Night's Solace - Cheryl Sanders Sardello

We are fortunate to have night's solace in the silence that is
created by the dark.  Here we can lean into the unknown,
setting aside the oppressive weight of our carefully
constructed version of who we think we are.  We can
remember how to see in the dark with our ears,
perceiving the Silence in the holy echoing and resonance,
its calling forth a knowing that is from the Soul. 
The Silence sends us on a different pilgrimage.

Cheryl Sanders Sardello
from - Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Living Silence - Robert Sardello

There is a Living Silence that hears the cry of the Soul.

Each of us has a companion-presence.  Something that is
always with us.  The companion-presence is Silence.
We need to nurture companionship with it [commune with it].

Silence was here before everything else, and it envelopes
everything else.  Silence is prior to sound, not the cessation
of sound.  If we drop into the quietness [within] for just a moment,
we feel the presence of Silence as an invitation.

As we accept the invitation and enter the mystery of Silence,
its presence resonates through the fibers of our flesh while
extending beyond the flesh to the deepest depths of the Soul
inwardly, and to the outermost reaches of the Cosmos
outwardly.  The inward silence of Solitude meets up with the

Great Silence of Cosmic Wisdom.  When we don't cultivate
the meeting point, we lose access to our Soul, to the presence
of the Silence.  Without Silence we are lost and cannot get still
enough to find our way back.

Silence bears the wholeness we are looking for...
Silence goes to the deepest depths of the Soul...

[In communion with the Silence] we feel a new attunement to
Spirit as a directly felt reality.  We have a bodily perception of
being welcomed into the vastness and fecundity of Silence. 
When we find the entry into the large stillness our lives are
irrevocably changed, a transition takes place.  The experience
comes with astonishing intimacy, that feels like the finding of
a long lost beloved.

Silence is palpable.  It's a living presence. It has a rhythm all
its own.  The currents of Silence weave polarities and opposites
and contradictions together.  Within Silence everything resonates
in true intimacy and mystery.

Our Soul connection with Silence is a form of sympathetic
resonance with the currents of Silence [the rhythm and pulsing
of Silence].  We enter into the deepest feeling of communing...

We, along with everything else, are within Silence.
We are held within a tender, loving invisible presence...
A vivid Presence of Silence...

This realm of Silence is pregnant with the ever-living Mystery.
It is the deepest feeling of communing, touched by the 
Ineffable, that keeps us intimately bound with the truth of our
Core Being, the very Essence of our Being; an interiority that
has been waiting for us.

Robert Sardello

Excerpts from: Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness

Great book if you're interested in deepening your inner life,
or reorienting to your inner life

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Listen to the Inner Friend - Matt Licata

In times of liminality and transition, there is a unique invitation
delivered to each of us, form the inner Friend, to slow down and
open to what it might truly feel like to play and imagine once again.

To explore from that place of beginner's mind, re-opening to those
natural states of awe, wonder and the simple joy inherent in a few
moments of just Being, Being who and what we already are,
without having to turn our lives into some unending self-improvement
project.

While we can hold an intention to improve our lives, relationships,
and sense of self, which is intelligent, and kind, simultaneously to
spend some time each day in these less-structured experiences, ones
that aren't oriented in improvement, in getting a different experience.

Maybe for us that's being out in nature (perhaps without our electronic
devices) or writing down our dreams, or doing some type of yoga or
meditation or prayer or whatever that might be: Writing, dancing,
putting our hands in some sand...

Tending to the wild undomesticated aliveness of the sensual world.
An invitation of being emptied-out of the known, the frozen, and
the crystalized within us...

Taking time each day to interrupt the trance of the collective, the
pull into a survival-level restlessness, and return into our bodies,
and provide an inner temple in which we can feel, where that
which has remained unlived can come into embodied reality and
disclose its wisdom.

To attune to that emerging right-brain flow of image, feeling, 
sensation, and those states of communion, Union and Unity
[within]...

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Notice the reflection of the statue in the round sand frame,
The "Inner Friend"? ... :)

 

Silence, the Immortal Food - Christian Bobin

For a long time I let this slow movement towards the Unknown,
this highest form of knowledge, be fulfilled in me:
the adoration of Silence.
It is never in vain that we give way
to this elementary beauty which seizes the Soul
in the spiral of a star or anything in the world...

It [The Silence] illuminates the night and its angelic sister,
solitude.  And it is by developing in us this silent attention
mute to the day, that we will find our place in the Absolute
that surrounds us.

