Welcome...

Come meander with me on the pathless path of the Heart
in these anecdotal,
sometimes inspiring, sometimes personal meanderings of the Heart's opening in the every-day-ness of life...

Saturday, January 30, 2021

Quiet Mysteries - Gina Puorro


[.....]

 I want to be a student of the subtle.
Of the soft whispers and sweet hymns
that ride the ocean breeze and the hawk's wing.
A slight pivot towards quietude and the small things.
There are tender spaces
between emptiness and longing
where we just might hear the songs that pass
from ancestral throats to receptive ears.

You contain multitudes - contradictions and stardust
and sacred instruction.
Leave your unanswered questions
on the kitchen counter
let them ripen a bit...
until their quiet mysteries penetrate you...

[.....]

Gina Puorro
Excerpt from: "nothing matters, everything matters"
Dec. 5, 2020

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Full Moon 1-28-21


Thursday, January 28, 2021

Fall Into Your Rhythm - Fred LaMotte


 You don't need to be a rosy-soft new age angel
in order to meditate.

You don't need to sip liquified kale, live in an ashram,
or be politically correct, in order to tap the infinite Source.

You don't need to be someone better, someone higher,
someone purer, someone 'else.'
There's no one 'else' for you to be.

It is the very search that divides us from ourselves...

The beginning and end of spiritual practice is to rest
the mind in [your] own broken heart.

Align your jagged edges.  Tune into the rough, unpolished,
yet sparkling joy of your uniqueness.

The symphony of creation would not resonate in the same
harmony without your singular piercing lovely note.
The world doesn't need another Gandhi, Jesus, or "spiritual
teacher" - it needs You.

"Enlightenment" is more like falling than rising, more like
collapsing than getting it all together.

Fall into your own rhythm: this is perfect stillness.
Collapse into the Grace at the heart of your own chaos:
that is perfect peace.

I did not learn this from the gods.
I learned it from my dogs.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Rainbow light reflected on rug...
(looks like a musical note to me :)


Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Pull Out Your Wonders - Nick Penna


When you listen you reach
into dark corners and
pull out your wonders.
When you listen your
ideas come in and out
like they are waiting in line.
Your ears don't always listen.
It can be your brain, your
fingers, your toes.
You can listen anywhere.
Your mind might not want to go.
If you can listen you can find
answers to questions you didn't know.
If you have listened, truly listened,
you don't find yourself alone.

Nick Penna - fifth grade !!!!

From: Poetic Medicine by John Fox

With Thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

What are your gifts - "wonders" - to the world that you could
pull out despite the weariness of existence that we
are experiencing these days with the COVID
hanging around - like a lurker in our lives?




 

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Feel It All - Gina Puorro


 Can you sit with this ocean of grief?
Can you feel the gravity of what is happening
without rushing towards silver linings
or happy endings?
Let the wound bleed a little longer
without running to cauterize it
with certainty and guarantees.
Let the lacerations cut a little deeper
carving lessons of the great mystery
into your flesh
and lean in close
to the pain.

Can you soothe without numbing?

Paint new landscapes with your frayed nerves
as your tongue searches for words
in a language that you have never had to speak before.
Feel the searing truth that nothing is certain
not today
or tomorrow
not the very next breath.
It never was.
But in this moment
we cannot ignore that.
Death sits close right now
we have a front row seat
to the cycles
of living and dying.

Feel the shakiness of your trust
the gnawing fear
the sting of loss
the burning anger
the confusion leaving you gasping
for why
and how
and when will this end?

Dissolve into the stillpoint
beyond thinking and doing
and feel the exquisite ache
of the heartbreaking
heart-opening act
of surrender.

Gina Puorro
April 5, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering



Friday, January 22, 2021

Stardust - Danna Faulds


 From a crowded firmament of
constellations, a galaxy reaches
out to stroke my cheek with a
single, spiral finger.  One star
speaks: "Life is not a test.
There is no key to find, or
door to open.  Self-improvement
is not the point.  There is only
awakening.  And one day you
will all awaken to the rapture
of the great lovemaking, when
the heart of everything is
revealed as you; when the myth
of separation is burned to ash
in the searing flame of truth."

A lifetime of forgetfulness
erased in an instant of 
remembering.  The Beloved
enters, takes me in a whirl
of tenderness and bliss.
In that moment, two are
one, and one is everything;
stars and souls are whole,
unbroken, flowing motions;
what is wrapped in skin or
cloaked in form has no birth
or death or destination.

The star speaks to me again:
"The seeds of love sown an
eternity ago are blooming now.
There has always been divinity,
and this, at last, is who we are -
love in endless consummation.
Love, not limitation, is the truth."

Then with a rush of wind like
countless wings, I am left to
sit in stillness, with the taste
of stardust sweet upon my lips.


Danna Faulds
From: Go In and In
2002

~

Photo from the Internet


Thursday, January 21, 2021

Our Path is Clearing - Ari Honarvar


 We are wondrous, complex, and resilient beings.
At any given moment, our bodies, minds and the
environment interact with and influence one another.
When we're able to balance these interactions, the result
is harmony,  However, living in this hyper-stimulating and
[chaotic] world, harmony can become compromised, and
after a while we become ripe for disease and disorientation.
The uncomfortable symptoms of disharmony are then often
confused with the root cause, and in our rush to escape
the uncomfortable emotions and sensations, we seek
distractions in the world...

But our wisdom and innate vitality await us and beckon us
to return to ourselves.
  When we do our inherent wisdom
shines light on the origin of disharmony, clearing the path...
We can bring back harmony and take responsibility of the
magnificence that is us.  Having cleared the distractions,
life becomes simple again and our path is clear...

Ari Honarvar
From - Rumi's Gift

~

Personal Note -  Now that we have hopefully been
relieved of the political drama and DisTraction of the
last 4 years, maybe we can individually and collectively
find a new sense of balance and harmony.  Clear the
toxicity of chaos, and focus on the priorities of our
collective existence in the ongoing Cosmic Play of Life.

Namaste
_/\_

~

Photo - Sunrise at Sunday River Ski Resort
in Bethel, Maine - taken by my brother on
ski patrol


Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Listening to The Beloved - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee


 ...listening is not an effort, not a technique...
Listening springs from the desire to be with the one whom
you wait to hear ["The Beloved"].  Listening is a coming
close, waiting for Presence to materialize into words, to
form ItSelf out of Silence.  Listening is a relationship, even
in the silence when nothing is heard.  Learning to listen is
to allow our self to be present without imposing or demanding,
to hold a space where something can be told, where meeting
can unfold between...lover and The Beloved; where openness
is answered.  The lover is the one who listens, whose being
is born to listen to The Beloved. 
Without the lover, how
could the song of The Beloved be heard?

At the beginning we have to learn the art of listening, the art
art of being present, attentive and empty.  We have to catch
the still, small voice of The Beloved, and not interrupt, not
ask too many questions.  We have to learn to be silent,
because listening is born from silence.  The listening of the
heart is always an act of love, a coming together [communion],
even when nothing is heard.  Listening is a wisdom.  It is
feminine, receptive, hidden...  Rumi knew how central a part
it plays in our wordless relationship with The Beloved:

"Make everything in you an ear, each atom of your being,
and you will hear at every moment what the Source is
whispering to you, just to you and for you..."  You are - we
all are - the beloved of The Beloved, and in every moment,
in every event of life, The Beloved is whispering to you
exactly what you need  to hear and know.
Listen [to The Beloved] and you will discover it every
passing moment.  Listen, and your whole life will become a
conversation in thought and action between you and The
Beloved directly, wordlessly, now and always.

We need to rediscover
how the heart listens to its Beloved.


Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

Excerpts from an article called:
The Circle of Love
on Spirituality and Practice

~

Photo from the Internet



Sunday, January 17, 2021

Come... Sit...

My heart, sit only with those who know and understand you.
Sit only under a tree that is full of blossoms...

Rumi

~*~

 Come... Sit...
The Unutterable said,
inviting me deeper
into Its Infinite Silence -
into the enduring "Mystery" that
Illuminates and Enlivens...
Breathing Life into existence...

Come... Sit...

Among the clutter of the mind,
between the chaos and confusion,
amidst life's disturbances and obstacles
that are hard to navigate...

Just listen

...in Stillness...


Come... Sit...

In the respite of The Great Silence
revealing all that is true
in this life experience,
and the Great Reality
beyond...

Come... Sit...

emptied out...
humbled...
opened...

Remembering the Eternal Being that you are...

Receding again into the UnBirthed
that birthed you...

Come... Sit...

Befriend the Luminous Silence..

Come... Sit...


Mystic Meandering
May 2016

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering


Friday, January 15, 2021

The Sacred is Here...


 The Sacred is Here...

  The Sacred is Here...

   The Sacred is Here...


Om Namah Shivaya

 

~*~

She gently and quietly invites me
deeper into Her inner realms...

She infuses me with Her Grace...
from within

She is my guru, my teacher -
ever teaching through Her Quiet Presence,
Her soft energies, and whispers of
Love.


Mystic Meandering
Jan. 5, 2021

_/\_


Om Namah Shivaya is a Sanskrit phrase
meaning
Salutations to the auspicious one

~

Personal Note: This poem emerged as a result
of direct experience of the movement of "The Sacred"
within during meditation, which I have also called
"The Mystery", or "The Silence" - not based on
belief or concept, but just being open to that which
enlivens us from within - The Presence of the Ineffable.
"She" also whispered: "Always come back to the
feeling of The Presence within."

"She" is a reference to how I experience the energy of
"The Sacred", which feels feminine to me.
"She" is always Here.. :)

_/\_

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

The Ghostly Winds...


My Dear,

Be free of concern...
Be free of your mind, and be still.
Let the winds of agitation and despair
pass through you...

Just rest and wait for
the winds to pass through -
as they will...

The stripping winds of decline,
the ghostly winds of the mind,
they all pass through...
Be patient and wait.

All is cared for...
All will be well...

Just rest your mind
and let it all pass...

My Dear,

Be at peace with yourself.
It all passes through.


Mystic Meandering
Jan. 11, 2021


Personal Note:  These were the words that
came through in meditation after a particularly
stressful and restless evening and night,
getting caught in the mind by the winds of
craziness and hatred occurring in this country.


Peace
_/\_


~

Photo - hubby :)


 

 

Monday, January 11, 2021

Rendezvous with Silence...


 Rendezvous with the Great Silence
through the Inner Window
of your Heart -
the portal to "The Mystery."

Sit quietly and listen deeply,
with no agenda or expectation,
leaving the window of your heart open -
waiting for the song of "The Sacred"...

Feel the caress of Silence begin,
inviting you in
with Her gentle breath,
breathing in your Heart...

The Silence that is always there
opens HerSelf to you - always.
Turn inward to the Inner Window,
bow to the Sacred Silence within and
enter her Cosmic Mystery,
Her endless Vastness...

Settle into the Rhythm of Primordial Silence.
Feel the soft dance of intimacy absorb you,
in this silent rendezvous...

Nothing disturbs The Great Silence.
Nothing disturbs the depths of It.
Nothing prevents Its Song
from being sung...

Everything occurs within this Great Mystery of Silence.
All life, all breath, all death, all movement.

In the intimate awareness of Sacred Silence
know that everything is living according to Its
natural order, is following Its
natural Rhythm,
the Rhythm of Life ItSelf,
including the life you think you have created...

All life is being lived by the Great Mystery...

All is the pulse of Silence...

The pulse of the Cosmos.


Mystic Meandering
May 2016

~

Photo - Northern Light Swirls of an
Aurora Borealis over Yellow Knife, Canada
(sent to us by a "friend" - probably from the internet :)


Saturday, January 9, 2021

Peace...


 Even in the midst of chaos there is Peace...
Even in the midst of complexity there is Simplicity...
Even in the midst of confusion there is Stability...

Stay rooted in your Eternal Nature at the 
Core of your Being...

MM

Thursday, January 7, 2021

A Fractured Reality - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Our contemporary consciousness seems so fractured.

Even the pandemic has constellated more fissures in our culture,
more tribalism, more discordant voices... 

It is as if the very fabric or our consciousness has become
distorted, that sees truth as a primal adversary, from a fractured
sense of reality. 

...in our present collective consciousness, we appear to have 
crossed over into a country where simple truths do not
reach us - there is no shared sense of reality...

I watch the stories swirl around and wonder if they are just
nightmares of a civilization that has lost its way -
patterns of denial to distract us from the failures of our
culture, with its increasing divisiveness...

There is a deep need to turn.....to the simplicity of what is...
to the true nature of everything...
We need to find a pathway that can return us to wholeness....

I find the only way to return, to embrace reality, is through
what is most simple, most ordinary.  By noticing what is
around me, the sound of the wind, the rain falling.  There is
a Cherokee practice that is similar to [Buddhist] mindfulness,
called, "the sound of the green forest humming"; the awareness
of the sound of the forest, the sound of the water and our breath.
When people are very well attuned they hear a certain sound 
and are mindful of that sound.  When they don't hear it they
realize they have stepped into a place where their thoughts
have become unbalanced.

Ordinary, everyday awareness can return us to a place of 
balance, where we are part of the living community;
a community not of internet bubbles, but of a primal
awareness [of nature]. Walking through this gate that is
always open, we can return to a quality of consciousness
beyond truth and lies, one that is more primal, spontaneous.
...we can leave behind a strange fractured world of distortions
 and breathe in air that is not toxic, walk on land that is
still singing.


Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi teacher

Excerpts from an article in
Emergence Magazine
called - A Ghost's Life



 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

The Sacred Calls - Dorothy Hunt


 How does the Sacred call to you?  Through deep longing?
Through loving? Through the birth of an infant or the death of
a beloved friend?  Through the silence of a forest or the 
magnificence of waves crashing at sea? Through a teacher or
teaching? A guru or a God?  A scripture or a spiritual tradition?
Through art, poetry, music? Playing with your dog, sitting with your
cat? Through a meditation practice or practice of service?  Or
does the Sacred calling come when you are most desperate, most
vulnerable, unable to know what to do, where to go, how to address
the pain you are suffering or the suffering you see all around you?
Does it call you to your knees when you don't know where else
to turn?

What if the Sacred is actually calling us every moment: Come; see!
See what you are, what this moment is.  Come back Home.
Return - again and again and again!

Many of us think that a sacred calling is a calling to "do," but my
sense is that the Sacred calls us to "be," calls us to surrender to
Being, and in the "being" the doing happens spontaneously.  It is
Being, rather than self, that is always becoming.  Whether we
resonate with the idea of a Supreme Being, or simply Being Itself,
surrender is a humbling act of acknowledging that the human mind
cannot fathom the Mystery of the universe, cannot "know" its Source
as an object, and in innumerable ways each day, does not even
know how to accept the moment it finds itself experiencing.  The
mind does not know how to surrender.  Yet over time, and with
Grace, it may discover its own limitations in the face of the Unknown
and let go of its illusion of control, its illusion of separation, its 
illusion of a self.  It may become so emptied of its false identity,
that Truth simply moves itself without anyone to know how or why
or when.

It seems to me that the Unnamable is here having a human
experience, and yet in the deepest place in our hearts, we may
sense that this  expression called "human" Being is called by the
 Sacred to experience the Sacred as what we are, what life is.
 
It appears the Sacred enjoys this dance with Itself.  In this dance,
we are invited to find out what is here when all we have believed
 about ourselves - the ways we have identified with thought,
feeling, body, memory, image - falls away, or is stripped away, or
 simply melts in its encounter with the Sacred. When all the forms
 of thought, memory, feeling, etc. have disappeared, what is left?

Being a human expression of life does not mean we have no
perception of choice, or of moving toward or away from our
experience of the Sacred, toward or away from what is most true
within.  Rather than a calling to be something, perhaps the Sacred
is calling to us to be, to see, to respond from what is most
sacred within us.  Perhaps the Sacred calling calls us to come out
of hiding - hiding our true self, hiding our true radiance, hiding
the Light that is here shining....

How does the Sacred call to you?  What does it beckon you to
discover, to sense, to be?  Perhaps the Sacred calling is not your
life's work, but discovering who/what is actually living life - your
life, to be precise!  You may discover there is no moment where we
can actually divide life into sacred and secular, holy and unholy.
Dream, dreamer and dreamed may disappear into What has no
name, no attributes and yet continually calls from itself to itself
within our own experience to be, to see, to love.

Dorothy Hunt
Buddhist Teacher

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering




Sunday, January 3, 2021

The Unfolding - Fred LaMotte



I shed every petal, crushed every pollen drop to fragrance
without form, peeled away the seed husk, cracked the casing
of the emerald germ down to the black Upanishadic holllow...

Still, I could not feel You.

I relinquished every veil of innocence, became more naked
than the moon before the sun.  I melted every photon to its
wave of darkness, offered my flesh to the fire before wanting.

Still, I could not touch the Love of whom fools stammer...

So I hid my face in your hiddenness, tore off my wings and
spiraled down into the rhythm of your stillness.  I fell into the
ocean of Unknowing where breath goes before it returns.

Knelt and stayed, an exile on the shore of my own ancient heart,
where no white sail pulsated in a final exhalation, come to bear
me away.

Then, in a wickless flame of chaos without root or stem,
I unfolded, and became infinite.  Longing blossomed in the
crimson void.  I became You.


Fred LaMotte

Friday, January 1, 2021

"The Mystery" is more than real...


 What is this "Mystery" that
abides in the depths of me?

Who is "She" that lives me?

"She" rises up in me as Energy
from the very core of my Being,
letting Herself be known in Her whirling
through the spine - dancing me;
the heart quivering, the intensity breathtaking -
The Alive Presence of "The Mystery."

"She" is Here - in us - always,
making Herself known as the Infinite Source of all,
ever abiding within the 
subtle realms of Being.

Not just believed to be true,
but felt to be true...

For what we believe to be true
in our minds,
becomes our "truth" -
our view of "Reality"

until - our inner eyes open to see
"The Mystery" revealed,
as a subtler Reality beyond Form...

"The Mystery" - a subtle Reality
that can be felt
beyond matter reality -
beyond conceptual ideas of reality;
and experienced as
"more than real."


Mystic Meandering
Dec. 27, 2020

Shivoham
_/\_

~

Photo - Aurora Borealis from a calendar

~

May we all experience the healing subtler realms of Being
in the new year, giving birth to new perspectives - new ways
of seeing and being in the world...