A Deeper Reality ? - a meandering...

Photo by Johannes-Plenio on Unsplash
Johannes Plenio website

 "I turn everything over to 'The Universe'!
The Beautiful, Beautiful 'hidden' Universe..."

These were the words I wrote in my journal late one
night recently, listening to the Deep Quiet within...

I used the term "Universe" because it is free of
religious persona, identity, and association;
is free of concept...

then came:

In the "hidden" Universe everything is all OK!

But why did the word "hidden" emerge?

What is this "hidden" Universe?

More words came:

The "hidden" Universe is behind matter reality;
the spatial intelligence behind
manifest existence...

(Maybe some of you already know this...
But it felt new to me that night.)

I didn't get the sense it was the universe of microbes,
or DNA, or ghosts, or aliens, etc.  But the "Universe" that
is behind the manifest Universe;
an animating universe of Source Energy...

I felt a vibration in my body resonating with the words...

~

The thought arose that maybe I've been trying too hard 
to "spiritualize" everything -
that is - impose a certain "spirituality/or belief onto life
circumstances, which has caused stress in the system...
Like there's some kind of "spiritual" standard that I'm 
supposed to live up to, like self-sacrifice, duty, obligation,
being responsible, etc.  That I'm not being "spiritual" enough,
or doing it "right";  that it's something I have to earn by "doing"
something; but I am unable to live up to the "spiritual" standards
others have set.

~

So I, for some innate reason, turned that night to what I call
"The Universe"
- and gave it all up:
"spirituality";
the struggle about what I should "do",
about my current life circumstance;
my sense of obligation, and my fear-filled mind
about what might happen,
and started trusting that everything would be alright...

Again - a full body vibration...

My pen kept writing:

The "spirituality" that we practice is "flat."

(but what did that mean?)

With the introduction of the word "hidden" the "Universe"
became/felt dynamic and full.  And I had the sense that "worship",
or belief in one figure or religion is like - obsolete - because
that is an earthbound construct!  "Spirituality" is an earthbound
construct!  The Universe is much "fuller" and has no need for
"spiritual" constructs.  "Spirituality" keeps you constrained,
confined, limited.

What have I come across here!?

Can this be true?  - I wrote...

It was as if I suddenly realized that I had been focused on the
wrong things all these years.  "Spirituality", deities, personas,
and concepts like "enlightenment" and "awakening."
Flat concepts and constructs.

Somehow I *felt* that there is a much fuller range of Reality
...behind everything seen...

And with that I felt a vibration go through my body again...
And knew that my experience here is just a blip in a bigger
Universe, and maybe doesn't exist at all!

This reality, in some sense, is like living on a flat screen TV
with events taking place on the surface.  But there is depth to
"The Universe" that is multi-dimensional or more holographic;
and empty of anything contrived.

~

Maybe I was given a glimpse of a deeper Reality.

Maybe...

I don't know.

Mystic Meandering
Aug. 22, 2023

~

You are detaching, the old is over and the new
is yet to come.  The Soul has cast its moorings and
is sailing for distant places.

Remember the instruction:
Whatever you come across - go beyond.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Johannes-Plenio on Unsplash
website

 

Grief as passageway of the Soul - Matt Licata

Grief is not something we "get over" by following pre-prescribed
stages, but a partner that we dance, play, honor, argue and weep
with as the cycles unfold.  It's appearance and the ways it longs
to be tended are unique for each psyche, heart, and nervous
system.

The timeline for this voyage is not knowable by the psychiatric
community, nor by insurance panels, or teachers of spirituality,
but is birthed in the heavens.  To rush, force, or pathologize
the experience of grief is to work against nature.

The grieving process [for all forms of loss] may not have an
endpoint or state of completion in which we come to some final
resolution, where we "finish" and land in some untouchable [more
spiritual] place, free from our embodied vulnerability, somatic
aliveness, and from falling apart and breaking open yet again.

While some may hold this fantasied end state as a goal which
comes about as we "master" [or "spiritualize"] life, the heart is
not interested in mastery.  But in entering the mystery in more
subtle and sensitive ways.

The heart itself is endless, and the visitors of grief may companion
us in their various forms for a lifetime.  Not come to harm, but
to reveal a portal into depth.  Shifting shapes, circulating, and
rotating, as they open and close passageways in the landscape of
the soul.

Grief is not so much a process that we "make it through", but a non-
linear unfolding, shepherd and emissary of the unknown.  It moves
not by way of straight line, but by that of circle and spiral.

Matt Licata

~

It is not an error
that you have been born
 a sensitive human being,
with a tender nervous system
and a heart that is sometimes
broken.

The tenderness there,
the shakiness, the grief...

not an error
to be remedied

or cured...

[or spiritually bypassed]

But a doorway to Essence,
a portal to Life.

Matt Licata

An Infinite Number of New Beginnings - Jeff Foster

In your attempt to be an 'adult',
you lose touch with your inner child.
In your rush to b the 'expert',
you disconnect from the amateur you,
the inner lover, innocent and wild.

In your quest for security,
your run from insecurity,
bury your anxiety, crush your doubts,
until one day they explode all over the place,
and make a mess of your nice, 'ordered' life.

Don't confuse the role you play
with who you truly are.
Don't confuse the adaptation with the actor,
the changing weather with the vastness of sky.

Your true identity lies in Presence...
And wonder.
And creativity.
And an infinite number of new beginnings.

Each moment.
Each canvas.
Each Now.

Jeff Foster

~

Jupiter, Venus, Moon - June 2015

"Spirituality" is a Concept - Eric Baret

Spirituality is a concept.  What people project on so-called
spirituality, they used to project on their Boy Scout team when
they were six, on their football team when they were ten, on
politics at twenty and on marriage at thirty...  The void that we try
to fill with a doll, an electric train, a good grade at school, a
career, a child, we then try to project onto spirituality...

True spirituality is gratitude.

True spirituality is a stillness that makes one available for
 every moment.

Wanting to set ourselves free from all our problems to become
"spiritual", to become "awakened", all comes from fear.

There comes a time when you don't feel the need to look for
yourself in the different currents of life.  Then there isn't any
 word, any direction, any knowledge, any school, any lineage,
 any teaching, and, above all, any spiritual person.

What remains is non-separateness.

[You] understand that there is nothing to understand, nothing to
 acquire. [You] don't need to invent tools to face life, to create ways
 to defend or affirm yourself to deal with situations. 
[You] look honestly at what is, what triggers fear, anxiety,
pretense, defense in yourself.  [You] clearly accept
your pretense, your limits.  These limits will reflect the Limitless.

Your clarity shines light on all that...
You are shining light into spirituality, not the other way around.

...when [you] project a superior/inferior [projection on life] - spiritual
 things that ought to set [you] free from ordinary life - then [you]
are in [your] imagination.

Let's function in day to day life: eat, sleep, love, see, feel, look.
Let all the emotions live inside us. Nothing to defend, to affirm,
to know. We do not need anything to get a feeling for the
 Primordial.
No need to change anything in ourselves.

Eric Baret

Teacher of the Tantric Tradition

Excerpt from an excerpt from his new book:
De L'abandon.
Full excerpt posted on Stillness Speaks

via: No Mind's Land

[brackets] mine

~

Photo - Shadow of a stained glass angel
on the ceiling...

Food and Feelings "Window"

Sometimes “spirituality” can become a kind of mask that we hide behind – another persona. This has been true for me in the past – hiding my feelings. Even now I have to catch myself sometimes and ask: Am I being real here... What am I really feeling… Am I just believing convincing spiritual jargon, and spewing out all the “right” words, “spiritualizing” my way through my feelings… Or am I being authentic. There is something authentic in *allowing and expressing* feelings – the truth of life experience. Feeling the feelings allows me to be more open to others, more compassionate, more engaged, more available, more vulnerable, and less detached. Feelings open the heart.

So – with my food fetish recently I am looking into the inner window of what the feelings are behind the Food: why I indulge, why I use it as a drug, what feelings am I trying to stuff, what am I trying to suppress, to medicate, to avoid, what are the holes that I am trying to fill, what is not being satisfied, what pain am I trying to soothe… Food actually has become a practice in awareness. At this point I am still on the outer fringes of awareness, but I am aware that something is not quite whole here – something needs to be seen, felt and acknowledged… And so I’m beginning to listen, to not resist the feelings, and see what they have to offer.

My first pass at *seeing* the feelings behind the food produced this list:

Food is resistance to what is.
Food is avoidance, denial, repression, suppression, self-gratification.
Food is anger, anxiety, frustration, grief, self-denial, self-sacrifice, unmet emotion, unmet feeling, unmet life.
Food is security, and insecurity, self-doubt, and neuroses of all kinds.
Food is distraction, disappointment and dissatisfaction.
Food is numbing.
Food is false control when I feel out of control.
Food is consumed in order *not* to face things that need to be faced.
Food is a way of fighting the fear.
Food is about not being good enough.
Food covers a deep pain, a deep grief, and temporarily fills a deep hole.

When I looked into this hole of pain and grief, I recognized that it is the old wound of separation – the original wounding of mankind - that spawns all religions, the search for Truth, for wholeness, for “Oneness.” Intellectually I know this mental *idea* of separation cannot be true… But, evidently it is still *believed* somewhere in this system. There is a very *deep* sense of *feeling* separate from ‘The Beloved’ – that no amount of intellectualizing or spiritualizing can assuage. This feeling is like being torn and gutted. It is torment and an extreme longing for relief. Food evidently offers that relief – like any other addiction – physical or spiritual. In fact, the feeling of “separateness” from the ‘The Beloved’ is probably the basis of all addictions.

The feeling invites me in, to see, to come to face to face with this sense of separateness that I continue to *feel* in my *being,* despite “knowing” otherwise: That in truth, this Primordial Beingness (‘The Beloved’) is intimate with and inseparable from all life, and all life experiences. I know this and yet evidently I don’t… And the closer I get to this gaping hole, the more I want to eat!!!! There is an overwhelming compulsion to consume every time I approach…

But I am willing to at least look over the edge, to feel this feeling of separation, to befriend it, to honor it, to *see* it, to stop avoiding and resisting it, or trying to cover it over with “spirituality.” Oh yes, almost forgot – and with food. I can’t *deny* its presence. It is too visceral – too intense. To hold it and give it space is freeing… ‘The Beloved’, through awareness, embraces everything, receives every feeling, every emotion back to ItSelf with deep acceptance and deep compassion. In the embrace the sense of emotional “pain” in this body begins to relax - because it has been seen, acknowledged and welcomed home.

The seeing of this, and the embrace of it, is not the end of it, however. It’s the beginning. It’s the beginning of living authentically, living mindfully, living fully awake and aware – with feelings and food… It’s an ongoing discovery.

~*~

Window "Pain"

After my foray into the “Egoless” Forest, a couple of posts back, with its lush green foliage, it appears that there are still some dragons lurking in the shadows there. Where are those knights when you need them!? And I thought they were here to protect and defend. Ah – but it appears that the lady of the castle must face her own dragons and apparently it is time. No “spiritualizing” of this lingering shadow-self is allowed here in the Egoless forest.

It was inevitable in window sitting that these shadow orphans of the self would come out of hiding from behind the trees to be seen and heard. That’s really all they want, like the rest of us. They are the parts that have been avoided; the parts I’d rather not deal with; the ones that are still hurting, still in pain, still not seeing who they really are. Experiencing our Essential Self more deeply actually opens the window to seeing more deeply all that has been avoided – through seeking enlightenment, through using “spirituality” as a cover to hide behind. Experiencing “True Self” is not the end, it’s the beginning. And each time I experience an “awakening” into this Natural State of Being, it seems a deeper awareness opens up to these hidden aspects that want to be known.

So it appears that I’m going to be exploring these more hidden spaces during “window sitting.” It’s already started. These little gremlins keep throwing rocks at the castle window, trying to get my attention. Which is strange, because the window is open and the screens are on – but I can hear them knocking. :) So I’m getting to reflect on all the ways I am still attached to “me”, especially in relationship. The sign of attachment seems to be the level of anger, frustration and irritation that I still feel in those relationships and with life in general. There is also a noticing that there is still a need for this “me” to defend, argue, correct, to speak out against, to judge – oooo – really? Maybe I don’t want to see this! Too late! I see that I am still playing out the unconscious dramas in relationships with family and my husband. This unconscious drama is like some kind of unspoken language of emotional triggers and reactions – deep neural pathways of pain that are engrained and habitual. I won’t regale you with the details, or go into the personal stories, but having to spend inordinate amounts of time with my family over the last several months has triggered a lot of old habituated patterns and suppressed feelings.

It has been my experience that in this process of awakening, enlightenment, or however one calls it, it is discovered that there is an emotional investment in hanging on to this sense of “me” with its fears, playing prescribed roles. In some unconscious way we seem to get attached to the “me’s” way of seeing – through pain - and therefore get emotionally invested in hanging onto our pain; to *not* seeing who we really are, because it’s too threatening to the ego. We cling to this suffering “me’s” way of seeing because there is a pay-off somehow. We get to stay stuck – and complain about it. We get to avoid what we don’t want to see and hide within this phantom “me.” We get to stay identified with the “me” that we believe we are - tenaciously hanging on to our sense of me that doesn’t *want* to see who it *really* IS, and doesn’t want to give up its role – causing suffering.

So I continue window sitting, curiously pulling back the curtain and seeing through the window “pains” – the places where pain still lives – not wallowing in pain mind you, not fixated on it, but allowing the resident orphans their say and meeting them with deep compassion and presence – welcoming them Home.

~*~

I did this picture back in 1991 as part of an “Inner Child” exercise.

She is the vulnerable child, in hiding.

~*~

PS: This does not mean that all my posts from now on will be about
"pain" or the shadow self.
I will continue to write about whatever shows up at the window...

Heart Openers

I’ve been noticing that there seems to be more reasons to cry these days. The state of the world, child abuse, poverty, the spiritual ignorance of people in power, fires, floods, tornadoes, and the global economy are reasons enough to shut down and turn off. But what I’m talking about here are the things that touch my heart and open it – although for some certainly the above would do that.

For me it is the little things, not the global issues that I can easily distance myself from, that touch me in a way that breaks my heart open. For instance, several months ago on the news they did a human interest story about blind people who were being taught how to march in a marching band while playing their instruments. Volunteers led blind people through marching routines, guiding them gently from behind with hands on shoulders or hips, to give them the feel of where their bodies needed to be while they were playing. It was heart warming enough to realize that these blind people were actually playing a musical instrument. But the fact that a group of volunteers would help them to have an experience of marching in a band just blew me away. Their blindness did not stop them from experiencing their expression of life. Wow. And it was facilitated by those willing to be available to them – to help them realize their possibilities. It opened my heart…

Then recently I went to the pet store to get cat food for our cat – Yodi Bhodi. While there I spotted the adoption area where there were cats who had been abandoned by their owners – for whatever reason – in cages. They were listless, blank eyed, like their spirits were gone. (I had given a cat to a shelter several years ago when we had to move out of state.) Some of the younger ones were meowing, wanting to be taken away – to be held and loved. My heart broke open. I wanted to take them all home. But rationality took over, as well as knowing that Yodi would not allow another cat in his territory after nearly 18 years of being an “only child.” I left the store nearly in tears. My heart ached open… I went home and hugged my cat a little closer as he patiently waited for the moment of affection to end, not wanting to ruin his reputation as ‘cat of the house.’

And then there’s kindness. Recently while grocery shopping, I was standing in the produce section, picking through the potatoes, trying to find ones that weren’t green and soft. There was another woman there at the bin, doing the same thing. In a soft English accent she said – “they don’t look too good do they?” There was such kindness in her voice, it took me by surprise. Suddenly I wanted to cry. My heart stirred open… I hadn’t expected a stranger to make a connection. The kindness of her connection touched my heart and opened it for a moment. I responded, and then quietly slipped away – as if shocked by the encounter. But the exchange touched my heart and left a lasting imprint.

I think some of us in pursuit of “spirituality” or “enlightenment” have often gotten the idea that we need to distance from our feelings, even run from them – or “spiritualize” them. I know I have - trying to stay neutral when a feeling arises, to be “spiritual”, to step back from the feeling inside and observe, almost as if it was someone else’s experience. Even the concept of being present to feelings is sometimes done to not actually feel them. And while I don’t want to collapse into my feelings, indulge in them – well sometimes - and allow them to overtake me, there is something authentic in allowing and expressing the feelings that arise in the moment that makes me more open to others, more vulnerable and less detached. Feelings, as I have discovered, open the heart. When seen with the eyes of the Heart, they give the opportunity to open to what is deeper, underneath the feeling.

The longing of the Heart is for connection and kindness, and so it responds to these expressions – with feelings. Can we be open enough to allow these feelings in, to touch us, to open us to be real with ourselves and others… It seems that it's not the big events necessarily, but the "everydayness" of life that offers these opportunities, that softly invites us to open.

My other Heart openers are: Violins - Genuine Philanthropy - People who follow their Passion – Deer - Bunny Rabbits in the yard, when they’re not eating my plants - Good Spiritual Teachers – Laughter - Grief: mine and others - Genuine Compassion – The Blog and Buddha Art at ZenDotStudio.

What are your Heart Openers? Let me know… seriously…

Heart Smiles – MeANderi
http://www.aserenitysanctuary.com/