An Affair of the Heart - "A Simple Man"

A Spiritual Autobiography of a fellow traveler and Friend

Free on-line book with PDF here

From the Preface

  

You should only trust what you Know in direct experience. All
else is hearsay, concept, theory, and conjecture; the interpretations,
by others, of their experiences, after the fact.  This book is about
none of that.  I don't present an interpretation of my past experiences
or ongoing experience.  I don't hold forth a theology, cosmology, or
notion of the "Truth."  Any seeming assertions are merely questions,
cloaked in possibility.  Whatever commonalities may exist in our
mutual experience, each of our Paths is unique.  If I describe the
Path I've taken, it isn't to inform, instruct, or suggest such a Path
to you, but only to Evoke Love and Longing, to ignite the Ember
at the Heart of your Being.

the Author

~

The author calls himself "a simple man" - sharing his "spiritual
journey."  I know him as a man of depth and devotion to the path
of Love, and The Beloved.  It's an amazingly authentic story of his
"spiritual quest" from childhood on.  Leaving the walled villages
of traditional religion, to wander in the "Spiritual Wilderness", 
looking for the fulfillment of his Heart's Longing.  He experienced
the Great Sorrow and Suffering of the world and its Breathtaking
Beauty, while tasting different spiritual teachings and philosophies
along the way with various "spiritual teachers."  He relentlessly
questions all he was taught to be "true" - discovering the Perfume
of The Beloved is in the Nature of his own Essence.

His writing is honest, genuine, passionate and humble...
I found much resonance and commonality in our spiritual
experience...

An amazing story.  I loved it!
Take the journey with him!

An Affair of the Heart

~

MM

 

The Loom of Creation - Ginny Lonsdale

called out
sung into being
through the loom of creation
dipped
coloured
immersed
kneaded
patterned
woven again

re-woven
I
came to Be, HERE.

Somewhere, along the
colour, spin and weave
of YOUR material story,
I remembered:

it is YOU

singing and breathing me.

- the rapture and exultation,
ardent love for YOU,
the treasure of your earth,
tears of joy outpour from a heart
filled with gratitude and wonder
for the privilege of being called forth,
to take a place HERE.
it is Our joy to hug and welcome each other.
Why not love
that which you have made?

it is Our joy to hold hands and dance.
Why not love
that which breathes me, adores me?

it is Our unity
that allows me to disrobe
and live in your clearing

HERE...

I am enfolded in your eternal embrace
naked and secure
in Your immeasurable Peace.

[.....]

Ginny Lonsdale

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Light shining in sink :)

 

Pull Out Your Wonders - Nick Penna

When you listen you reach
into dark corners and
pull out your wonders.
When you listen your
ideas come in and out
like they are waiting in line.
Your ears don't always listen.
It can be your brain, your
fingers, your toes.
You can listen anywhere.
Your mind might not want to go.
If you can listen you can find
answers to questions you didn't know.
If you have listened, truly listened,
you don't find yourself alone.

Nick Penna - fifth grade !!!!

From: Poetic Medicine by John Fox

With Thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

What are your gifts - "wonders" - to the world that you could
pull out despite the weariness of existence that we
are experiencing these days with the COVID
hanging around - like a lurker in our lives?

 

Inner Passageways - Matt Licata

 The path of opening the heart is not the same as becoming
 an unboundaried, leaky vessel for the unloading of another's
unlived life.  It is to the degree that we are attuned to our
own grief, sadness, shame, and rage that we will most
skillfully navigate within the we-space...

Most of us were not trained in the art of embodied

attunement as we live in an increasingly disembodied
world, where the capacity to hold unfolding emotional
experience was not encoded into a tender developing
nervous system.

The inner passageways, however, are luminous and ache
 for reorganization by way of the slower circuitries of
empathy, curiosity, wonder and awe. 

Inside something is stirring, a longing being awakened to
return home, for new circuitry to encode, for a new pathway

to light up and come alive.

Slowly, one moment at a time.
Safe. Connected. Open.

Embodied.

There is no urgency on the path of love.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Passion for Being...

I want to walk through life truly seeing - truly Aware...
Awake to the Presence of the Eternal Being that lives this life...

- the Life that animates all life...

I want to See everything as Living Aliveness;

with the same innocent wonder and amazement
as I did as a child, as if seeing Life living for the
first time...

I want to be in Love with life again -
if I ever was...

Maybe loving, and living life in new ways...

I want to Hear
the laughter of Life

in my Heart.

I want to Experience the Euphoria of
Life ItSelf, living ItSelf
in all its unfolding luminosity,
in the every-day-ness of life...

I want to Embrace
every thought,
expression,
and feeling
as it arises
without
trying
to
confine it,
or suppress it,
or correct it
before it is expressed.

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

I want to risk not following the rules,
the protocols, the agendas of others;
the well-worn paths.

Instead - rising above the familiarity
of any "path" to see what's really here...

May I have the courage to speak
with fierce grace to those who
would try to quell this passion,
to strip this enthusiasm, to
suffocate this spontaneity,
to dim the radiance and
clarity of
the

Passion of Being!

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 2011

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
reflection of stained glass on wall

(Holy Fire :)

The Dharma of Illness - Tarchin Hearn

In the midst of the 21st century, many people, in spite of all
their worldly wisdom, are still laden with medieval attitudes to
illness.....as if sickness is some kind of failing.  Physical dysfunction,
frailty or weakness is often experienced as if it were something to be
ashamed of, or guilty about - as if we have failed to meet some target
or some kind of socially acceptable ideal of good health.  We often
feel a need to make excuses for our suffering.  As if we needed to make
excuses for being vulnerably co-dependent dancings that we are!  We
try to identify a concrete cause for our condition, not only to help us
find a resolution to it but because the only alternative to identifying
a clear 'outer' cause seems to be that we ourselves, our behavior or our
lifestyles, are the cause.  It's our bad 'karma' or perhaps our bad diet or
lack of exercise or excessive stress, and illness is punishment or
retribution for our dissolute living!

[Could it be that] illness has invited us into a period of intensified
enquiry, contemplation and spiritual ripening...

An immeasurable expanse of experience and experiences surrounds
 and suffuses [us], a weaving together of uncountable situations and
circumstances - a seamless whole in the act of constant transformation
 - this dancing of [our] current knowing/beingness.

All complex, inter-dependent life dancings, in other words, all living
beings, have come about through the collaboration and balancing of
uncountable factors.  As the relationship between these factors
 changes, the system functions differently.  If the relationships change
 sufficiently, the functioning will change into something else
all together and the original functioning will no longer be there. 
These constantly changing relationships are a basic nature of all
interdependent arisings.  There is no shame in this.

Birth without death would not be life.  This continuous streaming of
birthing/dying is life in action.

~

Moving in the flow of compassion and deepening enquiry,
we engage with all beings in ways that support the integrity,
the stability and the beauty of the entire living world.

Engaging with this [flow] of birthing/dying living,
embracing it, surrendering to it, [we find that] the mystery
is tremendously integrated.
It is extraordinarily stable.  It has been in action for
billions of years.  It is breath-stoppingly beautiful in
all its vulnerability...

My medicine is wonderment...

Tarchin Hearn

Excerpts from:
The Dharma of Illness and The Medicine of Wonderment

Tarchin has a unique view of the inter-dependency of all life,
which he calls the "Holoverse", borrowing from the idea of
the Hologram.  The full article is worth the read, especially
for those dealing with a chronic health condition.  It really
helped me change my perspective on my own health issues.

(Dharma = Cosmic order)

Enlightening Perspective :)

My husband found this pic on Facebook and I just had to repost it here :)

Definition of Down Syndrome:

"The innate ability to see the good and beauty in the world,
to radiate joy and happiness, and to offer a unique perspective
on life with the ability to change other's perceptions."

Sweet...

This touched my heart deeply and reminded me that an
enlightened perspective doesn't depend on how intellectually
brilliant we are, or how much we understand with our minds,
it's all about how we see with our Heart;
staying innocent and open to life...

We are lit from within with a beautiful, loving, kind,
compassionate, trusting Spirit.
If only we could truly Experience it, Express it,
Be it...

Just Trust, Just Love, Just Be...

Follow Your Own Footsteps - Mark Nepo

Every time we talk to someone, there comes back to us a map
 of expectation as to how we should respond...

We share a confusion:
we are often given direction.

We share a pain;
we are often given instruction.

We share a desire;
we are often given a plan.

The power of these unspoken maps should not be underestimated.
For the endless gravities of expectation we move in and out of
govern most of our thinking and summons most of our energy
in denying them or complying with them.

In actuality, underneath all the plans, pressures, and expectations,
underneath all the subtle guidance and nudging, the next step
is truly unknown...

Thus, our spiritual charge is to maintain the wonder of the
singular explorer that each of us is...

The freshest step has always come when we are brave
enough to land at the end of what little we know,
breathing in new air, in reaction to no one, in wonder at
what is...

Mark Nepo

From: The Book of Awakening

(Mark's words, my format)

Fantasia of Existence...

Sinking deeper into the calming comfort
of the rich darkness of the universe within;
floating into the depths of the inner Cosmos,
lanterns of light appear suspended in the dark;
stars - at the interior frontiers of beginnings,
before time, before relative reality, before "I" began,
in the space of Pure Silence...

Where the unmanifest spirals ItSelf into form;
into galaxies of molten stardust
rotating ever so slowly through the universe;
that also somehow became "me"!
For no reason - except
the pure pleasure of Being,
the pure pleasure of existing.

This fantasia of Existence,
fancied to be composed of
stardust and galaxies of liquid light
dancing through the universe -
inhabits this body...

Light and matter
vibrating together, in resonance,
like a tuning fork - enlivening this body,
all bodies, everywhere.

A symphony of Wonderment...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 27, 2017

~

If a child is to keep his inborn sense of wonder
he needs the companionship of at least one adult
who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy,
excitement, and mystery of the world
we live in...

Rachel Carson

from a journal book called
Live In Wonder
by Eric Saperston

~

Photo - Vortex Art
craypas oils, done with fingers
2011

Live In Wonder - Bach, Monroe, Einstein

It must happen to all of us...  We pack up what we've learned
so far and leave the familiar behind.  No fun that shearing
separation but somewhere within, we must dimly know
that saying goodbye to safety brings the only security
we'll ever know.

Richard Bach

Quote from: Live In Wonder
a journal book
by Eric Saperston

~

Take wrong turns.  Talk to strangers.  Open unmarked doors.
There are so many adventures that you miss because you are
waiting to think of a plan.  To find them, look for tiny
interesting choices.

Randall Monroe

Quote from: Live In Wonder
a journal book
by Eric Saperston

~

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existence.
One cannot help but be in awe when he
contemplates the mysteries of eternity,
of life, of the marvelous structures of
reality.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

Albert Einstein

Quote from: Live In Wonder
a journal book
by Eric Saperston

~

Photo - Leaves on grass, color digitally inverted

Make a Covenant with the Mystery - Tom Spencer

...make a 'covenant' with mystery - by learning to stand in
relationship to what is known and unknowable at the very
same time.  I believe the essential trait that makes this
covenant possible is the capacity for wonder...

One need not peer off into the heavens to stand in
relationship with the mystery of our existence.  That
mystery is unfolding around us continually in a countless
variety of ways.  Our task is to pay attention - to stand
'with' means standing 'ready' by keeping our eyes, hearts
and minds open.  Even the most ordinary of experiences
has the capacity to change our lives...

Tom Spencer
from "Some thoughts about Wonder"

~

Photo from the Internet

Wonderment - Naomi Stone

When we truly arrive in that vast space
of who we are in purity of being
as we are created to be,

we are the living beauty of an expanding sanctuary,
we are life aware of itself
fluid
changing,
we are the flow of a shifting

transparency

of spirit

the bliss of an unseen kiss

felt in the

rising mist of existence
dissolving in the pure eternal joy
of this eternal moment
of
a thrilling transforming
ever changing
wonder...

Naomi Stone

~

Personal note: My own experience is that
"arriving" simply means we come to see/
recognize the Pure Beingness that we are.
We are, as Naomi says, "Life aware of itself."

~

Photo - Fat globules in a pan of water,
digitally altered :)

Listen for the Silence - Fred LaMotte

In the white noise
of many opinions
I long to hear the silence
creatures make
when they are listening.

There is no thought,
only the mysterious harmony
of trees and raindrops.

Invisible things appear.

The deer step gently
out of the mist.

When we listen,
the heart opens
fearlessly.

[.....]

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

Interfaith Chaplain
Instructor of World Religions
Shaman

~

For those who celebrate the Solstice/Yule
may you hear the Silence of Life
singing in your Heart...

_/\_

Follow Your Own Footsteps - Nepo & Machado

Every time we talk to someone,
there comes back to us a map of expectation
as to how we should respond.

We share a confusion;
we are often given direction.

We share a pain;
we are often given an instruction.

We share a desire:
we are often given a plan.

The power of these unspoken maps
should not be underestimated.
For the endless gravities of expectation
we move in and out of govern most of our
thinking and summon most of our energy
in denying them or complying with them.

In actuality, underneath all the plans,
pressures, and expectations,
underneath all the subtle guidance and nudging,
the next step is truly unknown... [and our own].

Thus, our spiritual charge is
to maintain the wonder of the singular explorer
that each of us is...

The freshest step has always come when
we are brave enough to land at the end
of what little we know,
breathing in new air,
in reaction to no one,
in wonder at
  what is...

Mark Nepo
From: The Book of Awakening

(Mark's words, my format)

~*~

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road,
and nothing more...

Wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking...

Antonio Machado

~

Photo - taken by my father
c. 1952/53
his own footsteps

The Unutterable Space...

There is a clear
Space
within our
Heart of Hearts

Softly Fluid
Purely Still
Undisturbedly Content
Innocently Wondrous
The Illumined Space of
Pure Being...

"Ordinary temporal life" is allowed to be -
to happen -
within the context of
this Space,
allowing everything to pass through it.

Trust this that
sits in the Heart.
Touch into it,
and see where
it takes you.
Feel how it buoys you up
and floats you through time.

Turn awareness
inward - Listening...
Sense Its Presence,
as if there was an inner window
to this voiceless, timeless
Space of the Ineffable

For even when the mind is preoccupied with words,
this Ineffable Space
is still silently present;
in the wordless language
of the Heart.

Feel the nearly imperceptible movement
as it subtly reveals Itself as
Love...
The reverberation of our Eternal Being,
echoing ItSelf as Love
through the chambers
of the Spiritual Heart

Everything comes back to this Unutterable Space

the Space of
~ Love ~

Mystic Meandering
July 20, 2016

Be The Energy - Danna Faulds

That’s how you came here,
like a star without a name…
Rumi ~

Be The Energy

Trust the energy that courses
through you. Trust – then take
surrender even deeper.
Be the energy.

Don’t push anything away.
Follow each sensation back to
its source and focus your awareness
there.

Be the ecstasy…

Be unafraid of consummate wonder.
Emerge so new, so vulnerable,
that you don’t know
who you are.

Be the energy,
and paradoxically,
be at peace.
Dare to be your own illumination,

And blaze a trail across
the clear night sky…..

Danna Faulds

From: Prayers to the Infinite

Copyright 2004
No website found

Outside The Walls - Chuck Surface

Mystical Experience, Divine Communion,
Is not confined to the many villages of religion,
Or to philosophical systems, however profound,
However revered their expounders.

For there are those who Wander,
Outside the walls of scripture and stricture,
In the Wilderness of Not Knowing,
Whose Hearts are, none the less…

Illumined with Grace.

Far from the village,
Road vanished into path,
Path vanished into hillside,
Hillside vanished into Vastness…

The Known vanished into Wonder.

For these Wilderness Wanderers,
There are no descriptions of reality,
No systems of belief or faith,
And the name of God is…

”Great Mystery”

And yet, like a Wellspring, their Hearts overflow,
Whenever they find, wherever they find,
In sources so-called “sacred” or “profane”,
That which invokes Within…

The Presence of The Beloved.

Neither a She, nor a He,
Nor a concept of belief of faith,
Or in any way “Known” in word or image,
But Known, palpably, viscerally…

In the Heart’s Direct Experience of Grace.

Here… within the Manifest Being,
Wherein Shines the Garden of The Beloved,
As the Ineffable, Intoxicating Sublimity,
The Inexpressible Ecstasy of…

The Great Mystery.

Chuck Surface

 ~

In The Garden of The Beloved

Chuck Surface on Facebook

Photo provided by Chuck Surface

Grace and Blessings - Chuck Surface...

Grace does not hold an abacus in one hand,
Tallying karma,
Or a Rubik’s cube in the other,
Challenging you to “Figure it out.”

Grace knows nothing of such cruelties.

Grace is the power that comes alive
When Attention, wandering in the world,
Turns inward,
In quest for The Heart’s Desire.

From the first awakening of Longing,
To the first turning inward,
through the long, wandering trek,
And the vanishing into Pure Being…

Is not everything the functioning of Grace?

Grace is the power of “Fruitioning”,
Of seed to Blossom,
Of ember to Flame,
Of Longing to Fulfillment.

Grace is the gravity of our own Pure Being,
Pulling “i”,
To its Ultimate Oblivion…
And Benediction.

The Heart’s Longing
And the mind’s Wonder
Arise from Grace,
As Grace.

Is not everything the functioning of Grace?

Grace, as my Heart speaks it,
Is not a “consequence”
Of conditionality,
Of causality.

Do we choose to have a Heart
Drunk with Longing?
Do we choose to have a mind
Moved by Wonder?

It is Grace that calls us,
Grace that moves us,
And Grace that sustains us,
Until we Vanish…

In its welcoming arms.

Chuck Surface

In the Garden of the Beloved

Chuck Surface Facebook

~~~~

Photo:  “The Hand of God” Nebula
by David Malin
From: The Invisible Universe

COPYRIGHT 1999

Malin named it “The Hand of God.”
In it he saw curled fingers formed by the stars
 reaching upward towards the blue.

To me the little magenta figure at the bottom
looks like a man in robes holding out his arms in blessing.
I call it the Cosmic Buddha J
How does the Universe do this -
creating such wonderment in the stars?!
Is it some unseen hand, or a trick of the eye ?
Or Grace…

A wonderful Mystery…

Sunrise!

Yesterday I commented on a fellow blogger's blog – Beyond the Fields We Know – on her series, SayYes to Life! – that I was never up at dawn, because I am a night owl, and an insomniac, so I don’t normally see the sunrise…  And that I wished I could see it…  Well, as Life would have it, I awoke this morning at 5:30 am, for what reason I don’t know.  My husband was up at 6:01, as usual.  I peeked at the clock… J  I tried to turn over and continue sleeping, but I could hear noises – that I don’t usually hear of course.  It was hubby puttering around in his office and down in the kitchen…  So I thought what the heck and clamored out of bed and went down to see if the sun was coming up.  Low and behold there it was!  The sunrise this morning was at 6:04 am.  I was probably up at 6:11, grabbed the camera and quickly took these photos through our dirty windows. And was back in bed by 6:30 am….  Still unable to sleep, I am back up posting this…    This was not the most colorful sunrise, but one I actually got to see! LOL    Be careful what you wish for. :)  The words below the photos are from John O’Donohue…

"May you awaken to the mystery of being here,
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence."

"May you experience each day as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder."

Ice Prisms...

There is innocent wonder
in the
spontaneity
of
living

~

see
what keeps you
unaware