This Magical Mystery - Kathleen Knipp

Give yourself fully to yourself...just as you are...

Feel fully this mystery of existence; your thoughts,
emotions, the breath, sensations in the body.

Just listening - whole body listening.
Nothing to "fix", or resolve, understand,
repress, or negotiate - or do.

Just simply Be.
Being just Is.

Surrender to just being,
just receiving, listening...

Feel comforted and at ease.
The fundamental feeling of ease
can be accessed - feeling held and supported.

Just Rest.  Just Be - Naturally...
Living this magical mystery.

Excerpts from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
"This Magical Mystery"

by Kathleen Knipp

Pathless Yoga

~

I find Yoga Nidra to be a wonderful way to rest the nervous
system and connect more deeply within in stressful times.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Embrace the Day...

Rest Dear Heart, Rest...

Embrace the day with Rest,

with clarity, with ease of mind...

Feel the warm, fluid rhythm
of Life around you;
upholding you,

carrying you
through the day,
landing you safely
on evening's shore,
through the twilight
and into the night...

And out of the darkness
a shining light...

Rest , Dear Heart, Rest...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 29, 2018

~

Photo - Wave Curl Mandala

~

In 2018 I did an "8 Day Challenge" presented by
Donna Iona Drozda, artist and educator from
Wren House Studio, on becoming aware of our
natural rhythms with life; how we orient ourselves
to the rhythm of each day.  The above mandala was
done as a part of the process, representing the rising wave
of my Inner Rhythm reaching outward to embrace the light/day.

The poem came as a result of drawing the image.

 

Embrace the Darkness - unknown

Everything is embraced/held by "The Mystery",
including what we experience as "darkness."

Nothing is excluded,
even the "darkness"

however that manifests
in our minds.

You have to be willing to dance
with the darkness,
which only means that
you are willing to meet it,
to be with it,
and not try to push it away;
not resist it as something
absent of Light,
but seeing that the 
darkness
is not the opposite
of Light.

Just dance with whatever
shows up...

The darkness is also
part of the dance.

Nothing is excluded.

Everything is embraced.

It is Love dancing with ItSelf...

Unknown author

~

Photo - Light and Dark Vortex Art
done with fingers
MM - 2011

 

Embracing Your Wholeness - Oriah

Embracing your wholeness is the greatest gift you can give...

Christine Wushke
Freely Human

~

All things are made of the same sacred presence - stillness...

All things emanate from and return to and are never
separated from a vast sacred wholeness...

This spaciousness that we are is not indifferent to the
suffering that we feel when we have forgotten what we are.
It reaches out to us, calls to us...

It is the Great Mystery.
It is what we are made of, and what everything and everyone
is made of.  It is what we participate in with every breath...

We will never be happy or truly be able to live and love fully
until we find our way of living from an awareness of the deep
stillness at the center of what we are... 
- Our Essential Nature -
which is wakefulness, awareness, love, peace, truth , beauty...

Look at your own life from within, that sense of quiet stillness
that you are.  You will see this inner essence, this innocence,
like a bright thread woven throughout the center of your life.

Living it consciously is why you are here...

Oriah Mountain Dreamer
From: The Call

~

Photo from a greeting card

 

The Embrace...

Everything is held in the Embrace of the Luminous Unmanifest...

~

This Eternal Embrace is
a dynamic stillness of Being
that holds everything as it is;
a holding space for everything to just Be...

~

We are held in this space of Divine Embrace -
a Vastness that just Is...

~

There is only ever the Embrace -
a deep compassionate Embrace for all life,
for all that is - as it is...

"The Mystery" embracing Itself in every expression of ItSelf...

~

Everything is suspended
in this ubiquitous space...

Rest in this space within...

And when we emerge from our rest,
we realize that we ARE the Embrace -
embracing Itself.

We ARE fluidly and interchangeably the Embrace -

Divine Intimacy...

Sweet Serenity...

Notes from my journal - 2009

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Tea with "Z"...

Today I had tea with "Z" - a wonderful Fellow Traveler who helps
me to see the "Truth" beyond my life-experience.  He helps me 
unwind the mind when I get a little too wound up in the thought
function of trying to figure it all out, and in my over vigilance about
the words I'm using, trying not to sound "dualistic, or "non-dualistic."
I sometimes find it hard having tea with "Z" because he tends to
deconstruct all the conceptual fabrications that I have built around
myself.  He points out to me, in the most non-judgmental ways,
where I am still hiding behind the words - defending, explaining,
clarifying - in an attempt to be "spiritually correct" so as not to
offend, so as to be understood, and where I'm still caring about how
I'm being seen.  Sometimes in this allowing myself to be seen in
the places where I am still attached there is an incredible feeling of
vulnerability, and a wanting to contract, to not see or be seen.  But
today "Z" invited me to see in a way that helped me let go of all
that.  (And here I want to explain that "we" really don't "let go" of
anything.  It dissolves when it is truly seen.  So you see the kinds
of word games I get into here, wanting to be sure you know that
I'm not caught in some dualistic way of thinking and expressing...:)

Anyway, what "Z" offered me in all my wrangling and entanglement
in thought and words today is this:  Who is having the thought that
you have to figure it out, that you have to know, that you have to be
vigilant about your words, about life?  What part of you says what
you know is not enough, that who you are is not enough, that the
way you express is not "right"?  In the moments of silence that
followed as I "checked in" internally (tea with "Z" is very
experiential:), I met the "internal monitor" - this hyper-vigilance
about languaging and expression, the "aspect" that tends to want to
monitor everything I do and say - and - I met the belief in 
inadequacy, in "not good enough."  And in that moment of meeting
them I saw that all there actually is, is Embrace.  There is only a
deep, compassionate Embrace for these "aspects" of the self. There
is just Embrace embracing, holding this vigilance, this
inadequacy, this not good enough belief.  In the seeing of this
all the contractions around the concepts relaxed - let go of me. 
In that moment of seeing I realized that what I had been struggling
with doesn't matter - the words, the vigilance, the inadequacy -
because it's all just being embraced - all the thinking and feeling
and expressing and doing.
There's only Embrace of all that is, as it is.  There is only
"The Mystery" revealing ItSelf in every expression.  It was what
I bring my attention to that fuels it into a fire of thought vigilance,
or thought frenzy that obscures the seeing of the Embrace.  I contract
into, become fixated on, and identified with those objects of attention,
unable to see beyond them; seemingly unable to experience the
Embrace of it all.

In this incredible opening of a doorway into seeing clearly there was
a sense of translucence, of everything being seen through - as it is -
just thought forms, or objects in Embrace, in Consciousness, in 

Awareness (sorry, the word thing again :) that are utterly translucent.
And with this also came the realization that I don't need to to explain or
clarify anything.  And then "Z"'s absolutely lovely words emerged into
clarity: "Don't focus on the words, on the thoughts, on the concepts, just
keep bringing your attention to the Embrace that holds it all."

In wordless wonder...

July 30, 2009

"Z" is Mitch Rosacker, now a professional, what I call a "perspective
changer" - or - "spiritual therapist" :) - although he may cringe at those
words.  He has his own practice called Self Discovery Studio - which
is lovingly known as the Ashram of Inverness. His apporach is
spiritually creative, sensitive to where you are, insightful, intuitive,
 encouraging and freeing.  He is also an artist by nature using art as a
way of opening to "The Mystery" within... 
I've sat with him many times over the years.

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
enhanced with Luna Pic

 

Terrible/Beautiful - Fred LaMotte

Everyone carries a dark secret.
We do not know its name.
But it's the same secret in all of us.
Terrible. Beautiful.

Sometimes we smile to hide it
because we are each afraid
that this is our secret alone.

But I know that your smile
covers the darkness
because it is mine.

[.....]

It is better that you look into my tears.
It is better that I look into yours.
The night embraced
blossoms into dawn.
A strange grace, is it not?

[.....]

How the soft wound
of courage glows
through this not trying
to hide it.

And a deeper secret:
I gaze from your heart,
you gaze from mine.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

At the Edge - Czeslaw Milosz

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map leads him there.

Or perhaps memory.  Once long ago in the sun,
When snow first fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong without reason,
Joy of the eyes.  Everything was the rhythm

Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast in motion.

He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

Czeslaw Milosz

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Feel What You Feel - Fred LaMotte

I don't need you to change me.

Just help me Be
who I am.

It is good
and very good for me
to feel precisely what I feel,
this cloud of grief,
this downpour of despair,
without any names or notes
to self.

Only let me dissolve
in a healing rain
that penetrates all my shadows.
A liquid sliver of sun may arise
on the jagged edge of mourning.

Or not...

Now I can feel everything
because I have tasted
the night.

How a bud bursts, spilling
beauty from its wound.

How the chrysalis shatters,
frees the golden
moth from her season
of uncertainty.
How a single tear
becomes the sky.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

These are difficult times for the Earth and a lot of people 
on the Earth now are suffering. There's a density intensity
on the planet now.  I feel it.  It is difficult to be
"lighthearted" and celebratory when so many people are
suffering.  The Earth itself and the people on it are unsettled,
and many are in darkness within, affecting the whole Cosmos -
the whole order of life.

What brings you to your knees?
What causes you to suffer inside?

What happened to empathy for those who are suffering in our midst?

My neighbor hung himself in his garage over a month ago.  No one
knew he was suffering.  Now his wife suffers.

Those who suffer do not need "fixing."
They need our heart...

_/\_
Namaste

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Reorientation - May Sarton

I am not ready to die.

But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.
I am moving
Toward a new freedom
Born of detachment,
And a sweeter grace -
Learning to let go.

I am not ready to die.

But as I approach sixty (73 😊)
I turn my face toward the sea.
I shall go where tides replace time,
Where my world will open to a far horizon.

Over the floating, never-still flux and change.
I shall go with the changes,
I shall look far out over golden grasses
And blue waters...

There are no farewells.

[.....]

May Sarton

With thanks to Death Deconstructed

Photo from the Internet

 

The Inner Flame - Duran, Lanzetta, Granger

If we can hear LIFE we can hear Silence
because the in intensity of this pure energy
manifests itself through the sound of
Existence.

Yolande Duran

~

Rather than a detriment, it can be healthy to be alone.
In solitude, we can find the Heart of hearts,
the inextinguishable flame that burns brightly within.

The call to silence and solitude occurs int he depth of
the soul and is not dependent on or subject to whether
the seeker resides in a monastic enclosure, wears the
proper religious garment, or spends hours in prayer
[or meditation].

Beverly Lanzetta

~

You must step outside society's norms.
You must be willing to abandon everything...

every fixed perception of reality...

True holiness comes from the direct experience
of communion - not from following prescribed actions.

Ivan Grander
Poetry Chaikhana

 

Soul Fury - Shams Tabriz

Art by Andrew Ostrovsky

born in Odessa, Ukraine
lives in the U.S.

What is your origin?
The Source?What is spirit?

Spend your life finding out...
other mysteries will come clear.

"God" is depth.  And you, you are also deep.
The same depth is in you.

Don't worry about terminology, pre-existence,
the original face, spirit, soul.

Search within yourself,  The great mystery is there.

Excerpts from the Sayings of Shams Tabriz

from: Soul Fury by Rumi and Shams Tabriz

With thanks to No Minds's Land

 

A Creative Universe - Thomas Berry

Empirical inquiry into the universe reveals that from its
beginnings in the galactic system to its earthly expression
in human consciousness the universe carries within itself
a spiritual as well as physical dimension.  Otherwise human
consciousness emerges out of nowhere.  In reality the human
activates the most profound dimension of the universe itself,
its capacity to reflect on and celebrate itself in conscious
self-awareness.

[we need to]...establish a deeper understanding of the spiritual
dynamics of the universe as revealed through our own empirical
insight into the mysteries of its functioning...

When we create, it is not purely out of ourselves, but out of
a continuation of the creativity of the universe...


Thomas Berry
From: Dream of the Earth

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Intuition is the mainline to the Universe. It's how the
Universe communicates.  It's the flow of Awareness
that comes from the Universe...

my husband :)

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Mystery and Ambiguity - Rod MacIver & MM

The spiritual ground that underlies what is not well articulated
can be just as powerful as the spiritual ground under something
that is carefully thought and executed.

Maybe the spiritual ground under what is not well articulated
has the potential to be even more profound because 
spirituality almost by definition involves mystery and ambiguity.
The closer one gets to the truth, the more ambiguous things get.

Rod MacIver
Heron Dance

~

No one can define what another's "spiritual" experience of
"The Mystery"/The Divine/The Ineffable, etc., should be or is...

It is my experience that each of us experiences "The Mystery"
uniquely, based on our individual beliefs, conditioning, approach,
and spiritual needs at any given moment.  Also in my experience,
"The Divine" (however defined) comes to us in a way we can
hear and receive; or in the way that we call to "The Divine."

"It" shows up in different "forms" or "energies" so that we may
recognize It.  The difficulty comes in trying to articulate that
experience...

My expressions of "The Mystery" (as I now call "The Divine")
reflect my own experience of that conundrum at any given time.
I don't "decide" to write a poem, poems emerge from time to time.
Sometimes the words are often the words that come to me during
silence or meditation.  I do however sometimes "play" with the
words hoping to make a poem less ambiguous, less obscure, less
nebulous, or esoteric.  They merely reflect my inner experience of
"The Mystery", which is by nature obscure, obtuse, and nebulous;
and which cannot be adequately articulated - as one cannot
explain "The Mystery."  They are not meant to be directives to
anyone else, only possible inspirations for any like-hearted souls
who happen to read and resonate with the words expressed...

Namaste

_/\_

A Humble Lover of "The Mystery"

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

a "mystake" :)

 

A New Dance - a meandering

I thought I had to follow a prescribed path of "enlightenment."
I thought I had to climb the highest "spiritual" mountain seeking
the "Truth."
I thought I had to find the "right" door, and then
I thought I had to knock and beg for it to open.
I thought I was being kept from the "Truth" -
that only the privileged "spiritual" elite could know...

My experience showed me otherwise...

I only had to turn inward to the Inner Sanctuary of my own Being
and truly See what was there - the "Mystery" Itself...

Over many years of "turning inward" to the Silence at my core,
I discovered that I did not need to be "purified" in order to be an
expression of "The Mystery"; I did not have to become a "perfect"
human being, or polish my heart.  My psychological wounds, my
samskaras, and conditioning still arise... and yet - I realized that
I am still a "Divine Vibration" in form...  Every part of me, and you,
vibrates subtly with the living Cosmos - even if not directly felt at
any given moment. 

An incredible mystery of Being...

In the deeper spaces of our Being we are enveloped in "The Mystery"
from which each one of our unique expressions of 
that "Mystery" arises...

Sometimes all I do to feel it, is to sit quietly in the deep Silence at
the core of my Being, my Inner Sanctuary, listening and attuning to
the Primordial Rhythm:
The Deeper Silence
The inbreath and the outbreath,
the Stillness of Being,
The Rhythm of birth, life, death, expansion and contraction.
In that space I feel suspended (held) in that Cosmic Rhythm; a
self-creating energy, expressing the rhythm of the
"Mystery" Itself...

And there I discovered that the Essence of our very Being is beyond
the intermediaries of the earthly "murtis" of our worship...

I am having to learn to move to a different Rhythm now,

to dance with the Mysteries of the Inner Cosmos...
Immersing myself in the Primordial Energy of
an Alive Cosmos - ever-unfolding into a new
Cosmology of Being...

Mystic Meandering
March 29, 2022

~

Photo from the Internet

Sing Your Song - Progoff/Sinetar

A creative journey grows out of the seed of
one's song.  We need that song from you,
the song that only you can sing.

Ira Progoff

~

.....power comes from harmony with [our] inner
world...  The relationship is nurtured in silence, in
solitude, in reflection...

People who overcome great difficulties have a trusted,
trusting relationship with themselves...  They are aware
of the inner core of themselves that is always there,
that never dies...

Marsha Sinetar

With thanks to Heron Dance

 

You are "The Force" - Don Miguel Ruiz

You are Life,
passing through your body,
passing through your mind,
passing through your soul.

Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect,
but because you can feel that Life, you find out that you are
the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes
the hummingbird fly from flower to flower.

You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every
animal, vegetable, and rock.  You are that force that moves
the wind and the wind breathes through your body.

The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that foce,
and that is what you are.

You are Life.

Don Miguel Ruiz

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo: Mystic Meandering

Christmas Cactus flower zoom blurred :)

 

Just Breathe...

Late at night,
at the edge of sleep,

I fall into the Rhythm of The Breath…

Content to just breathe ~

The silence outside the window

is pungent,

leaving me rapt,

sinking more deeply

into timelessness beyond time,

letting go of thought,

just awareing the stillness
of the night;

being breathed by

 The Silence of the Unknown…

I hear the sound of the ceiling fan

breathing its own whirling rhythm…

feeling the breeze of its breath

gently move the strands of my hair…

Just breathing ~

And "I" am suddenly gone…
unaware of my – self ~

slipping off the edge

into slumber;
lost in the Breath

until

just

before
the

rising
of

the

next

day

Again finding my-self

at the space at the edge,

before awakening ~
aware of…

Just Breathing ~

Aware of just Being…

Conscious of the Stillness

before thought...

Just breathing ~

Mystic Meandering

July 15, 2015