In Pursuit of Silence - George Prochnik

Silence has to do with the interruption of the imposition of our
own egos, our will, on the world...

Silence is where we hear something deeper than our chatter.
Silence is where we speak something deeper than our words.

Silence is the resting place of the Essential.

Silence is our natural milieu, and the more we get away from
Silence, the more we lose our humanity.

Silence returns us to what is real. 
Silence is a journey into the Heart of Being.
If you allow silence to circulate,  your mind becomes aware of
what Truth is.  It makes you aware that you're not in control
of anything.

Seek Silence...

In a world of noise,
silence calls to us...

It is not an esoteric practice.
It is as simple as shifting your attention
from the things that cause noise
to the vast interior spaciousness,
which is our natural silence.

From the documentary film:
In Pursuit of Silence
by George Prochnik

The Gift of Silence - Dada Gavand

Silence is the gate...

We are missing the aesthetic beauty of Silence, the fragrance
of quietude and inner peace, because the mind has become
overgrown and overactive. It has captured us and
the whole energy of life, going on and on ceaselessly,
continuing with its mechanical momentum in time.

In the present competitive commercial society there seems
to be no room for Silence.

Quietude and Silence are not the negation of life, but the
regeneration of it.  Silence is the means to elevate life energy
to a timeless dimension.

We have got to find this unknown dimension of life.  The
whole world is in desperate need of a new-dimensional
consciousness, so that human beings can live intelligently,
creatively, spontaneously and lovingly, and not just follow
the ego pursuits mechanically.

When one begins to realize the limitation of all thought
activity and ego drives the attachment [to them] drops.
One is left with a deep, profound Silence.

Silence becomes eloquent and active.  Silence becomes
intelligent and positive.  Action that springs from the depth
of Silence is spontaneous, truthful and universal.  It is
immaculate, timeless and spiritual.

Silence is the means and Silence is the end.
Creative Silence is the ultimate challenge.

Silence is the sap that rejuvenates life.
Silence is the source of eternal life.

Dada Gavand
East Indian Mystic

~

Find the Silence and you'll find "God."

Ramakrishna

~

If you celebrate Christmas
may you experience the
Gift of Silence...

~

"The Silence"
dwells among us
and in us...

Holy-Holy

Into The Twilight - Winter Solstice

There is a seamless "edge" when twilight comes...
And a twinge of longing when the
light wanes into twilight,
the edge of the veil;
that threshold between
light and dark...

A knowing that this life
is waning into twilight too,
from one state into another,
forever re-forming Itself...

Tree branches wave in the wind
in homage to the light
dimming in the West...

Owls hoo - calling the night
into existence
from the East;
prophets of twilight
standing at the edge
where ending meets beginning
and beginning, ending...

Twilight
the in-between,
as Life cycles through time,
through light and dark,
through living
and dying.

This night we stand at the edge of time,
and timelessness beyond time...

peering through
for a glimpse
of the
Infinite Light
that knows no dimming
and no night;
only Its own Eternal Radiance
of
Being...

This Light we are...

Mystic Meandering
Winter Solstice
Dec. 21, 2012

The Invisible World - John O'Donohue

When you enter the world, you come to live on the threshold
between the visible and invisible.  You bring with you a sense
of belonging to the invisible that you can never lose or finally cancel.
There is always some magnet that draws your eyes to the horizon or
invites you to explore behind things and seek out the concealed
depths.  You know that the real nature of things is hidden deep
within them.

When you become aware of the invisible as a live background,
you notice how your own body is woven around your invisible
soul, how the invisible lives behind the face of those you love,
and how it is always there between you.  The invisible is one
of the most powerful forms of the unknown.  It envelopes our
every moment.  It is the region out of which we emerged and the
state we are destined for, yet we never see it...

John O'Donohue

Excerpt from: Eternal Echoes

~

Be sure to click on the full screen icon on the video
for the full effect.

What Draws You? - Rumi

Artist: Puisi - ambua.id

There are two types on the path, those who come against
their will, the blindly religious, and those who obey
out of love...

The former have ulterior motives.
They want a midwife near because she gives them milk.
The other love the beauty of the Nurse.

The former memorize the proof-texts of conformity
and repeat them.  The latter disappear into
whatever draws them to God.

Both are drawn from the Source.
Any motion is from the Mover.
Any love from the Beloved.

Rumi
From: The Book of Love
translations by Coleman Barks

~

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull
of what you love...

Rumi

~

A baby pigeon on the edge of the nest hears the call
and begins her flight...
How can the soul not fly
when a message arrives saying,
"...come, come back to me!"

What is the secret that opens the door?

The key is the flutter of the heart's wings
and its endless longing.

When the door opens,
walk on the path...
where everything old becomes new,
and never look back...

Rumi

~

On Dec. 17, 1273 the great Sufi poet and mystic, Rumi,
died in Konya Turkey.  He was universally loved by
Muslims, Jews, and Christians.  It was called his
"wedding night" because death to him (and the Sufis)
was the ultimate union with God.

May it be so for all of us, when the time comes,
no matter "who" we know God to be...

Contemplative Experience - Thomas Merton

Contemplation is not trance or ecstasy, or a tendency to find
peace and satisfaction in liturgical rites; nor is it the hearing
of sudden unutterable words, nor the imagination of lights;
not the emotional fire and sweetness that come with religious
exaltation  It is not enthusiasm, not the sense of being "seized"
by an elemental force and swept into liberation by mystical
frenzy...

Contemplation is no pain-killer.

It is life itself - fully awake, fully alive.
It is spiritual wonder.
It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness
of life, of being.

It is gratitude for life,
for awareness and for being.
It is a vivid realization that life and being
proceed from an invisible, transcendent
and infinitely abundant Source.

Contemplation is, above all, awareness of
 the reality of Source.

And in that realization, the contemplative suffers the
 anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what "God" is.
This is great gain, because "God" is not a what",
not a "thing."
That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of
contemplative experience...realizing that there is no
such "thing" as "God", because "God" is neither a
"what" or a "thing", but pure Who [Pure Being],
the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs
into awareness [being].

Thomas Merton
Christian Monk

From: New Seed of Contemplation

~

Personal Note - His description is somewhat
different from the "mystical experience".  Still -
I relate to some of his description.  In the end, "It" is
 all Pure Beingness/Pure Awareness/Pure Consciousness.

The End of All Exploring - John O'Donohue

They are to be admired, those survivors
of solitude, who have gone with no maps
into rooms without features,
where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,
no path of danger to a cold summit
to look back on and feel exuberant,
no clarity of territories yet untouched
that tremble near the human breath,
no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores
to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,
no friendship of other explorers
drawn into the dream of the unknown.

No.  They do not belong to the outside worship
of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior
space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,
where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human
and a poultice of silence pulls every sound
out of circulation down into the ground,
where, in the panic of being, each breath unravels
an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind;
shawls of thought fall off, empty and lost,
where only the red scream of the blood continues unheard
without anonymous skin, and the end of all exploring
is the relentless arrival at an ever novel nowhere...

John O'Donohue

From - Echoes of Memory
Original title of poem: Nowhere

~

Photo - looking into the inside of a basket,
as if into an empty room.

The "Essential" - Baret and Adams

At some point you no longer seek to be less this and more that,
to be without fear, to be without desire; you seek nothing.
This can be called a form of respect for The Essential.
The Essential is not something that is hidden behind the
appearance - these are beautiful Indian stories - the Essential
is what is Here. There is nothing else than that.  There is nothing
 to understand, there is simply nothing.  That's what is reflected
 as lightness that apparently arises when the situations suit
 your ideology and which apparently disappears when the
 situations do not correspond to your plan for humanity...
 [or yourself :) ]

Eric Baret
teaches from the Tantric Tradition

~

Silence is the ultimate reality.  Everything exists in this
world through silence.  True silence really means
 going deep within yourself to that place where nothing
 is happening, where you transcend time and space.
You go into a brand new dimension of nothingness.
That's your real home.
In deep silence there is not good or bad,
no one trying to achieve anything.
Just being, pure being...
[What Beret calls The Essential]

Robert Adams
of the Advaita tradition

Awakening From Our Illusions - Ivan Granger

I am so aware of how much frustration people feel over the dark
turn in politics in recent years.  As an American, how do I
understand the racist, proto-facist, violent forces emerging within
my own country?  At the same time, similar tendencies are
appearing in the UK, India, the Philippines,
and several other nations.

While harmful forces must be answered with courage in the public
arena, I want to suggest that there is something important happening
on another level, as well: an enforced awakening.

We are going through a collective process of disillusionment,

whether we like it or not.  We are being required to drop our illusions
and witness unpleasant truths, about ourselves [individually and
as a nation], and about the world around us.  We may ask: What
have we ignored that has allowed such fear and hatred to fester?  How
have our political and social systems become so damaged that the
are unresponsive to the needs of society?  What cruelties are encoded
in society that I have ignored or made excuses for?  How did we
imagine things were solid, when they are so fragile?  How can my
neighbor [or family members] believe such things, and what is
their hurt that I was blind to?  These are the questions we are
forced to ask now.

Painful though it may be, we can only be strengthened by the
process of disillusionment.  We want to drop our illusions.
We want to see things as they are...

As a meditative exercise we can look at the reality we see,
the terrible and the beautiful together, and just sit with it;
[just be with it internally, meditatively].  It may break our hearts,
but we can just sit with it.  It may overwhelm us with its
immensity, but we don't run, we don't seek to merely feel good.
Instead, we just sit with it. 
We allow ourselves to see and feel fully.
We watch our reactions to it, but are not hooked by them.
In this way, we begin to inhabit a bigger reality, a fuller reality.
Our personal sense of reality becomes more integrated and a
truer reflection of what actually is.  As we do this, we become more
capable of fashioning healthier lives and healthier societies.

When I stop trying to assert some idea of how reality should work,
and just really notice what is.....everything just opens up.  The heart
opens in unexpected ways, making healing possible where only
walls seemed to stand.  It's easy to think that reality is somehow
broken, but when we really look, we discover that we inhabit an
improbable wholeness instead.  It's not entirely logical amidst the
world's fear and suffering, but look for yourself and see.  Really see.
Seeing the full picture, our actions become more effective and lasting.
Looking honestly, we become capable of compassion and
connection, where there was only anger and hatred...

Ivan Granger
Excerpt from a commentary on a poem by Mary Sarton
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - taken from inside, reflecting objects in the room
in the window - giving the illusion of another reality...

The Art of Suffering - Etty Hillesum

Most of us in the West don't understand the art of suffering
and experience a thousand fears instead.  Man suffers most
through the idea of suffering, and through his fear of suffering.
We cease to be alive, being full of fear, bitterness, hatred and
despair.  Don't we live an entire life each one of our days,
and does it really matter if we live a few days more or less?
There is room for everything in a single life.

When I say I have come to terms with life, I don't mean I
have lost hope.  It is a question of living life from minute to
minute and taking suffering into the bargain.  But does it
matter if it is the Inquisition that causes people to suffer in
one century, and war and pogroms in another?

Suffering has always been with us, does it really matter in
what form it comes?  All that matters is how we bear it
and how we fit it into our lives.

I can sit for hours and know everything and bear everything
and grow stronger in the bearing of it.  And at the same time
feel sure life is beautiful and meaningful.  Despite everything.
But that does not mean that I am always filled with joy and
exaltation [about life and its circumstances].  I am often dog-
tired after standing in queues, but I know that this too is part
of life, and I know something inside me will never desert me...

We carry everything within us. God and Heaven and Hell and
Earth and Life and Death and all of history.  The externals are
simply so many props; everything we need is within us.  And
we have to take everything that comes; the bad with the good,
which does not mean we cannot devote our life to curing the
bad.  But we must know what motives inspire our struggle
[against] and we must begin with ourselves.

Living and dying, sorrow and joy, the blisters on my feet and
the jasmine behind the house, the persecution, the unspeakable
horrors - it is all as one in me, and I accept it all as one mighty
whole and begin to grasp it better, if only for myself, without
being able to explain to anyone else how it all hangs together.

If you destroy the ideas behind [suffering] which life lies
imprisoned within, you liberate your true life - and then you
will have the strength to bear real suffering...

Etty Hillesum
Jewish Mystic of the Holocaust
from: An Interrupted Life

~

Wishing the Jewish community
a peaceful and light filled Hanukkah
as it comes to an end...

True Emptiness - Dorothy Hunt

True Emptiness - which we could also call formless Spirit -
fills the universe and is filled by the universe.  It contains
everything, yet is not separate from a single moment's arising,
or dissolving.  What I am calling Emptiness is simply empty of
self, and empty of definition.  The word "Emptiness" is not
really it, neither are any of our ideas about it, including the
ones I use to try to point to the Mystery that is Unnamable
and indefinable.  To be emptied of our attachment to
definitions and concepts - especially our self-concepts - is
to be unburdened, whole, fluid and free to truly be.

To be empty means we are open; to be empty means we are
available for whatever or whoever is in front of us; to be
empty means we are not stuck anywhere, but can experience
the fullness and the flow of life unhindered.  Our seeing is
empty until it lands on an object, is it not? Our freedom,
inherent wisdom and selfless love arise right out of
Emptiness...

For a moment, just allow yourself to be the emptiness, open
and without definition, yet intimate with the moment as it is.
You might discover a vast and spacious Presence that feels
more real, more connected, more meaningful and lovingly
your truest Self than anything you could ever imagine.  And
even though the mind cannot say exactly what this is,
something knows; something in you remembers.
And what remembers tenderly holds anything that may arise
to be seen, experienced or liberated...

Dorothy Hunt
Buddhist Teacher

 

Be Still and Know - Pir Elias Amidon

Imagine you are alone...
You feel the stillness inside of things...
There are no sounds, except the almost-never-heard
hush of things being.

You sense the stillness on all sides
and an identical stillness within you.
The voice of your thoughts sounds thin, metallic.

You remember a phrase - "Be still, and know."

You let your body be motionless, quiet.
A quiet body at ease relaxes the persistence of thoughts.
Then you feel the still, empty openness "behind" each of
your senses, the openness in which your senses arise.
You relax into that openness.
This motionless is not definable -
it is not a sensation.  Nevertheless it has an almost
kinesthetic effect on you, as if it is vanishing you,
the receiver, the photographic plate that records your
experience, this "one" becomes transparent.
You relax and let be. Now unbidden comes the stillness
of Presence, the stillness of a clearness that is always here,
behind and within everything.  It is what allows everything
to show up.  It is empty too, not made out of anything, yet
it is awesome and radiant.

It is empty Presence without form,
appearing as all form...
Knowing is not thinking.
It is Presence being present
to Presence.

Be still, do nothing. Let be.
No need to figure anything out.
Relax...

A sense of peacefulness opens in you,
vast and without dimension -
vast, peaceful tranquility without dimension...

...and you remember the Real...

Pir Elias Amidon
A Sufi
From Free Medicine

~

Photo - The Lone Skier
 taken by my brother...
Sunday River Ski Resort
Bethel, ME
early morning

Inner Rhythms

"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 McIver - Artist

I feel a resonance with his words, knowing that I need to find that
sense of my own rhythm.  But I also want to find the deeper
 Rhythm of Life; not just my own personal daily rhythm with life, but
 the Flow of the Inner Being, also 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 within
where The Rhythm of the Inner Being is felt - the Rhythm of Silence.
Finding that deeper Inner Rhythm is, for me, the Rhythm of Pure
Being ItSelf - the deeper Rhythm that animates all life... 
 But the "externals" of life distract me and distort the felt sense
 of this Inner Rhythm.

The hypnosis of the world keeps me/us magnetized to the ways of the
world, and pulls me/us 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...  I recently started using my husband's FB
account, just to see what it would be like...  I was hooked within a
couple of days.  It sucks you in, and displaces all other attention... I
have since tried to wean myself off of this "obsessive attention
disorder." It's the pablum of the matrix we live in. 
But no one trains us, when we're young, 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 to that interior space of The Rhythm that pulsates
Its Aliveness within us, and does not depend on a
 name, label, or identity - or the world's rhythms... 
I'm still using training wheels...

Before your innocent Heart was hypnotized by the rhythms of the
world, what did you want deep in your Heart?  Not what you wanted
 to be when you grew up, but what did you really long for?  What
 called to you?  Do you remember?  Do you know now?

~

Photo - Bliss Lotus Mandala
digitally blurred

2013

~

Personal Note: I am aware that there are FB pages out there that are not part of the manipulative matrix of superficial social media - that offer substantive and inspiring writings.  For them I am grateful...

Embracing the Day

Rest, Dear Heart, Rest...

Embrace the day with Rest,
with clarity, with ease of mind...

Feel the warm, fluid rhythm
of Life around you;
upholding you,
carrying you
through the day,
landing you safely
on evening's shore,
through the twilight
and into the night...

And out of the darkness
a shining light...

Rest, Dear Heart, Rest...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 29, 2018

~

Photo - Embracing the Day Mandala Art

I recently did an "8 Day Challenge"
presented by Donna Iona Drozda on becoming aware
of our natural rhythms with life; how we orient ourselves
to the rhythm of each day.  The above mandala was done
as a part of the process, representing the rising wave of our
Inner Rhythm reaching outward to embrace the day.  The
poem came as a result of drawing the image.

Iona's next "8 Day Challenge" will be in January.
You can contact her through her website:
Donna Iona Drozda Life Cycle Art/Life Programs.
Be inspired to live in balance with life!

~

"The Natural Rhythm is ever current, ever
within its organic flow,
allowing us to give voice to our
own creative expression of our Core Being
in the Heart..."

Donna Iona Drozda

Breathe in Life - Jeff Foster & Mark Nepo

from tinybuddha.com

...in truth, nothing is lacking where you are,
nothing is missing from the present scene
of the movie of your life,
and you are forever full, and complete...

The day is just waiting to be lived.
So breathe in life, friend,
breathe in life...

Jeff Foster

~

We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are
when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved,
and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed
and beneath every sadness is the fear that there
will not be enough time...

When we hesitate in being direct (authentic), we unknowingly
slip something on, some added layer of protection
that keeps us from feeling the world/life...

Our challenge every day is not to get dressed to
face the world, but to unglove ourselves so that
the doorknob feels cold, and the car handle
feels wet, and the kiss goodbye feels
the lips of another being...

Mark Nepo

From: The Book of Awakening

Surrender to Wholeness - Fred LaMotte

Surrender to wholeness.
There is no escape.
Refuse to be divided.
Rebel against any force
that would diminish or
entice you to choose
one view against its opposite.

For it is never that one side
is enlightened and the other ignorant.
Ignorance is the antipathy itself,
the separation of wholeness into
polarized opponents.

There are choices, but they are
momentary and intuitive,

never frozen into ideology.
Therefore, revolt against
every ideologue, every divider,
who would lure you into the
toxic but delicious energy of
blame and judgment.
Blame and judgment are not
actions, but re-actions.
And re-action means
endless entrapment...

Act from  the silence of
the unified field,
dynamically at ease
in the Heart...

Rebel ruthlessly yet gently...

Surrender and rebellion are
one and the same...

Fred LaMotte

excerpt from the blog post:
Surrender to Wholeness
(his words, my format)

~

Photo - through the bottom of a glass

Balance - Ursula Le Guin

Do you see how an act is not like a rock that one picks up
and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it.

When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears
it heavier.  When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond,
and where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed.
On every act the balance of the whole depends.
The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light,
all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do,
is well done, and rightly done.  All these act within the
Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's
sounding, to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight,
all they do is done within the balance of the whole.

But we... we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and
the wind do of their own nature.  We must learn to keep the
balance.  Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance.
Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.

Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore

via - Beyond the Fields We Know

~

Maybe we just need to keep learning how to live with each other
in a balanced way...

MM

~

The stars are like letters which inscribe themselves at every
moment in the sky.  All things depend on each other.
Everything breathes together.

Plotinus
CE 204/5-270

~

Photo - Funky art with "Scratch and Sketch Artist's Tile."
Represents balance, but also - how everything we do or
say reverberates out, affecting all beings...

Come to 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 still the presence of Love...

MM

2006

~

The further I wake into this life, the more I realize
that the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin
of all that is ordinary.  Light is in both the broken bottle
and the diamond, and the music is both the flowing violin
and the water dripping from the drainage pipe...

Mark Nepo

From: The Book of Awakening

~

With gratitude for the little things...

_/\_

The Sky Remained Blue - Richard Wehrman

He saw there was nothing to
do with the blue sky, no act to
perform with the leaves speaking
in the high branches, nowhere
to take the fallen leaves curled
into brown upon the dry grass;
they as well needing nothing from
him, other than his presence,
his being, which was not his
to take away, to withhold, to
give to some other.  They were
each the all of it, arising wherever
arising occurred; they filled the
silence with their being silence,
his silence and theirs was the
same.  The dancing sunlight,
the sounds of men making and
doing in the world - these also
were the silence sounding itself,
calling to him in his semi-separation,
whispering the right way, the way
to slide in to that which was out,
to enfold them all and to be
enfolded, to holds hands all the
way back to the beginning, and
ahead to the infinite yet-to-be,
intimately each the all.  And
the sky remained blue, and the
birds called, as he, and all the
leaves above him, listened.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here
Original title: He Listened

One Symphony

The Cosmos plays a continuous
Symphony of Silence
that only Inner Stillness can hear...

We have forgotten the music of the
Celestial Songs
that sound the stellar light language of
Love

Our remembrance lies hidden deep in
the cave of the Heart - untouched...
The unspoken language of the Heart
longs to be opened - awakened...
The dormant vibration calls to us,
to resonate with the tones of Creation
in the Space where Silence sings ~
in unified expressions with
All That Is...

Listen deeply and hear
the Celestial Symphony
within the Stillness
of the Heart...

Follow the pulsing sound
into the Vastness
of Silence...

Find your resonance
with the Rhythm
in your Heart

~ and know ~

We are all a tone of Love
playing our uniqueness in the
Chord of Life,
reverberating with
The Sound of Source...

Mystic Meandering
Aug. 1, 2001

~

Photo - Mandala Art
Starburst
digitally enhanced
2013

"Sabbatical Life" - A Reflection

Over the last few years I've reflected on the idea
that the life of a "mystic" was supposed to be about
"sabbatical" - you know, living a monk's life :) -
spending days in Silence, meditating, continuously
aware of the Pure Being that we are.  And yet,
in reality, I am continually pulled outward into the
requirements of daily living with its ups and downs,
preoccupations and distractions.  Of course!  Aren't we all! 
That's just how life is...

Sometimes I think I may be delusional to think that it is
possible to live according to the Inner Rhythm, focusing

on the Inner Life...

I also sometimes wonder if I'm being selfish, self-centered,
narcissistic to want to focus on the Inner Life...  Is this just
hidden ego? - rhetorical question. :)  I don't see this as an
escape from life, but a call to a way of being - and yet it
eludes me.  

When I ride the waves of this Inner Rhythm in meditative
Silence, I can feel the chaotic surface waves dissipate.  But
at times I also find myself making the distinction between
life as it is and the *idea* of the "sabbatical life" - creating
 a separation where there is none.  When in fact it is more
one's orientation towards life and living that matters - one's
relationship with life as it is - and - with "The Ineffable
Mystery" within...  I'm still working on that...

I know that ultimately it's not either/or, but both/and:
living in harmony with life as it is - surrendering to where
LIFE wants to flow - to the wholeness of Being;
living fully from a deep, abiding *awareness* of Pure
Beingness within - and - the awareness that it's really
all "The Mystery" living ITself here anyway...

I may have romanticized the "sabbatical life", but it still
calls to me, feels like a very deep and vital need - this
resting in the awareness of Pure Beingness - like breathing.
And at this point, for me, it requires Silence and Solitude,
which is why I post about it here :)  

The "key" seems to be - to be willing to face into the realities
of living, the requirements of daily living - while at the same
time being deeply aware of the deeper Rhythm within; not having
any preconceived ideas about what "sabbatical life" should look like,
 but being open to The Rhythm of the Inner Life - while learning to
ride the waves of daily life as they come.
.  They are not in opposition to each other, but flow together.

~

Mystics are people who quest for wisdom or for God,
[or the Truth of Existence, etc.], not in the world of
externals but in the microcosm of their own soul.  There
they follow themselves to be fully present to the experiences
of a deep-felt joy or sorrow, of beauty or suffering, of gain
or loss, so that these opposing poles might in time reconcile
and grow and ripen into a harmonious whole - which wells
up as peace that defies all rational explanation...

Anne Marie Kidder, Editor
 Etty Hillesum: Essential Writings

The Art of Silence - Casey, Hillesum & O'Donohue

We all need to learn the art of silence, to still the
clamor that comes from within as well as securing
for ourselves a zone where outward noise is hushed.
Above all we need to teach ourselves to become more
silent, because it is through an undisciplined tongue
that much of our personal and social disturbances
comes.  In a world where communication is huge,
it takes a fair amount of resolution to create for ourself
a sphere of silence, in which external urgencies are
put on hold and words are weighed.  We will never have
a listening attitude to life unless we spend time listening.
That means we stop engaging in the consciousness-absorbing
activities and start creating periods of silence and solitude.

Michael Casey
From: Strangers to the City
via No Mind's Land

~

Words should simply emphasize the silence,
with much space around a few words;
not empty, but inspired space.
The few great things that matter in life
can be said in a few words.

Brush in a few words against a wordless background,
to describe the silence, and the stillness and to inspire
them.  What matters is the right relationship between
words and wordlessness, the wordlessness in which
 much happens than in all the words one can string
together.  It's not some vague and incomprehensible
silence, for silence too must have contours and form.
All that words should do is to lend the silence form
and contours...

Etty Hillesum
Jewish Mystic of the Holocaust
From: An Interrupted Life 

~

Silence is the sister of the divine.
Silence is a great friend of the soul; it unveils the riches
of solitude.  It is difficult to reach that quality of inner
silence.  But if you trust in your own solitude
everything will be revealed to you,
as silence discloses the hidden depths.

John O'Donohue
From: Anam Cara 

via The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Yours Truly :)

no - not sleeping
resting in The Silence...

Hubby snapped the picture...
He said I looked peaceful :)

Solitude and the Consensus Trance - Ivan Granger

The idea of retreating into the desert or the forest always had a
romantic appeal to me, especially as a young man.

Thoreau's Walden was a close companion, and I regularly
reread his lines on living the essential life.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential acts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life...

Such a person experiences an intense need to silence the mind,
to settle the heart, and to sweep life clean of everything
unnecessary in order to feel that pulse that proves the living
presence beneath the skin of existence.

To accomplish this.....we want to retreat from the world.  But
what do we mean by "the world"?  We can loosely say it is
society, but that is too simplistic.  The world we are trying to
withdraw from is more of an idea of reality.  By withdrawing,
we are attempting to separate from the consensus trance.

It is the shared trance that we call the world, which [spiritual]
seekers instinctively withdraw from in order to see truly [clearly],
free from the pressures of society to remain within a limited
bandwidth of awareness.  When done with balance, steadiness,
and reverence, such withdrawal from the common bubble of
presumed reality can lead to surprising clarity, opening and bliss.

In the struggle to free oneself from the gravitational pull of
consensus reality, [we need to be careful that] we haven't
divided reality between what is sacred or true from the
mundane and illusory; be careful that we do not [exclude]
the vision of an undivided Whole.

The instinct to separate oneself in order to discover an
awareness that is pure and essential - whether through
literal retreat or some form of internal solitude - can be
enormously helpful along the spiritual journey; no longer
feeling trapped by [the trance's] gravitational pull and
artificial boundaries.

We come to recognize that the constricted space we know
as "the world" is not separate from the wider reality or
in opposition to it.
The Eternal is present in it all.

Ivan Granger
Part of a commentary written on a poem
from: The Dance of Bliss

An inspiring collection of poems from poets
and mystics from many traditions, accompanied
by Ivan's reflective commentaries.

"The Silence" Calls

"The Great Silence" calls to me again,
pulling me out of the mental chaos of the world trance.
The familiar Presence of the Unamable wafts over
my Heart like a gentle breeze -
opening the space,
unlocking the doorway to deeper Stillness of Being,
pulling me inward to a deeper Silence...

A strange peace overtakes me.  Ananda?

I settle within, floating
through the day, unperturbed;
acutely aware of the Presence of "The Silence"
within my Heart; the healing balm for a troubled soul.

I have not "chosen" this,
this "pulling" into the Great Silence.
It came unbidden...

pulling me into Its pure Stillness of Being,
wrapping Its invisible, gentle, loving hand
around my Heart...

I merely followed the pull...

listening to "the call" more intently...

hearing the clear sound of Silence,
feeling the Purity of Peace,
and the gentle breath of The Beloved...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 1, 2018

~

If we can hear Life,
we can hear Silence
because the intensity
of this pure energy
manifests itself through
the sound of existence.

Yolande Duran

~

picture of a Blue Castle

the Interior Castle :)

Sacred Outrage - Rupert Spira

...look behind the resistance you feel to what is happening.
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

~

Trust that a thread of love
operates in everything
and listen deeply 
for this Love…

Adyashanti


Act from Love...

We need to discern how to live life with peace
and equanimity in our current culture of hatred
and violence; not creating and "resisting" an "enemy"
in the "other", but finding compassionate courage to
work for that which is aligned with the Truth of our Being,
who we really are in our Heart, as individuals and as a country.
The first step is to meet and acknowledge our own
prejudices, hatred, and violence within ourselves,
that gets expressed in subtle and not so subtle ways
in our day-to-day lives - our indifference to another's suffering
 under the guise of  "spirituality."

_/\_

Solitude - Fred LaMotte

...fall into the space between thoughts.
This space is Presence.
It is Eternity.
It is the Self.

It is in solitude that love becomes
self-luminous, omnipresent.
Solitude is our "refresh" button.
Solitude refreshes our sanity.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Kindness - Penn Jillette

...All I want of America now is kindness.  That's all.
The past few years have filled too many of our friends and
neighbors with hate, and it breaks my heart.  Some people
started acting hateful, crazy and nasty so that they could win,
and then people who disagreed with them acted the same way.
They disagree in content but agree wholeheartedly in tone.

So many of us now agree with the message of hate, and play
"ideology" as team sports.  The message doesn't matter when
the medium is hate.  My friends who work on TV, people I
love personally, are using a tone and a meanness in their jobs
that they never used before.  Is hate where the money is?
I don't know if fighting fire with fire actually works, but I
do know that fighting hate with hate never works.

It makes me cry.  I've read about family members not invited
for Thanksgiving dinner because of political disagreements.
The Clash sang "anger can be power" and I believed it.  Maybe
I still believe it, but maybe I don't want power any more.
Can't we replace the word "evil" with the word "wrong?"
Everyone is wrong sometimes and nobody is ever evil.
The America I want is kind to people who are wrong.

I'm like a dog.  I don't hear words anymore, I just hear tone.
Anyone whose tone is kind will get my complete support.
Libertarian, Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Green...anything
else you got.  I've always been left out of team sports.  I don't
want to win enough.  I'm not part of a team.  I'm part of
humanity.  I want kindness.  There's no other team for me.
Let's love each other, and then discuss how to run the country
together.

Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller

With thanks to The Beauty We Love
for content and photo