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...

Sunday, July 29, 2018

Follow Your Own Footsteps - Mark Nepo


Every time we talk to someone, there comes back to us a map
 of expectation as to how we should respond...

We share a confusion:
we are often given direction.

We share a pain;
we are often given instruction.

We share a desire;
we are often given a plan.

The power of these unspoken maps should not be underestimated.
For the endless gravities of expectation we move in and out of
govern most of our thinking and summons most of our energy
in denying them or complying with them.
In actuality, underneath all the plans, pressures, and expectations,
underneath all the subtle guidance and nudging, the next step
is truly unknown...

Thus, our spiritual charge is to maintain the wonder of the
singular explorer that each of us is...

The freshest step has always come when we are brave
enough to land at the end of what little we know,
breathing in new air, in reaction to no one, in wonder at
what is...

Mark Nepo
From: The Book of Awakening

(Mark's words, my format)


Saturday, July 28, 2018

The Compass Of My Soul - Chuck Surface


I've read so much of the Great Paths,
Resonating here, with this,
Finding myself uneasy there, with that,
Until setting each tome aside...

'Twas You I found, wordless, within.

I've traveled far, to famed teachers,
Being uplifted here, by this,
Finding myself disturbed there, by that,
Until, leaving those places...

'Twas You I found, speechless, within.

I've sojourned in the villages of faith,
And in each discovered jewels,
In the rubble heaps of dogma,
But always, my sandals caked in mud...

'Twas You I found, Sparkling, there.

Beyond the safe harbors of orthodoxy,
In the deep waters of The Great Mystery,
Tossed in Dread Tempests of Unknowing,
Unanchored, Rudderless, Adrift...

'Twas You I found, the Compass of my Soul.

Chuck Surface



~

Photo from Chuck's FB page



Friday, July 27, 2018

Losing the Maps - Mark Nepo & Kastrup


Just when we're softened by the years,.
when we have enough experience to see
for ourselves, our maps are torn from us.
This can be frightening, but there's divine
timing in the dissolution of a stubborn mind,
the way an inlet waits on the last rock to crumble
so it can find its destiny to the sea.  Losing the
way set out by others is necessary so we can discover
for ourselves what it means to be alive.  Now we can
burn the clothes others have laid out for us, [other's
maps of reality, other's agendas], not in anger, but
to light our way.  Now we can let the soul spill its
honey on the unleavened life we've been carrying.
Now we can rise.

Poem from: Inside the Miracle

[brackets mine]

~

All explanations are myths whose truth-value we
assign subjectively.  They are true only in so far
as we say they are true.  They are stories we
conjure up and tell ourselves in order to make sense
of the disconnected, context-free phantasmagoria of
present perception.  It makes no sense to proclaim
any explanation for the present to be objectively true...

Bernard Kastrup
More Than Allegory
via - Markings


Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Go Deeper Than Love - D.H. Lawrence


What we lack is a cosmic life...
The rhythm of the cosmos is something we cannot
get away from without impoverishing our lives.
We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation
to the cosmos and the universe.
For the truth is, we perish for lack of fulfillment of our greater
needs, we are cut off from the great source of our inward
nourishment and renewal, sources which flow eternally
in the universe...

~

Go deeper than love,
for the soul has greater depths...
Go down to your deep, old heart.
and lose sight of yourself.
Let us lose sight of ourselves,
and break the mirrors.
For the fierce curve of our lives is
moving again to the depths
out of sight
in the deep living Heart.

D.H. Lawrence

~

I am part of a vast network, an unbroken legacy of evolved,
thinking sentient beings that is older than myself, older
than my ancestors, older than my species, older than the
rocks and trees and even the planet we live upon.

...my origins go back even further, to the Big Bang and beyond...
eons ago, to a time before time.


Poffo Ortiz


Sunday, July 22, 2018

Out Beyond Polarities - Rumi & Babka


Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field.  I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in *that* grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense...

Rumi


The great Persian poet and Sufi Mystic, Rumi, speaks in
this poem of a field, a clearing, a place empty of divisiveness,
empty of opposition, empty of what we think is certain.

Violence reverberates throughout the world in strains so familiar
that we often are complacent when there is another headline.

We don't often consider how our collective guilt extends the cruelty
and division in the world.  We are guilty of the failure to be
compassionate, and the polarity between the secular and the sacred,
and the unwillingness to be spiritually curious about our shared
responsibility for the violence we see in the world, [in the form of]
poverty, racism, homophobia; the violence of certainty, which claims
the superiority of being 'right'; the violence of oppression,
of absolutes, of nationalism.

We must meet each other in the space where we are all beyond
right and wrong [beyond polarities]... surpassed in the simplicity
of tenderness, the attentive word, the awareness that we each live,
in every moment, exposed to death.

We must practice deliberate compassion.
Each of us deserves to be valued and held as we are,
where we are...

Susie Paulik Babka, PhD
Associate of Religious Studies

Excerpt from an article she wrote in the Huffington Post,
"Out Beyond Ideas: A Field of Empathy in Response to Violence"
about the violent death of her father and 4 others in a
cycling accident.




Thursday, July 19, 2018

The Breath of Sacred Silence


Beyond all concepts of duality and non-duality
there is only the Breath of Sacred Silence...
Here is neither oneness or two-ness,
only the exquisite Rhythm of
the Infinite Breath
IN which Existence exists.

In this space
everything else falls away -
all breathing falls into The Rhythm
of the Ineffable - the Unknown -
The Mystery...

The inhale and exhale
of the Cosmos,
one Rhythm.
No longer aware of
separation,
only unspeakable Silence
breathing...

The mind tries to hold onto concepts,
through thought patterns,
thought processes;
an automated mechanism
that just runs,
creating scenarios of I/me/other.

BUT
Here - in the river of direct experience,
only the Breath of the Sacred breathes,
unencumbered by thought...

In this space of Grace
there is no sense of
union,
or dissolution,
or surrender...

One is simply - absorbed -
into the Ineffable Breath.
A natural, organic absorption of the whole being
in the ongoing stream of the
Pure Isness of Being...

The Ecstatic Mystery of the Breath of Sacred Silence...

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
July 19, 2018



Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Politics and Meditation - Fred LaMotte


The irony is this, that the greatest energy and healing we can
bring to our world today is not through political opposition,
not by feeding the polarization of energy between two sides,
and not by repeating the narrative of hate that each party
constructs about the other; vilifying each other...

This is precisely NOT the time to be swept into the negative
energy of party politics.  Let go of all such anxious thinking
and simply rest the mind in the Heart.
in the Heart is unity, not division.
The practice of meditation is a life-line to free our hearts
[and minds] from this endless strife and division.

When we practice the most ancient form of meditation, to
simply rest the mind in the Heart, we are practicing the most
radical politics.  We are dissolving the dysfunction and healing
the national wound.

The revolution is to breathe.  The radical act is to be present.
Rest the mind in the Heart.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance


This of course doesn't mean that we don't have our opinons
about what is happening in our country, but I know that
"sitting meditation" helps me to keep perspective and calm the mind.
It is exquisitely depolarizing...  :)


Saturday, July 14, 2018

The Pathless Path - reloaded...



This post was originally written in 2011
but is still timely for me...


I find the older I get the more I want to experience Truth directly,
and leave the many trodden "spiritual paths" that I've been on all my
life behind.  Even as a child I wanted to know "God" - a child's
understanding of God.  Then my search evolved and expanded to
include finding "myself" - whoever that was :), the Truth, Wisdom,
peace of mind, and last, but not least, the search for "Enlightenment."
They are all the same"path" under different disguises.  And now,
through all these many paths, I am feeling the need to settle, deepen,
and re-discover a sense of inner Truth; not by following a particular
external path - but by intuitively listening to the voice of my Heart;
experiencing Inner Beingness directly, through spending time in
Silence (which I avoid so easily).  Now if Life would only cooperate
and provide a less chaotic, disruptive, distracted life!  Just kidding -
maybe...  :)

 Being on a "spiritual path" implies that one is going somewhere,
seeking "Some - *thing*" at the end of the journey - like
retirement after a life of working; or a magical pot of gold at the end
of the mythical rainbow; or even the mystical "Holy Grail."  Or maybe
one is even seeking an end to something, like suffering, pain,
ignorance, their humanness, or the end of seeking.  But what if there
was no need for "a path",, no need for seeking the illusive big
"Some-thing" that spiritual seekers seek?  I find myself in this place
of questioning - again...  I have been down the "seeking road" -
many times.

The path of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening"/"Self-Realization",
particularly the path of what is known as Advaita or "Non-Duality",
has lost its luster, its pull, its certainty for me - much like the other
paths I have taken throughout my life.  It's just another construct.
  And I'd rather not describe Truth by a negative - with no-me, no-self,
 no other, no world - as Truth is all inclusive - including duality,
 me, self, other, world.

Even if one follows "a path" (which can be any path) there is no
guarantee that we will discover what we are looking for, and life will
not suddenly become easy or flowing with bliss.   We won't necessarily
lose our personality, with its quirks, our conditioning, or neuroses. 
Our thoughts will not stop, neither will our surface struggles, or
 our pain,  or our stories.  Walking "a path" doesn't even guarantee
 that we will  actually see life differently from either the mountain top,
 or nose to the ground;  or suddenly find our "purpose" -
as if there's only one. 
But no one tells us  this about "the path."
 It has to be a Self-discovery - 
for ourselves -  even if we have a
"Teacher" or follow a "Teaching"  to 
point the way.

Years of seeking, realization, recognition, and then forgetting, and then
remembering, and then forgetting again - brought me to the realization
that discovering (or rediscovering) this Being Self/Truth that we are,
 is through awareness of and deep intimacy with The Silence within;
through continually coming back to the Heart of Being - the space of
Silent, Still, innate Wisdom - which of course is wherever we are at the
moment, not off in the distance somewhere.  It's not a place. 
"The path" doesn't go anywhere.  There is no reward at the end. 
It's an inner pathless path...  And that's my "path" - rediscovering
 this inner Silent,  Aware Wisdom.  It's an inner pathless path
 of remembering; remembering the underlying Rhythm of
 Life ItSelf -


Ommmmmm...


"A mystic is content with nothing less than
to touch the Truth in its most universal purity"

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest in peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then
return to source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature....

Returning is the motion of the Tao.

Lao Tzu

~~

Photo - taken by my father
1952/53


Thursday, July 12, 2018

Ordinary Enlightenment - "G", Shinzen Young & Jeff Foster


There are many different definitions of mysticism, but a narrow
description of mysticism is known as the "perennial philosophy",
or "perennial wisdom."  [That Truth is Universal & Eternal].
In this sense, mysticism indicates the dying of the illusion
of selfhood into the greater reality of God, Nirvana, Dao, or a
number of other concepts representing the deathless and
indefinable part of us that is often called the Void. [or Emptiness].

It is the "death" [dissolution] of the individual ego into the
indescribable that characterizes the perennial wisdom. [Or rather]
it is the giving up of identifying with being the individual ego/self.

God, as the mystic understands the term, does not correspond at all
to the commonly held beliefs involving an anthropomorphic deity
gazing down on humanity from on high.  For the mystic, God is
much more subtle and immediate.  In mysticism, God is not a
separate being to us, rather the very "being-ness" that lies
 at the heart of everyone. 

The mystical process, whatever traditions or methods it uses, is
ultimately aimed at breaking through the prison of mortality into
freedom of what both the Buddha and Japanese Zen Master Bankei
called the Unborn.  Living as the Unborn we are no longer tied to
[attached to] a false sense of ego/self... but are liberated as the very
Awareness that is the heart of every being in the universe.

Excerpt from: "Buddha and Religion: Mysticism"
Buddha Space
Read the full article here
This blog also has other interesting topics!

~

Even for a deeply "enlightened" person, the experience of contact
with Flow and Emptiness does not necessarily go uninterrupted.  It
may happen frequently during the day, but not necessarily continuously.
Even a very liberated person still spends a lot of time experiencing
the world in the ordinary way.

What then is the difference between an ordinary person and a liberated
person?  The difference is a matter of freedom.  An "enlightened"
person has the ability to experience self and world as a Source wave.
And when they are not experiencing things that way, they understand
why that is the case. It is just because they are not paying close
attention...

Shinzen Young - The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works
via Markings

Pay attention! :)

~

There is no fixed path to enlightenment.  Enlightenment is not a
destination, a goal, a final resting place at the end of a long journey -
that's the mind's version of enlightenment.  Nobody is the authority
on your path - no teacher, no guru, no religious leader.  Nobody can
tell you the right 'way' for you...


~

Photo from the Internet


Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Rumi


Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.

Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.

Escape.

Walk out like somebody suddenly born into color.

Dot it now.
You're covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side.

Die,
and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that
you've died.

Your old life was a frantic running
from silence...

Rumi

~

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

Rumi

~

Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself is the cure...

Rumi

~

Photo - downpour in the sun


Saturday, July 7, 2018

The Radiance of the Inner Cosmos...


Give no regard to the voice of Fear that
divides you and conflicts you;
whether from within or without...

Walk as if the Divine were in your shoes,
walking you -
The Inner Cosmic Divine;
undivided by earthly "tribes"
of culture, religion, and politics,
earthly boundaries,
or the divided mentations of
mediocre minds;
yours and others.

Fall into the Inner Rhythm of
The Universal Eternal Being,
the ubiquitous Divine Presence
inherently everywhere at all times,
simultaneously,
 in and through life.

Do not listen to the 10,000 teachings
in your head that you have
accumulated over the years,
all trying to tell you what is true,
which way to go,
and how to be.

Just sit, be still, and listen...

Fall into the Silence and Radiance of
the Inner Cosmic Rhythm,
until you feel the
Inner Cosmos
move
you

Just Breathe...

Wait...

Then you will know what is true,
which way to go,
and
how to Be...

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 6, 2017

_/\_


Friday, July 6, 2018

Happy Birthday Dalai Lama


Today is the Dalai Lama's 83rd birthday.  I am not a Buddhist,
but I have, for a long time now, felt an unexplained "connection"
to The Buddha and Buddhist Heart Wisdom.  I have
experienced many "mystical moments" with The Buddha energy
in sitting meditation.  In a sense you could say I am a
"Buddha Mystic" :DDDDD
(one of my many self-imposed labels :)

I am also drawn, at times, to the Dalai Lama, to his heart of
compassion, his grandfatherly demeanor, and his innocent,
childlike happiness. His Presence (thru photos and the media) elicits
compassion and innocence in me, and my heart sighs.
There is an inexplicable resonance there, allowing me to feel
my own "Buddha Nature" - that Core Beingness within.

Here's a link about his exile from Tibet in 1959
before the invasion of Tibet by China.


Thursday, July 5, 2018

Beyond the World's Horizons - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee


Beyond the horizons of the world is a place that few know,
a place without borders, without loss or gain...  Something
within you mysteriously recognizes this primal emptiness,
the vast unknowing, the wonder of what is not.

There is no substance to form even images.  And yet, there is
a belonging that is stamped in the core of one's being, a belonging
that nothing can break.

Far away [from this place] is a place called existence.  It's full of
dreams. of opportunities, of life and death.  But here, in the world
beyond, there are no such dramas...  When all is dissolved, lost,
undone, we are what we [truly] are.

But the tears call us back into what people call life, into the strange
substance that weaves itself into form.  Yet even when we seem
stranded on this shore of existence, we can never forget that place
beyond the worlds that is always with you [within you].  It is at
the end and the beginning of every breath, more primal than even
silence...


Excerpt from: Fragments of a Love Story

~

Let me sit here on the threshold of two worlds,
lost in the eloquence of silence...

Rumi

~

Photo - Sunset reflected on the top of the car
taken by my husband


Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Free to Be - Fred LaMotte


The first discipline of non-violence is to honor every human being
as a unique soul-body, refusing to identify them by race, gender,
religion, or political party.

Yet just as much as right-wing movements, today's "progressive"
movement often promote conflict and division by labeling individual
Persons by their group identity.  Some of us who talk about "diversity"
actually stifle it, because real diversity is not to promote tribalism
[or nationalism], but to recognize the incomparable [unique]
Personhood of individuals. [As it also says in the Declaration of
Independence].

It is much easier to hate a category than a Person, whether your
animosity is toward Muslims or Christians, "black people", or
"white people", liberals or conservatives.

The beginning of world peace is to free each human soul-body from
racial, political, or religious abstractions.  Our incidental association
with a group is not who we really are.

I do not identify my Self [True Inner Being] as a color, as rich or poor.
capitalist or socialist, Republican or Democrat, Christian or
Pagan, [or American].  I am neither "good"nor "evil."  Those are just
conceptual chains with which your mind attempts to enthrall me.  But
I am not your concept of me:
you are.

If you want to superimpose a group identity on me, that is your act
of violence against the singularity of my Personhood.  You are free to
label me, but I am also free...  I refuse to identify with your label...
I Am who I Am...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

[brackets mine]

~

My note: It's an act of aggression when we impose prejudicial categories and labels on "others"; when we don't see that we are all a unique expression of our shared Core Beingness; when we've been enculturated to hate "other" people's cultures through fear because they are not like "us"...  We are all "free" when we recognize each other's Core Beingness as our own, and the diverseness of our individuality that expresses that Beingness and treat each other with respect and compassion.

And, oh btw, we are all immigrants here, unless you were born 100% Native American.  I am .2% Native American, but the rest of "me" comes from other countries, other cultures.  My English ancestors arrived here in the 1600-1700s and populated much of New England, and evidently somebody intermarried with a Native American.  My Irish and Scottish ancestors arrived probably in the 1800s and intermarried with the English ancestors, and my Norwegian ancestors arrived int he late 1800s, intermarrying with...  well you get the idea.  We are mongrels! :)  Essentially, however, we all share an Essential Beingness far beyond our ancestry, our humanness, far beyond personalities and character traits, beliefs, patriotism, opinions, DNA and intelligence.  And we are inherently Free to Be who and what we are!

And on another note:  My father was greeted by the Statue of Liberty coming back from Europe on a ship with thousands of other soldiers, (given to America by the French, btw), after serving in WWII at age 19-20 in Germany, being hit in the face with shrapnel from "enemy" mortar fire.  That was  his path, his journey, and that of his generation - to fight "the enemy" for an idealized freedom...  I don't think he (or that generation) understood things with the same "spiritual" lens that I do, but he did what he felt was right at the time, believing it was the right thing to do.  And I respect him for that, because his perceptions were different, although his war experience wounded him emotionally for life.  But he not only fought for America, he fought for the freedom of the Europeans in Northern Europe as well, and for the hope of freedom in the world... And yet we are still fighting!  Building walls instead of welcoming statues of liberty - because "we"/humanity (in general) lack the understanding of Who we all essentially are...

Namaste
_/\_

~

Photo -
via Stillness Speaks

Sunday, July 1, 2018

Silence Beyond Mind - Maitreya Upanishad


When a wise man has withdrawn his mind from all things without,
and when his spirit has peacefully left all inner sensations,
let him rest in peace, free from the movement of will and desire...

For it has been said:
There is something beyond our mind,
which abides in silence within our mind.
It is the supreme mystery beyond thought.
Let one's mind and subtle spirit rest upon that
and nothing else.

....When the mind is silent,
beyond distraction,
then it can enter into a world
which is far beyond the mind...

Then one knows the joy of Eternity...
Words cannot describe the joy of the soul
who is one with the Atman, his own Self.
Only those who experience the joy know what that is...

As water becomes one with water,
fire with fire,
and air with air.
so the mind becomes one with the infinite Mind
and thus attains freedom.

Maitreya Upanishad