It Floats Us - Ivan Granger

The vast flood
Rolls onward
But yield yourself,
And it floats you upon it.

Ikkyu

Day after day, experience after experience, terrors and tragedies,
joys and victories, everything  - life.  It can feel like an onslaught.

Most of us learn to dampen down the awareness in order to cope
and mimic those around us.

Yet even with dimmed senses we feel overwhelmed.

But yield yourself,
And it floats you upon it.

This is the liberating wisdom of surrender.

Most of our intense efforts in life, whether directed toward work,
family, even spirituality, are about trying to control the flow
of life.  We want to master the flood, bring it under our will.
We want to tame it so we can be safe.

But it never really works.

The lifelong effort is like a duck on a great river who imagines
he controls the current by the action of his paddling feet.

When he happens to face downstream - Amazing!  The river goes
just where he commanded!  When he turns left or right, he imagines
that he needs to increase his effort and improve his technique to get
the river flowing where he wants.  And when he turns downstream -
Calamity!  He has lost control of the river.

Or...  he can just sit on top of the river and let its current carry him.

Yielding ourselves to this great river, no longer imagining that we
can control it, we can finally begin to discover its true nature and
direction - and beauty.  We come to see its flow as a unifying harmony
and not a threat. Importantly, we notice our natural buoyancy.  
We are built to float upon it.

Commentary by Ivan Granger
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
(didn't have a picture of a duck :)

 

Within This Body - Tulsi Sahib and Ivan Granger

 

Within this body
breathes the secret essence.
Within this body
beats the heart of the Vedas.
Within this body
shines the Universe,
so saints say,
Hermits, ascetics, celibates --
all are lost
seeking Him
in endless guises.
Seers and sages perfectly parrot
the scriptures and holy books,
blinded by knowledge.
Their pilgrimage,
and fasting
and striving
but delude.
Despite their perfect practice,
they discover no destination.
Only the saints
who know the body's heart
have attained the Ultimate,OTulsi.

Realize this, and you've found your freedom
(while teachers trapped in tradition
know only the mirage
in the mirror.)

Tulsi Sahib

English version by Ivan Granger

of Poetry Chaikhana

~

Commentary by Ivan Granger

This poem really cuts right through the delusion of
fundamentalism on the one hand - and being overly
enamored with the spiritual practices and rituals, on
the other -

This is not to say that one should not study sacred texts or
that we should ignore the value of spiritual practices.  The
problem is that it's easy to forget what their true purpose is.
Sacred writing, sacred striving, they are signposts that remind
us to turn inward and discover the true heart that shines with
the light of the universe.

If we just memorize words or pray in the mountains, even if
we do it perfectly, we are idolizing the trappings of
spirituality, without understanding, without making the real

journey.  This is one of the reasons why there us so much
anger among fundamentalists in all traditions - they push
to fit into an externalized idea of what it means to be perfect,
yet they are not transformed, and they secretly know it.

Unable to face the pain of that failure, they externalize it, and
blame the imperfections of the world around them for holding
them back.  That pain becomes anger at the outer world, and
that anger is reflexively attributed to God.  Then that angry
God is imagined to punish by withholding heaven from the
individual until the whole world rigidly falls into order.
The more desperate these individuals become for release 
from spiritual pain, the more violently they try to enforce
their vision upon society in the hopes that they will finally
appease God and find freedom.

So sad, when all that is necessary is to slip through that pain,
let go of self-importance, and discover the immense joy
quietly glowing deep within.  No one and nothing else
holds us back.

More important is to yield and open and finally settle
into the secret shining heart [essence] that awaits discovery...

~

...Okay, Ivan will now step down from his soapbox. 
Have a wonderful weekend, and remember to take some
sweet quiet time to settle within.

Ivan Granger
Poetry  Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Sacred Experience - Ivan Granger

I know it is a challenging time in the world.  Things might feel
off kilter.  But this is also a holy time, a time to recall what
is sacred.  It is a time to reconnect with what illuminates our
minds and awakens our hearts.  We enter the cave of interior
awareness during this darkened period of the winter and
discover and rediscover the light within ourselves,
renewing ourselves...

