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...

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Grace - Chuck Surface


Grace does not hold an abacus in one hand,
Tallying karma,
Or a Rubik's cube in the other,
Challenging you to "Figure it out."

Grace knows nothing of such cruelties.

Grace is the power that comes alive
When Attention, wandering in the world,
Turns inward,
In quest for The Heart's Desire.

From the first awakening of Longing,
To the first turning inward,
through the long, wandering trek,
And the vanishing into Pure Being...

Is not everything the functioning of Grace?

Grace is the power of "Fruitioning",
Of the seed to Blossom,
Of the ember to Flame,
Of Longing to Fulfillment.

Grace is the gravity of our own Pure Being,
Pulling "i".
To its Ultimate Oblivion...
And Benediction.

The Heart's Longing
And the mind's Wonder
Arise from Grace,
As Grace.

Is not everything the functioning of Grace?

Grace, as my Heart speaks it,
Is not a "consequence"
Of conditionality,
Of causality.

Do we choose to have a Heart
Drunk with Longing?
Do we choose to have a mind
Moved by wonder?

It is Grace that calls us,
Grace that moves us,
And Grace that sustains us,
Until we Vanish...

In its welcoming arms.


Chuck Surface



~

Photo taken by my brother
at Sunday River Ski Resort
in Maine



 

Monday, February 10, 2025

The Blessing of the Deer - Jane Hirshfield

 


A house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible...

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished...

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken away from us.
I have disappointed.
I'm sorry.  I knew no better.

[.....]

This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.


Jane Hirshfield
Original title: "Standing Deer"
from The Lives of the Heart

~

Photo of Deer - Mystic Meandering


Saturday, February 8, 2025

Love Letter to my Body...


Dear Body,

After 75 years I am aware of your fragility and impermanence,
and yet you still struggle to remain -
as difficult as that has become...

I know this life experience has been very hard for you...
I will do my best to take care of you - to comfort you...
Body, just rest now; allow yourself to sink down
and relax - sleep...

You don't have to keep it all together...
(deep breath and body releases its tensions)

I know you suffer - and I'm sorry for
how you labor and struggle.
You have done well to house me here with all that
you have been through - and I have taken you for
granted.

I will help you as much as I can while you still continue
to support me here...

I am sad that you are declining - my companion.
I don't know how much longer you can sustain me here.
I am sorry that I haven't always treated you well;
not eating the right foods; indulging in what *tastes* good
to the palate - and gave me comfort.

Needing care for yourself - you help me to caregive another -
draining your life energy...
But you just keep going as best you can...

I will give you rest and comfort now...
In the elder years...

With deep gratitude...

Your Indweller...



Mystic Meandering
Jan 25, 2025

~

Photo - moi 
1949





 

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Primordial Light - Misc.



Almost none of us knows our true identity...
We forgot that we do not know our true identity...
We think of ourselves as Americans or Chinese,
as Republicans or Democrats, as believers or
atheists.  Each of those identities might be true,
bu each is a secondary truth.

There is a deeper truth.

We are the Universe...

The Universe made us...
{our bodies are made of the same elements]

In a  most primordial way, we are cosmological
beings...


The Primal Light, the light from the beginning
of time [and beyond time] - the Primordial Light -

We are that...


Brian Swimme
From: Cosmogenesis

He goes on:

The Primal light was discovered in 1964 by
Penzias and Wilson.
We know that each of these photons comes from a
place near the origin of the Cosmos, so if we trace
these particles of light backward we are led to the
birthplace of the Universe,

We have discovered our [cosmic] origin in a colossal
sphere of light.  This colossal sphere, fourteen billion
light years away from us in every direction, is the
origin of our universe.  And thus the origin of each of us.

The empirical evidence points to a time fourteen billion
years ago when our universe consisted of a colossal sphere
made of light, as well as the primal atoms of hydrogen and
helium.
The colossal sphere transformed itself into stars and galaxies
and everything else in the known universe.

Brian Swimme
From Cosmogenesis

~


There is a synchronicity between the world 
and the Universe; a symphony of energy
complimenting and working together.
There is an underlying order.
We must get in tune with the energy of
the Universe.

author unknown

~

I am part of a vast network, an unbroken legacy of
evolved thinking sentient beings that is older than
myself, older than my ancestors, older than my species,
older than the rocks and trees and even the planet we
live upon.

.....my origins go back even further, to the Big Bang and
beyond...  eons ago, to a time before time.

Poffo Ortiz

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering


 

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Stand Still. Listen. - Kathleen Knipp


I returned to the cabin at dusk.  As I was unlocking the door,
I heard a panicked voice leave a message on my answering
machine (yes, an actual answering machine - remember
those?)  My guest, who had set out for a hike with promises
to turn back early, was lost.  Very lost.  Darkness falls quickly
in the winter desert; the temperature can drop 20 degrees in an
hour.  She'd gathered her altitude, longitude, and latitude from 
her technology, but her data points did not reveal the trail.

So, I did what any experienced hiker would do.  I commanded
her to stop speaking and to listen carefully.  Then, I read her
a poem.

It was the same poem I'd received almost a decade earlier from
a wise and seasoned outdoorswoman one evening when I had
gotten turned around in the woods behind my home in Quebec.
It begins:

"Stand still.  The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here...
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers..."

By the time I'd ascended 500 feet, running full throttle with
my headlamp lighting up loose rocks, roots, and downed
trees - hazards for chronically sprained ankles - we made
contact again.  She had located the elusive path shortly after
our call and was now making her way down.

Stand still.  Listen.

When we can't find our way, we try our best to figure out
what to do.  We look for solutions, consult, gather information.
Do I turn left or right?  Speak up or hold silence?  Innovate or
uphold tradition?...

Listening - true listening - is not an activity.  It's not about
listening to something,or even for something.  It's not
listening to the mental chatter or the wisdom of the body.
Rather, it's about dropping into the primacy of experiencing,
into the field of pure receptivity, free from egoic interference.
It's resting in complete availability until the next step becomes
perfectly clear.

Listening.  It's what I teach.  It's what I practice.  It's what I
humbly learn and relearn daily through my own missteps and
moments of distraction.  When I fall into the habit of believing
that "I" can figure it out, that "I" make the decisions, that "I"
must find my way, the field narrows and"I" end up running
around in circles.

"Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.
You must let it find you."


Kathleen Knipp
Pathless Yoga


The poem "Lost" by David Wagoner

~

Photo taken by my brother
at Sunday River Ski Resort
in Maine.  He is a volunteer
ski patrol there...

~

Personal Note:

I love this piece by Kathleen.  It moved me deeply, not only
for it's message but because Kathleen did not give a "non-dual"
answer, dismissing her predicament, she gave a loving, caring,
compassionate answer to the woman who had gotten lost on
the trail - by reading comforting words from a poem about
 not being lost, about standing still and listening to the trees
 for the way to go.
And then Kathleen took action and went to help her friend
in trouble.  She acted with love from her heart...

In these very troubling times around the world, we need to
support each other in dealing with the reality we are faced with
 - in our  seeming"lostness"; as we navigate
a way "Home..." and remember our Infiniteness...

MM

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Blessings In the Chaos - Jan Richardson

 


To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be
 a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,

that go with you
even to the 
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you
cease.
Let what divides you
cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes
and demeans,
and let depart
all that keeps you
in its cage.

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.


The human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness,
a place where everything comes together,
where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform
into vision, where damage will be made whole,
where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise,
where the travails of a life's journey will enjoy a homecoming.
To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a
person now.


with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
Medieval Mandala

Friday, January 31, 2025

Between Two Houses - a meandering...



Sitting watching the evening news,
I looked out the living room window - to the space
between my neighbors' houses.

Looking through
the bare branches of the trees between their homes,
I saw the pinkish, orange, gold-yellow of the sunset
fading in the West.

It occurred to me, in that moment,
that no matter what is happening on the earth,
and my personal life - the Cosmos still "works"!
The sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the galaxies
all dance the Dance of the Cosmos -
for eons -

giving us beauty, wonder, and awe - and peace.
It's us humans that don't seem to be "working" well -
on this little planet - divided...

It also reminded me that there is a greater context
in which we live - a vaster Reality - hidden -
that I want to be aware of...

Sometimes this world seems so gray
- run by lunatics -
that I miss the beauty in
The Cosmos,
and in between spaces...

I really need to
look out my window more often! :)
And expand my view of the Universe...

Mystic Meandering
January 30, 2025

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
The photo was actually taken in April 2023



 

Monday, January 27, 2025

The Problem With Words - Ivan Granger


There's a real dilemma at the heart of religion and spiritual
endeavor.  The Eternal, the Whole cannot be adequately held
by such small containers as words.  Yet we humans are
instinctively communicators and word-makers.  What are the
sages and saints to do with their perceptions?  How do they
render the Eternal comprehensible to others and inspire new
seekers?  Describe the profound love and bliss and unity,
and we naturally name it Mother.  Convey the immensity and
power, we name it Father.  Or we say Beloved.  Or Friend.

All of these are valid ways to begin to form a notion of the
Eternal.  Through these words we as individuals can form a
relationship to this vast Reality.
  And through this relationship
 we can be drawn into deeper awareness, into deeper opening,
and into our own direct encounter... at which point we realize
how inadequate all words are.

The problem arises when the mystics are no longer heard or
are relegated to history, when too few people have their own
direct wordless encounter.
  Then we end up with entire
religions stuck at the level of words.  No matter how sacred
and truth-filled those words may be, words are always
incomplete.  Words alone are soon taken literally, and then
true knowledge is lost.  Not knowing what is real, religion
becomes embalmed, self-protective, sectarian, and sometimes
violent...

The wounds of religion are healed....through direct perception,
instead of forcing meaning....

Ivan Granger - Commentary
Poetry Chaikhana

~

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
the name that can be named is not the 
eternal Tao.

Lao Tzu

~

3D Art - Mystic Meandering


 

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Mining for Jewels - Chuck Surface


For jewels, we dig through the earth or hammer rock.
And upon finding, remove them from their encasement,
Leaving behind the rubbled detritus of earth and stone.

Just so, I approached the world of religion and philosophy,
Digging, sifting, washing away veiling encrustations,
Of hardened orthodoxies and binding dogmas.

The jewels found in that rubble. more or less precious,
Were expressions with which my Heart felt affinity,
And with which my discerning mind did not take issue.

The measure of these jewels, born of another's experience,
However cherished by multitudes over centuries,
Is their resonance with the Diamond of my own Essence.

Lacking this, no matter how treasured by countless others,
I left them in the rubble where I found them buried,
And wandered off, seeking deeper resonance and affinity.

Those jewels I found and kept, are treasured in gratitude,
For the Water of Beauty they offered my thirsting Heart,
And the Manna of Wisdom they fed my starving Mind.

Digging, sifting, washing away the obscuring encrustations,
Of so many binding orthodoxies and rigid dogmas,
I saw refracted, there, in those jewels of many colors...

The Diamond of my own Radiant Essence.

For some, it is best to set aside religion and philosophy,
And undo the conditionings that have accrued within us,
Over a lifetime lived under their tutelage and influence.

Not for everyone, but for some.

For some, our experience must be unwrapped, unveiled,
In interpretations by others, of their unique experience,
However revered or worshiped they may be...

So we can see with eyes afresh in Wonder.

For some, it is best to be liberated even from liberation,
Described and defined by others, long dead, or living,,
However revered or worshiped they may be...

So we can experience freedom anew, in its Purity.

Some of us must discard the burdensome clothing,
Of enlightenment and such, propounded by others,
However revered or worshiped they may be...

And face, naked and wide-eyed, our Radiant Essence.


Chuck Surface
Facebook
Original Title: The Diamond of Our Own Radiant Essence.



Photos Mystic Meandering


 

Thursday, January 23, 2025

The Unseen World - Rumi and Misc.

\

Everything you see has its roots
In the unseen world.

The forms may change
Yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
Every sweet world will fade,
But do not be disheartened.

The Source they come from is Eternal,
Growing, branching out,
Giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?
That Source is within you
And this whole world
Is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
Its waters are ever-flowing;
Do not grieve,
Drink your fill!

Don't think it will ever run dry,
This is the endless Ocean.

Rumi


~

From the earliest times, it was understood that the visible
world implied the existence of an invisible world, where
everything was infused with the supernatural and the felt
sense of the sacred.

Thomas Yellowtail expressed: "A man's attitude toward the
nature around him, and the animals in nature, is of special
importance, because as we respect our created world, so 
also do we show respect for the real world that we cannot
see."

Through the traditional wisdom of American Indians we
learn that there are ways of knowing that are obtained
through the earth that allow human beings to listen and
learn directly from the Great Spirit.

Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
Parabola Magazine
Fall 2017 Issue: "The Sacred"

~

Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there
is nothing but the spirits of all things.  That is the real world
that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something
like a shadow from that one.

Black Elk


with thanks to Love Is A Place 
for all entries today

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Light through empty water bottles
on the counter :)






 

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

The Greater Need - D. H. Lawrence


The rhythm of the cosmos is something we cannot get
away from without impoverishing our lives.  We must get
back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos
and universe.
For the truth is, we perish for lack of fulfillment of our greater
needs, we are cut off from the great source of our inward
nourishment and renewal, sources which flow eternally
in the universe...

D. H. Lawrence


~


Life involves both chaos and order and we sometimes
want desperately to control things, and we become
vulnerable to simplistic answers.

What is needed is courage to live in the midst of the
ambiguities of this moment...

Swimme and Tucker

~

Photo taken by my husband





 

Monday, January 20, 2025

An Inverted Reality - Misc.



The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe, 
because the axe was clever and convinced them that, because
its handle was made of wood it was one of them...

Turkish Proverb


~


We've been pulled into an inverted reality,
an alternate fantasy world
by a powerful narcissistic cult leader.
Up is down, and down is up.

author unknown


~


.....Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget

Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will...

Excerpt from the song"Vincent" by
Don McLean
about Vincent Van Gogh

~

Photo taken by my husband 


 

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Crazy Comfort - 2...


It happened again - this crazy comfort!
I woke relaxed! - again...
as if a burden had been lifted - again...
and my whole body had opened up
to a vastness within,
a deep openness - again...

I breathed in the Universe
and the Universe breathed me...

A word came...
The word was "Comfort" - again...
I *felt* it... viscerally, tangibly,
and let myself sink into it...

~ Comfort ~

Immersing myself in the feeling of the word,
letting it fill me,
expand me...

I felt exhilarated once again -
wide open,
*feeling* an internal
Comfort
from an unknown
Source within,
an unknown spring,
flooding the system...

~ Comfort ~


Mystic Meandering
Original Jan 10, 2024

~

It was about 1 year ago that this happened,
and again in Dec 2024
It has since subsided
with all that's happening in the world
at the moment, although I do have moments
of peace and Comfort.  I'm just always surprised
when it happens :)

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Relaxed Snoopy :)





 

Friday, January 17, 2025

The Great "Cosmic Womb"...


Laying down the burdens and chaos
of daily existence,
I come to rest in the "Mother Energies" -
the originating Life energies of the Cosmos...
Unfettered, Unbuffeted 
by the strain of life...
Embraced and infused by this Primordial
Source Energy...

This undefinable, nameless, formless "Cosmic Womb"
invites this mystic meandering in.
I stumble across the threshold of a doorless door...
into an Ineffable space of Silence
that enfolds me in the
Great Womb of Existence
in which we all live...

All existence is the exquisite vibration of
Primal Energy experiencing Itself
in many forms; morphing Itself into
different expressions, softening the harsh residues
of life being lived...

The fluidity of this "Source Energy" innately and
intimately flows through existence - like an
Aurora Borealis.
It subtly streams through this body,
leaving its own illumined energetic signature...
A new spark of Life is lit...

Mystic Meandering
2021


~


Jaw dropping wonder....in unfettered freedom, the cause of
the universe is 
This.
In the beginning the luminous womb is,
and the luminous womb willingly leaps in delight
and lets Herself go...
of Herself, upon Herself....it all comes forth.

She births Herself ....
She confines Herself by the limits
of space and time...
....becoming ordinary individuals...


From an interpretation of the
Pratyabhijnahrdayam
an ancient Kashmir Shaivism text
This version by Joan Ruvinsky

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Starry-Starry Part 2 - Swimme and Tucker

 


The essence of the Universe story is this:
The stars are our ancestors.  Out of them,
everything came forth.  They have a birth.
They go through development.  They come
to an end...

[.....]

In many cultures throughout history humans intuited  that they
descended from the stars, even before they had empirical evidence
from science that our bodies were formed by the elements forged
by the stars.  Humans felt something in the depths of the night
as they contemplated the presence of the stars.  They began to
suspect that the meaning of their lives went far beyond what
preoccupied them during the urgencies of the daytime world.
They knew in their hearts that *their* journey and the radiance
of the stars were interwoven.

[.....]

Stars are the fiery cauldrons of transformation.  Stars are the
wombs of immense creativity and complex interactions.
Certainly there are similarities in the human experience...
Could it be that life is not possible without vast mysterious,
and ongoing transformation...

From:  Journey of the Universe
Swimme and Tucker

~

Art - Vincent Van Gough

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

The Universe is a Story - Swimme & Tucker


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...

The story has the power to awaken us more deeply to
who we are - 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.

And this changes everything...

A new integrating story has emerged.
It is a story of transformation through time.
It is challenging our understanding of who we are
in the universe.

Are we here by chance, by necessity, by serendipity,
or on purpose?

Swimme and Tucker
From: Journey of the Universe

~

Everything is ultimately a story.
My life is a story,
your life is a story,
all occurring within the vast
Cosmic Ocean...

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

~

Photo from the Internet



 

Sunday, January 12, 2025

The Cosmic Mystery - a meandering...


Webb Telescope Photo


Spiritually I've gone rogue - LOLOLOL
No, not a mystic gone mad,
just following my "spiritual evolution",
if you will...

No more notions of "Enlightenment", or
"Self-Realization",
or following the "old institutionalized systems"
with their dogmas and doctrines...

The Cosmos calls to me now...
I'm drawn to the incredibly, amazing Vastness
and Mystery of the Universe...

The Cosmos ignites something in me -
an intense energy pervades my body,
unexpectedly.

I am compelled to step into this "new" Reality;
which isn't really "new" to me...
The Cosmos has been calling to me for a long time,
trying to get my attention, but something is
different now - more intense.
Earthling phone Home! :)

I have been weighed down by the "gravity" of 
earth-life:
conflagration, inauguration,
genocide, homicide...
overwhelm...

But there is a Symphony of Energy in the Universe
that I must follow...

And deeply look into Infinity -
and the gate of Eternity...

The Cosmic Mystery...

Blows "me" away...


Mystic Meandering
Jan 11, 2025

~


The goal of life is to match your heartbeat to the beat
of the universe...

Joseph Campbell





 

Friday, January 10, 2025

Deep Looking - Thich Nhat Hanh



In spite of the lessons of the collective wisdom of
the world, we rarely satisfy our yearning to know
the Truth of our Existence.

The Mystical approach to the essential questions
about the meaning of life is quite different from
the normal way of learning things through written
teachings, rather, the mystical transmission of the
purpose of life comes through living life with
ever expanding awareness...

author unknown


~

When we practice deep looking, we receive help,
we receive understanding, we receive the
wisdom that makes us free.

Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddhist Teacher





 

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

"Truth" - LaMotte & Goethe



With general truth our minds swell up,
assuming the abstraction to expand us and
make us smarter.  But a mind turgid with beliefs
is neither clear nor useful.  It is a gray intellectual
thicket that prevents real empathy, real presence.
The general truth, in fact, makes us smaller, because
it confines awareness to a conceptual box
which our ego must argue and defend.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance


~


We can never directly see what is true, that is, identical with
 what is divine: we look at it only in reflection, in example,
in the symbol, in the individual and related phenomena.  We
perceive it as a life beyond our grasp, yet we cannot deny
our need to grasp it.

[.....] the highest achievement of the human being as a thinking
being is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere
what is unknowable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goeth

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering