A Candle in the Wind - Monica Dayakar

There are a lot of weird ideas about this...

Awakening...  Enlightenment... the shift in perception...

A natural fall out...  thinking that everything will change after
the shift...

That enlightenment means that they will no longer be human...

Even sages are sublimely human...

I heard someone say...

"We do not become selfless doormats..."  !!

And yet... yet...

Including this one...

It is...
Till it isn't...

That's simply another idea
Of better... bigger...

Sounds real nice...

Selfless doormats is it, too...!!
Those that are...  simply are...

I know I was...

Till I wasn't...

LOL

Tried really hard not to be...

A scurried attempt at now being this shiny, brave new thing..

It didn't work...

Oh...

Tears...

And thereby hangs another tale...

Any attempt at replacing one idea about yourself with another...
Well...
Is the belief in the mentally fabricated self...

And apart from it...

There isn't one...

Circling within the dream
She learnt to pirouette perfectly...

What is not included in the gambit  of "being human"...

Yes...

It's all a dream...
[or so they say]

Ideas upon ideas...
All made up...

Seeking ideas of perfection... of what this should look like...

Tears...

Or not look like...

Across the board...
Humanity
The best and worst life has to offer...

A few days ago
Anger rose in me..

Of an intensity, that would put rage to shame...

I was shocked to the core of my being...!!

That I was even capable of it...

And whence had I abhorred it so... in another...

Lay in me too...

I just kept mumbling to my self....

"It's just unacceptable... just unacceptable..."
And kept shaking my head from side to side...

The core of my being ripped to shreds...

And I wept tears of blood...  that would inundate an ocean...

I guess... no one's exempt...

Shift or no shift...

And when all was lost...

And no ground beneath the feet...
Heck and no feet...
And no brownie points for Being...

A pretender under many guises...
I AM the biggest con-act in town...

Dressed as a cop...
Trying to catch a thief...

A lot is lost in translation when we can't see
each other's hearts...

And love guided her footsteps
To places she'd never been...

To the dark corners of her heart...
Where she's hid...

Face to face with herself...
In all shades of blue and pink...

A rainbow exploded...
And she disappeared in a wink...

And she flung her clothes to the wind...
Running naked like a mad woman,,,

No description fit...

And she laughed and cried...
A new born babe...

It ends where it began...
It was ever so...

And all notions of emptiness and fullness...
Cried in the dark,,,

As she wept and laughed...
A candle in the wind...

Monica Dayakar
13/01/2016

Facebook

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~~~

Your thinking that you have to make an effort to get rid of 
this dream of the waking state, and your making efforts to
attain Jnana (realization of Self) or real awakening, are
all parts of the dream.

Ramana Maharshi

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~~~

Photo Mystic Meandering

 

The Golden Eternity - Jack Kerouac

...in our true essence is known that everything 
is alright forever and ever...

It is all one awakened thing.  I call it the
Golden Eternity.

It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a
personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere:
self is only an idea, a mortal idea.  That which passes
into everything is one thing.  It's a dream already ended.
There's  nothing to be afraid of.  I know this from staring
at mountains months on end.  They never show any expression,
they are like empty space.   Do you think the emptiness of space
will ever crumble away?  Mountains will crumble away, but
the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind,
the vastness, empty and awake, will never crumble away...

There is only the Golden Eternity...
You are the Golden Eternity...

Jack Kerouac

from: The Portable Jack Kerouac

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Golden Eternity - Jack Kerouac

I have lots of things to tell you now, in case we never
meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me
under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter
moonlit night.

It said - It's all a dream,  Everything is Ecstasy inside.  We
just don't know it because of our thinking-minds.  But
in our true blissful essence is known that everything is
alright forever and forever.

Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop,
stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the secret Silence
inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember
the bliss your forgot:
There is only the Golden Eternity
You are the Golden Eternity

It is all one awakened thing.  I call it the Golden Eternity.
It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal
self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an
idea, a mortal idea.  That which passes into everything is
one thing.  It's a dream already ended.  There's nothing to
be afraid of.  I know this from staring at mountains months
on end.  They never show any expression, they are like
empty space.  Do you think the emptiness of space will
ever crumble away?  Mountains will crumble away, but
the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence
of mind, the vastness, empty and awake, will
never crumble away...

Jack Kerouac
The Portable Jack Kerouac
and The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

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

 

The Jewel of Non-Judgement - Fred LaMotte

No jewel is more radiant and clear than a mind free of
judgments.  Here is the space where we can truly meet.

And no "practice" is more full of grace than simply dropping
judgment.  Yet this effortless non-doing requires great
courage.  because the moment we drop the judge, we are
assailed by ten thousand voices from our conditioning, our
politics, our education, shouting, "How dare you!  This is
irresponsible!  You must choose sides! You must condemn
the opposition!  How can the world survive without your
judgments?"

Yes, the moment after you drop judgment, a tidal wave of
inner voices judges YOU.  Be courageous.  Drop them too!
When we drop the voices of our judgment, we drop the
voices that judge us, and we drop them not one at a time,
but all at once.  Let an exhalation of surrender sweep
these voices away like scattered petals, dry leaves.  Then
breathe in the breath of emptiness, sparkling with Shakti,
vibrating with the pure power of Silence.

Hollow and transparent, blaming no one, we are present,
eyes open to a luminous world, created just now.  The ocean
of the heart overflows through these eyes.  Few words are
needed.  We meet.  And we respond to a world that actually
IS, instead of responding to our mental judgments about it.
This is real response-ability.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

(and photo too)

 

Deconstruction - Danna Faulds

 I am deconstructing.
My identity, built
assumption by assumption,
is crumbling at my feet.
It's clear to me the way
of truth leads into the 
unknown...

[.....]

Balanced on the rubble,
I grope for
handholds even as I try
to let go.  I am bared to the
bone by pain and the thwarted
desire to maintain control.  I

long to paint the scene the
way I want, while ignoring
how it is.  My practice now
isn't about rebuilding what
I knew.  It's not about
clearing the littered ground
of old illusions only to
construct new ones.
Emptiness has a stark
beauty, noticed only
when I stop looking
for security.  I sit on the
tumble of mortar and brick
and pray for patience,
pray for strength,
pray for the humility
to just keep breathing.

Danna Faulds
Excerpt from: "Deconstruction"
From: One Soul
2003

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Silence Inside the Illusion - Jack Kerouac

painting by joe maccer deviant art

Everything is ecstasy, inside.  We just don't know it
because of our thinking-minds.  But in our true blissful
essence of mind it is to know that everything is alright
forever and forever and forever.  Close your eyes, let
your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3
seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the
world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot,
which was taught in immense milky ways of cloudy
innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all.  It
is all one vast awakened thing.  I call it the golden
eternity.  It is perfect.  We were never really born,
we will never really die.  It has nothing to do with
the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves,
many selves everywhere, or one universal self.
Self is only an idea, a mortal idea.  That which
passes through everything, is one thing.  It's a
dream already ended.  There's nothing to be
afraid of and nothing to be glad about.  Do
you think the emptiness of space will ever
crumble away?  Mountains will crumble,
but the emptiness of space, which is the
one universal essence of mind, the one
vast awakenerhood, empty and awake,
will never crumble away because it
was never born...

Jack Kerouac


Thanks to The Beauty We Love

The Darkness has Wisdom too - Brooke McNamara

painting by Joe-Maccer Deviant Art

If you can't change yourself, after all
the efforts, change the light
by which you read your story.

Exchange overhead for something softer -
a lamp, a candle, a vine of shining
holiday lights - and feel yourself
become hugged by the fabric of shadows.
You see the darkness here has wisdom too.
You see the objects around become related
by the pregnant emptiness that holds them,
and you.  Let this light reveal the rapture
of being just this.  Then, further still, try
moonlight, or no light, until, at last,
this open, sourceless incandescence
which you are
no matter who you think you are
will follow you from the inside
wherever you may go, however
you may change, or not.

Brooke McNamara
from - Feed Your Vow -
poems for falling into fullness

with thanks to The Dawn Within

The Kiss of "The Mystery"...

There is an intimacy in the deep recesses of internal Silence
that is indefinable, inexplicable, inexpressible
and hauntingly sublime...

A fluidity of
light and color...

A movement of
The Grand "What Is"...

There is depth and breadth,
yet no boundary.

There is substance and fullness,
yet - Emptiness...

It is a subtle, rhythmic
intimacy of
Mystical Silence
that opens the Heart;
that embraces, surrounds
and fills every crack and
crevice of existence...
Unwinding the contractions
of
body and mind...

There is a "sanity" in this Silence
that bestows a soundness of heart through Grace
that is beyond mere mental comprehension -
beyond cognition...

Finding the deeper Rhythm within
one loses a sense of "self"
and becomes
The Silence ~

Breathing ItSelf...

knowing It Is:

The Breath of the Infinite

The Whisper of Love

The Kiss of "The Mystery"

Mystic Meandering
 2016

~

Photo from the Internet

The Aurora Borealis seems to take the shape
of a round face looking down, kissing the earth...

True Silence - Fred LaMotte

"In meditation, Silence is Mother."

Amma Karunamayi

Let us speak of true Silence.  No, it's not negation.
Not the silence of suppressed speech, which is no
silence at all.  Suppressed speech, or repressed thought,
is a scream.  And the more we repress, the louder our
voiceless keening.

Let us tell of the inmost Silence, omnipresent, effective,
whether we speak or not.  Silence infusing the best words
with their Truth.  Silence is a real mantra, guiding the
mind to the hollow in the seed, through Winter root,
Spring flower, or Autumn leaf.

The Silence of emptiness pervades all forms.  It is the
primordial Silence of God, gushing tears from the spring
of bliss in the womb of creation.  True Silence is the
mother of poetry, the mother of art, the mother of music.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Silence (True Silence) is the Self.
Experiencing True Silence is
Self-Recognition.

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Wild Portals of Unknowing - Fred LaMotte

"God leads every soul by a separate path." - John of the Cross

I cannot possibly know what is most important; that which will
transform me.  If I already know what it is I will never be free,
because I have packaged "liberation" as knowledge, in the tight
wrapper of a concept.  This means that spiritual transformation
can never become a program, a technique, or a course that I take.

The moments that liberate me are wild portals of unknowing,
when the blue sky of wonder outshines any cloud it contains;
vast emptiness shifts into the foreground; techniques, traditions,
concepts cultivated in the past, dissolve...

[.....]

The best meditation evaporates into amazement.  The best mantra
melts into silence.  The best guru dances in the mist at the edge of
a meadow, and disappears into your longing heart, where true path
has no beginning....

No, I cannot possibly tell what is most important - how a blue
moth disguises herself in a petal of lupine, why cascade lilies
frolic in a rainy mountain meadow, what the hermit thrush means
to silence.  I cannot know when the golden sun will burst my chest
wide open, turning the small dark chamber of self-doubt into a
boundless empyrean.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

Photo - Vortex Art
2011

The Root of All Things - Chuang Tzu

The non-action of the wise man is not inaction.
It is not studied.  It is not shaken by anything.
The sage is quiet because he is not moved,
Not because he wills to be quiet.
Still water is like glass.
You can look in it and see the bristles on your chin.
It is a perfect level;
A carpenter could use it.
If water is so clear, so level,
How much more the spirit of man?
The heart of the wise man is tranquil.
It is the mirror of heaven and earth.
The glass [mirror] of everything.
Emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness,
Silence, non-action: this is the level of heaven and earth.
This is the perfect Tao.  Wise men find here
Their resting place.
Resting, they are empty.

From emptiness comes the unconditioned.

From this, the conditioned, the individual things.
So from the sage's emptiness, stillness arises:
From stillness, action.  From action, attainment.
From their stillness comes their non-action,
which is also action, which is, therefore, their attainment.
For stillness is joy.  Joy is free from care.
Joy does all things without concern:
For emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness,
Silence, and non-action
Are the root of all things.

Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

with thanks to The Beauty We Love!

Spacious Listening - Fred LaMotte

Listen...

Listen to the sounds around you,

outside, beyond the walls...

Listen to the faintest most distant
sound you can hear...

Aware of how listening
becomes spacious, unbounded.

Now listen to listening.
As you listen outside,
listen inside.
Without or within,
All space is awake...

Listen for the next thought to arise,
the next word in your mind...

See?

Your very listening
is perfect silence,
the radiant absence
of mental noise...

When there is listening,
there are no words.

Now feel your whole brain
listening, scintillating
with energy yet
free from thought,
each cell vibrantly full
of ever-awakening
emptiness...

[.....]

Feel the space of listening
all around your body.
Does this space have
any edges?

[.....]

Listening is the space
all around your body...
and inside your body...

The space of listening in each cell...

The space of listening between the atoms...
The vast space inside a single atom,
listening...

Your body is luminous, weightless and clear,
your flesh is permeated by the space
that is eternally awake
and listening...

The heavenly empyrean filled
with stars and galaxies
whose light has not yet reached you
pervades every particle
of your flesh...

The miracle that you are...

Listening to silence...

Listen to No Word,
No Thought arising...

You are Peace.
You are radiant clarity.

You are boundless love.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

"Silence is the secret music"

~ Sri Sri

~

"The primary guidance really isn't with the words.
It's just with the silence.  It's a kind of attunement.
Experience the Quietness at the core of Consciousness."

Adyashanti
From: The Unconditioned Nature of Being
 guided meditation on YouTube

~

Photo - via Uradiance

True Emptiness - Dorothy Hunt

True Emptiness - which we could also call formless Spirit -
fills the universe and is filled by the universe.  It contains
everything, yet is not separate from a single moment's arising,
or dissolving.  What I am calling Emptiness is simply empty of
self, and empty of definition.  The word "Emptiness" is not
really it, neither are any of our ideas about it, including the
ones I use to try to point to the Mystery that is Unnamable
and indefinable.  To be emptied of our attachment to
definitions and concepts - especially our self-concepts - is
to be unburdened, whole, fluid and free to truly be.

To be empty means we are open; to be empty means we are
available for whatever or whoever is in front of us; to be
empty means we are not stuck anywhere, but can experience
the fullness and the flow of life unhindered.  Our seeing is
empty until it lands on an object, is it not? Our freedom,
inherent wisdom and selfless love arise right out of
Emptiness...

For a moment, just allow yourself to be the emptiness, open
and without definition, yet intimate with the moment as it is.
You might discover a vast and spacious Presence that feels
more real, more connected, more meaningful and lovingly
your truest Self than anything you could ever imagine.  And
even though the mind cannot say exactly what this is,
something knows; something in you remembers.
And what remembers tenderly holds anything that may arise
to be seen, experienced or liberated...

Dorothy Hunt
Buddhist Teacher

 

Be Still and Know - Pir Elias Amidon

Imagine you are alone...
You feel the stillness inside of things...
There are no sounds, except the almost-never-heard
hush of things being.

You sense the stillness on all sides
and an identical stillness within you.
The voice of your thoughts sounds thin, metallic.

You remember a phrase - "Be still, and know."

You let your body be motionless, quiet.
A quiet body at ease relaxes the persistence of thoughts.
Then you feel the still, empty openness "behind" each of
your senses, the openness in which your senses arise.
You relax into that openness.
This motionless is not definable -
it is not a sensation.  Nevertheless it has an almost
kinesthetic effect on you, as if it is vanishing you,
the receiver, the photographic plate that records your
experience, this "one" becomes transparent.
You relax and let be. Now unbidden comes the stillness
of Presence, the stillness of a clearness that is always here,
behind and within everything.  It is what allows everything
to show up.  It is empty too, not made out of anything, yet
it is awesome and radiant.

It is empty Presence without form,
appearing as all form...
Knowing is not thinking.
It is Presence being present
to Presence.

Be still, do nothing. Let be.
No need to figure anything out.
Relax...

A sense of peacefulness opens in you,
vast and without dimension -
vast, peaceful tranquility without dimension...

...and you remember the Real...

Pir Elias Amidon
A Sufi
From Free Medicine

~

Photo - The Lone Skier
 taken by my brother...
Sunday River Ski Resort
Bethel, ME
early morning

Keep Noble Silence - Fred LaMotte

'Keep Noble Silence.'  This was the Buddha's teaching.
Is there a difference between ordinary silence and noble silence?

Ordinary silence is mindless.  Noble silence is mindful.

Ordinary silence is the absence of noise.  Noble silence is the
fullness of Being.  It is pure awareness, free from the chatter
of conceptual thought.

Peace comes through Being, not through argument.

Thought melts away, past and future dissolve into Presence.

Mind sinks into the groundless, journeys deep into the virgin
forest of the Heart.  There, in noble silence, one sees all
causes entangled in causelessness.  One sees golden emptiness
pervading all creatures.  One sees sparkling stillness in all action.

A silent heart irradiates the world with compassion.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Ordinary Enlightenment - "G", Shinzen Young & Jeff Foster

There are many different definitions of mysticism, but a narrow
description of mysticism is known as the "perennial philosophy",
or "perennial wisdom."  [That Truth is Universal & Eternal].
In this sense, mysticism indicates the dying of the illusion
of selfhood into the greater reality of God, Nirvana, Dao, or a
number of other concepts representing the deathless and
indefinable part of us that is often called the Void. [or Emptiness].

It is the "death" [dissolution] of the individual ego into the
indescribable that characterizes the perennial wisdom. [Or rather]
it is the giving up of identifying with being the individual ego/self.

God, as the mystic understands the term, does not correspond at all
to the commonly held beliefs involving an anthropomorphic deity
gazing down on humanity from on high.  For the mystic, God is
much more subtle and immediate.  In mysticism, God is not a
separate being to us, rather the very "being-ness" that lies
 at the heart of everyone. 

The mystical process, whatever traditions or methods it uses, is
ultimately aimed at breaking through the prison of mortality into

freedom of what both the Buddha and Japanese Zen Master Bankei
called the Unborn.  Living as the Unborn we are no longer tied to
[attached to] a false sense of ego/self... but are liberated as the very
Awareness that is the heart of every being in the universe.

Excerpt from: "Buddha and Religion: Mysticism"
Buddha Space
Read the full article here

This blog also has other interesting topics!

~

Even for a deeply "enlightened" person, the experience of contact
with Flow and Emptiness does not necessarily go uninterrupted.  It
may happen frequently during the day, but not necessarily continuously.
Even a very liberated person still spends a lot of time experiencing
the world in the ordinary way.

What then is the difference between an ordinary person and a liberated
person?  The difference is a matter of freedom.  An "enlightened"
person has the ability to experience self and world as a Source wave.
And when they are not experiencing things that way, they understand
why that is the case. It is just because they are not paying close
attention...

Shinzen Young - The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

via Markings

Pay attention! :)

~

There is no fixed path to enlightenment.  Enlightenment is not a
destination, a goal, a final resting place at the end of a long journey -

that's the mind's version of enlightenment.  Nobody is the authority
on your path - no teacher, no guru, no religious leader.  Nobody can
tell you the right 'way' for you...

