The Invitation - Oriah

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become
shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can....dance with wildness and
let ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember
the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can hear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your
own soul...

I want to know if you can see beauty, even if it's not pretty,
every day, and if you source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver
of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much
money you have.  I want to know if you can get up, after the
night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done...

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be
here.  I want to know if you can stand in the center of the fire
with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have
studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside,
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if
you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Oriah
From: The Invitation

~

Art - Woman Dancing in the Fire
(looking down from above, her arms and hands held out
in front of her)
Done with Craypas oils and fingers

c.2012

 

Broken...

I'm going to hang a shingle out -

"Not Available Today
Taking Care of Myself.
And don't ask me about tomorrow..."

We'll see how far I get with that.

I'm finally being honest with myself,
and everybody else - well almost...

Is this unloving, uncompassionate;
to save one's sanity;
to not put others first;
to not be self-sacrificing...

I finally "let go" of having to be available,
trying to be available
I finally just stopped...

No more clenched teeth,
no tight jaw -
well almost
Tension drains from the body...
I stare into nothing

But it didn't last...
The "hungry ghosts" kept gnawing at me
with their crises...

~

Numbing sleep is wearing off...
And the ache in the stomach is
coming back, or maybe it's hunger -
or maybe I just can't stomach life the way it is anymore...

I cannot engage in life "as it is" anymore.
"Acceptance" of it is only cursory, momentary.
There are no "magic keys."

A change is needed...

Life as it is, as I'm living it, is a spirit killer
and I can't apply more "spiritual band aids"
- I bleed right through them.

~

So here I am in bed - waiting
for a different life to rise up within me;
one that nurtures and sustains me...

I'm  not able to attend to life,
I need Life to attend to me...
Is this self-centered, narcissistic,
indulging in my dark side?

Or Life-centered...
I don't know...

I only know I'm broken...
Coming face to face with my brokenness...

Although the "spiritual pundits" will
tell me "I" can't be broken;
that somewhere within there is an
"unbrokenness" that can't be broken;
once found, never lost.

But the broken pieces are still there...

So I'm embracing my brokenness
and letting it be real,
letting it be seen - no longer hidden
behind "spiritual words."

"Not Available"
"Broken"

Mystic Meandering

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

In Difficult Times - Kathleen Knipp

Let go of the belief that 'I have to muscle this through' -
and let yourself be held...

This moment - if it could be different it would be different...

Everything changes...

Underneath the changing thoughts, emotions, beyond form
there is This - the unchanging, unspeakable Essence -
familiar as the breath - and a deep knowing that everything
is okay...  in the silence that is present, even as the soundscape
unfolds - a stillness that is present even as movement arises;
the silence and stillness that is Isness in all form...

Kathleen Knipp
gems from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
called: "A practice for difficult times"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

This is Not the End - Fred LaMotte

This is not the end of the world, but the beginning.  A time to
do something New.  Old ideologies, religions, political concepts
of left and right, dry up and fall like brittle leaves, all swept
away, destroyed by a gentle breath of Presence.

You are not "shifting" into a new dimension, a new age, or a
higher level of consciousness.  You are dissolving all dimensions
into one whole awareness, which cannot be divided into levels,
planes, star-ages, or degrees of initiation.  You must evaporate
 these illusions into energy itself.  This is your real Dharma,
your real Duty.  It transforms the earth.

This alchemy does not happen in times.  The effortless sinking
of Presence into deeper Presence has no duration...

Simply turn from your fearful angry mind to the space between
your thoughts, which is the space between the stars, which is the
radiant clarity of an open heart.  Then let the whole creation
burst form that cornucopia of emptiness.

Root down in the hollow of your seed, be naked, drop every
garment of belief.  Let go of your hope and your story.  Relax
into the divine darkness of uncertainty, the wound of not knowing.
The the glory of ten billion suns will blossom from the stillness
between your heartbeats.

Miracles 

happen in the field of the effortless.  Repose in the 
diamond point of no-thing, where exhalation ends and
inhalation begins.  This is the glowing dimension-less bindhu,
the seed of the wild flower of grace, just an inch or two in front
of your chest.

Breathe down into That, and for one eternal instant be breathless.
Galaxies whirl out of this space.  It is the loam of stars. Here,
the earth is refreshes and recreated.  Come and see for yourself.
Bring all your relations.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

 

A Thousand Ways to Pray - Fred LaMotte

Smiling we know
is a form of meditation.
Weeping is also a prayer.
Worry is beseeching
the Whirler of All
for the things you don't want.
When you are angry or bitter,
the purest devotion is your belly
without naming it.
Let the fire of outrage
burn a hold through your forehead.
This is profound samadhi.
Be the thole.
Yes, there are ten thousand
ways to pray.
Today is sacred
because the planets are ajar.

Your horoscope looks like
the web of a spider
who fell into a plastic
Starbuck's cup
and imbibed caffeine.
The little dipper spills
mad lukewarm light,
making your plans collapse.
Your mind says, "everything 
is going wrong,"
but your gut just savors
the bitter, the salt, the sweet,
the flavor of a rainy sidewalk.

Be patient with indigestion, friend.
It is the sum of all prime numbers
dissolving in the taste 
of silence.

Angels of dust sprinkle themselves
over your cauldron of moon-blood.
Your mind gives up its pasquinade,
the falsetto soliloquy of reason
which is only the echo
of a voice that stopped speaking
before you were born.
Finally you can fall
into this breath,
the breath of grieving,
sighing, murmuring "yes"

to the dark.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

If you pray because
you believe it will
change the earth,
don't waste this
precious breath.
If you pray because
your mind is at war
with the way things are,
then solve your mind,
not the world.

Fred LaMotte

 

"Ways of Seeing" - Interview with David Whyte

...I recognized in my Zen meditation moments of inhabiting
a greater identity.  The real discipline is to remain in that
greater identity and to sustain that sense of presence - so that
you see the essence of [things] that affects you very deeply when
you allow yourself to watch and deepen that attention...

What is asked of human beings on a daily basis, is to get out
of ourselves by paying attention to things other than ourselves.
To see in a way which is other than the way we have used to
name the world, other than the way we have been taught to see
the world, and then as a result have ourselves be seen by the world.

As in all great contemplative traditions, the  most nourishing thing
you can do is pay attention to [you immediate environment], but
it will also break your life apart, because the fixed identity that
had named the world and wanted it to be a certain way, in order
to prevent us from experiencing heartbreak, is found to be too
small.  To name/label is a smaller way of seeing.

Our way of staying safe is to assign names to what in fact cannot
be named.  It is the precise reason why poetry is so difficult to
write.  Because you're actually going to a part of you that doesn't
know what to say.  ...you are going to a part of you that radically
doesn't know and you are going to pay attention and observe 
from that place.  Then at that meeting place between what you
think is you and what you think is not you, that is where the
conversation happens.  And when you speak that conversation
out loud it comes out as poetry.  It is the same undoing of your
surface personality...

Interviewer: So how does one perceive the essence of things?

...listening is a deep form of looking...  I am looking at something
to see what it is saying to me, without imposing a voice upon it.

The implication of truly seeing is that the rest of the world must 
be perceiving the miraculous in you.  Which is quite humbling.
The only place to hold that sense of miraculousness without ego
is in silence...

Perhaps once you have established a relationship with silence,
with deep seeing and listening, then you can live in a way in
which you are not harmed by constant contraction [from noise
and chaos].  There is a reason why monasteries are quiet places.
There is a reason why artists go to quiet places, even when it is
just a quiet room to create.

Excerpts from "Ways of Seeing" - Interview with
David Whyte
by Judith van Leeuwen
From See All This
Sept 2022
with thanks to Kim Manley Ort

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Primordial Intimacy - a meandering...

"The 'key', in my experience, one of many keys actually,
is constantly 'returning' awareness or attention to the
awareness of Primordial Silence, Primordial Presence,
Primordial  Life before form.  I am constantly challenged
to "wake up" and remember this..."

This came out of a conversation with my husband in the
face of life's challenges that are currently occurring here
personally on an ongoing basis - for years actually -
that I feel pulling me away from this deeper sense of
Intimacy with "The Silence" within - which is what
I have been posting about recently - as a way to remind
myself.  The Primordial Silence of Life calls to me,
like an old Friend - inviting me, waiting for me to
respond, to come and be still - which has been almost
been impossible the last few months...  

Intimacy with this Primordial Silence is what nourishes
me - when I can be in that space.  It is the elixir of Life -
dissolving all resistance, and anxiety about what is, the
way life is right now, what it should be, and allows
the veils that keep me from this Divine Communion of
Silence to drop away...  But I'm not there.  I am riding
the "Mind Bus" with its stories and fears.

It is a conscious endeavor to remember that no matter
what is going on, there is always Intimacy with this
Primordial Silence within, even if not felt.  I just need to
 keep returning to It: The awareness of Primordial Intimacy
within myself...

Mystic Meandering

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Hush of "The Mystery"...

The Hush of "The Mystery"
silently moves through time and form...

Can you feel it? ~
this silent hush
that embraces you
that communes with you
even when you don't know it?

It waits for you to stop and listen ~
to sense Its Hush
surrounding you,
infusing you ~
beyond hearing,
beyond seeing,
beyond knowing.

It comes in sudden,
unexpected 
breezes of awareness
wafting through your being ~
in and out of your noticing,
but never really gone ~

It invites you to enter
the cosmic seduction of
Its Love,
to
follow Its Silence
more deeply,
into the inner cavern
of Its Heart
that awaits you
in the depths
of Its repose

Succumb
to what awaits you

in
the Heart of "The Mystery"

Love's Illumination...

Mystic Meandering
May 2015

~

"The Mystery", like Life Itself, is ever unfolding,
ever revealing ItSelf.
We are always in a state of discovering "The Mystery"
and what It is revealing to us - ongoingly.

What It offers each of us is unique, yet universal;

Speaking directing to our Hearts...

When I speak of "The Mystery"
it is always from my own experience of it,
for I am acutely aware
that I *know* nothing *about* "The Mystery",
only how "The Mystery" reveals Itself
to this Heart...

Namastse

_/\_

~

Photo - South Pole Aurora Borealis

 

Holy Hush - Yahia Lababidi

Silence is the inescapable force in our lives - a constant presence.
Contemplatives, poets, and thinkers alike, have long hinted at
a wisdom beyond words, straining the limits of language
and sense, to describe the ineffable.

Silence is not the absence of failure of words, but instead
somehow exists before and beyond representation, a primordial
essence that lurks beneath our constructed world.  In the immortal
formulation of Tao Te Ching: 'Returning to the root is silence/
Silence is returning to being.'

It is in silence, that things patiently unfurl, open up and trust us
with their secrets or reveal their hidden natures...

Silence can be difficult to define.  For it is not merely the
absence of sound, but may be perceived as an actual physical
presence - a holy hush,  the elemental silence found in the
natural world, where Time appears to collapse and one is 
afforded glimpses into Eternity. Silence is the solemn 
companion of nature and can presence like the very
pulse of Being.

Krishnamurti describes this mystical state: 'And it is only
where there is space and silence that something new can be
that is untouched by time/thought.  That may be the most holy,
the most sacred - may be...  You cannot give it a name.  It is
perhaps the unnamable.'

One is said to 'enter' and 'emerge' from this state, as though it
were an actual physical territory.  We cannot forcibly break-in
and enter, or rush through this portal to arrive at a meditative-
reflective state; but instead must patiently wait to be granted
access...

The Christian philosopher, Max Picard said:
"Silence is listening.  And as attentive practitioners of this
metaphysical art may sense, it can sometimes be unclear who
is doing the actual listening...  us, or Silence itself...

Otherwise, dissimilar spiritual traditions - Hindu, Buddhist,
Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Native American - all
agree on the importance of observing silence as a tool for 
inner transformation...

Yahia Lababidi
Egyptian-Lebanese poet and "thinker"

Excerpts from an article entitled:
"Notes On Silence" 

With thanks to No Mind's Land for the link :)

 

The Culture of Noise - Yahia Lababidi

Perhaps more than ever before, it has become necessary to
speak up in praise of silence, as an attempt to redress the
balance in a cacophonic contemporary culture that appears
 suspicious of outright contemptuous silence.  Living as we
do, in the busyness of this modern world - hooked up, beeping
and under the false imperative of needing to keep in touch with
everything - we find ourselves in the unhealthy situation of 
losing our silences and the sustenance that comes with them.

So we desperately rush, hurling ourselves from one activity
to the next, without ever pausing to dilute the concentration
of our experience with reflection.

...erosion of silence in our lives is unmistakably connected
with our noise-ravaged nerves, of increased stress levels, as
well as increasingly shortened attention spans, which affects
our ability to both think and feel deeply in order to sift through
the deluge of stimulus that informs our hurried and harried days.

Previously a portal to silence, the culture of reading is currently
imperiled in favor of "information snacking" to accommodate
our hectic schedules.  This coupled with the media's shrill and
insistent competition for our attention, makes it necessary to
guard our silences even more vigilantly.

If French philosopher Blaise Pascal is correct, that all of
humanity's problem stem from man's inability to sit quietly in
a room alone,' then the proliferation of talk and reality shows
may be seen as symptomatic of our cultural malaise. Namely,
reality shows, which actually serve to distract us from reality,
or being present to ourselves, are precisely a reflection of
our collective 'inability to sit quietly in a room alone.'

.....noise too can be the absence of sound.  Noise is the silent
invasion of our inner space by the clutter of undigested
information and unsorted emotions that pile up throughout
the days and weeks. With our private spaces thus encroached
upon, we risk becoming alienated from ourselves until our
lives are something foreign to us.  Against the odds, of what at
times appears to be a conspiracy of noise, we must try to assert
our birthright to retreat, reflect, and regenerate.

Solitude tends to produce an understanding of our own
limitations, and forces us to seek our own counsel in dealing
with them.

Yet, silence, like any controlled substance, must be handled with
care.  Initiates, or masters of silence - such as solitaries, thinkers,
monks, hermits, and ascetics - have long known how to mine it
for fortitude and insight, or to arrive at ecstasis.  But it is up to
each individual to determine how much is desirable and useful...

Just as the monastery and institutionalized silence are not for
everyone, so too extended travels to the foreign land of silence

are not for tourists.  Striking out fearlessly into interior territories
is not for dilettantes, or those less practiced with deeper
experiences of prolonged silence...

The aim, then, is to try to find that healthy balance - between
silent fasts and noise feasts...

Yahia Lababidi
Excerpts from an article
called
"Notes on Silence"

With thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Shared Brokeness - Desmond Tutu

We are able to forgive because we are able to
recognize our shared humanity.  We are able to
recognize that we are all fragile, vulnerable,
flawed human beings capable of thoughtlessness
and cruelty.  We also recognize that no one is born
evil and that we are all more than the worst thing
we have done in our lives.

A human life is a great mixture of goodness, beauty
cruelty, heartbreak, indifference, love, and so much more.
We want to divide the good from the bad, the saints from
the sinners, but we cannot.  All of us share the core qualities
of our human nature, and so sometimes we are generous
and sometimes selfish.  Sometimes we are thoughtful and
other times thoughtless, sometimes we are kind and sometimes
cruel.  This is not a belief.  This is a fact.

If we look at any hurt, we can see a larger context in which
the hurt happened.  If we look at any perpetrator, we can
discover a story that tells us something about what led up
to that person causing harm.  It doesn't justify the person's
actions; it does provide some context...

No one is born a liar or a rapist or a terrorist.  No one is born
full of hatred.  No one is born full of violence.  No one is
born in any less glory or goodness than you or I.

But on any given day, in any given situation, in any painful
life experience, this glory and goodness can be forgotten,
obscured, or lost.  We can easily be hurt and broken, and
it is good to remember that we can just as easily be the 
ones who have done the hurting and the breaking.  We are
all members of the same human family...

In seeing the many ways we are similar and how our lives
are inextricably linked, we can find empathy and compassion.
In finding empathy and compassion, we are able to move
in the direction of forgiving.

Ultimately it is humble awareness of our own humanity
that allows us to forgive:

We are, every one of us flawed and so very fragile.  I know
that, were I born a member of the white ruling class at that
time in South Africa's past, I might easily have treated someone
with the same dismissive disdain with which I was treated.  I
know given the same pressures and circumstances, I am capable
of the same monstrous acts as any other human on this 
achingly beautiful planet.  It is this knowledge of my own frailty
that helps me find compassion, empathy and similarity,
and forgiveness for the frailty and cruelty of others.

Desmond Tutu
and Mpho A. Tutu

from: The Book of Forgiving:
The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves
and the World

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

Photo - thanks to Uradiance

 

Remembering My Origins...

Molten golden Light
splays itself out within a fathomless darkness,
like a million jewels tumbled into the Stillness of the Universe;
dancing particles of Divine Illumination...

The shutter of Infinity opens and the Light
imprints its glittering image within Divine Darkness.
In a moment of stillness, a moment of no breath,
a moment in the timelessness of deep space,
The Light and the Darkness are one...

Int this space of Primordial Existence
The Darkness and Light intermingle
in the purity of cosmic fusion;
forever "blended" - like twilight...
Neither the enemy of the  other,
neither opposed to the other,
both expressing the same Source...

In the depths of The Deep
there is a dance of Life -
an inexpressible expression of
the Aliveness of the Absolute -
revealed in time as a movement of creation,
a movement of birth,
a movement and breath of
Light and Darkness - breathing as one...

In "Deep Space" - the Primordial Womb,
the Light and the Dark
exist together within the wholeness of
the Infinite Mystery
replicating ItSelf
through eons of time...

Mystic Meandering
April 2001

~

Earth-birthed in this body 73 years ago today (10/5/1949)
To Infinity and Beyond!  :)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Peace in the Attic ...

Photo by Dan V on Unsplash.com

I am grateful for the Quiet in this "House"...
Immersing me in the Quiet within;
The Stillness - with only the whir of the ceiling fan
and occasional distant sounds that somehow soothe...

It's as if the "House" is not my house -
but houses me anyway -
like the body "housing" my spirit,
allowing me to dwell here,
living in its spaces...

Its space holds my "things" - that
aren't "my" things - only accumulated
symbols of a life lived - spiritually, creatively,
intuitively, meaningfully -
mementos for someone's attic someday.

The "House" is still - yet Alive,
breathing in and out with the breeze;
curtains softly sway at the window...

When there is peace in the Attic of the mind there are
no addicting stories, no ruminating on the past, no trying
to fix anyone's problems - 
just quiet peace...

"The Mystery" of Life itself also
inhabits this "House"
- untouched - undisturbed -
filling every closet, drawer and cabinet;
and every space of my Being,
with its Fullness...

~

A dog barks sharply, breaking the Quiet...

But the "House", and its inhabitant, remain still -
breathing with the breeze...

Mystic Meandering
Sept, 20, 2022

 

Stirrings - Author Unknown

The Cosmic skies are stirring, there is change in the air
that may awaken us to some new truths.

How beautiful that we don't yet know the way.
How beautiful that there are elements of life
that still confuse us, make us feel deeper than
we could have imagined, and remind us of
what is real and pure in our hearts.

How beautiful, that even though we don't yet
know "the way", we can spread our wings,
shift our awareness, and trust that there is a
new unfolding that is destined to come.

It is the journey of metamorphosis that we
are being guided to walk...

Whatever comes, know that it is part of how we
move through our own cycles - into the dark
night of the soul, and then finally, into spiritual
wisdom...

Sometimes we need intensity to drive the
vehicle of transformation.

While we want to remain strong and centered,
we also don't want to limit or cut ourselves off
from allowing whatever comes to move us,
change us, and transform us.

We have to remember to keep shifting our
awareness of what life is and what role we are
here to play; to allow ourselves to keep questioning,
to keep allowing things to shock and surprise us, for
they are often the fuel for our continued unfolding.

Author Unknown
found on Facebook

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering