Learning From Trees - Grace Butcher

If we could,
like the trees,
practice dying,
do it every year
just as something we do -
like going on vacation
or celebrating birthdays,
it would become
as easy a part of us
as our hair or clothing.

Someone would show us how
to lie down and fade away
as if in deepest meditation,
and we would learn
about the fine dark emptiness,
both knowing it and not knowing it,
and coming back would be irrelevant.

Whatever it is the trees know
when they stand undone,
surprisingly intricate,
we need to know also
so we can allow
that last thing
to happen to us
as if it were only
any ordinary thing.

Grace Butcher

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Unintentionality - Richard Wehrman

The words, he felt, obscured, as
at the same time some revealed,
and it became a task of separation,
as of stones on the beach, the white
from the black, the large from the
small; yet this too exposed
artificiality, a point of view, an
ordering of the universe that denied
the given order, where all things
arrived together, and only an
analytical eye, a mind of obsession,
sought to make order, by grouping
what seems the same, from what
seemed not to belong.  And he saw
his unease with the way things were,
the need to shift reality to align
with his preference, his desire, so
that he wondered, why can I not
leave things alone?  But the words
(for this was where he started) when
left to themselves did their own
sorting, the way the wind mixed
maple leaves with ash, willow with
walnut, and the patterns of November
dazzled the eye, in its own ordered
disorder, and its truth was apparent,
its unintentionality soothed the
heart and settled the soul.  And he
said: words, whoever let you loose,
do what you will.

Richard Wehrman

From: Being Here

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Under the Words - Eckhart Tolle

Underneath the surface appearances, everything is not only
connected with everything else, but also with the Source of all
life out of which it came.  Even a stone, and more easily a flower
or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to
yourself.  When you look at it or hold it and let it be without
imposing a word or mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder,
arises within you.  Its essence silently communicates itself to you
and reflects your own essence back to you.  This is what great
artists sense and succeed in conveying in their art.  Van Gogh
didn't say: "That's just an old chair."  He looked, and looked,
and looked.  He sensed the Being-ness of the chair.  Then he sat
in front of the canvas and took up the brush.

When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a
sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long
time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became 
possessed by thought.  A depth returns to your life.  Things
regain their newness, their freshness.  And the greatest miracle
is the experiencing of your Essential Self as prior to any words,
thoughts, mental labels, and images.  For this to happen, you
need to disentangle your sense of I, of Being-ness, from all
the things it has become entangled with, or identified with...

The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things,
people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality
becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the 
miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you.
In this way, cleverness may be gained, but wisdom is lost, and
so are joy, love, creativity, and aliveness.  They are concealed in
the still gap between the perception and the interpretation.  Of
course we have to use words and thoughts.  They have their own
beauty - but do we need to become imprisoned by them?

You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly
believing that when you have attached a word to something, you
know what it is.  The fact is: You don't know what it is.  You have
only covered up the mystery with a label.  Everything has
unfathomable depth.  But all we can perceive, experience,
think about, is the surface layer of reality.

Do you think that combinations of words could ever explain
who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even
what a tree or stone is in its depth?

Eckhart Tolle
From - A New Earth

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Fierce Grace - Matt Licata

The Soul is always communicating with us.  The great Friend
is always looking for us, in the hope of drawing us nearer,
but often in ways that are unexpected and even bewildering
to the part of us that believes it's in control.

There are times in our lives when the most precious beliefs
and realizations fall apart and dissolve...  What was so clear
only days or weeks ago is transformed to dust.

In order to get our attention, the Soul must at times upset and
dissolve the status quo, turning inside out the dreams and
fantasies of me and the life I thought I was living... causing us
to see that perhaps we have no idea who and what we are, what
a relationship is, what the Divine is, and where we will find
meaning.

The reassembling of our world is a sacred process...

