The Fire of the Magdalene - Fred LaMotte

What is the mission of Mary Magdalene?  Is she just another
archetype of "the divine feminine."?  Are we called to abstract
her, with all the other Gods and Goddesses, into the faceless
hegemony of the One?

Perhaps she is yet another two-dimensional icon, a window,
into a numb impersonal nonduality.  Or does her feral
astonishing bittersweet gaze call us toward something quite
unheard-of and outrageous in the annals of spiritual teaching?

Her darshan is a droplet of terrible fire that consumes us,
burns us up and down with such accurate alchemy that our 
dross turns to gold, annihilating all that is not ourselves.
Nothing remains but our uniqueness.

The eyes of the Magdalene behold us, and we are held.  We
are held in the most severe and lethal demand: the demand
of bhakti.  Her gaze is not the fire of anger or judgment, but
passionate devotion.

Mary is devotion.  That is what bhakti means, Devotion - to
God? To Jesus? To Sophia? To attaining Gnosis? [To Brahma?
To Allah?]  Dear friend, she burns with deeper bhakti, purer
bhakti: devotion to becoming herself.

When the drop merges with the ocean, it is our spiritual work.
When the ocean merges with the drop, it is our spiritual play,
and our anointing. 

Mary's olive-eyed glance pierces the heart and calls both you
and me to the work, the play, of the great transformation:
be yourself!

Mary Magdalene is She who refuses to be an archetype or a 
symbol, refuses to signify any truth other than her own jagged
broken perfect wholeness, the ineluctable suchness of
Personhood.

Fred LaMotte
Interfaith Minister
Uradiance

~

Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering
2011

 

LIVE!

LIVE!

Let go...

Let it all go:
Hopes for the future.
Regret for the past.
Expectations for the present.

LIVE!

Embraced in the space of
your Aliveness,
at the still point of
your Being.

With no conceptual scaffolding of belief
to hold "you" together...

LIVE!

Disappear in the Excitement
of the Infinite Dancing Heart...

LIVE!

Without requiring yourself to be
different,
without wanting to change
who you ARE...

LIVE!

Authentically...  Genuinely...

Emptied out of the way your
conditioned mind tells you
what your life must be...

LIVE!

Free yourself from your facades
and the attachments to
your patterns of perspective
that keep you safe, but confined...

LIVE!

Let go into the Cosmic Stream

that already carries you...

LIVE!

Trust the unfolding of the Fire in your Soul...

Mystic Meandering
Aug. 13, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Fire in my Soul - Barns Courtney

I am flesh and I am bone...
Rise up...
I've got fire in my soul...
Rise up...

Do you walk in the valley of Kings?
Do you walk in the shadow of men
Who sold their lives to a dream?
Do you ponder the manner of things?
In the dark...

I am flesh and I am bone...
Rise up...

I've got fire in my soul...
Rise up...

Do you walk in the meadow of Spring?
Do you talk to the animals?
Do you hold their lives on a string?
Do you ponder the manner of things?

In the dark...

I am flesh and I am bone...
Arise - ting ting - like glitter and gold...
I've got fire in my soul...

Rise up - ting ting - like glitter and gold...

[.....]

Excerpts from lyrics to a song called
Glitter and Gold
By Barns Courtney
that touched my soul...  ting ting :)
Even the lyrics to an ordinary rocker song
can speak to your soul :)

 

Dancing In The Fire - Jennifer Welwood

There will always be voices that promise you greatness and glory;
They call out from the worldly marketplace;
They call out from the spiritual marketplace;
They call out from the bigger-better-more marketplace.

Do not buy their false promises, or purchase their ephemeral wares;
What fulfills for a moment is not worth the price of your soul.
There are heights that will lift you,
but not when you try to ascend them;
There are powers that will fill you,
but not when you make them your own.
There are treasures, and there are imitations of treasures.
If you have lost your true gold, at least turn away from the glitter.

Want only what is true.
This will lead you to the well of your deepest sorrows.
Follow the passageway, all the way down;
Become the dark emptiness of your core.
Be still.  Don't measure the waiting.
Be still.  Let the fire show you its secret heart;
A strand of clear light running through you.
Gather yourself there, and the luminous universe opens.

In the vast expanse, fathomless, infinite ocean of light,
lose yourself, and find yourself, and become what you already are.

Jennifer Welwood
Original title "Renunciation"

~

We can descend into the fire of direct experience of our feelings.
It is within the very core of this holy fire, in the alchemical crucible
of the body where the naked, groundless somatic territory of
illumination occurs, where healing emerges, and a new pathway
of love, care and compassion unfolds and illuminates within you.

Matt Licata

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
Woman Whirling in the Fire
(looking from overhead)

Craypas Oils
2012

 

Hidden Fire - Alain Joly

One has to start anew, to re-create, get rid of the old and let a
new possibility of life emerge.  Real health is revival, it is the
life that creates itself every moment, without the grooves of the
past that limit and condition us.  We can never know when the
time is ripe for a new possibility.  It comes as a surprise,
uncontrolled, uninvited...  A new dawn emerges.  This is why
I chose to name my blog The Dawn Within.  The Dawn Within
refers to the Light, or at least its first and shy expressions when
the mind ceases to be interested in its own productions or in
the objects of the world out there and turns within.  The dawn
is shy - the light is coming but is not yet a full sunny day.  It
is hesitating.  The night is still lingering but the promise is here.

Alain Joly

The Dawn Within

I do not know where the fire comes from
It is hidden, ready to burst
A piece of ember under the ashes

When the flame has died out
The ashes are left,
Like a thick coat
Tenacious
Like a screed

It doesn't let anything pass
But the ember doesn't die
It remains there

Hot
Waiting

We sometimes need so little
A tiny stimulation
To remove one by one the grey leaves
Glued
Welded
Undo the uncanny order
Of all these withering years

It sometimes takes very little
To revive
Timid
Intact
This little piece of fire
That contains the ardour and madness of all flames
Of all rebirths
Of all cures

Alain Joly

Excerpt and poem from an article in
The Culturium entitled:
Alain Joly: The Dawn Within

Want Only What Is True - Jennifer Welwood & Licata

There will always be voices that promise you greatness and glory;
They call out from the worldly marketplace;
They call out from the spiritual marketplace;
They call out from the bigger-better-more marketplace.

Do not buy their false promises, or purchase their ephemeral wares;
What fulfills for a moment is not worth the price of your soul.
There are heights that will lift you,
 but not when you try to ascend them;
There are powers that will fill you,
 but not when you make them your own.
There are treasures, and there are imitations of treasures.
If you have lost your true gold, at least turn away from the glitter.

Want only what is true.
This will lead you to the well of your deepest sorrows.
Follow that passageway, all the way down;
Become the dark emptiness of your core.
Be still.  Don't measure the waiting.
Be still.  Let the waiting become a fire.
Be still.  Let the fire show you its secret heart;
A strand of clear light running through you.
Gather yourself there, and the luminous universe opens.
In the vast expanse, fathomless, infinite ocean of light,
lose yourself, and find yourself, and become what you already are.

Jennifer Welwood
"Renunciation"

~

We can descend into the fire of direct experience of our feelings.
It is within the very core of this holy fire, in the alchemical crucible
of the body where the naked, groundless somatic territory of
illumination occurs, where healing emerges, and a new pathway
of love, care and compassion unfolds and illuminates within you.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Woman Whirling in the Fire
(looking from overhead)
Vortex Art with Craypas oils

The Other Window - Mark Nepo

[.....]

At the edge of winter, open the window
of your heart, see your breath,
how what you bring up becomes
the air.

When you're ready or pushed,
close your eyes and the other window
will appear,
the one that faces all of time.
What flies there never lands,
but hovers, dropping the seeds of
infinity in the breaks we can't heal.
So open the window of your pain,
though the whispers tell you
to nail it shut, and let in everything
that's ever lived.

What flies and never lands
has been waiting.
Be brave.
Don't run.
Let the fire
around your window
burn until you become
the opening.

Mark Nepo
Excerpt from the poem: "Love Your Window"
From the book: Inside the Miracle

Divine Fire...

I want to walk through life
truly *seeing* - truly Aware…

Awake to the Truth of Existence

Open to LIFE…

I want to See *everything* as the expression
 of Divine Beingness;
every leaf that drops,
or snowflake that falls,
every being…

with the same innocent wonder
and amazement
as I did as a child;
as if truly *seeing* Life
for the first
time.

I want to be in love with Life again…
if ever I was…
Maybe loving Life in new ways…

I want to hear
Divine laughter

In my
Heart
and
experience
Divine
intimacy
in
my
being

Let me be free from the entanglements
of the mind
that keep me compliant
and complicit
with the world’s ways…

Let me embrace
every thought,
expression,
and feeling
as it arises
without
trying
to
confine
it
or
suppress
it

Life
 is a passage,
endless pathways,
and I want to risk
not following
the rules
of
the well-worn
paths.

Instead,
rising above
the familiarity
of “the path”
to feel
the Essence
of Life
that lives
this
life
that
”I”
am

/

The
Divine
Fire

Mystic Meandering
meditative writings
2012/14

~

Photo: Amaryllis flower
 radially blurred