In The Autumn Of Life (excerpt) - Chuck Surface

In the Autumn of life...

I no longer care for "knowledge of",
In words, concepts and theories,
For the highest knowledge possible
Remains but yet another veiling.

And yet...

The mind continues as it has,
Reveling in its noble quest,
Behaving according to its nature,
Only now, knowing full well the futility.

In the Autumn of life...
I no longer care for "understanding",
Arriving at logical "conclusion",
For the deepest understanding possible,
Remains but yet another veiling.

And yet...
The mind continues as it has,
Devouring whatever crumbs might fall,
From the Table of The Great Mystery,
Only now, knowing full well the futility.

[.....]

And yet, in the Autumn of life...

I see the Blessing is born of our entirety:
The mind's desperate need to Know,
The Heart's desperate desire to Feel,
The Soul's desperate longing for Union...

[.....]

Here... in the Autumn of life...

Chuck Surface
Excerpt: In The Autumn Of Life

Garden of the Beloved

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"I sense there is this Mystery" - Rilke

No one lives life...

Disguised since childhood
haphazardly assembled
from voice and fears,
and little pleasures,
we come of age
as masks...

~

And though we strain against
the deadening grip of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery.

All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the water?
Is it the branches that signal
to each other?

Is it the flowers
interweaving their fragrances
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it animals, warmly moving,
or the birds that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then?

God, are you the one
who is living life?

Rainer Maria Rilke

~~~~

Life is the movement of "The Mystery"
Life is the manifestation of "The Mystery."
Life ItSelf is "The Mystery" in movement
with ItSelf in form.

The Formless *is* Form...

We are held in the embrace of "The Mystery."
*It* wants to be known and seen.

*It* wants to play in the seeing of ItSelf.

In looking into "The Mystery" there is a
sense of intimacy.
And there is only deep, deep Love looking back.

We are held in the intimate gaze of
"The Mystery",
like the intimate gaze of lovers seeing
 *into* each other,
seeing *beyond* each other,
seeing beyond the persona, the mask,
into the depths of Pure Being.

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
January 2009

~

Photo - Shadow of Bamboo leaves
creating a face against a reflection
of a rainbow crystal on the wall...

Life is a Dynamic Expression - Darryl Bailey

Life is a moving, shifting, dancing event...
and we are part of that movement.
Life will play out the way it plays out,
it's all just happening.
Life is a dynamic function, doing what it does.
Just acknowledge the movement, the event;
the Flow of Life ItSelf...

Everything in existence is a legitimate expression of Existence.

We are the legitimate expression of Life, of Existence,
of this great mysterious happening.
just as we are...
Each different and unique in our expression.

When we see that, we can rest...

Acknowledge the wild, exotic expression that you are,
in your uniqueness.

Darryl Bailey

Excerpt from video talk:
Challenging the Fantasies

photo image via Stillness Speaks

~~

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when
one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life,
when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within
oneself?  If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes
truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding
and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such
paradox.  One must live in the middle of contradiction, because
if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing
questions.  You continue to live them out, making your life a
worthy expression of leaning into the light...

Barry Lopez
From: Arctic Dreams

via: Beyond the Fields We Know

Simply Living...

I've been basking in a "new", and not so new, "revelation" that
life is a story being lived by Life ItSelf'; that *I* am being lived:
that we *are* the living story of Life.

Life lives the story of "me" that I've identified with all these years,
and believed, for a while at least, that "I" needed to be
"enlightened" - and have once again returned to the sense that
"I" am "simply living."

In this "revelation" there is an internal "letting go" - or
"giving up" - or some would say "surrender"...
And as a wise friend recently explained:
"In that, an ancient tension and stress is released.  And in the
deepest instance of 'giving up', even the somatic aspect of
our being feels a tremendous relief, and a Serene Emptiness
where that contraction had formerly been felt; as much in
our physical body as in our subtle energetic nature.
Struggle ceases, no longer driven by the engine of
dissatisfaction with 'what is', with 'how we are.'  No longer
driven by the engine of self-judgment and self-qualification,
by the desire to be better or worthy, or finally 'understanding'
or 'apperceiving' by the desire for 'enlightenment.'"

This articulates my current experience perfectly...

~

And I wrote this back in 2011

There is only the immediacy of the current moment -
just living that experience, whatever that experience is,
however it unfolds, without the sense of a separate "self"
striving for something "better", or to *do* anything to
improve it, or become "enlightened."

"We", the "Beingness" that we are, just experiences
whatever is occurring without a framework or reference
point, or concept...
It's just Life being life!

It is Existence experiencing ItSelf as "me", or "you" -
as an occurrence within ItSelf...
Simply Living...

We, as waves on the Ocean of Existence, are continually
occurring - unfolding fluidly, seamlessly,  Yet, a
"construct" of "self" can emerge *if/when* there is a belief
in a "self" that can hold onto the present moment - trying
to grasp what cannot be grasped.  But the current experience
cannot be grasped, for as soon as we try to capture it we
re-enter the struggle of "self"...

The present moment is unending, constantly reverberating
through the *concept* of time, and is what the wrinkle of
time happens *in* -
the Timeless Ocean of Existence.

And so the realization seems to be that we simply recognize
Life living ItSelf  as us - seeing the Luminous in everything -
recognizing that we ARE that
Luminosity of Life...

...simply living.

Namaste

_/\_

photo - from a greeting card

"Spirituality" is a Concept - Eric Baret

Spirituality is a concept.  What people project on so-called
spirituality, they used to project on their Boy Scout team when
they were six, on their football team when they were ten, on
politics at twenty and on marriage at thirty...  The void that we try
to fill with a doll, an electric train, a good grade at school, a
career, a child, we then try to project onto spirituality...

True spirituality is gratitude.

True spirituality is a stillness that makes one available for
 every moment.

Wanting to set ourselves free from all our problems to become
"spiritual", to become "awakened", all comes from fear.

There comes a time when you don't feel the need to look for
yourself in the different currents of life.  Then there isn't any
 word, any direction, any knowledge, any school, any lineage,
 any teaching, and, above all, any spiritual person.

What remains is non-separateness.

[You] understand that there is nothing to understand, nothing to
 acquire. [You] don't need to invent tools to face life, to create ways
 to defend or affirm yourself to deal with situations. 
[You] look honestly at what is, what triggers fear, anxiety,
pretense, defense in yourself.  [You] clearly accept
your pretense, your limits.  These limits will reflect the Limitless.

Your clarity shines light on all that...
You are shining light into spirituality, not the other way around.

...when [you] project a superior/inferior [projection on life] - spiritual
 things that ought to set [you] free from ordinary life - then [you]
are in [your] imagination.

Let's function in day to day life: eat, sleep, love, see, feel, look.
Let all the emotions live inside us. Nothing to defend, to affirm,
to know. We do not need anything to get a feeling for the
 Primordial.
No need to change anything in ourselves.

Eric Baret

Teacher of the Tantric Tradition

Excerpt from an excerpt from his new book:
De L'abandon.
Full excerpt posted on Stillness Speaks

via: No Mind's Land

[brackets] mine

~

Photo - Shadow of a stained glass angel
on the ceiling...

I'm still here... :)

There have been several people who thought that my last post,
"Good-bye Yellow Brick Road" was about, among other things,
saying goodbye to this blog...

There are no plans to quit the blog...
or take it down...

Just opening another chapter...

It may take on a different flavor,
challenging my own fantasies about "spirituality."

I still have things I want to post which reflect where I am
in my "evolution of awareness", which may be of interest.
I will still post what inspires me and hopefully you as well...
I may re-post some of my earlier writings if it reflects where
I am now.

I humbly thank you for reading here,
and thank the handful of those who have encouraged me
to keep posting, both in private and in public.  I am glad that
you find what is posted here inspiring and thought provoking...

Namaste

_/\_

As a friend recently wrote to me:

"The mind continues to Wonder.
but without struggle or need."

And another wonderful quote from a blogger friend - by Rumi

"I have been a seeker, and I still am.
But I stopped asking the books and the stars,
I started listening to the teachings of my soul."

goosebumps!

Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...

It's ending... and as TS Eliot said: "in my end is my beginning."

It's ending, the meandering - not because I have reached a "goal"
or the "end" of wondering what is True, or achieved "fulfillment"
of Being - quite the contrary...

What has been needs to end -
the disillusionment,
of years on the "spiritual treadmill" -
caught in the futility of trying to understand, to get somewhere,
to be other than "me", a "better" me, or no-me at all...
Going in circles,
rewinding myself through the same conundrums
over and over again,
trying to believe what others say is True...

Acceptance has set in...

Acceptance of myself as "I" am - the whole of "me"
without the need for a "spiritual identity" - another facade;
just "me" - living, breathing, being -

without the comforting certainties of "knowing" the answer
to the questions.

Feels freeing - actually,
letting go of old identities,
old masks, old myths about
how it's all sposed to be;
whether "this" is just a dream of duality,
or - if there's really a non-dual existence of the Divine
and "me"...

But can't do that mind trip anymore...
I can only see what I can see
and let the rest go...

The pursuit has ended...

No more trying to "become"
"enlightened", "illumined", "liberated"

to appease the mind's fantasies
about "spirituality."

No more rose colored glasses,
no more "Lucy in the sky with diamonds",
no more Yellow Brick Road,
with the "Wizards" of an illusionary Oz pulling the strings...

Subtly, I fell into the same mind traps

over and over again -
wanting, longing, searching,
waiting
for that elusive final epiphany -
the dissolving of the "me" in Ecstasy...

But there was nothing;
no rainbow,
or pot of gold;
no "radiance of Being" shining...

Just "me" - still "me"...

So -
Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...
I'm laying down the burden of "spirituality"...
and simply allowing myself to Be...

Now...

at last

I am...

finally free...

Mystic Meandering
April 16, 2018

Namaste
_/\_

~*~

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again,
I won't look any further than  my own back yard,
because if it isn't there, I never really lost it
to begin with." :)

Dorothy
From the Wizard of Oz

The Middle Way - Jack Kornfield

The Buddhist tradition is neither a path of denial or affirmation.
It shows us the paradox of the universe, within and beyond
the opposites.  It teaches us to be in the world, but not of the
world.  This realization is called the middle way.

The middle way describes the middle ground between
attachment and aversion, between being and non-being, between
form and emptiness, between free will and determinism.  The
more we delve into the middle way the more deeply we come to
rest between the play of opposites. 

Learning to rest in the middle way requires trust in life itself.

Trusting in the middle way, there is an ease and grace, a
cellular knowing that we, too, can float in the ever-changing
ocean of life which has always held us.

We come to rest in the reality of the present, where all the
opposites exist. T.S. Eliot calls this the "still point of the 

turning world, neither from nor towards, neither arrest or
movement, neither flesh or fleshless."

The middle path describes the presence of eternity.  In this
reality, life is clear, vivid, awake, empty and filled with
 possibility.  When we  discover the middle path.....we can
 be with all our experience in its complexity, with our own
 thoughts and feeling and drama as it is.  We learn to embrace
 tension, paradox, change. Instead of seeking resolution, waiting
 for the chord at the end of the song, we let ourselves open and
 relax in the middle. In the middle we discover that
 the world is workable...

Jack Kornfield
From: The Wise Heart

The Shape of "self" - MM

The Infinite Beingness that we are
takes the shape of
"self" - "you"...

- like contained water -

The Source of our Essential Beingness,
whether we call it God,
Buddha Nature, Consciousness,
Non-Dual Awareness,
Great Spirit, or
Infinite Being
is like fluid light;
refracting ItSelf
in order to make ItSelf
appear in form -
as "self"...

Our Being
takes the form of matter reality;
a modulation of Its Pure Beingness,
vibrating ItSelf uniquely into
the shape of "self."

Don't be deluded by prescriptive dogmas and
doctrines of hierarchies
selling you the steps to "enlightenment."
Instead, unshape your "self" from
the conceptual overlays
that man's finite mind devised
to try to explain what IS...

And fall into the Grace of Silence...

~

Don't entrap your "self" in intellectual argumentation,
and interpretations of
Self/No-self, Duality/Non-Duality, Just This/only Now;
frameworks of distortion; 

words that tickle the mind...

Instead, let the Shapelessness of your Eternal Being
take shape within you,
let It shape you -
and feel the authentic Being that you are.
Let It form and inform your
"self"...

The "self" cannot be discarded.
It is part of the whole
of who we are.
There can be no "separation"
or denial of who we are
as the wholeness of Being,
including the "self"...

Feel into the fluidity of
your Whole Being;
the essential feeling of Being.
Let your "self" be
the Luminous Infiniteness
with its myriad expressions,
its multiplicity and diversity...

~

If only for a moment...

Love your "self"...

Be yourself - as you are

Embrace all of "you"...

As the Infinite Whole...

Mystic Meandering
Feb/Mar/Apr 2018

This poem percolated over a period of 3 months

Namaste
_/\_

The Secrecy of My Own Being - Thomas Merton

The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me
by my own estimate of what I am.  My idea of what I am is
falsified by my admiration of what I do.  And my illusions
about myself are bred by another's imagined greatness.

If I do not know who I am, it's because I think I am the sort
of person everyone around me wants to be.  Perhaps I have
never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what
everybody else seems to want to become.  Perhaps if I only
realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire,
I would really begin to live after all.  I would be liberated from
the painful duty of saying what I really do not think.  [or feel :)]

Thomas Merton

~

Photo - a recent Spring snowfall
1:30am

For A New Beginning - John O'Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

John O'Donohue

From: To Bless the Space Between Us

A Love With No Name - Jeff Foster

Life produces life out of itself, the same life that was present
at the Big Bang is somehow also here - in form.  There are
moments when we can touch the wholeness of life, the
wordless mystery that permeates all creation - we can fall in
love with existence as it reveals an unconditional love with
no name.

We can become absorbed by life and realize we are not living
life, but life is living us. And we realize everything is deeply
okay - cosmically okay.  Even though our life situation hasn't
changed, our relationship to it has transformed.  We realize we
no longer need to struggle to find wholeness.  There is only
wholeness... 

Existence is rich with mystery and wonder, and sometimes,
without warning, light can shine through the cracks.
Life is somehow infinitely more than what it appears to be.
The extraordinary is hidden in the ordinary, just waiting to be
discovered.  Perhaps all the things we have taken for granted
are actually divine, sacred, infinitely precious expressions of

wholeness that cannot be expressed in thought or language.

We have invented many words over the years to try to point
to this cosmic wholeness, words like spirit, nature, Oneness,
Advaita, nonduality, consciousness, awareness, aliveness,
Being, Source, Existence, Isness, Tao, Buddha Mind,
and presence.

Thoughts and words fragment wholeness; they break up a
unified reality into separate things.  The world of thought is
the world of duality...  But the most important thing to
remember is that:
it's not about the words. 
It's about the wholeness of life itself;

inner stillness, a love letter from stillness to itself.

Life, then, is 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;
the wholeness that you are...

Jeff Foster
Excerpt From: The Deepest Acceptance

~

Photo - Mandala Art
digitally altered

Uncover the Original Center - Mark Nepo

Each person is born with an unencumbered spot -
an umbilical spot of Grace where we were each first
touched by God.  Psychologists call this spot
Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the
Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu Masters call it Atman,
Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness,
Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the center of Love.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are,
not by surface markers of identity.....but by feeling our
place in relation to the Infinite, and by inhabiting it.  This
is a life-long task, for the nature of becoming is a constant
"filming over" [covering over] of where we begin [began],
while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is
not essential; to be worn back to that incorruptible spot
of Grace at our core.

When the film [covering] is worn through, we have
moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness,
moments of Satori, as the Zen Sages term it, moments
of clear living, moments of full integrity of being,
moments of complete Oneness.

And whether the film is a veil of culture, or religious
training, the removal of that film and the restoration
of that timeless spot is the goal.  This is the only thing
worth teaching:  how to uncover that original center and
how to live there once it is restored.  The process of
return, whether brought about by suffering or love, is
how we unlearn our way back go God [to the core of Grace].

Mark Nepo
Excerpt from: The Book of Awakening

~

Photo of Tomato

I sliced a tomato a few weeks back and
found the white Christian cross in the center, and
in the middle of that cross, a little red heart.

Can you see it?!

Although I am no longer a Christian, or any other
religion for that matter, I still seek the Truth of
Existence and direct experience of "The Divine",
however one defines that for themselves.
I couldn't help but see the message in the tomato;
not a "Christian" message, but a universal message,
that no matter what one's religious identification,
regardless of "tradition",
The Heart, Love, is really the "original center" of
everything!

Namaste!

_/\_