As we deepen our inquiry, we might start to see this activity
of somatic and psychic restructuring as the expression of a
certain kind of grace... not the sweet, flowy, and expansive
grace that is our favorite kind, but a grace that is fierce and
wild and can have a certain disassembling energy to it.

It is the [fierce] grace of Kali, or that of the wrathful Tibetan
goddesses, a raging grace, a creative and destructive
reorganization of consciousness.
But it is grace nonethless.

Matt Licata 

~

FunQi Art - Mystic Meandering

2012

 

From Grit to Pearl - a meandering

Sitting in the Silence, the image of a pearl arose and I
remembered that a pearl is formed through irritation.
A piece of sand or grit gets in the oyster and the oyster
starts making a pearl around the irritant with layers and
layers of pearl-essence, turning and turning the grit until
it's covered with a beautiful, shiny sheen.

And of course, loving metaphor as I do, I saw the
association with the grit of life, the irritations of life, the
aggravating, challenging circumstances of life that create
multiple layers of irritation - and - the creation of a pearl.
The oyster seemingly takes this grit, without complaining,
and makes something beautiful of it...  Or is it that something
beautiful emerges from the grit of life, if we work with it,
sit with it, roll it around, not spewing it out, but allowing
it to be what it is, seeing it for what it is - the potential for
beauty...  The beauty of the pearl is a result of these layers
of irritations and aggravations of life in a seeming process of
metamorphosis...

What is revealed through the irritations is this living essence
of the pearl that in some ways created itself because of the
irritations, through the rubbing and chaffing of the grit of life...
As in - the irritation, the challenges of living are still the 
Essence, revealing Its beauty.  The irritations and challenges
of living are the living Presence emerging, or unfolding Itself,
in and through what our minds and bodies find irritating and
uncomfortable - if we give it a chance, if we stay with it,
engaging in the experiences rather than running from them.
If we learn to see the way the oyster sees :)  Ah - grit,
let's see what I can do with that...  

And what is seen is that the beauty and wisdom of the
irritations emerge over "time" it seems - or what appears
to be time - waiting to be discovered within the shell of what I
know to be "my life."  It is realized that the pearl is the culmination
of many layers of realized wisdom that are formed along the way,
from the nitty-gritty of living life as it is.

Even if we've had spontaneous awakenings to the Truth or our
Essence, it seems life continues to give us experiences that
expand the expression of that ever-unfolding Essence, of
Consciousness ItSelf, through the irritations and challenges
we face on a daily basis.  It's an ongoing emergence, realizing
that the totality of the experiences of life expands our awareness
 until it is ultimately realized that we are the Wholeness of Being
that we've been seeking - as we are - gritty as that may be...

It's a shift in perspective from grit to Pearl...

Mystic Meandering

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Struck - Richard Wehrman

The leaves, turned for some
time, of the maple, the oak, lit by
the afternoon light, shattered the air,
the eye, in color alight like no
other, only their own with the sky
behind, crystalline and pale blue, the
air stripped of otherness, only the
instantaneous transmission of
luminous ether, from interstellar
to earthly receptor; one was
struck dumb, dropped to the knees
felt by Saints upon stones,
hands folded, eyes lifted upward
as angels descend, yet the only
action was to be struck stone still,
movement arrested, unbelievableness
standing present in the everyday,
there, with the everything else -
cars moving down the street,
people walking this way and that,
geese heading west before they
turned south; so the procession
proceeded, the unnoticed noted by
few, you could hardly say it
mattered, another Fall day - yet it
fell, it landed, as unlikely as
any fiery chariot out of the sky, the
ordinary unveiled; bliss beheld in
one simple moment's blessing.

Richard Wehrman

From - Being Here

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
The photo with my old i-5phone
 just doesn't do justice to this flaming wonder
against the moonlit sky tonight... 

 

The Explosion of the Superficial - Eric Baret

As long as one carries within oneself
the capacity to be appeased by a car,
a house, a woman, a dog, a profession,
a future, a past, a knowledge, a spirituality,
a teaching, there is not yet this ardor indispensable
to the bursting of what must burst.
This total madness of dissatisfaction
is the energy necessary for
the explosion of what is superficial in us.

Eric Baret

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

FunQi Art - Mystic Meandering
2012

 

Meditation- LaMotte & Chopra

Real meditation does not 'by-pass' pain. Meditation
penetrates into the nectar of pain.  Meditators do not
rise above pain, they surrender to its core.  At the center
of pain is the flowering of boundless energy.  Ananda isn't
a passing mood or a temporary emotional state.
Ananda is the juice of pure Existence.
It glows in the dark, the beyond within.  Transcendence is
not above.  It is the hollow in the seed.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Meditation isn't something otherworldly.  It is quite natural
and effortless.  Meditation mode exists in everyone.

Meditation is a journey, not just a calm break from one's
daily routine.  It's an inner journey of "waking up" (becoming
more conscious, more aware).  It affects every aspect of your
well-being.

There is a difference between shallow silence and deep silence.
Deep silence takes you deep into silent Awareness - reconnecting
to the totality of Consciousness.

As meditation unfolds you see that Existence can take care of you.
"Life"/Consciousness always knows what to do.

Deepak Chopra

Excerpts from: Total Meditation

~

Anxiety, fear, trauma, stress cause us to be out of focus with
the Sacred within, and we become distressed.  We have to keep
refocusing on the Sacred within - often through meditation -
allowing the Sacred Energies to embody us...

Be at peace...

Everything is taken care of...
No need to worry or stress about anything.
Everything is "covered" (taken care of)
forever and ever...

Focus only on the Sacred Energies
at the Core of your Being...
There is nothing you can do...

Trust the Energies...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Sept. 17, 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Divine Dissatisfaction - Martha Graham

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening
that is translated through you into [creative] action, and
because there is only one of you in all time, this expression
is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through
any other medium and it will be lost.  The world will not
have it.  It is not your business to determine how good
it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other
expressions.  It is your business to keep the channel 
open.  You do not even have to believe in yourself, or
your "work."  You have to keep yourself open and aware
to the urges that motivate you.  There is a queer dis-
satisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive...
Keep the channel open...

Martha Graham
Dancer/Choreographer

~

Befriend this perennial dissatisfaction while continuing
to unlock the spiritual electricity of creative flow.

Julia Cameron

with thanks to Brain Pickings for quotes

~

Art - Mystic Meandering

 

The Jewel of Non-Judgement - Fred LaMotte

No jewel is more radiant and clear than a mind free of
judgments.  Here is the space where we can truly meet.

And no "practice" is more full of grace than simply dropping
judgment.  Yet this effortless non-doing requires great
courage.  because the moment we drop the judge, we are
assailed by ten thousand voices from our conditioning, our
politics, our education, shouting, "How dare you!  This is
irresponsible!  You must choose sides! You must condemn
the opposition!  How can the world survive without your
judgments?"

Yes, the moment after you drop judgment, a tidal wave of
inner voices judges YOU.  Be courageous.  Drop them too!
When we drop the voices of our judgment, we drop the
voices that judge us, and we drop them not one at a time,
but all at once.  Let an exhalation of surrender sweep
these voices away like scattered petals, dry leaves.  Then
breathe in the breath of emptiness, sparkling with Shakti,
vibrating with the pure power of Silence.

Hollow and transparent, blaming no one, we are present,
eyes open to a luminous world, created just now.  The ocean
of the heart overflows through these eyes.  Few words are
needed.  We meet.  And we respond to a world that actually
IS, instead of responding to our mental judgments about it.
This is real response-ability.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

(and photo too)

 

Nighttime is for "The Beloved" - Ivan Granger

The stories we tell ourselves are the stories of the Soul,
the way the self understands itself.  In dreams and stories
we reformulate our perception of the world, deepen it.  And
in doing so the psyche becomes more dynamic and alive to
its own possibilities.

