The Paradox of Freedom - Amoda Maa

The closer we come to truth (and the closer we come to
living the truth), everything becomes paradoxical.  Yes, everything.
It's this and that.  It's human and divine.  It's messy and it's perfect.
it's time-bound and it's timeless.   It's relative and it's absolute.
It's form and formless.  Everything becomes paradoxical.

We start to live as this paradox, because truth is not an end point.
Truth is not an answer.  Truth is not a belief system.  Truth is an
open ended-ness within us.  And this is where freedom begins.

It's not a freedom that negates our human experience, with all its
changes, with all its ups and downs, with all its losses and heart-
breaks.  It's a freedom that allows us to live at peace with all of
it, even when it's not peaceful.  It's a deep acceptance of what is.

It's a freedom that wipes away all the cover-ups, everything we tell
ourselves in order to protect ourselves,  to pretend that we're safe,
to imagine a perfect destination.  It's a freedom that wipes away the
layers of defended-ness, all the strategies that we create - mental
strategies, emotional strategies, energetic strategies - to get what we
think we want from life in order to feel comfortable, in order to
feel special, in order to feel loved.  But these cover-ups end up being
our prison.  And there is no fulfillment in this self-created prison.

Fulfillment only comes when there are no cover-ups. It's the fulfillment
of internal freedom, and has nothing to do with the external.  You
could be in a jail cell, and still this freedom is available.

Amoda Maa

~

What really matters is your
capacity to turn towards the
tenderness of your heart in
the midst of that which
offends you.

Amoda Maa

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Pristine Silence...

Pristine Silence
Untainted, Untouched
filled my chest...

I gasped at its sudden, unbidden
Presence...

Golden Silk slicing through me
like warm clarified butter,
in undulating waves of light...

It arose again and again from within,
so clean and clear.
I marveled at its clarity;
undistilled, undisturbed clarity...

This golden-hued Silence opened in my chest,
inviting me to look inside -
to see it clearly - to recognize "it."

This that I thought had been lost to me.
This - this Pristine Silence - that is the very
Presence of The Mystery...

I was both humbled and ecstatic
by the imagery - focused on the
Silken Silence that had cut through me,
opening me to ItSelf;
Inviting me inward in waves of
Golden Silk...

All I could do was watch internally -
in awe and wonder, as this Pristine Silence
split me open and kissed my heart -
and stayed...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 28, 2019

Personal Note:
How does one even begin to accurately describe
The Presence of The Mystery - the Indescribable -
that leaves its touch, its image, imprinted forever in
the heart.  Words can only try to translate what is
experienced - the treasure that is found in awesome
 wonder - leaving one wordless...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Infinite Unfolding - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The Mystical Path
takes one into the depths of the Heart.
It leads you from the known to the unknown,
and then further into
the unknowable,
into a darkness brighter than
any light.

Nothing can prepare you for the Heart's journey,
for the places it can take you,
the depths and the heights
that are within you.
So many times  you think you are crazy,
bewildered and lost.
There are few signposts,
often little sense of direction.
It is our own unique journey.

It takes us to places where there are no
books or stories, no words to comfort us,
except the story of our own Heart,
our own confusion, longing and love.

We awaken to the simple and fundamental truth
that there is nothing other than 'God.'
Even the idea of a path is an illusion...

~

So what is this love story that unfolds within
the Heart of a Mystic?

How much of "our story" is [really] "God's story"?

...all one story,
One Light
split into many fragments,
yet always remaining
One Light...

This one story
is lived in millions of ways,
each story a unique fragrance of Love.
Every cell in creation lives its own love story -
its longing for the Source.
Human beings have the capacity
to make this story conscious,
to know the nature of their
hidden longing.

There can only ever be
one story,
because
there is only one Beloved,
and yet
we are part of this story;
our little "i"
must also be
a part of
The Beloved...

Infinitely Unfolding

Excerpts from:
Fragments of a Love Story
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic

~

Please  note: I have taken excerpts from  the book
and arranged them in the form of a prose poem.

~

Photo: Mystic Meandering
Lotus Heart Stained Glass piece digitally zoom blurred

Sublime Union - Ameeta

At the root of awakening
is the yearning for reality
to know itself as
the formless it is.

At the root of manifestation
is the yearning for reality
to know itself as
the formfullness it is.

Form arcs towards formlessness
Formlessness arcs towards form.

Like lovers reaching out
to each other
arms outstretched
they seek to know the other
as themselves.

In their sublime union
is the beginning and the end,
and everything between;
the eternal dance,
always being always becoming.

As form awakens
to its formlessness
it grows in its capacity
to express formlessness.

Simultaneously
as formlessness awakens
to its formfullness
it grows in its capacity
to be expressed in form.

Form and its formlessness
evolve together.
The manifest and its unmanifest source
grow together
in the deep dark womb
of the fathomless depths.

Ameeta
2019

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Dance of Light and Dark - Winter Solstice

We are "The Mystery" come into being,
out of the dark and light...
Consciousness awakened,
Self replicating ItSelf;
or whatever word you give
"The Mystery"...

"I" dressed up as "me" - "me" as "I" - i/I
Formless as form,
Form as formless.
Light and Dark entwined...

Opening to "The Mystery"
we are free to be our unique selves,
however that is defined...

When we know this
"something" wakes up inside -
and hums...

Everything is OM -
- humming -
playing in the play of Life
as i/me
with a multitude of other expressions of
i/me...
"The Mystery" playing you, playing me,
each a reflection of the other...
Both "The Mystery" playing ItSelf...

When we let go of the conceptual words
and the frameworks of belief and interpretations

we are just FREE...

Letting go of the concepts of
i/I, me and "no-me", Self/no-self,
we are just Life living ItSelf here...
We are being LIVED
as we are...

There is something authentic
in allowing myself to be
just as i am...

Life is met from a different space -
the space of acceptance,
where everything is embraced
as it is...

The deep grief and sadness of loss,
the laughter and joy of new birth,
the dance of the dark and the light,
dancing together in the playground of Life...

Mystic Meandering
Winter Solstice 2019

~

Happy Solstice/Yule
the real reason for the season :)

~

Photo - Cosmic Swirl Paperweight

Authentically You - V. Erickson, Nepo & MM

Often times, a person will think they know you by piecing
together tiny facts and arranging those pieces into a puzzle
that makes sense to them.  If we don't know ourselves
very well, we'll mistakenly believe them, and drift toward
where they tell us to swim, only to drown in our own
confusion.

Here's the truth: It's important to take the necessary steps
to find out who You are [our True Beingness] because
you hold endless depths below the surface of a few facts
and pieces and past decisions.  You aren't only the ripples
that others can see.  You are made of the Ocean...

Victoria Erickson
Author of - Edge of Wonder

~

What it really comes down to is the clearness of heart
to stop defining who you are by those who have hurt you
and to take up the risk to love:
to live at the vibrant edge
of being spirit in the world
exploring the intoxicating quandaries
of being alive,
accepting the grace of our
humanness...

Mark Nepo
From - The Exquisite Risk:
Daring to Live an Authentic Life

~

It's about being enlivened from within;
being fiercely true to the core of our Being:
Compassion, Love and Pure Aliveness...

Open to how That wants to express ItSelf -
allowing the Dynamic Mystery that we are
to express ItSelf from deep within...
Not needing to take a stand on anything,
but finely attuned to the Heart of Love -
discovering a deeper Wisdom...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Sept 2016

~

Art - Craypas Oils
done with fingers

2012

True Purpose - Author Unknown

What is my purpose in life? - I asked "The Void"

"Your problem is that you equate your purpose with
goal-based achievement, like 'enlightenment.'
The Universe isn't interested in your achievements,
your concepts and beliefs...

Just your Heart...

When you choose to act out of kindness,
compassion and love, you are already aligned
with your true purpose..."

From Facebook
Author unknown

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Mind Games...

Tired of noisy words,
the "spiritual abstractions"
cleverly strung together
by word-crafters espousing
their mind games - not
from the simplicity of their Heart,
but the complexities of their minds;
having been absorbed by too many
conceptual ideas: "there is only here
and Now"; "there is no other"; "there
is no me"; "'i' does not exist -
creating a phantom reality from those concepts
and ideas on which to hang your mind;
plying their paradoxes into 'non-dual' jargon.

Once a player in "The Mind Games",
I now seek refuge in the simplicity of the Heart,
and a more "direct experience" of what cannot be
defined by words and abstractions; not philosophical,
existential conundrums that boggle and confuse, but
a simple truth,
untethered and unencumbered...

I'd rather step into the unknown
and be free, than be tethered to the
certainties of noisy words and abstract
mind games that parade as truth.

Without those, I am free to BE - who I am,
as I am;
a unique expression of "The Ineffable Mystery" of Life
that animates my being -
living from the simplicity of the Heart...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 14, 2019

~

Photo from the Internet
digitally altered

Goddess of the Dark - Ameeta

Who are you?
why do you speak to me so?
Stinging my eyes with unbidden tears
Filling my heart with unnamed sensation
Calling my whole being to pause

I don't know you
You are not a destination I aspired to
nor do you fit any image I've ever known
Yet when you appeared on my horizon
I recognized you instantly
in the soundless depths of me

You give no direction yet
But I can feel you anchoring me within
Preparing void as womb
Even as you lead me to lie there and die
in your embrace

Goddess of the Dark
I feel your presence in me now
And your strength and power
Perhaps now I will have the wherewithal
to let everything go
every last bit of it, good and bad

My highest ideal and my biggest fear
They are but two ends of one chain
that binds me to this world, this existence

I have to let them both go
I have to be prepared to die fully

Ameeta

May 2019

~

Photo - Someone's "selfie by mistake" that they sent me...
The Mystery of the Dark Goddess :)

The Traveler - Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden

The traveler who finds his road blocked by a river will use
a raft to reach the opposite shore, but, this shore, once
reached, he will not take the raft on his shoulders while
continuing his journey.  He will abandon it as something
which has become useless.

The raft represents the different kinds of methods, intellectual
training, or moral discipline, which are available as means to
bring the seeker of liberation to the "other shore."  On this shore,
both have lost their value; they bear no relation to the conditions
existing on the "other shore" and, like the raft in the parable,
they are only a useless burden...

To go beyond virtue and vice, opinions and beliefs, is to go
beyond the mental constructions which are built by the mind,
unceasingly, and to recognize, by transcendent insight, that
they are void of reality.  It is also to recognize, by transcendent
insight, that which has been imagined as practicing virtue,
surrendering to vice, as holding opinions and elaborating theories,
as traveling towards a goal and reaching a goal, is nothing but
an inconsistent phantom, devoid of reality.

Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden
from - The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhists Sects

with thanks to  - The Beauty We Love

~

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

Rumi

~

Photo - taken by my brother

Untethered...

Untethered I step off into "space" -
the spaciousness of Just Being.
Flying into the vast unknown;
Invisible inner Forces showing me the way -
if I allow them to...

Not trying to "direct" my own way
by what I had known before;
letting the conceptual veils drop away...
Remaining open to an Invisible Force
at the Core of my Being -
the Inner Essence of what
makes me - me;
not an abstract construct,
but Life living ItSelf as me...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 29, 2019

~

Art - Untethered Heart
craypas oils
2009

digitally altered

There Is Room in the Heart - Ameeta

What distresses you
my friend?

Isn't it mostly
what your mind says
should not be?

The mind says
it should not be
and yet it is.

There is room
you know
there is room
in the heart
for what the mind
won't allow.

There is room
in the heart
for what the mind
can't understand.

There is room
in the heart
for every
contradiction
and conflict
for every pair
of opposites
to co-exist.

No no
shouts the mind again
it is wrong
and I won't allow it.

There is room
in the heart
for all of
shouting mind.

There is room
in the heart
for reality
as it is.

Recognize
your open heart
my friend
and receive life here.
Receive life
in this home of love
and know your heart
as the birthplace
of everything.

Ameeta

2011

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Season of Giving - Kahlil Gibran

You give but little when you give your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep and
guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the
over-prudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand
as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?
And what is fear of need but need itself...
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full,
the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much of which
they have - and they give it for recognition and their
hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.  And there
are those who have little and give it all.  There are the
believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer
is never empty.  There are those who give with pain,
and that pain is their baptism.  And there are those who
give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy,
nor give with mindfulness of virtue;  they give as in
yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give
unasked, through understanding.  And to the open-handed
the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than
giving.  And is there aught you would withhold?
All you have shall some day be given [away].
Therefore, give now, that the season of giving
may be yours and not your inheritors.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in
your pasture.  They give that they may live, for to withhold
is to perish.  Surely he who is worthy to receive his days
and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.

And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life
deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.

See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an
instrument of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life while you,

who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

Kahlil Gibran

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet

A Bridge to a Kinder World - Diane Walker

We pray today, not just for ourselves,
But for all in need of prayer.
We act, not just on behalf of ourselves,
But for those who will benefit.
...and we reach out today, not just to those
Whose opinions mirror our own,
But in hopes of building a bridge to a kinder world.

Diane Walker

Contemplative Photography

Photo and verse by Diane Walker

Talk/Sound and Silence - Kahlil Gibran

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your
heart, you live in your lips.

Sound is a diversion and a pastime.

For thought is a bird of space,
that in a cage of words may indeed
unfold its wings, but cannot fly.

Kahlil Gibran

~

There are those among you who seek the talkative
through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes
their naked selves and they would escape.

And there are those who talk
and without knowledge of forethought
reveal a truth which they themselves
do not understand.

And there are those who have
the truth within them, but they tell it not
in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells
in rhythmic silence ~ ~ ~

Kahlil Gibran

Thanks to Dorothea Mills

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"The Mystery" never leaves you - John O'Donohue

"The Mystery" never leaves you alone.  Behind your image,
below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another
world waits.  A world lives within you.  No one else can bring
you news of this inner world.  Through our voices, we bring

out sound from the mountain beneath our soul.  These sounds
 are words.  There are so many talking all the time, loudly,
quietly, in rooms, on streets, on TV, on radio in the paper,
 in books [on Facebook :)]. The noise of words keeps what we
call 'the world' there for us. We take each others' sounds and
make patterns and predictions, benedictions, and blasphemies.
Each day, our tribe of language holds what we call 'the world'
together.  Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes
the invisible to become visible.

Above us, galaxies dance out toward infinity.  Under our feet
is the ancient earth.  We are beautifully molded from this clay. 
Yet the smallest stone is millions of years older than us.  In our
thoughts,  the silent universe seeks echo.

An unknown world aspires towards reflection. Words are the
oblique mirrors which hold your thought.  You gaze into these
word mirrors and catch glimpses of meaning...
Behind their bright surface is the dark and the silence.  Words
are like the god Janus, they face inwards and outwards at once.

If we become addicted to the external our interiority will haunt
us.  We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or
deed can still.  To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our
vulnerable complexity.  In order to keep our balance, we need to
hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and
unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together.  No
one else can undertake this task for you.  You are the one and
only threshold of your inner world.  This wholesomeness is
holiness.  To be holy is natural; to befriend the worlds that
come to balance in you.

Behind the facade of image and distraction, each person is
an artist in this primal and inescapable sense.  Each one of
us is doomed and privileged to be an inner artist who carries
and shapes a unique world.

Human presence is a creative and turbulent sacrament, a
visible sign of invisible grace.

John O'Donohue
from Anam Cara

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from Unsplash

Infinite Hunger - Alan Watts

Man is characterized by a hunger for the infinite.....
 which, whether he knows it or  not,
 can be nothing other than God.  Assuming God exists,
it will follow that God is man's true end...

...man is often mistaken as to the goal of his life, desiring
wealth, power or physical pleasure instead of God.  But
his real appetite continues to be God, for which lesser
goals are always unsatisfactory substitutes.

Alan Watts

via - The Beauty We Love

~

God isn't *a* being, but a state of Being,
and we are that state of Being.  It is our
Essence...

Author Unknown

~

"Our *real* appetite is for God" - as one understands
"God" - has been my experience since childhood.
The deepest longing of the Heart has always been for "God",
called by many names over the years; Love, Pure Awareness,
 Consciousness, The Divine, Pure Being, The Self, The Mystery,
The Silence, etc. The longing  turns out to be "God" calling ItSelf
back to ItSelf.  I am forever grateful that the longing continues
to be there - drawing me ever inward to the "God Space" -
to ItSelf...

MM

~

Photo from the Internet

The Madman - Kahlil Gibran & Balthazar

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a
house-top cried, "He is a madman."  I looked up to behold
him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time.
For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my
soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my
masks no more.  And as if in a trance I cried,"Blessed,
blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

Kahlil Gibran

~

In an insane world you must be mad to be sane.  In an
upside down world true sanity appears as strange and
dangerous.  Things are so backwards that it seems impossible
to be happy, that it seems dangerous to love, that it seems as
madness to be honest and authentic.

In this absurd world the only thing that makes any sense is to
be radically authentic to ones self - even if it is the opposite
of society.

The Madman

The one who unquestioningly follows their heart is a madman.
The one who unfailing listens to the soul and heeds its urgings
is the madman.

The madman is dangerous - not that he will physically hurt you,
but he will shatter your illusions.  He is unpredictable, wild and
untamed.  You will feel uneasy around him because he does not
prop up your house of lies.

She cannot be contained or influenced.  You cannot bribe her
with money or status.  You cannot control her through fear or
desire.

The madman loves his madness, he does not reject it.  For he
knows that his madness is his treasure, is his very life-force
itself.  Only the twinkle in his eye betrays the chaotic
kosmos within.

He is mad precisely because he is not mad.
She is utterly natural, spontaneous, unburdened, innocent.

The mind is insane.  Society is insane.  And the mind is
society's conditioning in you.

"Normal" is to be profoundly inwardly sick.  Beneath nearly
everyone's smiley mask is a mount of pain, fear, sorrow anger,
anxiety, neuroticism, and insanity.  Everyone you see is a
dormant walking volcano that only doesn't erupt because
they have learned to suppress their inner energies.

It is the mind which is truly insane - the mind acting without
the lead of the heart and soul.

The Freedom of Madness

A man needs a healthy dose of madness, else he will never
do anything.....real.  If you want to be truly alive and truly
free you must be mad.

Mad to be oneself,
And mad enough to lose oneself.

Mad enough to risk everything for freedom, for truth,
for the heart, for love.

Mad enough to lose all respectability if it means staying
true to life and oneself.

Learn to love your madness, your primordial chaos.
Dare to be ecstatic, dare to be untamed.

Dare to be the Madman.

Excerpts from "The Madman"
Seth Balthazar

via - No Mind's Land

~

Art - "The Mask"
Mystic Meandering
Craypas oils
2009

Wandering Free...

Wandering the woods without a trail,
my focus on finding The Truth
is realized as a self-made illusion.

Not needing to find yet another belief system;
no longer a need for a specific path
cut by others; nor the illusion of
future "enlightenment" through practice,
discipline, or self-control...

Finding comfort in loosening the
constraints of the "spiritual cocoon"
that I wrapped myself in for so long;

even the mantel of meditation
has become too heavy and is unraveling -
becoming frayed... like an old prayer shawl.

Reborn from the Chrysalis of my comforting beliefs,
finding freedom in just BEing ME,
without suffocating concepts or a defined
"spiritual image"; instead finding my true Face...

Breaking free from the conceptual "spiritual"
constructs; the scaffolding of beliefs and ideas
about "spirituality" that propped "me" up;
caged in spiritual ideals, unable to fly...

Freed now from the cage of my own making,
I can breathe, I can LIVE
intuitively, being moved from within,
listening for what calls to me...
discovering freedom in being open to where life goes,
as I wander the woods without a trail...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 18, 2019

~

With gratitude to Debbie whose email inspired
this poem and her phrase: "wandering the woods
without a trail."

The sack of insignificant things...

I was carrying items of no significance in a sack,
roaming through a house with many different rooms,
looking for something I couldn't identify...

I was having trouble seeing, kept squinting, kept
trying to open my eyes more and more to the "Truth",
but everything remained a blur...

Unable to see clearly, unable to focus,
I just looked down into my sack of insignificant things,
 and saw there ideas and beliefs I didn't need,
but had held onto - on many levels.

Bewildered, I wondered why I continued to carry
the sack of insignificant things... and kept wandering
through the house.

Room to room, belief to belief,
looking for the "answers"
that I thought I lacked...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 15, 2019

~

This came from a dream I had recently...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Carving out a "Path"...

Life is asking me to redefine "the path" - again - to deepen
into a "new" way of seeing, being and living.  I am
embarking on what feels like a new step into the unknown,
carving out a "path" for myself, opening to new directions,
new perspectives, new awareness.  Being open to what is
really living this Life called "me" - and - at the same time,
allowing myself to just be the way I am.  As Ramana Maharshi
said to those who were searching for the Truth of their being -
"Be as you are..."  In letting go of the need to look through a
particular "spiritual" lens, I realize how freeing it is to allow
myself to just be myself...  To not strive to know the Truth,
but to let it reveal ItSelf; to not strive to be "spiritual" or
"non-dual" - or "enlightened."  I can just be who I am  -
as that is who my true "Beingness" IS.  I don't have to be
self-conscious about using words like "I", "me", "my" - in
some kind of pseudo non-dual awareness - because...  It's all
just Beingness, pure Awareness, pure Consciousness, Source,
God, etc., expressing ItSelf.  There's no need to make a
distinction between self and Self.  It's all The Self...
Imagine that :)

I don't need to worry about whether I'm coming from the ego-
self because it's part of the whole package, part of the
wholeness that we are.  I only need to BE, and let
BEingness reveal ItSelf, express ItSelf, live Itself as "me."

It's not about "me" being "enlightened", or spiritualizing
everything, but seeing the True Nature of myself and
being authentic...

I continue to gradually shed the conceptual frameworks that
have defined and informed my "path" so far - the boxes of belief
that have tended to constrain this authentic expression of Self,
extricating my sense of self from the life dramas that have
preoccupied my mind.  This shift in consciousness may take
some time, and I don't know where I will land, realizing that
Life is truly a Sacred Adventure of just Being, and adventure
in lightness and boldness; of letting go of the sack of
insignificant items/beliefs that I've been carrying for so long...
It's a never-ending exploration...

Namaste
Mystic Meandering

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Forest Wisdom - The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

One of the great discoveries of the Upanishads is The Self,
which is identical in all of us, the Life of all that lives.
Whenever we love we are really responding to The Self
within that person.  If we discover The Self in our own
consciousness, there will be no more [separateness].
This is the underlying theme of all mysticism.
Therefore, meditate on The Self - realize this
underlying Reality.

All existence - everything in the phenomenal world -
is "woven" in the Imperishable [The Self]...

From the introduction to The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
by Michael N. Nagler

~

The Self indeed is the light of man...

The Self, pure awareness, shines as the light within the heart,
surrounded by the senses...

When The Self takes on the body, [it] seems to assume
the body's frailties and limitations; but when it sheds
the body at the time of death, The Self leaves all these
behind.

...in sleep, the shining Self keeps the body alive
with the vital force of prana...

The Self is indeed Brahman [God],
but through ignorance people identify it
with the intellect, mind, senses, passions,
and the elements of earth.

...The Self freed from the body, merges in Brahman,
infinite life, eternal light.

Those who realize The Self enter into Peace...

Excerpts from The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
From - The Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran

True Identity - Seth Balthazar

True Identity cannot be lost.
No matter how many masks you wear
the unique face underneath cannot be lost.

It cannot be lost, but it can be forgotten.
The "I" cannot be lost, but it can be blinded.
To find it again is only to remember that which
you already knew.
It is the remembrance of your true identity.

The search is for one's true identity.
For who you ultimately are,
and what is your essential source.
To know through and through the Essence
of your being.

And to live that, to express that in the world.

Seth Balthazar
Philosopher and Poet
Excerpt from - "True Identity"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Shadows of Bamboo leaves
against rainbow colors on a wall
forming a face/mask...

Only Breath - Rumi

Not Christian or Jew, or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, Sufi or Zen...

Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East
or the West,
not out of the ocean
or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal,
not composed of elements at all.

"I" do not exist,
am not an entity in this world
or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve
or an origin story.

My place is the placeless,
a trace of the traceless.

Neither body or soul.

I belong to The Beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only That Breath breathing
human being.

Rumi

recited by Coleman Barks

"Why We Hate" - Steven Spielberg

There is a very interesting 6 episode series that we recently
watched on The Discovery Channel called
"Why We Hate", explaining the human capacity for hate. The
series titles are: Its Origins, Tribalism, Tools and Tactics,
Extremism, Crimes Against Humanity, and Hope.  Maybe
some of you have seen it as well...  It was produced by
Steven Spielberg and Alex Gibney of The Discovery Channel.

It is a provocative documentation of human's hatred toward
one another.  Episode 6 includes discussions with a neuro-
scientist, Emile Bruneau, that proved to be an eye-opener
for me, and brought some self-awareness.  He related it to
the brain and certain neural pathways, calling it
"biological hate" and how we can, in a sense, retrain the
brain through meditation! [which doesn't require that you
belong to a particular religion].  That despite our conditioning,
our environment, our *learned* prejudices, our isms, our "tribe"
[which would include our "religious" tribes, not just our race
and ethnicity] we can *unlearn* our innate, conditioned
capacity for hate for those we *perceive* to be different from
"us." The Us vs them mentality.

If you are on Comcast/Xfinity you can watch it On Demand.
You can also watch it on Amazon Prime, which requires
membership, although you can evidently pay to watch individual
episodes.  In which case watch episodes 5 & 6 and you'll get
the most important parts.  The first episodes are good, but a
little slow.  On the computer you can go to
Discovery.com/shows/why-we-hate and you can view episodes
there on "DiscoveryGo."  We were able to watch the Trailer
for free...

It's worth the watch!

Here's the link to the Trailer with Steven Spielberg
on "DiscoveryGo"

A brave and startling truth - Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons
and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is nor perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon or Mother Mississippi who,
without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouth abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in it labor
And the body is quieted in awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing,
irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it,
We, this people, on this wayward floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible,
we are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

Maya Angelou

via No Mind's Land

~

Photo from the Internet

The Upanishads - Eknath Easwaran

We spend our days in the familiar world of our five senses,
but what lies beyond that, if anything - a vast world, perhaps,
waiting to be explored.  Most of us are happy to stay where
we are.  We may even be afraid to venture into the unknown.

Yet there are always a few who are not content...
Simply knowing there is something unknown beyond their
reach makes them acutely restless.  This is true of adventurers -
especially those who seek to explore Consciousness itself.
They quietly slip out to see what lies beyond - the
topography of Consciousness itself [that] has an
illumination of its own...

We are meant to explore, to seek, to push the limits of
our potential as human beings.  The world of the senses
is just the base camp: we are meant to be as much at home
in Consciousness as in the world of physical reality.

It is our destiny as human beings to make this journey
ourselves.  Everything else is secondary...

Follow the path of the illumined ones...

...a familiar voice tugs at the edge of awareness...

~

The Upanishads are the recorded stories from Hindu sages
for whom the transcendent  Reality called "God" was
more real than the world reported to them by their senses.
Their purpose is not so much instruction, but inspiration -
an ecstatic snapshot of transcendent Reality.

The Upanishads tell us that there is a Reality underlying
life which rituals cannot teach, next to which the things we
see and touch in everyday life are shadows (of the Real).
This Reality is the essence of every created thing, and
the same Reality is our real Self.  Each of us is one with
the power that created and sustains the universe.  And
this oneness can be realized directly...  a Reality beyond
ordinary knowing...
It is the purpose for which each of us has been born...

From - The Upanishads
Eknath Easwaran
excerpt from the Introduction

~

This is my new "exploration" :) -
although I have no desire to become a Hindu,
and may not agree or resonate with all aspects of the
belief system.  And indeed I don't want a "belief system"
to live by. I want to live the true Essence of Life.  But, I
am still curious to know how others define and experience
that Reality, and glean gems from their wisdom writings.
Am always looking for new sources of inspiration :)

~

Photo - The Flammarion Engraving
from the internet