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

 

A Vessel For Blessing - John O'Donohue

May morning be astir withe the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to Source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurt and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners.

A morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from Silence.

May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,
and the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to
A different shape.

May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.

John O'Donohue
From - To Bless The Space Between Us
Original title: "Blessing for Artists at the Start of the Day"

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Commentary by Brittany Deninger:

One of the things that O'Donohue's exquisite blessings suggest is that blessing doesn't erase difficulty, but rather reaches deeper.  [Blessing] he says, is not the invention of what is not there, nor the glaze-eyed belief that the innocent energy of goodwill can alter what is destructive.  Blessing.....issues from the confident depth of the hidden self, and its vision and force can transform what is deadlocked, numbed, and inevitable.  When you bless someone, you literally call the force of their infinite self into action.

The hope of a blessing is that we reach for language that is large enough to hold and welcome the full range of human experience. ...our hardships are an inevitable part of the story.  Our difficult experiences are our teachers that mark us and make us. ...the words that pass between us have potential to invite and to invoke.  Our words can clear a path for the depth of another soul to emerge.  The central gesture of a blessing is presence calling to presence.

Brittany Deninger
Asst. Instructor in Theology and Culture
Excerpt from an essay entitled: "The Art of Blessing", posted in the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology Website

 

Fantasies We Live By - Terry Pratchett

"You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

Really?  As if it was some kind of pink pill?  No. Humans
need fantasy to be human.  To be the place where falling
angel meets the rising ape.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little - ?"

Yes. As practice.  You have to start out learning to believe
the little lies.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty.  That sort of thing.

"They're not all the same at all!"

You think so?  Then take the Universe and grind it down to
the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and
then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy.
And yet (Death waved a hand).  And yet you act as if there
is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some...
some rightness in the Universe by which it may be judged.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point -"

My point exactly...

Terry Pratchett
From Hogfather

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

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?

 

Imagine a New Experience - Mark Vernon

 Imagination.....reveals the truth of existence and life.  It converts
everyday incidents into rich perceptions that might amount to
a revolution in experience - seeing not with the physical eyes

but through them; seeing beyond the physical realm into the
Infinite realms, if only with our inner seeing, trusting imagination
as the living power of creativity with which we can cooperate...

~

As things run out of control, life is felt to be complexifying at
exponential rates and panic sets in.  It's not really.  It always was
complex.  Rather, people have lost their bearings for lack of
imagination.  The crisis becomes an opportunity to see more.

People cite rules instead of offering forgiveness, resort to courts
rather than reconciliation and, when culture wars break out, ethics
is weaponized in shaming and scapegoating - dividing and 
ostracizing people.

Tweets of hope are drowned out by threads of hate.
It's a dangerous time.

~

[However] It is no longer about the identification and defense
of principles, but the effort to mutually transcend old patterns of
behavior [old patterns of thinking] - laying open the hidden heart;
to understand, not condemn; to liberate, not subjugate.  It welcomes
mistakes as opportunities for the kind of learning that transforms
the soul as well as the mind.
Life has interiority and soul.

It isn't about dissolving the ego but routing out the desire to
possess life and control others.

~

There is a changed meaning to freedom...

There is a shift in consciousness...

In perceiving Eternity one actually 
gives up any struggle...
[We become} transparent to reality...
Time becomes fluid...

We realize we never possessed life to start with.
[We] live because life pours itself into us...
The everyday deaths through which we pass,
as well as the seemingly final death of passing over,
reveal there's a source of life.  It is timeless love,
which include and transcends death.

We are creatures of Infinity...

Excerpts from an essay on William Blake called
The Four-fold Imagination
by Mark Vernon

see the full, in depth essay here

With thanks to Virginia Lonsdale
at Footnote from a  moment

~

"If the doors of perception were cleansed
everything would appear to man as it is,
Infinite..."

William Blake

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Reflection of sky, clouds and trees in a puddle :)

Inside the Fairy Tale - Matt Licata

It's not so much that we need (or even can) get out of the matrix,
the developmental-cultural-historical lens through which we have
come to perceive what we call "reality."