Nighttime is when we normally sleep and dream.  Most people
imagine life shuts down at night, but a lover [of The Beloved]
knows better.  When the rest of the world rests, the lover [of
The Beloved] finds those sweet illicit moments with The Beloved.
Even if it's just a glimpse, a smile through the window's lattice,
that is what the lover lives for.  We light up, we catch fire 
in the night.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

Note: "The Beloved" also refers to The Divine, The Sacred,
God, The Mystery - or however one calls it for themselves.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Silent Stream...

Come to Rest in the Silent Stream...
In the Inner Stream of Silence, the place of Deep Rest...

The Silent Stream is your refuge...
Letting go of the surface chaos,
moving into deeper rhythms;
the Flow and Rhythm at the core of your Being...
Allow your body to rest and align with that Rhythm...

More than ever now, you need Deep Rest and Deep Silence...

Do not allow yourself to be disturbed or disrupted by anything,
including your own emotions..

Nothing else matters now, except taking refuge in
the Silence of Deep Rest...
There you are held... cradled beyond
comprehension - only felt, and experienced...

Rest in the deeper Mystery of Being...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Sept. 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Contemplating The Mysteries - Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
One cannot help but be in awe when one
contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life,
of the marvelous structure of reality.  It is
enough if one tries merely to comprehend a
little of this mystery every day.
Never lose a holy curiosity...

Albert Einstein

~

We participate in an unfolding, dynamic reality.
There is no solid, static universe, reality is mutable -
affected by our perception of it.

Opening to the vast universe takes all ways of "knowing:"
the rigors of science, the powers of imagination, embodied
wisdom and mystical vision - and - accepting what still
remains unknowable...

The Institute of Noetic Sciences

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Song of Life - J. Krishnamurti

I have no name,
I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.
I have no shelter;
I am as the wandering waters.
I have no sanctuary, like the dark gods;
Nor am I in the shadow of deep temples.
I have no sacred books;
Nor am I well seasoned in tradition.
I am not in the incense
Mounting on high altars,
Nor in the pomp of ceremonies.
I am neither the graven image,
Nor in the rich chant of a melodious voice.
I am not bound by theories,
Nor corrupted by beliefs.
I am not held in the bondage of religions,
Nor in the pious agony of their priests.
I am not entrapped by philosophies,
Nor held in the power of their sects.
I am neither low nor high,
I am the worshipper and the worshipped.
I am free.
My song is the song of the river
calling for the open seas,
Wandering, wandering,
I am Life.
I have no name...

J. Krishnamurti

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Muse-ic of Life...

Last night... while waiting for sleep...

I noticed I could hear "sounds" differently:
the ceiling fan whirring
through the air overhead
had the vague sound of violins
playing in the distance...  The distant
"traffic" noise from the highway hummed some
unidentifiable melody...

Everything sounded " different" -

I had the feeling that I was
"waking up" to the world -
to the "magic" of the world;
that they weren't ceiling fans,
or cars, or trucks, or planes -
but some magical symphony
playing in the night...

Every sound was the sound of an alive Universe...

My heart opened to the delight
of life playing its song -
and I melted into sleep, totally immersed
in the music of the world;
as an owl softly hoooo'd in a distant tree...

Magic...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 26, 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Unseen Muse - Kavi

...poetry is an elusive trickster
when i want it to be there
it disappears

it does not respond
to command

but instead
seems to live its own life

freely unconcerned
with what i want

any sign of wanting

on my part

and it's off

hiding in the ether

enjoying the unformed realm

so what can i do?

i have no plan

not building a career

or a platform
not trying to be anything

or get anywhere

no

i simply have to follow the waves
to rise and fall
guided as they are
by some unseen hand
some mysterious intelligence

the same intelligence that runs the whole show.

Kavi Jezzie Hockaday

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering