Hallowed Halloween - Billy Collins

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,
or riffling through a magazine in bed,
the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.

They're moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
You go to the place you always thought you would go,

the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

Some are entering into a funnel of flashing colors into
a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
an woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.
With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals - eagles and leopards - and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their back in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

(And some just smile, forever on)

Billy Collins
Questions about Angels

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

May you all have a safe and
Hallowed Halloween

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering.

 

Birth/Death - Krasznahorkai

[...] he would see that birth and death were only two tremendous
moments in an eternal waking, and his face would glow with
amazement as he understood this; he would feel... - gently he
grasped the copper handle of the door - the warmth of the
mountains, woods, rivers and valleys, would discover 
the hidden depths of human existence. would finally understand
that the unbreakable ties that bound him to the world are not
imprisoning chains.....  ; and he would discover the enormous
joys of mutuality which embraced and animated everything;
rain, wind, sun and snow, the flight of a bird, the taste of
fruit, the scent of grass; and he would suspect that his
anxieties and bitterness were merely cumbersome ballast
required by the live roots of his past and the rising airship
of his certain future, and, then -- he started opening the door -
he would finally know that our every moment is passed in
a procession across dawns and day's-ends of the orbiting
earth, across successive waves of winter and summer,
threading the planets and the stars.

Suitcase in hand, he stepped into the room and stood there
blinking in the half-light.

Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Hungarian Novelist and Screenwritet
From:  The Melancholy of Resistance

with thanks to Love is a Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Death - J Krishnamurti

.....can you look at death without the image of death?
As long as the image exists from which springs thought,
thought must always create fear.  Then you either rationalize
your fear of death and build a resistance against the inevitable
or you invent innumerable beliefs to protect you from the fear
of death.  Hence there is a gap between you and the thing of
which you are afraid.  In this time-space interval there must be
conflict which is fear and anxiety...

Thought, which breeds fear of death says, 'Let's postpone it, let's
avoid it, keep it as far away as possible, let's not think about it' -
but you are thinking about it.  When you say, 'I won't think about
it', you have already thought out how to avoid it. You are frightened
of death because you have postponed it.

We have separated living from dying, and the interval between the
living and dying is fear.  The interval, that time, is created by fear.
Living is our daily torture, daily insult, sorrow and confusion, with
occasional opening of a window over enchanted seas.  That is 
what we call living, and we are afraid to die,  which is to end this
misery. We would rather cling to the known than face the unknown
- the known being our house, our furniture, our family, our
character, our work, our knowledge, our fame, our loneliness, our
gods - that little thing that moves around incessantly within itself
with its own limited pattern of embittered existence.

We think that living is always in the present and that dying is
something that awaits us at a distant time.  But we have never
questioned whether this battle of everyday life is living at all.
We want to know the truth about reincarnation, we want proof
of the survival of the soul, we listen to the assertion of clairvoyants
and to the conclusions of physical research, but we never ask, never,
how to live - to live with delight, with enchantment, with beauty
every day.

We have accepted life as it is with all its agony and despair and
have got used to it, and think of death as something to be carefully
avoided.  But death is extraordinarily like the life we know how to
live.  You cannot live without dying.  You cannot live if you
don't die psychologically every minute.  This is not an intellectual
paradox.  To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new
loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise
you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what
love is or what freedom is.

Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it
means to live.  We don't know how to live, therefore we don't 
know how to die.  As long as we are frightened of life we shall be
frightened of death.  The man who is not frightened of life is not
frightened of being completely insecure for he understands that
inwardly, psychologically, there is no security.  When there is no
security there is an endless movement and then life and death are
the same.  The man who lives without conflict, who lives with
beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to
die.

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Freedom from the Known

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"Choice"/No-Choice - a meandering...

"... it is not necessary to accept the choices handed
down to you by life as you know it.  There is more
to it than that - no one HAS to do something he
doesn't want to do for the rest of his life."

Hunter S. Thompson

The Proud Highway

from Whiskey River

~

A Meandering...

While I would like to agree with the above quote,
from my own personal experience, there are times
when you are placed in a position of "no choice" in an
"untenable" (impossible) situation; some call it the
"choiceless choice."

That happened to us a year ago - because we couldn't just
turn our backs on a family member and send her out to
be homeless on the streets (as some suggested we do),
where she obviously wouldn't survive;  nor drop her off
at Rehab, where she refused to go.  We were told we
couldn't put her in a Nursing Home/Care Facility against
her will, as she was still capable of making her own
decisions - and made it clear she wouldn't go!
You can't force someone to go where they don't want to
go, as much as we would have liked to.  We felt we had
no other choice but to take her in, while looking for
alternative places for her to stay, that never worked out.

We were always told we were in an "untenable situation" -
because there was no other choice, no other workable option...

It is what it is - I know...  What's so is what's so - yes...

Accept and Navigate... okay

So we navigate the rough waters daily, struggling to keep
from drowning in an ongoing impossible situation..

~ 

Beware of simplistic answers to sometimes complex
situations that Life hands you...

MM

Blessings to all who are dealing with "untenable"
life situations and challenges...

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Foliage Mosaic

 

The Universe's Story - Misc.

...the universe is not simply a place but a story,
a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong,
and out of which we arose.

This story has the power to awaken us more deeply to who we are.
For just as the Milky Way is the universe in the form of a galaxy,
and an orchid is the universe in the form of a flower,
we are the universe in the form of a human.

And every time we are drawn to look up into the night sky
and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe,
we are actually the universe reflecting on itself.

Journey of the Universe
Brian Swimme and Mary Evenlyn Tucker

~*~

The Absolute is both unmanifest and dynamic creative force.
From the creative force everything arises;
both the world as well as personal consciousness.
Everything is a play [story] of consciousness,
not an unreal illusion.

Excerpt from an article by
Jan Easman

~*~

Everything is ultimately a story.
My life is a story,
your life is a story,
all occurring within the vast cosmic
Ocean of Consciousness.
The story of The Eternal is being lived
here...

The Ineffable Mystery of the Universe
takes a journey through
the story of life - as us...
The "Divine Drama" is our story -
and our "story" is the "Divine Drama"...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2013

~*~

The real mystery is how It
unveils Itself within us;
how the Beloved makes Itself known
to ItSelf in the fragile container of the 
human being.

In the midst of the Divine Drama
there is a human story to be told.
But it's all "God's" story
being lived in human form...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

A mystery :)

 

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...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 16, 2023

~

Blessings to all in these uncertain times
May we all remember our Inner Light,
our Essence...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Don't Drown - Simó Necic

They appear as given direction and order
What you are
Have to become
What this world you barely know -
except what you read,
learned, and were told about -
Is

You are looking for your place to be
Purpose and meaning
Seeking what this is all about
What they told you
These voices in your head
Named father, mother, teacher, master
God and devil
Demons and angels
Spirits and deities
Your soul

You feel that they were all lying to you

You are drowning

Something you cannot name seems to be swallowing you
Slowly, bit by bit

You cling to your beliefs
What they taught you
What you practiced
They get louder
Distracting
I am! I am!

Silence is screaming

Presence awareness
The same voice
Disguised

Trying to keep you above

You aim higher
Gradually, you feel how you drown
You can barely breathe
Aliveness

The stream takes you

I am!  I am this!  Not this!

You drown in what you thought it to be
And it is not
That

While resistant, what you know, chokes you
You seem to die
But you don't

What seems like drowning
Are the voices in your head
Still pretending
They know the truth
Are truth

I am!

Simó Necic

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Don't fill your head with "voices" of others -
the so-called "teachings" of others;
the beliefs of others.

Don't seek what you need in the external world
of techniques, and foolish mind games
of clever worldly wisdoms;
of lofty "spiritual" words.

Instead, seek the company of the Innermost Essence
of your own Being - in the Silence of Being;
The True Wisdom - the Innate Wisdom;
The Inner Voice of Inherent, Intuitive Wisdom...

Trust the "Wisdom Mother" within...

Mystic Meandering
June 11, 2022

~

...all the more persistently
live in harmony with the
"Voice of Being"
within yourself.

Vaclav Havel

with thanks to Love is a Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"The Eclipse" - a meandering...

One of the things that the recent eclipse of the sun
reminded me of was the larger Cosmos, of which
we are all a part.  And the Cosmos is working!
The planets and moons and suns align, then move
apart in their perpetual orbits, doing what they
were "designed" to do.  The Universe works -
it's humans who can't seem to do that, to align,
to "get it together" as they are "designed" (?)
Or maybe I just have an idealized perception
of how a human being is supposed to be...

Anyway - it - the eclipse - reminded me that there's
a greater intelligence at work in the Universe, a
Deeper Reality beyond what we experience on
earth as humans.  So the earth, moon and sun
were aligned - briefly.  I have no idea really what
the significance of that is - just that it reminded me
of a Deeper Reality behind what we know as reality -
working in the Cosmos...

~

And so - "The Quest" - for me - is to discover, or
re-discover, the Deeper Reality of myself - my Essence
of Being in the Greater scheme of things...

I have forgotten how to BE what I am!
In a sense what "I" was designed for;
one could say my "Soul's" task - or
even my Being's purpose - if there is one...

Some call it the Self, but I get hung up on that word,
because the big "S" Self is not another self
hidden somewhere inside us that we have to "become."
But it's a discovery, a remembering, having a felt sense
of, the Deeper Reality of one's very Being - the Essence
of one's Being; our Natural State of Being, beyond
personality, beyond conditioning, beyond mind, beyond
religion, beyond "spirituality." 

Who are we really?

I thought I knew, but...

I haven't really met "Her" yet... ;)
Well, maybe on occasion...

Now if I could only remember to learn to see and approach
life from that Essence of my very Beingness...

Ahhhh - Peace...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 14 & 15, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Re-Discovery - Merton & Easwaran

At the deepest level communication
is not communication but communion.
It is wordless, it is beyond words, and
it is beyond concept.

What we have to recover [re-discover] is
our original unity [within].

What we have to be is what we are...

Thomas Merton
from a speech he gave just before he died.

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Everything we have ever achieved we owe to the inexplicable
urge to reach beyond our grasp, [and] know the Unknown.
This urge is part of our evolutionary heritage, given to us for
the ultimate adventure: to discover who we are, what the
universe is, and what is the significance of the brief drama
of life and death we play out against the backdrop of
eternity.

Nothing can satisfy us but reunion with our real Self...

Eknath Easwaran

From the Introduction to The Unpanishads

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Cosmic Blanket" :)

 

Civil-ization? - LaMotte & Gély

The world is a field of conflicting opposites.  You
will never wake up one morning to discover that the
politicians made peace on earth, because peace is not
the nature of this world, or politicians,
[or its inhabitants.]
We come to stay for only a while...
We are strangers and pilgrims on the earth...

Fred LaMotte
excerpt from a post on Uradiance

[brackets mine]

~

"For as long as I can remember, I have believed in God, but
not the institutional God...  God is incomprehensible.  We
can't put Spirituality in a little capsule for consumption.
The way the world works doesn't change.  The big guy
crushes the little guy.  For two thousand years [or longer]
it hasn't changed.  There is no humanity in so-called
civilization."

Gabriel Gély

Gabriel was an artist who lived with the Inuit peoples of Canada
for 38 years.  He lived with them when they were living 
 a "traditional" lifestyle [their tradition].  And lived with
them during their transition to settlement lifestyles.
He died at age 96 in 2020 in Nova Scotia

Excerpt from an Interview with Rod MacIver
of Heron Dance

[brackets mine]

~

Personal Note:

It seems that history keeps repeating itself.
Our own "American" indigenous peoples were put on
reservations (settlements) after many of them were 
massacred by the white anglos, including women and children.
The white man believed they had a "manifest destiny" from God;
that they were entitled to the land, and so took it.

The same thing happened at The Alamo in Texas.
The Americans decided they wanted the land that belonged
to the Mexicans, and they took it.
The same in Ukraine, Putin wants an empire, 
and he's trying to take it...

White Supremacists want to kill Blacks and Jews -
in the name of God...

It seems that every civilization has its history of 
violence and injustices.
We are not immune...

"the enemy is us"
even with our
lofty "non-dual"
spiritual
words.

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The saying on one of my T's
(the picture on the T is much better!)

 

Go Beyond - The Upanishads

We spend our days in the familiar world of our five senses,
but what lies beyond that, if anything - a vast world, perhaps,
waiting to be explored.  Most of us are happy to stay where we
are.  We may even be afraid to venture into the unknown.

Yet there are always a few who are not content...

Simply knowing there is something unknown beyond their
reach makes them acutely restless.  This is true of adventurers -
especially those who seek to explore Consciousness [Ultimate
Reality] itself.  They quietly slip out to see what lies beyond
 the topography of Consciousness itself [that] has an
illumination of its own...

We are meant to explore, to seek, to push the limits of our
potential as human beings.  The world of the senses is just the
base camp: we are meant to be as much at home in
[transcendent Reality] as in the world of physical reality.

It is our destiny as human beings to make this journey
ourselves.  Everything else is secondary...

Follow the path of the illumined ones...

...a familiar voice tugs at the edge of awareness...

~

The Upanishads are the recorded stories from Hindu sages
for whom the transcendent Reality called "God" was more
real than the world reported to them by their senses.  Their
purpose is not so much instruction, but inspiration -
an ecstatic snapshot of transcendent Reality.

The Upanishads tell us that there is a Reality underlying 
life which rituals cannot teach, next to which the things we
see and touch in everyday life are shadows (of the Real).

This Reality is the Essence of every created thing, and
the same Reality is our real self.  Each one of us is one
with the power that created and sustains the universe.  And
this oneness can be realized directly...  a Reality beyond
ordinary knowing...
It is the purpose for which each of us has been born...

From the Upanishads
Eknath Easwaran

excerpt from the Introduction

~

I had forgotten that I had already started this deeper
"exploration" :) back in 2019.  But there have been
so many distraction since then, that I feel called to
explore the depths of Reality again, although the
distractions weigh heavy.  Something deeper than
what I am living now calls to me - from the "edge of
awareness"...
There is always a "call" to deepen.

I want to live the true Essence of Life...

~

Photo - The Flammarion Engraving
from the internet

 

The Deeper Needs - D. H. Lawrence

 Photo by David Peters

We have fallen into the mistake of living from our little needs,
til we have lost our deeper needs.  We are perishing for lack of
fulfillment of our greater needs.  We are cut off from the great
source of our inward nourishment and renewal.  Sources that 
flow eternally in the universe.   Vitally the human race is dying.
We must plant ourselves again in the universe...and prepare for
the re-emergence in a bigger life in touch with the moving cosmos.

D.H. Lawrence

Photo - David Peters

 

Drop the Judgement...

There is no judgement about what we do
or don't do - about what is said or not said...

Drop the judgement and see what happens...

Everything is just what it is.

Everyone is just what they are.

If you drop the judgement
you drop the anger...

Judgement is like resistance -
it binds the heart...

You can't get people to change...

The issue is to drop the judgement
and just allow things to be the way they are -
because that's the way they are...

When I can 't feel compassion
I need to drop the judgement...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 30, 2023

12:52 am

(I'm still working on it :)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Aliveness - Joseph Campbell

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life.
I don't think that's what we're really seeking.  I think what we're
seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life
experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance
with our own innermost Being and Reality, so that we actually
feel the rapture of being alive.

Joseph Campbell
from: The Power of Myth

Celebrating 74 years of "Aliveness" today.
Thank you all for taking the journey with me
on this blogspot in cyberspace :)

Blessings to all my fellow "meanderers" :)

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Soaking in Being - John Scott

Ananda has been an ongoing exploration and inquiry for
me for several years.  My morning practice has gradually
become what I call "soaking in Being."  Shortly after waking
up and brushing my teeth, I sit in a favorite chair that fits
me particularly well.  The deep sweet, physical relaxation of
sleep is still present and readily available for me to "soak" in.
I simply turn attention gently toward this felt sense of Being.
The body responds.  It seems that Being loves it when the
light of Awareness shines upon it.  The feeling of well-being
shines brighter when attention turns toward it.  Waves of
well-being wash over and through the body.  Breathing slows
and almost stops.  The felt-sense of well-being or bliss seems
centered within the belly as it ebbs and flows throughout the
body.  Sometimes it almost tickles and makes me want to laugh.
Eyes are usually open and maybe even looking around the
room, watching the morning sunlight stream in through the
blinds.  Thoughts may be coming and going, no problem.
Meanwhile the body soaks.  I feel it now as I type this.

Over the years, I've come to understand this as what is
described in the Upanishads as Sat-Chit-Ananda, or
"Awareness of Being is Bliss," as Nisargadatta put it.  When
Awareness becomes aware of Being, bliss shines forth just
as light and heat emanate from the sun.  The light and heat are
not separate from the sun.  They're all one thing.  And 
Awareness-Being-Bliss are all one "thing":  True Nature.

Just as the sun may be obscured by clouds or may even seem
to disappear at night, so it is with the radiance of Ananda.  But
the sun never really stops shining.  It's just that our perspective
is constantly changing, and we have to remind ourselves of that
and come back to the felt-sense of Being, over and over again.
It seems that this is the kernel of all spiritual practices, this
remembering who we are and Knowing it even through changing
circumstances - feeling it at all times and Knowing it as ourselves.

John Scott is a project manager for a university health science center
and a Certified iRest Yoga Nidra Teacher living in Austin, Texas

~

with thanks to Kathleen Knipp
at Pathless Yoga

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Golden Eternity - Jack Kerouac

...in our true essence is known that everything 
is alright forever and ever...

It is all one awakened thing.  I call it the
Golden Eternity.

It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a
personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere:
self is only an idea, a mortal idea.  That which passes
into everything is one thing.  It's a dream already ended.
There's  nothing to be afraid of.  I know this from staring
at mountains months on end.  They never show any expression,
they are like empty space.   Do you think the emptiness of space
will ever crumble away?  Mountains will crumble away, but
the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind,
the vastness, empty and awake, will never crumble away...

There is only the Golden Eternity...
You are the Golden Eternity...

Jack Kerouac

from: The Portable Jack Kerouac

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering