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

The Inward Pull

There is an intimacy of the Heart in turning inward,
following the pull of "The Silence"
that is hauntingly
sublime...

A magnetic pull of
"The Mystery"
pulls
from within,
pulling ItSelf back to ItSelf...

In fluidity of being one feels suspended
in an endless depth and breadth,
fullness and emptiness,
all at the same time;
noticing a subtle movement of awareness
aware-ing everything at once...

Collapsing into the Cosmic waves of Pure Being,
into Existence prior to manifestation,
everything within softens and opens,
like a delicate flower,
including the body,
touched by a subtle
rhythmic caress
of
the Unknown
~ breathing ~
~ embracing ~

surrounding and filling;
unwinding contractions
of body and mind.

There is a sanity in this Cosmic Silence

that bestows a soundness of Heart through Grace
that is beyond polarization...

In this deeper Rhythm within
one loses a sense of "self."
Conflict and chaos dissolve,
becoming "The Silence" ~

breathing ItSelf...

The Breath of the Infinite

The Whisper of Love

Mystic Meandering
March 1, 2017

_/\_

Photo - Cosmic Waves and Splash
Craypas oils - 2012

~

This magnificent refuge is inside you.
Enter.
Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway...
Be bold.  Be humble.
Put away the incense and forget
the incantations they taught you.
Ask no permission from the authorities.
Close your eyes and follow your breath
to the still place that leads to the
invisible path that leads you
home.

St. Teresa of Avila

A Plague of Intolerance - Thomas Merton

A mass movement readily exploits the discontent and frustration
of large segments of the population which for some reason or
other cannot face the responsibility of standing on their own
feet.  But give them a movement to join, a cause to defend, and
they will go to any extreme, stop at no crime, intoxicated as they
are by the slogans that give them a pseudo-religious sense of
transcending their own limitations.  The member of a mass
movement, afraid of his own isolation, and his own weakness as
an individual, cannot face the task of discovering within himself
the spiritual power and integrity which can be called forth only
by love.  Instead of this, he seeks a movement that will protect
his weakness with a wall of anonymity and justify his acts by
the sanction of collective glory and power.  All the better if this
is done out of hatred, for hatred is always easier and less subtle
than love.  It does not have to respect reality as love does.  It
does not have to take account of individual cases.  Its solutions
are simple and easy.  It makes its decisions by a simple glance
at a face, a colored skin, a uniform.  It identifies an enemy by
an accent, an unfamiliar turn of speech, an appeal to concepts
that are difficult to understand...  This is not "ours", he says.
This must be brought into line - or destroyed.

[Because of] this universal infection of fanaticism, the plague of
intolerance, prejudice and hate, which flows from the crippled
nature of mankind... [we] must labor with inexhaustible
patience and love, in silence, perhaps in repeated failure,
seeking tirelessly, wherever we can, to restore the capacity of
 love...

Thomas Merton
from - Disputed Questions
(written in the 1960's)

Thomas Merton was a Christian Trappist Monk
and social activist in the 1960's.  He was a strong
supporter of non-violence and civil rights.  In his
later years he became interested in Zen Buddhism
and promoted an East-West dialogue.  

He died in Bangkok in 1968.

~

Thanks to The Beauty We Love

Etty Hillesum - Mystic of the Holocaust

True peace will come when every individual finds peace
within himself; when we have all vanquished
and transformed our hatred for our fellow human
being of whatever race - even into love one day.

~

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty:

to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves,
more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others.
And the more peace there is in us,
the more peace there will also be
in our troubled world.

Etty Hillesum
from: An Interrupted Life: The Diaries

~

Etty Hillesum, known as the Mystic of the Holocaust, was a young
Jewish woman who lived in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation
and who died as one of the millions of victims of the Holocaust.

Russian authors and Christian mystics likely contributed to Hillesum's
understanding of spirituality.  She did not strive for ecstasy, but longed
to meet the depth of her own interior and life itself.  She had little
interest in organized religion of any kind.  In a time when the "whole
world [was] becoming a giant concentration camp," she felt one must
hold fast to what endures - the encounter with God at the depths of
one'sown soul.  Her spirituality was not confined to her intellectual
understanding of a greater power.  In the concentration camp of
Westerbork, she had unusual experiences of spiritual awakenings
 and insight.

"I now listen all day long to what is within me, and am able to draw
strength from the most deeply hidden sources in myself.  I keep
following my own inner voice even in the madhouse..."

Hillesum suffered inner turmoil during her young childhood, but
increasingly transformed into a woman of maturity and wisdom.
She writes:

"Everywhere things are both very good and very bad at the
same time.  The two are in balance, everywhere and always.
I never have the feeling that I have got to make the best of
things; everything is fine just as it is.  Every situation,
however miserable, is complete in itself and contains
the good as well as the bad."

In touch with the equilibrium of a bigger picture, she continuously
 drawsfrom this interior place to find meaning in her current reality.

Her transformation unfolds, and she records a slow emergence of
astounding inner freedom.  She could no longer
"live with the kind of hatred so many people nowadays force upon
themselves against themselves..."

Her diaries record the increasing anti-Jewish measures imposed by
the occupying German army, and the growing uncertainty about the
fate of fellow Jews who had been deported by them.

On Sept. 7, 1943 she and her family were deported to Auschwitz.
Her parents were killed in the gas chambers.
Etty died there November 30, 1943 at the age of 29.

Etty invites us to be the "thinking heart" of our country.
as it hangs on the brink of perpetual chaos and conflict...

From - Western Mystics
and Wikipedia