Solitude - Thomas Merton

If you seek a heavenly light
I, Solitude, am your professor!

I go before you into emptiness,
Raise strange suns for your new mornings,
Opening the windows
Of your innermost apartment.

When I, loneliness, give my special signal
Follow my Silence, follow where I beckon!
Fear not, little beast, little spirit...
I, Solitude, am angel
And have prayed in your name.

Look at the empty, wealthy night
The pilgrim moon,
I am the appointed hour,
The "now" that cuts
Time like a blade.

I am the unexpected flash
Beyond "yes," beyond "no,"
The forerunner of the Word of God.

Follow my ways and I will lead you
To golden-haired suns,
Logos and music, blameless joys,
Innocent of questions
And beyond answers.

For I, Solitude, am thine own Self.
I, Nothingness, am thy All.
I, Silence, am thy Amen!

Thomas Merton

via - The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Silence Heals the Brain - Azriel ReShel

The value of silence is felt by everyone at some point in their life.
Silence is comforting and nourishing...  It opens you up to
inspiration, and nurtures the mind, body and soul.  Meanwhile
the madness of the noisy world is drowning out our creativity,
our inner connection [to Source] and hampering our resilience.
Science is now showing that silence may be just what we need
to regenerate our exhausted brains and bodies.

Studies show that noise has a powerful physical effect on our
brains, causing elevated levels of stress hormones.  Sound
travels to the brain as electrical signals via the ear.  Even
when we are sleeping these sound waves cause the body to
react and activate the amygdala, the part of the brain associated
with memory and emotion, leading to the release of stress
hormones.  So, living in a consistently noisy environment will
cause you to experience extremely high levels of these
harmful hormones.

The brain recognizes silence and responds powerfully...
Many meditation teachers and practitioners can attest to this.
 The brain recognizes silence.  Two hours of silence per day
prompted cell development in the hippocampus, the brain
region related to the formation of memory, involving the senses.
And when you are in an environment with lower levels of
sensory input, the brain can 'recover' some of its cognitive
abilities.

While noise creates stress, silence relieves stress and tension
in the brain and body.  Silence helps our cognitive resources,
while noise makes us lose our concentration, decreases
cognitive powers and motivation, as well as overall brain
functioning.  The ancient spiritual masters have known this
all along; silence heals, silence takes us deeply into ourselves,
and silence balances the body and mind.

The healing benefits of nature and stillness are well documented,
but now we can add to this quest for health and well-being,
the nourishment of our brains.  The simple, yet ancient
experience of silence could just be the healing balm we need
to quell our crazy modern lifestyle...

Azriel ReShel
Excerpt from an article entitled:
Silence is Vital for our Brains Well-Being
at https://upliftconnect.com/

via - No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Inside a large seashell  

Symphony of Silence...

Photo - David Peters on unsplash

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 of Silence ~

in unified expression with
All that Is...

Listen deeply and hear the
Celestial Symphony

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

Where Do You Come From? - Katarina Jonsson

Art by Johannes Plenio on unsplash.com

Where do you come from
he asked.
I never arrived,
she answered,
but I come from a thousand different places
sometimes from sorrow and hurt
sometimes from the greatest joy
other times from shame and guilt
from projections and competition
she said.

But where do you come from
he asked.
I come from a thousand different places
she answered.
I never arrived.
Sometimes I come from ignorance and blame
sometimes from darkness and despair.
I have come from happiness and communion
from disappointment and loneliness
she said.

But where do you come from
he asked.
I come from a thousand places.
I never arrived
she answered.
I came from inferiority and superiority
sometimes from equality.
I have come from thoughts and emotions
and I have called them love.
They both fell silent.

Where do you come from
he asked.
I come from silence
from love
from God
she said.
I have arrived.

Who has arrived
he asked.
I don't know
she said...

Katarina Johnsson

via - The Dawn Within

Just Below Our Fear - Stephen Levine

There are words in us
that don't know how
to get to the surface.
Words hidden in our marrow
afraid to show themselves
concerned the world will end
if they are uttered.
Words that cross
the river of pain
that wish to tell the world
how much love is hidden
just below our fear.
And some of these words
sometimes find their way
to live among us
in the trust to hear them,
words that spin our compass,
anger and loneliness redirected
by insight and forgiveness,
words like mercy and compassion,
words we never trusted to exist.

Words hide in the strangest places,
under stones, in clouds,
in a moment of a friend's kindness,
in a moment of generosity;
in poems beginning their first line
climbing happily into the heart singing,
how close the moon comes
when we trust the night.
Words even hide in other words.
Mercy hides in the hesitant pause,
questioning how much can be trusted
to the tongue, to the pen,
invoking their true voice
rise to the surface
to sing their original song.

Stephen Levine


via - The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Can you see the two "eyes" in
the cloud looking down ? :)

The Meaning of it all? - Unmani

Since I was a child I asked myself this question:
"What is the meaning of it all?  Why am I here?
What the hell is going on here?"

I was surrounded by facades and people pretending to know
a lot of apparently very important stuff.  There were so
many rules and so much mental information that must prove
that there is a secret meaning that they all know.  And this
meaning must be very grown-up, important and serious...

That knowing that I knew wasn't intellectual or any kind of
belief.  It wasn't some kind of special experience or state of
mind.  It was beyond all that.  It was, and is, a simple knowing
that whatever is happening.....is part of the movie of life.

Recognizing this and letting go of the usual chase for meaning
can leave you feeling very lost.....empty of anything that means
anything.....

What is left is simply the experience itself.....without needing
a meaning.....  This gives space to really experience Life fully.
Everything is experienced in an open and raw way, without any
overlay of meaning.  None of it needs meaning.  It is enough
as it is.  It is overflowing with Life expression, with Life playing
itself in this way or that.  This is the expression of Love.

Life is Love loving itself in this particular way, now, exactly as
it is in this experience.  This is the true meaning of Life.  The
raw experience without any need of any filter or overlay.
Nothing means anything, and yet, everything means so much
that is beyond all words.

There is no need for any extra meaning or mental labeling
or interpretation to Life because it is enough unto itself.
The only thing the mind can do now is bow down in
absolute reverence to the simplicity of Life as it is.

Our limited minds cannot know the true meaning of Life.....
It is only when you give up trying to know something
that will give you a special 'me' identity, that you see
how simple and obvious the true meaning really is.
Life doesn't care about the meaning you think you know.
It is simply living itself as it is.

Within the movie of a person's life, the only purpose or
meaning is to acknowledge this simplicity and live in
alignment with that.  It is all around you, in you, and
as you.  Just stop for a moment and see the mysterious
love song of Life to ItSelf.

Unmani

excerpt from a larger article
via No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Birthing... - Stephen Levine

There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.

It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.

It is an insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.

We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.

But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.

And there is nothing left to say
but - we are That...

Stephen Levine
from: Breaking the Drought, Visions of Grace

~

Photo - Beautiful Mammatus clouds at sunset
taken by my husband a couple of nights ago.

Cosmic Bardo - Matt Licata

All the techniques, the teachings, the things to manifest, the new
beliefs to take on, the worn-out ideas about the true source of
peace, aliveness and flowing abundance.  Perhaps there were
once answers to these questions, but now there is no answer to
be found.  Only a burning where the questions once existed.

This burning is the doorway, the portal...

A cosmic sort of exhaustion can come at times, where we find
ourselves in the bardo between one moment and the next.  We
can't quite go back to the way it was, but the rebirth has yet to
appear.  There is a creativity in the liminal but it can seem out
of reach.  We are asked to marinate in the womb..., to tend to
the groundlessness, and find refuge in the unknown: to be
midwife to the darkened illumination.  There are signs and
symbols and guidance all around and inside us, but their
appearance is governed by a timeline written somewhere else.

As we bear witness to a new day, in awe at the gift that has
been given... the breath is here.  The heart is quivering.  The
birds have come.  Sounds from the other world, another
opportunity to hear, to behold the miracle of the senses.  The
sun has come up again.  The moon is hiding nearby waiting
her turn.  For just one moment, the veil parts and the
perfection is there awaiting our participation.

Your life is not an unending self-improvement project and
your heart is not a venture to be undertaken, mastered and
completed.  Perhaps today was never going to be the day
when you figured it all out, got all your questions answered,
or resolved the contradictions....  but to let your heart open
to the vastness of the question.  To fall to the ground as a
humble lover of the mystery.  And listen once again.

Matt Licata

~

Photo by my husband...

The Uncharted Woods - Adyashanti

Listen now, or lose your life, for what I have to say is what you
have imagined in quiet moments but have failed to realize in
full.  Perhaps you were too timid or astonished at the critical
moments, or couldn't find the courage to step through the veil
of your frail life when the door was opened for you.

Or perhaps you wanted to keep your life as your own, and
chose to hold onto a few pennies when you could have had
gold.  No matter, for yesterday has passed into the dust of
remembered dreams, and tomorrow's story is yet to be written.

Which is precisely why you and I are now here together...
Stand with me here at the precipice and take my hand in yours,
for I am good company to those ready to depart familiar ground.
If not, then let loose of my hand now and take that of a more
familiar companion.  For where we stand is known, but our
next step will not be - nor the one after or the one after that.

So shoulder all of your longing and intent and leave all else
behind.  I give you fair warning: The world you are about to
leave will not be there when you return.  For nothing truly left
behind is ever the same upon our return.  Let us not waste any
more time on discussions or debates; you have surely been
caught in those tide pools too long already.  Too much talk
is wearying to the soul and evades the spirit of things.
Longing is the true measure of a man or woman and alone
has the power to draw us out of ourselves and into the vast
air of eternity...

This is as fair a day as any to begin the journey back
 to your origin.  So lift your foot together with mine and
 we will step off the well-trodden paths and into the
 uncharted woods where the essence of things lies
 waiting for you to open your eyes.

It is time to begin watching your steps, dear companion.  For
you have already wasted the goodness of too many days
stumbling along with the unconscious drove.  Today I bid
you to place no foot upon the earth without feeling the sinews,
skin, and bone of your feet with each step.  How awake you
are to the least of things will determine how awake you become
to the greatest in due time.  For in the play of time, the great
manifold diversity of things in the end proves their unity....

I can see in your eyes a fear and confusion.  But fear not,
for I do not speak of death.....but of awakening from death,
from sleepwalking in dreams and veiled imagination.  Beyond
 the veil all is well, and more well than I can attest.  Within the
immortality of what you are, there is a contentment and peace
born only of your true identity.

Have you not been told how grand you are, how uncontained,
how limitless?  I for one maintain that you are as unseen and
eternal as the space that spans beyond the myriad universes.
I praise the immortal Self - not one self among many, but the
Self within all selves.  For everywhere I go, and in each and
everyone I meet, I greet my secret and unseen Self.  For I know
 each man and each woman as I know myself, none greater or
lesser in essence or worth.

I have no desire or pull toward the gods, nor sacred relics,
nor holy books.  For I have waded through the various
dogmas and found them lacking in the essential vision, the
unitary glance that reveals God's hand within every gesture.
Why should we go looking for more than we are, when we
are what we are looking for?  Beware of misguided longing,
for it leads in the end to brutality.  How much blood has
already been spilled in God's name and how much more to
come?

I bid you, dear companion:  Throw off the yoke of belief,
for to arrive at the nobility of truth you must be cleansed
of all borrowed knowledge till you are as innocent as the
day before you were born.  You must forge from within your
longing a fiery sword of discrimination, unsheathed from the
past - determined to never again take anything secondhand,
but instead prove true or false each statement yourself.

For truth belongs to neither man or woman, nor holy book,
nor well-reasoned philosophy or belief, but only to itself -
immortal and pure. 

Adyashanti

Original title - "Everlasting Inheritance" (2006)

via - No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

A Room - Jane Hirshfield

A room does not turn its back on grief.
Anger does not excite it.
Before desire, it neither responds
nor draws back in fear.

Without changing expression,
it takes
and gives back;
not a tuft in the mattress alters.

Windowsills evenly welcome
both heat and cold.
Radiators speak or fall silent as they must.

Doors are not equivocal,
floorboards do not hesitate or startle.
Impatience does not stir the curtains,
a bed is neither irritable or rapacious.

Whatever disquiet we sense in a room
we have brought there.

And so I instruct my ribs each morning,
pointing to hinge and plaster and wood -

You are matter, as they are.
See how perfectly it can be done.
Hold, one day more, what is asked.

Jane Hirshfield
from The Lives of the Heart

via The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
digitally altered

Shimmers of Light...

We are the grace of Love fulfilled,
the shimmer of Sacred Light,
lustrous uniqueness in a field of
multitudinal Divine Shimmers
- autonomous, yet in glittering Oneness.

We are the twinkle of liberated luminosity
radiating from the Heart Pulse of Love,
in the Sound Stream of Life,
continuously unfolding...

We are created, and create, from the glowing embers
of the mystical furnace of Love's Fire...

We are the molten flow of golden translucence
that forms us in the fire of Divine Love.
Love infuses us in every micron of consciousness
- Golden Light turned fluid,
flowing incessantly from the Primordial Heart...

Light of Love.
Love of Love.

Love experiencing Itself as Love
in every breath,
in every beat of our heart...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 2001

~
Ultimately there is light and love and intelligence
in this Universe.
And we are it.
We carry that within us.
It's not just something 'out there.'
It is within us
and this is what
we are trying to
re-connect with -
our original light,
love and intelligence,
which is who we are.

...remember...

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
(A Tibetan Buddhist Nun)

Photo - Mystic Meandering
reflection of light on wall
from a doorknob!

Every word of every tongue - Fakhruddin Iraqi

Every word of every tongue is
Love,
telling a story to her own ears.
Every thought in every mind,
She whispers a secret to her own Self.
Every vision in every eye,
She shows her beauty to her own sight.
Every smile on her face,
She reveals her own joy for herself to enjoy.

Love courses through everything,
no, Love is everything.
How can you say, there is no love,
when nothing but Love exists?

All that you see has appeared because of Love.
All shines from Love,
All pulses from Love,
All flows from Love -
No, once again, all IS Love!

Fakhruddin Iraqi

Sufi Poet
He was actually from a region in Iran
called Iraqi

via Poetry Chaikhana

~

Don't take your joys and suffering personally.
We are - all of us - stories
told by God
to him/herself
to illuminate him/herself.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

...how exhausting it is to always find fault!

Love knows that nothing is ever needed
but more Love...

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

~

Photo - Mandala Art
digitally altered
2013

Threads of Connection - Rig Veda

There is an endless net of threads throughout the Universe.
The horizontal threads are in space.
The vertical threads are in time.
At every crossing of the threads,
there is an individual,
and every individual is a crystal bead.
The Great Light of
Absolute Being
illuminates and penetrates
every crystal bead.
And every crystal bead reflects
not only the the light from every other crystal
in the net, but also every other reflection
through the entire universe...

The Rig Veda

The earliest Veda text

~

Photo - Mandala Art
Indra's Net of Jewels

Uni-Verse: One Sound - Fred LaMotte

"Om is the primordial word.  All that is, was, or will be is Om."

Mandukya Upanishad

"Adau Bhagavan shabda rasahi: In the beginning, the Lord
created the cosmos through a subtle stream of sound."

Rig Veda

Creation is sound.  The universe is sound.  The subtle essence
of light shines in darkness as sound.  Each star has a sound.
Every galaxy is a revolving chord, the harmony of a trillion
worlds.

The atoms of your body are chimes.  Each cell of your body is
a carillon.  Your music vibrates into my sound-body, mine into
yours.  Both are intermingled with that galactic harmony, the
gong of planets.  Our subatomic counterpoint trembles and
dances over the scale of humanity, and humanity's music co-
mingles in the cosmic chorus of angels.

You are a ringing bell.  Who struck you?  Even from a thousand
miles away, I am touched by the song of your body.  Each cell
of my flesh feels and recognizes your key, your rhythmic signature.
The memory of you brings a blue note, a minor seventh, a raga
into my inward ear.

My heart is a receiver of your elegy, and a transmitter of my own
love song.  Inside the ribs of every man and woman, the hollows
of a well-carved instrument resonate, softly playing notes
deeply personal, yet pervading the universe.

With the vibrant sound of our minds, we contribute to the
harmony of All, or we grind out dissonance.  The most
important question we can ask at any moment is, "Do my
thoughts right now create harmony on earth, or disharmony?"
Harmonious thoughts expand creation, bringing light out of
darkness.  Cynical or hateful thoughts unravel creation and
contract our energy, preventing waves of music from
manifesting as light.

We are each a unique resonance of grace notes.  Are you a
morning or an evening raga?  Are you the music of the wind
or rain?  A brook of Spring rain murmuring in the desert?  The
song of melting snow high above tree line, chanting under
stones?  Are you the sound of moonbeams falling softly on the
petals of an amaranth hibiscus, changing their color to burgundy?

The day will come, and now is here, when you will wake in the
morning stunned by a symphony of blossoms, polyphony of sun
and dew.  The day will come, and is now here, when medicine
will be music, and songs will heal us.  The day will come, and
now is here, when listening to vibrations of mantras, O most
silent melody in the ancient brain, will dissolve the mind of
war into pure love.

The day will come, the day is here, when you long for the
Beloved, O nakedness more intimate than form; you merely
call the Beloved's most secret name, and the Beloved is
with you, nearer than this breath!

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - via Uradiance