Yearning - Rumi

One night a man was crying,
Allah! [God] Allah! [God]

His lips grew sweet with the praying,
until a cynic said,
'So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?'

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.

'Why did you stop praying?' [Khidr asked]

'Because I've never heard anything back.'

[Kidhr said]

 This longing you express
is the return message.

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

Give your life to be one of them.

Rumi
Original title: "Love Dogs"

~

Yearn for more.

...don't linger in any spiritual benefit
you have gained,
but yearn for more,
like one suffering from illness
whose thirst for water is never quenched...

Rumi

I Cry for Sirens - Revisited...

Some time ago, as I was driving to my mother's, I passed an ambulance
speeding down the fast lane, coming from the opposite direction;
lights flashing, sirens blaring, horn frantically honking to get the traffic
ahead of it out of the way.  I immediately started to cry.  I had forgotten
that since childhood the sound of ambulance sirens makes me cry...
It's as if my heart leaps out of my chest, knowing that whoever is in that
ambulance is in trouble and needs help.  I can hear it in the sirens - of
course - that's what they're for.

I recognized this strange phenomenon as the heart of compassion. I felt
the heart of compassion that actually lives here wake up again.  I had
never thought of it that way before.  I've always tried to hide this little
quirk of crying at the sound of sirens; to stuff those feelings, to stop
 myself from crying, to hide the love that wants to express itself...
 I thought there was something emotionally wrong with me.

I recognized the tender heart of compassion within - crying *for*
 someone in trouble, in danger, maybe dying, in pain and possibly
 suffering.  It has always been here, since childhood - this little heart
 of compassion.  It has been covered over with layers and layers of fear;
 not allowing myself to overtly *feel* and express the heartache and
compassion for a suffering world. I also hid it behind a mask of
adulthood, and a mask of "spirituality." That's easy to do in some
 "spiritual circles", you know - to not feel, to hide what you feel behind
 a mask of ideology, belief,  ritual or religiosity.  "Spirituality" becomes
 clinical, intellectual, philosophical - detached...

I learned to wear the "spiritual mask" early in life, and later in life to
talk myself into lofty, wordified "spiritual" places.  Please slap me if
I do it again. :)  I learned on the particular "spiritual path" that I was on
that there is no "me", and therefore, no "other" because there is only
this esoteric Beingness.  The danger of misinterpreting that is that
another's pain then somehow becomes invisible - instead of
 recognizing that our pain is all the same. How ironic.
We separate ourselves from one another's heartache - dismissing it as
 just a story of a "me" that doesn't exist -  because feeling another's pain
 leaves us too vulnerable,  too engaged;  and because we'd have to
face our own - heartache that is.
  I know this experience is not true for all of us - this detached place
 of no feeling. I hid my Heart.  But - the Heart remembers - and Love
*sees*, hears, notices, *feels*, and cares - with deep compassion...

Hearing the sirens again, the rawness of an unprotected, loving Heart
exploded in my chest.  And I remembered how that *feels*...  And I
rather liked it.  I hope I never lose it; never stop *feeling*, whether
it's sadness, grief, or love and joy.  I'm sure there will be more
opportunities as Life opens this Heart more and more...

I not only cried, I smiled, because I knew it meant that the Heart
that lives here is *Alive* - feeling - caring - loving...

~

I posted a version of this back in 2011.
It seemed appropriate to re-post it
in light of the events that are taking
place around the world now...

Namaste

_/\_

.

The Energy of Life - Naomi Stone

There is something wonderful
working in the world
and in the natural flow
of life...
an energy
that moves this existence
moment to moment...

Trying to name it or trying
to control it changes
the inner wisdom
and steals the wonder
of discovery...

Watch a child exploring
his world.
Touching...tasting...squealing
with delight starting
at the beginning

We are seldom taught
to trust it
because someone
wants to pay you to live
their ideas and answers...
or charge you for learning
them by luring you away,
away from the gift
of your own gloriously
divine heritage...

Suddenly...
you are entrapped...
doubting who you are
in a world where
everyone seems
to think they have the answers...

Live the awareness of the flow
and infinite portals
ever opening
around and within you...

Naomi Stone
Original title: "Spiraling Energies of Creation"

~

Art - Craypas oils
done with fingers
2012

Let it go - Danna Faulds

Let go of the ways you thought life
would unfold; the holding of plans
or dreams or expectations - Let it
all go.  Save your strength to swim
with the tide.  The choice to fight
what is here before you now will
only result in struggle, fear, and
desperate attempts to flee from the
very energy you long for.  Let go.
Let it all go and flow with the grace
that washes through your day whether
you receive it gently or with all your
quills raised to defend against invaders.
Take this on faith: the mind may never
find the explanations that it seeks, but
you will move forward nonetheless.
Let go, and the wave's crest will carry
you to unknown shores, beyond your
wildest dreams or destinations.  Let it
all go and find the place of rest and
peace, and certain transformation.

Danna Faulds
From: Go In and In
2002

Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters
and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crown of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

via: The Beauty We Love

In Turbulent Times...

In these turbulent times of upheaval
on the surface of life,
dive deep...
into the Stillness of Being within,
where nothing is disturbed, nothing is harmed...

Externally it's all "The Mystery" playing
itself out in the construct of time - the Unmanifest in form.

In the Greater Context in which life takes place,
everything is allowed...
The world will go the way it goes -
life will continue to unfold the way it unfolds -
the light and the dark will continue to dance together -
in time-bound reality.

Do not focus only on the chaos;
mind-created contractions of fear and ignorance.

Instead...  Turn within...

Experience the depths of True Stillness,
the Stillness of the Everlasting Deep,
experience what's beyond the chaos and fear
- what holds the Cosmos together -
the enduring hum of Aliveness within all form...

Held in The Rhythm of Stillness that sustains Existence,
that IS Existence, Rest...
in the Embrace of That which animates all Life...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Nov. 2016

~

Come into Peace...

Even in the midst of chaos there is Peace...
Even in the midst of complexity there is Simplicity...
Even in the midst of confusion there is Stability...

In everything there is Love...

Mystic Meandering
2006

Have You Met "The Beloved?" - Chuck Surface

If you have not yet met The Beloved,
And wonder where She might be found...

Look within.

Let your Attention journey to The Tavern,
At the Crossroads of Heart and Mind.

And look for Her there,
With the eyes of your Soul.

If you wander off down the road of Mind,
You'll only reach a "conclusion."

If you wander off down the road of Heart,
You'll lose yourself in the imagined.

Journey to the Tavern of The Beloved,
At the Crossroads of Heart and Mind.

And look for Her there,
With the eyes of your Soul.

For She is your Essence,
Dancing in the Heart of your Being.

It is Her Great Joy to pour Grace,
Into a Cup held forth Empty.

But you must hold forth your Cup.

If you lose yourself in chatter there,
You will miss Her Silent arrival.

If you seek stature among those gathered,
You will see only yourself.

If you must have fellowship,
Commune with your empty Cup.

If you must yammer,
Speak to Her as if She is already found.

If you must think, reminisce,
Of that which was known, then forgotten.

If you must daydream, imagine,
The vanishing of duality.

Wait there, at the Tavern of The Beloved,
The Mind starved, the Heart Drowned in Longing;

For if you have not yet met Her,
It is There that you will surely find Her.

Or rather, I should say,
It is there that She will surely find you...

At the crossroads of Heart and Mind.

Chuck Surface

Original title: "At the Crossroads of the Heart and Mind"

In The Garden of the Beloved Facebook

Garden of the Beloved Website

At the Mercy of A Greater Love...

I don't know who or what "The Beloved" is - really...
Some have called Her "God", "The Divine", some "The Mystery";
She has a multitude of names... and faces...

But She is so much more than any name, attribute, or description
we could ever bestow - although we do.

I only know that my whole being responds
when I call to
- "The Beloved" -
from the Heart.

She surges through the body;
tangible, organic movement
felt in the body and experienced in the senses;
"across the whole of being" - as a Friend says.
It's like a presence, without solidity or form;
more like a breeze that moves through,
caressing as it goes...

She/It/He is personal -
deeply touching the inner place of origination;
which some may call the soul,
with a tone that strikes a chord of resonance within,
blown by an unexpected wind...
to which we have seemingly been attuned...

I don't know who or what "The Beloved" is - really...
I "know" nothing at all...
I am only drawn to "The Beloved"
in all Her disguises;
at the mercy of a Greater Love
beyond belief...

Mystic Meandering
July 13, 2017

~

Photo -

This flowering plant just grew one year.
I have no idea what it is,
but notice the many faces :)