Instead, begin to see it clearly, in all its nuance, subtlety, and
dream-like luminosity.  How am I imagining myself, others, and
the world?  What is the myth in which I am living, through which
I am seeing?  What is the story I'm telling, who are the gods and
goddesses I am traveling with?

Am I willing to take the risk to dream a new dream?  To differentiate
from the voices I have inherited from a world that has forgotten the
mysteries.  To listen to the new poetry as it pours out of the stars.

While we may never be able to fully step outside the matrix and
 report back as a neutral observer and "detached witness"
(another fantasy of modern consciousness), we can play within it,
dance inside and around it, allow ourselves the freedom to
 hide and seek, and the imagination to get lost and to be found.

We can get messy, fall apart, be vulnerable, fail well, fail with heart,
forget and remember, dissolve and come back together. And set aside
the fantasy that one day we'll come to some safe, secure, knowing
resolution to the wildness of love and its contradictory, untamed,
and relentless activity.  That one day we'll become a "master" at life,
wiggle into some invulnerable/untouchable state, tucked away and
protected from the reality that the rug can and will be pulled out
from underneath us in each unfolding moment.

To fully participate in the dream without falling into trance. And
even if we fall into trance, to dare to see it, too, as none other
than "the Beloved" in disguise.

It's really like being a character in our own fairy tale, with all the
mythical and archetypal beings by our side, curious as to what the
crazy love-struck boy or girl is going to do next, in awe of the
human form and the inseparability of matter and spirit.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - via No Mind's Land

You May Dream Dreams

A Pause for Gratitude...

A Pause for Gratitude...

Gratitude for the Beauty of the Natural World

with its contrasts...

For the Joy of Imagination and Play

And Meditative Moments

For Moments with Mom - coloring

one of her mandalas

she is blind in one eye and losing her sight in the other
and yet she colors!

For Mystical Moments

And an unexpected November Rose

Whether you celebrate the American Thanksgiving or not,
may Peace, Joy, and Gratitude sit at your table today...
and every day...

Winter Whammy!

Sometimes life is just "magical"!

With Winter's Whimsies arriving in April

Joy Rising...

And calm Rest...

Offering a weekend "Sabbatical"...

:)

Who Would You Be If You Weren't Who You Think You Are...?

Okay, so maybe I’m taking the “spiritual path” a little too seriously…  I don’t know.  It seems all the sages and “spiritual teachers” that I read and listen to have taken their path very seriously, which is why they are where they are – and why we follow them, emulating them.  But, am I being too serious...

Over at ZenDotStudio, Carole is following the path of Joy, which sounds a whole lot more fun than the one I’ve been on lately.  :)  I mean she is really enjoying life!   In my last post I didn’t mean to imply that the “spiritual path” could not be “fun” when I said there’s no getting comfortable on the “spiritual path” because it seems there’s always some issue to attend to, to look at, that needs pruning, etc..  Or that we need to constantly be working on our issues…    It’s just that some of us seem to have a harder time accessing Joy.

I commented on a friend’s blog post yesterday, who was dealing with feeling stagnant, in a kind of off-hand humorous way, that sometimes it helps me to see things differently when I use my imagination, to be playful, to take on a different role, or persona, say of someone I admire – like snoopy the dog for example in his scarf, goggles and flying cap.  You may remember that image. :)  Just the mere act of wrapping a scarf around my neck makes me feel more lighthearted and free.  Or, as my blogger friend suggested, wearing long, striped socks like Pippi Longstocking!  Yes!  I remember how much fun and freeing it was to play dress up as a kid.  Wearing a mixed match of clothes somehow put me into a different, more playful place, an imaginative place.  As a kid I didn’t think about it, it was just spontaneous and authentic fun.  There was no rightness or wrongness to it…  It was just innocent child’s play…

I had a Buddhist therapist one time who asked me about the people I admired and why, and then had me pretend to be them talking to me to find out what they would say to me.  Interesting exercise actually – although awkward – but it made the point.   Pretending to use the qualities that I admired in them, only to discover that I had those same qualities too…   And another therapist said that the clothes we wear make a difference in how we feel about ourselves.  So – maybe I need a change of costume…  Where did I put those goggles and flying cap…

And interestingly I had a conversation this morning with my husband about how we see our selves is only a glimpse of a larger story; how we limit ourselves by how we perceive ourselves, and not seeing the bigger picture.  And how we can use our imagination, play, roles and personas to go beyond who we think we are.  “Christine” is a persona, a fabrication of the self, a mental construct based on upbringing, conditioning, and who I have come to believe myself to be.  So why not use my imagination to play different aspects of the self – as children do – without constraining myself to an idea of who I think I am.  If self is just a mask for the pure Beingness that we are, then Beingness is free to take on any persona, mask, self, role, personality that it chooses, right?  And since there are so many aspects to this self that we have come to believe in, then why not use one that reflects more clearly, more transparently the essence of our Being.   Even “spirituality” can become a mask we hide behind… 

When Byron Katie asks, “who would you be without that thought?” we think in terms of – being happier, being calmer, more accepting, being freer.   But to put a humorous twist on it, why not think in terms of personas!  Who would I be without my thoughts that life is hard, stressful, lifeless, directionless, that I’m a failure, etc.   Of course the answer is supposed to point you to your True Self, and not another character, or persona.  So what would my True Self/Beingness look like without these thoughts, or these personas?  Or better still – how would I see life differently if I pretended to be who I really am - Beingness ItSelf…  I think I’ll try that one on for size and see how it fits.

WHO am I when Beingness is seen and recognized to be what is looking through these eyes?   I feel lighter already… :)

Photo

I couldn’t sleep one night
and did this piece at 2am.
I call it The Blue Cocoon :)

The Spice of Life...

Yesterday I got a comment from a blogger friend on The Stew of Life post that reminded me that one of the things I *love* is the smell of savory spices, which then led me down the path to where I usually go to experience those wonderful scents. In the Summer I can go out to my herb garden, swish around in the thyme, tarragon, lavender, basil, rosemary, and marjoram and smell those delightful aromas. And sometimes I bring the herbs in and dry them as aromatic reminders. But – I *also* have a favorite spice shop where I like to go and just inhale. Usually at Christmas time it is particularly pungent. It’s been two Christmases since I’ve been there. My mind wafted to the memory and I thought – YES! That’s where I need to go to experience the “spice of life” – to soothe the simmering stew – to make life a little more palatable. Sometimes I find serenity in the simplest of pleasures – aromatic spices is one of them.

So today, after cleaning the kitchen, I headed off to the spice shop near the Lo-Do area of Denver, tucked away on a side street. This particular spice shop is in an old building, with creaking wooden floors, and shelves and shelves of jarred spices and herbs – as I imagine an old Herbalist’s shop might be – a place for creating alchemy. There is also a glassed-in “spice room” where they grind the spices into powders. The shop has lots of ambience and atmosphere. It seems reminiscent of what I imagine the “old world” to look and feel like. When I have been there before, the spice shop, not the “old world”, the experience of the spices with their unique aromas has always soothed me. But today there was no person behind the glass grinding herbs, and no pungent odor of spices wafting through the air. A slight scent of disappointment arose within me…

In the back of the shop they have wooden bins where they sell small packets of several kinds of the crushed herbs - cheap. So I headed to the back and started sniffing, bin by bin – the financially challenged person’s cheap thrill… The aromas were delicious. My absolute favorite aromatic spice is Marjoram. The dried little pod-like buds - right after they’ve been crushed - create a very distinctive odor: clear, clean, crisp. If serenity had a scent this would be it – in my imagination. I found the Marjoram bin and sniffed and sniffed at the little package. But it didn’t give off that familiar fragrance. So I kept going from bin to bin. I finally found one that said: “Herbes de Provence.” Oo-la-la! Ahhh – a touch of “old world” - France maybe. The packet ingredients were a combination of several herbs & spices: French Thyme, Savory, Fennel, Rosemary, Marjoram (there it was!), Basil, Lavender and Tarragon… I knew I had to take this one home – open it up – crush it some more to release the savory scent, place small amounts in little open bowls, and set the bowls in my kitchen cabinets. Each time I open a cabinet door my imagination takes flight as I inhale the fresh aroma of “Herbes de Provence” – and pretend I’m in a country kitchen. I take a deep breath and feel - serenity…. My little reprieve from the simmering stew of life…

Imagination – the spice of life…