, “Oh! I’ve seen this movie before!” and got up and walked away.


One man went to Switzerland for a holiday and returned after a month.
He met his friend one evening and decided to go out for a meal.
The friend asked him, “So did you enjoy the beautiful scenery in Switzerland?”
The man replied, “Yes, kind of. But the mountains kept coming in the way.”


("Anything that you see becomes merely a supportive argument to your already formed conclusions.")

One man was telling his friend, “Do you know, I really made a fool of myself.”
The friend asked, “Why, what happened?”
The man said, “I replaced ten cracked windows in my house and then discovered that I had a crack in my glasses!”

How nice it is to look at things with a fresh perspective. Every moment has it's own unique flavor whether we recognize it or not. I've just eaten a handful of beautiful rich red cherries. All delicious yet none of them the exact same taste - the mixture of sweet & sour shifts bite to bite changing in complexity. Each moment an intersection of who we are mixed with all the elements seen and unseen - simply infinite.