Trust the Presence that Holds it All - Amoda Maa

Be courageous enough to meet life from the unknown - without
a safety net, without hope, without past, and without future.

Without the hope of salvation - without running away from or
running toward anything in your mind - you are forced to fall into
an open space of Being-ness.

And in this openness, you fall out of time and out of imagination,
right into the present.

In other words, you become present - you become totally available 
to the essential Being-ness of life.

In presence, you and life have collapsed into each other - there is
no longer a "future life," it's all happening now.

In this eternal now, you and life are one - and when you are one
with what is, how can you possibly fear what is?

It's like fearing your self, and that's ridiculous - because your self,
the Being-ness that you already are, never leaves you.

Being-ness is totally dependable - it is always here.

Now you are in touch with a deeper kind of trust -  one that is 
not based on something.

It is no longer a conceptual trust, but one that is inherent in the
nature of presence.

It is inherent in the nature of life, because life is always what is
here in the present - it can't be anywhere else.

This deeper trust has no meaning to the mind, but complete
meaningfulness to your natural state [or Essence of Being].

And even if you fail, even if life leads you to a seeming dead-end,
even if you are handed an unwanted circumstance, even if you
don't get to you desired destination of perfect happiness, even
if you heart is broken open over and over again - you will still
trust the Presence that holds it all.

Amoda Maa

words I needed to hear - with thanks to Michel at 
No Minds's Land

~

Photo - Dorothea on the Beach at Sunrise

 

Holy Hush - Yahia Lababidi

Silence is the inescapable force in our lives - a constant presence.
Contemplatives, poets, and thinkers alike, have long hinted at
a wisdom beyond words, straining the limits of language
and sense, to describe the ineffable.

Silence is not the absence of failure of words, but instead
somehow exists before and beyond representation, a primordial
essence that lurks beneath our constructed world.  In the immortal
formulation of Tao Te Ching: 'Returning to the root is silence/
Silence is returning to being.'

It is in silence, that things patiently unfurl, open up and trust us
with their secrets or reveal their hidden natures...

Silence can be difficult to define.  For it is not merely the
absence of sound, but may be perceived as an actual physical
presence - a holy hush,  the elemental silence found in the
natural world, where Time appears to collapse and one is 
afforded glimpses into Eternity. Silence is the solemn 
companion of nature and can presence like the very
pulse of Being.

Krishnamurti describes this mystical state: 'And it is only
where there is space and silence that something new can be
that is untouched by time/thought.  That may be the most holy,
the most sacred - may be...  You cannot give it a name.  It is
perhaps the unnamable.'

One is said to 'enter' and 'emerge' from this state, as though it
were an actual physical territory.  We cannot forcibly break-in
and enter, or rush through this portal to arrive at a meditative-
reflective state; but instead must patiently wait to be granted
access...

The Christian philosopher, Max Picard said:
"Silence is listening.  And as attentive practitioners of this
metaphysical art may sense, it can sometimes be unclear who
is doing the actual listening...  us, or Silence itself...

Otherwise, dissimilar spiritual traditions - Hindu, Buddhist,
Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Native American - all
agree on the importance of observing silence as a tool for 
inner transformation...

Yahia Lababidi
Egyptian-Lebanese poet and "thinker"

Excerpts from an article entitled:
"Notes On Silence" 

With thanks to No Mind's Land for the link :)

 

Epiphany - 2013

It seems that my "spiritual path" has been laced with small
"epiphanies" and "divine flashes" of awareness, and "mini
awakenings" over the years.  I had one of those moments
back in 2013 when standing in my backyard.  I had stepped
outside to be in nature for a while, connecting with the stillness
and silence - taking it all in - noticing and feeling the connection.
I was in the process of taking some pictures of the shadows 
that the late afternoon sun in November was making on the fence,
when suddenly the words: "There is nothing but 'God'" ran
unbidden and unexpectedly through the silence of my being.
Say what!  There was an immediate sense of profound peace,
contentment, and joy in my heart.  I even started to giggle to
myself.  But I was also completely shocked by the word - 
"God" - and my very tangible felt experience of it.

I had not used the "God" language in years, after leaving the
religion of my childhood some 26 years before this, as it holds
imagery of my Christian upbringing of a person in the clouds
with white beard, meting out judgment.  It has so many old
paradigms, somewhat fundamentalist "religious" connotations
from my past, which made it all the more surprising that this
was the word that floated through.  If the inner "voice" had said:
 "All there is, is "Awareness," or "Consciousness, " or "Pure Being,"
 I would have gone, of course! - as those are the words that I often

use, abstract as they are. I also have used words like Buddha Nature,
The Divine,The Self, Brahman, The Ineffable, The Eternal, or
The Infinite. But I was jolted awake by the clear use of the word
"God." As this phrase ran through me I had the image of a deep
golden light, like a sunset, that ran across the screen of my mind,
as if to show me the depth and vastness of the word.  As it wasn't
 the persona "God" image of my childhood.  No, it was an
 incomprehensible sense of vast, expansive, all-inclusive, infinite,
 ubiquitous, Alive Presence, with which I felt an immediate sense of
  inherent communion - not one which needed to be sought after,
 but that was already actively happening...  And with that
realization came profound sense of Grace...

It was also realized that it doesn't matter if there is a sense of
a "me" or "no-me"; if one "concentrates" or not, or meditates,
or not.  It is inconsequential.  It was just realized that all there is,
is Infinite Existence that just IS - no matter what name or
qualities we give It...  or how we discover it for ourselves.

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
2013

~

Art: Mystic Meandering
Ethereal Vortex
Done with fingers and Craypas oils
2010

 

The Sacred is Here...

 The Sacred is Here...

  The Sacred is Here...

   The Sacred is Here...

Om Namah Shivaya

 

~*~

She gently and quietly invites me
deeper into Her inner realms...

She infuses me with Her Grace...
from within

She is my guru, my teacher -
ever teaching through Her Quiet Presence,
Her soft energies, and whispers of
Love.

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 5, 2021

_/\_

Om Namah Shivaya is a Sanskrit phrase
meaning
Salutations to the auspicious one

~

Personal Note: This poem emerged as a result
of direct experience of the movement of "The Sacred"
within during meditation, which I have also called
"The Mystery", or "The Silence" - not based on
belief or concept, but just being open to that which
enlivens us from within - The Presence of the Ineffable.
"She" also whispered: "Always come back to the
feeling of The Presence within."

"She" is a reference to how I experience the energy of
"The Sacred", which feels feminine to me.
"She" is always Here.. :)

_/\_

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"The Mystery" is more than real...

 What is this "Mystery" that
abides in the depths of me?

Who is "She" that lives me?

"She" rises up in me as Energy
from the very core of my Being,
letting Herself be known in Her whirling
through the spine - dancing me;
the heart quivering, the intensity breathtaking -
The Alive Presence of "The Mystery."

"She" is Here - in us - always,
making Herself known as the Infinite Source of all,
ever abiding within the 
subtle realms of Being.

Not just believed to be true,
but felt to be true...

For what we believe to be true
in our minds,
becomes our "truth" -
our view of "Reality"

until - our inner eyes open to see
"The Mystery" revealed,
as a subtler Reality beyond Form...

"The Mystery" - a subtle Reality
that can be felt
beyond matter reality -
beyond conceptual ideas of reality;
and experienced as
"more than real."

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 27, 2020

Shivoham
_/\_

~

Photo - Aurora Borealis from a calendar

~

May we all experience the healing subtler realms of Being
in the new year, giving birth to new perspectives - new ways
of seeing and being in the world...