Rest In Peace - Papaji

Rest in Peace...

You are Eternal Being, unbounded and undivided.
All is well...

You are Happiness, your are Peace, your are Freedom.
Do not entertain any notions that you are in trouble.

Be kind to yourself.  Open to your Heart and simply Be.
Those who know This know Everything.
If not, even the most learned know nothing at all.

Papaji

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

 

Attend to Inner Silence - Adyashanti

...attend to the inner silence of your being is what Being itself
calls you to do.  In many ways, silence is the greatest teacher
and most wise teaching.  The call of the heart never confines
itself to the mind's ideas...  It follows the impulse of silent
intuition, which is so much better aligned with what the
moment dictates.  Leave the mind to do what it is best at,
and look to the wisdom born of silence for inner guidance
relating to things of the spirit.

Adyashanti

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Well at the Core of Your Soul - Fred LaMotte

The golden wellspring of your intuition is the true Master,
the true Guru, the true spiritual Friend.  Any "spiritual teacher"
or guide who does not lead you to this well [within], and
invite you to drink from it, is no one to follow.  Why should
you pay money, or give away your power, to someone to tell
you what you can only learn from your own intuition?  When
the true Teacher reveals the wellspring at the core of your
being, he, or she, walks away silently, and leaves you to gaze
into the waters of your own infinite Shakti, the unfathomable
healing waters of your power.....the trembling ripples of silence
into the stars.

And when you want to sit with that Teacher, or with the Christ,
or with any of the Rishis, you will find them here, sitting by
the well.  Not in any temple or ashram, but here, in the golden
radiance of the hollow spring at the core of your soul...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The River of Silence - Kahlil Gibran

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind
and to melt into the sun?  And what is it to cease
breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides,
that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you
indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then shall
you begin to climb.  And when the earth shall claim your
limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

If we can hear life, we can hear Silence
because the intensity of this pure energy
manifests itself through the sound of existence.

Yolande Duran

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Everything is this Primal Energy - the Primal Source of life;
not a persona, or god, or goddess or even Pure Consciousness;
just the fluid Energy of Life running through all living beings.
We are that Energy...

MM

~

Photo - my late blog friend Dorothea...
Walked into the Light - Jan 17, 2021

 

Equinox - Rumi

Artist - Puisi

Look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love.

Look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life.

Why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad.
Pay attention to how things blend.

Why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last?

Look at your heart and tongue,
one feels but deaf and dumb,
the other speaks in words and signs.

Look at water and fire,
earth and wind,
enemies and friends all at once.

The wolf and the lamb,
the lion and the deer

far away and yet together.

Look at the unity of this
spring and winter
[or summer and fall]
manifested in the equinox.

You too must mingle my friends...

Be like sugarcane,
sweet and silent.
Don't be mixed up with bitter words.
My Beloved grows right out of my [your] own heart.
How much more union can there be...

Rumi
Translation by Mader Khalili
From: This Dance of Bliss
by Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana
Original title: "Look at Love"

~

The "Equinox" is a "pivotal comic hinge"
signifying equilibrium, or equality;
a fluid threshold, poised between 2 seasons,
[or even between life and death].
Or in the case of the whirling dervish,
the union/merging of heaven and earth;
between Divine and human.
The Dervish whirls with one palm open up
to the cosmos and the other palm downward,
open to the earth...

symbolizing the union of our Divine nature
and our human nature...

the fusion of spirit and matter;
being reborn to the Truth of our Being...

 

 

Traveling Toward Life - Richard Wehrman

He was surprised
to see the gray clouds,
for the sunrise was clear
with blue sky, and he
assumed, as he always had,
that the sky moved
as the sun moved, east
to west, yet here the clouds
came. traveling west to
east, and he thought of
the trajectory he imagined
his life took, of birth
to death, infancy to old age,
and he wondered if he
had missed something,
if the winds moved
differently than he supposed,
if death also traveled
toward life, if there were,
more currents than he
could imagine, and if
imagining itself, setting
a distinct course, one he
planned in advance, kept
him from seeing; if he
were at this moment
actually growing younger,
at the same time he grew
older; if he was in fact
moving in ways he could
barely sense, into another
life, into other worlds.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here
Original title: "Traveling"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Horizon of Life - Halifax & Willis

Our priorities shift as we see the horizon of life that is the
threshold of death...

Joan Halifax
Zen Buddhist
Director of Upaya Center
Author of Being with Dying

~

At the end of life or if we become sick, [or in the aging process]
we begin to let go of the roles that previously offered significance,
status and definition; the losses of position, responsibilities,
self-image, etc.  We become informed by internal rather than external
 concerns.  How we work with these losses and still find meaning
 will shape and inform how we close our lives...

Claire B. Willis LICSW

From - Lasting Words

~

I interviewed a woman who was terminally ill.

'So', I tried delicately to ask, 'What is it like to wake up every
morning and know that you are dying?

'Well', she responded, 'What is it like to wake up every morning
and pretend that you are not?'"

-unknown

 

The Time Is Ripe - Ajahn Chah

Now you too must learn to be satisfied with the many years
you've already depended on your body.  You should feel that
it's enough.

You can compare it to household utensils that you've had for
a long time - your cups, saucers, plates and so on.  When you
first had them they were clean and shining, but now after using
them for so long, they're starting to wear out. Some are already
broken, some have disappeared, and those that are left are
deteriorating: they have no stable form, and it's their nature
to be like that.  Your body is the same way.  It has been
continually changing right from the day you were born,
through childhood and youth, until now it has reached old age.

Allow the mind to let go of its attachments.  The time is ripe.

Even if your house flooded or burnt to the ground, whatever
the danger that threatens it, let it concern only the house.  If
there's a flood, don't let it flood your mind.  If there's a fire,
don't let it burn your heart.  Let it be merely the house, that
which is external to you, that is flooded and burned.  Allow
the mind to let go of its attachments.
The time is ripe.

It is the same with your wealth, your possessions, and your
family -  they are all yours only in name; they don't really 
belong to you, they belong to nature.

It's like the water of a river.  It naturally flows down the
gradient; it never flows against it, that is its nature.  If a
person were to go and stand on a river bank and, seeing the
water flowing  swiftly down its course, foolishly want it to
flow back up the gradient, he would suffer.  Whatever he was
doing, his wrong thinking would allow him no peace of mind.
He would be unhappy because of his wrong view, thinking
against the stream.

Find your real home...

Ajahn Chah

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The "Now" is a Portal to Eternity - Rupert Spira

Behind the "picture" [manifest reality] there is a mystery...

Whatever we think, has just passed...

the experience is unnamed...
[neither past, present or future]

The "Now" is not a moment in time...
How long does it last?  How long is the present moment?

There is no "present moment" - it is Eternity - ever-present;
not moving in time...

There is only one [continuous] "Now".

The "Now" is an access to the portal of Eternity.

Rupert Spira
Excerpts from a YouTubevideo: the Picture and the Mystery

~

When we speak of "Life" it must be understood we are not
referring to life as we know it from the surface of fact, but
to that fragile, fluctuating, centre which forms never reach.

Antonin Artuad

~

Photo - from Death Deconstructed,
as well as the Artaud quote.

 

Births - Pablo Neruda

We will never have any memory of dying.

We were so patient
about our being,
noting down
numbers, days,
years and months,
hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note -
we leave it to others as memory,
or we leave it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
Nor do we even keep
the memory of being born,
although to come into being was tumultuous and new;
and now you don't remember a single detail
and haven't kept even a trace
of your first light.

It's well known that we are born.

It's well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the shelter in the fisherman's quarter
or in the rustling cane fields
there is quite unusual silence,
a grave and wooden moment as
 a woman prepares to give birth.

It's well known that we were all born.

But of that abrupt translation
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and weeping and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition, that quivering
of an electric presence, raising up
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that woman left empty,
the mother who is left there in her blood
and her lacerated fullness,
and its end and its beginning, and disorder
tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers
till everything comes together and adds
one knot more to the thread of life,
nothing, nothing remains in your memory
of the savage sea which summoned up a wave
and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.

The only thing you remember is your life.

Pablo Neruda
from Plenos Poderes (Fully Empowered)

Art by Jackie Traverse

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

 

Heart Sutra Discourse #2 by Osho

Photo by David Peters

At the very core of life, death exists.
Hidden in it is the greatest freedom.

Death is not an ax that cuts down the tree of life.
Death is making love to God, or God making love to you.
Death is cosmic.

You don't remain like you.
You don't remain as an entity.
You don't remain defined,
identified with anything.

You disappear into the Whole.

Learn to die consciously...

excerpt from The Heart Sutra, Discourse #2 by Osho

 

Tattered Truth - Thomas Merton

We are all convinced that we desire the truth above all.
Nothing strange about this.  It is natural to man, an intelligent being,
to desire the truth. But actually, what we desire is not "the truth"
so much as "to be in the right."

To seek the pure truth for its own sake may be natural to us, but we
are not able to act always in this respect according to our nature.

What we seek is not the pure truth, but the partial truth that justifies
our prejudices, our limitations, our selfishness.  This is not "the truth."
It is only an argument strong enough to prove us "right."
And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction that
somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong.

Why do we want to prove them wrong?

Because we need them to be wrong.  For if they are wrong, 
and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth: our selfishness
becomes justice and virtue: our cruelty and lust cannot be fairly
condemned.

We can rest secure in the fiction we have determined to embrace as
"truth."  What we desire is not the truth, but rather that our lie
should be proved "right," and our iniquity be vindicated as "just."

No wonder we hate.  No wonder we are violent.  No wonder we
exhaust ourselves in preparing for war!

And in doing so, of course, we offer the "enemy" another reason 
to believe that he is right, that he must arm, that he must get ready
to destroy us.

Our own lie provides the foundation of truth on which he erects
his own lie, and the two lies together react to produce
hatred, murder, disaster.

Thomas Merton

from - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
"Tattered Truth"

 

What's Your Bias? - Brian McLaren

People can't see what they can't see.
Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall,
trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.
No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,
unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias...

Confirmation Bias:  We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities.  As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn't fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer s simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It's almost impossible to see what our community doesn't, can't or won't see.

Complementary Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I'll be hostile to yours.  If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I'll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don't know how much (or little) we know because we don't know how much (or little) others know.  In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are.  As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can't be seen from where I am right now.  But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias:  I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false.  I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don't notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don't have intense and sustained personal contact with "the other", my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It's hard to see something when my way of making a living require me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

Brian McLaren
from - Why Don't They Get It?  Overcoming Bias in Others.

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The Swan and The Frog - Dennis Holtje

Photo by Robert Woeger on Unsplash

There once was a beautiful white swan that came from the great
ocean to the North.  After being in the South for the winter, it
was ready for the return journey home.  So it took off and with
its big wing span and shining white feathers, it soared effortlessly
through the blue sky.  After a long while, and far along the journey,
the swan began to tire and came down to land for a rest.  It landed
right on the edge of a water well and let out a deep sigh.

In the bottom of this well there lived a frog.  The frog said, "Well,
who are you and where do you come from?"

"I am a swan, and my home is on the water of the great northern
ocean," answered the swan.

"Ocean?  How big is this ocean? asked the frog.

"Very big," said Swan.

"Is it this big?" Frog asked, taking two hops backward.

"No, much bigger," said Swan.

So the frog took five huge hops backward, saying,
"Is the ocean this big?"

Swan said, "No, it's much bigger than that."

And so the frog went around the entire well - his whole
reality, as he knew it - and asked the swan, "Now, is the ocean
as big as this?"  And the swan said, "No, it's much bigger,
much bigger!"

Thereupon the frog said, "Well, you're a fool and a liar!"
because he knew there could be nothing bigger than
 his world and his well.

Dennis Holtje
From: Light to Sound

 

 

The Role I Play - Wislawa Szymborska

[.....]

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it's mine.  I can't exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play's all about.

Ill prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can't conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for hammy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can't take back,
stars you'll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run -
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But her comes Friday with a script I haven't seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage).

You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations.  Oh no.
I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there's no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I've done.

Wislawa Szymborska

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo via Death Deconstructed

 

Delightful Distractions - Fred LaMotte

Honor the slight distractions
that keep you sane.
These are not distractions.
These are the essentials.
A titmouse at the thistle feeder.
Wing-beat of geese
navigating by the moon.
A glistening spider's web
in the withering hyssop.
Exultation of a turquoise moth
who will only live until sunrise.
The motionless explosion of a rose.
Are you not redeemed by the sure
sweet vision of particulars?

What else is faith?
The baby's ancient gaze
from a supermarket shopping cart.
Elegant cracks in a hand-made tea bowl.
Two dragonflies dancing at the edge
of a spring-fed forest pond.
Fragrance of honeysuckle
on a broken fence.
Sound of a horse's tail
swatting flies on a summer morning.
These are not distractions.
These are every flame-tipped thing
conspiring in a ceaseless revelation
to whisper yes, you are here.
The splendor of Sri Yantra
seen in the camellia blossom
that fell in the night by your back door,
its empyrean petals, choir upon choir.
The crown of an infant against your cheek.
Bamboo wind chimes in an empty temple.
Whisper of waves dissolving on sand.
The silence between raindrops.
This breath.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

My personal delights:

Crickets chirping their chorus in the quiet of night.
The sound of rain hitting the elephant ear leaves of
 a zucchini plant in the garden.

Sitting in the open window late at night
breathing in the silence, as the cool night air
brushes my face.
The early morning echo of the birds wake-up call,
or their haunting goodnight song.
Sunlight through glassware... :)

What are some of your delights?