In The Garden of Time - Chuck Surface

[.....]

Some of our deepest wounds,
Are judgments, self-inflicted,
Endless paper cuts upon our spirit,
Made by an inherently imperfect 'self',
Despising its imperfection.

When in fact, the green-stemmed fruit,
The infant petals in a sheltering bud,
Are as they should be, in their time,
On schedule to arrive, in their time,
In this Dream of passing seasons.

For here, in The Garden of Time,
What is not yet, becomes what is,
And what is, becomes what was,
And our manifest Being, ever ripening,
Is not yet, now, as it will be, then.

On this Path of Love and Surrender,
Tend gently the seedling of the Heart,
Doing the needful, as you are able,
But then Surrender, giving yourself over,
Sweet unripened...

To The Beloved Gardner.

Chuck Surface
In The Garden of The Beloved Facebook

Farewell Letter - David Whyte

She wrote me a letter
after her death
and I remember
a kind of happy light
falling on the envelope
as I sat by the rose tree
on her old bench
at the back door,
so surprised by its arrival
wondering what she would say,
looking up before I could open it
and laughing to myself
in silent expectation.

Dear son, it is time
for me to leave you.

I am afraid that the words
you are used to hearing
are no longer mine to give.
They are gone and mingled
back in the world
where it is no longer
in my power
to be their first
original author
not their last loving bearer.
You can hear
motherly affection now
only from your own mouth
and only
when you speak them
to those
who stand
motherless
before you.

As for me I must forsake
adulthood
and be bound gladly
to a new childhood.
You must understand
this apprenticeship
demands of me
an elemental innocence
from everything
I ever held in my hands.

I know your generous soul
is well able to let me go...

[.....]

I find myself
after loving you all so long,
in the wide
infinite mercy
of being mothered myself.


P.S. All your intuitions are true.

David Whyte

Thank you to - The Beauty We Love

Haunted...

A kind of 'grief' has hit me again...
I'm beginning to feel haunted with memories of my mother's death,
how she looked the last few days, with eyes glazed over, struggling,
unable to make a connection.  I wasn't there to see her the last
morning when "she" died...  the person, the persona, the body...

But the "pictures" of the days before that I hold in my mind are
beginning to flash back.

I don't understand why she didn't go peacefully, even before
those last few days, when she lost her ability to speak,
her tongue swollen, unable to eat or drink without choking;
she had lost her ability to swallow.
She couldn't move her arms or turn in bed - as if paralyzed.
It must have been scary for her.

In those last few days I couldn't offer any solace or comfort.
It frightened me to see her this way,
because I felt helpless to do anything for her...
The body mechanism was dying...
The circuits of her brain were shutting down.

All we could do was wait, and watch over a period of days
as she slowly passed - still conscious, then semi-conscious,
then unconscious, then gone...

She would look up at the ceiling as if there was something
there, but she could not communicate what she saw.
And she'd look out the window as if to look for something
'out there.'  Maybe the beautiful woman that she said she
saw on the fence, when she could speak, who told her that
she was going to help her on her "Journey."

"Journey" well Mom...

So those are the memories I have of Mom on this
Memorial Day, trying to find better memories
in my mind.

Strange how the grief comes back to haunt you...

I can't overlay it with some nice "spiritual" belief;
It is what it is.  I feel what I feel.
Accepting everything as it is...

~

Photo - Mom in the hospital Dec. 27, 2018
less than 3 months before she passed at home
on March 21, 2019

Follow Your Genuine Self - Eric Baret

Fear, rage, love, sadness or any other emotion
with no apparent cause are bursting bubbles in a
boiling magma back to the heart of what is essential.

Lacking in clarity, we link the emotion to a situation,
and allow it to disturb our peace.  In reality, emotion
points to the heart.  When we refuse an emotion we are
simply postponing life.  Emotion is inherently free of
thought or knowledge.  If we remain present to our
emotions, the habit of attributing them to an external
cause will, sooner or later, fall away.

If you meet someone who is at peace, you can feel peace
in their presence.  The important thing is to realize that this
peace you feel is your own emotion as well.....experience
this openness that you experience in the so-called other.
Stay present to it...  What you feel in the other is also
your experience...

You might occasionally go to listen to [a spiritual teacher],
but you realize what you hear to be true on his lips is
your own truth.... 

You must follow yourself when you feel a true emotion.
You might be reading a text by Meister Eckhart and an
emotion arises in you.  Close the book; the text will fall away.
The important thing is the tear sliding down your cheek.  This
is your treasure, your direction, your teaching.  It is what
you must follow, must listen to....

Eric Baret

Via - No Mind's Land

~

There is something that waits and listens for the sound of
the genuine in yourself.  Can you find a way to hear the
sound of the genuine in yourself?  Do you know who you
genuinely are?

Howard Thurman

Your Original Depth - Eckhart Tolle

Partly as a result of the spiritual teachings that have arisen outside
the established religions, but also due to an influx of the ancient
Eastern wisdom teachings, a growing number of followers of
traditional religions are able to let go of identification with form,
dogma, and rigid belief systems and discover the original depth
that is hidden within themselves.  They realize that how 'spiritual'
you are has nothing to do with what you believe but everything to
do with your state of consciousness.  This, in turn, determines how
you act in the world and interact with others.

Many people are already aware of the difference between spirituality
and religion.  They realize that having a belief system - a set of
thoughts that you regard as absolute truth - does not make you
spiritual no matter what the nature of those beliefs is.  In fact,
the more you make your thoughts [beliefs] into your identity,
the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself. 
Many 'religious' people are stuck at that level.  They equate truth
with  thought, and as they are completely identified with thought
 [their mind], they claim to be in sole possession of the truth in an
unconscious attempt to protect their identity.

What is arising now is not a new belief system, a new religion,
spiritual ideology, or mythology.  We are coming to an end,
not only of mythologies but also ideologies and belief systems.
The change goes deeper than the content of your mind,
deeper than your thoughts... to your Original Depth...

Eckhart Tolle
From - A New Earth
2005

~

Photo - from the internet

A Symbolic Universe - Ernst Cassirer

...man lives in a symbolic universe.  Language, myth, art,
and religion are parts of this universe.  They are the varied
threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of
human experience.  All human progress in thought and
experience refines and strengthens this net.  Physical reality
seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity
advances.

He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images,
in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see
or know anything except by the interposition of this
artificial medium.  His situation is the same in the
theoretical as in the practical sphere.  Even here man does
not live in a world of hard facts, or according to his immediate
needs and desires. He lives, rather, in the midst of imaginary
emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in
his fantasies and dreams.  'What disturbs and alarms man,'
said Epictetus, 'are not the things, but his opinions and fantasies
about the things.'

Ernst Cassirer

German Philosopher

From - An Essay on Man:
An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

via - The Beauty We Love

~

Fun-Qi Art - 2009

Craypas oils
done with fingers

When a madman smiles at you - Rumi

Galen, the great physician, asked one of his assistants
to give him a certain medicine.

"Master, that medicine is for crazy people!
You're far from needing that!"

Galen: Yesterday a madman turned and smiled at me,
did his eyebrows up and down, and touched my sleeve.
He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't recognized
in me someone congenial."

Anyone that feels drawn,
for however short a time, to anyone else,
those two share a common consciousness.

Rumi
From Rumi's Little Book of Love and Laughter

version by Coleman Barks

~

I had an experience last year similar to this.
I encountered a black man who came up quickly
behind me in his wheelchair while I was shopping
at the local Walmart.  I laughed and quickly got out of
his way because he startled me.  He engaged with me
in my startledness with a grin and some banter. I bantered
back, feeling awkward yet relieved by the humor.  There
was a connection there that was lighthearted, yet strange.
 But I just went with it.  He had one leg in a boot cast,
so I assumed he had  been injured - thus the wheelchair. 
We continued our banter in the middle of the grocery aisle.
I was feeling a bit captured, and am sure we appeared crazy
to those around us...  as they slowly maneuvered past us... :)

A few weeks later I saw him again from a distance, although
 he didn't see me. He was still in his wheelchair, with the boot
cast on - just sitting in an open spot in the store.  He suddenly
turned his head and said something over his shoulder -
 to no one there!

I realize now that he was my "madman" in a wheelchair who
recognized something "congenial" in me for a short time
through our smiles and banter...

The "medicine" it seems is to see that we are alike,
that we all share a common consciousness,
even in our "madness" sometimes...
and in that we can find compassion for each other.

Namaste
_/\_

Neither "Separate" nor "One" - Matt Licata

We are neither "separate" nor "one", but the erupting holding
field in which the energies of "separate" and "one" interpenetrate
and dance the relative into being.  Neither of these concepts
are majestic enough to contain the mystery of the soul.  While
we may have a preference over unity and oneness, over
multiplicity and differentiation, it would appear that Love
does not share this bias and is ready at all times to equally
employ either of its manifestations to be its envoy here.

Those visitors of raw, achy, lonely, broken openness are not
neuroses to be cured or mistakes to be remedied. The shaky
vulnerability is not pathology, it is path.  As our perception
is cleansed, we see that they are not obstacles, but passionate,
yearning requests, tending to the lost grief, joy, rage
and peace of the unlived life.

The freedom we long for will never be found in the eradication
of the unwanted, but only in deeper layers of attunement to the
love and information it carries.  At times the burning can seem
unbearable.  Such is the nature of the human heart.  We may
burn until we are translucent, but it is by way of this burning
that wholeness is revealed.

Matt Licata

Peace Bell - The Great Bell Chant

May the Sound of this Bell
Penetrate deep into the Cosmos.
Even in the darkest spots
Living Beings are able to hear it clearly
So that all suffering in them ceases.
Understanding comes to their hearts
And they transcend the path
of Sorrow and Death.

The Universal Dharma Door
Is already open.
The Sound of the Rising Tide is heard clearly.
The miracle happens.
A beautiful child appears in the heart of the Lotus flower.
One single drop of this Compassionate Water
is enough to bring back the refreshing Spring
To our mountains and Rivers.

Listening to the Bell
I feel the afflictions in me begin to dissolve.
My mind calm, my body relaxed
A smile is born on my lips.
Following the Sound of the Bell
My breath brings me back to the safe Island of Mindfulness.
In the Garden of my Heart
the flowers of Peace
Bloom beautifully.

via - Love Is A Place

Violence - J. Krishnamurti

We are trying to understand violence as a fact,
not as an idea, as a fact which exists in the human being,
and the human being is myself.  And to go into the
problem I must be completely vulnerable, open, to it.
I must expose myself to myself - not necessarily
expose myself to you because you may not be interested -
but I must be in a state of mind that demands to see this thing
right to the end...

Now it must be obvious to me that I am a violent human being.
I have experienced violence in anger, violence in hatred, creating
enmity, violence in jealousy and so on - I have experienced it, I
have known it, and I say to myself 'I want to understand this whole
 problem, not just one fragment of it expressed in war, but this
aggression in man that also exists in animals, of which I am a part.

Violence is not merely killing another.  It is violence when we use
a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when
we obey because of fear.  So violence isn't merely organized butchery
in the name of God, in the name of society or country.  Violence is
much more subtle, much deeper...

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a
European, or anything else, you are being violent.  Do you see why
it is violent?  Because you are separating yourself from the rest of
mankind.  When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality,
by tradition, it breeds violence.  So a man who is seeking to
understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion,
to any political party or system; he is concerned with the
total understanding of mankind.

The moment you protect a belief, an idea, a dogma, the thing that
you demand or that you hold, that very protection indicates anger.
So can you look at anger without any explanation or justification...
Can you look at anger completely objectively?

To go beyond violence I cannot suppress it, I cannot deny it...
I have to look at it.  I must become intimate with it.  You have
to learn how to look at anger...  You have to learn why you are not
objective, why you condemn or justify.  You have to learn that you
condemn and justify because it is part of the social structure you live
in, your conditioning as a German or an Indian or a Negro
 or an American or whatever you happen to have been born with,
 all the dulling of the mind that this conditioning results in.

To live completely, fully, in the moment is to live with what is,
including the anger...  The face of violence is not only outside
you but inside you...

J. Krishnamurti
excerpt from: Freedom from the Known

via - The Beauty We Love

~

All violence begins with disconnection [a sense of separation].
All outward violence begins as inner loneliness [a sense of not belonging].

[We must] break the code of disconnection...

Glenn Doyle Melton

From the article:
One Teacher's Brilliant Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings

The Root of All Things - Chuang Tzu

The non-action of the wise man is not inaction.
It is not studied.  It is not shaken by anything.
The sage is quiet because he is not moved,
Not because he wills to be quiet.
Still water is like glass.
You can look in it and see the bristles on your chin.
It is a perfect level;
A carpenter could use it.
If water is so clear, so level,
How much more the spirit of man?
The heart of the wise man is tranquil.
It is the mirror of heaven and earth.
The glass [mirror] of everything.
Emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness,
Silence, non-action: this is the level of heaven and earth.
This is the perfect Tao.  Wise men find here
Their resting place.
Resting, they are empty.

From emptiness comes the unconditioned.

From this, the conditioned, the individual things.
So from the sage's emptiness, stillness arises:
From stillness, action.  From action, attainment.
From their stillness comes their non-action,
which is also action, which is, therefore, their attainment.
For stillness is joy.  Joy is free from care.
Joy does all things without concern:
For emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness,
Silence, and non-action
Are the root of all things.

Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

with thanks to The Beauty We Love!

No Greater Temple - Matt Licata

At times the visitor of melancholy will appear,
arriving from the night world, from the moon,
[the feeling world], not to harm, but to reveal.
A tenderness, a disappointment, a raw achy
uncertainty.  The guide has appeared but wasn't
quite what we thought.  Such is the way of the
heart.  As we are made into dust, the fire is tended.

While it may be tempting to replace the burning
with bliss, the sadhana of disappointment demands
that we listen, to the stories and feelings and whispers,
and longings, and place the shattered pieces on the
altar in front of us.

Even if we cannot love, accept, or transform what has
come, we can always bow.  What this bowing looks
like for each of us will never conform to other's
fantasies and ways; for the map is weaved deep into
our soul alone.

We can fall to the ground and bear empathic witness to
the broken wholeness, to the wisdom shining out of
the human heart, for there is no greater temple.

Matt Licata

Be ahead of all parting - Rilke

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.

For beneath winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be forever dead in Eurydice - more, gladly arise
into seamless life...
Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a crystal cup that shatters as it rings.

Be. And know as well the need to not be;
know the great void where all things begin,

the infinite source of your most intense vibration,
so that you may give it your perfect assent
and come to completion now.

To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable
numbers of beings abounding in Nature,
add yourself gladly...

Rainer Maria Rilke

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 13

I combined the translations of Stephen Mitchell,
Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

With thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Eurydice was Orpheus' wife, but is also
a reference to the underworld in Greek Mythology.

The Unbroken - Rashani Rea

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.

Rashani Rea

Listen from the Depths...

In Deep Silence
In Deep Rest
In Deep Quiet
In Deep Awareness
Deeply listen...

Deeply unwind
the wounds
the dramas
the stories
that
create
your
pain

Sit
in the depths
of the Silence
of Existence
and
listen

Suspended
in
Pure
Awareness

Touch and be touched by it -
this Sacred Silence,
this Awareness
that holds your
stories,
your
woundings
your
brokenness

From the depths of
your Being

Listen ~

to the whisper of
The Wound

Touch its depth
and
allow it
into the liquid flow
of Life

again...
resting in
the Depths
of the Heart

Thrive

in
the Depths

Be absorbed by
IT...

Keep vigil

from this space

of
Sacred Silence

From here all things
are made
clear...

\

Mystic Meandering
May 4, 2012

istock photo

~

Personal Note: Thank you to those who commented,
either directly on the post or through email re: my last post,
"Life Postmortem."  I appreciate your kindness and offerings...
And to DK who posted an inspiring post that rekindled the
Inner Spark - Thank you...

And to Ori and Lydia - you make my Heart dance.
Much gratitude

Life Postmortem...

It's been six weeks since my mother passed...  My grieving has ended.
I did most of my grieving over the 3 months she was home on
"Hospice Care", waiting to die; which was really her children taking
care of her 24/7, watching her deteriorate; although, because of her
dementia, she forgot that's what was happening to her - until about
a week before she passed, making it all the more sad...
She struggled so hard to hang on to life...

But my mother's passing was not the worst part actually.
I am at peace with that and my "spiritual" beliefs have seen
me through.  It's the "postmortem..."

Now my days are dominated with going through her 90 years of
life's belongings at her house with my sister.  Mom was a bit of a
pack rat/hoarder, so we are trying to clear things out so we can
put the house up for sale, which also means trying to find a place
for my sister to live, as she has lived with my mother for 8 1/2 years.

But she doesn't want to move.  That is not an option - she can't pay
the mortgage or the bills...  My brother returned to his home early
in April after staying with Mom for 3 months until the week after
she died, and tried to set things in motion for my sister and I to
follow through in processing the "postmortem" experience.

The process itself is difficult, even demanding, but with my siblings
has been especially challenging.  We are all so very different;
different values, different priorities, different perceptions, and we've
 all taken different paths, and made different life choices for ourselves
 and how we choose to live...  And they don't mix well.  But we manage
most of the time to treat each other kindly...  Unfortunately there has
 also been a lot of drama, which I really can't expand upon here... 
But will be glad when everything is finally settled, and I can "move on",
 as they say, and have some space to breathe again, and hopefully
 rekindle  the Spark within, as I am feeling rather uninspired lately
 - lackluster;  out of sync with the rhythms of Life.
 Like an automaton going through  the motions to get things done,
 yet surprisingly "present" as well.

But nothing speaks to me anymore - well almost nothing.
Feeling trapped in the particulars of my moment-to-moment
experience. It is what it is, and I am where I am...  No pretense here...
The stress of the family dysfunction and the grind of being
 immersed in the mundane has made me weary of life - and placed a
 heavy burden on my heart...

I have had little time for Solitude and deep Meditation - feeling rather
distracted by the externals of living, creating a feeling of "separation"
from the Alive Presence within...
My meditation space has now become storage space for some of my
 mother's things, which will have to be gone through at a later time -
another "postmortem" activity...

I don't foresee this "experience" ending any time soon.  It will probably
last through the Summer, although I know this too shall pass, and
there will be another, hopefully brighter, postmortem...

I realize I am on the edge of a new journey, a new chapter in this
story that is playing itself out in my life at the moment - waiting
for the page to turn.  I know it's all just a story in the context of a
larger Story - but still...  It is being lived in "real" time... condensed
from somewhere out of time...

And so it goes...

Namaste

~

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another
human being.  We should all be thankful for those people
who rekindle the inner spirit.

Albert Schweitzer