Mystics write poetry, universally, Saints and sages, shamans
and seers, wise women and medicine men - they sing songs,
they riddle, they rhyme...  

Numinous experiences are not easily communicated through
words.  The sacred can be witnessed and participated in, but
not conveyed through limited concepts.  Any attempt to
communicate what is perceived in states of encompassing
unity and mental quiet is necessarily an act of translation.
Poetry is well suited to the sacred, enabling language to
relay experience...

Sacred experience is beyond word and form, yet the limited 
mind, in trying to understand what it has witnessed,
reflexively interprets its experience in terms of the world known
to the senses.  What emerges is a primal language of metaphor,
a rich and spontaneous pidgin that develops between the 
limited mind and unlimited awareness.

The fiery rising of the Kundalini inspires verses on the moth's
ecstatic annihilation in fire.

To the seer, enraptured by the holistic vision of reality as
fluid interconnectedness, one thing truly is another.
Metaphor ceases to be a literary device or a dramatic
mode of expression; it is observed reality.

It is from this visionary metaphor that sacred poetry is born.

Ivan Granger
excerpts from the Introduction to his book
The Longing in Between
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Fire and Ice

 

A Great Light - Jay Ramsay

I saw a great light come down over London,
And buildings and cars and people were still
They were held wherever they were under the sky's
Clear humming radiance as it descended --
Everywhere, in shops, behind desks and on trains
Everything stopped as the stillness came down
And touched the crown of our heads
As our eyes closed, and the sky filled us
And our minds became the sky --

And everyone, regardless of crime, class or creed
Was touched; as slowly we began to stir
Out of this penetrated light-filled sleep
Dizzily as the hand completed its dialing,
And the train lurched forward
And I saw faces looking at one another questioning,
I saw people meeting eye to eye and standing
Half amazed by each other's presence
I saw their mouths silently shaping the word why
Why didn't we know this? and yet knowing
They already knew, and without words
We all stood searching for the gesture
That would say it --

As the lights went green, we drove on...

Jay Ramsay

from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around
the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology) Edited by
Ivan Granger at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Excerpts from Ivan Granger's Commentary:

.....one of the things I really like about this poem - it can be read
as a collective moment of awe, or of spiritual awakening- or a
city-wide encounter with a UFO... 

  It's not really clear what is happening, just that there is a
 shared moment of stillness and wonderment.  Everyone stops and
 is confronted with a dazzling, otherworldly reality.  What's actually
happening seems less important than the shared experience. 
Not only is this a witnessing of something that transcends the
 day-to-day existence, but there is also a recognition of fundamental
 connection with everyone else.

Then, of course, the lights turn green, and the business of living
continues.  But perhaps those people carry with them just a bit 
more sacred wonder into their daily activities...  and who knows
the many subtle, far-reaching ways it will continue to radiate out
through our lives?  This is how private experiences of transformation -
otherworldly or of the inner world - quietly transform the world.

.....we are visitors here, not permanent residents.  Our time on earth is
limited.  We may not know our departure date... best to stop

 and do what we came here to do. 
Offer a helping hand.  Share a smile. 
Do what the soul always wanted to do.
And discover the secret heart of things.

Ivan Granger

~

Many live challenged lives now...
The greatest gift we can give
each other is our compassion...

MM

~

Photo with thanks to The Beauty We Love

 

Choosing What Is - Ivan Granger Commentary

I vow to choose what is...

You would think the unavoidable nature of "what is" makes a
statement like this meaningless, but the human mind is not
entirely sane.  It often chooses fantasy and imaginings,
shoulds and coulds, possibilities and even impossibilities over
what is.  Very few of us truly dwell in reality.  Rarely do we
fully experience the moments of our lives.

What is it that we are straining for as we constantly lean away
from "what is"?  What do we think is missing that we need?  We
don't need someone else's life.  We don't need a perfect marriage,
better finances, or a better place in society.  We don't even need
to be a saint living in the mountains.  What's missing is ourselves.
What we really need is to stand in our own shoes, to be utterly
ourselves.  We need that missing ingredient - being present.
We need to live, with honesty and an open heart, the life that
already moves through us.

[.....]

The power of a practice like Zen is that it defines the human 
journey, not as escape, but as coming home, of settling into
ourselves and being present with the present.  It challenges us
to actually live the moment that continuously arrives and
passes and renews itself.

By making this journey to "what is," we finally meet ourselves
and learn what this amazing thing is that we call life, with all
its rich, joyful, painful, and transitory beauty.

Excerpt from a commentary by Ivan Granger
on a poem of vows by Hogen Bays
you can read the full poem and commentary here

~

Personal Note:  As some of you know, I'm being challenged to
 accept and be present to "what is"in my daily life experiences.
My ability to accept what is fluctuates from day to day.

~

Swirls with Craypas Oils
done with fingers
Mystic Meandering
2011

 

The "Good Dark" - Ivan Granger

What is the "Good Dark?

The Light is so often considered one of the attributes of the
Divine, but we forget that dark too is also a metaphor...  The
Eternal is sometimes called dark because IT is beyond the
ability of the limited intellect to see.  It is the realm where
there is no longer separation; nothing is seen as separate
from That [The Eternal].  It can feel like a shining darkness.
So the Sacred Dark, the Good Dark is the Eternal, that
exists in its mysterious, invisible, indefinable form.  Vast
beyond comprehension.  [It is the Eternal] that gathers
everything, even light, into ItSelf.  This is the darkness
where there is great joy.  This is the immense Mystery...

In we understand the Divine to be that living, mysterious 
darkness, then we finally recognize ourselves as the same
as that darkness. [The light and dark being the same - think
Yin-Yang, where the light is contained within the dark and 
the dark within the light.]  In the 'half-light' [partial under-
standing] we are still distracted by our own faces, we are 
confused, more aware of ourselves than the holy mystery
that we touch.  We become like a young lover, too self-
conscious to simply lose oneself in the embrace of the
Belove.

...[when] we have no 'face' [identity] of our own separate
from That, then we can melt silently into the Good Dark,
into the Mystery of the Divine.  This is the place where
concepts fall, where reality is no longer parceled out into
dichotomies of good and bad, right and wrong, (no division
of opposites)...  There is nothing (except the Divine Wholeness
that is within all things).  The ego-mind is no longer able to
segment reality.  Underlying the complex diversity of
creation is a single Unity.  And within that Unity, the
individual is not separate or different from the vast Divine.
There is no separation between individual self and the
center of all selves...  Just Pure Being...

If you can settle deeply into this awareness, then you will
find yourself drinking the ecstasy of true love-wisdom.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

[brackets mine] (parentheses his)

~

We are from the fathomless depths,
the "darkness" of "The Deep"
before Light began...
from which Light emerged...
We are the Deep Ananda of
The Divine...
without knowing how or why...
without the need for certainties,
for answers ; only the
ever-available Presence of
Divine Love...Pure Bliss
Pure Blessing
OMmm...

Mystic Meandering
January 2017

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

 

Your Spirit is Mingled with Mine - Hallaj

Art by Rassouli

"Your spirit is mingled with mine
as wine is mixed with water;
whatever touches you touches me.
In all the stations of the soul you are I."

Hallaj

The great Sufi mystic poet, Hallaj, was persecuted and 
eventually put to death by orthodox religious authorities
for poems like this, in which he seems to be equating himself
with God.

This is the danger faced by most mystics.  The sacred experience
is one of ecstatic union with the Divine.  Where do "you" cease
to be. and where does the Divine begin?  In mystical union,
these questions are artificial since the Divine is everywhere...

"Wine" here is not wine; it is the drink of Divine union.  It is the
"water" of the soul, awakened and flavored with the fermenting of
life.  This is the celestial drink of initiates: the amrita of the yogis,
the ambrosia of the Greeks, even the tea of our own poetry tea house...

When wine is poured into water, water takes on the nature of wine,
until no difference can be perceived. This is how he comes to the
final realization:

In all stations of the soul you are I.

When the divine wine pours into the clear water of the soul,
everything is turned to wine.  God and self become indistinguishable.
Rather, self is lost and only God remains.

Ivan Granger

Poetry Chaikhana

~

Art by Rassouli 

 

Nighttime is for "The Beloved" - Ivan Granger

The stories we tell ourselves are the stories of the Soul,
the way the self understands itself.  In dreams and stories
we reformulate our perception of the world, deepen it.  And
in doing so the psyche becomes more dynamic and alive to
its own possibilities.

Nighttime is when we normally sleep and dream.  Most people
imagine life shuts down at night, but a lover [of The Beloved]
knows better.  When the rest of the world rests, the lover [of
The Beloved] finds those sweet illicit moments with The Beloved.
Even if it's just a glimpse, a smile through the window's lattice,
that is what the lover lives for.  We light up, we catch fire 
in the night.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

Note: "The Beloved" also refers to The Divine, The Sacred,
God, The Mystery - or however one calls it for themselves.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Insistent Grace - Stephen Levine & Ivan Granger

 There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.

It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.

It is an insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.

We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.

But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.

And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.

Stephen Levine
Original title: "Millennium Blessing"

via Death Deconstructed

~

Commentary by Ivan Granger

Most of us spend our entire lives avoiding that inner opening.
Most of the time it is a quiet itch at the back of the awareness
we squirm and turn away from.  And when it really presses
on us, it can inspire terror, as if we were facing death.

It is the death of our old world view, the death of patterned
awareness, the death of our limited notion of who we are.  All
we thought ourselves to be stops - and so it is a sort of death.
To feel that grace approaching, to welcome it, requires a sort
of courage.

It requires courage, and surrender.  We have this idea that
spiritual opening is a terrible effort... No...  That unfolding
wants to occur within us.  The only effort is to let go of our
endless strategies to halt the process.  We all feel it, a gentle
prodding to let the heart open, to know ourselves truly, to be
present and radiate ourselves into the world.  It is insistent,
trying to happen within us.  Call it grace, if you like.  The
question presented to us: Do we courageously accept the
invitation or not?

For those of us who live in contemporary society, how hard
it is to stop the ticking of the clock?  From such an early age
we internalize the sense of time and progress and deadlines.
Yet, in doing so, we forget that these are all just concepts,
just one way to understand the unfolding of being and
experience.  That sense of time is a powerful tool for doing
and accomplishment, but it isn't inherently "real."  It doesn't
have much to do with who or what we are.  There is a flow of
days and months, but they are the surface current of a much
deeper timelessness.

It's fascinating how we use the hyperactivity of thought to
define the world, to frame our perception of the world, and
in some ways to limit our notion of the world.  The other
thing about thought:  It creates time.  When thought settles
down, we discover timelessness.  And as the poet says, the
mind comes to rest, not in the head, but in the heart.

And we remember.  It is not through intellection but through
stillness that we remember.  Look at the word "remember."
Re-member.  To remember is to finally see how apparently
separated reality actually fits together in a single body.
Discursive thought can only ever examine pieces of the whole.
To remember is to have the full vision of Wholeness, as
things actually are.  But this vision is found in timelessness
and stillness, through the quiet mind unfiltered.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

...Lalla - Ivan Granger - Rupert Spira

I have traveled a long way seeking God
but when I finally gave up and turned back
there He [She] was within me!

Lalla
14th Century Mystic
of the Kashmir Shaivism tradition

For so many mystics it is this way.  After intense searching
without "success",  what can be done but give up or collapse?
Yet a special thing happens at that very moment.  We drop
our expectations, our hopes, our projections about this
external thing called "God" [Self/Enlightenment].  For the
first time we have truly let go of the story we've been telling
ourselves about what "God" is...  It is only then that the
scales fall way from our eyes.

We stop straining to look, and finally see.
And we see the Eternal already here, within.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

After the current of seeking gives up and sinks back down
into the depths of the Ocean of which it is itself a
modulation, it finds the peace for which it was in search...

Rupert Spira

~

Photo - Colored in Mandala
digitally blurred
Mystic Meandering

~

Nothing is more important in these polarizing, unsettled
 times than directly experiencing the Presence of our
Eternal Being within, and knowing that we *are*
that...  That's what will get us through... 
I endeavor to *feel* this Presence daily...
Try to find a quiet space to be in each day
and enter the Quietness within
and just breathe

Namaste

_/\_

Changing Perceptions of Reality - Ivan Granger

One must remain in the Vastness,
alert and lucid,
Letting one's gaze encompass
the infinite sky,
As though seated on the summit
of a mountain,
open to all the horizons.

by Shabkar
from - Tibetan Poems of Shabkar,
Translated by Matthieu Ricard

I am acutely aware of the anxiety felt by everyone -
concerns about Covid-19, uncertainty about jobs and
the economy in general, the increasingly messy political
situation, all surrounded by pressures of isolation.  Whatever
worries you may be feeling are being shared by many.  Even
in uncertainty and isolation, there is connection and community
and, therefore, strength.

...everything is an opportunity for awareness.  Even in moments
of fear, we [can] always be asking ourselves, what can I learn
from this?  How can I use this moment as a way to step free from
limited ways of thinking...?

One observation that comes to mind is that when society is moving
along in expected ways we are much more likely to align with
the group mind.  The group mind asserts that reality is a certain way
and the routine functioning of day-to-day life seems to confirm it, so
we enter into the shared psychic current - for good and for bad.  We
can list many of the ways that are good, but it also lulls us into a
rather narrow band of perception and self-awareness.  When those

outer certainties, which were never certainties in the first place,
change, when the rhythms of the human world shift and become
less predictable, the fear we feel is more fundamental than the
question of a paycheck or health concerns;  it is a fear that
reality is falling apart.  It is worth reminding ourselves that
Reality [the Vastness] itself is never vulnerable and the only

thing that changes is our agreed upon description of it [our
tribal mentality].  We are being coaxed to see reality in a new
way, to see different aspects of reality, to see a wider view of
reality...

The challenge is to quickly adapt our awareness to the new
terrain, to recognize its regular features, to find what is familiar
and identify what is new, to be at home in a more opens space.

...the less rigidly we hold to some idea of how things used to
be or "should" be and, instead, allow our minds to acclimate to
what is happening, the more naturally and confidently we can
step forward.

As conscious beings we always want to perceive as clearly as
we can.  We want to perceive as much of reality as we can.  And
we must remind ourselves that what we call reality is just a
mental model of what actually is.  When that mental model is
shaken, we can try to prop it up exactly as it was before, but more
rickety and at a tenuous angle, or we adjust it.....to reflect a new
understanding.

 We have a chance to review our assumptions and assess which
 ones don't stand up to the scrutiny of stress.  We are invited
to embrace possibilities that had previously been rejected. 
We can use this time for redefinition and improved perception.

Moments of uncertainty are a genuine opportunity to update
our descriptions of reality, both personally and collectively,
in order to more fully reflect the immensely mysterious space
of being we inhabit together.

The big challenge is not to shut our eyes as our vision expands.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Every word of every tongue - Fakhruddin Iraqi

Every word of every tongue is
Love,
telling a story to her own ears.
Every thought in every mind,
She whispers a secret to her own Self.
Every vision in every eye,
She shows her beauty to her own sight.
Every smile on her face,
She reveals her own joy for herself to enjoy.

Love courses through everything,
no, Love is everything.
How can you say, there is no love,
when nothing but Love exists?

All that you see has appeared because of Love.
All shines from Love,
All pulses from Love,
All flows from Love -
No, once again, all IS Love!

Fakhruddin Iraqi

Sufi Poet
He was actually from a region in Iran
called Iraqi

via Poetry Chaikhana

~

Don't take your joys and suffering personally.
We are - all of us - stories
told by God
to him/herself
to illuminate him/herself.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

...how exhausting it is to always find fault!

Love knows that nothing is ever needed
but more Love...

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

~

Photo - Mandala Art
digitally altered
2013

Waiting - Leza Lowitz

You keep waiting for something to happen,
the thing that lifts you out of yourself,

catapults you into doing all the things you've put off,
the great things you're meant to do in your life,

but somehow you never quite get to.
You keep waiting for the planets to shift

the new moon to bring news,
the universe to align, something to give.

Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry the dishes, the job -
it all stacks up while you keep hoping

for some miracle to blast down upon you,
scattering the piles to the winds.

Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life.
Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking.

But all the while, life goes on in its messy way.
And then you turn forty.  Or fifty.  Or sixty... [or 70] :)

and some part of you realizes you are not alone
and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom -

when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over,
it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched,

and when caterpillar turns to butterfly
if the pupa is brushed, it will die -

and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg
it's because the things is too small, too small,

and it needs to break out.
And midlife walks you into that wisdom

that this is what transformation looks like -
the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life,

the yearning and writhing and pushing,
until one day, one day

you emerge from the wreck
embracing both the immense dawn

and the dusk of the body,
glistening, beautiful

just as you are.

Leza Lowitz

Thank you to Ivan Granger at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Art by Barbara Stone

Awakening From Our Illusions - Ivan Granger

I am so aware of how much frustration people feel over the dark
turn in politics in recent years.  As an American, how do I
understand the racist, proto-facist, violent forces emerging within
my own country?  At the same time, similar tendencies are
appearing in the UK, India, the Philippines,
and several other nations.

While harmful forces must be answered with courage in the public
arena, I want to suggest that there is something important happening
on another level, as well: an enforced awakening.

We are going through a collective process of disillusionment,

whether we like it or not.  We are being required to drop our illusions
and witness unpleasant truths, about ourselves [individually and
as a nation], and about the world around us.  We may ask: What
have we ignored that has allowed such fear and hatred to fester?  How
have our political and social systems become so damaged that the
are unresponsive to the needs of society?  What cruelties are encoded
in society that I have ignored or made excuses for?  How did we
imagine things were solid, when they are so fragile?  How can my
neighbor [or family members] believe such things, and what is
their hurt that I was blind to?  These are the questions we are
forced to ask now.

Painful though it may be, we can only be strengthened by the
process of disillusionment.  We want to drop our illusions.
We want to see things as they are...

As a meditative exercise we can look at the reality we see,
the terrible and the beautiful together, and just sit with it;
[just be with it internally, meditatively].  It may break our hearts,
but we can just sit with it.  It may overwhelm us with its
immensity, but we don't run, we don't seek to merely feel good.
Instead, we just sit with it. 
We allow ourselves to see and feel fully.
We watch our reactions to it, but are not hooked by them.
In this way, we begin to inhabit a bigger reality, a fuller reality.
Our personal sense of reality becomes more integrated and a
truer reflection of what actually is.  As we do this, we become more
capable of fashioning healthier lives and healthier societies.

When I stop trying to assert some idea of how reality should work,
and just really notice what is.....everything just opens up.  The heart
opens in unexpected ways, making healing possible where only
walls seemed to stand.  It's easy to think that reality is somehow
broken, but when we really look, we discover that we inhabit an
improbable wholeness instead.  It's not entirely logical amidst the
world's fear and suffering, but look for yourself and see.  Really see.
Seeing the full picture, our actions become more effective and lasting.
Looking honestly, we become capable of compassion and
connection, where there was only anger and hatred...

Ivan Granger
Excerpt from a commentary on a poem by Mary Sarton
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - taken from inside, reflecting objects in the room
in the window - giving the illusion of another reality...

Solitude and the Consensus Trance - Ivan Granger

The idea of retreating into the desert or the forest always had a
romantic appeal to me, especially as a young man.

Thoreau's Walden was a close companion, and I regularly
reread his lines on living the essential life.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential acts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life...

Such a person experiences an intense need to silence the mind,
to settle the heart, and to sweep life clean of everything
unnecessary in order to feel that pulse that proves the living
presence beneath the skin of existence.

To accomplish this.....we want to retreat from the world.  But
what do we mean by "the world"?  We can loosely say it is
society, but that is too simplistic.  The world we are trying to
withdraw from is more of an idea of reality.  By withdrawing,
we are attempting to separate from the consensus trance.

It is the shared trance that we call the world, which [spiritual]
seekers instinctively withdraw from in order to see truly [clearly],
free from the pressures of society to remain within a limited
bandwidth of awareness.  When done with balance, steadiness,
and reverence, such withdrawal from the common bubble of
presumed reality can lead to surprising clarity, opening and bliss.

In the struggle to free oneself from the gravitational pull of
consensus reality, [we need to be careful that] we haven't
divided reality between what is sacred or true from the
mundane and illusory; be careful that we do not [exclude]
the vision of an undivided Whole.

The instinct to separate oneself in order to discover an
awareness that is pure and essential - whether through
literal retreat or some form of internal solitude - can be
enormously helpful along the spiritual journey; no longer
feeling trapped by [the trance's] gravitational pull and
artificial boundaries.

We come to recognize that the constricted space we know
as "the world" is not separate from the wider reality or
in opposition to it.
The Eternal is present in it all.

Ivan Granger
Part of a commentary written on a poem
from: The Dance of Bliss

An inspiring collection of poems from poets
and mystics from many traditions, accompanied
by Ivan's reflective commentaries.

"Unknowing knowing" Commentary - Granger

The following is the commentary by Ivan Granger that
accompanied the previously posted poem:
"Unknowing knowing"/"I Entered the Unknown."
I thought it might be helpful...

He says:

...the poem's archaic use of the word "knowing" implies a
general sense of knowledge acquired through reason and the
testimony of the senses.

The Spanish Saint, [St. John of the Cross] is speaking about
the mystical idea of "unknowing", the state in which all
concepts and mental filters have been set aside.  In that state
of unknowing, we rise above the elaborate constructions of the
logical mind and come to rest in pure awareness ("knowing by
unknowing").  He is contrasting true, unfiltered knowing, gnosis,
with the mere accumulations and organization of information.

To be unknowing in this sense is to encounter every instant
entirely as it is, in pure wonder, without projections, without
anticipation or agitation.  [Whereas] the intellectual mind.....
is always processing, analyzing and making everything fit
within its comprehension.  In interprets.
Awareness can step beyond the intellect to fully apprehend
reality...

This state of supreme unknowing is not perception in the sense of
drawing in and interpreting exterior input through the senses.  In
normal perception, the intellect sifts and sorts that sensory data
and formulates it into a working hypothesis of what reality is.

...the mystic's unknowing is the centered awareness of unfiltered
reality.....without an egoic agenda.  The full awareness in this
state of unknowing does not sift reality, it bathes in it.

"The transcendence  of "knowledge".....is found to be an
experience of "the deepest ecstasy/of the Divine Essence."
[as St. John of the Cross calls it].

Ivan M Granger
Commentary from: This Dance of Bliss

Poetry Chaikhana

This Dance of Bliss - Goethe

What is this dance of bliss
Cascading through my senses?
I feel new life, holy rapture
Burning through my nerves and veins.
Was it a god who shaped these symbols
Summoning this inner ecstasy,
Filling my impoverished heart with joy,
And revealing, through some mysterious impulse,
Nature's secret sinews surrounding me?

Am I a god?  I am filled with such light!
In this pure array of emblems I see
Nature's workings laid bare before me.
Only now do I comprehend the sage's wise words:
It is your mind that is closed, your heart that is lifeless!
....rise without fright,
and bathe your earthly breast
in the rosy dawn's light!

As all things, one in one, are woven,
Each in the other works and lives and is whole!
While heavenly beings climb and descend
Passing down their golden pails,
And with their incense-pinioned wings
All heaven and earth are blessed;
They sing in symphony
through all things!

Goethe

~

This poem is from a newly published, inspiring collection
of poetry by classical mystics, seers and saints from all
traditions, called This Dance of Bliss, compiled and edited by
Ivan Granger of Poetry Chaikhana.  He also offers his
reflections and commentaries on the poems...

For a closer look at what's inside,
 and pre-order discount click here

The Beautiful Wound - Rumi & Mirabai Starr

The wound is the place where the light enters you...
Rumi

Your most secret wound is the doorway...
Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

The Christian Mystic, Teresa of Avila, speaks of "the
beautiful wound" of longing for God, describing
the depth of suffering as a doorway to union with
The Beloved.  John of the Cross coined the term
"dark night of the soul" and developed a teaching
that shows how to surrender to radical unknowing
and allow ourselves to be stripped of all that stands
between our souls and The Divine.
These and other mystics see deep sorrow as a
great spiritual blessing, rather than a problem
requiring a solution...

Mirabai Starr

~

There is a cure,
an individual medicine
not a social remedy,
sit quietly
and listen
for a voice
within
that will say:

Be more silent.

As that happens
your soul
starts to revive.

Rumi
Be More Silent

~

Photo - taken by my brother
after the Nor'easter
in the Northeast yesterday...

Good Medicine - Andrew Colliver

Unbelief is good medicine, undoing belief
better:

all beings free to leave their being
and enter silence.

The nameless tree with its forest
of green,
the endless expanse called
sky, beaks and

feathered wings with their urgent
conversations;
all around, the light that sets the vital body
to humming,

and the dark of re-creation:

the world held for us in promise
until it is loosed from
our thinking.

Andrew Colliver

Poetry Chaikhana

Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

The rebel in me likes this poem, especially its opening line...
"Unbelief is good medicine, undoing belief
better:"

I don't take this as a commentary on belief vs. atheism or agnosticism
or any of those artificial dichotomies of thought.  This is a commentary
on thought itself, our perception of reality, our relationship to reality.

All belief, whether good or bad, orthodox or unorthodox, is a window
we set in the mind.  Its frame defines the boundaries of what we
 perceive and what we are blind to; its tinted glass colors what we see
 and how we understand it.  That window of belief often serves the
 important purpose of helping us to focus, training us to see what is not
 commonly recognized. But, at a certain point in our awakening
 process, the very notion of belief becomes a problem.  All belief,
no matter how elevated or pure or accurate, is only a thought
 about reality.  What the soul ultimately craves is direct perception
 of reality - which requires dropping all perceptual filters,
including belief itself.

To enter that state of direct perception ("all beings free to leave their
 being/ and enter silence") requires deep silence.  The distorting
 vibrations of mind must quiet.  Get quiet enough and even the sense of
 ego fades, along with all its demands that it be seen as the center
of existence.  The various tugging and tremors of awareness melt away
 and finally, finally we see things as they are, without labels, without
 artificial separations: "The nameless tree with its forest of green..."

Seeing clearly, we see that everything flows into one another, and it is
 all filled with a living, glistening light -- even within ourselves.  Seeing
 this light, feeling it flow, feeling the heart overflow, we are filled with a
   quiet glee.  The very sense of who and what we really are is
 transformed. We feel alive for the first time... "all around, the light
 that sets the vital  body to humming"

That is when new possibilities emerge, the promises within ourselves,
within our interrelationship with reality are freed to find fulfillment.
For that to happen, we must first move beyond belief and free
 ourselves from the filter of the chattering mind.... "the world
held for us in promise/ until it is loosened from/our thinking."

Trust Your Vision - Ivan Granger

So often we pour ourselves intensely into life's purpose without
actually pausing to consider why we are doing what we are doing.
How is it a reflection of who we truly are?  How does it express
our specific qualities and role within the larger panorama?  What
does it imply about the fundamental nature of reality?

Rarely in the modern world are we encouraged to discover our
vision and dedicate ourselves to it.  To the prevailing mindset,
one's vision is thought to be intangible, suggesting something
that is a fantasy whose pursuit is narcissistic or even delusional.
The focus of life must be practical with goals that are approved
and easily measured.

That approach, while seemingly reasonable and safe, is
devastating to both the individual and to society as a whole.
While we certainly must live effectively within the physical
and social worlds that require a certain level of practical purpose,
we are not such stunted creatures that exist only on that level.
We are magical beings, here to embody immensity and love and
the will of the universe as it expresses itself uniquely through
each of us.

Vision is the way we discover our personal path through the world.
Vision is the way we come to know ourselves, allowing us to be as
we are, showing us how to act with strength and creativity in
service to our true [vision].

A vision is not the same as some fantasy or daydream.  A true
 vision is the voice of nature, the intention of the universe,
uniquely tuned to our soul.

The word "vision" can trip us up because we think of seeing
things that are external to our physical bodies, so we often
consider a vision to be external to us.  But vision in the
spiritual sense is the conscious mind's way to assign meaning
to the deep recognition of self as a harmonious expression of the
self-aware universe. In other words, vision is not so much about
seeing as it is about being.  A vision is a challenge to ourselves
to be more fully ourselves.  Vision is a vocation, the calling of
the soul to its true role.

The first question is, how strongly do we want to see?  And then
we must answer the second question, do we dare live the truth
seen?  Then again, what's the point to any other path but our own?

Ivan Granger
commentary on the poem
"Trust Your Vision" by Stephen Levine
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Sunset digitally enhanced...