One Soul - Danna Faulds

When one soul is set ablaze
by truth, the whole universe
ignites, and for an instant
light reaches every corner,
cave and crevasse.  When

the heart remembers what
it is, joined in vastness by
joy and suffering, both the
future and the past dissolve
like snowflakes on the tongue.

There is nowhere to run, no
reason to do anything but
rest in the cradle of the
cosmos, rocked in the arms
of emptiness, and held in
the near embrace of love.

Danna Faulds
From: One Soul
2003

How We Endure - Meister Eckhart

What keeps us alive,
what allows us to endure?
I think it is the hope of loving,
or being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey
to find its source, and how the moon wept
without her lover's
warm gaze.

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

Meister Eckhart

The Fire of Separation - Mirabai Starr

There is a longing that burns at the root of spiritual practice.
This is the fire that fuels your journey.  The romantic suffering
you pretend to have grown out of, that remains coiled like a
serpent beneath the veneer of maturity.  You have studied the
sacred texts.  You know that separation from your divine source
is an illusion.  You subscribe to the philosophy that there is
nowhere to go and nothing to attain, because you are already
there and you already possess it.

But what about this yearning?  What about the way a poem by
by Rilke or Rumi breaks open your heart and triggers a sorrow
that could consume you if you gave in to it?  You're pretty sure
this is not a matter of mere psychology.  It has little to do with
unresolved issues of childhood abandonment, or codependent
tendencies to falsely place the source of your wholeness outside
yourself.  The longing is your recognition of the deepest
 truth that God is love and that this is all you want.  Every
 lesser desire melts when it comes near the flame.

You realized that not every one experiences this.  For some
people, the spiritual journey is not so dramatic.  It's less about
the overwhelming desire for union with some invisible Beloved
than it is about quietly waking up.  It's about developing
compassion, rather than suffering passion.  There are people who
never doubt that God is with them, and so there is nothing to long
for.

But there are those, like you, who have felt the Divine move like
an ocean inside them, and, incapable of sustaining an unbroken
relationship with that vastness, feel they have been banished to
the desert when the wave recedes.  There is a tribe of holy lovers,
who have tasted the glorious sweetness that lies on the other side
of yearning, when the boundaries of the separate self momentarily
melt into the One, before the cold wind of ordinary consciousness
blows through again, and restores your individuality.  You would
risk everything to rekindle that annihilating fire.  You would leave
your shoes at the door and run after the cosmic flute player, if only
you could hear that music one more time.

You would give up everything for one glimpse of the Beloved's
face.  You sneak into his chamber in the middle of the night and
say "Here I am. Ravish me."  But when you awake the next morning,
swooning, and alone, you realize you missed the entire encounter.
You throw your clay cup on the cobblestones and it shatters.  You
thought you would marry, bear babies, make a career in broadcasting.
You wander city streets during siesta hour and wonder where He is
sleeping.  Your longing and your satisfaction are reciprocal.
The moan of separation is the cry of union...

Mirabai Starr

Excerpt from: Longing for the Beloved
posted in Parabola
via - No Mind's Land

The Deepest Acceptance - Jeff Foster & Rilke

True freedom is found not through escaping the present experience,
but by diving fearlessly into its hidden depths.  You must be willing
to see *through* the idea of separation from life, in all its forms, in
the midst of your current experience.  You must be open to exploring
suffering - how and why it manifests in you, where it originates.  

You must be willing to look at your pain, fears, sadness, longings.
They are part of the wholeness of life.  You must be willing to face
them head on and find deep acceptance for the seemingly
unacceptable aspects of yourself...  Beyond the personal story of my
own suffering, I discover that pain is not really my pain.  It's the
world's pain.  It's humanity's pain...

It's one thing to know who you really are when life is easy and things
are going well for you.  It's another thing to remember this in the heat
of the moment, when things fall apart, when life gets messy.  We find
another way of  looking at suffering, a radical new way of relating to
it.  We can see the messiness and beauty of day-to-day human
 existence as something to be avoided, or transcended, *or* we can
 see it for what what it really is: a secret and constant invitation to
 wake up - even if we believe we already woke up yesterday.
Life, in its infinite compassion, won't let us rest on our laurels.   It's
about finding out who you *really* are, beyond who you *think*
 you are, beyond who you've been taught you are, beyond your story
 about who you are, beyond all your concepts and images of
who you are.

If we are to be truly free - we must face reality with open eyes.
We must move away from denial, wishful thinking, and hoping,
 and tell the truth about life as it is.  Great freedom lies in admitting
 the truth of this  moment, however much it clashes with our dreams
 and plans - and self-image...  Acceptance is about seeing reality,
seeing things as they actually are, not as we wish them to be.
And from that place of alignment with what is, all creative, loving
 and intelligent actions flow naturally.

True freedom has nothing to do with being a better wave in the Ocean,
or perfecting our story of ourselves,  Freedom is about waking up from
the dream (illusion) that we are separate waves in the first place, and
embracing all that appears in the Ocean of our experience.  Maybe
the true calling in life is to accept present experience deeply - to let go
of how this moment should be - letting go of our false self-image.

Great freedom lies in fearlessly facing the darkness and finally coming
to see that the darkness is inseparable from light...  Life cannot
 be good or bad.  Life is simply life.
 It's about seeing the Mystery of Life
 that is already here.

Jeff Foster

Excerpts from: The Deepest Acceptance:
Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life

~*~

No experience has been too unimportant,
and the smallest event unfolds like fate,

and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric
in which every thread is guided by an infinitely
tender hand

and is laid alongside another thread
and is held and supported by a hundred others.

Rainer Maria Rilke

~

Photo: I noticed the different patterns
in the sheer curtain from the play of light on it.
For me these patterns represent the
"fabric of life", the weave of life,
in all its variations...

Overwhelm - Jeff Foster

Oh sweet little boy, beloved little girl,
you are so overwhelmed by life,
I know,
by the enormity of it all,
by the myriad perspectives available to you.

You feel so pressed down sometimes,
by all the unresolved questions,
by all the information
you are supposed to process and hold,
by the urgency of things.

You are overcome by powerful emotions,
trying to control,
or at least influence,
everything and everyone around you,
trying to hold yourself together,
trying to make it all 'work out' somehow,
trying to get everything done 'on time',
trying to resolve things so fast,
even trying not to try at all.

You are exhausted, sweet one,
exhausted from all the trying
and the not trying,
and you are struggling to trust life again.
It's all too much for the poor organism, isn't it.
You are exhausted, you long to rest.
And that is not a failing of yours,
nor a horrible mistake,
but something wonderful to embrace!

For the exhaustion is pure intelligence,
and it says, let go, let go! Stop trying so hard!

Stop pushing for answers right now.
Allow everything to rest right now.
Take a sacred pause.

Allow questions to remain unanswered, for now.
Allow space for yourself to breathe today.
Allow everything to fall out of control today.
Allow yourself to not be able to hold it all up today.
Allow yourself to not know how, to not know at all.

Allow the heart to break, if it needs to,
and the body to ache, and the soul to wake.

Everything is okay, when you get down to it.

And know you are loved, little one.
Know you have always been loved,
long before you were named,
long before you were even born,
long before overwhelm came to show you the way.

Jeff Foster

The Light is the Same - Rumi

The lamps are different,
but the Light is the same.
So many garish lamps in the dying brain's
lamp-show.

Forget about them.

Concentrate on the essence,
concentrate on the Light.

In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own
holy fire.

The Light streams towards you from all things.
All people, all possible permutations of good, evil
thought, passion.

The lamps are different,
but the Light is the same.

One matter, one energy, one Light,
one Light-mind,
endlessly emanating all things.

One turning and burning diamond.
One, one, one.

Ground yourself, strip yourself down,
to blind loving silence.

Stay there until you see
you are gazing at the Light

with its own ageless eyes.

