Welcome...

Come meander with me on the pathless path of the Heart
in these anecdotal,
sometimes inspiring, sometimes personal meanderings of the Heart's opening in the every-day-ness of life...

Tuesday, April 30, 2024

The Fire of the Magdalene - Fred LaMotte


What is the mission of Mary Magdalene?  Is she just another
archetype of "the divine feminine."?  Are we called to abstract
her, with all the other Gods and Goddesses, into the faceless
hegemony of the One?

Perhaps she is yet another two-dimensional icon, a window,
into a numb impersonal nonduality.  Or does her feral
astonishing bittersweet gaze call us toward something quite
unheard-of and outrageous in the annals of spiritual teaching?

Her darshan is a droplet of terrible fire that consumes us,
burns us up and down with such accurate alchemy that our 
dross turns to gold, annihilating all that is not ourselves.
Nothing remains but our uniqueness.

The eyes of the Magdalene behold us, and we are held.  We
are held in the most severe and lethal demand: the demand
of bhakti.  Her gaze is not the fire of anger or judgment, but
passionate devotion.

Mary is devotion.  That is what bhakti means, Devotion - to
God? To Jesus? To Sophia? To attaining Gnosis? [To Brahma?
To Allah?]  Dear friend, she burns with deeper bhakti, purer
bhakti: devotion to becoming herself.

When the drop merges with the ocean, it is our spiritual work.
When the ocean merges with the drop, it is our spiritual play,
and our anointing. 

Mary's olive-eyed glance pierces the heart and calls both you
and me to the work, the play, of the great transformation:
be yourself!

Mary Magdalene is She who refuses to be an archetype or a 
symbol, refuses to signify any truth other than her own jagged
broken perfect wholeness, the ineluctable suchness of
Personhood.

Fred LaMotte
Interfaith Minister
Uradiance

~

Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering
2011






 

Sunday, April 28, 2024

The Inner Wilderness - Brené Brown


Belonging so fully to yourself that you're willing to stand alone
is a wilderness - an untamed, unpredictable place of
solitude and searching.  It is a place as dangerous as it is
breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared.  The
wilderness can often feel unholy because we can't control
it, or what people think about our choice of whether to
venture into that vastness or not
.  But it turns out to be the
place of true belonging, and it's the bravest and most sacred
place you will ever stand

Brené Brown

with thanks to Beyond The Fields We Know

~


Photo - Mystic Meandering






 

Friday, April 26, 2024

The path of reality - Nathalie Delay


The path of reality is a non-path, because it is above all
an exploration of life int its wholeness... without falling
back on our models and our repetitive, comfortable
pat-terns.  It's a non-path.....because we recognize in
real
time how we negotiate with reality, how we 
cling to a belief or to our need for control
, and how this
outlook keeps us from being in tune with the moment 
and creates our suffering...

The path of reality does not require us to conform to any
model,
 because it is not attached to what we do, think or
feel.  It invites us to see how we behave with our opinions,
our emotions, and with living beings.

The path of reality is more than anything a path of self-
knowledge, not in the psychological sense but in the
most essential and profound sense there is.  It helps
us rediscover our absolute aspect while incorporating
the most human part of us. It brings us back to the
roots of our being, making a complete humanity
possible...


~

Photo - Mystic Meandering



 

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

The Ever-Changing "Path" - a meandering


Once again Life is asking me to change my "path."
I am again embarking on what feels like a leap into
uncertainty, jumping off the "spiritual treadmill,"
and allowing myself to just BE,
letting go of the need to look through a particular
"spiritual" filter.
Although I am still drawn to all things "spiritual."
It's in my Soul, and DNA :)

I rediscovered recently how freeing it is to just be "me" - 
not trying to be more "spiritual", or something other than I am.
I don't have to be self-conscious about using the words
 "I", "me", and "my" - in some kind of pseudo "non-dualness",
as some traditions do...
 - because -
 it's all Source - expressing ItSelf. 
There's no need to make a distinction between self and
 Self, creating divisions where there aren't any.

I only need to BE, and let Source reveal Itself,
express Itself, live Itself as "me" - a wave on the Ocean of Being.

It's not about "me" being "enlightened", but rediscovering my
authentic, natural self - and just living it - just walking it.
It's a fluid "path", not static, and not always clear.

I continue to gradually shed the conceptual frameworks that
have defined and informed my "path" so far - the boxes of
belief that have tended to constrain my authentic expression.
And now trying to extricate myself from the life dramas
that have preoccupied my mind and life recently; although that
is proving to be harder than I thought.

This shift in consciousness is happening gradually, over time,
and I doubt that it's over.  There is no finish line to cross, no
destination to arrive at.  It's a never-ending exploration of the
Truth of Myself;  which sometimes feels like an
"existential crisis." :)

I no longer pursue a "path" or "teacher", but only a direct
intimacy/communion with "The Mystery"/The Divine/Source
(however one defines that for themselves) - listening and
waiting for the Inner Voice...

Asking: What is "The Mystery" calling me to now?


Mystic Meandering
April 2024

~

Photo from the internet




 

Monday, April 22, 2024

A Perspective on Impermanence - Ajahn Chah



Now you must learn to be satisfied with the many years
you've already depended on your body.  You should
feel that it's enough.

You can compare it to household utensils that you've had
for a long time - your cups, saucers, plates and so on.
When you first had them they were clean and shining,
but now after using them for so long, they're starting to
wear out.  Some are already broken, some have disappeared,
and those that are left are deteriorating: they have no stable
form, and it's their nature to be like that.  Your body is the
same way.  It has been continually changing right from the
day you were born, though childhood, and youth, until
now it has reached old age.

Allow the mind to let go of its attachments.  The time is ripe.

It's the same with your wealth, your possessions, and your
family - they are all yours only in name; they don't  really
belong to you, they belong to nature.

It's like the water of a river.  It naturally flows down the
gradient; it never flows against it, and that is its nature.

The time is ripe - find your real home.

Ajahn Chah
Thai Buddhist Monk

Excerpt from an article in Lions Roar
First published Jan. 1, 1994
by permission of the Abbot,
Wat Pah Nanachat,
Thailand

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Snow owl on skylight



 

Saturday, April 20, 2024

Pondering Impermanence...



The Eternal Being that inhabits the body is not aging -
but I am surprisingly surprised by the reality of the body's 
increasing decline: loss of memory, lack of stamina
and muscle functioning, etc...
I am on the off ramp and the inevitable dropping of the
body transition is surely coming...

Although grateful that the end of the body's struggles
is closer - (how close "she" doesn't know)
but wonders what that will be like;
to witness the death of her body
and the possibility of a 
"cosmic birthing" into a new "form"
of the Formless; or maybe dissolve back
into cosmic dust, or be absorbed by the
Vastness of the Eternal.
Sentience dissolving into the Eternal...

Who really knows...

All is transient here.
We're just passing through.
I shouldn't be surprised by this,
feeling the body's decline as I do -
but still -
every so often,
it gives me pause...

Mystic Meandering
2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering



 

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Housed in the Quiet...


I am grateful for the Quiet in this House
that I dwell in...
Immersing me in the Quiet within;
the deep 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 Being,
allowing IT to dwell here,
living in these spaces...

The "House" is still - yet alive,
breathing in and out with the breeze.
I can tell by the way the curtains softly sway...
Its space holds my "things" - that
aren't my "things" - only accumulated
symbols of a life lived: spiritually, creatively,
intuitively, meaningfully -
mementos for someone else's attic someday.

There is exquisite peace in the mind
in these Quiet spaces...
No stories, no ruminating on the past,
No mental fires to put out,
No trying to fix anyone's problems,
No inner conflict,
just the deep Quiet of Being -
communing with the Stillness within me...

Life goes on as it has been
and I remain in the Quiet of my Soul...


Mystic Meandering
April 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering



 

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Silence Calls To Us - Nathalie Delay




It's interesting to observe how hard it is to stay alone,
in silence, without distractions.
We are afraid to be face-to-face with ourselves.
Face-to-face with our impatience, our agitation, our worry.
Face-to-face with the depth of our being.
We are afraid to dive into the infinite space of our true nature,
when no attribute nor any - story covers it up.
And yet it calls to us in silence,
but we don't listen.
And yet we have an acute and painful longing for it,
like exiles too long cut off from their homeland.
So, instead of trying to fill the space which has appeared,
let us give ourselves over to silence, to the absence of certainty.
Let us not miss the incredible opportunity to be,
in all simplicity and humility
and taste the nectar of pure presence
when there are no more expectations, only the gift of self.
Let us not miss this unique chance to taste the substance of the 
moment when no superfluous activity waters it down.


with thanks to No Mind's Land

~


 

Sunday, April 14, 2024

The Inner Voice - Janet Conner


There is a Voice inside you.
There is a Voice inside everyone.
Whether you hear it or not, the Voice is there.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, 
the Voice is there.
Whether you ask for help or ignore its guidance,
the Voice is still there.  
Waiting.
It is waiting for you to stop,
if just for a moment, and listen.
The Voice is always there, guiding you,
encouraging you, loving you...
Pick up your pen and penetrate the thin wall
of consciousness that keeps you apart...
Once you start asking for more you will start 
receiving more:
more ideas, more intuition, more inspiration,
more wisdom, more opportunities,
more challenges, and more questions.
Always, there are more questions.
The answers live deep inside the questions.

Janet Conner
from: Writing Down Your Soul

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
My mother's and grandmother's
writing desk, at sunset...  Now topped with
assorted baubles :)


 

Friday, April 12, 2024

A New Madness - CG Jung


The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are
not elemental happenings of a physical and biological
order, but psychic events.  To a quite terrifying degree
we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are
nothing other than psychic epidemics.
[relating to the soul or mind.]

At any moment several millions of human beings may
be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have
another world war or devastating revolution.  Instead of
being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides,
and inundation, modern man is battered by the elemental
forces of his own psyche.

C.G. Jung

with thanks to Love Is A Place

Vortex Art Mystic Meandering
"The Matrix"

~

Did you take the Red pill today?
Or will you take the Blue pill and
 continue to hide in "The Matrix"? 

Now is an opportunity to change our
perspective, and change our way of 
being in the world - to meet the madness
and stand up to it.

 

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

The Haunted Room - John O'Donohue



The way you think about your life can turn your soul into a 
haunted room.
  You are afraid to risk going in there anymore.
Your fantasy peoples this room of the heart with sad presences,
which ultimately become disturbing and sinister.

The haunted room in the mind installs lonesomeness at the heart
of your life.  It would be devastating in the autumn of your life
to look back and recognize that you had created a series of
haunted rooms in your heart.

Fear and negativity are immense forces, which constantly tussle
with us.  They long to turn the mansions of the soul into a totally
haunted house.  These are the living conditions for which fear 
and negativity long, and in which they thrive.

We were sent here to live life to the full.  When you manage to be
generous in your passion and vulnerability, life always comes to
bless you.  Had you but the courage to acknowledge the haunted
inner room, turn the key, and enter,
you would encounter nothing
strange or sinister there.

You would meet some vital self of yours that you had banished
during a time of pain and difficulty. 
Sometimes, when life
squeezes you into lonely crevices, you may have to decide between
survival and breaking apart.  At such times, you can be harsh with
yourself and settle to be someone other than who you really long
to be.  At such a time, you can do nothing else; you have to survive.

But your soul always remains faithful to your longing to become
who you really are.  The banished self from an earlier time of life
remains within you waiting to be released and integrated.  The
soul has its own logic of loyalty and concealment.

Ironically, it is usually in its most awkward rooms that the special
blessings and healing are locked away.

Your thinking can also freeze and falsify the flow of your life's
continuity to make you a prisoner of routine and judgement.

John O'Donohue
from Eternal Echoes

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
image from light on the ceiling
through the top of a lamp shade...





 

Monday, April 8, 2024

Facing Down the Dragons - a meandering...


I knew this is why I keep entering "The Cave."  I keep getting
chased down by fear and anger - again and again.  I have carried
them all my life, in different forms, and I am exhausted
from carrying them - the weight of darkness.  I have tried many
 times over the years to lay fear down, to trick it, to manage it,
to numb it, to be aware of it...  But awareness of it is not enough.
  It must be faced full on - in all its disguises: anxiety, anger,
frustration, and stress.  But first, I had to experience the
Silence of Being in "The Cave", to prepare the way to open to
meet Fear, and allow myself to experience it all the way through. 
 I am not yet "through" the fear, in its myriad forms.
  It is an ongoing process.

"The Cave", or "sanctuary" serves several purposes.  It provides
the physical space, a room, like a holding space, and, is also the
inner space of deep Silence that is the foundation of seeing with
clarity, for entering into the exploration and investigation of the
hidden shadows of the self in the safety of the deeper space of
Awareness.

The first night that I sat with fear in "The Cave", many years ago,
I was amazed that Awareness curiously moved towards it, and 
experienced it.  Awareness was not afraid of the fear, but was
compassionate towards it.  A small opening of light came through.
I began to relax and allow the fear to be, instead of trying to
push it away.

The second night I sat with fear, I became aware that I am
somehow invested in it, an unconscious and habituated response
to life, although I don't understand why or the dynamics of how
that happened.  But I realized that there is an unconscious
pattern and a familiarity with fear that makes it hard to
"just let go", as some suggest, despite the pain that creates it.
It is such an ingrained, habituated pattern that in a sense it
has become the default position in my psyche.

In sitting with fear, I became aware that fear is the mind's view
of things.  It's the view through the lens of fear that I am 
somehow attached to...  Something needs to be seen more deeply
here, but at this point, these many years later, I am still blind
to it.

The third night I realized that anxiety traumatizes the body.
Fear is very visceral, releasing all kinds of fear hormones and
bodily symptoms that wear out the body...  There was the
understanding, over and again, that fear is triggered by thoughts
believed to be true, to be real, creating this physical trigger -
the body-mind's response to a mental state of mind - a biological
response to the mind's view.  The body-mind mechanism
automatically defaults to anxiety with its resulting physical
felt experience of trauma.  Even the *thought* of facing the fear
creates fear.  It is so uncomfortable physically that it is hard to
face this construct of fear without spiraling into panic.

And I realized - once again - that despite many "awakenings",
much of the time my life is still fear driven by this underground
electrical current - short circuiting everything in its path.  
Anxiety has become an entrapment, a prison - a private self-torture
of and by the mind...

I have seen all these insights before and yet there is still "fearing",
even now as each new life experience arises.


What is the remedy I asked:

These words emerged from within, from the Deep Silence:

Follow the Fear.  Let it take you deeper.  Deeply attend to it.
Explore the tendrils of it.  Allow yourself to *fully* experience it.
Watch how it plays itself out: where it goes, what it tells you,
where it leads the mind and body.  Trust where it takes you.


Mystic Meandering
originally written 2010
updated 2024

~*~

"In order to transform our fears
we must be willing to enter the cave
of the Blue Dragon.
There we come face to face
with our despair
and all aspects of the mind...

Standing at the mouth of the cave
of the Blue Dragon
and yelling 'I'm not afraid'
is not the same as entering it
with compassion for who (what)
we will find."

Genju -  108zenbooks

~*~

"It takes exhaustion to stop running...
to surrender and be led within
deeper and deeper into the journey,
the dazzling, dark journey into ourselves..."


~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
a sheet of scrapbooking paper
color digitally inverted


Saturday, April 6, 2024

Have You Hugged Your Ego Today? - Fred LaMotte


I love my ego.   A person who tries to flat-line
and abolish the ego can be very humorless and dull. 
Have
you hugged your ego today?  The ego is no bondage at all,
because it only lasts for an instant, responding playfully
to this momentary alignment of particles and forms, then
vanishing back in to the Ocean of Consciousness.  The ego
is very responsible, the soul's response-ability to each 
situation that arises.... [it]is born from the play of Consciousness
in myriad selves
I need my ego to dance, my little bubble of "I".... 
Let your ego sparkle, dance, sing and meditate.  Let your ego
effervesce and dissolve again and again in laughter, in tears.
You really do need an ego if you want to laugh and cry.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Personal Note: The ego is part of the whole package.
There is no need to get rid of it, or deny it - just be
who you are, be ALIVE, embrace the whole package
 of who you are.

I haven't met a "spiritual teacher" yet who did not
have an "ego."  If you're with them long enough 
you see it seep out from behind the "spiritual teacher"
facade.  :)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
a gift for my "ego"  2 years ago
on my 72nd birthday :)
that made me giggle with delight.
Some egos don't like birthdays,
they don't believe there is a self
to celebrate...  It's still their ego :)))



 

Thursday, April 4, 2024

Drop Into Freedom...



In my decline I have lost track
of how things are "supposed" to be...
of how things are "supposed" to "work" -
like life...
of finding my way to wherever it is that
I'm "supposed" to be going.

Somehow I've lost my "keys"...

I have grown weary 
of how things are...
of what I'm "supposed" to be doing...
of taking responsibility for things
I'm not responsible for...
of attachments to things that used to be important...
of the body and its ailments and loss of functioning...
of the *ideas* of "awakening" and "enlightenment"...
who "awakens"?
what "enlightens"?
Does it really matter?

Is this how impermanence works?
You lose your keys to things that don't really matter
so that at some point it all falls away
in its importance,
and you are liberated *from*
false ideas and premises,
from hopes and dreams
that keep you bound,
and you "drop"
into
Freedom


Mystic Meandering
April 2, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Sri Yantra

 

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

An Inner Journey - Rod MacIver


A journal chronicles a journey
And the journey itself is home.
The journey in search of deeper awareness
The Source within
An inner journey that is not abandoned
Is its own triumph, its own work of art.
The journey itself is home.

~

There is an inner myth guiding each of our lives,
generally unknown to us.

Use your journal to explore that,
to explore the journey [the myth].

The value of journaling is the process of self-exploration
and self- nurturing [or self inquiry]

What is seeking to unfold in your life?

Ultimately the "goal" is to live in harmony
with your inner life [your Inner Being].

Rod MacIver
From: The Song Within


~

Personal note:  I have been journaling as part of my
"journey" for over 40 years, as part of my "spiritual path",
a sort of "spiritual inquiry" and reflection...
For me “journaling” is not only about bringing mindfulness
 and awareness to my life, relationships, and spirituality,
but is a meditative practice to turn that awareness
 to the deeper space of inner Silence… 

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering