Within This Body - Tulsi Sahib and Ivan Granger

 

Within this body
breathes the secret essence.
Within this body
beats the heart of the Vedas.
Within this body
shines the Universe,
so saints say,
Hermits, ascetics, celibates --
all are lost
seeking Him
in endless guises.
Seers and sages perfectly parrot
the scriptures and holy books,
blinded by knowledge.
Their pilgrimage,
and fasting
and striving
but delude.
Despite their perfect practice,
they discover no destination.
Only the saints
who know the body's heart
have attained the Ultimate,OTulsi.

Realize this, and you've found your freedom
(while teachers trapped in tradition
know only the mirage
in the mirror.)

Tulsi Sahib

English version by Ivan Granger

of Poetry Chaikhana

~

Commentary by Ivan Granger

This poem really cuts right through the delusion of
fundamentalism on the one hand - and being overly
enamored with the spiritual practices and rituals, on
the other -

This is not to say that one should not study sacred texts or
that we should ignore the value of spiritual practices.  The
problem is that it's easy to forget what their true purpose is.
Sacred writing, sacred striving, they are signposts that remind
us to turn inward and discover the true heart that shines with
the light of the universe.

If we just memorize words or pray in the mountains, even if
we do it perfectly, we are idolizing the trappings of
spirituality, without understanding, without making the real

journey.  This is one of the reasons why there us so much
anger among fundamentalists in all traditions - they push
to fit into an externalized idea of what it means to be perfect,
yet they are not transformed, and they secretly know it.

Unable to face the pain of that failure, they externalize it, and
blame the imperfections of the world around them for holding
them back.  That pain becomes anger at the outer world, and
that anger is reflexively attributed to God.  Then that angry
God is imagined to punish by withholding heaven from the
individual until the whole world rigidly falls into order.
The more desperate these individuals become for release 
from spiritual pain, the more violently they try to enforce
their vision upon society in the hopes that they will finally
appease God and find freedom.

So sad, when all that is necessary is to slip through that pain,
let go of self-importance, and discover the immense joy
quietly glowing deep within.  No one and nothing else
holds us back.

More important is to yield and open and finally settle
into the secret shining heart [essence] that awaits discovery...

~

...Okay, Ivan will now step down from his soapbox. 
Have a wonderful weekend, and remember to take some
sweet quiet time to settle within.

Ivan Granger
Poetry  Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

A Non-Path Path :) - a meandering...

I am feeling the need to settle deeper into the interior, and 
rediscover a sense of the inner Truth of Myself; not by following
a particular external path - but by intuitively listening to the 
Inner Voice; by spending time in Quietude, and "The Silence"
(which I crave, but so easily avoid by getting distracted on
non-essential things.).

"The Quest" - for me then - is to discover the Deeper Reality of

Myself.  I have forgotten how to be ME!  In a sense, what I was
"designed" for; one could say my Soul's "calling"...   Some call it
the Self (or Higher Self), but I get hung up on those words, because
the big "S" Self is not another self hidden somewhere inside us with
a big S on it that we have to "become"/discover.  But it's the discovery
of, a remembering of, having a felt sense of, the authentic, natural
self, beyond mind, beyond religion, beyond "spirituality."  Who are
 we really?   What is the "Deeper Reality"? I thought maybe I knew, 
but I haven't really met Her - yet...  Hopefully I will find the Deep
Quiet of the Heart, and the Illuminating Light of the Soul.

The path of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening"/"Self-Realization",
particularly what is popularly known as "Non-Duality, wasn't
IT for me, with its attraction to the mind and its abstractions and
mind games. It is just another construct, a belief system.  I found
out that the "Emperor has no clothes!  And I'd rather not describe
Truth by a negative - with no-me, no-self, no other, no world - as
Truth  is all inclusive - including duality, me, self, other, humanity,
and the world.

Even if one follows a "spiritual path" (which can be any path), life
will not suddenly become easy or flowing with bliss, although there
may be little epiphanies and "awakenings" here and there. We won't
necessarily lose our personality with its quirks, and become an
emotionless automaton. We won't lose our conditioning, or our 
neuroses.  Our thoughts will not stop, neither will our surface
struggles, or our pain, or our stories.  Walking "a path" doesn't even
guarantee that we will actually *see* life differently, or suddenly
find our "purpose" - as if there is only one.  But no one tells you
this about "the path."  It has to be a self-discovery, even if we have
a "Teacher", a "Path", or use a "Teaching" to help point the way.

It is different for everyone, of course.  I'm only reflecting on my
own experience here...

Years of seeking, realization, recognition, and then forgetting, and
then seeking again, then remembering, and then forgetting again, etc.,
brought me to the realization that discovering (or rediscovering) the
Essence of who I am is, for me, through awareness of and deep
intimacy with "The Silence" within; through continually coming
back to "The Silence of Source" - the space of Stillness, and
innate Wisdom - which of course is wherever we are at the 
moment, not off in the distance somewhere.  It's not a place.
"The path" doesn't *go* anywhere.  There is no reward at the end.
It's an inner pathless path...  And that's my "path" - again :)
rediscovering the inner Silent Truth of Myself, directly;
experiencing the underlying Rhythm of Existence Itself, and
within that the Truth of Myself...

Mystic Meandering
April 2024

~

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road,
and nothing more;
Wanderer, there is no road.
The road is made by walking...

By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path that will
never be trod again...

Wanderer, there is no road -
only wakes upon the sea..."

Antonio Machado

~

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest in peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the [inner] self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then
return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature...

Returning is the motion of the Tao.

Lao Tzu

~~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
taken at the Denver Botanical Gardens

 

Just Walk It - a meandering...

Some people's nature is made for Silence and Solitude,
others - not...

I crave it...

that is - my body and soul crave it...

I am often overwhelmed by the stimulation
of daily living, being pulled by the externals,
needing to turn to the Inner Life...

There are many ways of accessing our "Inner Being"/Essence,
or "The Divine", or "Source" - however one calls it;
through being out in nature, thru Dance, or writing Poetry,
in Art, or Music, and Meditation; however we are naturally
inclined.  It's an individual thing and "The Divine"/Source/Life
meets us where we are, *as* we are...

There are no "shoulds" or "have to's" in intimacy with
"The Inner Silence."
You don't have to regurgitate what you have been taught
was the "truth"; what you are conditioned to *believe*
as an established way of "believing" - a dogma...

Maybe we're just a dramatization/expression of
"Consciousness", or "The Source", or "The Ineffable";
Unique waves on the Ocean of Awareness.

No one person, religion, spirituality, philosophy or
institution *has* the "answer"...

The Real Source of "truth" is within, and transcends all
beliefs, unencumbered by religion, language, history, or culture...

Life unfolds differently for all of us.
And maybe it "happens" according to the way we "believe" -
who knows...

Go the way you feel pulled/called to go,
the path will change as needed.

Whatever your walk of Life,
whatever your nature,
whatever your path,
just walk it...

Mystic Meandering
March 15, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Be Curious Instead of Afraid - Pema Chodron

Regard everything as transparent...

See through everything...

See that everything is in transition...

Liberate concepts and beliefs...

Let go of the need for an "answer"/solution

Rest in the nature of Essence -
the Primordial State of everything...

Be a child of fantasy/imagination...

Be curious instead of afraid...

Pema Chodron
Buddhist Teacher

~

I've had this posted on my refrigerator
for years.  Maybe I should have read it
more often :)

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Remember Your Essence...

Our Essence is the same Silence that suspends the Cosmos,
and the same Energy of the Stars...
We are the Hush of "The Mystery"
and the breath of Life itself...

Our Essence is embodied in every cell of the body...

Our Being is the Dance of the Aurora Borealis
and the unlit Light of the Sun...

generated through the inner radiance
of Shakti - the primal energy -
coursing through our bodies...

Our Essence is "Godness" seeking expression...
in human form;
it is the Essence of all matter reality -
Life living us...

May we all remember our Inner Light,
our Essence...

_/\_

Blessings to all in this Sacred Season of Light...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 16, 2023

~

Photo Mystic Meandering

 

Remember Your Essence...

Our Essence is the same Silence that suspends the Cosmos,
and the same Energy of the Stars...
We are the Hush of "The Mystery"
and the breath of Life itself...

Our Essence is embodied in every cell of the body...

Our Being is the Dance of the Aurora Borealis 

and the unlit Light of the Sun...

generated through the inner radiance
of Shakti - the primal energy -
coursing through our bodies...
Our Essence is "Godness" seeking expression
in human form;
it is the Essence of all matter reality...
Life living us...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 16, 2023

~

Blessings to all in these uncertain times
May we all remember our Inner Light,
our Essence...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Don't Drown - Simó Necic

They appear as given direction and order
What you are
Have to become
What this world you barely know -
except what you read,
learned, and were told about -
Is

You are looking for your place to be
Purpose and meaning
Seeking what this is all about
What they told you
These voices in your head
Named father, mother, teacher, master
God and devil
Demons and angels
Spirits and deities
Your soul

You feel that they were all lying to you

You are drowning

Something you cannot name seems to be swallowing you
Slowly, bit by bit

You cling to your beliefs
What they taught you
What you practiced
They get louder
Distracting
I am! I am!

Silence is screaming

Presence awareness
The same voice
Disguised

Trying to keep you above

You aim higher
Gradually, you feel how you drown
You can barely breathe
Aliveness

The stream takes you

I am!  I am this!  Not this!

You drown in what you thought it to be
And it is not
That

While resistant, what you know, chokes you
You seem to die
But you don't

What seems like drowning
Are the voices in your head
Still pretending
They know the truth
Are truth

I am!

Simó Necic

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Don't fill your head with "voices" of others -
the so-called "teachings" of others;
the beliefs of others.

Don't seek what you need in the external world
of techniques, and foolish mind games
of clever worldly wisdoms;
of lofty "spiritual" words.

Instead, seek the company of the Innermost Essence
of your own Being - in the Silence of Being;
The True Wisdom - the Innate Wisdom;
The Inner Voice of Inherent, Intuitive Wisdom...

Trust the "Wisdom Mother" within...

Mystic Meandering
June 11, 2022

~

...all the more persistently
live in harmony with the
"Voice of Being"
within yourself.

Vaclav Havel

with thanks to Love is a Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"The Eclipse" - a meandering...

One of the things that the recent eclipse of the sun
reminded me of was the larger Cosmos, of which
we are all a part.  And the Cosmos is working!
The planets and moons and suns align, then move
apart in their perpetual orbits, doing what they
were "designed" to do.  The Universe works -
it's humans who can't seem to do that, to align,
to "get it together" as they are "designed" (?)
Or maybe I just have an idealized perception
of how a human being is supposed to be...

Anyway - it - the eclipse - reminded me that there's
a greater intelligence at work in the Universe, a
Deeper Reality beyond what we experience on
earth as humans.  So the earth, moon and sun
were aligned - briefly.  I have no idea really what
the significance of that is - just that it reminded me
of a Deeper Reality behind what we know as reality -
working in the Cosmos...

~

And so - "The Quest" - for me - is to discover, or
re-discover, the Deeper Reality of myself - my Essence
of Being in the Greater scheme of things...

I have forgotten how to BE what I am!
In a sense what "I" was designed for;
one could say my "Soul's" task - or
even my Being's purpose - if there is one...

Some call it the Self, but I get hung up on that word,
because the big "S" Self is not another self
hidden somewhere inside us that we have to "become."
But it's a discovery, a remembering, having a felt sense
of, the Deeper Reality of one's very Being - the Essence
of one's Being; our Natural State of Being, beyond
personality, beyond conditioning, beyond mind, beyond
religion, beyond "spirituality." 

Who are we really?

I thought I knew, but...

I haven't really met "Her" yet... ;)
Well, maybe on occasion...

Now if I could only remember to learn to see and approach
life from that Essence of my very Beingness...

Ahhhh - Peace...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 14 & 15, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Go Beyond - The Upanishads

We spend our days in the familiar world of our five senses,
but what lies beyond that, if anything - a vast world, perhaps,
waiting to be explored.  Most of us are happy to stay where we
are.  We may even be afraid to venture into the unknown.

Yet there are always a few who are not content...

Simply knowing there is something unknown beyond their
reach makes them acutely restless.  This is true of adventurers -
especially those who seek to explore Consciousness [Ultimate
Reality] itself.  They quietly slip out to see what lies beyond
 the topography of Consciousness itself [that] has an
illumination of its own...

We are meant to explore, to seek, to push the limits of our
potential as human beings.  The world of the senses is just the
base camp: we are meant to be as much at home in
[transcendent Reality] as in the world of physical reality.

It is our destiny as human beings to make this journey
ourselves.  Everything else is secondary...

Follow the path of the illumined ones...

...a familiar voice tugs at the edge of awareness...

~

The Upanishads are the recorded stories from Hindu sages
for whom the transcendent Reality called "God" was more
real than the world reported to them by their senses.  Their
purpose is not so much instruction, but inspiration -
an ecstatic snapshot of transcendent Reality.

The Upanishads tell us that there is a Reality underlying 
life which rituals cannot teach, next to which the things we
see and touch in everyday life are shadows (of the Real).

This Reality is the Essence of every created thing, and
the same Reality is our real self.  Each one of us is one
with the power that created and sustains the universe.  And
this oneness can be realized directly...  a Reality beyond
ordinary knowing...
It is the purpose for which each of us has been born...

From the Upanishads
Eknath Easwaran

excerpt from the Introduction

~

I had forgotten that I had already started this deeper
"exploration" :) back in 2019.  But there have been
so many distraction since then, that I feel called to
explore the depths of Reality again, although the
distractions weigh heavy.  Something deeper than
what I am living now calls to me - from the "edge of
awareness"...
There is always a "call" to deepen.

I want to live the true Essence of Life...

~

Photo - The Flammarion Engraving
from the internet

 

Pilgrimage - The Upanishads

Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely
adrift and alone.  From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman,
[the spiritual life principle of the universe, or Soul. or Essence

inherent in the real self of the individual]...  The self-luminous.
abiding point - underlying the whirlpool of transient feelings,
emotions, and delusions...

As the sun lights the world even when clouded over, "the
Immutable" is never seen but is the Seer; it is never heard
but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is
never known but is the Knower.

The Unpanishads

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo from the Internet

 

"The Companion" - a meandering...

"The Companion" is unidentifiable, nameless,
identity-less - and - indwells us.
"The Companion" is a felt sense of Presence within;
beyond all concepts of "God", religion, deity, or
enlightenment...

"The Companion cannot be reduced to a name, or
label - it's beyond that...
You can't wrap it, or trap it, in a conceptual framework.
It's beyond concept...

"The Companion" is a felt resonance...
that helps align us with the internal frequency of
our Essence, our Being, our Soul -
even when we don't recognize it.

It's what attunes us to the Essence of our Being -
inexplicably...

"The Companion" is always within us;
noticed as an inner stillness
when we pay attention to it.
It's been there all along - comforting.

We just haven't been aware...

~

Companion from the Unseen
Mysterious Friend of the Heart
You comfort me, and sustain me
and free me from my darkest night.

Mystic Meandering

Sept. 28, 2022

Written after a conversation with my husband
about something we were both experiencing back
in Sept - and we called it "The Companion" to give
a sense of what if feels like within - but which is
beyond even that description...

~

Photo - Northern Lights from a Calendar 

 

The Great Suffering - A Simple Man

The Great Suffering is one of many perceptions and sensations
felt in the body, and happens simultaneously with the 
awareness of the Beauty around us - in the formless Field of
Awareness.

Everything is overlaid with acquired knowledge, and the
psychological and somatic conditioning.  The immediacy of
our experience becomes veiled, overlaid by unconscious,
reflexive conditioning.  The overlay applies to the totality of
experience and what it feels like to be alive.

The Great Suffering comes about as we learn of the darker
aspects of Nature and humankind.  The aspects of the Great
Suffering are not innate elements.  Nothing originally overlays
our Naked Essence. Can we come to an Experience of Being
that we have known before the constituents of The Great
Suffering clouded our Essence?

Our Essence is the Essential me unshrouded by all that has been
acquired over the course of a life; all that is not native to us.
It is the feeling of Aliveness.  You can feel yourself.  You can
feel the Field of Awareness Itself - which is the Feeling of
yourself...  You have to keep bringing your Attention back to
feeling yourself as the Source, which is prior to the arising of
thought...

Who then am I?

The Formless Aliveness, the Essential self , recognized and
remembered.  

Excerpts from: An Affair of the Heart
by - A Simple Man

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Story of Akhilandeshwari - Laura Amazzone

Art: Peter Weltevrede

Akhilandeshwari is a South Asian Goddess figure in the Shakta
Tantric Tradition. According to that tradition She is a vast field of
 Consciousness - a force of Ultimate Reality - the Great Mother
Herself. 
 Her name means "Never not broken."

It is hard not to feel the brokenness of the world with all the
man-made crises, conflict, disasters and devastation happening in
the world; not to mention the personal dramas that play out in
 our lives.  We are all impacted by the global crises of these times.

What is needed to help find our way through?  How can our
breakdowns lead to breakthroughs? How do we approach the
challenges, pain and difficulty that overwhelm some of us? 
How do we transform our  own fears and personal  sense of
 impotence into something meaningful,
empowering and liberating?

[It is believed that] Akhilandeshwari can help us move through
the very challenges and difficulties in life.  She helps us to find
that  light of our Essence  through the cracks of the chaos.  She is
the power of the Sri Yantra, an ancient Hindu symbol of Union
 [with] Divine  Consciousness.

Brokenness seems to suggest separation, but if we look closely
 we can see  the felt sense of what is ever-present beneath the
cracks that  can lead to our own sense of internal balance and
union within.

One of Her many gifts is to remind us of the power to be
found in our brokenness.  From the Shakta Tantric perspective
 Akhilandeshwari brings and removes the pain and suffering that
 break  us down. She guards over all those experiences in life that
can knock  the wind out of us and send us reeling, crashing down,
 wondering how we will ever get up.  She brings and removes the
 deep sense  of brokenness, the crushing pressure on one's heart,
the endless mental anguish, to  remember what's Real.  Our
"Never not broken" experience  can be a fierce and painful
 process.  However, She gives us courage to face the many little
 deaths that happen repeatedly in  our life.  If we surrender and allow
 ourselves to go to the heart of our pain, we can find refuge in our
 vulnerability  and in our imperfections.

Spiritual growth and freedom can be gained through difficult
experiences and in the invaluable lessons they provide there is
always a gift in the pain we experience.

Akhilandeshwari is depicted as riding a crocodile, which represents
 our primal instincts, especially fear, and our false pretenses and roles
 we play to appear "perfect" and "whole."  She destroys all illusions
 and delusions, so we can come back to our Essence. The intensity
of our experience is to disorient our egos so that we drop our
attachments  and come into our authentic nature.

When we remember the unlimited Space behind our brokenness we
form new patterns and ways of being.  The journey that unfolds is
deep, mysterious, soul affirming and often intensely creative.

Akhilandeshwari breaks us down and from the depths of despair,
we come back to fullness and wholeness - our Essence.

Laura Amazzone

Excerpt from an article
Published Dec 2015 in the Sutra Journal

 

In Difficult Times - Kathleen Knipp

Let go of the belief that 'I have to muscle this through' -
and let yourself be held...

This moment - if it could be different it would be different...

Everything changes...

Underneath the changing thoughts, emotions, beyond form
there is This - the unchanging, unspeakable Essence -
familiar as the breath - and a deep knowing that everything
is okay...  in the silence that is present, even as the soundscape
unfolds - a stillness that is present even as movement arises;
the silence and stillness that is Isness in all form...

Kathleen Knipp
gems from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
called: "A practice for difficult times"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Cosmic Perspective - a meandering...

We are told in certain "traditions" that everything is Consciousness,
Awareness, Eternal Beingness, The Essential Self...  Plug in
whatever works for you - "God", The Ineffable, The Unknown, etc.
"IT", they say, is everywhere at the same time, aware of
everything that is occurring all at once.  I actually had this
experience while sitting in a doctor's waiting room.  I was
suddenly aware of what was AWARE of me sitting there -
and that "IT" was everywhere, awaring everything in the room.
It was "me", but also a greater "Awareness" than my own.

The mind can't really fathom such abstractions, so it creates words,
creation stories, and images, like "God", Buddha, Shiva, and other
deities, which personifies (person-ifies) what cannot be person-ified,
to try to explain what cannot be explained - including words like
Beingness, Consciousness, and Awareness... :) Non-dual language.

There is just this pure Space of Awareness, they say - what my
husband calls the "Portal of Eternity."  Works for him :)  I
experience "IT" as an alive Space of Silence within.  Everything
is felt to be suspended in, and infused with this Silence that just IS -
including you and me.  A mystery...

The "trick", as I'm discovering ever slowly, is to see from a
Cosmic Perspective, rather than the "Earth mind" that only sees
the "Earth mind" as real; does not see the bigger picture of being
suspended/infused in/with "The Infinite", but only thinks its
immediate reality is real - when it is only a part of a much larger
Cosmic Reality - of which the Earth experience is a part.  As my
husband says, the dynamics of the Cosmos has its own way -
and you can't manipulate it.  There's something bigger going on here.

How would life change for humanity if we started to see our lives
in this way,  from the perspective of Cosmic Consciousness that
sees the whole picture?  What would happen if we started viewing
each other from the Cosmic Perspective?  Something I fail at 
miserably - continuing to be distracted by the externals of life, on
the surface of life - entangled in the emotions that creates.

But maybe this Cosmic Perspective is the dis-entanglement from 
the matrix of our personal life dramas - to see all of existence from
a different perspective - to see the Infiniteness and True Nature of
all things - of all Existence.

We are breathed by the Cosmic "Spirit", if you will. Some call it
The Silence, or even The Holy Spirit...  I feel IT when sitting in the
Space of Silence within - the Still Point.  This, for me, is intimacy
with my "Eternal Being" - this sense of intimate connection through
the breath of Silence.  This energy/vibration runs through the whole
body, is in every cell.

"IT" is what we abide in naturally and don't even realize it.  We
are not always aware of it, don't have a felt sense of it,distracted
 again and again by the externals of life and living.  Pure Cosmic
Energy is what we breathe, and what breathes us, is what bathes the
cells, and permeates "our" world.  This "Divine Energy" of Life
continues on after death, but we focus on the  physicality and not
the Universal Energy that sustains and animates the body - that
which never dies.  We only see personalities playing out their roles
here, not the Beingness, or True Nature, or Essence of the "person."

At least from my perspective :)

It seems all so esoteric and yet we can feel the realness of "The
Mystery" of it - experientially - through our awareness, or direct
experience of IT.  In the Silence of Being I can feel this Infinite
Energy, the Universal Source coursing through my body - and
know that THAT is who I am, at the core of my being - not my
person-ified identity...

And yet, I remain distracted by this external identity that clouds
the Cosmic Perspective...

Mystic Meandering
Taken from my Journal notes
2014

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"Wisdom Mother"...

Art: Meganne Forbes

Don't fill your head with the "voices" of others -
the so-called "teachings" of others...

Don't seek what you need in the external world
of techniques, and foolish games of
clever worldly wisdoms.

Instead, seek the company of the Innermost Essence
of your own Being - in the Silence of Being;
The True Wisdom - The Innate Wisdom;
The Inner Voice of Inherent, Intuitive Wisdom...

Trust the "Wisdom Mother" within...

Mystic Meandering
June 11, 2022

 

The Indigenous Within - Malidoma Patrice Some

The indigenous world, in trying to emulate Nature, espouses
a walk with life, a low quiet day-to-day kind of existence.  The
modern world, on the other hand, steams through life like a 
locomotive, controlled by a certain sense of careless waste
and destruction. Such life eats at the psyche and moves its
faster and faster along, as they are progressively emptied out
of their spiritual and psychic fuel.  It is here, consequently,
where one's spirit is in crisis, that speed is the yardstick by
which the crisis itself is expressed.

Any person in modern culture who is aware of this destruction
from the machine world upon the spiritual world......realizes
that there is a starvation of the soul.  And realizing that, he or
she starts to wonder what to do about it.  In places that I have
been to speak to people about the beliefs and realities of the
indigenous world, there has been a consistent number of people
who have been so touched, even profoundly shaken by what I
was telling them that I have to believe that I was not so much
appealing to their minds as I was awakening something within
their souls - something that has always been there.  This tells
me that there must be an indigenous being within each of us.

[The Buddhists call it out True Nature, Advaitins call it the Self.
Hinduism call it the Atman, or the innermost Essence.]

Malidoma Patrice Some

[brackets mine]

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Say I Am You - Rumi

I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel.
I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branched.
Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.

Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose and nightingale lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift and the falling away.

What is and what is not.
You who know Jelaluddin,

You are the one in all...

Say I am you.

Jelaluddin Rumi
Coleman Barks Translation

~

What hurts the soul?
To live without tasting
the water of its own essence.

Rumi
Coleman Barks Version
from the Mathnawi I

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering