Mining for Jewels - Chuck Surface

For jewels, we dig through the earth or hammer rock.
And upon finding, remove them from their encasement,
Leaving behind the rubbled detritus of earth and stone.

Just so, I approached the world of religion and philosophy,
Digging, sifting, washing away veiling encrustations,
Of hardened orthodoxies and binding dogmas.

The jewels found in that rubble. more or less precious,
Were expressions with which my Heart felt affinity,
And with which my discerning mind did not take issue.

The measure of these jewels, born of another's experience,
However cherished by multitudes over centuries,
Is their resonance with the Diamond of my own Essence.

Lacking this, no matter how treasured by countless others,
I left them in the rubble where I found them buried,
And wandered off, seeking deeper resonance and affinity.

Those jewels I found and kept, are treasured in gratitude,
For the Water of Beauty they offered my thirsting Heart,
And the Manna of Wisdom they fed my starving Mind.

Digging, sifting, washing away the obscuring encrustations,
Of so many binding orthodoxies and rigid dogmas,
I saw refracted, there, in those jewels of many colors...

The Diamond of my own Radiant Essence.

For some, it is best to set aside religion and philosophy,
And undo the conditionings that have accrued within us,
Over a lifetime lived under their tutelage and influence.

Not for everyone, but for some.

For some, our experience must be unwrapped, unveiled,
In interpretations by others, of their unique experience,
However revered or worshiped they may be...

So we can see with eyes afresh in Wonder.

For some, it is best to be liberated even from liberation,
Described and defined by others, long dead, or living,,
However revered or worshiped they may be...

So we can experience freedom anew, in its Purity.

Some of us must discard the burdensome clothing,
Of enlightenment and such, propounded by others,
However revered or worshiped they may be...

And face, naked and wide-eyed, our Radiant Essence.

Chuck Surface
Facebook
Original Title: The Diamond of Our Own Radiant Essence.

Photos Mystic Meandering

 

Remember Your Essence...

Our Essence is the same Silence that suspends the Cosmos,
and the same Energy of the Stars...
We are the Hush of "The Mystery"
and the breath of Life itself...

Our Essence is embodied in every cell of the body...

Our Being is the Dance of the Aurora Borealis 

and the unlit Light of the Sun...

generated through the inner radiance
of Shakti - the primal energy -
coursing through our bodies...
Our Essence is "Godness" seeking expression
in human form;
it is the Essence of all matter reality...
Life living us...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 16, 2023

~

Blessings to all in these uncertain times
May we all remember our Inner Light,
our Essence...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Don't Drown - Simó Necic

They appear as given direction and order
What you are
Have to become
What this world you barely know -
except what you read,
learned, and were told about -
Is

You are looking for your place to be
Purpose and meaning
Seeking what this is all about
What they told you
These voices in your head
Named father, mother, teacher, master
God and devil
Demons and angels
Spirits and deities
Your soul

You feel that they were all lying to you

You are drowning

Something you cannot name seems to be swallowing you
Slowly, bit by bit

You cling to your beliefs
What they taught you
What you practiced
They get louder
Distracting
I am! I am!

Silence is screaming

Presence awareness
The same voice
Disguised

Trying to keep you above

You aim higher
Gradually, you feel how you drown
You can barely breathe
Aliveness

The stream takes you

I am!  I am this!  Not this!

You drown in what you thought it to be
And it is not
That

While resistant, what you know, chokes you
You seem to die
But you don't

What seems like drowning
Are the voices in your head
Still pretending
They know the truth
Are truth

I am!

Simó Necic

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Don't fill your head with "voices" of others -
the so-called "teachings" of others;
the beliefs of others.

Don't seek what you need in the external world
of techniques, and foolish mind games
of clever worldly wisdoms;
of lofty "spiritual" words.

Instead, seek the company of the Innermost Essence
of your own Being - in the Silence of Being;
The True Wisdom - the Innate Wisdom;
The Inner Voice of Inherent, Intuitive Wisdom...

Trust the "Wisdom Mother" within...

Mystic Meandering
June 11, 2022

~

...all the more persistently
live in harmony with the
"Voice of Being"
within yourself.

Vaclav Havel

with thanks to Love is a Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Your Inner World - Rod MacIver

The Ocean within you is the universal reality or essence 
that dwells withing all beings...  Discovering this ocean is
vitally important for the discovery of balance because it 
provides a place of peace for you to return home to
despite all the chaos of the day.

Joel and Michelle Levy
Living in Balance

~

A friendship with your quiet interior allows you to better
understand the patterns of your life.  A special power comes
from diving deep into that world and accessing the wisdom it
contains.  It is a place of wisdom and peace, but our relationship
with it requires nurturing.

Your inner world guides you without you knowing it.  Our
thought patterns determine the quality of our lives.  The question
is, how can we gain access to the potentials of "knowledge" [knowing]
contained in the depth of us, how can we achieve increased capacities
of direct intuition [experience] and enlarged awareness...

A life journey, a creative journey, grows out of the seed of one.s song.

How would you describe the current of energy, the life force inside
you...?  Our most important relationship is our relationship with our
 self, with our interior world.  What do you do to nurture that
 relationship?  How you nurture that relationship will determine the
 quality of your life.

Rod MacIver
Heron Dance

~

What we call fate does not come to us from outside; it goes forth
from within us.

Rainer Maria Rilke

With thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The innermost self - Hermann Hesse

I seek to reach the innermost part of myself...

One thing no longer existed for him, the wish to have teachers
and to listen to teachings.

He asked himself - "But what is this, what you have sought to
learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who 
have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?"  And
he found: "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which
I sought to learn.  It was the self I wanted to free myself from,
which I sought to overcome.  But I was not able to overcome
it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from
it.

No thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this
my very own self, this mystery of one being one and being
separated...  And there is nothing I know less about... I know
nothing about myself!  I searched Atman, I searched Brahman,
I was willing to dissect myself and pull off all of its layers, to
find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life
the divine part, the ultimate part.  But I have lost myself in the
process.  I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to
find a secret behind the ruins.

I want to get to know myself, the secret of Sidartha.

[The beauty of this world] was no longer the veil of Maya, was
no longer a pointless coincidental diversity of mere appearance,
despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity
who seeks unity, but the beauty was also in Sidartha, the singular
and the divine lived hidden - the purpose and the essential
properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in 
them, in everything...

From: Sidartha
Herman Hesse

~

I do not believe in "spiritual paths."
The purpose of spiritual paths is to
enmesh you in the world of knowledge,
while Reality resides prior to it.

All spiritual paths lead to unreality,
Discard all paths...

Nisargadatta Maharaj

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"Wisdom Mother"...

Art: Meganne Forbes

Don't fill your head with the "voices" of others -
the so-called "teachings" of others...

Don't seek what you need in the external world
of techniques, and foolish games of
clever worldly wisdoms.

Instead, seek the company of the Innermost Essence
of your own Being - in the Silence of Being;
The True Wisdom - The Innate Wisdom;
The Inner Voice of Inherent, Intuitive Wisdom...

Trust the "Wisdom Mother" within...

Mystic Meandering
June 11, 2022

 

The Indigenous Within - Malidoma Patrice Some

The indigenous world, in trying to emulate Nature, espouses
a walk with life, a low quiet day-to-day kind of existence.  The
modern world, on the other hand, steams through life like a 
locomotive, controlled by a certain sense of careless waste
and destruction. Such life eats at the psyche and moves its
faster and faster along, as they are progressively emptied out
of their spiritual and psychic fuel.  It is here, consequently,
where one's spirit is in crisis, that speed is the yardstick by
which the crisis itself is expressed.

Any person in modern culture who is aware of this destruction
from the machine world upon the spiritual world......realizes
that there is a starvation of the soul.  And realizing that, he or
she starts to wonder what to do about it.  In places that I have
been to speak to people about the beliefs and realities of the
indigenous world, there has been a consistent number of people
who have been so touched, even profoundly shaken by what I
was telling them that I have to believe that I was not so much
appealing to their minds as I was awakening something within
their souls - something that has always been there.  This tells
me that there must be an indigenous being within each of us.

[The Buddhists call it out True Nature, Advaitins call it the Self.
Hinduism call it the Atman, or the innermost Essence.]

Malidoma Patrice Some

[brackets mine]

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Embracing Your Wholeness - Oriah

Embracing your wholeness is the greatest gift you can give...

Christine Wushke
Freely Human

~

All things are made of the same sacred presence - stillness...

All things emanate from and return to and are never
separated from a vast sacred wholeness...

This spaciousness that we are is not indifferent to the
suffering that we feel when we have forgotten what we are.
It reaches out to us, calls to us...

It is the Great Mystery.
It is what we are made of, and what everything and everyone
is made of.  It is what we participate in with every breath...

We will never be happy or truly be able to live and love fully
until we find our way of living from an awareness of the deep
stillness at the center of what we are... 
- Our Essential Nature -
which is wakefulness, awareness, love, peace, truth , beauty...

Look at your own life from within, that sense of quiet stillness
that you are.  You will see this inner essence, this innocence,
like a bright thread woven throughout the center of your life.

Living it consciously is why you are here...

Oriah Mountain Dreamer
From: The Call

~

Photo from a greeting card

 

Beyond Buffoons and Bullies...

Give no regard to the voices of fear that
divide you and conflict you;
whether from within or without...

The "Inner Essence" that you are is
undivided by the earthly "tribes"
of politics and religion;
of false power and ancient aggressions...

Do not listen to the baffling words of others
trying to tell you what is true,
what to do,
and how to be.

Instead, turn to your Primordial Essence
inherently within you at all times...

Listen to the deep internal Silence
beyond the bluster of buffoons and bullies
with mouthfuls of meaningless words...

Be still...

Breathe...

Wait...

Then you will know what is true,
what to do
and
how to BE...

Mystic Meandering

Feb. 24, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering