Welcome...

Come meander with me on the pathless path of the Heart
in these anecdotal,
sometimes inspiring, sometimes personal meanderings of the Heart's opening in the every-day-ness of life...

Thursday, December 29, 2016

What's Your Echo? - Bram Levinson


Have you actually ever considered what you do right now,
like the next word that comes out of your mouth,
the next social media post that you put up, the next thought that
flutters across your mind...is actually contributing to your echo?
Your echo is the energy that someone is filled with when they talk
about you or think about you - your energy with them.
Your echo is the energy that trails behind you in your wake.
It's the energy that outlives you and out lasts your body, your life.
It's your impact, your imprint.
We emanate energy.  We are energy in a human body and that energy
is palpable, it's contagious.

What's your echo?

What's going on in the world has triggered a lot of opinion.
What you emanate into the world contributes.
It's your echo.
We are responsible for what we give off.
What is happening around the world right now is the sum total of
all our energies that are frenetic.  We are giving off a lot of chaos.
There is a rising wave of intolerance that is happening in our minds.
We get swept up into it...  [But] we are given life boats to navigate
those choppy waters if we are clear enough.
It's about getting out of our stories and beliefs that we walk around with
about who we *think* we are.

We are all energy, the energy that animates us into life...

What you do matters...

It takes presence...


What's your echo...? 


Bram Levinson
Yoga and Meditation Teacher

Excerpts from the video: "Echoes: What Remains of Us?"


To view the full video click HERE and scroll down to video

~

What we speak
becomes the house
we live in.

Who will want to sleep in your bed
if the roof leaks
right above it?


Hafiz

~

Photo - part of an arurora borealis




Sunday, December 25, 2016

The Gift of "The Quiet"...


I awoke to "The Quiet" filling this space...
A palpable Nameless Presence in the air this morning,
as if "It" had taken up residence here,
in this space of dwelling...

I breathed "The Quiet" in,
and with curiosity
turned my awareness more keenly to
"The Quiet",
and was comforted...
by this unbidden Presence.

Through fluid eyes I understood that
only "The Quiet Presence" truly occupies this space,
not the *things* in the rooms, or the rooms themselves,
but only the ubiquitous space of "The Quiet"
that matter reality dwells *in*
beyond sight, beyond form...
Every sound, every form dwells within "The Quiet"
and "The Quiet" dwells in them...

I surrendered in Love and Gratitude to "The Quiet"
that dwells here,
that fills the space here - tangibly -
forever present in each breath
of this space that"I"
occupy as well...

Hush...

"The Quiet" Presence
dwells among us
and in us...

Holy-Holy

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Meanderings
Dec. 5, 2016

~

If you celebrate Christmas
may you experience
the gift of "The Quiet" Presence
filling your space today...
and every day...

_/\_


Photo - have no idea what this is a photo of,
probably a "mistake" - but can you see
the faint outline
 of a heart in the center
of that "cloud"?  :)


Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Listen for the Silence - Fred LaMotte


In the white noise
of many opinions
I long to hear the silence
creatures make
when they are listening.

There is no thought,
only the mysterious harmony
of trees and raindrops.

Invisible things appear.

The deer step gently
out of the mist.

When we listen,
the heart opens
fearlessly.

[.....]



Fred LaMotte
Interfaith Chaplain
Instructor of World Religions
Shaman

~

For those who celebrate the Solstice/Yule
may you hear the Silence of Life
singing in your Heart...


_/\_


Saturday, December 17, 2016

An Unfinished Song - Mark Nepo


The more we surrender the more we are touched by
the life around us...

In our journey, when.....driven by experience
we spiral through a stripping of our will,
reduced to an unfinished song.....into
a place of increasing surrender
that always brings us closer
to the essence of
life.

It is often when in need -
when too sad to keep the mask in place,
too tired to keep the wall propped up,
too wounded to lift the sword -
often it is then that we glimpse
each other as we really are,
stripped of all things we think
we need to protect ourselves.

When we are humbled to surrender
our claims of control and mastery,
we are invited into a space where
we are both completely ourselves
and completely beyond ourselves.

In moments of total surrender
we become the song
that brings us and others alive.

Surrendering control, letting go
and accepting,
opens a small
doorway
back
to life;
to being present
and staying open...
to the mystery of Being,
living in Wholeness...


Mark Nepo
From: The Exquisite Risk:
Daring To Live An Authentic Life

(Mark's words, my compilation)

Photo - Mandala Art digitally altered

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Authentic Being - Clare Blanchflower


Make no mistake
There is no goal
There is no path
Your quest ends
Here
In the
absolute
authentic
allowing of
this moment's
raw expression

In the deepest surrender
to what is
the lens of
limited focus
softens into
unbounded emptiness
Revealing
the infinity of you

If you truly desire
to know
your Self
Awaken to
Honesty
Let go of everything
that keeps you from
authentic
Being

Allow the awakeness
of the moment
to meet your
wholehearted
openness

Give up all roles
Surrender all masks
Melt
Into the radiant gaze
of wholeness

Clare Blanchflower


Monday, December 12, 2016

Emptying - Mark Nepo


Experience is a river that never stops coming.
Often we need to empty ourselves of conclusions, judgments and
preconceptions in order to meet whatever comes our way...
The early monastic vow of poverty was based on the need to empty,
as a way to involve a deeper form of listening.
In its original intent we find that poverty of mind reflects a quietude
that can restore an inner emptiness.  Poverty in an inner sense means
a divestment of all the distractions that occupy the mind.  It means an
emptying of the interior belongings that keep us from the essential
experience of being that waits beneath all our human noise.

[We] must carry less - must put down the wounds that clog
 and weigh the heart.  We must risk being touched [by life].

[But] letting go is not just about putting things down.
On a deeper plane, letting go is about letting your heart crumble,
 about letting yourself be rearranged by the journey of being alive.
  To soften and crumble is not to die.  It simply allows us to change.
  It is a call to enter the unknown.

When we can admit who we are, and give voice to what lives inside us,
[all that we feel and experience], that very act opens us like an inlet
and lets the depths of being rush in.  For in admitting who we are lets
the mysteries of life enter us.
We are talking about the authenticity of being.


From - The Exquisite Risk: Daring To Live An Authentic Life

~

Photo - the bottom of a glass bowl...


Friday, December 9, 2016

The Timeless Moment - Bodhipaksa & Hesse

Time was no longer a path with the past behind me
and the future before me, as we commonly conceive of it.
Instead there was a sense of an eternally unfolding present moment.
Rather than time being a journey along a linear path, change
 appeared to be mandala-like.  It seemed to be like a flower
 seen from above, endlessly unfolding from within,
 or like a kaleidoscope's image forever rearranging itself.

It struck me as highly misleading to think in terms of there being a
 past behind us and a future ahead of us.  Instead there was only
 this one present moment, eternally unfolding, according to its
 nature. I found myself in an eternal, timeless present...

Bodhipaksa - Living As A River
via: Markings


"I would like to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise
of its own unfolding"
John O'Donohue

~

Have you learned that secret from the river;
that there is no such thing as time?
That the river is everywhere at the same time,
at the source, at the current, in the ocean, and
in the mountains,
 everywhere...
And that the present only exists for it,
not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

Herman Hesse
Siddartha


~

Top Photo: Mandala art digitally altered
2nd Photo: An Aurora Borealis in Yellow Knife, Canada
 - a "river" in the sky :)
Sent to us by a friend




Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Vigil of "The Eternal Presence"...


Beholding the Beauty of the Placeless Place,
the Invisible Space of "The Eternal Presence",
prior to the world of form,
where You exist before your "self",
before the "you" was born...

Enfolded in the Embrace of Existence...
Surrendered to The Silence...
Immersed in the deep internal River of Stillness...
You find yourself
in the Hush of the Mystery:
the indwelling realm of "The Eternal Presence..."

Effortlessly breathing a cyclical rhythm.
Overtaken by Pure Silence.
Resting in the In-between:
The Liminal space - holding vigil -
at the threshold between time
and timelessness...

Awake - in the pre-birth twilight
within the Primordial Womb of Being,
from which all things are birthed,
and in which all things exist,
there is a profound sense of completeness;
a place of being fulfilled and emptied out
- simultaneously...

No "self"-realization, no holy revelations...
Only Awareness, and the pure ISness of Being - just being,
 in the fullness of the timeless Presence of Being - within...
Where Everything unfolds
in one continuous, ongoing moment.
No "present moment", nor past, nor future,
only the ceaseless unfurling
of the Liquid Life Stream,
without time...

~ as the body-mind wanders
through time ~

~

What words can convey
what can only be experienced...
And these jumble of words are only distortions
of the pureness of "The Eternal Presence."

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Nov. 22, 2016

~

The Divine is experienced by the heart.
The Intellect, at best, can only trail behind and take notes.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana



Sunday, December 4, 2016

Invocation - Dolores Stewart


You who were with me before I was born,
dark shining on dark,
be with me now.
You who will stay with me after I die,
light traveling on light,
be with me now.

You who are nameless
in the marketplace of the ten thousand things,
how shall I call you?
You who are invisible between the stars,
how shall I see you?

You who nurture me with silent wisdom
speak to me now.
I am listening beyond the sounds of night,
I am looking beyond the sights of the day.
You who fill the infinite void,
travel on my shoulder now,
show me the way.

Dolores Stewart
From - Doors to the Universe


~

The desire to go home
is a desire to be whole,
to be the point of intersection
of all the lines drawn through
all the stars...
that center called love.
To let the soul go wild,
to cease to speak
and be perfectly
understood.

Rebecca Soinit
Excerpt from - Storming The Gates of Paradise

(Ms. Soinit's words, my format)


Thursday, December 1, 2016

There Is Always a Song - The Radiance Sutras


Strong or soft, wild or serene -
Wherever breath flows there is song.
Hear its whisper touching behind the face,
singing in the throat,
Dancing spirals in the sanctuary of your heart.

In this practice of listening,
A moment may come when you just want to lie down.
This is a doorway - surrender.
Fall into the wide-open embrace of life.
You are the instrument breath is playing.

All the meditations you have ever loved
Are vibrating in this luxurious hum,
Continuing even in sleep and dreams.
This is your school.  Just you and infinity.
The texture of the Self is untamed freedom.


~

Photo - Mandala Art digitally altered