Unknowableness - Richard Wehrman

He searched for certainty
in an uncertain world;
he looked at the unseen,
and since it was unseen,
sought to bring it near,
to refine its sharpness,
to make it holdable, to
find tangibility.  His
efforts all failed; he sought
to make water solid, to 
give soul a distinct form,
to quantify love so that
he could hold it in a box,
to carry it with him.

His efforts all failed.
With every new attempt
he saw the outcome, his
patterns became transparent,

yet he still walked  familiar
paths; only old age
seemed to offer help, taking
away his capacities; the
way one thing became
another, without his knowing
how.  Only unknowableness
seemed to offer any
way in, to bring him,
unexpectedly, relief from
his mind.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here

~  

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

What I Must Tell Myself - David Whyte

[.....]

I have only this breath
and this presence
for my wings
and they carry me
in my body
whatever I do
from one hushed moment
to another.

I know my innocence
and I know my unknowing
but for all my successes
I go through life
like a blind child
who cannot see,
arms outstretched
trying to put together
a world.

[.....]

Watching the geese
go south I find
that
even in silence
and
even in my home
alone
without a thought
or a movement
I am part
of a great migration
that will take me to another place.

[.....]

When one things dies all things
die together, and must live again
in a different way,
when one thing
is missing everything is missing,
and must be found again
in a new whole
and everything wants to be complete,
everything wants to go home
and the geese travelling south
are like the shadow of my breath
flying into the darkness
on great heart-beats
to an unknown land where I belong.

David Whyte
Excerpts from - "What I Must Tell Myself"
From: The House of Belonging

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Dimension of the Soul - Matt Licata

Part of the challenge of practices and orientations organized
exclusively around returning to the background field or
context of awareness is that we can lose touch with the
richness of the inner world, the wisdom of creativity...in the
sparkle of the imagination.

We spend so much time [mentally] interpreting and understanding
our experience that we lose touch with the magic of just one
present moment with the aliveness of the senses and more 
intuitive knowing...  Through imagination and creativity a new
poem is received, a new story is able to tumble out of the stars
into, through and as our lives.

The "spiritual journey" is by its very nature radically unique...
It must be explored by way of primary, first-person experience.

Contemporary spirituality is filled with all sorts of ideas and
concepts about what it means to be "spiritual" and we must 
find the courage to question even the most sacred of these ideas,
trusting the path of direct revelation as we come to have more
and more confidence in our own unique experience.  There are
infinite number of  ways to open to, touch, and enter the mystery,
and the right way for us might look quite different from others,
even our "spiritual teachers."

At some point on our journey, we might hear a call to set aside
the beliefs, teachings and practices we've gathered throughout
our lives and rest.  This "rest" is not passive, cold, or resigned
but lit up from within...  we open to a more paradoxical
invitation that comes roaring out of thundering silence.  Just
what this is must be discovered by each of us in the fire of our
own direct experience.  We cannot take anyone's word for it.

In this "rest" we are taken inside a dimension of experience
where we honor the entirety of what we are - [we are] drawn to
 bring more awareness to this dimensions of experience. 
 Something mysterious, magical, alive and sacred is wired into
this moment by its very nature and carries the fragrance of the
holy.

...something is granted permission and space to emerge - exactly
as it is.  We are invited into a deeper, richer exploration of the
dimension of the soul; re-entering the state of pure wonderment.

Matt Licata

From: A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves In Difficult Times

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Spiritual Egos - Fred LaMotte

Spiritual egos make a distinction between "beginners techniques"
and "advanced techniques."  Their intellect wants something
difficult to do, a sense of accomplishment.  That is why so
many new age teachers speak of their spiritual "work."  Do
they ever speak of their spiritual "play"?

Ease is the cure for dis-ease.  The deepest, most healing
spiritual practice, we ease into.  In fact, we do not practice.
We let go of practice.

The goal is never an achievement done by "advanced" practice,
but the dissolution of the do-er.  It is known by un-knowing and
done by un-doing.  This can only happen to the effortless.  The
most powerful meditation is the simplest, the most natural.

When you really look at people who carry a bag of "advanced"
techniques, you often see a weariness behind the stiff mask of
their perpetual smile. Of they look tentative, because they are
always taking the next step, and never completely here.  Only
the beginner dwells in eternal freshness...  The beginner is never
 advanced because she is present.

In the deepest and most natural meditation, you never have to
leave your body.  Every atom of your body is already woven out
of swirling stars....  No wind can uproot the beginner.  No
wound can puncture the intergalactic stillness of the Beginner's
core.

Transcending your body is not an advanced practice. It is a practice
of disconnection. That is why, in the Anapanasati Sutra, the Buddha
said, "Awareness of body in the body."  He did not say,
"Transcend the body."  He said to grok the body from within the body,
for consciousness and matter are one energy,
every cell and photon trembling with the sap of awareness.

...be a beginner.  Always feel the freshness of the first day of creation.
Now is the beginning.  Now is the end of time.  How could "now" be
advanced?

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - MM 
the two faces of Pumpkin Head :)

 

Waking - Richard Wehrman

He woke again, as he always
did, out of nothing into
something; the wind woke too,
barely there, a dry exhale of
breath over the leaves,
over the dry grass, and he noted
how complete he felt, in this
almost not hereness, only the
edge of awareness, the quality
that noted, that attended to,
and beyond that nothing else
at all, though it was coming back,
the body's sense of being...

...and the single
sounds that arrived before
sight, for he had not yet opened
his eyes -- so a single scrape,
a rough-edged rasp, which carried
no meaning...
(was it the sound of a bird?)...
he could not tell; just the arrival
of sound, before you called it
sound, and it was just it,
what it was, and now he opened
his eyes, and the hill streamed in,
simply in that moment was,
where before it was not, as it
was again as his eyelids closed,
and the heat of the sun on his legs
as the bird, a different one,
called three single cries,
and as the wind moved again,
he smiled.

Richard Wehrman

From: Being Here

~

Photo taken by my brother
Bethel, Maine

 

The Essence - a meandering

The Essence of our own Being is felt - not understood...
An animating life energy inherent in

the body system itself...

originating from within;
an innate aliveness
 that lives this body...

A mystery, The Mystery...

And also my felt experience...

And then of course the mind tries to put words
to it, to explain it, interpret it...  :)

Once I recognized it internally, it "awakened", or 
"came alive" in the body, although already there -
but made itself known , as my very own Being
 - embodied - in and through my
recognition of it.

Again, a mystery that I try with words to explain...

Although its movement is now deeply felt within,
nothing actually changes in my
human experience.

I did not become a different "person."
The "ego" didn't suddenly disappear.
Old habits of conditioning still remain -
and yet - there is this recognition of the Source
energy that mysteriously inhabits and animates this body.
Not conceptually known, but a felt movement of Being in 
the body - embodiment...

It's not even the feeling of "love" - as we know love...

It's a tangible felt sense of openness, of 
total acceptance of what is...
of whatever is unfolding in the life experience...

And what is "love" really but
the total acceptance of everything...

The Essence of Being...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Jan 20, 2022

 

The body knows, the heart knows - Matt Licata

You don't have to fix anyone's problems.  You don't have to save
them, heal them, or get them to take on your favorite metaphysical
beliefs, theories, and techniques.

Just be there with them so that they feel felt and understood.
Bear witness to their own organic wisdom as it re-calibrates,
reorganizes, and emerges.

Listen.  Not only to their verbal narrative but to the somatic
story as well.  To the secret, sensitive language emerging from
their heart.

Bracket your beliefs and systems for a few moments.
Attune.  Enter into the miracle we-space with them, so that
they feel felt.

Extend to them a field of permission where they can go through
their experience without any pressure to heal or to meet some
hidden agenda in order for you to stay close.  Resist the
temptation to "teach" them.  But instead, "reach" them, finally,
by way of the circuitry of empathic immersion.

It's going to be difficult to do this if we are out of touch with 
our own unlived life - with the unmet grief, the unheld sadness,
the unmetabolized rage.  If we have disavowed these visitors -
including through our endless [spiritual] theories and beliefs...

Of course the mind has such a hard time with this.  It just can't
believe it.  What about my theories and techniques and spiritual
beliefs and all of it?  I must convey it all and show them.

But the body knows.  The heart knows. The holy nervous system
knows.

The "other" is not in need of new information, theories, or spiritual
beliefs, but needs and wants and longs for you...  your nakedness,
your tenderness, your raw unfiltered being, your love.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
November Rose

 

For One Who Is Exhausted - John O'Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness takes over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

John O'Donohue
From - To Bless The Space Between Us

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Divine Wind...

This body, the vehicle I inhabit,
needs deep rest...

Relief - from the constant stimulation of life and living -
and the unbalance that it brings...
Shutting out the "worldwind" that spins
 out of control around me;
Not obliged to enter its chaotic storms,
I turn to the rhythmic pace of the Soul...
The Holy Space...

Even my Soul needs quiet "shelter"...
Respite - from the endless sucking winds of the demands of
others who are lost in an addiction to themselves...
Empty shells wanting to be filled;
grasping at me, drowning in their dark, distorted shadow,
as they try to pull me under to save them from themselves -

like hungry ghosts...

And my Heart needs to feel the Stillness
at the Core of my Being - again;
to hear the comforting sound of the Divine Wind,
restoring me to
sanity and wellness of being;
whispering Life into my Heart,
as I surrender
to its soft, silent Breeze...

Mystic Meandering
January 12, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Nature's Way - Fred LaMotte

The stillness
of the English primrose
in Winter,
furiously blooming
all by itself.
No gardener.
The rain turns to snow,
then back to rain,
without your decision,

or indecision.
No creator.
Morning does this.
Evening does that.
Yet somehow the moon
commingles with the sun
in a kind of diffuse
blue whiteness.
No painter.
And without your
assistance,
countless sentient beings
become themselves.
They choose, they act,
suffer consequences
and rewards,
and they are deeply grateful
to you
for this breath,
for this silence,
for not interfering.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Held - Matt Licata

When we are able to "hold" our experience as well as allow
ourselves to "be held" by something larger than our personal
self, we learn to trust ourselves and the workability of our lives,
even in the midst of uncertainty.  We become better able to
respond to the challenges life will inevitably provide and trust
deepens in the basic wisdom that underlies even our most trying
experiences...  Over time, as we illuminate and befriend our
experience at deeper levels, we invite its meaning and intelligence
to disclose itself...  symbolically and metaphorically and begin
to realize that even during times of intense struggle and suffering,
we are contained within something immense and ultimately
trustable...

We are always, already being held by something infinite and vast -
the contemplative and meditative traditions provide a portal
into this larger, already existing dimension of experience...

Matt Licata

from - A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

~

Photo from the internet

 

You can stop worrying now - Czeslaw Milosz

In advanced age, my health worsening,
I woke up in the middle of the night,
and experienced a feeling of happiness
so intense and perfect that in all my life
I had only felt its premonition.
It didn't obliterate consciousness:
the past which I carried was there,
together with my grief.
And it was suddenly included,
was a necessary part of the whole.

As if a voice were repeating:

"You can stop worrying now;
everything happened just as it had to.

You did what was assigned to you,
and you are not required anymore
to think of what happened long ago."

The peace I felt was a closing of accounts
and was connected with the thought of death.
The happiness on this side was
like an announcement of the other side.
I realized that this was an undeserved gift
and I could not grasp by what grace
it was bestowed on me.

Czeslaw Milosz

original title "Awakened"

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo from the internet

 

Ripples of Reality - Wilson & LaMotte

When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality
is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened
 and disoriented.  We tend to think they are mad..  Yet it is
neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same
 genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints,
the same conditioning, the same learning experiences.  We
are all living separate realities. That is why communication
fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are
so common.

Robert Anton Wilson
From - Prometheus Rising

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Your point of view and my point of view are equally "right"
and equally insignificant facets in the dazzling holographic
diamond of opposites.  Whatever is, the opposite also is, 
simultaneously arising.  Yet neither of these little flickers of
local light is Truth.  Truth is what illuminates the entire jewel.

If we spent less energy constricting ourselves to a point, and
instead, let ourselves expand into the Whole, each One of us
would illuminate the world with a silent glance of beauty, a
gentle touch of joy.

This is the effortless breath of grace: inhaling into wholeness,
exhaling into uniqueness, the All embodied in the particular.

It is a happening, not an intention.  It does not need to be
planned or affirmed.  Plans and affirmations get in the way.

Just give up trying to be any-thing else.  Let Be who you
actually Are, the entire quantum crystal of eternity in this
moment.

Your point of view, my point of view: infinitesimal ripples in
one ocean of cosmic Light.  We are not just waves, you are the
sea.  As knowings, we are very very small.  As Beings, we are
vast beyond imagining.  We include each other.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Funky Art - Mystic Meandering

 

The Dakini Speaks - Jennifer Welwood

My friends...
Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It's simple - how could we have missed it for so long?
Let's grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please. let's not be so shocked by them.
Let's not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life's only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.

This is the true ride - let's give ourselves to it!
Let's stop making deals for safe passage:
There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore...

Give everything for what cannot be lost...

Jennifer Welwood

~

Personal Note: I had to look up what a Dakini is :)
A Dakini, in the Tibetan tradition means "sky dancer/walker"
and is a tantric deity that might best be described as a female
embodiment of enlightened energy.  Dakinis are energetic
being in female form, evocative of the movement of
energy in space.

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

Primal Energy

 

The Unchanging Reality - Sattva Lynn

Art by Meganne Forbes

Don't try to control the noise;
just notice what is always Quiet -
which is the Noticing Itself.

That Noticing
is Loving Aliveness,
Pure Awareness or Light.

Only what is
total silence, stillness,
unmoving, and unchanging...
can possibly notice anything.

Or else it would be
another changing thing.
Therefore, what is unchanging
must be Eternal.

It must be Invulnerable -
meaning without influence.
It cannot be affected
or influenced in any way.
or it would change.

Just notice what is
always unmoving -
always Here to
notice anything at all.

That is where true power lies.
BECAUSE it does not change.
It is always what It Is.

Then you don't have to
try to control, alter
or overcome the noise
of thoughts and feelings,
and habits of identification.

You just keep noticing,
or open your heart
to the Unchanging Reality -
and ask inside how
to know it as your Self.

Sattva Lynn

With thanks to No Mind's Land

 

Change - Amoda Maa

The world is breaking, down or open, or both.  We stand at a
major bifurcation point, like never before seen in our human
story.  It is an inner and outer breaking point, a point of 
maximum stress.  A point when we the "system" (whichever
system we're talking about, it could be a physical thing like
a piece of metal or a psychological thing like the ego-mind
or a biological thing like a cellular organism or a collective
thing like a species) is under severe pressure to evolve.

But this evolution is not guaranteed.  The system could 
totally break down and devolve.  It could collapse into
insanity or chaos.  It could fall into unconsciousness, fear
and hysteria.  It could only barely survive.  Or it could start
the process of breakdown and at the critical point break through
to a new level.

Each of us is called to listen from a deeper place to what is
demanded by the reflection of the outer world.  Do we 
continue to operate from a divided state, a state of fear and
panic and noisy narratives that lock us into armored perspectives
and narrow pedestals?  Or do we open so wide that we can hold
the totality of the mess, the loss, the grief, the horror and the
agony in that openness, and then remain as this openness come
what may?  Can we truly take up the invitation for an inner
revolution of consciousness?

Today, a well of sorrow for the insanity that floods humanity
and keeps on coming.  Today, a whisper of light on the horizon
of darkness as the potential for transformation and evolution
beckons...

Amoda Maa

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo from the internet