Don't Let Your Fire Go Out - Ayn Rand

In the name of the best within you,
do not sacrifice [your] world to those who
are the worst.  In the name of the values
that keep you alive, do not let your vision of
man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the
mindless...  Do not let your fire go out,
spark by irreplaceable spark...
Do not let the hero in your Soul perish...

Ayn Rand
From: Atlas Shrugged
(Russian born controversial American Writer)

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Fire and Ice on window pane...

 

The Fire of the Magdalene - Fred LaMotte

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fred LaMotte
Interfaith Minister
Uradiance

~

Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering
2011

 

LIVE!

LIVE!

Let go...

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

LIVE!

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

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

LIVE!

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

LIVE!

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

LIVE!

Authentically...  Genuinely...

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

LIVE!

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

LIVE!

Let go into the Cosmic Stream

that already carries you...

LIVE!

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

Mystic Meandering
Aug. 13, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Fire in my Soul - Barns Courtney

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

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

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

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

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

In the dark...

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

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

[.....]

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

 

Dancing In The Fire - Jennifer Welwood

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

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

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

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

Jennifer Welwood
Original title "Renunciation"

~

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

Matt Licata

~

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

Craypas Oils
2012

 

"She"...

"She" - is not Shiva
             not "The Mystery"

             nor "the Goddess"

"She" - is the Primal Energies of the Universe -
            The Originating "Mother Energies"
             like the mother load of Gold

"She" - is beyond all concepts of "God",
             religion, or enlightenment
             Nameless, beyond form or identity

"She" - is the pre-verbal Primordial Energies
             infusing all Existence

"She" - is the all-consuming Holy Fire that burns
             through all our illusions and delusions

"She" - is the depth of Sacred Silence - the Deep Quiet
             always calling us Home - to the Heart of Being

Mystic Meandering
January 21, 2021

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 :)