Free The Body - Gabrielle Roth

We are born into bodies that are fluid and free.
Yet for most of us, this state of grace is sadly short lived.
Judgement, emotional wounds, fear and loss become
stored deep inside our muscles and bones, leaving us
with shoulders that sag, hips that are locked, arms that
can't reach out, hearts that beat behind a stone wall.  When
we move our bodies we shake up firmly rooted systems of
thought, old patterns of behavior and emotional responses
that just don't work anymore.  Rhythm, breath, music and
movement become tools for seeing, then freeing, the habits
that hold us back.  When we free the body, the heart begins
to open.  When the body and the heart taste freedom, the
mind won't be far behind.  And when we put the psyche
into motion, it will start to heal itself.

Gabrielle Roth

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
rock balance

 

Resting in the Womb of Creation - Kathleen Knipp

...The body is one radiant mass of Aliveness,
the Aliveness that just Is...  Feel the pulse of the Universe throb
through, giving up any struggle, any need to do or know; to 
figure out...  Just resting, being breathed...

The natural flow of thoughts and emotions will continue...
Slip behind or below the thoughts and emotions like an
ocean with waves and froth on the top - surface turbulence.
Sink down beneath, deep down, below all the movement
of the mind, resting in absolute stillness; the vast silence
of the Ocean of Pure Awareness, Pure Beingness...

There may be a sense of being pulled, drawing you deeper
and deeper into the silence, into a stillness beyond
comprehension and words, receding into the womb of
creation before time, deeply resting, being held in a feeling
of ease and well-being that is familiar...

Kathleen Knipp
Excerpt from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
Resting in the Womb of Creation

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Holy Silence - Robert Sardello

There is a living Silence that hears the cry of the Soul...

...a sacred depth of being that asks us to enter an inner
clearing that makes room for new life, including living,
breathing Silence.  In this dimension where time has become
space, life is enlivened.

\

The Silence sends us on a different pilgrimage.  It guards
the heart's fire and teaches us to speak from within with a
language that is imbued with the Sacred.  Words thus
nurtured in this Holy Silence fly forth to lead us back to
the Silence from which we were born.

As we enter the mystery of Silence, its presence resonates
throughout the fibers of our flesh to the soul inwardly and
to the cosmos outwardly.  The inward silence of solitude
meets up with the Great Silence of Cosmic Wisdom.  When
we do not cultivate this, we lose access to the presence of the
Silence.  Without silence we are lost and cannot get still
enough to find our way back.

Silence [The Great Silence] is around us and within us.  It
goes to the deepest depths of the Soul and to the outermost
reaches of the cosmos and continuously unites the two at
the centering place of our Heart.  Here everything comes 
alive again as if for the first time.  We may be shocked to
notice we had not even realized we had lost ourselves. And
feel a new attunement to Spirit as a directly felt reality.
The Silence is a palpable, living Presence...
The deeper we enter into The Silence the more we become
aware that this living presence is primary.

Robert Sardello
From: Silence - The Mystery of Wholeness

from the introduction and Chapter 1

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Be the Energy - Danna Faulds

That's how you came here,
like a star without a name...

Rumi

Be The Energy

Trust the energy that courses
through you.  Trust - then take
surrender even deeper.
Be the energy.

Don't push anything away.
Follow each sensation back to
its source and focus your awareness
there.

Be the ecstasy...

Be unafraid of consummate wonder.
Energy so new, so vulnerable,
that you don't know
who you are.

Be the energy,
and paradoxically,
be at peace.

Dare to be your own illumination,
And blaze a trail across
the clear night sky...

Danna Faulds

From - Prayers to the Infinite

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

At Winter Solstice - Dolores Stewart

Art by Valerie Claff
www.valerieclaff.com

Winter Owl hoots three times in the far woods,
fair warning for all small creatures
scurrying to their burrows.

Are we not still and always
those crouching figures
who flee the heavenly alchemy?
Three times in the crackling air,
Owl hoots for us.

*

Wind plays the drums of snow...
staccato taps
crescendo off the roofs,
flourish of shuddering branches.
Ice snaps its castanets,
its daggers.

Atonal music of the darkest days
needs the most fearless,
subtle listeners.

*

Those strumming flamenco 
fingers of sunlight
are a long time away now.

Now we go comforted
in dreams and ceremonies
flaming our star-speck candles,

raising our voices against that other music,
drowning out the forever
at night's heart.

*

Look up!  The wheel is turning.
The spectacular crowd of stars,
the tangle of dimensions
jostle for our attention.
Salute the birth of everything holy.

Dolores Steward (Riccio)

with thanks to Beyond the Fields We Know

~

Photo - Art by Valerie Claff

 

Let the Mind be the Mind - Danna Faulds

Photo - Cate Kerr

Let the mind be the mind...

Behind its restless activity,
just one layer deeper is stillness,
and beneath even that,
is an ocean of mystery and truth.

Swim in this eternal sea
until you know yourself
to be infinity,
and bring that knowing
back into your day.

Let the mind be the mind,
but don't bind yourself
to its limited reality.

Trust your experience of vastness.
Trust the truth that never
loses potency
or disappears 
in fear.

Let the mind be the mind
and identify not with thought
but with with Silence...

Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner and Poet
From: Limitless

~

Photo - Cate Kerr
Beyond the Fields We Know

~*~

Still your mind in me,
still yourself in me,
and without a doubt
you shall be united in me,
Lord of Love,
dwelling in the Heart.

Bhagavad Gita

 

The Golden Silence...

The Deep Silence calls to her
in the waking moments;
the "remedy" for all that
disturbs, contracts and constricts,
that blinds her from the Way...

It whispers to her:

Loosen the robes of religion you have worn -
that bound you.
Untie the shoes of "spirituality" -
that don't fit now.
Lay down all the "apparel" - the outer garments -
that have burdened you.

Dare to be naked...

Laying in the early morning silence,
she brings her tattered self to the deeper
dimension of the Golden Silence within;
careful not to get lost in the shadowy caverns
of the unconscious mind along the way...

In the space of Deep Silence she hears:

Just be still and wait...
Trust the Flow of Life
Wait for the pieces to fall together.
Observe the metamorphosis
that is taking place inside you
through
your internal "wranglings"
and your unbearable struggles;
like a butterfly trying to break through
its hard chrysalis - wanting to be free...

Be patient - do not resist what is...

It will all be okay - is okay...

Cross the threshold of your troubled mind
and step into the still waters of the Golden Silence within,
your Primordial Home...

Rest here...

Unscathed...

Mystic Meandering
May 31, 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

 

The Elusive Present Moment - St. Augustine & Ostaseski

"Now" is neither in time nor out of time.
The elusive present moment is measured by the tick-tock time
of a clock, which we humans have invented, nor is it separate
from past or future.  There is no time line, at least not as we
conventionally think about it.

St. Augustine (paraphrased)
from - The Five Invitations

~

Hope....is not a wish to be fulfilled, or a plan to be formulated
and executed, but in how we meet the ever-changing moment.

The present moment could best be described as the flow of life.
We are continually being shaped by it and we are shaping it
through the way we meet and respond to it...

Frank Ostaseski
The Five Invitations

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Life as it is - a meandering

Religion is a heavy mantle some people wear -
robes of ritual, dogma and doctrine...

Advaita is a heady game some people like to play -
self/no-self?

Non-duality - a conundrum -
not two - but not one...

I'm tired of all these heavy "games" I've played
in the "Spiritual Game"...

It's time for me to just step out of the way -
to let myself unfold -
and not entangle myself in the many webs
that constrain and constrict that Flow.

Maybe some ancient saint or sage had it all figured out -
maybe not...

My inner sage tells me it's about acceptance,
about empathy, compassion; about living life as it is
the best I can without living up to some "spiritual"
ideal: Someone else's beliefs, someone else's "way",
someone else's "truth"; the "right" perspective, or
"right" thinking... 

Needing to listen to the
deeper Rhythm of my own Soul/Essence/Being...

But strong primal instincts arise,
unable to "spiritualize"
the rawness of emotions into - pretty language...

The practicality of Buddhist Wisdom draws me now -
not as a religion or belief system, but as day to day
wisdom for getting through...
The wisdom of accepting what is, of just being present,
of mindfulness, of caring and compassion, of stepping
out of the way of the experience and just seeing what unfolds,
letting go of expectations, the need for solutions,
 and the need to control - allowing life to happen
as it does...

No more lofty goals of "enlightenment" -
just fulfilling the requirements of ordinary daily living
in the midst of global and personal chaos
- in my new role as "caregiver" -
doing what needs to be done
as life keeps living itself
 as it is...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 12, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Hubby and Emmy sleeping....

 

Change - Frank Ostaseski

We don't grow and transform in our comfort zones.  We grow
when we realize we are no longer able to control all the
conditions of our lives, and are therefore challenged to
change...  When we release our clinging to what used to be
and our craving for what we think should be, we are free to
embrace the truth of what is in this moment.

No matter what we do or don't do, things will always change.
Change is constant and inevitable.  We need to trust ourselves
and persevere without despair...

Frank Ostaseski

The Five Invitations

 

The Wheel of Time - Einstein & Ostaseski

We trust that time is linear.
That it proceeds eternally, uniformly,
Into Infinity.

But the distinction between
past, present and future is
nothing but an illusion.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow
are not consecutive, they are connected
in a never-ending circle.

Albert Einstein

~

Like a confluence of great rivers,
our lives are a series of different moments, joining
together to give the impression of one continuous flow.
We move from cause and effect, event to event, one point
to another - which gives an outward impression that our
lives are one continuous, unified movement.
In reality, they are not.

Each moment is born and dies.  And in a very real way we
are born and die with it.  Creation and destruction are two
sides of the same coin.

Frank Ostaseski
The Five Invitations

~

Photo - Mom's Mandala
a mandala that she colored in
several months before she died in March 2019.

 

The Invisible One - Nag Hammadi Scrolls

I am thought that lives in the light.
I live in everyone, and I delve into them all...
I move in every creature...

I am the invisible one in all beings...
I am the voice speaking softly...

I am the real voice... the voice from the invisible thought...

It is a mystery...  I cry out for everyone...

I hid myself in everyone, and revealed myself
within them, and every mind seeking me longs
for me...

I am she who gradually brought forth
everything...

I am the image of the invisible spirit...
The mother, the light... the virgin... the
womb, and the voice...

I put breath in all beings.

Nag Hammadi Scrolls
from: Why Religion, Elaine Pagels

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Sri Yantra necklace

 

 

"The Game" - a meandering...

"You don't play the game,
the game plays you"

Yellowstone

~

I am being played by Life...

I am not responsible for how
"The Game" is played out or how it ends.

I'm just a "player" in "The Game."
I need to let it play out -
to step aside and let it play -
let it unfold.

Beliefs don't matter.
It's all like a play, a movie, a dance, a story, a "game."
Choose your word, the one that resonates with you.
Some call it a dream...

I have to ride it out, and
not take "The Game" seriously.

I'm not in control of "The Game."

You don't direct the dance,
the dance directs you,
and there's nothing but
the dance...

It's all part of a larger "Game" that we
cannot even comprehend.

There are many depths, many layers
to "The Game."
There are multiple levels all playing at
the same time.

Each day you have to "see" how "The Game"
will play out - how to play "The Game" that day -
how you're going to play.

It's kind of like Alice in Wonderland,
where the game changes depending on
which rabbit hole you go down, or which
door you go through - what fantasy you
choose to play.

Each day a new fantasy or a continuation of
an old one, an old theme that keeps getting 
replayed - but who chooses?  Are there doors
that you must go through as part of your life
experience?  Did Alice have a choice?  It seems
she just fell down the rabbit hole -
into another reality,
another game...

What hole will I fall down and what doors will I have
to go through in the life experience, Life Game -
and what hat am I going to wear? :)

Mystic Meandering

Nov. 17, 2022

~

Photo - Mad Hatter hat
from the internet

 

 

"it happens" - Kathleen Knipp

.....in our "practice" of life, we can just rest back and experience
how it's being done.  We don't have to do life, life happens in
whatever way it happens.  [But] we claim the activity that
happens as something volitional.

Observe the belief, explore the belief that I am in control, that
 I am the "doer" [of what happens].  Question the belief.
Life is happening, just as breathing is happening or thinking is
happening.

What would it feel like to slide out of the picture into an
observer position, being aware of thoughts that are generated
by the mind and emotional states that arise and pass - watching
it all happen.  It plays out like an old show on a big screen.
Step back and watch with a sense of curiosity.  See yourself as a
"character" that you observe - watching, observing, noticing all
the different sensations of the body - the different experiences.
Have compassion for your "character."  Life is changing out of
our control, our expectations, our wants.

Surrender to the Great Mystery, beyond comprehension, before
time, before conceptualization; inexplicable but palpable.
Source reveals itself in all of its different manifestations - as
profound tranquility and turbulence, as mind stuff, as breath
and body: the totality of all of its expressions.
Rest deeply in this knowing.

Kathleen Knipp

Excerpts from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
"it happens"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering