Quality of Life - Rod MacIver

The tendency is to trade our time, our lives, on unnecessary
distractions...

Simplicity... - allows us the freedom to say no to activities and
projects [or to people].  Simplicity contributes to independence
from the dominant culture and its preoccupation with the extreme,
the ridiculous, the trivial.  Simplicity enhances our ability to
create a work of beauty, to be independent, to deal in truth.

In that way, simplicity contributes to the courage of conviction.

The spiritual life has always been the simple life, the reflective
life.  Simplicity enhances your relationship with your inner
world.  Reducing clutter and focusing on the essential [the Essence]
is an important aspect of slowing down.

The soul is simple; it doesn't relate to complicated.  It needs
simple pleasures.  Wisdom asks for simplicity -- the elimination
of unnecessary distraction...  What is the essence here?  What
can be removed without detracting from the whole?  Where's the
juice?

...

What can you cut out that you wouldn't miss?  What can you give
away without impacting the quality of your life?  Where's the juice
of your life? What can be removed to allow you to focus on that?

...

The thoughts offered above were originally written to myself in
my journal.

Rod MacIver - Heron Dance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Soaking in Being - John Scott

Ananda has been an ongoing exploration and inquiry for
me for several years.  My morning practice has gradually
become what I call "soaking in Being."  Shortly after waking
up and brushing my teeth, I sit in a favorite chair that fits
me particularly well.  The deep sweet, physical relaxation of
sleep is still present and readily available for me to "soak" in.
I simply turn attention gently toward this felt sense of Being.
The body responds.  It seems that Being loves it when the
light of Awareness shines upon it.  The feeling of well-being
shines brighter when attention turns toward it.  Waves of
well-being wash over and through the body.  Breathing slows
and almost stops.  The felt-sense of well-being or bliss seems
centered within the belly as it ebbs and flows throughout the
body.  Sometimes it almost tickles and makes me want to laugh.
Eyes are usually open and maybe even looking around the
room, watching the morning sunlight stream in through the
blinds.  Thoughts may be coming and going, no problem.
Meanwhile the body soaks.  I feel it now as I type this.

Over the years, I've come to understand this as what is
described in the Upanishads as Sat-Chit-Ananda, or
"Awareness of Being is Bliss," as Nisargadatta put it.  When
Awareness becomes aware of Being, bliss shines forth just
as light and heat emanate from the sun.  The light and heat are
not separate from the sun.  They're all one thing.  And 
Awareness-Being-Bliss are all one "thing":  True Nature.

Just as the sun may be obscured by clouds or may even seem
to disappear at night, so it is with the radiance of Ananda.  But
the sun never really stops shining.  It's just that our perspective
is constantly changing, and we have to remind ourselves of that
and come back to the felt-sense of Being, over and over again.
It seems that this is the kernel of all spiritual practices, this
remembering who we are and Knowing it even through changing
circumstances - feeling it at all times and Knowing it as ourselves.

John Scott is a project manager for a university health science center
and a Certified iRest Yoga Nidra Teacher living in Austin, Texas

~

with thanks to Kathleen Knipp
at Pathless Yoga

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Renewal - D.H. Lawrence & Alan Watts

What we lack is a cosmic life...

The rhythm of the cosmos is something we cannot get away
from without impoverishing our lives.  We must get back into
relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the
universe.  For the truth is, we perish for lack of fulfillment of
our greater needs, we are cut off from the great source of our
inward nourishment and renewal, sources which flow eternally
in the universe...

D.H. Lawrence

~

We have been brought up to identify ourselves with just the ego,
and so we ignore and are unaware of the vast, vast extent of our
Being.  People who by various methods become fully aware of
their cosmic Consciousness.....discover that the real deep, deep
Self - that which you really are [your Essence], fundamentally
and forever - is the whole of your Being.

You have to get away from all the madness for a while because
we become insane, we get confused with our roles.  Man is not 
his role.  Man is deeper than that.  So, go into the forest or
someplace alone in nature, all by yourself, and find our who 
you really are!  And then you no longer confuse yourself with
your particular temporary body, [or role] but identify with the
entire process of nature and the whole cosmos...

Alan Watts

with thanks to No Mind's Land for the Alan Watts quotes.

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering
"Windows into Infinity Mandala"
2013

 

What Calls the Eye to See - Adyashanti

What calls the ear to listen or the eye to see
more than the surface facade that shrouds our essential spirit?
Parting the strata and dross, what is essential picks its way
through the manicured narrative of endless lives.  In each
moment of every day, Truth is not lacking or held in
abeyance for some later date; it is given in full measure,
and abundantly so.  Do not be afraid of what appears to be
chaos or dissolution - embrace the full measure of your life
at any cost.  Bare your heart to the Unknown and never
look back.  What you are stands content, invisible,
and everlasting.  All means have been provided for our
endless folly to split open into eternal delight.

Adyashanti
2012

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Storm Cloud at Sunset

Solitude and the Consensus Trance - Ivan Granger

The idea of retreating into the desert or the forest always had a
romantic appeal to me, especially as a young man.

Thoreau's Walden was a close companion, and I regularly
reread his lines on living the essential life.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential acts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life...

Such a person experiences an intense need to silence the mind,
to settle the heart, and to sweep life clean of everything
unnecessary in order to feel that pulse that proves the living
presence beneath the skin of existence.

To accomplish this.....we want to retreat from the world.  But
what do we mean by "the world"?  We can loosely say it is
society, but that is too simplistic.  The world we are trying to
withdraw from is more of an idea of reality.  By withdrawing,
we are attempting to separate from the consensus trance.

It is the shared trance that we call the world, which [spiritual]
seekers instinctively withdraw from in order to see truly [clearly],
free from the pressures of society to remain within a limited
bandwidth of awareness.  When done with balance, steadiness,
and reverence, such withdrawal from the common bubble of
presumed reality can lead to surprising clarity, opening and bliss.

In the struggle to free oneself from the gravitational pull of
consensus reality, [we need to be careful that] we haven't
divided reality between what is sacred or true from the
mundane and illusory; be careful that we do not [exclude]
the vision of an undivided Whole.

The instinct to separate oneself in order to discover an
awareness that is pure and essential - whether through
literal retreat or some form of internal solitude - can be
enormously helpful along the spiritual journey; no longer
feeling trapped by [the trance's] gravitational pull and
artificial boundaries.

We come to recognize that the constricted space we know
as "the world" is not separate from the wider reality or
in opposition to it.
The Eternal is present in it all.

Ivan Granger
Part of a commentary written on a poem
from: The Dance of Bliss

An inspiring collection of poems from poets
and mystics from many traditions, accompanied
by Ivan's reflective commentaries.

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