Rumi

Fully "ME" - Anna Wood & MM

One of the most valuable insights I've gained through yoga
and meditation is that I've lived most of my life estranged
from myself as a whole, compartmentalizing aspects of my
existence into heart/mind/instinct/left foot/daydreams/ love
handles.  Thus segmented "I" was (am) never fully "me,"
and I never had (have) to come to terms with the actual
density and simultaneous emptiness of being alive as a
human being on planet earth.
...it seems to me like we've collectively designed a global
system that prevents most of us from accomplishing it
even we had the will to.

Silence, by clarifying our senses, invites us to witness
ourselves as we are.

Anna Wood
From: A More Intricate Cup of Tea

~*~

What I seem to understand - what I have always known, but
have felt constrained by mental/conceptual frameworks - is
that Life/Existence/Awareness *delights* in expressing
 ItSelf, and *how* It expresses ItSelf really doesn't matter
 to It. Awareness has no concept of non-dual awareness,
 of non-dual language. It *sees* everything as ItSelf, and
 therefore as not  separate from ItSelf.  The idea that it is
 "non-dual" does not even occur to It.  It does not concern
 ItSelf  with "non-duality," or duality for that matter.
It doesn't *see* duality, the self, the me, as a problem to
 overcome, or be seen through, or merged with, as other than
 non-dual. The whole me/no-me, self/no-self concept
doesn't matter anymore.  I somehow had constrained my
 Self by subtly making those very linear delineations,
splitting Existence in two - creating duality; becoming more
 *self* conscious -  trying to fit this expression of Being into
 a "non-dual" conceptual framework instead of just Being what
 I already knew myself to be.  My SELF!
 Beingness being ItSelf - as me...

What a relief!  Such freedom!  I can just be ME! - living from
the Heart of Being, and not the framework, the scaffolding.  In
 a sense I muted this innate Aliveness that wants to express here
*through* constraining myself to the frameworks and scaffoldings
of *conceptual* "non-dual" ideas, interpretations, language and
beliefs - trying to fit myself into a nice neat "spiritual" box.
When all along it was about coming Alive again, rekindling the
Life that already lives here - "outside the box."

Infinite Beingness expresses Aliveness.
Its only purpose, evidently, is to express Life, in all its forms.
Aliveness expressing ItSelf as Life - all life, not just
"non-dual" life -
whatever that might mean...

Mystic Meandering

Meditative Writings
2011

Self-Discovery - Sandy Jones

I discovered there is no reason to try to pull life apart
into 'ego and not ego' or self and not self, or real and
unreal, higher self or lower self.  As if we could
possibly separate Life and all that it is, from itself
and its very own totality of self-knowingness.

No, I found it can't be done.  It's not the way to love
and peace and joy and the unbridled being of who we are.

One day I discovered.....that I am the living awareness of
Something that is infinite and forever.  Life is the Living
Divine Mind being this awareness [that] I am.  It is my
very Self-knowing.  It is me and it is all that Life is.
It is nothing but love and Light and Self-knowing. And
this Awareness does not come from out of me, I do not
possess this Awareness, this living infinity of me, but it
does live as the life and light of all that I am.

We are the Light of the All in all.  Living awareness,
knowing itself as Identity, as you and me.  I am the
Self-Knowing Identity of the Ineffable All That Is.

And yes, I can only speak for me and what I have
found.  But for me, the journey here, in this world of
time and matter, is not about achieving some void of
no-me, to become emptiness or living without a sense of
self.  No, not at all, for me, it has proven itself to be
totally the opposite.

Life led me home, the ups and downs, the painful losses,
the tears of love, the anguish, it all brought me home.
It was the hard teachings led me back to myself, this
childlike innocent beauty and happiness, back to my heart,
to understanding the unbound freedom from fear.

Life is about Self discovery, walking into it all and seeing
the beauty of everything, including our self.  There is no
way to know Life/Presence without you and me, this self
we are, right here in the middle of it all.  I am an aspect of
this All inclusive wholeness, this ineffable Mystery that is
knowing itself to be.

It took me a long time to find this freedom, this fearless
knowing of this eternal light that is being who I am.  It
took a conscious choice to be brave, at first, trusting what
had been revealed to me, leaping in and living it all.
I cannot be otherwise.
I am the wonder of its ever unfolding beauty and grace...

Sandy Jones