It is ours when all is lacking and all is far from being,
to give our life the patience of a work of art,
the flexibility of reeds that the hand of
the wind wrinkles, in homage to winter.
A little Silence is enough.
A little of this immaterial food that The Mother dispensed
and burned it into infinity...

Christian Bobin
the Simple Enchantment

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Beyond a Timeline...

I rest in the Silent spaces of the Soul -
in and out of time,
beyond a timeline,
where existence transcends
time, flowing in the stream
of the eternal Cosmos,
just outside the noise
of troubled waters...

Quietude that nourishes
body and Soul.

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 2, 2024

~*~

In this spiritual world there are no time divisions
such as past, present and future; for they have
contracted themselves into a single moment of
the present where life quivers in its true sense.

The past and the future are both rolled up in this
present moment of illumination, and this present
moment is not something standing still with all
its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on.

D.T. Suzuki, 1870 - 1966
On Indian Mahayana Buddhism

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Light shadows on a wall...

 

The Melody of Silence - from the Quran

In the depths of the soul, where words dissolve,
Sounds a secret melody,
A music that no ear can hear,
For it is woven from the very silence,
This sacred silence, where the world ceases to whisper,
And where the eternal song of the Divine begins.

This melody has neither beginning nor end,
She is the echo of an ancient Love,
A Love that exists before time,
Before the stars are lit,
Before the universe was woven,
She is the first breath,
He who gave life to clay,
And which continues to resonate in the hearts
of those who listen,
With the ears of the soul.

In the melody of Silence,
Each note is a prayer,
Each break, a return to the Source.
Those who have passed through the tempest of the ego,
And the torments of the spirit,
Know that this music is not found in the noise of the world,
But in the inner quietude,
Where heaven and earth meet,
In the sacred union of being and non-being.

The melody of Silence is the voice of Love,
Who speaks without words,
Who touches without touching,
Who kisses without hugging,
It is the melody that the prophets heard
in their hears,
When they were alone with the Beloved,
When the night enveloped the world,
And the whole cosmos seemed to hold its breath,
Waiting for the Light to reveal itself.

from the Quran

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Silence of the Soul is my Home, my Friend...

 

Notes From The Window - 9-27-24

Sitting at the window in The Silence of just Being
soothes my Soul - it *feeds* the Soul.
The Stillness is powerful tonight...

The Silence within and the night hold me
in Quietude...

I feel emotionally "safe" here in The Silence 
and know that this Silence is my Core,
it is The Silence of the Soul.
I just bask in its Peace...

~

The Silence of the Soul at the window is what
I need.  I've been using bandaids again:
techniques and strategies, though helpful,
they are not what nourishes the Soul...

When I'm at the window at night,
I feel a sense of well-being inside.

I relax and breathe - even when I still
get caught in the negative meanderings of
the mind - I return to The Silence within,
and am at peace...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 27, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Caregiver to the Soul - a meandering

I am on a different journey now,
have been for the last several months...

It's a journey of Divine Descent,
into the inner caverns,
the deepest interiors of Myself,
into the interiority of the Soul...

Along the way I have encountered
the Shadow-lands of old traumas,
old emotional wounds, etc., and what are
considered the "dark" emotions;
engaging in negative meanderings of the mind.
It's been a challenging passage.

And in that descent to the core of my Being,
I have learned that the portals to the Soul
are not necessarily illumined;
sometimes they are through the dark places;
passageways through the catacombs of the Soul.

Standing in the kitchen this morning
I unexpectedly heard this phrase,
from the Inner Voice -
"Caregiver to the Soul."

I felt uplifted, inspired - relieved, released
from the darkness that has shrouded me -
if only for that moment...

And now I must explore how to be the
Caregiver to my Soul
listening deeply to the deeper needs
of the Soul - to what nourishes and feeds
the Soul life...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 27, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Perspectives on perspective - a meandering...

My father had a saying on a small plaque over
 his desk that said:

"Don't judge another man till you've walked a mile in
his shoes."

I Googled it to see if I could find the quote, and it came
up with several variations.

I liked this one:

"You can't really understand another person's experience
until you've walked a mile in their shoes."

Cherokee Indian saying

~

Then it gave someone's interpretation on the meaning:

"to experience life as someone else lives it and see the
world from their perspective, instead of trying to
change their perspective; it's known as empathy and
compassion..."

author unknown

~

And then there was this one...

You never really know someone until you understand 
their point of view, until you climb around in their skin
and walk around in it.

Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird

~

How often in the "spiritual culture" do the spiritual elite
try to convince you that their perspective is the "right"
perspective, the non-dual, spiritual perspective,
under the guise of "Truth."

But maybe we all just "see" the "Truth" differently,
through different "windows", through different
 lenses of perception...
It's all a play of perspectives...

Namaste 

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Different Perspectives out the same window

 

Portals to the Soul - Matt Licata

The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go through the dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.

Stanley Kunitz
The Testing Tree

~

As we move through the second half of life, a new voice will
often emerge, pouring out through our longing, our grief, our
anger, and our disappointment.  A figure from deep in the soul.

To hear and respond to the call, we have to slow down and 
listen through the veil, beyond the noise and density of the
collective...

It takes courage to listen to the soul and to take it seriously.
To cultivate a real devotion to the messages it is sending us.
We are called into this devotional place by way of our
dreams, our study and practices, and through prayer, ritual,
dance, art, creativity, and being a parent, a teacher, a lover,
and a friend (and Caregiver).

It can be a lonely journey at times, if there is no one who can
truly understand us.  We turn to look for the Friend though they
are not there.

But the Friend is near, even if unable to be seen.

Holding and tending this aloneness, and the grief that
accompanies it, lies at the very heart of the process of
 death and rebirth, and the truth that all healing is
relational in its essence.

There can be no unity or oneness without there first being
an experience of separation.  Otherwise, union would have no
meaning.  They co-arise together, where a subsequent union
lays the seeds for a more subtle separation, and then a more
subtle union, and on and on.

Separation and multiplicity are just as holy as oneness and
union; they are equally valid emanations of the Beloved.

There is no end to the depths of the human heart.  We don't
wiggle into some sustained transcendent state where we're
"permanently" awakened, gone beyond the reality that the
Beloved will pull the rug out from underneath us, in order
to draw us nearer, and to reveal more of its essence.

In the end, [The Beloved] seems quite uninterested in our
fantasies of permanent transcendence.

Even as we may yearn to rise above our embodied
sensitivities, emotional wounding, and relational trauma,
on the alchemical path they are the prima materia, the
required matter, and portals into the depths of the Soul.

Matt Licata

~

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
2011

 

Soul Friend - John O'Donohue

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding
of love and friendship.  One of the fascinating ideas here
is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is
anam cara.  Anam is the Gaelic word for Soul and cara
is the word for friend.  So anam cara in the Celtic world
was "soul friend."

In everyone's life, there is a great need for an anam cara,
a soul friend.  In this love, you are understood as you are
without mask or pretension.  The superficial and functional
lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you
can be as you really are.  Love allows understanding to
dawn, and understanding is precious.  Where you are
understood, you are at home.

The anam cara experience opens a friendship that is not
wounded or limited by separation or distance.  Such
friendship can remain alive even when the friends live
far away from each other.  Because they have broken
through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul
level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed.  When
the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured.

Even across the distance, two friends can stay attuned to
each other and continue to sense the flow of each other's
lives.  With your anam cara you awaken the eternal.

John O'Donohue

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Balance: Noticing the Opposites - iRest

Artist- Puisi

Our experience always changes.  We have idealized
expectations of what we think life is supposed to be.
Life will do what life does, despite trying to
control our experience.

Balance is born out of transformative embrace of the
fullness of life in its ups and downs, not dependent
upon on external life circumstances.

Flow with the waves of life, noticing the *sensations*
in the body, exploring the opposites in the body,
the heaviness and lightness; feeling both sensations
in the body at the same time; as well as opposite
emotions and beliefs.

Every experience has an opposite.
Once explored and underlying sense of well-being
and ease can shine through, a true balance emerges.

Trying to control our experience [causes stress],
instead set life free to be what it is through allowing
life to be as it is, in balance and harmony with the
opposites, through the simplicity of noticing.

From an iRest meditation
from a free meditation series
through the iRest Institute

~

Photo - Art by Puisi

 

Silence Beyond Mind - Maitreya Upanishad

It has been said:
There is something beyond our mind,
which abides in silence...

It is the supreme mystery beyond thought.
Let one's mind and subtle spirit rest upon that mystery
and nothing else...

...When the mind is silent,
beyond distraction,
then it can enter into a world
which is far beyond the mind...

Then one knows the joy of Eternity...
Words cannot describe the joy of the Soul
when one is one with Itself...

As water becomes one with water,
fire with fire,
and air with air,
so the mind becomes one with the Infinite Mind
and thus attains freedom.

Maitreya Upanishad

~

When I can intrain with a deeper Silence of simply Being,
the mind is not in chaos and I can experience the Sacred
in the chaos...  I have only known a few of such
fleeting moments... :)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Walk Away - Buddha and Hafez

If you cannot find a Friend who is good, wise and loving,
walk alone, like a king who has renounced his kingdom,
or an elephant roaming at will in the forest.

The Buddha

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Run my dear,
from anything
that may not strengthen
your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
from anyone likely
to put a sharp knife
into the sacred, tender vision
of your beautiful heart.

Hafez

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

.

 

Facing the Wound - Jeff Foster

You have been afraid to break down...

You've been carrying so much...

Do not fear the grieving and terrible
ache of existence.  For sure, there will be
times when the pain is so intense you will find
it difficult to breathe and your mind may project
death and oblivion for you...

But, you will keep on breathing, and you will be
breathed through the abyss and carried lovingly
by nameless forces through the voided voids and
out again into the awe and vastness of living.  Your
breath will not fail you, but your mind may make
you doubt it.  There is a terrified child in you who
just wants to be reassured and held.  She lives inside

us all.

Be kind to your trauma, be gentle and soft, but don't
forget to be fiery and fierce when the moment calls
for it.  There is time for sweet talk and soothing
words and there is time for the sword too.  Let your
trauma know, it will not dictate the passage of your
life any longer.

[.....]

Weep and rage if you need to, let your trauma witness
the primordial power that boils in your heart...
Weep and rage if your need to, let your precious
raw heart be seen!

Your trauma will not take you down,
it will enrage and enliven you and push you
to the raw edge of sanity, yes, but it will 
 not take you down.

Remember the fire and forgiveness,
and the unbearable love that moves all things.

Breathe into the void now.
It's never as bad as it looks through the
filter of the mind.

Do not fear the oblivion,
it is the only place where you will find
your true freedom...

Jeff Foster

Excerpt from:
"Trauma: Do Not Fear The Oblivion"

You tube video: https://youtu.be/KMj9cP_gnf4?si=YEbBi76f3sIOk2NB

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Amidst Transitions - Rainer Maria Rilke

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of
tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer
hear our astonished emotions living.  Because we are alone
with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us;
because everything we trust and are used to is for a 
moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst
of a transition where we cannot remain standing...

[.....]

And that is why it is so important to be solitary and
attentive...  The quieter we are, the more patient and open
we are, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can
enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it
becomes our fate; nothing alien happens to us, but only what 
has long been our own...

What we call fate does not come into us from the outside,
but emerges from us...
We move in infinite space...

[.....]

We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can.

Only someone who doesn't exclude any experience,
even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship
with another person as something alive and will himself
sound the depths of his own being.

[.....]

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest sense,
something helpless that wants our love.

So you mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness
rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if
anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands
and over everything you do.  You must realize that something
is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds
you in its hand and will not let you fall...

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any
misery, any depression, since, after all, you don't know what
work these conditions are doing inside you?  Why do you
want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this
is coming from and where is it going?  Since you know, after all,
that you are in the midst of transitions...

[.....]

Rainer Maria Rilke

Excerpts from "The Eighth Letter"
From: Letters to a Young Poet

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Twilight Edge

 

Follow Your Own Map - Mark Nepo

Every time we talk to someone, there comes back to us a map
of expectation as to how we should respond...

We share a confusion:
we are often given direction.

We share a pain;
we are often given instruction.

We share a desire;
we are often given a plan.

The power of these unspoken maps should not be
underestimated.  For the endless gravities of expectation
we move in and out of govern most of our thinking and
summons most of our energy in denying them or complying
with them.  In actuality, underneath all the plans, pressures,
and expectations, underneath all the subtle guidance and nudging,
the next step is truly unknown...

Thus, our spiritual charge is to maintain the wonder of the
singular explorer that each of us is...

The freshest step has always come when we are brave 
enough to land at the end of what little we know,
breathing in new air, in reaction to no one...

Mark Nepo
From: The Book of Awakening

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
(Scrapbooking paper) 

 

Accepting reality - a meandering...

As I awoke one morning recently, it came to me in my
half sleep that I had to accept death...
That my current life experience may be the
beginning of my end -
and that I need to accept that...

My body and mind immediately relaxed...

I get that it's not about getting my life back, as I have been
wanting, but about accepting the impermanence of my life;
of everything basically, including this particular life
circumstance; my *ideas* about how life is supposed to be,
or recovering my life, restoring it to what it was before...

I've heard this all before,
through different spiritual traditions,
but this time it came from within
and was organic,,,

It's about accepting impermanence,
accepting death; death of ways of life,
death of beliefs, death of ways of being,
death of the body...

Not trying to recapture, or restore everything
to the way it was - so that I can "finish" my life...

But letting go of the idea that Life has to be/go
a certain way...

There was great *relief* in realizing this
- a profound acceptance of reality...

