Release - Plotinus

Let your mind and heart release all that disturbs you.
Let your body be still,
and all the frettings of your body and all that surrounds it -
let the earth and sea and air be still, and heaven itself;
and then think of spirit
as streaming, pouring, rushing, and shining
into you, through you, and out from you in all directions
while you sit quiet.

Plotinus

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Work of Love - Mark Nepo

It is not the work of love to change people,
or force their growth in our direction.
The work of love depends on giving others
a sense of safety in the world, nurturing their
confidence to lean into life and the unknown...

But how do we listen and be with those who
have fallen through the ice?
Stay close and keep them warm, resisting the
urge to prematurely solve the situation.  If
nothing can be done, sit with them and
withstand the urge to abandon those who
seem stuck.  Offer your tent and stay till
the way out presents itself, not forcing a rescue.

Mark Nepo
Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Universe Sings - Basil Braveheart

photo by Vincent Guth on unsplash

My Grandma told me that the Universe is singing in the
snowflakes, the raindrops, in the trees, the water and all
Creation. Physicists call this holistic holographic universe.
Lakotas call it Taku Wakan Skan Skan/Mitakuye Oyasin,
which means everything is connected and related in 
divine rhythm, vibration.

Remember the Lakotas know that the song sings the singer.

The Spirit sings the song.

Basil Braveheart

With thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart
whispers back.  Those who wish to sing always find a song.

Plato

Remember Your Essence...

Our Essence is the same Silence that suspends the Cosmos,
and the same Energy of the Stars...
We are the Hush of "The Mystery"
and the breath of Life itself...

Our Essence is embodied in every cell of the body...

Our Being is the Dance of the Aurora Borealis
and the unlit Light of the Sun...

generated through the inner radiance
of Shakti - the primal energy -
coursing through our bodies...

Our Essence is "Godness" seeking expression...
in human form;
it is the Essence of all matter reality -
Life living us...

May we all remember our Inner Light,
our Essence...

_/\_

Blessings to all in this Sacred Season of Light...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 16, 2023

~

Photo Mystic Meandering

 

Sacred Experience - Ivan Granger

I know it is a challenging time in the world.  Things might feel
off kilter.  But this is also a holy time, a time to recall what
is sacred.  It is a time to reconnect with what illuminates our
minds and awakens our hearts.  We enter the cave of interior
awareness during this darkened period of the winter and
discover and rediscover the light within ourselves,
renewing ourselves...

Mystics write poetry, universally, Saints and sages, shamans
and seers, wise women and medicine men - they sing songs,
they riddle, they rhyme...  

Numinous experiences are not easily communicated through
words.  The sacred can be witnessed and participated in, but
not conveyed through limited concepts.  Any attempt to
communicate what is perceived in states of encompassing
unity and mental quiet is necessarily an act of translation.
Poetry is well suited to the sacred, enabling language to
relay experience...

Sacred experience is beyond word and form, yet the limited 
mind, in trying to understand what it has witnessed,
reflexively interprets its experience in terms of the world known
to the senses.  What emerges is a primal language of metaphor,
a rich and spontaneous pidgin that develops between the 
limited mind and unlimited awareness.

The fiery rising of the Kundalini inspires verses on the moth's
ecstatic annihilation in fire.

To the seer, enraptured by the holistic vision of reality as
fluid interconnectedness, one thing truly is another.
Metaphor ceases to be a literary device or a dramatic
mode of expression; it is observed reality.

It is from this visionary metaphor that sacred poetry is born.

Ivan Granger
excerpts from the Introduction to his book
The Longing in Between
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Fire and Ice

 

How the Light Gets In - Pat Schneider - For Solstice

To open a door in one's mind, whether in writing,
in prayer, or in writing-as-prayer, is to invite an
experience of "the deep."

It's rather like standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking
the ocean at night, a cliff from which I can hear the 
pounding surf below me, and see in the distance a 
multitude of stars.

I am aware of danger, but I am also aware of my own
freedom and my own good sense.

Although I could do so, I will not back up, close down,
and refuse to see or hear.
Although I could do so, I will not step out and lose myself.
I will not fall to my death.

I will stand where I am and allow the vast expanse to
come to me through my eyes, through my ears, through
wind moving the tiny hairs on my skin, through the
pressure of the solid rock against the soles of my feet.
I feel awe, I feel my own smallness, but I feel that I,
too, belong.  If I am open to the possibility, I sense that
I am seen;
I am known;
I am held in the attention of the mystery.

from: How the Light  Gets In
by Pat Schneider

~

During the winter moon/months,
it's natural to make a creative connection to
the Quiet Depth of your inner gold mine...

In the outer world, everything moves very fast.
There's no doubt things are ramped up.
Follow your Inner Counsel
Trust your still small voice.

May resilience be radiant within all living  beings.
That even the darkest of times,
a light shines forth from the heart.

Donna Iona Drozda
From Opening the North Gate

~

For Winter Solstice
Dec. 21, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

 

Just Breathing...

The silence outside the window late at night
is pungent,
leaving me rapt,
sinking more deeply
into timelessness beyond time,
letting go of thought,
just awareing 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...
slipped off the edge
into slumber
until
just
before
rising
the
next
morning

Again finding myself
at the space at the edge
before awakening,
before rising...

Just breathing

Conscious of the stillness
before thought...

Just breathing

Mystic Meandering
July 15, 2012

~

The Breath - neither mine nor yours - is the same breath
touching everyone, the same breath uniting everyone
and everything.  The same breath touching all beings,
those who are suffering, those whose lives have been
torn apart by war, those living in famine and poverty.
Immersed in this universal breath, limitlessness is
revealed as form remains...

Kathleen Knipp
Pathless Yoga

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The River of Silence - Kahlil Gibran

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind
and to melt into the sun?  And what is it to cease
breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides,
that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you 
indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountaintop, then shall
you begin to climb.  And when the earth shall claim your
limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran

~

You must seek nothing but the Source...

Rumi

~

Photo - my late blog friend Dorothea...
Walked into the Light - Jan. 17, 2021

~

In this season of honoring the rebirth of the Light;
in the cycle of birth, death and rebirth -

We don't have to physically die to experience the deep,
 restorative Silence - and dance


  MM

 

Inner Guru - Nisargaddatta

All that a Guru can tell you is: "My dear Sir, you are quite
mistaken about yourself.  You are not the person you think
yourself to be."

Trust nobody, not even yourself.  Find out, remove and
reject every assumption till your reach the living waters
and the rock of truth.

[.....] if you stay with the idea that you are
not the body nor the mind, nor even their witness, but
altogether beyond, your mind will grow in clarity, your desires -
in purity, your actions - in clarity and that inner distillation will
take you to another world, a world of truth and fearless love.

[.....]  Confide in your inner self.

The greatest Guru is your inner self.  Truly, he [she] is the supreme
teacher.  He [she] alone can take you to your goal and alone meets
you at the end of the road.  Confide in him [her] and you need no
outer Guru....

Nisargadatta

~

Silence is the Guru,
all the rest is imagination...

Eric Baret

~

With thanks to Love Is A Place

~

I have come to realize that the "Great Silence" is
my Friend and Teacher/Guru.  And through meditation I rely on the
Great Silence within to reveal what I need to see and know...

MM

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Longing of the Heart...

The Longing of the Heart is there to draw you in.
It's the Longing for that which is true, pure,
innocent, whole and Alive within you...

It's the Longing for the embrace of the Eternal Being
that animates your being...

It's the call of "The Beloved."

Follow the call...

~

The Longing is your Innocence;
an innocent Longing for
Divine Intimacy;
the Eternal recognizing Itself in you...

It is the Self calling ItSelf back to ItSelf,
like the rhythm of the Ocean pulling the waves
back to Itself from the shore;
reclaiming ItSelf...

Let your innocent Longing carry you to
your Eternal Being within - the Essence of yourself...
Thrive in the depths of its Stillness there...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings

c. 2004

~

Photo/Art - Mystic Meandering

~

Can;t believe this was written 20 years ago!

Longing is not necessarily a painful thing.
It can be quite sweet and tender... as this
evidently was...

 

The Longing - a meandering...

Since I was a young child I longed to know "God" -
the "God' of my childhood religion...

~

Recently longing has arisen again...

I long to know "God" still,
even though that longing has been covered over by layers of
different beliefs and stances - all veils...  And my idea of, and
names for "God" have changed; like "The Mystery", The Beloved,
The Great Silence...

It's time to part the veils so that I may truly know the "God" of my
longing; not the "God" of my childhood religion - not a man-made
"God" - but "The Source" Itself...  The Primordial, Nameless "God"...
Some have called it the Primal Energy, or even the Divine Breath...
But I long for something more personal...

I sense that all our longings and sorrows come from this longing for
"Source"; to know who/what that truly is - our origin, and if we are
that - as the many spiritual teachings say.

So I turn to look for the Source of my longing, that I wish to know 
intimately - again - as in the beginning - before birth.  All others
have been only names, personas, maybe even "lesser gods."

The longing is not for a distant "God - but the "God" who
resides within - the Source or Essence of myself.

Whoa - What?

As those words slipped out onto the page, they caught my attention:
"the 'God' who resides within -
the Source or Essence of myself."

The "Source" is within!
What I long for is in myself! 

This hit me as if this was a "new" revelation,
with a feeling of relaxed awe and wonder...

And yet, I know I know this! - intellectually, in my head.
"God - aka the Primal Source of all that is resides in everyone and
everything...  But I want to know it experientially...
to feel it intimately...

I am not ashamed to feel that longing again; that was hidden by
the veils of the intellect, the intellectualized, conceptualized, and
abstract stances, and belief systems...

It is the Heart longing that will bring me to "the Source" of my
longing; not stances and belief systems, but the innocent, child-like
longing from the Heart - the direct experience that the "God" I long
for resides within myself.

I am finally allowing myself to feel that fire of longing
again...

My child-heart has opened once more...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 8, 2023

from my journal

After this "revelation" I felt a Presence behind my heart and with it
a deep Quiet came over me internally...

the "God" of my longing dwells within!

Amazing!

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Sunset Heart Leaves

 

This Moment in Time - Jorie Graham

What I tell my students, when they feel singularly unfortunate to
be born in this moment, is this is your moment, the moment your
soul showed up incarnate.  In this world.  It is an astonishing moment
to be alive.  You could have been born into a lull - instead you were
born into a tipping point. It's your one life and you've entered it at
a flexion point - a point when everything you do matters.  How
often in history does a soul get to live in such an era?  Don't waste it.
Show up for it.  With everything you've got.  Some will invent,
some will organize, some will witness, some will grieve, some
will console.  Live this life now.  Even if in fury and grief, live it.

You don't want to die not having lived.  It's incredibly easy to find
a way around experience rather than through it.  But you will have
cheated yourself out of ..... your life.  You are
here now.  Now is the time to live fully, not hide, not escape.

Jorie Graham

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Moment to Moment - Etty Hillesum

...every moment gives birth to a new moment...

Life courses through one as a constant current in a great

series of moments, each having its own place in the day.

...whenever suffering thrusts itself upon us we must not
avoid it - but accept it.

Does that mean I am never sad, that I never rebel, always
acquiesce, and love life no matter what the circumstances?

No, far from it.  I believe that I know and share the many
sorrows and sad circumstances that a human being
experiences, but.....they pass through me, like life itself;
as a broad, eternal stream, they become part of that stream,
and life continues...

...ought we not, from time to time, open ourselves up to
cosmic sadness?

Your sorrow must become an integral part of yourself.
You mustn't run away from it, but bear it like an adult.
Do not relieve your feelings through hatred, do not seek
to be avenged on all German mothers, for they, too,
sorrow at this very moment for their slain and murdered
sons.  Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself
that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and
courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate.
But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and
instead reserve most of the space inside for your hatred and
thoughts of revenge - then sorrow will never cease in this
world and will multiply...

Etty Hillesum
From: Etty Hillesum - Essential Writings
by Annemarie S. Kidder

Etty was Dutch living in Nazi occupied Netherlands
during the Holocaust, and died in Auschwitz at the age
of 28 or 29. Her writings were taken from her journals.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
"walking in Divine shoes"

~

May all those observing Hanukkah
find peace in their sorrow...

 

 

Into the Forest - a meandering...

"The Forest" traditionally is a threshold symbol of entering
the unknown, the deeper nature, or the spiritual world.  In
fairy tales it usually represents a passage through difficulties
and an opportunity for "transformation" of some kind.  I also
see it as a sanctuary, refuge, a place of deepening. This entering
the "Dark Forest" happens sometimes when I have lost
(intentionally or otherwise) the frameworks, or beliefs,
 which have given structure to my life; when I must find my own
 way, and be true to the call of the Soul, despite the difficulties
 encountered.  Shamans, poets, holy men and women sought
refuge in the forest, as a healing place.  Going into The Forest
represents a return to Primordial Being - beyond societal,
cultural, conceptual and spiritual frameworks; beyond dogma
and doctrine... In a way, it is like returning to the child's heart
of innocence - just following the longing of the Heart once
again; trusting that I will emerge from "The Dark Forest" with
clarity.  As a child I often went into the woods next to our
house to just sit, to listen and commune with nature, and 
write poetry - at the ripe old age of 11 :)  It was a place of
directly experiencing what I knew then to be "God."  Now
known by many other names...

And since I don't have a "Dark Forest" handy to enter, and I'm
spooked by things that go bump in the night, my "Forest" will
have to be the Interior spaces - navigating the inner Forest of
the Unknown - as well as the difficult practicalities of everyday
living that I'm now faced with.   It will be an interesting 
sojourn, if I can pull it off...  What better time of year
than approaching the Winter Solstice to go within...

Mystic Meandering
originally written 6-22-2019
updated Dec. 6, 2023

~

The familiar horizon has been outgrown;
the old concepts, ideals,
and emotional patterns no longer fit.
The time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.

You enter the forest at the darkest point
where there is no path.
Where there's a way or a path
it is someone else's path; each human being
is a unique phenomenon.

The idea is to find your own way...

Joseph Campbell

~

Midway upon the journey of life
I found myself within a dark forest,
for the straightforward pathway
had been lost...

Dante Alighgieri
The Inferno

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Sacred Darkness - Fred LaMotte

Darkness is not the absence of light.
Darkness is the womb of light.
Darkness has nothing to do
with evil.
It is the deepest good.
Darkness is not despair
but the peace where joy begins
as a hidden seed
of self-enfolding.

A bud wrapped in darkness
to protect its golden petals
from the frost,
a chrysalis cocooned in darkness
to protect its rainbow wings
from the storm,
your tears rapt in shadows
to ripen before they fall.
The void is moist and fertile.
There, stars shine
because of the blackness
between them.
The Sun reconceived
on the longest evening 
of the year.

The New Moon an embryo
floating in holiness,
radiance sheathed
in the unseen maternity
of night.

Honor the ache
of your desolation.
Feel the darkness breathe
and kick in your belly,
down where you would not go.
This exhalation will lead you
to the pulse of divine
Unknowing.
For darkness is not
the absence of light.
Darkness is the mother of fire.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

 

The Descending Path - Mat Licatta

The path of the heart is not only one of transcendence - ascending
and rising above - but also one of descent: Into the underworld,
earth, and shadow, and into relationship with the figures of the
somatic unconscious.

The lunar way isn't as clear as its heroic or solar counterpart.
It is unclothed: of fixed concept, a precise map, and knowing
how it's all going to turn out.  It has a way not of confirming but
of dismantling the spiritual persona. 

No promises, no guarantees, no mythical tales of some "permanent"
state of enlightenment or unending transcendent experience, 
where we can remain safe and free from the reorganizing fires of
love, which burn through the known to reveal essence.

[.....]

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Fleeting Whispers...

Her past fades away -
mere images in a dreamland -
forgotten...

Her world fades away - unbelonging now -
a foreigner on a strange planet
whirling through space.
Kabuki theater...

Her mind fades - not remembering
the things she needs to remember -
unable to articulate what she has forgotten...

Her body fades - unable to do the things she used to do - 

challenged keeping pace with life -
frustration...

Her life, paper thin, fades to a shadowy form
unable to hold its color -
losing its luster...

We are impermanent, fleeting whispers of spirit
on a temporary journey -
this life experience...

And sometimes that story doesn't go the way
we have in mind...

It all fades away - eventually...

That is the natural state of things...

So she turns her inner compass
toward "Home" - toward Source -
that lies within her...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 26, 2023

 

A Philosophy of Suffering - Etty Hillesum

Most of us in the West don't understand the art of suffering
and experience a thousand fears instead.  Man suffers most
through the idea of suffering, through his fear of suffering.
We cease to be alive, being full of fear, bitterness, hatred and
despair.  Don't we live an entire life each one of our days,
and does it really matter if we live  few days more or less?
There is room for everything in a single life.

When I say I have come to terms with life, I don't mean I
have lost hope.  It is a question of living life from minute to
minute and taking suffering into the bargain.  But does it
matter if it is the Inquisition that causes people to suffer in
one century, and war and pogroms in another?

Suffering has always been with us, does it really matter in
what form it comes?  All that matters is how we bear it
and how we fit it into our lives.

I can sit for hours and know everything and bear everything
and grow stronger in the bearing of it.  And at the same time
feel sure that life is [still] beautiful and meaningful.  Despite
everything.  But that does not mean that I am always filled with
joy and exaltation [about life and its circumstances].  I am
often dog-tired after standing in queues, but I know that this too
is part of life, and I know something inside me will never
desert me...

We carry everything within us.  God and Heaven and Hell and
Earth and Life and Death and all of history.  The externals are
simply so many props; everything we need is within us.  And
we have to take everything that comes; the bad with the good,
which does not mean we cannot devote our life to curing the
bad. [or helping those who suffer].  But we must know what
motives inspire our struggle [against] and we must begin
with ourselves.

Living and dying, sorrow and joy, the blisters on my feet and
the jasmine behind the house, the persecution, the unspeakable
horrors - it is all as one to me, and I accept it all as one mighty
whole and begin to grasp it better, if only for myself, without
being able to explain to anyone else how it all hangs together.

If you destroy the ideas behind [suffering] which life lies
imprisoned within, you liberate your true life - and then you
will have strength to bear real suffering... [the reality of suffering].

Etty Hillesum
Jewish Mystic of the Holocaust

from: An Interrupted Life
She died in Auschwitz at age 28 or 29

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

 

A Prayer for a Suffering World

May we be free of physical suffering...
May we be free of mental anguish...
May we be free of all suffering
and the roots/causes 
of suffering...

May we be safe...
May we be at peace...

May we be well in body and mind...

May we live with ease...

From 2 Buddhist sayings...

~

Photo from the internet digitally altered

 

Graced With Gratitude...

Gratitude arises
like a warm flame
in the Heart;
a flame that
comes alive
on its own
from within

Overtaking me by surprise...

It's a gratitude of
unknown origin -
not contrived,
or cultivated,
but
deeply felt in the
core of my Being;
only awareness is 
needed...

A gratitude
not for being alive,
but for Aliveness ItSelf.
for the Aliveness that
is Life;
that dances and sings
the Cosmos
into being;
that imbues existence
with LIFE!

For the color and movement
of life being lived
in every minute detail;
for the opening and
unfoldment of life
that has its own
course,
its own
way,
unfolding Itself in
total freedom of Being

I am truly graced with Gratitude -

beyond words...

Mystic Meandering
October 2015

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Inner Myth - MacIver & Campbell

We each have an inner myth guiding our lives.  That
myth guides us without us knowing it.  It grows out of
all the things we've learned, the things we've failed at,
out of our insecurities, out of the triumphs we
experienced.  It is also affected by the spiritual current
that underlies our lives - the mythical journey that is seeking
to manifest in our outer life if we'll only pay attention to it.
It is the seed that is wanting to grow into a tree, the call 
waiting to be answered, but risky.  That path is risky.

What is the inner myth guiding your life, unknown to you?
What mysterious figure, what spirit entity of wisdom and
kindness might you invite to accompany you, guide you,
on your journey?

Rod MacIver
Heron Dance

~

Joseph Campbell says myth opens the heart and the imagination
to the wonders of the universe and the mystery of existence.
He says myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the
human life.  He says that myths can teach us how to live a 
human lifetime, not grounded in ancient religions, that support
our personal quests for wisdom and happiness.

From the 4 Ways that Myth Can Change Your Life,
According to Joseph Campbell.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Mysterious Man with the flat hat
and long robe in the curtain... :)

~

What stories do we tell ourselves,
and what beliefs do we live by
that may be outdated now?

 

Idleness - Csikszentmihalvi

Robertson Davies, the Canadian author, said one of the most
important things in his life was being able to take a nap every
day after lunch for twenty minutes.  That's for two reasons. One
is that by developing a schedule that's under your control, you are
not being flogged around by life, as he puts it; you are not always
jumping to someone else's tune.  You develop your own rhythm...

The other thing is that it's during idle time that ideas have a chance
to recombine in new ways, because of we think consciously about
solving a problem or writing a book, then we are sitting there
forcing our ideas to move in a lockstep, in a straight line, and
probably what comes out is not very new or original.

For original ideas to come about, you have to to let them percolate
under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no
way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction.  So
they find their way, their random combinations that are driven by
forces we don't know about.  It's through this recombination that
something new may come up, not when we try to push them
directly.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalvi interviewed by Michael Toms in the
New Dimensions Newsletter.

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many
 diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve
ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground
that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world
within...  By middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives
from ourselves.

John Gardner

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Personal Note - this is also why what I call "silent time" is
so important to me.  It doesn't have to be "meditation" but just
getting still, getting quiet, without interruption.  It seems then that
 words for a poem will rise to the surface, or an idea for something
that my mind could not "solve"...  Usually that "silent time" isn't
until the Quiet Hour, between 12 midnight and 1am  :)

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Your "Soul's Task" - Gary Zukov

What does it feel like to remember your soul's task?

When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what you
are doing, when your activities and actions become gratifying
and purposeful, when what you do serves both yourself and
others, when you do not tire within but seek the sweet
satisfaction of your life and your work, you are doing what
you were meant to be doing.  The personality that is
engaged in the work of its soul is buoyant.  It is not burdened
with negativity.  It does not fear.  It experiences purposefulness
and meaning.  It delights in its work and in others.
It is fulfilled and fulfilling.

from: The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukov.

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~*~

The past offers itself up
to feed the soul that seeks fullness [fulfillment]
by continuously reclaiming itself.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana