"Lanterns of Light"...

Sinking deeper into the calming comfort
of the rich darkness of the universe within;
floating into the depths of the inner Cosmos,
"lanterns of light" appear suspended in the dark:
stars - at the interior frontiers of beginnings,
before time, before relative reality, before "I" began,
in the space of Pure Silence...

Where the unmanifest spirals ItSelf into form;
into galaxies of molten stardust
rotating ever so slowly through the universe;
that also somehow became "me"!
For no reason - except
the pure pleasure of Being,
the pure pleasure of existing.

This fantasia of Existence,
fancied and composed of
stardust and galaxies of liquid light
dancing through the universe
inhabits this body...

Light and matter
vibrating together, in resonance,
like a tuning fork - enlivening this body,
all bodies, everywhere.

A symphony of Wonderment...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 27, 2017

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Koviashuktok - Sam Wright

Koviashuktok is an Eskimo word, loosely meaning,
"the inner dream." It is one with the living water welling up
from the very springs of being that nourish and sustain all life.
Without it life becomes a dreary, dead place and deep within,
our spirit begins to rot.  The inner dream need not be some 
great and overwhelming plan; it need not be a dramatic
picture of what might or must be some day.

Koviashuktok is the quiet persistence in the heart that 
enables us to ride out the storms of churning experiences.
Koviashuktok is the exciting whisper moving through the isles
of our spirit answering the monotony of limitless days of
dull routine.  It is the ever-recurring melody in the midst of
broken harmony and harsh discords of human conflict.  It is the
touch of significance which highlights the ordinary experience,
the common event, the wonder of each hour, the beauty of the
Earth.

Koviashuktok is not an outward thing.  It does not take its rise
from the environment in which we move and function. It lives
in the inward parts, it is the deep within where the issues of life
and death are ultimately determined.

We need to keep alive the exciting whisper, for as long as we are
Koviashuktok, we cannot lose the significance of living.

Sam Wright 
from: The Edge of Tomorrow

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo from an ad featuring
"Cool Night" by Paul Davis

 

Autumn Mosaic - Delores Stewart

Before we come with rakes and crackling
energy to clean it up,
the backyard is precisely
as the dog prefers it - left alone,
a natural selection
of leaf, stick, bone, pod, seed, and stone.

But we are cosmic instruments
of music and disturbance, only
animals by half,
and will not let the season bleed
its shifting earth designs
of stone, bone, leaf, stick, pod and seed.

Some earthscapes rearranged
are gardens, or hillsides
shorn to make a path for wired poles
or graveyards stiff with grief
or clearcut forests.  Let me take care
of seed, stone, pod, bone, stick, and leaf.

Let me recall the universe
is breathing in my breath, it plays
its tune in me, it dreams my being -
an unnamed, unrecorded god
becoming conscious as I am
of leaf, seed, stick, stone, bone, and pod.

I am a painting made of sand and pollen.
Structure and spirit
are my codes.  Nothing of life
is random or a trick
I draw myself a part of all
with pod, leaf, bone, seed, stone, and stick.

The circle of the seasons turns
and never comes back quite the same.
Fertile impulses in time
will overgrow the patterns I have sown,
return to animal wilderness
of stick, pod, stone, leaf, seed and bone.

Let me be glad
new seasons bud from stick and leaf,
new forces split a pod and spill the seed,
new rhythms rise from stone and bone.

Delores Stewart
From: Doors to the Universe

Original title: September Mosaic

with thanks to Beyond the Fields We Know

~

For the Equinox

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

 

The "Cosmic Mother Energy"...

Photo by John Hyde

Laying the burdens of this existence down,
for just a  moment - late last night...
Coming to rest in the "Mother Energy";
the "originating primal energy"
of the Cosmos...
Fluid, Unfettered, Unbuffeted energies,
Untouched by the strain of life circumstances...

Embraced, and tangibly Infused by
Primordial Source Energy
coursing through my body,
I relax...

Mental images and constructs of present life
circumstances, once holding reign on my mind,
now pass through, as I focus on the dance
of energies within.

Pathways of the Primal Energies
subtly leave their imprint...

The body tries to self-correct after a life-time of
walking the energetic History Trail of Family Dynamics
in physicality - core survival issues that have left
indelible scars - begin to release - a bit...

I experience the "Deeper Reality" of this exquisite
Primal Energy, and realize it experiences Itself
in many forms; morphing Itself into different expressions,
different life experiences, reshaped by life occurrences that
also shaped my perspective and perceptions -
even now...

Now finally experiencing the fluidity of the "Mother Energy"
that innately flows through me/us - like an Aurora Borealis -
streaming through this body, leaving its illumined
energetic signature...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 19, 2023

~

Photo of Aurora Borealis
by John Hyde
Near Juneau, Alaska

 

Adi Shakti: The Primal Energy - Madhu

The [Cosmic] Mother's magic is ancient as life itself.
She existed before Gods and mortals, and She will
still exist even after the great dissolution.  Mother is
pure energy in subtle form...

The name Adi (or Adya) Shakti means 'primal power'
[or force], or 'primal energy' in Hinduism.  She is the
power/force/energy that permeates all creation, including
the animate, inanimate, and divine.  She is the [energy]
from which the universe is created and sustained, and
She is what everything will withdraw back into at the
end of their lives.

Shakti in the highest causal sense is God as Mother,
and in another sense it is the Universe that issues
from Her Womb.  She is the darkness from which light
issues, the unmanifest from which everything manifests.

She is no one particular form...but is generally manifested
in everything that we see in the universe, including the
life force that moves in it.  She is often described as
neither male or female, yet both male and female at the
same time - beyond descriptive categories of male and
female.

She IS Everything...

She is unbroken Reality...

She is pure Being Consciousness-Bliss,
existing in the form of Time and Space,
and all that is therein, and is the radiant
Illuminatrix in all beings...

From: The Primal Goddess
by Madhu

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Note:  I know I've posted this post (and photo) a couple of
 times already over the years, but it has become an important
piece in my exploration of the "Deeper Reality"...

 

 

A New "Quest" - a meandering...

I get excited when there is new movement in my life...

When I awoke this morning there was a sense of a 
new "Quest" - a new "journey."

Don't know why - just felt it...

I wrote in my journal:
"A new journal book today,
maybe a new way of 'seeing',
a new 'journey'? - A journey of
discovery...
The "Quest, as I see it, is really an Exploration of a 
'Deeper Reality' within, for lack of a better
term." (It's just how it came to me...)

I have to be open, aware, and curious
to take this journey.

When I checked our video camera pics from
the night and morning, there was one of a hummingbird -
stopped directly in front of the camera,
looking right into it, flapping its little wings.
And within milliseconds darted off and away.

I giggled and played it several times -
giggling like a little kid each time.

Something stirred within me
that I hadn't felt in a long time...

I was suddenly filled with the nectar of life,
the magic of living;  inebriated with the joy of life again...

(missing for so long, bogged down, and feeling
imprisoned by life).

Today I felt totally gifted...   free....  joyful...

Had "The Universe" heard the unshed tears of my Heart?

I'm excited to be on this new journey of discovery,
exploring the depths within...

The "Deeper Reality" includes Joy - in the simple things;
an Inner Quiet of Being, and
the excitement and the innocent laughter of a child.
It is playful...

I want to see where this goes!

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 17, 2023

 

A Single Leaf Falls...

Leaning back on the soft, stuffed chair back cushion
I sink into myself, and rest there...

I hold my hands over my chest, as if holding 
a tiny infant against my heart.

I realize I am actually holding my self, my own
heart in my hands - cradling and nurturing
my "little heart". as of it were a child;
reassuring it that it's alright;

loving it...

All these burdens that it's been carrying for so 
long, lurking in the dark shadows, in need
of embrace and release.

A deep cry would be good - but the tears don't come.

I breathe deeply into the painful wounds of the heart -

feeling empathy and compassion for the "burden carrier",
as she has carried the angry, shadowy baggage of a 
painful family dynamic far too long.

I'm looking for IN-spiration that I can't seem to find.
Within I only find sadness and tears wanting to emerge,
to be felt - but are held back, as if dammed by a
learned facade -

waiting to explode - and be set free.
Like a river frozen in deep archaic woods,
embedded there for centuries; locked in time,
encoded in the body and mind - needing to flow
through and be released, not left hidden behind a
silent spirituality,
always "up", always "strong", holding it "together."

The facade starts to crumble, being replaced by authenticity,
and a different strength - a "speaker of truth" - her own truth,
that must be spoken,

not drowned in other people's words and ways...

A single leaf falls from a tree outside the window,
a poignant moment in her reflection.
Soon the tree will be bare, naked - and exposed...

Vulnerable without her covering...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 15, 2023

~

With thanks to Sarah Carlson and her own healing process
for the inspiration for this poem...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Speech of Rain - Thomas Merton

The rain.....fills the woods with an immense and confused sound.
It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with inconsistent
and controlled rhythms.  And I listen, because it reminds me
again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not
yet learned to recognize.

The rain [surrounds] the cabin with its enormous virginal myth,
a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, or rumor.
Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing,
judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves,
soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood
with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the
hillside!  What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest
at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly
innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world,
the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the
talk of the water courses everywhere in the hollows!

.....It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.  As long as it talks
I am going to listen.

Thomas Merton
excerpt from Thomas Merton's essay:
The Rain and the Rhinoceros,
Raids on the Unspeakable 

With thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo from the internet

 

The Longing of Our Wounds - Matt Licata

Healing can't just be conceptual.  It's not a matter of thinking
differently, more "positively", or even more "spiritually" -
orbiting around the wound with our favorite metaphysical
beliefs, ideas and fantasies.

It's not clear thinking, or even "awareness" that can reach into
the wound and reorganize it. These can all be supportive, of
course, but in the end, healing is experiential, somatic, and
embodied.

While the wound is open, while it's activated and online,
there's a way in that moment that it's weeping.

That weeping, those tears that emerge from inside the wound,
these are emanations of a vital process in alchemy called solutio.

There's a dissolving that must occur in order for transmutation
to unfold.

In that moment of open weeping, the wound presents itself to
be reorganized, to receive something which has been missing,
something the wound has been longing for.

Not just the wound in some abstract way, but the longing of the
little one, the lost orphan of the psyche and soma who has been
carrying that burden of trauma, of aloneness, of unbearable 
emotional pain on our behalf for so long.

That longing, that yearning in the heart is to receive what has
been unavailable..., and what was missing at the
time the trauma became embedded.  
What that is, is love...
The healing medicine is love...

Matt Licata

~

For those still traumatized by 

9-11-2001

Blessings of Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Poetry is Given - May Sarton

Poetry seems to me so much a true work
of the soul... Poetry [is] given...
In a state of grace, when the deep channels are open,
and when they are, when I am both profoundly "stirred"
and balanced, the poetry comes as a gift from powers
beyond my will...

The poem is primarily a dialogue with the Self,
and the novel a dialogue with others.  They come
from entirely different modes of being...

May Sarton
From - The Journal of a Solitude

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Collision - May Sarton

For a long time now, every meeting with another human being
has been a collision. I feel too much, sense too much, am
exhausted by the reverberations after even the simplest
conversation.  But the deep collision is and has been with my
tormenting and tormented self [mind]....
I hope to break through into the rough rocky depths,
to the matrix itself.

May Sarton
from - The Journal of a Solitude

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

It may be silent here, but in the back of my mind is
 a clamor of human voices, too many needs, hopes, fears.
I hardly sit still without being haunted by the "undone."
I often feel exhausted...  How to summon the vitality
needed?  Life requires the power to endure constant adversity.

May Sarton
from - The Journal of a Solitude

~

[It is] never a waste of time to lie down and rest even
for a couple of hours.  It is there that images float up
[insights, awarenesses, creativity]

May Sarton
from - The Journal of a Solitude

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Time Passage...

So much of this life gone-by now;
remembering previous chapters
of the Fiction called "my life",
as if they never really happened -
or did they...
Some so distant in the mind they
are more like dreams, some nightmares;
and the characters I played - some good,
some bad.

Now nearing the end of the story I am an elder
character, losing her grip on life and time,
wondering what death will be like.
Will there be awareness after death?
Or, like a mist, will I dissipate back into the
Cosmos with no memory of this "journey"
on this planet spinning in a galaxy in space?
Maybe become an Aurora Borealis -
Pure Energy -
Pure De-Light...

How strange this novel turned out to be,
more drama and struggle than I would have liked,
but also more poetic than prose...

Mostly the story didn't go
the way I had in mind...
In this passage through time...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 1, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Deep Space...

Molten golden light
splays itself out within a fathomless darkness,
like a million jewels tumbled out into the stillness of space;
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 merge - like twilight...

In this place of Primordial Existence,
the Darkness and Light intermingle
in the purity of cosmic fusion;
forever "blended",
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 a breath of
Light and Darkness
forever merging...

In "Deep Space"
the Light and the Dark
exist together within the wholeness of
the Infinite Mystery...

Mystic Meandering
April 2001

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
A street light through tree branches
digitally altered...