Journey Out of Time - Ram Dass, Rupert Spira, Elias Amidon

Time is a box formed by thoughts of the past and future.
When you're not dwelling in the past or anticipating the future,
but are just here - you're outside of time.
Dwelling in the moment is dwelling in Eternal Presence.
  From within here... you are not being in time. 
You [just] Be, and time goes by, as if you were
standing on a bridge, watching it all go by.

Ours is a journey toward simplicity, toward quietness, toward a
kind of joy that is not in time.  In this journey out of time, we
are leaving behind every model we have had of who we thought
we were.  This journey involves a transformation of our being.
It's a journey that takes us from primary identification with our
psyche to identification with our souls, then to identification
with God, and ultimately beyond any identification at all.

Life is an incredible curriculum in which we live richly and
passionately as a way of awakening to the deepest truths of
our being.  As soul, I live in the moment, in each rich and
precious moment, and I am filled with contentment.

Ram Dass
from Polishing the Mirror:
How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart

~

The Eternal Now,
when seen through the mind,
appears as time.

The Now is our Self.
We are not present in the Now.
We are the Now.

The Now is not a container that contains our Self
along with everything else.
It is our Self, Eternal Presence...

Rupert Spira

~

Let your heart be like the sky,
that transparent, that close.
Touch everything.  Be so quiet
against each leaf, each face.
Where lovers move, be there.
Where bullets strike, be there.
Around each voice, be that air.
Now you know how God feels.

Pir Elias Amidon

Rhythm of Sadness...

A deep rhythm of sadness
arises from within...
unexpectedly,
spontaneously,
inexplicably.

It rises even though
I "know"
that before thought and feeling
"I" am Eternal Beingness.

The rhythm of sadness
is not assuaged
with the knowledge
that "I am" That...

It will not be held back
by the sand bags of knowledge,
from the caverns of the mind...

It matters not to
"The Eternal"
that sadness and grief
arise in the mechanism called
"me",
like the tides of the ocean,
rising and falling
in a darkened harbor;
felt not seen...

It is all just held in Its Awareness...

Sadness
is of no consequence
to "The Eternal..."
It just is - sadness
rising and falling,
breathing
through

me

I follow the rhythm of sadness

as it rises through the gut
into the Heart
where it meets
The Rhythm
of

"The Eternal"
and
dissolves
~
~
~

into
rivulets
of energy;
just energy,
decreasing in
intensity.

Only to rise again
another day, or
on the next tide...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 20, 2015

~

Sadness is not something you need to fix,
cure, or transform.  It need not be healed but held.
You need not shift sadness into some "higher" state or
apply teachings so that it will yield into something else.
For it is complete and pure on its own.

With the fire of awareness and the ally of your breath,
touch your heart...
Go on a journey into the core of the feeling, the sensation,
images and the raw, shaky life that is longing to be held.
And listen.

It is by way of this journey that sadness will be revealed to
be what it is, a bridge into the the universal heart, a messenger
of power, mercy, and fierce compassion...

Matt Licata

Twilight...

There is s seamless "edge" when twilight comes...

And a twinge of longing when the
light wanes into twilight,
the edge of the veil;
the threshold between
light and dark...

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

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

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

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

At twilight we stand at the edge of time.
and timelessness beyond time...

peering through
for a glimpse

of the Infinite Light
that knows no dimming
and no night;
only Its own Eternal Radiance
of
Being...

This Light we are...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 21, 2012

I will not hear my mother's voice again...

I will not hear my mother's voice again - or see the recognition
in her eyes when she was surprised to see me at her bedside;
or see her lift her head up from the pillow, her index finger
pointed into the air, as I was on my way out her bedroom door,
saying "I love you" - as if to remind me for the last time.
And my reply: "I love you too!" - pausing to look back...

I will not "know" my mother anymore - in form - although her
Spirit Essence lives on somewhere now; a comforting feeling,
no matter what one's beliefs are about what happens after death.

That's the thing I learned through my mother's 3 month "death
experience" - only Love remains - not your spiritual beliefs, or
ideologies, or philosophies about life; your pain or childhood
wounds.  Only Love...  All the left-over parent/child issues
dissolved as I watched her lay vulnerable and weak, speaking in
whispers as her body declined; eventually unable to speak, or
eat, or drink...  Only compassion and sorrow arose as her body
struggled to let go of, or hang on to, life - and she became fearful.
It was not an easy death the last few days.  It became more like
hard labor, giving birth to something unseen...

In the weeks before her passing, as she deteriorated, she saw
things in the invisible world: elves outside her window in the
trees, and people from the spirit world she did not know standing
near her bed.  And what she called a "beautiful woman" whom
she said had come to "help her on her journey."  I surely hope so...

There were no "religious" or "spiritual" overtones to any of it.
No talk of "God", which surprised me from what I knew of my
mother; a sometimes very pious Christian.  There was only this
idea of a playful fantasy of going on a "journey" with "spirit
people" to help her.  Maybe life isn't as serious as we think,
maybe life is a playful journey.

Mom, you are safe now.
May you feel the Love on the other side of the veil...
For there is only Love and Grace at the end of the "journey."

I love you again and again - we all do...

~

Mom breathed her last breath this morning
March 21, 2019
at 10:21 am

6 days before her 91st birthday

~

Written March 10, 2019

Trust Your Solitude - Rainer Rilke

.....in the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your
beautiful anxiety about life...  Here, where I am surrounded by
an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they
come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere
who can answer for you those questions and feelings which,
in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most
articulate people are unable to help, since what words point
to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable.  But even so, I
think that you will not have to remain without a solution if
you trust in Nature, in what is simple in Nature, in the small
Things; if you have this love for what is humble, then everything
will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more
reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays
behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness,
awakeness, and knowledge.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and
try to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked
rooms or books written in a very foreign language.  Don't
search for the answers, which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is,
to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps then,
someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even
noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in
the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you
will find all your paths...

Rainer Maria Rilke
Excerpt from: Letters to a Young Poet #1

Aloneness - John O'Donohue

It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness.
Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to
quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you.  The
Mystic Thomas Kempis said that when you go out into the
world, you return to having lost some of yourself.  Until you
learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise
of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you
will only become empty and weary.  When you face your
aloneness, something begins to happen..... a sense of true
belonging.  This is a slow and open-ended transition...
In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home
within your life.  It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you
rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows
begin to open outwards to the world.  No longer on the run
from your aloneness, your connections with others becomes
real and creative.  You no longer need to covertly scrape
affirmations from others or from projects outside yourself.
This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.

John O'Donohue
From: Eternal Echoes

Stillpoint Presence - John Welwood

If you look directly into the experiencing consciousness itself,
what you find is a silent presence that has no shape, location or
form.  This nameless, formless presence - in, around, behind
and between all our particular thoughts and experiences - is
what the great spiritual traditions regard as our True Nature,
the Essential Self, or Holy Spirit...

Be-ing means resting in the flow of this Presence, which is
awake, open and responsive.  This dynamic fluid openness
provides a direct channel to the heart of Life...

Our [unconditioned nature] lies much deeper than our
conditioned personality and behavior, which are always a
mix of positive and negative tendencies.  It lies in the essential
openness at the core of our nature [Being].
It is the stillpoint Presence.

In turning away from our [essential nature] we throw away our
own jewel-like essence and then express that alienation in
everything we do.  This is the plague that is ravaging humanity.

John Welwood
from: Love and Awakening

John was a Spiritual Psychotherapist
known for integrating Western Psychology
and Eastern Spiritual Wisdom

He passed Jan 17, 2019

~

Photo - Mandala Art
2013

Silence - The Mystery of Wholeness - Sardello

There is a Living Silence that hears the cry of the Soul.

Abandon surface impressions and patterns.
Abandon what has become comfortable, and embrace a
sacred depth of being that asks us to enter that which is wholly
unknown and that which fosters genuine metanoia.  This Holy Silence
creates an inner clearing that makes room for new life, including
living, breathing Silence.  In this dimension where time has become
space, life is enlivened.

We are fortunate to have night's solace.  In the silence that is created
by the dark of night...that melancholy time, when the stars remind
us of the Silence of "God" - here we can lean into the unknown,
setting aside life's demands and tasks, and the oppressive weight
of our carefully constructed version of who we think we are.
We can remember how to see in the dark... with our ears...
perceiving the Silence in its holy echoing and resonance, its
calling forth a knowing that is from the Soul.

The Silence sends us on a different pilgrimage.  It guards the
heart's fire and teaches us to speak from within with a
language that is imbued with the Sacred.  Words thus nurtured
in this Holy Silence fly forth to lead us back to the Silence from
which we were born...

As we enter the mystery of Silence, its presence resonates
throughout the fibers of our flesh to the soul inwardly and
to the cosmos outwardly.  The inward silence of solitude meets
up with the Great Silence of Cosmic Wisdom.  When we do not
cultivate this, we lose access to the presence of the Silence.
Without silence we are lost and cannot get still enough to find
our way back.

Silence bears the wholeness we keep looking for while we do
not know exactly what we are looking for.  It is around us and
within us.  It goes to the deepest depths of the Soul and to the
outermost reaches of the cosmos and continuously unites the
two at the centering place of our Heart.  Here everything comes
alive again as if for the first time.  We may be shocked to notice
we had not even realized we had lost ourselves.  And feel a new
attunement to Spirit as a directly felt reality.
The Silence is palpable.

In Silence everything displays its depth.  We are part of the depth
of everything around us.  We see that separation between
ourselves and the world is an illusion.  We and the world each
mirror the other within the depths of the Soul.

Silence is not merely the void from which things spring up, it is
a living presence.  The deeper we enter into Silence the more we
become aware that this living presence is primary.

Robert Sardello
From: Silence - The Mystery of Wholeness
from the Introduction and Chapter 1