Step Through - Fred LaMotte

Painting by Joe-Maccer, Deviant Art

As you fall asleep tonight,
do not take this inhalation
for granted.
Honor her like a royal guest.
Make a spacious tent
of your flesh,
for She who contains
the galaxies
has come to dwell in you,
pouring her gift from the stars
down your backbone.
Each expiration will lead you
through a silver door,
a mirror of moonlight.
The key is silence.
Step through.
Follow her rainbow into the void
where wings of astonishment
will carry you from death to death.

A scent of blossoms
from the garden in your body
will guide you home,
enlarged by a memory
of stillness.
Neither come nor go
and She will lead you
from the mind to the Heart.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Original title "Shekinah"

The Thread - William Stafford

There's a thread you follow.  It goes among
things that change.  But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.

Tragedies happen, people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do to stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford
from - The Way It Is, 1998

William Stafford's journey with words began most
mornings before sunrise.  This simple poem was
written 26 days before he passed.

One of his students, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye wrote:
"In our time there has been no poet who revived human
hearts and spirits more convincingly than William Stafford.
There has been no one who gave more courage to a
journey with words, and silence, and an awakened life."

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - from the Internet
This is an actual bridge in Vietnam
color digitally altered

The Winter of Life...

You know, I discovered recently that time has a way of
catching us unaware...

Even though spiritually speaking "time" is only a construct,
the body lives in a time-bound reality, subject to "time"
and deterioration...

I meandered into my 70's last October,
eyesight diminished, and hard of hearing -
What?  Are you talkin' to me?
Guess that means hearing aids...
Are you kidding me!? - resistance set in...

But here it is...  The Winter of my life has arrived,
catching me a little off guard.  I don't know why,
I see it in my hands...

It was as if some switch went off (or on) in my body
 when I turned 70 that whispered -  "body - old."

I could feel it in my body.  Actually, I felt my body
beginning to wind down years ago, but 70 was more
distinct, more of a palpable - "click" - as if time
started counting down - in earnest.

And then there was a fall in November,
a stumble that laid me up for a month!
And then some kind of respiratory "flu" in
December - the cough lasting 6 weeks!
All taking its toll on the body.
Even though I know "I" am not my body -
still...  it's wearing out;
this vehicle that has carried me this far...

Others have told me aging is all in your head.
meaning the mind.
But, the mind is going too!  Acuity left when
I wasn't looking, and memory is fogged in.
Maybe I'll forget that I'm getting old. :)
That's the biggest shocker - feeling old,
and not remembering things...

Scary

The furniture seems a little lower than it was;
harder to get up... toilet too.
It's harder to get around - stiffness has replaced
what fluidity I knew.  The grey hair has set in
around the edges.  And I see where I'm headed in
the faces of other "older women" now...

I wonder - will this "aging" affect my sense of
"knowing" the "Spirit" that animates this body?
"The Mystery", the Ineffable, Pure Awareness,
Consciousness, The Silence, "God", the Self;
however one calls IT.

Will I forget it all - that I've tried so hard to
remember...

That's my biggest "anxiety" -
If I "lose" my mind
will I remember Who "I" Really Am -
the Essence of "me"...

Do I even know that now...

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 24, 2020

~

There is a touching innocence in
the mystery of the human self.
Even after thousands of years of
experience and reflection,
we still remain a mystery to ourselves.
There is something deeply unpredictable
and unfathomable.
...Even when you approach yourself tenderly
with the candle of receptive and reverential
seeing, all you achieve is a glimpse...

John O'Donohue
from - Eternal Echoes

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

If You Seek Reality - Nisargadatta & Adyashanti

If you seek Reality you must set yourself free of all
backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking
and feeling.

Even the idea of being a man or a woman, or even human,
should be discarded.  The Ocean of Life contains all,
not only humans.

So first abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of
yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that.  Abandon
all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or
spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of
achievement of every kind.

You are complete, as you are...

Nisargadatta

~

You have to be willing to ask, "Who am I?" or "What am I?"
without any script or role, without the story about who you
are and what you are, releasing the script of what you think
your life is about.  Every sense of identity has its script - like,
"I'm a spiritual seeker."  We each have a specific role and our
stories about that role.  But our roles and stories are not
what we are...

When you start to realize what the truth is, you wake up from
the story of you.  You recognize that truth is not an abstraction,
it is not something to learn.  You discover that truth is who you
are without a script or role...

There is a state in which mind says, "I have no idea who I am",
because it can't find the right script.  Awakening is the
realization that happens after the mind says,"I give up.  I just
have no idea who I am."  When you start to understand this,
you realize that if you put down your script and just drop the
roles for a moment, you are not what you have taken yourself
to be.

What you are without your role is often assumed to be hidden.
So when you look past your character called "me" for the truth
of your being, you may think there's someone to find who is
somewhere hidden.  Looking for the "enlightened Self" is just
another role, another script.  If you drop the script, what are you?
Enlightenment is to have no script...

Give up the script, the role, the identity -
even if it is to have no identity..

Adyashanti
from - Emptiness Dancing

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Shadow Love..."

Don't try to cover things over with a pretense of love...
a shadow love.

Just let things be as they are.
Your responsibility is to be real, authentic -
maintaining integrity.
There is great healing in this.
Maintain your integrity through authenticity.

Go beyond the shadow of love...

Don't allow love to be a pawn, manipulated by the
fingers of delusion,
misdirected energies and perceptions.

Don't aspire to love - but aspire to be real.

Be clear and transparent.

When love is just a covering,
an egoic pretense, it dissipates.
Let love dissipate to reveal what's beyond
love's shadow...

Don't be fooled by the magician's love.

There is something beyond "love"
as we define love.
It is Presence.
Being genuinely present from the place
of authenticity...

Love is that Presence living us...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2004

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

A Different World - Harlan Hubbard

... I myself, I require a more direct revelation,
not one that must come through so many minds
before it reaches mine.

I must have faith that I can see and hear,
that I can feel without thinking, or even trying to put into words.
It's not for anyone else, it's personal...

The interval of solitude is precious.
It is a different world and I am a different self.
I feel relieved of a responsibility that cannot be defined.
I am released from pressure, my mind is free.

Yet, would I not feel a lack of balance if I lived alone all the time?

Harlan Hubbard
1900-1988
from his journal, 1959

Harlan Hubbard was an American painter, writer and poet
who lived a very simple life riding the Missouri and Ohio
Rivers with his wife Anna in a shantyboat, eventually
settling down in Kentucky.

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

When you find that your long cherished beliefs
do not agree with your direct experience,
trust your experience.  Prefer the truth of your
experience to your dearest delusions...

Mystic Meandering

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Eccentricity - Nick Bantock

Eccentricity is underrated.  I'm not talking about the, Look
at me, I'w wearing strange clothes and waving my arms
around trying to get attention, sort of behavior, but a kind
of eccentricity that frees-up people to be individuals,
rather than nodding clones.

Being a genuine eccentric means.....your mind passes
into new territory.  And once you've entered that unique
space, staying with it, and not worrying how others may
interpret your preoccupation...

It takes courage to open your eyes wide and express
what you see and feel in a way that gives you and others
the permission to articulate, create and challenge the tired
norms that neuter and suffocate...

After all, what do you have to lose?  And think what there
is to gain, if not a world of possibility.

Nick Bantock
Facebook

via - Donna Iona Drozda

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Authentic Allowing - Clare Blanchflower

Make no mistake
There is no goal
There is no path
Your quest ends
Here
In the
absolute
authentic
allowing of
this moment's
raw expression

In the deepest surrender
to what is
the lens of
limited focus
softens into
unbounded emptiness
Revealing
the infinity of you

If you truly desire
to know
your Self
Awaken to
Honesty
Let go of everything
that keeps you from
authentic Being

Allow the awakeness
of the moment
to meet your
wholehearted
openness

Give up all roles
Surrender all masks
Melt
Into the radiant gaze
of wholeness

Clare Blanchflower

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

On Being Authentic - Elizabeth Lesser

The irony of hiding the dark side of our humanness is that our
secret is not really a secret at all.  How can it be when we're all
safeguarding the very same story?  That's why Rumi calls it an
Open Secret.  It's almost a joke - a laughable admission that each
one of us has a shadow self - a bumbling, bad-tempered twin.
 Big surprise!  Just like you, I can be a jerk sometimes.  I do
 unkind, cowardly things, harbor unmerciful thoughts, and
mope around when I should be doing something constructive. 
Just like you, I wonder if life has meaning; I worry and fret
 over things that I can't control; and I often feel overcome
 with a longing for something I cannot even name.  For all of
 my strengths and gifts, I am also a vulnerable and insecure
 person, in need of connection and reassurance.  This is
the secret I try to keep from you, and you from me, and in
doing so, we do each other a grave disservice.

Rumi tells us that the moment we accept what troubles we've
 been given, the door will open.  Sounds easy, sounds attractive,
but it is difficult, and most of us pound on the door to freedom
 and happiness with every manipulative ploy save the one that
actually works.  If you're interested in the door to the heavens
opening, start with the  door to your own secret self.  See what
 happens when you offer to another a glimpse of yourself.  Start
slowly. Without getting dramatic, share the simple dignity of 

yourself  in each moment - your triumphs and your failures, your
 satisfaction and your sorrow. Face your embarrassment at being
human, and you'll uncover a deep well of passion and compassion.
  It's a great power, your Open Secret.  When you heart is undefended
you make it safe for whomever you meet to put down his/her
burden  of hiding, and then you both can walk through the
 open door.

Elizabeth Lesser

from: Broken Open

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Sound of The Genuine - Howard Thurman

There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for
the sound of the genuine in yourself.  And if you cannot hear it,
you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching,
and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that
you had never been born...

You are the only you that has ever lived;
your idiom [your unique signature]  is the only idiom of its
kind in all of existence and if you cannot hear the sound of the
genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the
ends of strings that somebody else pulls...

There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of
the genuine in yourself, and sometimes there is so much traffic going
on in your minds, so many different kinds of signals, so many vast
impulses floating through your organism that go back thousands of
generations, long before you were even a thought in the mind of
creation, and you are buffeted by these, and in the midst of all of this
you have got to find out.....Who you are...  How the sound of
the genuine come through to you...

The sound of the genuine is flowing through you.  Don't be deceived
and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams,
your ambitions, so that you don't hear the sound of the genuine in you,
because that is the only true guide that you will ever have, and if you
don't have that you don't have a thing.

You may be famous.  You may be whatever the other ideals are which
are part of this generation, but you know you don't have the foggiest
notion of who you are, where you are going, what you want.
Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in
yourself.

Now there is something in everybody that waits and listens for the
sound of the genuine in other people.  And it is so easy to say that
anybody who looks like him or her, anybody who acts as this person
acts, can't hear any sound of the genuine.  I must wait and listen for
the sound of the genuine in you.  I must wait.  For if I cannot hear it,
then in my scheme of things, you are not even present.  And everybody
wants to feel that everybody else knows that she is there.

There is something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine
in your mother, in your father, in the people you can't stand, and if
you had the power you would wipe them out.  But instinctively you
know that if you wipe them out, you go with them.  So you fight for
your own life by finding some way to get along with them without
killing them.

There is something in you that waits and listens for the sound of the
genuine in other people.  And if you can't hear it, then you are
reduced by that much.  If I were to ask you what is the thing that you
desire most in life, you would say a lot of things off the top of your
 head, most of which you wouldn't believe but you would think that
you were saying the things that I thought you ought to think
 that you should say.

But I think that if you were stripped of whatever there is in you that is
literal and irreducible, and you tried to answer that question, the
answer may be something like this: I want to feel completely
vulnerable, completely naked, completely exposed and absolutely
 secure... [i.e. to be my Authentic Self].

This is what you look for in your children [if] you have them, this is
what you look for in your husband if you get one.  That I can run the
risk of radical exposure and know that the eye that beholds my
vulnerability will not step on me.  That I can feel secure in my
 awareness of the active presence of my own [uniqueness].

So as I live my life then, this is what I am trying to fulfill.  It doesn't
matter whether I become a doctor, lawyer, housewife.  I'm secure
because I hear the sound of the genuine in myself and having learned
to listen to that, I can become quiet enough, still enough, to hear the
sound of the genuine in you.

Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if I hear the sound
of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come
up in you.  So that when I look at myself through your eyes having
made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall
that separates and divides will disappear and we will become as one,
because the sound of the genuine makes the same music.

Howard Thurman

from a 1980 commencement speech at Spelman College

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

"Don't ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come
alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people
who have come alive..."

Howard Thurman

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
The inside of a large earthenware pot
digitally colored...

Prayer for the World - Mirabai Starr

Beloved One,
Living Light,
Spirit of all that is,
Thank you for welcoming us
To this sacred circle,
Comprised of every hue on the spectrum
Of the human community.
Be with us now
As we lean in to hear your call.
Stay close as we stand up
To speak your message of unconditional love.

Divine Mother,
Embodiment of Mercy and Compassion,
Enfold us in your protective cloak
As we dare to take in the pain of the world.
Give us the courage and strength
To drop our preconceptions
And step onto the field of global strife
Armed with the flaming arrow of unconditional love.

Sacred Friend,
Hidden behind the eyes of the broken,
Reveal yourself,
Let us behold the beauty of your face
In all beings, everywhere, always.
Where once we perceived only the impossible,
Blinded by our desire for circumstances, people,
And our own sweet selves to be different,
Let us rest now in what is
Alert to your power to astonish us
With the global awakening of unconditional love.

Holy One,
We carry legacy of our ancestors
In the marrow of our own souls.
We are all reluctant prophets.
We must be called and called again,
And yet again.
We turn and turn away,
We yield and bow and rise,
Until at last,
Clasped by the ferocious wings of your angels,
We declare, Hineyni.
Here I am.
Make of me a vessel of your divine will,
The will of unconditional love.

Great Spirit,
True Self and No-Self,
Fill the hearts of our leaders
With humility and holy awe.
Embolden them not to turn away from the Other
But to lay down their weapons
And take the adversary in their arms.
Infuse them with the fire
That melts swords into ploughshares
And spears into pruning hooks.
Show them the secret passageway from hopeless conflict
Home to unconditional love.

Father-Mother God,
May the Children of Abraham and Sarah
At last fall silent in the face of your radiance.
May our hearts soar in remembrance.
May our knees bend and our bodies bow down,
And our spirits rejoice,
Overflowing with unceasing prayer,
Resounding and cleansing and blessing all the land:
There is nothing but you,
Nothing but God,
Nothing.

AMEN.

Mirabai Starr

written in 2015
during the Iran and US peace agreements


With thanks to Michel at No Mind's Land

~

Photo from the Internet
digitally altered

The Kiss of "The Mystery"...

There is an intimacy in the deep recesses of internal Silence
that is indefinable, inexplicable, inexpressible
and hauntingly sublime...

A fluidity of
light and color...

A movement of
The Grand "What Is"...

There is depth and breadth,
yet no boundary.

There is substance and fullness,
yet - Emptiness...

It is a subtle, rhythmic
intimacy of
Mystical Silence
that opens the Heart;
that embraces, surrounds
and fills every crack and
crevice of existence...
Unwinding the contractions
of
body and mind...

There is a "sanity" in this Silence
that bestows a soundness of heart through Grace
that is beyond mere mental comprehension -
beyond cognition...

Finding the deeper Rhythm within
one loses a sense of "self"
and becomes
The Silence ~

Breathing ItSelf...

knowing It Is:

The Breath of the Infinite

The Whisper of Love

The Kiss of "The Mystery"

Mystic Meandering
 2016

~

Photo from the Internet

The Aurora Borealis seems to take the shape
of a round face looking down, kissing the earth...

The Code of Authentic Living - Joan C. King

Physics teaches us that, at its essence, everything is energy.
We are beings of energy.  A mysterious life force, made up of
the Source Energy that reverberates within each molecule is
in every cell of the body.

Source Energy animates every living being and [is] eternally
creative, ever seeking new dimensions, relentlessly pursuing
new expressions...

Source Energy is our link to the creative energies of the
Universe.  We thrive when our actions and interactions are
aligned with the energy that animates and sustains our cells.

Out of the Source Energy of the Void, the energy that powers all
creation, the energy that resonates within our cells, something
new is being born at every transition in life...  A new reality is
unfolding from the field of possibility.  At moments of transition,
the vortex of creative energy that is our life force is activated.
Its waves carry the blueprint that informs every new aspect of
our lives.  If we surrender to the vortex of energy Cellular Wisdom
will direct us on a path that leads to emerging new dimensions of
our lives...

We cannot find this energy in our minds, because our thoughts
are not our actual experience.

Any journey within leads, paradoxically, to heightened awareness
of the expansive energy which permeates all life.  The energy
that we encounter when we look inside ourselves is the same
energy that guides the movement of the heavenly spheres - the
stars, galaxies, universes.  Each living being has a characteristic
profile of energy frequencies expressed within his or her body, but
our spirits are not confined by physical limits.  Our individual
energies pulse in and out of the sea of all energy...  When we tap
into that confluence of energy we arise renewed, knowing that
the energies in our bodies are moving within the harmonies of
vast cosmic music.  There's nothing that you have to do to earn
the presence of Cellular Wisdom [i.e. Source Energy], for it is
nothing less than the essence of who you are.

Joan C. King
From - The Code of Authentic Living

~

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for
the sound of the genuine in yourself.  It is the only true guide
you will ever have.  And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your
life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.

Howard Thurman

~

Photo - Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering
2012