Questions for the Quest - Misc.

 

From the Web Telescope

[spiritually speaking:]

What is the deepest longing of your Heart -
that which is more important than anything else?

What in you is being called forward, seeking attentions?

What is the pull, what calls to you?

What is your own inner resource,
sanctuary, refuge?

What is it that you call upon
that helps you connect
with [the inner feeling of stillness]
and being at ease?

What wants to be felt,
acknowledged?

Be open to what reveals itself...

Kathleen Knipp
excerpts from a Yoga Nidra meditation

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As we embark on a "new" year -
I'm questioning again,
things like these...

why are you questing?
Or - why did you start questing so long ago?

What drew you to the Quest?
What are you trying to pursue?
What calls to you still and
compels you to keep questing?
What speaks to your Soul?

~

I know from my own experience

not to let others determine my "path"
out of obligation or obedience,
no matter what others may tell me the truth is -
or isn't.

I must follow my own "invisible" path
that only I know; the one that is true for me...

That will intuitively lead me Home...

Blessings to us all for a safe passage in the year ahead...

_/\_

MM

~~~~~~~

 The pilgrimage is one that each must make alone...

to that boundary of space and time where
the mind and heart encounter the
"ultimate  mystery",
the known unknowable...

The quest will perhaps require more courage
than you or I can bear...

Chet Raymo
from: The Soul of the Night

Soul Friend - John O'Donohue

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding
of love and friendship.  One of the fascinating ideas here
is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is
anam cara.  Anam is the Gaelic word for Soul and cara
is the word for friend.  So anam cara in the Celtic world
was "soul friend."

In everyone's life, there is a great need for an anam cara,
a soul friend.  In this love, you are understood as you are
without mask or pretension.  The superficial and functional
lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you
can be as you really are.  Love allows understanding to
dawn, and understanding is precious.  Where you are
understood, you are at home.

The anam cara experience opens a friendship that is not
wounded or limited by separation or distance.  Such
friendship can remain alive even when the friends live
far away from each other.  Because they have broken
through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul
level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed.  When
the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured.

Even across the distance, two friends can stay attuned to
each other and continue to sense the flow of each other's
lives.  With your anam cara you awaken the eternal.

John O'Donohue

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The Silence Called...

She called me to the window again last night.
She beckoned me to come and be still,
to listen...

She waited for me to settle,
to be quiet...

Waited as I deepened
into Her Stillness...

No agenda, she whispered...

I listened...

Put everything aside and just breathe, She said.

Be aware of My Breath, breathing you...

Experience My Presence,
Sense the Intimacy
in every cell...

From the depths of Stillness
I heard Her call again,
calling me back to HerSelf.
Like a Great Ocean pulling back
the waves on shore,
back to ItSelf...

The wave giving in to the pull...

The Great Silence called
again and again;
the silent rhythmic intimacy of wave and Ocean,
one and the same...

The Silence embracing ItSelf,
knowing only
ItSelf...

The Eternal Embrace...

Come - She whispered...
Follow the pull...
Give in...

Come Home...

Mystic Meandering
Aug/Sept 2010

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Rest in the Breath - David Whyte

Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and
how we love to be.  To rest is to give up on the already
exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its
endless outward need to reward itself through established goals.
To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that
there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to
put it right; to rest is to fall back literally and figuratively from
outer targets, and shift.....to an inner state of natural exchange.

The template of natural exchange is the breath, the autonomic
giving and receiving that forms the basis and the measure of
life itself.  We are rested when we are living [that] exchange...

In rest is the sense of stopping, of giving up on what we've been
doing or how we have been being.  It is the sense of slowly coming
home...

Deep in the primal exchange of the breath, is the give and take,
the blessing and the being blessed and the ability to delight
in both.  In rest there is a sense of presence, a delight in and
anticipation of the world and all of its forms [in which]
receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.

A deep experience of rest is a perspective from which we are
able to perceive the outer specific forms of our work [and life]
and our relationships whilst being nourished by the shared
foundational gift of the breath itself.

Rested, we are ready for the world,
but not held hostage by it...

David Whyte

Excerpts from a writing called "Rest"
From the book: CONSOLATIONS

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"The Cave"...

Entering "The Cave"

the place of deep inner Silence and stillness...

Relaxing...

Listening deeply for the Inner Voice.
Following its sound.
Finding its Rhythm in the fluid, instinctive
inner River...

It is the space of The Sacred...

This aware, awake space is curious and unafraid,
wants to engage, to see, to know,
to experience ~

...and be experienced...

This Space is deeply compassionate,
deeply open,

...and is waiting to be known...

Pure Awareness
flows through here ~

the life blood of The Sacred.
It flows around the obstacles of my mind,
and moves toward every disturbance,
filling every mind-made crack and crevice,
wanting to meet, soothe, comfort, and embrace.

In "The Cave"
there is only patience, listening
and deep rest...

It is a gentle refuge
that feels like Home...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 2010

Personal Note:  It's been a long time since I've
entered "The Cave."  I've missed it...

~

Photo - Art - Mystic Meandering
Craypas oils with fingers

 

What I Must Tell Myself - David Whyte

[.....]

I have only this breath
and this presence
for my wings
and they carry me
in my body
whatever I do
from one hushed moment
to another.

I know my innocence
and I know my unknowing
but for all my successes
I go through life
like a blind child
who cannot see,
arms outstretched
trying to put together
a world.

[.....]

Watching the geese
go south I find
that
even in silence
and
even in my home
alone
without a thought
or a movement
I am part
of a great migration
that will take me to another place.

[.....]

When one things dies all things
die together, and must live again
in a different way,
when one thing
is missing everything is missing,
and must be found again
in a new whole
and everything wants to be complete,
everything wants to go home
and the geese travelling south
are like the shadow of my breath
flying into the darkness
on great heart-beats
to an unknown land where I belong.

David Whyte
Excerpts from - "What I Must Tell Myself"
From: The House of Belonging

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Edge You Carry With You - David Whyte

You know
so very well
the edge
of darkness
you have
always
carried with you.
You know
so very well,
your childhood legacy:
that particular,
inherited

sense of hurt,
given to you
so freely
by the world
you entered.
And you know
too well
by now
the body's
hesitation
at the invitation
to undo
everything
others seemed
to want to
make you learn.
But your edge
of darkness
has always
made
its own definition
secretly
as an edge of light
and the door
you closed
might,
by its very nature
be
one just waiting
to be leant against
and opened.

And happiness
might just
be a single step away,
on the other side
of that next
unhelpful
and undeserving
thought.
Your way home,
understood now,
not as an achievement,
but as a giving up,
a blessed undoing,
an arrival
in the body
and a full rest
in the give
and take
of the breath.
This living
breathing body
always waiting
to greet you
at the door,
always prepared 
to give you
the rest you need,
always,
no matter
the long
years away,
still
wanting you,
to come home.

David Whyte
From: "The Edge You Carry With You"
in 'Still Possible"

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Heaven's Wrinkle - Susan Tweit

 Looking at the heavens places me in time and space - and beyond
them.  Gazing at the stars, I look through heaven's wrinkle; the
light I see now represents their past, having traveled many years
across space to reach my eyes here on earth; the light they are
emitting now will be visible only in some future, years away.

I and all the other lives on Earth are connected to the stars, held
together by gravity, the invisible glue that defines our universe,
and bound elementally by a common material: stardust.  This
atomic grit of interstellar space paints dark clouds on the Milky
Way, condenses itself into swirls of gravity-bound suns and 
planets, and provides the minerals bounded by the push and pull
of electrical charges into the molecules that form our cells.  Like
stardust and other materials of life itself, we are in constant
motion, changing shape as we pass through our lives, and after
the makings of our bodies break down and are recycled,
rearranged into other forms of life.  The stars remind me of
where I come from and who I am.

Susan J. Tweit
from -Walking Nature Home

with thanks to Beyond the Fields We Know
for post and incredible photo!

Step Through - Fred LaMotte

Painting by Joe-Maccer, Deviant Art

As you fall asleep tonight,
do not take this inhalation
for granted.
Honor her like a royal guest.
Make a spacious tent
of your flesh,
for She who contains
the galaxies
has come to dwell in you,
pouring her gift from the stars
down your backbone.
Each expiration will lead you
through a silver door,
a mirror of moonlight.
The key is silence.
Step through.
Follow her rainbow into the void
where wings of astonishment
will carry you from death to death.

A scent of blossoms
from the garden in your body
will guide you home,
enlarged by a memory
of stillness.
Neither come nor go
and She will lead you
from the mind to the Heart.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Original title "Shekinah"

Aloneness - John O'Donohue

It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness.
Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to
quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you.  The
Mystic Thomas Kempis said that when you go out into the
world, you return to having lost some of yourself.  Until you
learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise
of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you
will only become empty and weary.  When you face your
aloneness, something begins to happen..... a sense of true
belonging.  This is a slow and open-ended transition...
In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home
within your life.  It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you
rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows
begin to open outwards to the world.  No longer on the run
from your aloneness, your connections with others becomes
real and creative.  You no longer need to covertly scrape
affirmations from others or from projects outside yourself.
This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.

John O'Donohue
From: Eternal Echoes

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

Listen to Trees - Hermann Hesse

Trees are sanctuaries.  Whoever knows how to speak to them,
whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.
They do no preach learning and precepts, they preach
undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

[.....]

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer,
then a tree has something to say to us: Be still!  Be still!  Look
at me!  Life is not easy, life is not difficult.  These are childish
thoughts.... Home is neither here no there.  Home is within you,
or home is nowhere at all.

If one listens to them silently for a long time, it reveals its kernel,
its meaning.  It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's
suffering, though it may seem to be so.  It is a longing for home....,
for new metaphors for life.  It leads home.  Every path leads
homeward, every step is birth, every step is death...

When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and
the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve
an incomparable joy.  Whoever has learned to listen to trees no
longer wants to be a tree.  He wants to be nothing except what he is.
That is home.  That is happiness.

Hermann Hesse
Trees: Reflections and Poems

via: Love Is A Place

Invocation - Dolores Stewart

You who were with me before I was born,
dark shining on dark,
be with me now.
You who will stay with me after I die,
light traveling on light,
be with me now.

You who are nameless
in the marketplace of the ten thousand things,
how shall I call you?
You who are invisible between the stars,
how shall I see you?

You who nurture me with silent wisdom
speak to me now.
I am listening beyond the sounds of night,
I am looking beyond the sights of the day.
You who fill the infinite void,
travel on my shoulder now,
show me the way.

Dolores Stewart
From - Doors to the Universe

Via: Beyond The Fields We Know

~

The desire to go home
is a desire to be whole,
to be the point of intersection
of all the lines drawn through
all the stars...
that center called love.
To let the soul go wild,
to cease to speak
and be perfectly
understood.

Rebecca Soinit
Excerpt from - Storming The Gates of Paradise

(Ms. Soinit's words, my format)

A Dream of Wholeness - Matt Licata

As you fall asleep at night,
and look up into the moon -
It's just there waiting for you -
that vague sense that something is missing;
of disappointment in the way things are unfolding...

Perhaps at a much earlier time, with a star or a tree or water
as your witness, you made a prayer of wholeness.
The response to that prayer has come,
but not in the way you expected.
It has arrived by way of the shattering of an old dream,
the dream of how you thought it would all turn out.
While this dream is painful, it is alive, sacred and holy.

Heartbreak and disappointment are not easy.
They will pull the rug out from under you and remind you
of how [raw] it really is here, of how anything could happen,
and of how unresolvable life truly is.

These ancient feelings and emotions are not your enemies
working against you.  They are not evidence of your failure,
or that you have fallen off the path.
They are the path.
But they are not the path you thought.
They are of the unknown and seeded with creativity.

They are relentless in a way, these forms of love,
but will never give up,
they will never stop looking for you
and calling you home.

Matt Licata

Deeply Listen - Mark Nepo

Deep listening is meeting experience openly
so we can discover the coherent whole of life that connects us.
The task is to slow down enough and be present enough
to listen to each moment that calls…

Each enlivened moment is a thread in the fabric of the Universe -
each embued with spirit and wisdom.
We must learn to see through to the essential realm
that underlies everything, to listen below the surface of things
for what’s hidden…

The task is to be humble enough and attentive enough to
 pull the threads until the threads unravel the cocoon
 of our own making that shrouds us from the mystery
 that is always present.

At the deepest level, the most essential level,
listening entails a constant effort to *feel* that moment where
 everything touches, so that we might be touched by
 the Life Force in all things,
tuning to the mystery that surrounds us…

Life is a river… all we are left with is to find that current
 and join it…
listen for the water as it opens your gills,
feel the wind of truth,
receive the ancient rain of insight as it softens the mind…

When our individual sense of being merges with
 the ongoing stream of being
 that is the heartbeat of the Universe -
breathing the Breath of the Universe…

If stilled enough our breath can join the Breath of the Universe -
our deepest Home.

Mark Nepo

Excerpts From: Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Ultimate Reality - Robert Adams

The highest teaching in the world is Silence.

There is nothing higher than this.

A devotee who sits with a sage purifies his mind

just by being with the sage.

No words exchanged, no words said.

Silence is the Ultimate Reality.

Everything exists in this world through Silence.

True silence really means going deep within yourself

to that place where nothing is happening,

where you transcend time and space.

You go into a brand new dimension of nothingness.

That is where all the power is.

That's your real home.

That's where you really belong where there is no good and bad,

no one trying to achieve anything.

Just being - pure being.

The only freedom you will ever have

is when you go deep into the Silence...

Robert Adams

Via:  No Mind's Land

The Silence Calls...

Silence called me to the window again.
She beckoned me to come and be still,
to listen…

She waited for me to settle,
to be quiet…
Waited as I deepened
into her Stillness…

No agenda, She whispered…

I listened…

Put everything aside and just breathe, She said.
Be aware of My Breath, breathing you…
Experience my Presence,
Feel my Fullness,
Sense the Intimacy
in every cell…

From the depths of Stillness
I heard Her call again,
calling me back to HerSelf.
Like the Great Ocean pulling back
the waves on shore,
back to Itself…
The wave giving in to the pull…

The Great Silence called
again and again;
the silent rhythmic intimacy of wave and Ocean,
one and the same…

The Silence embracing ItSelf,
knowing only
ItSelf…

The Eternal Embrace…

Come – She whispered…
Follow the pull…
Give in…
Come Home…

Mystic Meandering

Aug/Sept. 2010

Photo: The inside of a seashell 

Confusion - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

“There is no end to this dynamic mystical journey

that leads to the beyond…

The wayfarer has to learn to leave behind the old understanding
and allow what is new to become known…

The journey Home has another dimension,
a deeper direction.
I have had to face the illusion of my own journey,
how I was caught in certain convictions,
especially spiritual convictions.

Now I sense something else,
a swirling quality
that carries
confusion,
chaos,
and
freedom

Always the journey, [&] the path changes.
Always we are thrown into something
beyond what we might have expected.

Now I sense something else,
something that was always at the borders
of consciousness…
and yet avoided in its intensity.
A quality of chaos envelopes me from within…
the chaos of life
and what is beyond life…

Where does the path go,
what strange byways does it follow?
Always we look for a sense of direction.
Are we going Home?

Is this the right path?
Are we in tune?

But the path is much deeper
and more ancient than any sense of direction.
It belongs to the timeless inner dimension…

~

There is a choice…
We can follow the ego
with all its subtleties of
self-defense.

We can walk away from our heart’s call…
And so the path dissolves,
its urgency hidden,
its demand neglected….

But how can the path ever be lost?

The path is a strange creature,
full of the unexpected,
born from the unexpected,
attempting to take us into the
unknown,
into the unknowable.

And always we want the security
of knowing,
and so our fear of the dark
betrays us...

What is this path,
this empty way?

There is a heartache,
a call,
and a sigh that comes from
the depth.

These are the signs,
but where do they lead?

Why do we expect something
tangible…?

Why do we look for
reassurance
when we stand at the water’s edge?

Follow your heart’s call – but where?

Deep within we sense the terror of an endless night
and will make sure that our path skirts around this
desolate place.
We may hear the phrase
”to die before you die,”
but what do we know of this ultimate desolation?

The path will take us to the water’s edge,
and may even provide us with the illusion
of a boat, with the fantasy of a further shore,
but really these are just mind games and
psychological gimmicks.
There is no spiritual board game,
no path to enlightenment,
because “The Beloved”
comes “like a thief in the night”…

~

Why do we look for answers?
Why do we try to dress with the right clothes
for the journey, the correct spiritual attitude,
when we need to be unprotected?

So many stories have been told,
books written, pictures painted,
and always we skirt around the edge,
frightened of facing the depth
of our longing….

Sorrow, endless sorrow is what we are given to work with,
to open us, to take us, to silence us…
This endless sorrow has oceans of joy
hidden within it, the joy that is life itself,
the hidden face of creation.

This joy is not a flimsy alternative to life,
not life skating on the surface,
but the intensity of emptiness
pouring into form,
“The Beloved”
manifesting.

Hungry for what is Real,
we know neither our self
nor the chaos that awaits us.
We like to think we are spiritual seekers,
lovers, wayfarers…

But what is there to name?

Those who remain behind carry names;
they carry banners of their own inner development,
their spiritual or worldly success.
They know who they are, and are
resplendit in their own recognition.

The lost are not like this;

all they have known is emptiness
and a hunger.

Maybe they have had experiences,
glimpses of the beyond.
But the real journey is beyond
any such knowing,
is too simple to be explained,

too ordinary to be noticed,
and far too intense to be talked about.

There are things that can never be said,
perhaps because they are too intimate,
too painful, too bewildering, or just
unspeakable…

It is not someone else’s experience,
but a vortex of undoing
into which I am drawn
or thrown.”

Excerpts from: Fragments of a Love Story

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic



Please Note: I have taken excerpts from various pages
in the book, putting them together in the form of this prose poem.


Photo: Vortex Art

Oriah, Mooji, Foster & No Mind's Land...

“The blessing of a new year is the reminder that we can begin again and again –
 not just in January, but whenever we need to, with each dawn, each breath.
  Some days I begin again dozens or hundreds of times.
  We will all inevitably at times become distracted and weary.
  We will wander from the clarity of knowing that is beyond articulation and understanding,
 the moments of sitting in the center of what we are
 and why we are here,
 the awareness that is rooted in Love.

Often it is the deep longing to reach for the Beloved within and around me that helped me begin again.
  But sometimes I lose even this, cannot find the end of the thread of that longing that will take me home
 to the Infinite Love I have tasted in moments of grace.
  And then I find, to my astonishment, that even this lack, this loss of feeling and faith,
 when willingly experienced fully,
 can make me available to the longing that guides me home…”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Copyright 2015

“Let the untrue be exposed and thoroughly burned.
Let whatever is untrue [be burned up] as it is recognized as false.

Wake up to the recognition of your Eternal Self.

Stay in the Heart.
Keep your eyes on
’The Beloved’

Your world may feel like it is being turned upside down.

Do not be disheartened…
It is your good fortune that your ‘world’ is being crushed.

Let your [world] be upside down so that what is true can
 reveal itself and begin unfolding
 in its authentic expression as True Life and Being.

Grace is helping you in every way.
Trust it…”

Mooji

(Above photo:  Zoom blur of a fire in our fireplace J)

“May you speak your deepest truth,
following nothing and nobody
but your own unique path
with some kind of crazy conviction
and an ancient courage
that emanates from beyond
mind…

Be willing to stumble sometimes,
to fail, to fall,
to not know,
to sometimes walk blindly
into the night,
to love without fear,
and to love fear
if and when it arises…”

Jeff Foster

(Above photo taken by my father circa 1952/53)

~*~

Let me to introduce you to Michel Bellegarde over at

No Mind’s Land

Michel has a wonderful blog site full of inspirations and resources
from Krishnamurti to Rumi, and everything in between: sages, mystics, scholars…

  It is where I found Chuck Surface.

Michele creates his own inspirational You Tube videos as well, some of which can be viewed
on his blogsite.  He posts inspiring quotes and poems from various authors and poets,
including myself.  J

Visit No Mind’s Land and let your Spirit Play!