Jeff Foster

via The Dawn Within

~

Photo from the Internet

Beyond the World's Horizons - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Beyond the horizons of the world is a place that few know,
a place without borders, without loss or gain...  Something
within you mysteriously recognizes this primal emptiness,
the vast unknowing, the wonder of what is not.

There is no substance to form even images.  And yet, there is
a belonging that is stamped in the core of one's being, a belonging
that nothing can break.

Far away [from this place] is a place called existence.  It's full of
dreams. of opportunities, of life and death.  But here, in the world
beyond, there are no such dramas...  When all is dissolved, lost,
undone, we are what we [truly] are.

But the tears call us back into what people call life, into the strange
substance that weaves itself into form.  Yet even when we seem
stranded on this shore of existence, we can never forget that place
beyond the worlds that is always with you [within you].  It is at
the end and the beginning of every breath, more primal than even
silence...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

Excerpt from: Fragments of a Love Story

~

Let me sit here on the threshold of two worlds,
lost in the eloquence of silence...

Rumi

~

Photo - Sunset reflected on the top of the car

taken by my husband

Simply Living...

I've been basking in a "new", and not so new, "revelation" that
life is a story being lived by Life ItSelf'; that *I* am being lived:
that we *are* the living story of Life.

Life lives the story of "me" that I've identified with all these years,
and believed, for a while at least, that "I" needed to be
"enlightened" - and have once again returned to the sense that
"I" am "simply living."

In this "revelation" there is an internal "letting go" - or
"giving up" - or some would say "surrender"...
And as a wise friend recently explained:
"In that, an ancient tension and stress is released.  And in the
deepest instance of 'giving up', even the somatic aspect of
our being feels a tremendous relief, and a Serene Emptiness
where that contraction had formerly been felt; as much in
our physical body as in our subtle energetic nature.
Struggle ceases, no longer driven by the engine of
dissatisfaction with 'what is', with 'how we are.'  No longer
driven by the engine of self-judgment and self-qualification,
by the desire to be better or worthy, or finally 'understanding'
or 'apperceiving' by the desire for 'enlightenment.'"

This articulates my current experience perfectly...

~

And I wrote this back in 2011

There is only the immediacy of the current moment -
just living that experience, whatever that experience is,
however it unfolds, without the sense of a separate "self"
striving for something "better", or to *do* anything to
improve it, or become "enlightened."

"We", the "Beingness" that we are, just experiences
whatever is occurring without a framework or reference
point, or concept...
It's just Life being life!

It is Existence experiencing ItSelf as "me", or "you" -
as an occurrence within ItSelf...
Simply Living...

We, as waves on the Ocean of Existence, are continually
occurring - unfolding fluidly, seamlessly,  Yet, a
"construct" of "self" can emerge *if/when* there is a belief
in a "self" that can hold onto the present moment - trying
to grasp what cannot be grasped.  But the current experience
cannot be grasped, for as soon as we try to capture it we
re-enter the struggle of "self"...

The present moment is unending, constantly reverberating
through the *concept* of time, and is what the wrinkle of
time happens *in* -
the Timeless Ocean of Existence.

And so the realization seems to be that we simply recognize
Life living ItSelf  as us - seeing the Luminous in everything -
recognizing that we ARE that
Luminosity of Life...

...simply living.

Namaste

_/\_

photo - from a greeting card

Travel Lighter - Rumi

Be foolishly in love,
because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence
except through a love exchange.

If someone asks, But what is love?
answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those
who have escaped the questions
of free will and fate....

Love and lover live in eternity.
Other desires are substitutes...

How long do you lay embracing a corpse?
Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in Spring dies in the Fall,
but love is not seasonal.

With wine pressed from grapes,
expect a hangover.
But this love path has no expectations.

You are uneasy riding the body?
Dismount, Travel lighter.
Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror
reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry
that comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed
or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own
without any judgement of them.

Be pure emptiness.
What is inside that? you ask,
Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets
That they keep.

Rumi

excerpts from: No Expectations

~

Photo - Mandala Art
digitally altered