I felt freed of everything that has bound me:
ways of thinking, perspectives, feelings about life...

And also realized that I have been resisting the little
deaths in my life - the changes that create disruption.

*Everything* changes, *everything* dies,
that is - changes form; form transforms itself
continuously...

It is the natural way of life itself;

it *is* the reality.

I'm going to die (my body that is) at some point and
maybe this life circumstance is just the
precursor to that,
the doorway to that...

But I keep trying to make this current experience
change, to stop in some way - resisting it -
when in reality it is an opening.

I was almost euphoric,
because changing my perspective means the end of
suffering, struggle, trying to make things happen, trying
to have a "spiritual" perspective about it all,
trying to find a way *out* of my experience...

(although this shift is gradual, as I discovered)...

Everything is impermanent, transient...

I'm accepting (ongoing) that reality...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 8, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Aging Has Its Own Rhythm...

Legs ache, weak

I shuffle...

I struggle to climb the stairs...

Legs ache, weak
I stumble...

Existence here is getting unstable;
feeling vulnerable...

Legs ache, weak
I wobble...

My Soul and body call me to be still

Legs ache, weak

I hobble...

I must stop -
listen to the rhythm of my Soul;
find my inner balance again

Legs ache, weak
knees buckle...

I fall...

January 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

I took this one night recently while "window sitting."

I turned around from the window and
couldn't help but notice
what lies ahead and what is now...

Aging has its own rhythm...

my new reality...

 

Don't Let Your Fire Go Out - Ayn Rand

In the name of the best within you,
do not sacrifice [your] world to those who
are the worst.  In the name of the values
that keep you alive, do not let your vision of
man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the
mindless...  Do not let your fire go out,
spark by irreplaceable spark...
Do not let the hero in your Soul perish...

Ayn Rand
From: Atlas Shrugged
(Russian born controversial American Writer)

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Fire and Ice on window pane...

 

The Troll in the Mind - Mark Nepo

We spend so much time
anticipating what will happen next that we miss
the whisper of Heaven that unfolds wherever we are.

Though I have known and survived
many forms of pain
fear is the troll in the mind
that anticipates more.

And just as a loud noise prevents us
from finding the peace in the center of silence,
fear prevents us from finding
the inch of Heaven [Silence] in the center
of whatever moment we are in.

Yet, no matter how much I've been through
and how much I've learned,
I can't stop the wave of anticipation.
No one can.

It is part of being human.

Mark Nepo
(a cancer survivor)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
A dried rose petal with one
eye at the top of a big schnoz.
Looks like a troll to me :)

 

Just Below Our Fear - Stephen Levine

There are words in us
that don't know how
to get to the surface.
Words hidden in our marrow
afraid to show themselves
concerned the world will end
it they are uttered.
Words that cross
the river of pain
that wish to tell the world
that love is hidden
just below our fear.

And some of these words
sometimes find their way
to live among us
in the trust to hear them,
words that spin our compass...
words we never trusted to exist.

Words hide in the strangest places,
under stones, in clouds,
in a moment of a friend's kindness,
in a moment of generosity;
in poems beginning their first line
climbing happily into the heart singing,
how close the moon comes
when we trust the night.
Words even hide in other words.
Mercy hides in the hesitant pause,
questioning how much can be trusted
to the tongue, to the pen,
invoking their true voice
rise to the surface
to sing their original song...

Stephen Levine

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Listening at the level of the Soul - Danna Faulds

I'm trying to listen
at the level of the Soul,
to hear the liquid gold
that flows in from Source,
to receive the mystery
with all my inner senses.
I can't tell you how I
do this exactly.  It's a
matter of attuning and
also choosing to receive.

It isn't so much a practice
as a way of life --

opting for quiet so I don't 
miss the gifts that come
from who knows where...

I'm not sure why
inner listening means so
much to me, but I think
it's why I'm here. Today,
what the universe has to
say to me is this:
By being yourself without shame
or excuses, you add your 
small puzzle piece to the
infinite frame of the unknown.

Danna Faulds

with thanks to No Minds Land

This is why I sit at the window at night,
to hear the Quiet of my Soul...

MM

~

Beyond the "cloak of spirituality" that we wear,
in its many guises, is the unconditional Nature
of our own Being - the" Genuine Self",
the "Authentic Self" at the depths of Beingness;
not the super-imposed conditioning of belief systems,
but the pure state of Being from deep within the
Quietness of the Soul
that has no "belief", no conditioned *idea* of
"spirituality" - just pure Being,
living as we are...

Mystic Meandering
May 2019

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering