The Playground of Life...

We are "The Mystery" come into being...
Consciousness awakened...
Self replicating ItSelf;
or whatever word you give
"The Mystery"...

"The Mystery" dressed up as "me."
Formless as form,
Form as formlessness.
"Divine" and human intertwined...

Opening to "The Mystery"
we are free to be our unique selves,
however defined...

When we know this
"something" wakes up inside
and comes Alive -
it hums...

Everything is
~ humming ~

playing in the play of Life;
a multitude of expressions
all playing together
in this virtual reality...

"The Mystery" playing you, playing me,
each a reflection of the other...
both "The Mystery" playing ItSelf...

When we let go of conceptual words
and frameworks of belief and interpretations
we are just FREE...

Letting go of the non-dual concepts of
i/I, me and "no me", Self/no-self,
we are just Life living ItSelf here...
We are being LIVED

as we are.

There is something authentic
in allowing myself to be
just as i am...

Life is met from a different space -
the space of vast openness
to "The Mystery" of Life ItSelf,
where everything is embraced
as it is...

The deep grief and sadness of loss,
the laughter and joy of new birth,
the physical pain and psychological drama
of being human...

All dancing together in the playground of Life...

Mystic Meandering
2019/2024

~

Photo - 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

 

Questioning Existence - a meandering...

Arising from a deep slumber
I began to wonder:

...maybe there is no
"mysterious meaning" to life.

Is there meaning to trees, to grass,
to rocks, to sky? - do they even care...

They just are...  They just exist...

Everything seems to struggle to exist:
a struggle for survival - or maybe even
a struggle for death,
but with no "spiritual" overlay -
just life living itself...

Maybe there are no "spiritual" standards to live up to;
like being on the "right path";
no "spiritual cookies" to achieve;
like "enlightenment."
If there is no "right way" -no "right path"
then doing anything "right" doesn't matter...

I think I'm discovering the futility of striving
after some "spiritual" meaning to life;
some "mystical mystery" to explain existence...

Existence is an enigma...

All our beliefs are just trying to explain it really;
how we try to understand the ineffable.
But we exist in a bubble of unknowing,
where the blind lead the blind,
professing to know
the "Truth of Existence."

Mystic Meandering
July 1, 2023

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Life as it is - a meandering

Religion is a heavy mantle some people wear -
robes of ritual, dogma and doctrine...

Advaita is a heady game some people like to play -
self/no-self?

Non-duality - a conundrum -
not two - but not one...

I'm tired of all these heavy "games" I've played
in the "Spiritual Game"...

It's time for me to just step out of the way -
to let myself unfold -
and not entangle myself in the many webs
that constrain and constrict that Flow.

Maybe some ancient saint or sage had it all figured out -
maybe not...

My inner sage tells me it's about acceptance,
about empathy, compassion; about living life as it is
the best I can without living up to some "spiritual"
ideal: Someone else's beliefs, someone else's "way",
someone else's "truth"; the "right" perspective, or
"right" thinking... 

Needing to listen to the
deeper Rhythm of my own Soul/Essence/Being...

But strong primal instincts arise,
unable to "spiritualize"
the rawness of emotions into - pretty language...

The practicality of Buddhist Wisdom draws me now -
not as a religion or belief system, but as day to day
wisdom for getting through...
The wisdom of accepting what is, of just being present,
of mindfulness, of caring and compassion, of stepping
out of the way of the experience and just seeing what unfolds,
letting go of expectations, the need for solutions,
 and the need to control - allowing life to happen
as it does...

No more lofty goals of "enlightenment" -
just fulfilling the requirements of ordinary daily living
in the midst of global and personal chaos
- in my new role as "caregiver" -
doing what needs to be done
as life keeps living itself
 as it is...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 12, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Hubby and Emmy sleeping....

 

Innately...

 Everything lives according to
its Innate Rhythm:
The flowers know when to bloom -
innately...

The leaves leaf out of the trees -
innately...

die and go dormant
innately...

So too our own body lives and dies
in sacred cycles of opening, unfolding, and
falling apart - innately; a lifespan...
Reorganizing its energy in different ways -
innately...

And "we", we continue our innate pull to Wholeness.

Dying is in the life of everything...

The Grand Mystery of Life living ItSelf...

...innately.

Mystic Meandering

Summer Solstice 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Simply Living...

 I've been revisiting the view that life is a story being lived
by Life ItSelf; That "I" am being lived; that we are the living
story of Life.

Life lives the story of "me" that I've identified with all these
years, and believed, for a while at least, that "I" needed to be
"enlightened" - and have once again returned to the sense
that "I" am simply living.  Just Being.

In this there is an internal "letting go" - or "giving up" - or
some would say "surrender"...  And as a wise friend explained:
"In that, an ancient tension and stress is released.  And in the
deepest instance of 'giving up', even the somatic aspect of our
being feels a tremendous relief, and a Serene Emptiness where
a contraction had formerly been felt; as much in our physical
body as in our subtle energetic nature.  Struggle ceases, no longer
driven by the engine of dissatisfaction with 'what is', with 'how
we are.'  No longer driven by the engine of self-judgment and 
self-qualification, by the desire to be better or worthy, or
finally 'understanding', or the desire for
'enlightenment.'"

~

There is only the immediacy of the current experience -

just living that experience, whatever that experience is,
whether it is one of joy, or sorrow and grief, however it
unfolds, without the sense of a "self" striving for something
"better", or to do anything to improve it, or to create
strategies to become "enlightened;"  the struggle of the "self."

Everything is allowed...

"Enlightenment" is just untangling what you believe to be
true - your belief constructs.  Just live life intuitively,

with no strategies for "awakening."  Don't get trapped in
the mind, or try to figure out how to play the game.

"We", the "Beingness" that we are, just experiences 
whatever is occurring without a framework of time,
or reference point, or concept...

It's just Life being - life!

It is Existence experiencing ItSelf as "me", or "you" -
as an occurrence within ItSelf...

Simply Living...

We, as waves of the Ocean of Existence, are continually
occurring - unfolding fluidly, seamlessly, reverberating
through the concept of time, and is what the wrinkle of
time happens in - the Timeless Ocean of Existence.

And so the realization seems to be that we simply
recognize Life living ItSelf as us...

...Simply Living

As we are...

Our Natural selves...

Now if I could only remember this...  :)

_/\_

Mystic Meandering

~

photo taken by my brother
Sunset over the Parker River in
Newbury, MA

Be Undone - Clare Blanchflower

photo by Martin Stranka

 In the willingness
to be so fully undone
For all strategies to end
Surrender is here...

To see and be seen
in the light
of what is

To rest
as undefended
presence
at the feet of Life

Being humbled
again and again
As threads
of defense
dissolve
and the true power
of Being
is embodied
Life living ItSelf

A pure power
that wants nothing
A power
that says
I don't know...

And the eternal heart
beats in
silent reverence

Clare Blanchflower
Original title - "Devotion Is"

Timeless Source - Nisargadatta

 Just live your life as it comes.
Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself.

You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey
into the unknown.

Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you.
Know yourself as you are.
Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and
unconsciousness.
It is utterly beyond both.

Go beyond the personal and see.
You are utterly beyond all existence and non-existence,
utterly beyond all that mind conceives.
Question yourself: Who am I?

What is behind and beyond all this?

You are infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility.
You are timeless Source.

Nisargadatta

from: I am That

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

All life is being lived - Rainer Maria Rilke

 No one lives life...

Disguised since childhood
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears,
and little pleasures,
we come of age
as masks...

["The Mystery in disguise :)]

~

And though we strain against
the deadening grip of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery.

All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?
Is it the things themselves.
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?
Is it the winds blowing over the water?
Is is the branches that signal
to each other?

Is it the flowers
interweaving their fragrances
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it animals, warmly moving
or the birds that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then?

God, are you the one
who is living life?

Rainer Maria Rilke

~

We are the luminosity of Life

...simply living.

Author unknown

~

Photo - shadow of Bamboo leaves 
creating a "face" on a reflection of a rainbow
crystal on the wall.

No Secret of Life - Kiserian

 There is no secret of life for you to find.  It makes me smile
when you talk of finding your true nature or losing your ego
or seeing that you are not separate.  That you have no self or
know you never had a self.  I always want to ask who is it
that knows what they are not?  All your focus is on what does
not exist.  And then you say this is it, or talk of what is, or
your talk of consciousness or awareness.  Does it not seem
funny that you tell me you no longer believe in concepts and
then use a flood of concepts to tell me that?  You are like a
river saying it is finished with water.

You trade one set of concepts for another.  All because you get
a little peek into what we always saw, felt and lived. 
Not knowledge.  Not ideas.  Simply life.
It needs no name.  There is no concept that your little mind
can invent to express everything that goes far beyond our
human experience.  You are like people who love playing
word games.  You can always beat me at a word game.  You
are the masters of using words to get what you want. Even
when you say that what you want is beyond words.  If it was
really beyond words, how could you speak of it?

I am not here to say you are wrong. 
I am not playing the game with you.  

I watch you play a tug of war with words over who is saying
it the best, badmouthing others and then you say you do not judge!
I am only pointing out that when you have the need to assert
what you believe, even if you never call it a belief, you are still
not seeing what I am talking about.  For it is not seen, not even
felt in the way we think of feelings.

You are trying to use words to say what you perceive.  But the
words you use take anyone listening away from life.  You can
never get outside of life to look at life.  To say nothing is real
creates an imaginary line between real and false.  And denying
what is felt and experienced is what Western philosophers have
always done.  Do you not see yourself falling into the very same
trap?

When you say it is all love, that may be as close as you can get.
I only wonder why that is never enough for you...

Kiserian - from Kenya
speaking of the concept of Non-duality

with thanks to No Mind's Land

see videos of her speaking here

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

No Such Things as Death - Sadhguru

Most people are investing their whole lifetime
just for their material well-being.
Dying to live, this is called.
When you are constantly in pursuit of security,
you are in pursuit of death.

There is no such thing as death.

There is only life, life and life alone..
moving from one dimension to another,
another and another.

Most people only experience peace and
transcendence when they are dead.
But in the yogic tradition, the word 'samadhi'
is used to describe a state in which one has
transcended the limitations of the body and mind,
in this life.

If you work five to ten years for your security,
that's okay...
But if you are going to work all your life
for your security, you are seeking death
because death is the only secure thing
in existence.

Life is never secure...

Death - An Inside Story
Sadhguru
Feb. 19, 2020

With thanks to Ocean Speak

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Play of Perceptions - Nancy Neithercut

"Awakening" is utterly uncaused...

All trying or trying not to try merely perpetuates the illusion
of something to get or some-one to "get it."

There's nothing you can do to "get it."

There is no path, no method, no practice.

"Awakening" is not a belief or understanding.
It is not about getting rid of beliefs.

You cannot erase yourself.

It does not happen in the character [called "self/me"].

It is a shift that occurs in the brain.

The brain imagines things like gods and selves.
We try all kinds of things to join together the separate
pieces to create unity - but all trying merely perpetuates
the illusion that some-one is trying - chasing their tail.

You may have had a glimpse of the feeling that life is
just doing itself [living itself], this edgeless centerless flow,
and you will do anything to try to get it  [the feeling] back.

Yet trying merely perpetuates the illusion.

All of life always occurs by itself.

It is intuited and cannot be captured with words or knowing
in a conventional sense because it is beyond belief,
imagination or understanding - and although there may seem
to be techniques in order that you may feel this, all these
techniques do is give you the idea of it...

This recognition, this deep knowing feeling tone of
seamlessness... embraces the mind with the  most wondrous
sense of awe.

It is an unfathomable, untouchable, un-pinpoint-able edgeless
vast expanse ever emerging never done nor undone,
seamless, fleeting, momentary, without time nor non-time,
neither moving nor non-moving - that has no name or
 non-name, unknowable yet deeply felt.

There is not me, not two, not one.
All we can know is that there is an un-interrupted,
invisible symphony of what we call perception and the
simultaneous recognition of it.  It is known and felt deeply -
the pulsating aliveness vibrantly appearing as anything and
everything.

There is no separate thing called life.  You are simply
Awareness [Beingness] aware, aware through a
symphony of perceptions, the streaming of you, of me,
of we...

[This recognition] is the end of everything you held to be
true about yourself and your world, including the ideas of
truth...

Nancy Neithercut

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

"Everything is a play of perception.
Life is an ongoing exploration of this
dance of perceptions."

Mitch Rosacker
Self Discovery Studio

~

Mandala Art - Mystic Meandering
2013

Which do you see - a crescent moon
or a caricature profile of a baby's face ? :)

Found Notes - MM

"There are no shortcuts to what lies beyond."

"There is poetry in emotion that needs to be expressed -
allowing yourself to be raw and open to what arises..."

"letting life take care of itself,
being open to where life goes..."

~

I found this piece of paper that these notes were hand-
written on, on top of some papers that were in a stand-
alone plastic file holder - as shown in the photo - on a
table next to my desk - very noticeable from where I
sat, noticing something was out of place, as messy as
it is :) - as if they were left for me to see...

I have no idea who said them!, or where I got them
from...  But wanted to share them as they seem
relevant for life as we are experiencing it at the
moment...

Namaste

_/\_

Cosmic Breathing...

Photo - Johannes Plenio at Unsplash

Sitting in the Silence of the Inner Landscape,

I suddenly realize the Cosmic Breath of Infinity
is slowly breathing this body -
breathing in... breathing out...

Held in the pause between breaths -
I recognize that "I" am being breathed
by an unheard Rhythm...

From the Inner Window,
at the edge of Infinity
I see beyond this world,
into the formless void,
beyond moon and stars,
into the Infinite Cosmic Ocean
that holds it all...

Aware of what is aware within:
Life - breathing ITSelf...

Every Breath is the Primordial Breath
rippling through space...

Hush
Be Silent
Listen

Entrain with the Cosmic Rhythm
that is breathing you...

Slow down and breathe
the Infinite Breath -
that whispers...

All will be infinitely well...

Mystic Meandering
April 12, 2020

~

Photo - Johannes Plenio at Unsplash

Hidden Fire - Alain Joly

One has to start anew, to re-create, get rid of the old and let a
new possibility of life emerge.  Real health is revival, it is the
life that creates itself every moment, without the grooves of the
past that limit and condition us.  We can never know when the
time is ripe for a new possibility.  It comes as a surprise,
uncontrolled, uninvited...  A new dawn emerges.  This is why
I chose to name my blog The Dawn Within.  The Dawn Within
refers to the Light, or at least its first and shy expressions when
the mind ceases to be interested in its own productions or in
the objects of the world out there and turns within.  The dawn
is shy - the light is coming but is not yet a full sunny day.  It
is hesitating.  The night is still lingering but the promise is here.

Alain Joly

The Dawn Within

I do not know where the fire comes from
It is hidden, ready to burst
A piece of ember under the ashes

When the flame has died out
The ashes are left,
Like a thick coat
Tenacious
Like a screed

It doesn't let anything pass
But the ember doesn't die
It remains there

Hot
Waiting

We sometimes need so little
A tiny stimulation
To remove one by one the grey leaves
Glued
Welded
Undo the uncanny order
Of all these withering years

It sometimes takes very little
To revive
Timid
Intact
This little piece of fire
That contains the ardour and madness of all flames
Of all rebirths
Of all cures

Alain Joly

Excerpt and poem from an article in
The Culturium entitled:
Alain Joly: The Dawn Within

At the Core of Being...

At the very core of our Being
there is complete stillness,
a dynamic Stillness
of Being

~

Just Being

~

There is utter awareness
of all life, all existence;

the felt sense of
the ISness of Being,
of Life...

~

Living
~

In the Silence of this
dynamic Stillness
one is aware of
the cocooning hush
of "The Mystery",
of Primordial Existence
that holds the unmanifest
in the comfort of
Its Womb
before its birth
into form...

~
Resting

~

In this Stillness of Being
the rhythmic breath
of the Cosmos
pulses
like waves....

~
Calming

~

The originating cosmic energies
of an Alive Cosmos
generate themselves into time and space
spiraling outward from the Core;
like a stellar rose that gives birth
to itself through spiraling open
its petals...

~

 Blooming
~

All Existence is at
the Core of our Being,
IS our  very being.
In every atom, every cell...
We are the living Cosmos

~
Breathing
~

Existence lives itself
in a perpetual unfolding of Life.
The Core of Being birthing ItSelf

in and as us ~

The unmanifest manifesting
the formless into form

~
Replicating
~

At the Core of Being
there is only

Aliveness
Stillness
Silence
Peace
Love
Life

It is who we are...

~*~

Namaste

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
2015

~

Photo - Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering
2012

Passion for Being...

I want to walk through life truly seeing - truly Aware...
Awake to the Presence of the Eternal Being that lives this life...

- the Life that animates all life...

I want to See everything as Living Aliveness;

with the same innocent wonder and amazement
as I did as a child, as if seeing Life living for the
first time...

I want to be in Love with life again -
if I ever was...

Maybe loving, and living life in new ways...

I want to Hear
the laughter of Life

in my Heart.

I want to Experience the Euphoria of
Life ItSelf, living ItSelf
in all its unfolding luminosity,
in the every-day-ness of life...

I want to Embrace
every thought,
expression,
and feeling
as it arises
without
trying
to
confine it,
or suppress it,
or correct it
before it is expressed.

Let me be free from entanglements
of the mind that keep me compliant
and complicit with the world's ways...

I want to risk not following the rules,
the protocols, the agendas of others;
the well-worn paths.

Instead - rising above the familiarity
of any "path" to see what's really here...

May I have the courage to speak
with fierce grace to those who
would try to quell this passion,
to strip this enthusiasm, to
suffocate this spontaneity,
to dim the radiance and
clarity of
the

Passion of Being!

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 2011

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
reflection of stained glass on wall

(Holy Fire :)

The Dance of Light and Dark - Winter Solstice

We are "The Mystery" come into being,
out of the dark and light...
Consciousness awakened,
Self replicating ItSelf;
or whatever word you give
"The Mystery"...

"I" dressed up as "me" - "me" as "I" - i/I
Formless as form,
Form as formless.
Light and Dark entwined...

Opening to "The Mystery"
we are free to be our unique selves,
however that is defined...

When we know this
"something" wakes up inside -
and hums...

Everything is OM -
- humming -
playing in the play of Life
as i/me
with a multitude of other expressions of
i/me...
"The Mystery" playing you, playing me,
each a reflection of the other...
Both "The Mystery" playing ItSelf...

When we let go of the conceptual words
and the frameworks of belief and interpretations

we are just FREE...

Letting go of the concepts of
i/I, me and "no-me", Self/no-self,
we are just Life living ItSelf here...
We are being LIVED
as we are...

There is something authentic
in allowing myself to be
just as i am...

Life is met from a different space -
the space of acceptance,
where everything is embraced
as it is...

The deep grief and sadness of loss,
the laughter and joy of new birth,
the dance of the dark and the light,
dancing together in the playground of Life...

Mystic Meandering
Winter Solstice 2019

~

Happy Solstice/Yule
the real reason for the season :)

~

Photo - Cosmic Swirl Paperweight

Untethered...

Untethered I step off into "space" -
the spaciousness of Just Being.
Flying into the vast unknown;
Invisible inner Forces showing me the way -
if I allow them to...

Not trying to "direct" my own way
by what I had known before;
letting the conceptual veils drop away...
Remaining open to an Invisible Force
at the Core of my Being -
the Inner Essence of what
makes me - me;
not an abstract construct,
but Life living ItSelf as me...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 29, 2019

~

Art - Untethered Heart
craypas oils
2009

digitally altered

The Season of Giving - Kahlil Gibran

You give but little when you give your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep and
guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the
over-prudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand
as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?
And what is fear of need but need itself...
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full,
the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much of which
they have - and they give it for recognition and their
hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.  And there
are those who have little and give it all.  There are the
believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer
is never empty.  There are those who give with pain,
and that pain is their baptism.  And there are those who
give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy,
nor give with mindfulness of virtue;  they give as in
yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give
unasked, through understanding.  And to the open-handed
the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than
giving.  And is there aught you would withhold?
All you have shall some day be given [away].
Therefore, give now, that the season of giving
may be yours and not your inheritors.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in
your pasture.  They give that they may live, for to withhold
is to perish.  Surely he who is worthy to receive his days
and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.

And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life
deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.

See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an
instrument of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life while you,

who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

Kahlil Gibran

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet