A Deeper Light...

One must dig deep
*through* the dark night
and mine the darkness
to find a Deeper Light -
within...

Aligning with the Breath of the
Inner Cosmos - the Rhythm of 
the Universe...

Releasing burdens and responsibilities
too heavy to carry - suffocating mind, body -
and dimming the light...

Breathe the Deeper Light
vibrating *inside* the darkness,

Shining through densified layers,
like a soft light shining through an
alabaster vase - a warm honey glow...

*This* Light - shone through stone -
lights the way to a Deeper Reality,
a deeper peace, and opens the body to
Deep Comfort...

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 13. 2024
Day 5 of "The Pause"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

I'm Baaack :) & Mark Nepo

"The Pause" has ended for now...  I am re-entering blog land. :)
It was an intense "Pause" and life continues to be intense in
many ways, but I wanted to start sharing some of the insights,
poetry that came, and other people's writings that spoke to me
during the pause...
 In a kind of mysterious synchronicity I was
given what I needed to hear or see...

This does not mean that my life circumstances have changed.
  As always, life is an ever-unfolding experience - but I am trying
 to learn to *meet* life differently - trying to be open
 and listen more to where life wants me to go,
 with less resistance - and open more
 to Light - hopefully.

~*~

On Being "Lost" - Mark Nepo

From Day One of "The Pause"

When we lose our "self-created" map,
our real knowledge of the path begins...

...the journey truly begins when we lose possession of what
we *thought* were answers, and are left to accept that we are
not in control.  ...beyond every answer is a larger quest-ion.

Being lost on the inner plane can be understood as a
disorientation that is necessary as we are thrust from what we
*think* we know, into the vibrant field of all we do not know.

Being lost can be a prelude to a deeper way, because once we
admit that we're not sure where life is taking us, then we are
ripe for transformation.  Then we are shapeable.  When losing
our way, we frequently retreat and withhold or take what we
think is a safer path.  This often complicates our confusion.

The reason most people get/feel lost is because they don't go
far enough.  They doubt where they are and change direction
too soon.  Somehow we are called to lean forward [to lean
into life more] with what little light we are given.

There are sudden moments - lightening flashes - by which
we can navigate for a while, sometimes years. And the moods
of confusion in between - those very dark nights - are where
we need to practice patience [waiting].  Too often, when
drifting through a difficult passage of uncertainty, we punish
ourselves for not knowing more, or not being more decisive
[or more "spiritual"].

But the lightening flash to dark night and back again is part of
the journey, despite how hard we work.  When the lightening
flashes - in our mind or in our heart - we glimpse the hidden
order and our changing place in it.

If we can see our way *through* the uncertainty of feeling "lost",
unexpected callings often present themselves.

Mark Nepo
excerpts from Seven Thousand Ways to Listen:
Staying Close to the Sacred

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Don't let your fire go out - Ayn Rand

For All who are oppressed...

In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice [your]
world to those who are at its worst.  In the name of the values
that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted
by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless...  Do not let your
fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark...  Do not let the
hero in your soul perish...

Ayn Rand

From: Atlas Shrugged
(Russian born controversial American Writer)

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

My heart feels Great Sorrow for the people
of Ukraine in this moment in time,
 and the suffering they are enduring... 
But also for those others who
experience the same oppression by
autocratic ideologies.

Blessings

 

Emergence - Paul Levy, Betty Kovacs, & Andrew Harvey

 Humanity has become affiliated with a mysterious
psycho-spiritual disease of the Soul - the virus of the mind.
The very source of madness is to be found within the
unconscious psyche of humanity.  There is a fissure, a
primordial dissociation, a split deep within - a state of
fragmentation deep within the collective unconscious.

We are truly living in dark times where the darkness is
emerging from hiding in the shadows and is becoming
visible...  Confronting the darkness and viewing the
collective nightmare [requires looking] through the 
mystical lens of our intimate connection with the Divine.

We are currently living contrary to our innate creative
impulses, out of integrity with our Soul, [which has]
created a collective insanity/madness that we are
playing out.

What the world needs is for each of us to have the
courage to follow our calling, step into our true vocation
and share our creative gifts with the world such that we
co-inspire each other.

When intense darkness manifests within an individual's
process it can potentially lead to an emergence of an
unknown light within that person of which they are
previously unaware...

Paul Levy
from the Forward in Radical Regeneration by
Andrew Harvey

~

The first darkness we have to face, is the story we've
been telling ourselves about ourselves.  We have become
addicted to a story that now has the power to negate the
entire world.

Betty Kovacs
Merchants of Light

~

Because we may well be standing on the threshold of a new
story that is destined to emerge, we must open to the crisis
that makes its emergence possible.  Staying open and vulnerable
to exploding suffering and danger on every level demands
everything from us.  The industrial civilization has become
intoxicated with itself.

Andrew Harvey
from - Radical Regeneration

~

"Thinking" is the story we tell ourselves
about our world, about our experience,
about our existence, running scenarios in
the mind of the way it "should" be or
shouldn't be - how it will play out -
in our heads...

"If you touch one syllable of that story
you will suffer."

I touched the syllable
It's torture
I suffered

Mystic Meandering
April 18, 2021

With thanks to Mitch Rosacker
of Self Discovery Studio
for the quote: "If you touch one syllable
of that story you will suffer."

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
from a larger piece
2012

Dark Night of the Soul - Mirabai Starr & Jeannie Zandi

The Dark Night of the Soul, as St. John of the Cross conceived it,
is actually an inner state of "spiritual crisis."  It is an experience
of being stripped of all spiritual feelings, all our false constructs,
and a dismantling of edifices of religious concepts with which we
are accustomed to propping up our inner lives.  In the Dark Night
we cannot feel the presence of the Sacred anymore, and the word
"God" becomes devoid of meaning.  It is a plunge into the abyss
of radical unknowingness.  It is only when we get out of our own
way that the Divine can take over and fill us with love.  But it's a
grueling process to come to this level of surrender.

But the Dark Night of the Soul is not only about being brought to our
knees.  It is about unconditional love, the kind of love that wakes
us up and affirms our deepest humanity.  The act of consciously
yielding to the shattering of the heart [in grief] is not high on the
 list of cultural values, but it is part of being awake [to life]...

The Dark Night of global crisis will reveal itself as a state of pure
luminescence, where nothing is as we thought it was...

Mirabai Starr
Excerpt from Dark Night of the Soul

~

Even the most sophisticated.....seekers are flummoxed by a dark
night experience, and this ability to flummox is at the heart of its
effectiveness and purpose.  The coping strategies of conditioning
must be entirely frustrated, the arrogance of the "me" must be
thoroughly met with a humbling, so that the being is left with
absolutely nowhere to turn to "solve the problem."  Thus the
brilliant survival strategy that has the illusion of separation at its
base is brought to its knees, so that a new reliance on the organic
flow of the Divine may rise.

The dream of "getting there" that the being invested all her life
energy, hours and efforts into is suddenly seen as a mirage.  And
trying to get to Nirvana with strategies [is seen as] hopeless,
because it IS hopeless.  The coping strategies generally have to
fail utterly for a new reliance on living radically open and
unprepared in the moment to be fully embraced.

What the soul is after is not a temporary influx of light, but a
thorough deconstruction of the false that results in the embodiment
of a light that shines through the darkness.

The Dark Night of the Soul is an initiation, a sacred passage, a
dying of the old and birthing of light enfleshed.  This process of
initiation or passage is not a problem to be solved.  Huge amounts
of shadow material will rise, identities will fall, coping mechanisms
will fail, and tremendous amounts of energy, mostly as emotion, will
emerge to be released.  The "me" coping structure undergoes a
massive deconstruction, and the fresh innocent, wide-eyed and present
Essential Being emerges from the rubble.

Jeannie Zandi

Excerpt from: Dark Night: The Breakdown of the Mythology of Me