Religion and Spirituality - Wayne Teasdale

There is a difference between
religion and spirituality.
Spirituality refers to an individual's
solitary search for and discovery of
the Absolute or the Divine...

[however one knows that to be]
It involves direct mystical experience of "God"
[however one knows that to be],
or realization of the vast Awareness.
Spirituality carries with it a conviction
that the transcendent is real...

Religion is more a social organism of
worship and ritual...

We need direct contact with The Divine or Ultimate
Mystery.  The focus of Religion is on worship at a
corporate level - carriers of tradition rather than
the mystical life...

Spirituality can be profoundly transformative when it
inspires in us an attitude of surrender to The Mystery.
Spirituality draws us into the depths of our Being,
where we come face to face with ourselves, our
weaknesses and the Ultimate Mystery.

Religions depend on institutions to make decisions for
us through conformity to external religiosity and the
safe routines of liturgy and ritual.

The necessary shifts in consciousness requires a new
approach to spirituality that transcends past religious
cultures of fragmentation and isolation.
We don't need to go into monasteries to become mystics.
We need only to realize and activate that Essential part
of our Being...

How we make the journey is what spirituality is all
about, using all the resources from all the religious 
traditions available to us...

Finding our own path.

Finding a way to relate to the Divine [however one knows
that to be].  The evolution of an individual's spirituality
is a mysterious and intimate matter.  It originates in the heart,
in deep stirrings that represent an insatiable longing of the 
heart [for Source]...

We are created for the spiritual journey...

Wayne Teasdale
from: Mystic Heart

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Child of the Milky Way - Chet Raymo

I am a child of the Milky Way.  I am made of the dust of stars.
Every atom in my body was forged in a star.  When the
Universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for
the wood and the fish for the pond.  When the first galaxies
fell into luminous clumps. already matter was struggling
toward consciousness.

The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush.  If there is
a voice in Sagittarius, I'd be a fool not to listen.  If "God's"
voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I'll pick up my ears.
If night's faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I'll sit
back on a dark hillside and wait and watch.  A hint here and
a trait there.  Listening and watching.  Waiting, always waiting
for the tingle in the spine.

Chet Raymo
from The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage

with thanks to Cate Kerr
Beyond the Fields We Know

Photo - Cate Kerr

~

How can you explain the mystery of the Inexplicable?
You can only surrender to it...

My "medicine" - my wild comfort -
is the wonderment and splendor
of the Infinite Cosmos...
It soothes my Soul

MM

_/\_

 

Unknown Wanderer - Ed Crowley

People often
ask me where
I live and what's
the name of my 
hometown road
I smile
as I tell them
it's nowhere

Yet
it's everywhere
and it's simply

my humble abode
I'm the
Unknown Wanderer
and hence
I simply wander
then I pivot
Awareness around
Into the stillness
of the Silence
as I lay my soul
down in Rumi's field
Where the
Beloved Ones
teachings are revealed
If you want to know
where I call home at
the end of the day
look up at the stars
It's beyond your vision
but if you look
long enough you'll
sense me there
spinning like a Sufi
in the boundless
galaxy
of the Milky Way

[.....]

Ed Crowley

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~*~

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.  I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the door sill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep."

Rumi

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

At the Edge - Czeslaw Milosz

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here.
Or perhaps memory.  Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,

Joy of the eyes.  Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight.
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

Czeslaw Milosz

translated by Robert Hass

with thanks to Whisky River

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Far Bigger Reality? - a meandering...

 

When "window sitting" in 2010 with only the bright moon lighting
the night, the non-dual concept of "me-no-me" (or self-no-self) arose...
I scratched some notes out on the windowsill in the moonlight:

"Window sitting", like meditation, takes the focus off the "me"
and puts the focus on what is Aware within me - The Silence -
at the Core of my Being - or some call it Consciousness...
This Silence (for me) unwinds the "me" - slows it down -
gives it space...

*

Pondering the non-dual concept of whether there's a "me" or no-me
is tedious, divisive, and not very helpful - a conundrum that keeps me
 focused on the "me" as if the "me" is arguing its own existence. 
The thought arose that the tree does not argue whether it is a tree
 or not...  It just bes the tree. (Yes, that is what I wrote.) :)

The so-called "me" is like a lens through which the Essence or Core
of my Beingness sees the world, sees life, how it engages with life...

*

Recently (2024), while sitting in The Silence, these words floated
through: "there is a far bigger Reality than 'spirituality', or 'religion',
or 'non-duality.  It is a Reality inclusive of our entire personal
human existence, and human experience - as "me."

*

The sense (back in 2010 window sitting) was that we have to open
the "aperture" of the "me" - to take in the larger view, to not fixate
on *things*, like thoughts, ideas, beliefs, feelings, circumstances,
people, etc.  We have to soften our gaze to see the bigger Reality....

I/me became aware in this moment, sitting at the window, that there
 is just a fluid sense of Beingness at my Core, (the only way I know
 to describe it) - that which is Aware within me, as me, call it the
Divine Consciousness - or Essential Nature - was I now "no-me?"
And other questions arose:  Is it true that there is no "me"?
"How can that be true" (as non-dualists would argue that there is
no me - and no tree...) (I no longer ask questions regarding such
unanswerable abstractions - or maybe I just don't understand the
concept).

The sense arose in me (back then) that there is a "me" function of
"Consciousness;" a practical function.  Like a thought function, or
body function, there is a "me" function... a "me" mechanism...
(Some call this the ego)

The "me" is a function of our Divine Nature/Consciousness - not
its enemy that needs to dissolve, as some teach.  It's a conditioned
function - by life's experiences - habituated to perform in certain
ways, but that also allows the Essential/Divine Nature to express
Itself through this "me" - this human - as me...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 2024

~

Photo taken by my brother
on the coast of Gloucester, Mass

~

You don't possess Life, Life expresses itself through *you*.
Your body is a flower that Life let bloom; a phenomenon
created by Life.

Ilchi Lee

~

The "religion" of the future will be a cosmic religion.  It should
transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology.

Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based
on a sense arising from the experience of all things, natural/human
and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.

Albert Einstein

Live in Harmony with the Voice of Being - Vaclav Havel

It is I who must begin.

Here and now,

right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
- to live in harmony
with the 'voice of Being', as I
understand it within myself.....

Vaclav Havel

Teaching with Fire

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

 

The Weight of Opinions - a meandering...

While I have my personal opinions
about what just happened in this country -
and the numbing and sombering effects of
its consequences,
I must not engage in my opinions -
but turn my focus
towards the Greater Reality within myself -
for I do believe there is a Greater Reality than our
personal beliefs, religions, "spirituality", nationalism;
personal politics; and the distractions of our lives
that keep us bound to *this* time-bound reality -
that I must now learn to travel through...

For some reason this moment is a "gate" that we,
as a country and a world, must pass through  - and
learn to accept and navigate what has befallen us in
this shift in reality...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 6, 2024

~

If there is anything you should stop wearing
as you get older is the weight of other people's
[and your own] opinions...

Author Unknown

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Go in the Dark - Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this too, was a gift...

Mary Oliver

(I still don't understand it :)

with thanks to Under My Umbrella and Beyond

~

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.  Go without sight, and
find that the dark, too, blooms and sings and is
traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Wendell Berry

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
Nordic Forest
(drip painting)

 

Ghosts? - Paul F. Eno

I don't believe that ghosts are "spirits of the dead" because I 
don't believe in death.  In the multiverse, once you're possible,
you exist.  And once you exist, you exist forever one way or
another.  Besides, death is the absence of life, and the ghosts
I've met are very much alive.  What we call ghosts are lifeforms
just as you and I are.

Paul F. Eno
Footsteps in the Attic

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Spirit Light"

~

My favorite grandmother passed 26 years ago yesterday.
My father passed 39 years ago tomorrow.
Although their bodies are gone something of them lives on
 somewhere, maybe not as the personas we remember,
although my brother insists that my father joins him on his
 motorcycle  rides quite frequently :) - not as a ghost that he sees,
 but a felt presence...  My husband's mother passed in Nov 2017. 
Two weeks after her death my husband and I both felt a strong
loving presence, and we both *knew* it was *her* presence -
how I don't know...  Not as a ghost or apparition, but as
 living presence.

A Mystery...

MM

 

Simply Silence...

In the midst of chaos there is always Silence...
In the midst of complexity there is simplicity...
Being in the Rhythm of Silence unwinds the mind -
unwinds the fears.
It unwinds the contracted body, thoughts, emotions, and feelings
that have become an habituated response to life.

Silence is the medicine that brings us back to the current of Life
again; into the Infinite Presence that lives us...

It is not "mother earth" pulsing through us,
but That which also pulses through "mother earth" -
the Cosmic pulse of Life that infuses all things...

Reach deeply into the Stillness of Silence
within you - the Primordial Space of Silence
and thrive there...

In this stillness is the congruancy of Life...

Feel the Stillness,
the Sacred Silence...
Awaken to its Rhythm...

It is not thought...
Go behind the mind,
to the Essence of Existence -
Silence...

Sweet, Sweet, Silence...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings from the Silence
2006

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Leaves on a branch
color inverted digitally giving
this wonderful oriental, zen-like affect
of simplicity...

 

Fall Flourish

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 

 

Mysterious Interchanges - Victor Hugo

He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring,
comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the
skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of
the constellations, and the invisible splendour of God,
opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the 
Unknown.

In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when flowers
of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center
of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of
the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps
have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something
depart from him, and something descend upon him, mysterious
interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the
Universe.

Victor Hugo
Les Miserables

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Primordial Silence - a meandering...

"The key", for me anyway, one of the many "keys"
actually, is constantly "returning" my awareness or attention
to the awareness of Primordial Silence within.  I am constantly
challenged to "wake up" and remember this deep Silence at core of
 my Being...

This came out of a conversation with my husband in the face
of life's challenges that are currently occurring here personally
on an ongoing basis - for years actually - but especially 
these last 2+ years - that I feel pulling me away from the deeper
sense of intimacy with "The Silence" within - which is why I
have been posting about Silence recently - as a way to remind myself.
The Primordial Silence calls to me, like an old Friend, 
inviting me, waiting for me to respond, to come and be still -
thus the late night "window sitting" that I practiced years ago,
 where I can rendezvous with the Great Silence by being
 in the stillness and quiet of the night...

Intimacy with the Primordial Silence is what nourishes me, my
Soul - when I can be in that space.  It is the elixir of Life -
dissolving all resistance, and anxiety about what is, the way life
 is right now, what it should be, and allows the veils that keep
 me from this Divine Communion of Silence to drop away... 
But, I'm not there... 
I am riding the "Mind Bus" with its stories and fears.

It is a conscious endeavor to remember that no matter what is
going on, there is always this intimacy with Primordial Silence
within, even if not felt.  I just need to constantly return to the felt
sense of It:
The awareness of Primordial Silence within myself...

Mystic Meandering

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Moment of Joy - Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate...

 ....sometimes something happens better than all the
riches or power in the world.  It could be anything, but
very likely you notice it in an instant...

 Anyway, whatever it is, don' be afraid of its plenty...

Mary Oliver
from: Swan

Original Title - Don't Hesitate

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Personal Note:  This happened to me a couple of days ago
Suddenly the shroud of darkness lifted, and there was causeless joy,
and LIFE, and gratitude, peace and contentment
just waiting underneath...
It was joyous :)
And then it disappeared after a day just as it had arisen...

A moment of Joy...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Mistakes - John O'Donohue

One of the qualities that you can develop, particularly
in your older years, is a sense of great compassion for
yourself.  When you visit the wounds within the temple
of memory, you should not blame yourself for making
bad mistakes that you greatly regret.  Sometimes you
have grown unexpectedly through these mistakes.
Frequently, in a journey of the soul, the most precious
moments are the mistakes.  They have brought you to
a place that you would otherwise have always avoided.
You should bring a compassionate mindfulness to your
mistakes and wounds.  Endeavor to inhabit the
rhythm you were in at that time. If you visit this
configuration of your soul with forgiveness in your heart,
it will fall into place itself.  When you forgive yourself,
the inner wounds begin to heal. You come in out of the
exile of hurt into the joy of inner belonging.

John O'Donohue
from Anam Cara

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - mistake :)

 

The Comet :)

Photo - Comet C/2023A3
Taken by my brother off the coast of Gloucester, Mass
Friday evening, Oct.18, 2024

~

That's how you came here,
like a star without a name.
Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights.

Rumi

 

In Harmony with The Cosmos - Sardello

Silence is not a path...
The most basic experience of Silence is intimacy...
Silence keeps us intimately bound with the truth of
our Being...

We feel how we, in our individuality, are part of a
vast and mysterious world process...
Illusion and ego-fantasy begin with forgetting this
intimacy with Silence...

In "practicing" [being aware of] the Silence we are not
trying to merge with the Cosmos, or to leave this world
for timeless regions... but to come into harmony with the
Rhythm of Silence and the great [natural] rhythms governing
the world [planet].  We start by sensing the presence of
extremely subtle currents of The Silence that have a unique
quality.  These currents are neither "energy" nor the electro-
magnetic currents of the body.  We experience the currents
of Silence, as being touched by a "spiritual" presence.  The
nature of the currents of Silence is that of the presence
of an interiority, like knowing someone in a way that reveals
the essence of their Being.  We experience an immediacy
of the quality of interiority.  There is nothing behind Silence...
There is just Silence...  When we are in The Silence we
experience something very bodily and we also experience
 it as a subtle touch at the level or our Soul, at
the level of our own interiority.

[Accessing] The Silence through directly sensing is the key
to living both our Soul life, and our spiritual life *in* the world...

The work is to be with The Silence itself...

Robert Sardello
Excerpts From - Silence: The Key to Wholeness

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

Personal Note:  I have experienced some of what Mr.
Sardello describes as his own experience.
Everyone experiences this Silence differently...

 

Attune to The Rhythm - Henry Miller

When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist.  Try to solve
it, and you only set up more resistance.  I am very certain now
that...if I truly become what I wish to be, the burden will fall
away.  The most difficult thing to admit, and to realize with
one's whole being, is that you alone control nothing.

To be able to put yourself in tune or rhythm with the forces
beyond, which are truly operative ones, that is the task...

Henry Miller

~

Photo - The October 2024 Aurora Borealis
taken by my brother in Mass.

~

"Touch Eternity/a deeper Reality on a daily basis"

MM

 

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 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

~

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...