Sleeping - George Carlin

People say, "I'm going to sleep now," as if it were nothing.  But
it's really a bizarre activity.  "For the next several hours, while
the sun is gone, I'm going to become unconscious, temporarily
losing command over everything I know and understand.  
When the sun returns, I will resume my life."

If you didn't know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in a 
science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell all
your friends about the movie you'd seen.  "They had these people,
you know? And they would walk around all day and be okay? 
And then, once a day, usually after dark, they would lie down
on these special platforms and become unconscious.  They would
stop functioning almost completely, except deep in their minds
they would have adventures and experiences that were completely
impossible in real life.  As they lay there, completely vulnerable to
their enemies, their only movements were to occasionally shift
from one position to another; or, if one of the 'mind adventures' got
too real, they would sit up and scream and be glad they weren't
unconscious anymore.  Then they would drink a lot of coffee."

So, nest time you see someone sleeping, make believe you're in a
science fiction movie.  And whisper, "The creature is regenerating
itself.

George Carlin

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Maybe we should all take more cat naps :)

 

Roots in the Unseen - Rumi

Everything you see has its roots
In the unseen world.

The forms may change
Yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
Every sweet word will fade,
But do not be disheartened.

The Source they come from is Eternal,
Growing, branching out,
Giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?
That Source is within you
And this whole world
Is springing up from it.

The Source is full,

Its waters are every-flowing;
Do no grieve,
Drink your fill!

Don't think it will ever run dry,
This is the endless Ocean.

Rumi

~

Photo taken by my brother
somewhere in Canada :)

 

Trust the Presence that Holds it All - Amoda Maa

Be courageous enough to meet life from the unknown - without
a safety net, without hope, without past, and without future.

Without the hope of salvation - without running away from or
running toward anything in your mind - you are forced to fall into
an open space of Being-ness.

And in this openness, you fall out of time and out of imagination,
right into the present.

In other words, you become present - you become totally available 
to the essential Being-ness of life.

In presence, you and life have collapsed into each other - there is
no longer a "future life," it's all happening now.

In this eternal now, you and life are one - and when you are one
with what is, how can you possibly fear what is?

It's like fearing your self, and that's ridiculous - because your self,
the Being-ness that you already are, never leaves you.

Being-ness is totally dependable - it is always here.

Now you are in touch with a deeper kind of trust -  one that is 
not based on something.

It is no longer a conceptual trust, but one that is inherent in the
nature of presence.

It is inherent in the nature of life, because life is always what is
here in the present - it can't be anywhere else.

This deeper trust has no meaning to the mind, but complete
meaningfulness to your natural state [or Essence of Being].

And even if you fail, even if life leads you to a seeming dead-end,
even if you are handed an unwanted circumstance, even if you
don't get to you desired destination of perfect happiness, even
if you heart is broken open over and over again - you will still
trust the Presence that holds it all.

Amoda Maa

words I needed to hear - with thanks to Michel at 
No Minds's Land

~

Photo - Dorothea on the Beach at Sunrise

 

The Inner Sanctuary - Christiane Singer

It is essential to take care of that heaven within us, 
invisible to others, this sanctuary that life has built us and
populated by the messengers, those who, in multiple ways,
have inspired us, led us to the best of ourselves.
In all the places inhabited by suffering there are also guards,
thresholds of passage, intense knots of mystery,

These areas so feared, however, reflect the secret of our being
in the world, or as mythological saying puts it: where the dragons
are laid, treasures are hidden.  Hope should no longer be looking
to the future but to the unseen.  Only the one who bends towards
his heart as in a deep well finds the lost track.

Christiane Singer
French-Austrian writer, essayist and novelist

with thanks to Michel at No Mind's Land

Photo - the internet

 

Yielding and Allowing - Kathleen Knipp

[What if we]...let go of the need to hold ourselves up.
Become familiar with the sense of yielding and allowing.
Realign and connect with that which feels most important,
that which our heart most deeply desires and yield to the
pull...

[What if we]...sense what if feels like to feel safe.  Access
somatically the feeling of letting go, surrendering, giving up
the struggle, even if only momentarily; releasing into the
Eternal Embrace.  Feel the sense of relief - simply being.

[What if we]...just feel what's here, without any sort of
commentary.  Sense the entirety of this moment: body, breath
thoughts, emotions - all the stuff of human experience, just as
it is; the changing landscape of emotions and thoughts.

It's okay to fully let go and to feel very deeply the human experience.

The Infinite and the finite are just different facets of the same gem.
There's no contradiction.  Infinite and finite simultaneously.
Vast and condensed at the very same time.
What a mystery.

Fully living this mystery; the experience of being human
and being Divine...

Kathleen Knipp

Excerpts from a Yoga Nidra meditation
called "Receiving"

 

The Voice of Silence Within - Fred LaMotte

Upon emerging from meditation.  I was moved to share this:

The world is not in chaos.  Minds are in chaos.
There is a place we need to return to: the wellspring of our own
intuition, the starry depth in our core.  This is the real Guru, the
true Friend, the true Master.  Throw the penny in this little mind
into that well, which has been silently bubbling up for countless
lifetimes, in a hidden glade, the wildest glen of your ancient brain.
Fall into this yearning hollow, all the way down your spine,
through your rib cage into the solar plexus.  You are just a ripple
of silence trembling into the galaxy.  Who will guide you to this
well?  The true Friend.  She leads you not to herself, but points 
beyond words to your own heart.  Listen to the voice of the Silence
inside silence.  A real Guru reveals this murmuring spring in the
valley of your chest,through a whisper, a touch, or their mere
presence.  They then walk away, freeing you to name the Mystery
for yourself, as you gaze into the unfathomable waters of Shakti,
the healing current of your own awakened grace.  Whenever you
want to come to this forest pool and sit with your Guru, or the
Christ, with Buddha, or with any of the Rishis, you find them
waiting here, nearer than your pulse.  Not in any temple or
ashram, but in the golden dark inside the inward spring of
Divine Love, overflowing with the nectar of emptiness,
gushing stars, pouring out the fierce wild atoms of your body,
for no reason but to dance.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo from the Internet 

 

"Stilling" - Kathleen Knipp

Consider what would feel "stilling", calming, settling.
Many traditions teach "be still" and that stillness can be a
stilling of the body.  Finding a position in which the body
can remain still has the effect of stilling the mind to some
extent. Stilling has an effect on the body as well as the mental
and emotional faculties.  Just as emotions have an effect on
the physical body they can influence the experience of 
emotions and thoughts.  So becoming still is happening on
multiple levels simultaneously. As the process of stilling
ceases, you become more aware of the breath that's always
happening...

As we become more still, the more subtle aspects of our Being
are more evident.  In stillness we have a greater capacity to open
to listening, to pure listening, not with the ears, or listening for
something, or to something.  Just listening - availability.

In stilling the body and stilling the mind we become more
present to that which is - what's here - which can manifest in
an infinite variety of ways.  What's here is ever changing, ever
renewing.

Allowing the body to be as it is gives the emotions and thoughts
the freedom to move and change.

As we become more still, that which is essential becomes
more apparent, that which is most important, the sense of a
"greater purpose", the "feeling" of being drawn/called toward
that which may be beyond our comprehension, beyond explanation,
beyond words.  Yet in the stillness it is felt as a bodily experience.
Yield to it, trust, knowing that it takes care of itself.  Just fall into
the stream, as the flow of life flows through us.

As we become still there may be a sense of ease, softening,
equanimity.  Meet what arises with an attitude of openness and
curiosity.  It is constantly changing and ever evolving.  Sensing
beyond the habits of the mind and surface turbulence there is
great stillness, unfathomable stillness...

Stillness that just is....

Kathleen Knipp
excerpts from a Yoga Nidra Meditation

original title - "be still"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Inner Listening - 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
to keep me focused on
the truth.  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: There is
only one consciousness
shining through the whole.
Open to it.  Breathe it in.
Receive it fully.  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 Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Ceaselessly Being Written - Wendell Berry

We arrive here in this world having forgotten where we came from,
though something of a memory seems to remain: a whisper, a
distant shine like that of a house window at night on the far side
of the valley, perhaps what some have called "the inner light," to
guide us when finally we have been jolted awake.  And so we 
don't come from nothing.  But once here we don't know where we
are.  At first I learned the world as a book written, completed the
day before my birth, not to be changed by another pen stroke. 
And then I saw that some I know were departing from it, never
to return, and new strangers were arriving.  The newcomers, if
they stayed, would learn more of less of where they were.  And
then, in time, they too would depart, taking with them the sum
of all they had learned, leaving behind them maybe a few who
would remember them, and then the rememberers too would go 
and be gone.  I see in this order of things, nothing to complain
about.  I have been here long enough to watch the whole turn of 
the wheel.  I see that we are passing through this world like a
river of water flowing through a river of earth.  A far cry from a
written book, the world - to extend my desperate metaphor - is
a book ceaselessly being written, and not in a human language.
This too has not been submitted to our judgment, and it is not
for us to regret.  To give thanks seems truly to be the right
response, for as we come and go we learn something of love,
the gift and the giving of it, if we accept it...

That is the heart speaking in the heart's language, and out of
a mystery so vast that order and chance may be reconciled
within it.  Because, for all we surely know, we come into our
times and places as much at random as leaves falling...

Wendell Berry

from How it Went - Thirteen more stories of
the Port William membership

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo -Mystic Meandering

 

The Language of Invisible Vibrations - Hazrat Inayat Khan

Color and sound are not only the language in which one
communicates with the life without, but also the language in
which one communicates with the life within.  One might ask
how it is done.  We can see the answer in certain scientific
experiments.  Special plates are made, and by speaking near
such a plate marks are made upon the plate with sound and
vibrations.  Those marks make either harmonious or in-
harmonious forms.  If that is true, then every person, from
 morning till evening, is making invisible forms in space by
what he says. He is creating invisible vibrations around him
 and so he is  producing an atmosphere.  Therefore it is that
 one person who may come into the house, and before he speaks
you are tired of him, you wish to get rid of him.  Before he
 has said or done anything you are finished with him, you would
 like him to go away, for in his atmosphere he is creating a sound;
 a sound is going on which is disagreeable.  There is another person
 with whom you feel sympathy, to whom you feel drawn, whose
friendship you value, whose presence you long for; harmony
is continually created through him.  That is sound too.

If that is true then it is not only the external signs, but also the
inner condition which is audible and visible.  Though not visible
to the eyes and not audible to the ears, yet it is audible and
visible in the soul.  We say: "I feel his vibrations.  I feel the person's
presence.  I feel sympathy, or antipathy towards that person."
There is a feeling, and a person creates a feeling without having
said anything or done anything.  What you are speaks louder than
what you say.  "It is life itself which has its tone, its color, its vibration.
It speaks aloud."

Hazrat Inayat Khan
Vol. 2, The Mysticism of Sound and Music
7. The Spiritual Significance of Color and Sound

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Unknown Wanderer - Ed Crowley

I'm the Unknown Wanderer.
Understand that I speak not 
the language of your mind.

My speech is completely Silent.
It's compassionate and kind

I speak the silent alphabet,
that only talks Heart to Heart.
It immediately quells all fears

If you cannot hear it,
then go ahead and
shut the gates of both
your eyes and ears.

Go within, beyond mind,
far deeper, to the stillness
of the Silence within.

Listen closely and you
will hear the melodies
of Heart to Heart music
within the tranquil stillness,
where truth has always been.

There's only one sound
drowning out all others.
It's the transcendent,
primordial sound of OM.

It's echoing within the
innermost chambers
of your Soul.  I'll be ringing
the sacred inner temple bell,
I'll be calling you back Home.

It's the ecstatic bliss
of the Beloved One,
singing It's loving presence,
Intimately to your Essence.

Now open all your eyes,
the inner and outer ones,
You'll finally see the Reality
of the splendor of Existence.

With an empty mind and
a pure Heart, all of the 
world's miracles abound.

Feel the reverberating,
crescendo culminating.

You'll [be] Consciously
Awake, to Realize, that
It is Love that is indeed
Creation's primordial sound.

Ed Crowley

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Sacred - Ostaseski

The Sacred makes surprise appearances,,,

To know the Sacred is not to see new things,
but rather to see things in a new way...

The Sacred is not separate or different from all
things: It is hidden in all things.
The Sacred has always existed.
It is the nature of reality.
We don't always perceive or distinguish
the Sacred.

We see in a conditioned way,
staying on the surface of life.
When we pay attention, however, we realize
that the Sacred reveals itself continuously - yet
is unnamable and cannot be fully described.
Ordinary people can and do regularly experience
the Sacred in myriad ways and forms.
Silence is a natural response to the presence of the Sacred
no matter when it appears.  We become aware of the 
majesty in the ordinary and the depth of the Sacred
that is always around us and within us...

Frank Ostaseski

From: The Five Invitations

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"The Companion" - a meandering...

"The Companion" is unidentifiable, nameless,
identity-less - and - indwells us.
"The Companion" is a felt sense of Presence within;
beyond all concepts of "God", religion, deity, or
enlightenment...

"The Companion cannot be reduced to a name, or
label - it's beyond that...
You can't wrap it, or trap it, in a conceptual framework.
It's beyond concept...

"The Companion" is a felt resonance...
that helps align us with the internal frequency of
our Essence, our Being, our Soul -
even when we don't recognize it.

It's what attunes us to the Essence of our Being -
inexplicably...

"The Companion" is always within us;
noticed as an inner stillness
when we pay attention to it.
It's been there all along - comforting.

We just haven't been aware...

~

Companion from the Unseen
Mysterious Friend of the Heart
You comfort me, and sustain me
and free me from my darkest night.

Mystic Meandering

Sept. 28, 2022

Written after a conversation with my husband
about something we were both experiencing back
in Sept - and we called it "The Companion" to give
a sense of what if feels like within - but which is
beyond even that description...

~

Photo - Northern Lights from a Calendar 

 

Infinite Spirit/Divine Flow - Trine

There is an Infinite Spirit of Life behind all [life] -
a divine flow from the Infinite Source through the individual.
If this is true then the life that comes by this inflow to man
is necessarily the same in essence.  It is a difference in degree.

Our life as individual spirits is continually coming from this
Infinite Source by means of this divine inflow.  If our lives are
directly from this Infinite Spirit that is manifested in the life
of each [then it]is identical in quality with that Source, just as a
 drop of water from the ocean is, in nature, in characteristics,
identical with the ocean, its source.  How could it be otherwise?

Doesn't it not then follow that the only limitations are the
limitations he [man] sets to himself, by virtue of no knowing
himself?  Recognizing our true identity brings our life into
harmony with the same force.

The great central fact in human life, is the coming into a
conscious vital realization or our oneness with the Infinite Life,
and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine flow.

Ralph Waldo Trine

From: In Tune with The Infinite

published in 1897

~

Photo Aurora Borealis from a calendar

 

The Great Suffering - A Simple Man

The Great Suffering is one of many perceptions and sensations
felt in the body, and happens simultaneously with the 
awareness of the Beauty around us - in the formless Field of
Awareness.

Everything is overlaid with acquired knowledge, and the
psychological and somatic conditioning.  The immediacy of
our experience becomes veiled, overlaid by unconscious,
reflexive conditioning.  The overlay applies to the totality of
experience and what it feels like to be alive.

The Great Suffering comes about as we learn of the darker
aspects of Nature and humankind.  The aspects of the Great
Suffering are not innate elements.  Nothing originally overlays
our Naked Essence. Can we come to an Experience of Being
that we have known before the constituents of The Great
Suffering clouded our Essence?

Our Essence is the Essential me unshrouded by all that has been
acquired over the course of a life; all that is not native to us.
It is the feeling of Aliveness.  You can feel yourself.  You can
feel the Field of Awareness Itself - which is the Feeling of
yourself...  You have to keep bringing your Attention back to
feeling yourself as the Source, which is prior to the arising of
thought...

Who then am I?

The Formless Aliveness, the Essential self , recognized and
remembered.  

Excerpts from: An Affair of the Heart
by - A Simple Man

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Story of Akhilandeshwari - Laura Amazzone

Art: Peter Weltevrede

Akhilandeshwari is a South Asian Goddess figure in the Shakta
Tantric Tradition. According to that tradition She is a vast field of
 Consciousness - a force of Ultimate Reality - the Great Mother
Herself. 
 Her name means "Never not broken."

It is hard not to feel the brokenness of the world with all the
man-made crises, conflict, disasters and devastation happening in
the world; not to mention the personal dramas that play out in
 our lives.  We are all impacted by the global crises of these times.

What is needed to help find our way through?  How can our
breakdowns lead to breakthroughs? How do we approach the
challenges, pain and difficulty that overwhelm some of us? 
How do we transform our  own fears and personal  sense of
 impotence into something meaningful,
empowering and liberating?

[It is believed that] Akhilandeshwari can help us move through
the very challenges and difficulties in life.  She helps us to find
that  light of our Essence  through the cracks of the chaos.  She is
the power of the Sri Yantra, an ancient Hindu symbol of Union
 [with] Divine  Consciousness.

Brokenness seems to suggest separation, but if we look closely
 we can see  the felt sense of what is ever-present beneath the
cracks that  can lead to our own sense of internal balance and
union within.

One of Her many gifts is to remind us of the power to be
found in our brokenness.  From the Shakta Tantric perspective
 Akhilandeshwari brings and removes the pain and suffering that
 break  us down. She guards over all those experiences in life that
can knock  the wind out of us and send us reeling, crashing down,
 wondering how we will ever get up.  She brings and removes the
 deep sense  of brokenness, the crushing pressure on one's heart,
the endless mental anguish, to  remember what's Real.  Our
"Never not broken" experience  can be a fierce and painful
 process.  However, She gives us courage to face the many little
 deaths that happen repeatedly in  our life.  If we surrender and allow
 ourselves to go to the heart of our pain, we can find refuge in our
 vulnerability  and in our imperfections.

Spiritual growth and freedom can be gained through difficult
experiences and in the invaluable lessons they provide there is
always a gift in the pain we experience.

Akhilandeshwari is depicted as riding a crocodile, which represents
 our primal instincts, especially fear, and our false pretenses and roles
 we play to appear "perfect" and "whole."  She destroys all illusions
 and delusions, so we can come back to our Essence. The intensity
of our experience is to disorient our egos so that we drop our
attachments  and come into our authentic nature.

When we remember the unlimited Space behind our brokenness we
form new patterns and ways of being.  The journey that unfolds is
deep, mysterious, soul affirming and often intensely creative.

Akhilandeshwari breaks us down and from the depths of despair,
we come back to fullness and wholeness - our Essence.

Laura Amazzone

Excerpt from an article
Published Dec 2015 in the Sutra Journal

 

"Spiritual Practice" - Frank Ostaseski

Authentic "spiritual practice" is not about maintaining high
altered states, transcending the body, bypassing difficult emotions,
or healing all that remains unresolved within us.  "Spiritual
practice" helps us settle into the utter simplicity of being ourselves...
The healing happens when we bring awareness to the places
that have been hardened in us through the conditioned habits
of grasping, resistance and avoidance.

Mindfulness [awareness] is the deconditioning [of those habits].
Then things are free to be as they are.  We allow the difficult,
dark and dense.  We become more intimate with our full humanity
and discover an ever-deeper, vast sense of wholeness.

Being who you are can only arise from
accepting where you are.

Frank Ostaseski
The Five Invitations

~

Photo from the internet

 

Trust...

Religion is a vehicle;
Spirituality is a vehicle;
Metaphysics is a vehicle;
A Guru/Teacher is a vehicle;
Quantum Physics is a vehicle;
Creativity and Art is a vehicle;
Yoga and Meditation is a vehicle;
and maybe Psychology is a vehicle;
tending to our traumas and wounds;
Maybe telling our stories of challenge
and difficulty is also a vehicle for us to
discover what is true for ourselves...

We don't have to follow a prescribed path,
or one teacher, or one way, or one story, but
use all "ways" to access the truth of existence;
the truth of your Being...

Life itself is the vehicle...

Trust your own way...
Trust your own experience...

Sometimes that means we have to go to the
darker places within for the truth to be revealed...

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 21, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Hope - Frank Ostaseski

Hope is a subtle, sometimes unconscious attitude of the heart
and mind that is essential in this human life.  Experts differ
on whether hope is an emotion, a belief, a conscious choice,
or all three.  I think of hope as an innate quality of being, as
open, active trust in life that refuses to quit.

When hope is misunderstood, it can plunge us into delusion
and become a hindrance to facing the facts of life.  To discern
the real value of hope, we must draw a line between hope and
expectation.  Hope is an optimizing force and moves us and all
of life toward harmony.  It is an abiding state of being, a hidden
wellspring within us.  This version of hope is a basic human
need.

Yet our usual kind of hope is little more than wishful thinking.
It's frequently tied to an an almost childlike belief, sometimes
even blind faith, that an external agency or authority will bring
about what we desire.  Driven by our preference for a different
 set of conditions, this conventional view of hope is a rejection
of what is present for us in the here and now.

Ordinary hope disguised as expectation is fixated on specific
outcomes.  This hope gets conflated with the desire for a
certain future result.  Attaching our happiness to a specific
future result causes us all sorts of suffering..... attachment to
outcome posing as hope interferes with our ability to be present
to our experience of life as it is unfolding.

Mature hope takes us inside ourselves and toward finding the 
good in the experience.  Mature hope requires both a clear
intention and a simultaneous letting go.  This hope is not
dependent on outcome.  The hope is in the potential for our
awakened [or skillful] response, not in things turning out
a particular way - and we are no longer trapped by our
conventional view of hope.  We leave room for surprise.
The energizing quality of mature hope helps us to remain
open to the possibility that while life may not turn out the 
way we first thought, opportunities we never imagined may
also arise.

Frank Ostaseski
Buddhist Teacher

from: The Five Invitations

 

Courage - Fra Giovanni

[.....] The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet
within our reach, is joy.  There is radiance in darkness, could
we but see.  And to see we have only to look...

Life is a generous giver.  But we, judging its gifts by their
covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard.  Remove
the covering, and you find beneath it a living splendor, woven
of love by wisdom...

Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings
it to you.  Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, the gift
is there and the wonder of an overwhelming presence.  Your
joys too, be not content with them as joys.  They, too, conceal
divine gifts.

Life is full of beauty beneath its covering, you will find earth
but cloaks your heaven.  Courage then to claim it.  But courage
you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,
wending through unknown country home.

Fra Giovanni
1513

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

"We're just walking each other home."

Ram Dass

~

Photo from the internet

 

Eternity - Joseph Campbell

Eternity isn't some later time.
Eternity isn't even a long time.
Eternity is that dimension of here
and now that all thinking in temporal
terms cuts off.  The experience of eternity
is right here, in all things...is the function of
life...

Joseph Campbell
from: The Power of Myth

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Golden Eternity - Jack Kerouac

I have lots of things to tell you now, in case we never
meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me
under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter
moonlit night.

It said - It's all a dream,  Everything is Ecstasy inside.  We
just don't know it because of our thinking-minds.  But
in our true blissful essence is known that everything is
alright forever and forever.

Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop,
stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the secret Silence
inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember
the bliss your forgot:
There is only the Golden Eternity
You are the Golden Eternity

It is all one awakened thing.  I call it the Golden Eternity.
It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal
self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an
idea, a mortal idea.  That which passes into everything is
one thing.  It's a dream already ended.  There's nothing to
be afraid of.  I know this from staring at mountains months
on end.  They never show any expression, they are like
empty space.  Do you think the emptiness of space will
ever crumble away?  Mountains will crumble away, but
the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence
of mind, the vastness, empty and awake, will
never crumble away...

Jack Kerouac
The Portable Jack Kerouac
and The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Peaceful Presence - a meandering...

Suddenly peace overtook me and I was no longer
engaged in mental thrashings about life circumstances...
at least in that momentary, fleeting moment...

And I thought to myself:
Finally, Peace has come!

I actually fell into a twilight sleep -
aware that I was at last at peace/peaceful,
without trying to be peaceful, just basking
in the unbidden feeling of being at peace.
It was wonderful -
and somehow I knew that everything is deeply okay;
deeply peaceful at its core; at its essence...

Was this real, a dream, a mystical experience?

I understood that underneath the tempests of the mind
there is an abiding peace at the core of our being;
lost to us most of the time, to our awareness,
by the crashing waves of the mind's turmoil, but can be
felt in between the waves; like the pause between the
breaths.  There is a peaceful pause that sustains itself

 - even if not felt...

Everything is at peace at its core, but you can't try to get
there, you can only allow it to come through, to just
receive it when it emerges/arises on its own within,
and make yourself available to it when it does...

If only for one fleeting moment...

Mystic Meandering 
Jan. 7, 2023
around 3pm

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering