The Weaving of New Cloth - Matt Licata

At times, the wisest, most skillful, and most compassionate
action is to establish a boundary with another person.  To
stand up and assertively say No.  To move in an empowered
and swift way to protect our own integrity.  To privilege our
own autonomy and interiority. To meet narcissism, abuse, and
neglect with a fiery, fierce, and direct response.

This is not only the case with "external" others - other people
in our lives - but also with the multitude of "internal" others -
from the interior landscape.

You might recognize them by their predictable refrain: "There is
something wrong with you.  You have failed. No one will ever
love you unless you change and become someone different.  You
are not okay.  You have fallen short.  You have done life wrong.
You are no good. You do not belong.  Your sensitivities and
eccentricities are not welcome here."

These are the voices of the past, the shadow of a culture of
materialism and greed, of the lineages of transgenerational
trauma and trance.  The voices of disembodiment, insensitivity,
of a societal and global ego that has fallen out of communion
with the natural world, the body, and the imaginal [mystical] realms.

These internal visitors, to an open and sensitive nervous system,
must also be met with the boundaries of discernment.  To 
realize those moments when we fall out of wisdom-presence of
the here and now, into the time machine of the "there and then."

[We need to] reclaim our own basic goodness, and not merely
accept their conclusions, reality tunnels, and the lenses through
which they have come to see things.  But cleanse our perception
with clear-seeing and the wildness of love.

To take the risk of telling a new story, dreaming a new dream,
spinning out a new tale, weaving a new cloth.  And to allow
ourselves to be turned by the great Weaver Herself...as new
vision is revealed, as we become that vessel in which She
can come alive here again.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Destiny - Markham & Maharshi

There's a destiny which makes us brothers;
none goes his way alone.
All that we send into the lives of others
comes back into our own.

Edwin Markham
1852-1940

My mother wrote this on the first page of my little
autograph book when I was 7 or 8 years old... :)

~

Whatever is destined
not to happen
will not happen;
try as you may.

Whatever is destined to happen
will happen; do what you may
to prevent it.

This is certain.

The best course of action, therefore,
is to remain silent.

Ramana Maharshi

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Peace...

Come into Peace...

Even in the midst of chaos there is Peace...
Even in the midst of complexity there is Peace...

Even in the midst of confusion there is Peace...

In everything there is a Peaceful Silent Presence...

In life and death we are held deep within the
Great Heart of Silent Peace...

Mystic Meandering

~

Photo from Pinterest

 

The Beginning of Love - Thomas Merton

The beginning of love
is to let those we love be perfectly themselves,
and not to twist them to fit our own image.

Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves

we find in them.

Thomas Merton

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from pixabay.com

 

Blessed Solstice

Photo- Dancing Sky - Ryan Bliss

 Have an Inspired Solstice!

Darkness is not the absence of light,
darkness is the womb of light...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Dancing In The Fire - Jennifer Welwood

There will always be voices that promise you greatness and glory;
They call out from the worldly marketplace;
They call out from the spiritual marketplace;
They call out from the bigger-better-more marketplace.

Do not buy their false promises, or purchase their ephemeral wares;
What fulfills for a moment is not worth the price of your soul.
There are heights that will lift you,
but not when you try to ascend them;
There are powers that will fill you,
but not when you make them your own.
There are treasures, and there are imitations of treasures.
If you have lost your true gold, at least turn away from the glitter.

Want only what is true.
This will lead you to the well of your deepest sorrows.
Follow the passageway, all the way down;
Become the dark emptiness of your core.
Be still.  Don't measure the waiting.
Be still.  Let the fire show you its secret heart;
A strand of clear light running through you.
Gather yourself there, and the luminous universe opens.

In the vast expanse, fathomless, infinite ocean of light,
lose yourself, and find yourself, and become what you already are.

Jennifer Welwood
Original title "Renunciation"

~

We can descend into the fire of direct experience of our feelings.
It is within the very core of this holy fire, in the alchemical crucible
of the body where the naked, groundless somatic territory of
illumination occurs, where healing emerges, and a new pathway
of love, care and compassion unfolds and illuminates within you.

Matt Licata

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
Woman Whirling in the Fire
(looking from overhead)

Craypas Oils
2012

 

The Thin Door - Lisa Marguerite Mora

Tell me about the passing of life,
its thin door which is as fragile as life itself.
I can hear the music on the other side,

and the shadows of bird flight
move under the door frame
with the tinkle of wind chimes.

Tell me about how life passes into life,
hope into beginnings.
There is no reward for having lived...

There is only continuity and re-emerging
from room to room and the love
that perfumes this place and the next.

Lisa Marguerite Mora

Originally published here

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Now We Are Free - Gladiator

 

The Swan - Rainer Maria Rilke

This laboring of ours with all that remains undone,
as if still bound to it,
is like the lumbering gait of the swan.

And then our dying - releasing ourselves
from the very ground on which we stood -
is like the way he hesitantly lowers himself

into the water.  It gently receives him,
and, gladly yielding, flows back beneath him,
as wave follows wave,
while he, now wholly serene and sure,
with regal composure,
allows himself to glide.

Rainer Maria Rilke

with thanks to Death Deconstructed
and photo too...

 

Remembering What You Love - Chuck Surface

What is there to do,
But Remember what you Love,
And ache with all your Heart,
However distant Heaven may seem,
However much a fairytale and a Dream

What is there to do,
But rest, with each breath and heartbeat,
In that U n b e a r a b l e Longing,
Which will not be consumed,
By the fires of doubt and despair.

For you did not choose to be stricken,
But simply found yourself afflicted,
With a Remembering beyond memory,
A Feeling beyond emotion.
A knowing beyond knowledge...

As yet unKnown.

What else...

For when faith fails, Longing endures,
When belief crumbles, Longing endures.
When other's paths prove not our own,
Longing endures.

Longing... endures.

What...
But to Remember what you Love,
However She presents Herself,
Within the Secret Heart,
Of your own unique Longing.

You are not cursed, weary Friend!
For this Longing, Unbearable,
Is both Path and Guru,
For those of us so Blessed.

And Love...

Chuck Surface

Facebook

Website

 

Spiritual Anarchy - Shiv Sengupta

Anarchy and chaos seem to go together like peanut butter and
jelly,  like macaroni and cheese, or Thelma and Louise.  The
two seem inseparable in our minds because we have no idea
what this word "anarchy" really means.  It conjures images of
rioting in the streets, burning cars, broken shop windows, 
rampant looting, bands of armed militia terrorizing innocent
civilians, bodies on the street, starvation... but that's just the
Hollywood version.

Anarchy is first and foremost about self-governance.  Yet, self-
governance is not something most people are capable of.  Most
need to be led, guided, instructed, advised, rewarded and punished
for them to feel as if they are on the right path in their lives.  They
need this structure put in place for them so that they may feel a
sense of value, contribution, progress and meaning.  Without it
they feel lost - cast adrift upon a vast ocean of experience with
no real markers by which to chart their progress.

If you were to take a person like that and suddenly strip them
of the scaffolding that society has built around them, they would
most likely react by either going berserk or falling apart.  Most
people are simply not ready to have the dual training wheels of
meaning and identity taken off their bicycles.

They are better off doing as they are told.  They are better off
maintaining an illusion of freedom and choice.  They are better
off believing that their opinions and beliefs are proof of a uniquely
forged identity.  They are better off believing that the more they
protect and craft that identity the more secure they are going to be.
They are better off believing that the more people they can get
to agree with them, the more proof they will have of the rightness
of their perspectives.

Without others to provide them with a context for their experiences,
such people are totally lost.  Without someone to agree with and
someone to oppose, it is hard for them to know where they stand.

Those who have spent their lives living in castles in the sky will
have no idea what to do when they see that the sky is just a great
blue void that they are endlessly falling through.  They will simply
flail in desperation.  And flailing people certainly look chaotic.
But flailing is not anarchy.  It is just chaos.

When the Buddha spoke of enlightenment, he was speaking about
spiritual anarchy.  When L Krishnamurti talked about a "total 
revolution", he was talking about spiritual anarchy.

Anarchy is a process that begins with the stripping away of all
the narratives we have invented as a civilization - until there is
nothing left of a person but Spirit encased in flesh.  The experience
 of living is whittled down to the very core until we are brought
to the heart of it - the self in its rawest and most unadulterated form.
The book of life is torn apart - one page at a time, chapter by
chapter - history, race, religion, nationality, gender, spirituality,
ethnicity, politics - all the accumulated knowledge of the world
expunged.

We stand face to face with the universe just as we once did on
the day we were born.  We recognize that the essence we call a
"self" and the essence we call a "universe" are one and the same
even if their forms may differ.  Finally, we choose to take
responsibility for this essence in all its forms - including that of
our self.  This is spiritual anarchy.;

It is governance not just of a separate individual self.  It is
governance of the whole as our self.  Such governance doesn't
happen by force.  It is not an assertion of our own will upon the
universe, nor is it the submission or surrender of our will to the
universe.  It is a governance that happens by listening, adapting
and responding to the flow of life itself.  Then at times when this
flow aligns with that of society, we may appear to "conform."  And
when this flow appears to misalign with that of society, one may
appear to "oppose."  Yet, this aligning and opposing has nothing to
do with being "for or against."  The direction in which we move
has not been primarily set within a social context.

When I gaze up at a starry night sky, my eyes can see stars that
exist hundreds of light years away.  And if I close my eyes, I can
still feel the aftershocks of the Big Bang resonating within my body.
This moment encompasses all of space and time.  This whole
universe has been gifted to me as a canvas.  And I going to listen
to someone telling me what to draw on it?

Spiritual anarchy is the process by which the control of the social
self-construct is relinquished and restored to Spirit.  The only law
that applies henceforth is spiritual law.  Yet, this is not something

cast in stone like commandments on a tablet.

It is a truth that reveals and rewrites itself afresh moment after 
moment...

Shiv Sengupta

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo- Mystic Meandering

 

Fantasies We Live By - Terry Pratchett

"You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

Really?  As if it was some kind of pink pill?  No. Humans
need fantasy to be human.  To be the place where falling
angel meets the rising ape.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little - ?"

Yes. As practice.  You have to start out learning to believe
the little lies.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty.  That sort of thing.

"They're not all the same at all!"

You think so?  Then take the Universe and grind it down to
the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and
then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy.
And yet (Death waved a hand).  And yet you act as if there
is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some...
some rightness in the Universe by which it may be judged.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point -"

My point exactly...

Terry Pratchett
From Hogfather

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Stories We Carry...

I wish to pack my stories away,
to leave them in an attic or basement
and continue on with life - unencumbered.
But the stories haunt me,
and the mind won't let go;
imprisoning me in the stories,
which are also other people's stories,
who have helped to create mine...

Such torture, these stories that we
create together - of pain, and fear and
betrayal - trying to navigate the narrow
road that led us here - and unwind it;
trying to untangle from each other's stories,
that have become such a burden to carry,
and let the other free to travel their
story alone...

Dec. 2, 2021

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Hey God - John Roedel

John: Hey God.

God: Hey John

John: Grief keeps sneaking up on me.

God: That's because grief is like a ninja.

John: When will it leave me alone?

God: Hopefully never.

John: Um. What?!

God: To grieve means that you have loved.
Grieving is one of the truest human experiences
that you will ever participate in.  It often arrives
without warning - like a late day summer storm -
obscuring the sun and drenching you in a downpour.
It is a gift, isn't it?

John: Uh, no.

God: Grab a pen and write the following four things down.

1) Grief can come and go as it pleases.
You gave it a key to your house at the exact moment you
gave your heart to somebody else.

2) Bereavement is the debt you must pay for having loved.
There is no getting over the loss of a beloved who is now
resting in the arms of endless love.  Grief has no expectation
date.  Despite the passing time, the phantom pain of mourning
is always one memory away from returning.

3) Of all the emotions you face, grief is the by-far stickiest.
It gets all over everything.  Like peanut butter, grief sticks
to the roof of your soul.

4) Grief is like an
afternoon thunderstorm
in late July.

It's the storm
that's always waiting
on the edges
of your most sunny
days to roll
across the horizon
and right over you.

The ghosts of your loved
ones who have died
are the clouds.

The webbed lighting

illuminating the
dark canvas sky is
their reminder to you
that life is just a
brilliant temporary flash
of time.

It's a reminder
to live now.
to be bold.
to be electric.

The pounding rain isn't your tears.
It's the hope of eternal life that
falls on you.

It's that downpour of hope that will
help you grow deep roots in love...

The gale winds
of these storms are
the messages from
those you have
lost to death that
are whispering
to you through the pines
the following psalm:

"It's okay, my love.  Eternity is holding  me.
Death isn't an end.  Death is a threshold.
I'm still here.  I never left.  Love doesn't die.
I remain.  There is no afterlife.  There is only life.
I'm here with you.  Love doesn't die."

It's all such an adventure!

John Roedel
from: Hey God, Hey John
a book about John's simple conversations with God...

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Unfathomable Deep - Edward Thomas

I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep 
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travelers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.

Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends,
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter and leave alone
I know not how.

The tall forest towers;
its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf;
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.

Edward Thomas
1878-1917

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo by Cate Kerr
Beyond the Fields We Know

 

The Loom of Creation - Ginny Lonsdale

called out
sung into being
through the loom of creation
dipped
coloured
immersed
kneaded
patterned
woven again

re-woven
I
came to Be, HERE.

Somewhere, along the
colour, spin and weave
of YOUR material story,
I remembered:

it is YOU

singing and breathing me.

- the rapture and exultation,
ardent love for YOU,
the treasure of your earth,
tears of joy outpour from a heart
filled with gratitude and wonder
for the privilege of being called forth,
to take a place HERE.
it is Our joy to hug and welcome each other.
Why not love
that which you have made?

it is Our joy to hold hands and dance.
Why not love
that which breathes me, adores me?

it is Our unity
that allows me to disrobe
and live in your clearing

HERE...

I am enfolded in your eternal embrace
naked and secure
in Your immeasurable Peace.

[.....]

Ginny Lonsdale

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Light shining in sink :)

 

Fly With Me - Amata Goldie

Fly with me, to the horizon of eternity

Let us cast away our mortal suits

Let us fly into the divinity

Of who we truly are.

Come and fall into my embrace,

Only the Holy can reach us here

And the demands of tomorrow shall disappear

Into the continuum of time forgotten

Follow me into the light of your longing

The desert of your soul is parched Beloved

Turn away from it all,

In surrender to the Holy,

To the pulse of your immortality.

Do you hear your soul humming?

Come, unfurl your petals of purity.

Turn now, towards only the light.

Come and fall into my embrace,

Only the Holy can reach us here.

Fly with me to the horizon of eternity.

Let us taste once again

The jewel of Love that we are.

Amata Goldie

with thanks to No Mind's Land

Photo from the Internet

 

A Prayer...

Call my name...  Call my name...

My unborn name...

The name that only You know...

When I danced with the unnamed stars
and unknown galaxies...

Let me hear Your voice again...

Let me sink into Your depths...
Let me feel the warm glow of Your
hidden light...
Let me hear the soft sound of Your
unplayed music -
dancing through the Cosmos -
before You were called
Shakti, Shiva, The Buddha, Allah, The Christ;
or however You reveal Yourself,
in the land of myths and stories...

Let me rest in
Your Primal Energy at the Core of my Being,
That which infuses all life
and lights everything from within.
The Breath of the Eternal Source...

Amen

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 7, 2021

Photo from the Internet

 

May Your Heart Fly - Hafiz

The lily-perfumed wings of love
Will lay dust of all your grief.
Patience my heart, and struggle on.

For when love binds,
It binds you to the tyranny of a racing steed,
And when love scatters,
It flings the soul-like fragments of the stars
Out of the ambergris scented woods.

Love makes of each moment an eternity
And tends the garden of the heart's desire.
When love mocks, ruby tears fall heavy as pomegranates
And when love looks, it sees your deepest mystery.

Love seeks out the tears of hidden hearts
And turns not from the Lovers of the Dawn.
Is there a remedy for the pain of love?

Or is it too unbearable for thought?

One taste of the medicine
And you realize just how sick you have been.
Those who plead in the defense of love
In love's judgement shall find grace
And to the court, Hafiz
May your heart fly...

Hafiz

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

Photo from the internet

 

Mighty Mother - AE (George William Russell)

Unto the deep the deep heart goes,
It lays its sadness nigh the breast:
Only the Mighty Mother knows
The wounds that quiver unconfessed.

It seeks a deeper silence still;
It folds itself around with peace,
Where thoughts alike of good and ill

In quietness unfostered cease.

It feels in the unwounding vast
For comfort for its hopes and fears:
The Mighty Mother bows at last;
She listens to her children's tears.

Where the last anguish deepens - there
The fire of beauty smites through the pain:
A glory moves amid despair,
The Mother takes her child again.

AE (George William Russell)

Irish Poet and Painter

with thanks to Death Deconstructed
and photo too...

 

Perishable - Niall Williams

It's because people are so perishable.  That's the thing.
Because for everyone you meet there is a last moment, there will
be a last moment when you hand slips from theirs, and everything
ripples outwards from that, the last firmness of a hand in yours
that every moment after becomes a little less firm until you look
down at your own hand and try to imagine just what it felt like
before their hand slipped away.  And you cannot.  You cannot feel
them.  And then you cannot quite see them, there's blurry bits,
like you're looking through this watery haze, and you're fighting
to see, you're fighting to hold on, but they are perishing right 
before your eyes, and right before your eyes they are
becoming a bit more ghost.

Niall Williams
From: History of the Rain

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Nothing is more important than empathy for another human
beings' suffering.  Nothing.  Not career, not wealth, not intelligence,
certainly not status.  We have to feel for another if we are going to
survive with dignity.

Audry Hepburn

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Floating Fork :)

 

The Golden Scaffolding - Matt Licata

It's an act of mercy and compassion to step back and acknowledge
how much we've been through over these last couple of years.
Just to be alive as a human being on the planet right now carries
with it a certain tone of activation in the body and nervous system.

It's like there's been a continuous drip of a soul-level cortisol or
adrenaline, on the one hand, and a collapse into hopelessness/
helplessness on the other - an alternation between hyper-vigilance
and a numbing shutting down.

Each of these responses and the bodily felt arousal that accompanies
them are coherent and make sense.  In addition to our verbal
narratives and stories, there are the stories of the body and also
those of the nervous system that weave together.

Underneath it all, a deep longing to rest and to feel safe again in our
bodies, to re-tune and enter consciously into the next phase.  
Something has fallen away that we will never be able to return to,
but the exact nature of what's coming next has yet to be given.

This not-knowing where we're headed can generate that deep, even
cosmic sort of restlessness that many are experiencing.  We are in
that period of liminality and transitional space, in between the way
things used to be and the birth that is yet to come.

The temptation is to get out of the in-between and into the rebirth as
quickly as possible.  But if we bypass the reorganization prematurely,
we will not be able to receive the gold that is found only within the
core of that which is falling apart.  This is the invitation into the
rich, alchemical yellowing.

This is a difficult realm to navigate as it is not held as valid and
honorable in our conventional world.  But it is one of potential
and creativity, a doorway to experience that is not always available
in times of certainty and flow.

In the very center of the paradox and contradictory energies is the
water of life.  It is a courageous journey into that territory and one
that will surprise us.

It may grind us into dust, but it is the particles that survive that
initiation that form the golden neural and soul-scaffolding of a
new world.

Matt Licata

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Rain Talk - Thomas Merton

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone,
in the forest, at night, cherished by this
wonderful, unintelligible,
perfectly innocent speech,
the most comforting speech in the world.
the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges,
and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it.
It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.
As long as it talks I am going to listen.

Thomas Merton

with thanks to The Beauty We Love
and photo too...

~

As I recall we haven't had rain in months - I miss the sound,
the smell, the comfort...  And we have yet to see our first
snowfall this season.  Very late...  Very dry...  No rain talk...

 

The Edge You Carry With You - David Whyte

You know
so very well
the edge
of darkness
you have
always
carried with you.
You know
so very well,
your childhood legacy:
that particular,
inherited

sense of hurt,
given to you
so freely
by the world
you entered.
And you know
too well
by now
the body's
hesitation
at the invitation
to undo
everything
others seemed
to want to
make you learn.
But your edge
of darkness
has always
made
its own definition
secretly
as an edge of light
and the door
you closed
might,
by its very nature
be
one just waiting
to be leant against
and opened.

And happiness
might just
be a single step away,
on the other side
of that next
unhelpful
and undeserving
thought.
Your way home,
understood now,
not as an achievement,
but as a giving up,
a blessed undoing,
an arrival
in the body
and a full rest
in the give
and take
of the breath.
This living
breathing body
always waiting
to greet you
at the door,
always prepared 
to give you
the rest you need,
always,
no matter
the long
years away,
still
wanting you,
to come home.

David Whyte
From: "The Edge You Carry With You"
in 'Still Possible"

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Emptying - Mark Strand

I empty myself of the names of others.  I empty my pockets.
I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.
At night I turn back the clocks;
I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do?  The hours have done their job.
I say my own name.  I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds.  How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am.  I change and I am the same.

I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

Mark Strand
(1934-2014)

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Our life force, like our flesh, never seems to issue away 
from us all at once.  Anyone who has been half dead can
attest to this.  What we call our soul can die in small quantities,
just as our bodies can be worn, amputated, and poisoned away,
bit by bit.  The lost parts of our souls are no more replaceable
than the lost parts of our bodies, life incrementally lifting
from life, just like that.

Anne Boyer

~

Photo - Painting by Nancy Proucher