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...

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Who then is breathing? - Ilchi Lee


Observe your own body.  It breathes.
You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer
conscious of your own ideas of self-identity.
Who then is breathing?

The collection of information that you mistakenly think is you
is not the protagonist in this drama called the breath.  In fact,
you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening.

You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot
purposely keep your own life going.  The expression, 'my life'
is actually an oxymoron, a result of mistaken assumption...

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



Monday, June 26, 2017

Non-Duality - Monk in the World


...non-duality.

It's really not a place we go to but a place we realize.
And we realize it by taking the time to be silent,
to be in solitude, to breathe and wait for the
grace to be given by the Mystery we call
Love.

Excerpt from a post written for his grand-daughters


Friday, June 23, 2017

The Play of Emotion - Rafael Stoneman


Here I am Here again
Not again
But only Now
Though it seems that moments are repeating
It is really One continuous moment.
What changes and what remains the same?
Somehow through the prism of the mind
many moods appear in consciousness
although there is only one Ultimate mood.
This is the miracle of color
The play of emotion.
On the negative end of the scale
we condemn the negative.
But we imagine that we are on the positive end
when we seek ways to remove the negative.
How positive would we feel if there was only
the positive end of the scale?
If we are willing to sacrifice the pain
are we willing to sacrifice the pleasure?
Equanimity is a dear friend.
One that holds the same embrace
for praise and for blame.
The same space for fortune and
for misfortune.
The same face for respect
and betrayal.

Rafael Stoneman


via my friend Michel
at No Mind's Land
where I get a lot of
wonderful posts to reblog :)
Thanks Michel!

~

Photo - original pic was a fire in the fireplace,
digitally zoom blurred and color altered - magic :)



Wednesday, June 21, 2017

The Days are Round - Jean Giono


Days begin and end in the dead of night.
They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which
lead to ends - arrow, road, a person's life...
They are shaped round, in the manner of eternal things...

Civilization tried to persuade us we are going towards something,
a distant goal.  We have forgotten that our only goal is to live,
to live each and every day, and that if we live each and every day,
our true goal is achieved.

All civilized people see the day beginning at dawn or a little after,
or a long time after or whatever time their work begins;
this they lengthen according to their work,
during what they call "all day long;" and end it
when they close their eyes.
It is they who say the days are long.

On the contrary, the days are round.

Jean Giono
Rondeur Des Jours
French Novelist

~
For Summer Solstice and the Natural Cycles of Life
~

Photo taken by my brother somewhere in New Hampshire


Sunday, June 18, 2017

The Weaver and the Loom - Danna Faulds


Sit here for a bit.
Place yourself outside the frenzied pace of life.

Slow down long enough to appreciate birds in flight,
water drops like prisms in the grass and countless
shades of green.

Step off the fast track and listen to the sound of breath
and birdsong.

Take a moment to just be,
and in being, know the whole of this creation,
mystery and madness, passion and profanity,
know it all as one, stunning tapestry.

Sit still
and the thin line between sacred and profane simply
fades away.
There is nothing then to reconcile.

All the disparate are woven on the loom of life.

Sit here a bit
and your unique place in the pattern becomes clear.
Take the still point with you when it's time to walk away.

Make the choice to see affinity,
to watch the picture taking shape as thread joins thread.

Dare to be the weaver and the loom,
creator and creation, the sower and the sown.

In a moment of stillness,
all that came before is seen as one.

Danna Faulds
From: Go In and In


Danna is"...a long term practitioner of Kripalu Yoga.
She writes:
"Some days, the first line of a poem interrupts me and insists on
being written down - NOW!  Other days, I write the words 'This
is what I have to say to you' at the top of the page and see what
comes.  Like a faucet dispensing water from a hidden reservoir,
this kind of writing allows the formless mystery to flow into my
conscious life.  What I tap into when I write from the quiet of my
meditation cushion feels limitless.  Each morning finds me at the
edge of my current experience, writing about where I am stuck,
where I am learning to go, and what is calling me forward right
now.  Words on the page, both poetry and prose, are the bread
crumbs left behind as I move beyond my comfort zone and into
the unknown..."
(excerpt from Amazon.com)





Thursday, June 15, 2017

Realization - Darryl Bailey


You simply need to acknowledge the life experience you already have.
Most people do not acknowledge, in any clear way, what their life
experience is or has been.  This acknowledgement is not about coming
to another idea or description.  It's not about a focus on new and
complicated thoughts.  It's a simple acknowledgement of something
we already know.  It's about realizing the vital, moving, shifting
liveliness that this moment is.

The basic happening of this moment is a moving, shifting, dancing
event presenting itself.  Even if we don't call it anything - if we
make no attempt to do it - it still happens.

[.....]

Everything is changing.  Whether it's a body, a thought, a mood,
a situation, a relationship, a career, and so on, everything is changing.
Atoms, chairs, planets, galaxies - it doesn't matter what it is - it has
an apparent beginning, ageing, and ending.  Even the sense of
existing disappears every night.  All forms that appear to exist are
moving on to some other appearance.
What is has no form.

...There is no storyline.  No one is doing the happening.  It's a formless,
buzzing, pulsing, tingling - a streaming, flowing event.
That's all there is.

No matter how much you think you've created this basic happening,
you haven't.  It doesn't matter how many meaningless sounds get
attached to illusions of form, all of this is formless and beyond any
possible explanation.  You can call it no-self, or God, or whatever you
feel you have to; words aren't that important.

Without forms and labels what is there to question?  What is there
to describe?  There is only an inexplicable, formless dance
presenting itself...


Darryl Bailey
Excerpt from his writing - "Realization"

~

Photo - pattern created by a visualizer
to the sound of music playing... :)



Tuesday, June 13, 2017

The Silence Calls...


Silence called me to the window again last night.
She beckoned me to come and be still,
to listen...

She waited for me to settle,
to be quiet...
Waited as I deepened
into Her Stillness...

No agenda, She whispered...

I listened...

Put everything aside and just breathe, She said.
Be aware of My Breath, breathing you...
Experience My Presence,
Feel My Fullness,
Sense the Intimacy
in every cell...

From the depths of Stillness
I heard her call again,
calling me back to HerSelf.
Like a Great Ocean pulling back
the waves on shore
back to ItSelf...
The wave giving in to the pull...

The Great Silence called
again and again;
the silent rhythmic intimacy of wave and Ocean,
one and the same...

The Silence embracing ItSelf,
knowing only
ItSelf...

The Eternal Embrace...
Come - She whispered...
Follow the pull...
Give in...
Come Home...


Mystic Meandering
Aug/Sept 2010

~

Photo: The inside of a seashell



Sunday, June 11, 2017

What Is Left To Say - Lisel Mueller


The self steps out of the circle;
it stops wanting to be
the farmer, the wife, and the child.

It stops trying to please
by learning everyone's dialect;
it finds it can live, after all,
in a world of strangers.

It sends itself fewer flowers;
it stops preserving its tears in amber.

How splendidly arrogant it was
when it believed the gold-filled tomb
of language awaited its raids!
Now it frequents the junkyards
knowing all words are secondhand.


It has not chosen its poverty,
this new frugality.
It did not want to fall out of love
with itself.  Young,
it celebrated itself
and richly sang itself,
seeing only itself
in the mirror of the world.

It cannot return.  It assumes
its place in the universe of stars
that do not see it.  Even the dead
no longer need it to be at peace.
Its function is to applaud.

Lisel Mueller

see Ivan's commentary on
Lisel's poem here

~

Photo - Face Reflections Mandala
2013


Friday, June 9, 2017

No tongue can tell your secret - Ivan Granger


The direct encounter with the Divine can't be put into words.
Words are a creation of the limited mind, powerful certainly,
but limited.  Words, even when masterfully wielded, can only
describe limited aspects of limited reality.  Words imply a
fracturing of reality into countless objects, an impassible
duality of observer and observed, describer and described.
How can words properly convey the undivided Wholeness?
(There is really no 'encounter' the way I just phrased it, because
that implies two separates meeting, when there is really only
the profound recognition of unity.  Words fail the Wholeness.)

Seeing this limitation, some teachers construct complex frame-
works of descriptions.  Some hint and suggest and riddle.  Some
fall silent.  What is said and what is left unsaid...a fascinating game.
But it is only the encounter (which is not really an encounter) that
conveys the truth of all this.

The "tongue cannot tell" these things properly.  "But the gift of the
ear / is that it hears" anyway.  That is, when we truly and openly
listen, an inner whisper begins to draw the awareness beyond the
descriptions, the suggestions, the silences.  And suddenly there we
stand, outside of all words, and concepts that obscure while they
define.  There we stand, witnessing, participating in the living
Wholeness that is the divine nature of undivided Reality.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

This is an excerpt from a commentary Ivan wrote on a poem
by Hakim Sanai -

No tongue can tell Your secret
for the measure of the word obscures Your nature.
But the gift of the ear
is that it hears
what the tongue cannot tell.

~

Photo - rainbow light on wall digitally altered





Tuesday, June 6, 2017

The Whisper...


The Rhythm of Sacred Silence calls me
back into ItSelf again and again...
It waits patiently while I move
through my stories ~ through my illusions;
my contractions of fear;
my brokenness...

The Rhythm invites me to dance ~
to sway to its movement ~
to hear its pulse, its silent language,
like a whisper in the background of noise
trying to get my attention.

I have to be quiet to hear The Whisper
speaking silently:
Come, be with Me,
Come, and be still,
Come, listen, hear Me,
Come, dance with Me,
Come, and be still...

 I turn my attention to listen curiously,
as if someone has spoken just over my shoulder ~
barely audible.
I wait and listen ~ aware of a subtle presence,
like butterfly wings.
The Rhythm rises ~ palpable.
It draws me to it.

I bow inwardly to The Whisper...
We embrace and dance in Stillness,
the sweet Rhythm of Love...

Mystic Meandering
March 2009


Sunday, June 4, 2017

Simply Seeing - Meister Eckhart



The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which
God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye,
one seeing, one knowing and one love...

Meister Eckhart

~

Photo - picture of an Amaryllis bloom radially blurred
forming the eye in the center...




Thursday, June 1, 2017

"Deep Space"...


Molten golden light
splays itself out within a fathomless darkness,
like a million jewels tumbled out into the stillness of space;
dancing particles of Divine Illumination...

The shutter of Infinity opens and the light
imprints its glittering image within Divine Darkness.
In a moment of stillness, a moment of no breath,
a moment in the timelessness of deep space,
the Light and the Darkness merge - like twilight...

In this place of Primordial Existence,
the Darkness and Light intermingle
in the purity of cosmic fusion;
forever "blended",
neither the enemy of the other,
neither opposed to the other,
both expressing the same Source...

In the depths of The Deep
there is a dance of Life -
an inexpressible expression of
the Aliveness of the Absolute -
revealed in time as a movement of creation,
a movement of birth,
a movement and a breath of
Light and Darkness
forever merging...

In "Deep Space"
the Light and the Dark
exist together within the wholeness of
The Infinite Mystery...

Mystic Meandering
April 2001

~

Photo - a street light through tree branches
digitally altered to create this affect...