The Challenge of Illness - John O'Donohue

We never value or even see some things in our lives until we
are just about to lose them.  This is particularly true of health.
When we are in good health, we are so busy in the world that
we never notice how well we are.  Illness comes and challenges
everything about us.  It unmasks all pretense.
When you are really ill, you cannot mask it.

Illness also tests the inner fiber and luminosity of the soul. 

Illness focuses us onto our "inner landscape", into resting
deeply in the inner silence of the Soul.  It is a remedial silence
that allows us to endure, to move through, but not necessarily
getting rid of the illness.  We can't have an agenda - only the 
deep acceptance of the companion - and learn to navigate it.

John O'Donohue
From - Eternal Echoes

~

Photo of Soft Sunset taken by my brother :)

 

Sacred Outrage - Rupert Spira

 

...look behind the resistance you feel to what is happening
 [in this country, the world].
See if the resistance comes from Love of Truth...  If it does then
 it is not an egoic resistance to what is.
It is Sacred Outrage because you know that things are
not in line with Love.

Love is God's Being [Pure Beingness] shining through us.
We are the modulation of that Infinite Being...
Everyone has something unique to offer...
Each person will be motivated to express Love and understanding
in different ways - some as activists, some as teachers, writers,
artists, poets, doctors, nurses, etc...
Don't inhibit your action with pseudo non-dual reasoning.
Resistance at the relative level of existence is necessary.
Ask: What is my resistance motivated by - fear and neuroses,
or Love and Intelligence...
Act from the place of Love and understanding.
Engage...
 from the Heart.

Rupert Spira

~

We weep when light does not reach our hearts.
We wither like fields if someone doesn't
rain their kindness upon us.

Meister Eckhart

~

Photo from the Internet

Finding the Rhythm - a meandering

 

”A balanced life is based on its own rhythm. 
If you don’t set your own rhythm, and have the discipline
 to follow it, your life will move at the speed of
the culture around [you], which moves too fast. 
The space we make for quiet time affects our thought patterns
and, in turn, the quality of our lives.
To what extent is the rhythm of your life a result of…..adapting…..
to the flow that surrounds [you]." 

Rod MacIver

 Or I would even say, to the people around you. Have we entrained
 to the people around us – living their rhythm?  I  know I have…

I feel a resonance with his words, knowing that I needed to find
 that sense of the larger Inner Rhythm again,
 not just my own personal daily rhythm with life,
but the Flow with the Inner Being, commonly called the Tao,
 the undercurrent flow of Life within – from which all movement
arises.

The only way I know to do this is to turn within to The Silence
where  The Rhythm of the Inner Being is felt – the Rhythm of Silence
 ItSelf.  Being in The Sacred Silence is what brings me joy,
and a felt sense of Presence.   Finding that Inner Rhythm,
The Silence of Being, is “Divine Communion.” 
 This, for me, is the True Rhythm, the Rhythm of Pure
 Being ItSelf – the deep undercurrent of Life that animates all life
 – which is The Silence.
  This is what calls to me – over and over again.

But the hypnosis of the world keeps me magnetized to the ways
 of the world and pulls me out of this deeper way of living and
 knowing. We are conditioned to be drawn to the external drama
 of the world, to chew on it, teethe on it…  It’s the pablum
 of the matrix we live in.  But no one trains us to turn within
 to the Quiet Inner Presence of Silence. 
And so we follow the rhythm of the world (the civilized, political,
 chaotic world), with its hypnosis of separation from our Inner Being,
instead of turning  inward to the Awareness of the Inner Rhythm;
to that interior space of The Rhythm of the “Great Mystery”
 that pulsates Its Aliveness within us, and does not depend
on a name, label, or identity – or the world’s rhythms…  

Mystic Meandering
2015

 

~

Mandala Art:  Mystic Meandering
 Bliss Lotus Mandala
2013

The Hush of "The Mystery"...

The Hush of "The Mystery"
silently moves through time and form...

Can you feel it? -
this silent hush
that lives in you,
that moves through you,
that communes with you
even when you don't know it?

It waits for you to stop and listen -
to sense Its Hush
infusing you -
beyond hearing,
beyond seeing,
beyond knowing...

It comes in sudden,
unexpected
breezes of awareness
wafting through your being -
in and out of your noticing,
but never really gone -

It invites you to enter
the cosmic seduction of
Its Presence,
to
follow Its Silence
more deeply,
into the cavern
of Its Heart
that awaits you
in the depths
if Its repose

Succumb
to what awaits you

in
the Heart of "The Mystery"

The Breath of the Eternal...

Love's Illumination...

~*~

Mystic Meandering
May 2015

~

I use the term "The Mystery" here, but one can call it:
The Infinite, the Ineffable, the Nameless, The Ultimate
Reality, The Beloved, and of course - God...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

"The Mystery", like Life ItSelf, is ever unfolding,
ever revealing ItSelf.
We are always in a state of discovering "The Mystery"
and what IT is revealing to us - ongoingly.
What IT offers each of us is unique, yet universal:
Speaking directly to our Hearts...
When I speak of "The Mystery", as in this poem,
it is always from my own direct "experience" of it,
for I am acutely aware that I *know*, intellectually,
nothing *about* "The Mystery",
only how "The Mystery" reveals ItSelf to and in my
Heart...

Namaste

_/\_

 

Beyond "Spirituality" - MM & A.H. Almaas

 

Beyond the "cloak of spirituality" that we wear,
in its many disguises, is the unconditioned Essence
of our own Being - the "Genuine Self",
the "Authentic Self". the "Precious Pearl"

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 Consciousness
that has no "belief", no conditioned "idea" of
"spirituality" - just pure Beingness,

living as we are...

Mystic Meandering
May 27, 2019

~

The non-dual realization is only a step toward
greater mysteries and forms of freedom
leading to the deepening realization
of the fullness of being human,
expressing the totality of the 
cosmos in all its physical and
spiritual dimensions -
living the simplicity
of
ordinary life.

A.H. Almaas

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
 Pikes Peak
taken from Greenland, Colorado

Ageless and Brainless :) - a meandering

Last week I had two MRIs,
one for the brain, (to see if I actually had one :))))
and the other the lumbar spine because of the problems
I've been having with balance and walking and tingling
in my legs, and ache in the sacrum...

The night of the MRIs I had a felt sense that there is something
within that doesn't *feel* 75.  I guess what the non-dualists
call "The Self."  It's like there's something inside the body-me
that doesn't age - is Ageless.  Maybe some call it the Soul.
The Inner Being, the Inner Spirit, The Essence, The Ineffable, etc.

But it's like I became *aware* of its Presence.
I woke? :):):):)

I'm aware that my/the body *is* aging, declining, losing its
functioning, including my brain/mind.  But there is this other 
"me" (non-dualists won't like that) - which isn't another "me" -
which isn't "me" - but something that isn't aging - watching all
this happen - which I now call "The Watcher" :)
But which is also known as The Source, the Infinite Self, and
sits at the very Core of my Being behind the Heart...

But this awareness of that didn't make "me" *feel* any better
physically.  Physically I'm still declining...

~

It also occurred to me, in that same flow that night, that the
brain *has* to be connected to, or *is* the mind.
(I have been told otherwise - that the mind is not the brain.)
You can't locate the mind - although people seem to point to
the head.  But it's apparently free-floating somewhere,
I guess... :)

But the brain has a "thinking" function...
I contemplated that the mind and the brain may not be
separate entities...
because... when the brain (the physical organ) starts to not
function properly, then the "thinking" function (of the brain)
is diminished or diminishing.  Thinking becomes garbled,
mixed up and unclear.  You lose cognition.
Then there's also a memory function of the brain, which also
deteriorates and you lose your memory because that section of
the brain has lost its functioning.  And there is a language function,
that when it declines you begin to lose your words, etc.
Hopefully you get where I'm going. :)

The mental functions apparently correlate information,
which become thoughts (?)

Where are these thoughts coming from now - once the brain
starts to deteriorate - is there a separate thing called mind - that
thinks....  hmmmmm

Geez - maybe I need an MRI of the brain more often.
It seemed to open up a new pathway?  LOLOLOL

Just ramblings, I know - with a little humor on the side...

But still....
something to ponder....

Mystic Meandering
April 5, 2025

~

Photo from the Internet

 

An Odyssey of "Spiritual" Liberation - a meandering...

 

The "spiritual"meandering that I do is really an Odyssey...
a life long, sometimes complicated wandering through life,
and down many "spiritual paths", marked by many changes;
a physical, psychological journey as well, and very much
an emotional one...

So in this sometimes challenging Odyssey that started with
Christianity, then led me to Metaphysics, Buddhism,
Non-Duality/Neo Non-Duality, I find myself seemingly landing
 in Buddha's lap again - revisiting mindfulness and awareness,
 at least for the time being....

And what I've gleaned so far in my "spiritual sojourn" from all
the "wisdom teachings" is that It's an ever evolving Odyssey.
There is no "end", no big bang, once and for all "enlightenment"
that we arrive at - with bells, whistles and flashing lights...

And here is what evolved for me,
and has, to some extent, been liberating...
And yet, it's all still a mystery...

~

At some point there was a Recognition of our
"Indigenous" Nature.  Not Native American Spirituality,
although I learned from that as well, but the felt sense of
our Fundamental Essence...

Liberating...

There was Recognition of "The Mystery" - in disguise - playing me/you!
Revealing Itself through the play of me/you - the Joy of me/you!

Liberating...

There is Recognizing more and more that we are "The Mystery" in
 form, which expresses Itself through our self - as our self...

Liberating...

There is Recognizing that "The Mystery"/The Ineffable is our
 Fundamental Essence, covered over by years of religious/psychological/
emotional conditioning and traumas - giving us an identity - which we
believe to be who we are - but aren't completely...

Liberating...

There is Realizing it is the beliefs about the "self" that dissolve, not the
self/ego/personality itself.  The personality then shines with the
Light of the Fundamental Nature.
This recognition is what liberates...
Not the pursuit of "enlightenment", or becoming "enlightened,
but recognizing the Inherent, liberated  Inner Being that we are -
our Essence - which is Ageless and unbound...

Liberating...

Liberation is not the "me/self" that is liberated.  It's "The Mystery"
ItSelf within that is liberated - in our recognition of it.  It's the
Infinite within us, that which animates us, that is liberated.
It all gets liberated in the recognition of Itself in us, as us.

the mystery is - that we are "The Mystery."

Liberated!

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 31, 2020

intro added April 2025

"The Mystery" in me bows to "The Mystery" in you!

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Happiness" Floats...

The other day I unexpectedly felt "happiness" 
flow through, amidst other darker emotions too...
It wasn't really "happiness", but more a calm
contentment, out of the blue...

And not even contentment,
more just a
still inner Quietness that grew...

A smile of the Heart

And just as easily as it came,
it went...
It just floated up -
and away...

Strange...

I did not create it...
It was causeless "happiness"
just visiting...

I met it with gratitude...

Mystic Meandering
April 2, 2025

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

It was never my "goal" to be "happy."
Never pursued it, never felt "entitled" to it.
Occasionally it does come to visit :)

The Art of Creating "Happiness" - Thich Nhat Hanh

What is the nature of joy and happiness?
How can we touch true joy in every moment?
How can we live in a way that brings a smile
to everyone we encounter?

Use your talent to find ways to bring
happiness [joy] to yourself and others.
The happiness that arises from meditation is
not the same as the feelings that come from
the pursuit of pleasure-seeking

Meditative joy has the capacity to nourish our
mindfulness, understanding, and love.
Live in a way that encourages deep meditative
happiness/joy in yourself.

You can vow to bring joy to one person in the
morning, and to help relieve the suffering of one
person in the afternoon.

Ask yourself, "Who can I make smile this morning?"
This is the art of creating happiness...

Thich Nhat Hanh

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

From the kitchen window the branches of
this apple tree that's trying to grow at the corner
of the shed have a luminescent pinkish glow...
Just gorgeous... :)  
Brings me an inner sense of "happiness."

 

Humility - Brian Doyle

 

You cannot control anything.
You cannot order or command everything.
You cannot fix and repair everything.
You cannot protect [people] from pain
and loss and tragedy and illness.
You cannot be sure you will always be
employed, or healthy, or relatively sane.

All you can do is face the world with quiet grace.

When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story
in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or
several at once, sometimes;  when we are older we take on
other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you
and I both know men and women who become trapped in
the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately
imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to
escape who they no longer wish to be;  but finally, I think, if
we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with
humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief....
and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and
true about humility.

Humility does not mean self abnegation, lassitude, detachment;
it's more a calm recognition that you must trust in that which
does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly
ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture.  You
must trust that you being you matters somehow...

[and that]

.....pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy...

[and]
You do your best to reach out tenderly and touch and elevate as
many people as you can reach...

You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath
you draw.  Humility is the road to love.  Humility, maybe, is
love.  That could be.  I wouldn't know; I'm a muddle and a 
conundrum shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder,
trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards
of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.

Brian Doyle

Excerpts from the chapter - "The Final Frontier"
From: One Long River Song

~

Photo from the Internet

On Suffering - Kathleen Knipp

 

Life is suffering...

This ubiquitous phrase, the first noble truth of Buddhism, is so
frequently repeated and disseminated throughout mainstream
media that even your uncle who disdains all things esoteric
has likely encountered a variation of it.  Life is suffering.
Many in my entourage are feeling the suffering.  They are
profoundly feeling it.  They keep company with others who
are feeling it.

Of all the teachings passed down through the ages, this message
has endured and become a widely recognized and popular catch-
phrase.

Why? 
 And, more importantly, how might we draw upon it as we face
these challenging times?

Many believe that the cause of their suffering is the destruction of
democracy and the destabilization of the world order.  Is this true?
Is it possible that the current catastrophes have only ripped the scab
off a subtler, root source of suffering?  Might it be that this round of
disasters serves as a compelling place to point a finger?  If that
lunatic were not running the US government (you can choose which
madman) then I'd feel OK.  Remember the early days of the pandemic
when we were all terrified to touch our groceries, no less our loved
ones?  Between then and today, maybe an illness or a death or a 
lost job or relationship took the helm of the suffering ship.

Why do we strive to rid ourselves of suffering?  Why not eradicate
joy?  Why, when, as we learn in Kashmir Shaivism:
 the Totality contains everything - everything, that Consciousness
manifests in an infinite variety of forms, not just the ones we like,
are we certain that "something needs to be done here!"  Why do I
believe life should be any different than it is?
[This is a tough question to ask oneself, especially when suffering.]

We are bound to suffering.  Might we ask ourselves, "What does
suffering actually feel like?"  How is it expressed in me?  Through
me?  Is it a nagging nebulous unsatisfactoriness or more of a
screaming painful certainty that I am in imminent danger?

[Or experiencing a chronic illness, or sudden decline in the body.]

Perhaps we can find a little time each day to sit on our cushion,
or lie down on our mat, or be wherever we are in whatever
position we happen to find ourselves, and we feel into the suffering.
Sense it deeply.  Every nuance of it.  Feel how we reject this
agony.  Sense the tension in our muscles, the knot in the belly,
the clenching of the teeth.  [Feel the anxiety and fear that arise.]
Feel how we protest and blame.  Recognize how we distract or
how we try to rearrange our lives to avoid feeling that which is
inevitable.  [Trying to rearrange the chairs on the deck of the Titanic :]
Engage this practice with curiosity and with love.  
Give it all you have.

Maybe inquire, "Who is feeling this pain?"

For sure, there is fallout from the current political scene.  There is
no denying that the lives of many people have been adversely 
affected, and that, likely, they will continue to be...

.....this human gig is temporary...
this particular set of crises, well, they too will pass.....

Observe with gentleness our very human tendency
to identify with mind and its contents...

[to forget] that it's a never-ending play of Consciousness.

Kathleen Knipp
Pathless Yoga
Non-Dual Teacher
Excerpts from "On Suffering"

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Art - Mystic Meandering
Light and Dark Vortex

2011

 

The Beauty of the Night...

I love the darkness of night,

when all is still in my part of the world,
and The Silence of the Universe fills the body
and Heart....

No distractions, no disturbances...
I settle into what really matters -
The Silence of Being, the Nameless
- just breathing...

I would rather be awake during the darkness
of night, than enduring the brashness,
cacophony and chaos of the day.
The darkness is comforting, calming...
There's a Beauty in the night's darkness
that can be felt...

It is The Silence of Life ItSelf
that matters most to me;
an odd duck, I know.
Not "day driven" - going from
one task to another,
seeing how much I can get done;
maybe it's my age,
and waning life energy.

The simplicity
of night's quiet darkness
soothes me and allows me to access
the deep space within, again.
Deep calling to deep...

For now, though, I must let go of
the night's allure -
and fall into sleep.

Mystic  Meandering
March 21, 2025
2:05 am

~

I can hardly wait for "Window Sitting" to
begin again.   :)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Full Moon July 2022

 

Dancing in the Fire - Oriah

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you
dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.  I want 
to know if you risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring 
your moon.  I want to know if you have touched the
center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened
by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.  I want to know if you can sit
with pain, mine or your own without moving to hide
it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, 
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us
to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true
to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it's not
pretty every day, and if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and
mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout
to the sliver of the full moon, "Yes!"

 I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to
the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children,
[or your elderly parents, your spouse, or a dying loved one.]

It doesn't matter to me who you know or how you came to
be here.  I want to know if you will stand at the center
of the fire with me and not shrink back.
[can you meet me there...]

[This - is Friendship]

Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Original title - "The Invitation"
from - The Invitation

[brackets mine]

~

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
Woman Dancing in the Fire
(as seen from overhead)

~

"No one cares how much you know
until they know how much you care."

attributed to Theodore Roosevelt,
although no one really knows the
true author...

 

Creating Your Own Reality - Haramein

There is a concept that a person can create their own reality.

This concept is only partially correct because it is generally
discussed in a one-way manner i.e., a person sending a message
to the field [God, the Universe, etc.] with a request/intention/
prayer desiring an outcome.

This is only 1/2 of the loop.

The wave you're sending is the feed-forward part of the loop.
You need to realize that the wave coming back is the feed-back
which is the rest of the Universe creating its reality and 
responding to you.  The Universe (Planck Field or "The Divine")
interacts with the rest of humanity and your creation and the
Universe gives you a result that is a combination of everyone's
feed-forward waves.

If a person could create a reality exactly the way they wanted it,
 a few things would happen:

1) you would be the only one in it because everybody else would
be creating their own.  It would be very lonely.

2) you would also be bored within seconds since you had everything
you wanted.  

What happens is that you put your intention out into the field and
you stay open to what comes back realizing it's going to get modified
for the highest evolution of the whole.  (One can only hope this is true :)

The unexpected feed-back gives you empathy for yourself and others.
You might not get exactly what you expected but now you're learning
from the experience. [Hopefully true.]  The totality of everyone's learning
is how the Universe learns about itself....

Nassim Haramein

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

We Grow Up - Rainer Maria Rilke

We say release, and radiance, and roses,
and echo upon everything that's known;
and yet, behind the world our names enclose is
the Nameless: our true archetype and home.

The sun seems male, and earth is like a woman,
the field is humble, and the forest proud;
but over everything we say, inhuman,
moves the forever-undetermined god.

We grow up; but the world remains a child.

Star and flower, in silence, watch us go.
And sometimes we appear to be the final
exam they must succeed on.  And they do.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Stephen Mitchel version

~

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, 
that around every circle another can be drawn;
that there is no end in nature, bur every end is a
beginning; that there is always another dawn risen
on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
from Essays: First Series (1841)

_

Photo from the Internet
Color digitally inverted

 

You Be You - Brian Swimme

Each era in the Universe is unique,
never to be repeated.  It's as if at dawn a deep
resonant voice calls forth to every entity in
existence:  "Become your unique self."
The Universe advances only if you 
blossom forth as you!

At birth each of us is given a quantum of
energy.  The Universe offers us a gift and
asks only one thing in return:
That we use it to say who we are.
When we live a life that expresses our unique
being, we align ourselves with the Universe.

Brian Swimme
Cosmogenesis

~

Photo - Aurora Borealis by John Hyde

 

Celebrating Uniqueness - Hermann Hesse

I revere trees when they live in tribes and families, in forests
and groves.  And even more I revere them when they stand alone.
They are like lonely persons.  In their highest boughs the world
rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they don't lose themselves there,
they struggle with all the force of their lives for only one thing:
to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their
own form, to represent themselves.

A tree says:  The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took
with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique
the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar
on my bark.  I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my
smallest special detail.

Hermann Hesse
Notes and Sketches

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Tree Refection in pond color inverted..

~

NOTE: For my Follow.it followers
there was a typo error
in the 4th line down which should
have read:
"but they don't lose themselves there..."
I was unable to edit it on your follow.it copy.
Sorry about that :)

 

"Home"...

Never lose sight of "Home" -
your inner "Home"...
The deep Silence of your Being -
The Essence...

that sustains you -
that in-spires you -
through every life experience...

Through physical pain -
and emotional heartache...
The Silence waits for you -
like a dear Friend...

Welcomes you "Home"
again and again and again -
when you have wandered away -
into the chaos of the world...

You are loved beyond measure...

Mystic Meandering
March 11, 2025

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Water Bottle Reflections

 

Embracing Humanity's Pain - a meandering...

I wrote this piece about 13 years ago in the aftermath of Hurricane
Sandy that devastated parts of the Northeast in the U.S.  It seemed
relevant to resurrect it with what is going on in the world today,
with floods, fire, famine and ongoing, endless wars -
the state of humanity...

~

The images on TV back then of people on the East coast left broken
 and brokenhearted - calling out for assistance, as if they had been
abandoned - touched my heart, touching that same feeling of
abandonment deep within myself somewhere.  And I wonder, how
could I live in a contemplative bubble that I am wont to do - close
myself off to what is happening in the world, under the guise of
"spirituality"?  I can't.  There is no either/or.  It's all one Life living
ItSelf out here - just as it is...  Pain and Peace...  And maybe it's
really that I want to protect myself from feeling my own pain.
That's what global pain does.  It gets us in touch with our own
pain, our own vulnerability, our own helplessness to know what
to do for a hurting world, let alone our own pain.

I saw a woman on TV back then helping in the clean-up effort in
her own coastal town - crying - saying - "I want to go home, but
there is no home.  It's gone."  I turned away and cried silently in
my heart.  I can't imagine the devastation to the psyche that no
amount of religious platitudes of non-attachment, or non-dual
refrains of: there is no "me" who wants to go home - can assuage.
It is a deep wound of the heart to lose one's sense of "Home" -
to *feel* that sense of separation and loss.  I'm sure some have
 felt that in one form or another at some time in our lives,
whether it was a loss of a physical place, a person, or an
emotional/spiritual sense of "Home" - that led to a sense of
 deep "homesickness" of the heart.

And a lot of us know people in our daily lives who need our
empathy and our compassion, who have lost their sense of
"Home", feeling abandoned by "God" (however we know that
to be) - losing that felt sense of connection adrift in their lives. 
 I understand this deep wound.  I know such people. 
 I've been there.  I empathize.
  It is a helpless feeling not knowing how to help them. 
 It's as if some people's pain is so deep , it cannot be mended. 
 It is not a tangible "fix" on a practical level, or seemingly a
"spiritual"one either.  It is a deep pain of the psyche.   
It is a loss of "Home" - a loss of one's internal bearing of the
Spirit;an insatiable pain that no one and nothing can fill.  I'm
sure you've met them too. The ones whose hearts cry the cry
of desperation in a dark wilderness of the mind, like sleep
 deprivation, leaving a deep hollow hunger within. 
 How do we help these wounded wanderers?
  Like the displaced people of Palestine, and
 Ukraine, in their current reality... 
Breaks my Heart again...

It all trickles down, pain upon pain - or maybe I sound too morbid -
too dramatic...  But it's true.  We are all impacted by the pain of
others, by the global, collective pain of a wounded world.  One
person's pain affects us all.  And yet, many times, as I have
discovered, we are helpless to end the pain, and so we distract
ourselves from the pain, theirs and our own, by shutting it out,
and shutting down; by pretending that it is all a grand illusion,
a dream that we can detach from.  I have done it too, not wanting
to experience the pain.  But the pain ripples out anyway - through
humanity.  How can we *not* be affected - how can we not allow
ourselves to *feel* it...

Humanity's pain *is* my/our pain.  It's all a reflection.  And lofty
beliefs and "spiritual" words are dismissive, not helpful, because
they cannot be heard, or received by those caught in their deep pain...
Humanity's pain needs the embrace of an empathetic heart of
compassion...

~

There's nothing I can offer
that buffers the pain
that softens the heartache,
or heals the wounds -

And yes, at times I don't want
to feel others' pain,
because it is too overwhelming...

And because I have my own pain.

And what to do with that as well...

I sit with it and let it speak,
let it cry,
let it take me to the "mothering":
womb of the Silence of all Life,
and rest there - waiting;
petitioning the Cosmic Energies,
neither male nor female,
to intervene,
on behalf of
a suffering world.

Sometimes
that's all I can do...

When the "practical"
fails to touch the soul...

We pray...

And that is our offering
of love...

Mystic Meandering
2012

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering