Listen to the Wound...

In Deep Silence
In Deep Rest
In Deep Quiet
Deeply Listen

Sit in the depths
of the Sacred Silence
of Existence
and
breathe...

Touch and be touched by
this Sacred Space
that holds your
stories,
your wounding,
your brokenness.

From the depths of
your Being
Listen to the whisper
of the Wound...

From here all things
are made
clear...

Touch its depth
and
allow it
into the liquid flow
of Life

again...

Mystic Meandering
2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

a "wound" in a tree...
Can you see the weathered face
screaming?

 

Everyone Is Wounded - Rachel Naomi Remen

All people are wounded, but people who come here can't cover
it up the way the rest do.  Everybody has pain, everybody is
wounded.  And because [Commonweal] participants can't cover up
 their woundedness now that they have cancer, they can trust each
other. I can trust another person only if I can sense that they, too
have woundedness, have pain, have fear.

[When you have cancer, or other chronic or serious illness]
you feel separated from the whole  human race.  You feel
 as though you're looking at the world through plate glass. 
You can see other people, but you feel as if you can't touch them
 or be with them, because you are different.  They say that the
sense of isolation, of being separated from people who are
well, is as painful as chemotherapy, as cancer itself...

Years ago, when I was Associate Director of the pediatric
clinics at the Stanford Medical School, one of my
colleagues, Marshall Klaus, did a study which at the time
was extremely innovative.  He was chief of the intensive
care nursery, where all the babies were these tiny little
people you could hold in your hand.  Each incubator was
surrounded by shifts of people and millions of dollars worth
of equipment.  Everything was high-tech. Of course, we
didn't touch these infants because we'd get germs on them.
But Klaus decided to do an experiment in which half the
babies in the nursery would be treated as usual, and the 
other half would be touched for fifteen minutes every few
hours.  You'd take your pinky finger and rub it up and down
the little baby's back.  And we discovered that the babies
that were touched survived better.  No one knows why.
Maybe there's something about touching that strengthens
the will to live.  Maybe isolation weakens us.

Rachel Naomi Remen
Cofounder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program,
as interviewed by Bill Moyers in
Healing and the Mind

with thanks to Rod MacIver 
at Heron Dance
Rod is a survivor of 4th stage Lymphoma.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

"People don't care how much you know,
until they know how much you care."

whatever happened to compassion...

 

Reality Rupture - Pema Khandro Rinpoche

The Tibetan term bardo, the "intermediate state" [or the
in-between state], is not just a reference to the afterlife.  It
also refers more generally to moments when gaps appear,
inter-ruptions to the continuity that we otherwise project onto
our lives.  The interruptions in our normal sense of certainty
are what is being referred to by the term bardo.  To be precise,
bardo refers to that state in which we have lost our old reality

and it is no longer available to us. [there is no going back].  
There is a total rupture in our who-I-am-ness.

We have been holding onto the idea of an inherent continuity
in our lives, creating a false sense of comfort for ourselves on
artificial ground.

Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it
means to be disrupted...  In these moments we lose our grip on
the old reality and yet have no sense what a new one might be
like.  There is no ground, no certainty, and no reference point -
there is, in a sense, no rest.

There is rupture in our reality...

A direct experience of disruption felt a the core of our being,
and there is no longer any use manufacturing artificial security.

The bardo teachings are really about recognizing the value of 
giving up the game, which we play without even knowing it.
We hold pictures/images of our ideal self in an ideal world.  We
imagine that if we could only manipulate our circumstances or
other people enough, then that ideal self could be achieved, and
in the meantime we pretend to have it together... and pursue
reality as we think it should be...

When we suffer disruption. we find we just can't play the game
anymore.  Holding it all together is not an option.

Death and loss are great teachers, if we can open to the
experience of profound disruption.

Without some way of managing this experience, this unsettling
discontinuity, punctuated by occasional disruptions to the very
idea of our being, we never know if we are going to show up....

We contract with our wounded sense of self, and are dissociated
from our true nature, and make frantic efforts to create something
more ideal, more secure, more definite.

In a raw broken-open state, this place where we let go of all
games, there is actually a great sense of relief available to us,
a knowledge that we don't have to do it anymore - to *be* that;
and find way to disrupt our own habit of clinging to our
continuity story.

Emerging from the bardo, we reenter the flow of life with a
new sense of groundlessness: it is clear that "later" is not always
a luxury that will be available to us...  The perspective gained
in the bardo cuts through petty concerns.  It cuts through delusions
so that whatever we contact, we do so with raw presence, without
the denial of impermanence.  A new kind of openness becomes
available to us.

The rupture of the bardo inevitably leads to whatever is next and
appreciating the [losses] in our lives, and the bardo for what it is -
the pause - the end that clarifies what exactly we will now be
beginning...

Impermanence is not just an illuminator of loss.  It is the illuminator
of newness, the ever-unfolding moment and its creativity....

Pema Khandro Rinpoche

excerpts from
"Letting Go In the Bardo"

from Lion's Roar

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Soul Hears - Rumi

The soul has been given its own ears to hear things the mind
does not understand.

If you want to know who someone is, what is flowing through
or not flowing, stay in a listening posture.

Close your eyes inside your companion's shadow.

Rumi

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Plumb The Depths...

Do not be afraid to
plumb
the
depths
of 
your 
Being,
of

Truth;
to question
everything
you
have
learned

Take the journey deeply inward
to your beginnings - and endings;
to the Silent hum
in the Heart
of all Life
that sings,
and
see
for
your
self.

There are many caravans to follow,
those aspiring to "enlighten" or "awaken" you
with their words,
left like burning firewood to light your way,
along the road...

But only in Sacred Silence can the journey be made
to the Heart of Being;
to discover the depths of Being ~
of That which you are;
That which wants to 
*live*
within you...

Do not let fear stop your descent
into the Inner Vastness:
the deep Ocean within...

Be still,
and open...
Listening...

Follow the plumb line
of your breath,
past the Furies and the Sirens
into the soft ebullience
of Love
and quiet Joy
waiting for you,
like ethereal
liquid pools
of Light
drawing
you
in

Rest Here

In
the
depths
of
this
Alive
Silent
Spacious
Awareness

Listen to the endless
Rhythm already
holding
you
in the cradle
of
Peace

Feel
the
pervasive
contentment
of Life
Here
in
the
depths of
Sacred
Silence,
that animates
every cell,
every atom,
every sound,
every thought,

every feeling ~

until you *know*
THIS

*as*

yourself.

Simply Living...

Mystic Meandering
April 17, 2012

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
2010

 

When Things Fall Apart - Pema Khandro Rinpoche

There are times like these in our lives - such as facing death
or even giving birth - when we are no longer able to manage
our outer image, no longer able to suspend ourselves in
pursuit of the ideal self.  It's just how it is....  and in these
times of crisis we just don't have the energy to hold it all
together.  When things fall apart, we can only be as we are.
Pretense and striving fall away, and life becomes starkly
simple.

The value of such moments is this:  we are shown that the
game can be given up and that when it is, the emptiness
that we feared, emptiness of the void, is not what is there.
What is there is the bare fact of being.  Simple presence 
remains - breathing in and out, waking up and going to 
sleep.  The inevitability of the circumstances at hand is
compelling enough that for the moment, our complexity
ceases.  Our compulsive manufacturing of contrived 
existence stops.  Perhaps in that ungrounded space, we
are not even comforting ourselves, not even telling
ourselves everything is okay; we may be too tired to
do even that.

It's just capitulation - we're forced into non-grasping of
inherent reality.  The contrived self has been emptied
out along with contrived existence and the tiring
treadmill of image maintenance that goes along with it.
What remains is a new moment spontaneously meeting us,
again and again.

There is an incredible reality that opens up to us in 
those gaps...

Pema Khandro Rinpoche

excerpts from Breaking Open in the Bardo

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"Prepare for Death" - a meandering...

"Prepare for death" were the words I heard
whispered recently, unexpectedly.
I tried to ignore them,
not wanting to acknowledge them,
but wanting to keep them at bay - like
they hadn't been heard -
but they had...

This meandering is not meant to be morbid, just realistic,
even sobering - it is for me anyway...

Maybe the "reason" our bodies decline,
I thought, is because it is, in a sense, preparing
us for death... so that we recognize what's coming,
because we feel the body's fading, so we can start
detaching from the attachments we made in this world...

Most people I've encountered recently
don't like the mention of the word "death",
they react, as if it was a dangerous word;
like it's not supposed to happen, at least not now,
because our lives, for the most part, are still
oriented toward achievement and accomplishment,
materializing what we want, acquiring - and legacy.

Most are not ready to "let go" yet.

Evidently the word "death" - makes some people
very uncomfortable - let alone its actuality.

In pondering death,
the reality of impermanence,
I never thought I would back away,
but would welcome the
release...  I still do really...
But I wasn't expecting the words to waft
through me either...

And do they mean - literally?
Or metaphorically - like - *some*thing is
going to die in me?  Or a message that some*one*
will pass?  Or symbolically - like some aspect of
myself is going to fall away?

It is not clear...

As I continued to ponder its meaning
memories of those who have passed and their lives
floated through.  But those memories seemed like
another world - like looking through a window
into another time - which it is actually
- it *was* another time
that now seems unreal.

I want to be able to look through the window
into the past-death portal and what that's going to 
be like.  It seems we really can't know until we get
there, unless we are given glimpses, through meditation,
or mystical moments, or belief...
And I "believe" that *some*thing departs -
but what?

Spirit, Soul, Consciousness?
Returning to the "energy"
from which "we" arose?

a Mystery...

I have no clue really - just meandering here...

But I do think we feel death coming
in the waning of our body and energy; and the mind
unable to maintain its acuity, its cognition, its
memory of words...

We *are* given signs, but we try to fool ourselves
into thinking that if we just "live right",
pray/meditate enough,
exercise and eat "right";
believe the "right" religion,
we can put off the inevitable.

When it's time for me to "let go" of this world -
I hope I can relax and willingly walk over the bridge,
 through the portal into the Unknown...

Namaste

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
July 13, 2024

12:30am

~

Photo - Mystic Meanderng

 

The Silence Called...

She called me to the window again last night.
She beckoned me to come and be still,
to listen...

She waited for me to settle,
to be quiet...

Waited as I deepened
into Her Stillness...

No agenda, she whispered...

I listened...

Put everything aside and just breathe, She said.

Be aware of My Breath, breathing you...

Experience My Presence,
Sense the Intimacy
in every cell...

From the depths of Stillness
I heard Her call again,
calling me back to HerSelf.
Like a Great Ocean pulling back
the waves on shore,
back to ItSelf...

The wave giving in to the pull...

The Great Silence called
again and again;
the silent rhythmic intimacy of wave and Ocean,
one and the same...

The Silence embracing ItSelf,
knowing only
ItSelf...

The Eternal Embrace...

Come - She whispered...
Follow the pull...
Give in...

Come Home...

Mystic Meandering
Aug/Sept 2010

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Dance in the Depths...

In these turbulent times with its upheaval
on the surface of life,
dive deep...
into the stillness of Being within,
where nothing is disturbed, nothing is harmed...
Dance in the Depths...

externally it's all "The Mystery" playing
in the construct of time - the Unmanifest in form.

In the Greater Context in which life takes place,
everything is allowed...
The world will go the way it goes -
life will continue to unfold the way it unfolds -
the light and the dark will continue to dance together
in time-bound reality.

But do not focus only on the chaos;
the mind-created contractions of fear...

Instead...  Turn Within...

Experience the depths of Inner Stillness,
the Stillness of the Everlasting Deep within.
Discover what's beyond the chaos and fear
- what holds the Cosmos together;
the enduring hum of Aliveness within all form...
We are held in that Rhythm of Stillness that
sustains Existence, that IS Existence.

Rest...

In the Embrace of that which animates Life...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings whispered to me
 Nov. 2016

~

I need to practice this again and again...

 

It Floats Us - Ivan Granger

The vast flood
Rolls onward
But yield yourself,
And it floats you upon it.

Ikkyu

Day after day, experience after experience, terrors and tragedies,
joys and victories, everything  - life.  It can feel like an onslaught.

Most of us learn to dampen down the awareness in order to cope
and mimic those around us.

Yet even with dimmed senses we feel overwhelmed.

But yield yourself,
And it floats you upon it.

This is the liberating wisdom of surrender.

Most of our intense efforts in life, whether directed toward work,
family, even spirituality, are about trying to control the flow
of life.  We want to master the flood, bring it under our will.
We want to tame it so we can be safe.

But it never really works.

The lifelong effort is like a duck on a great river who imagines
he controls the current by the action of his paddling feet.

When he happens to face downstream - Amazing!  The river goes
just where he commanded!  When he turns left or right, he imagines
that he needs to increase his effort and improve his technique to get
the river flowing where he wants.  And when he turns downstream -
Calamity!  He has lost control of the river.

Or...  he can just sit on top of the river and let its current carry him.

Yielding ourselves to this great river, no longer imagining that we
can control it, we can finally begin to discover its true nature and
direction - and beauty.  We come to see its flow as a unifying harmony
and not a threat. Importantly, we notice our natural buoyancy.  
We are built to float upon it.

Commentary by Ivan Granger
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
(didn't have a picture of a duck :)

 

The Loom of Weaving...

Withdraw from the Loom of Weaving;
the mind-made threads, the mind-made
rhythms on the surface of life, and find
the Silent Thread
that weaves through all other threads.

The True Rhythm of Life

Stay with this silent, organic Rhythm
that flows through you.
Put all other synthetic threads aside and
follow the Silent Thread...

Follow the Deeper Rhythm...

Wait in Silence
until you feel the True Rhythm within...
The Rhythm of Silence.

Follow this Rhythm to the Source,
like a stream that Flows to the River,
that flows to the Ocean.
Find the Source in The Rhythm...

Where does it take you?

Into the depths of your self -
the depths of your Being,
the depths of Silence...

Attune to that Rhythm...

Mystic Meandering
Aug 27, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Weaving Ill-matched Threads of Life - Rainer Rilke

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth -
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,

to hold you.

Rilke

from Rilke's Book of Hours
Love Poems to God

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Rediscovering Sacred Silence - Jean Klein

Silence is our real nature.
What we are fundamentally,

is only Silence...

It was before the beginning of all things.
It is causeless.
Its greatness lies in the fact that it simply is.

Silence has no opposite in noise.
It is beyond positive and negative.
Silence dissolves all objects.
It is not related to any counterpart
which belongs to the mind.
Silence has nothing to do with mind.
It cannot be defined but it can be felt directly...

Silence is freedom without restriction or center.
It is our wholeness,

neither inside or outside the body.

Silence is joyful, no pleasurable.

It is not psychological...

Silence is holy.
Silence needs no intermediary.
It is healing.
There is no fear in Silence.
Silence is autonomous like love and beauty.
It is untouched by time.
Silence is meditation, free from any intention...

Silence is the absence of one's self...

Sound, which comes from Silence, is music.
All activity is creative when it comes from Silence.
It is constantly a new beginning.
Silence precedes speech and poetry
and music and all art.

Silence is the home ground of all creative activity.
What is truly creative is the word, is Truth.

Silence is the word.
Silence is Truth

Jean Klein

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

(Jean Klein's words, my format)

~

Photo - Vortex Art
2011

 

Endless Mystery - Rod MacIver

The deep, important journeys of life involve endless mystery.
The source of the cohesive disequilibrium of the universe  -
the disharmonies that combine to create harmony, the depths
of our inner worlds and the hidden belief systems and
mythologies, unique to each of us, that guide our lives
without us knowing it, the beauty of the natural world and the
search, individual to each of us, for the courage to manifest
the beauty within, to evolve, to change.  And the somewhat
contradictory search for inner peace.  We search for harmony
with our inner world, and sometimes find it, then, once again,
lose it.  And then of course the ultimate mystery of death and
the implications of that mystery on the true nature of life.
On living that life...

Rod MacIver

Heron Dance

 

DUST - Dorianne Laux

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth.  Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor -
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn't elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That's how it is sometimes -
God comes to your window
all bright light and black wings,
and you're just too tired to open it.

Dorianne Laux

What We Carry

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Do you notice the eyes looking back at you? :)

 

"Downtime" - Rod MacIver

A crucial consideration in creating a [creative and authentic] life,
 is downtime.  By downtime I don't mean just time away from
the work.  I don't mean time to run errands or time to watch TV,
but time for reflection and solitude.  Time to let your mind
just wander to wherever it wants to go.  Time to absorb whatever
messages the larger universe might want to send.  Time to give
the messages deep inside your inner world an opportunity
to bubble up.

Without downtime [solitude], and it does require discipline and
planning, you lose touch with yourself.  You lose perspective on
the challenges of your life, and they start to take over.  You lose
access to your creative juice.  You may think that what you are
doing is dealing with pressing issues, and that those issues are so
important that you can't afford time away, but the message your
inner world will receive is that it is not valued.  It will then
retreat, and your [creative] work, your life, will lose power.

All the major setbacks in my life have come after a protracted
period of addressing pressing issues and not taking time off to
relax my mind and gain perspective.

Rod MacIver
Artist 
Heron Dance

~

Photo from the Internet

Happy July :)

Has anyone got an igloo I can use ?

LOLOLOLOL