Our True Nature - A Buddhist Perspective

Remember the clear light, the pure white light from which
everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the
universe returns; the original nature of your own mind.
The natural state of the universe unmanifest.

Let go into the clear light,
trust it, merge with it.
It is your own true nature,
it is home.

[.....]

No matter where or how far you wander, the light is only
a split second, a half breath away.  It is never too late to
recognize the clear light.

From the Tibetan Book of the Dead

Adapted and translated by W.Y. Evans-Wentz,
edited by Jack Kornfield

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Cosmic Light...

Sadness gives way to spontaneity...

The inner child of the Cosmos
has come to play...

There's a hidden joy inside that shimmers up
- playful,
tickling the heart...

Subtle joy turns into Love for the whole experience of
LIFE

knowing it's all the "Play" of the Cosmos...

The Light of the Cosmos
hidden within myself
begins to glow -
an unlit light.

It's the rhythm of the Cosmos that moves me,
taking my breath away,
making my heart skip;
and the realization that

I am Cosmic Light -
lit from within!

I am the Cosmos!

I am the joy of the Universe...

It's all the Play of Cosmic Light!

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 21. 2020

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

Here's a woo-woo story about how I found this poem again... :)

One night I was checking the stats on my blog, and saw my
URL with a number after it.  I had never seen this before.  So I
clicked on it, and it gave me two links.  I recognized the first
link, so I clicked on it.  And it took me to a fellow blogger's blog,
now deceased!  And right there on the page was the poem, 
"Cosmic Light" that she had posted in 2020.  She passed away
in January 2021.  How strange!  A "voice" from beyond?
However it came, it was as if someone was trying to remind me,
that even though I have been going through dark and challenging
 times the light is still there. And I still have to embrace it all everyday,
the dark and the light.  I even mentioned to a friend that
I thought my Light  was going out - he too reminded me that there
 is still a light within that never goes out.
 We ARE that Light!  And that life is a play of the 
Cosmos :)

I have since tried to enter that same combination of URL with 
the number again and it tells me "site not found"

:)

 

The Light of Breath - Hazrat Inayat Khan

We ordinarily think of the breath as that little air that we feel
coming and going through our nostrils; but we do not think of
it as that vast current that goes through everything, that current
which comes from Consciousness...

...it is written that first the Word [or Logos - the Word of The Divine]
was, and from the Word all things came [into being].  But before
the Word was the Breath, which made the Word. 

Behind the word is the much greater power: Breath.  If a person
wishes to study the self, to know the self, what is important is
not the study of the mind, of the thought, the imagination, nor of
the body, but the study of the breath.  The Breath has made the
mind and the body for its expression.  It has made all from the
vibration to the physical atom, from the finest to the grossest.

~

Breath is a light in itself, and it becomes projected like the beam
from a searchlight...   Breath is sometimes not different from the
light of the sun but even brighter than that. Breath being a light 
from another dimension, which is unknown to science today, it
cannot be visible to the ordinary physical eyes.

What people call the aura is the light of breath, but not everyone
sees it.  A radiant countenance is a proof of an aura which
illumi-nates it, and the lack of it is the lack of light in the breath.
 A seer sees the sign of a death more clearly and longer beforehand
than a physician can.  The reason is that the seer sees in the aura
of a person whereas the physician sees only the condition of the
body.  Many experience the phenomenon of the light of breath,
and yet doubt if it can be true, for they think it is perhaps an
imagination.  Others, who are capable of seeing that light,
confirm their doubt.  The Sufi, by the development of breath,
experiences this light, which becomes for him a proof of the
existence of that dimension which is unknown to the ordinary
world.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

From:  The Philosophy of Breath
and The Healing Papers

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Sacred Fog - Sarah Carlson

As one drops in
and widens,
there can be a sense
of being in a sort of
sacred fog.
There is a softness here.
Though that which
once anchored
has altered,
there is safety, too.
Rhythmic waves
create a gentle harmony
that blends with breath and heart.
Vastness may not be visible,
yet is both discernible
and inclusive.
This sacred fog
can allow for
that which aches or tugs
or threatens
to disperse
as light once more
works its way
around and through
from above.

Sarah Carlson
Meanderings of the Heart

Posted with permission of the author

Sarah is publishing her third book called:
Tender Light Softens,
which includes the above poem.
See her blog: Meanderings of the Heart
for more poems and info about her books.

~

Photo - Sarah Carlson

 

Rekindling the Flame...

I'm rediscovering the Fire-Light that wants to come to life
again here; that wants to express and give voice;
and not be constrained by "spiritual" conundrums,
but the simplicity of the Light that Lives me -
without mentations and cogitations of words and concepts
that cloud and dim its Light...

Interesting that this is the cross quarter day between
Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  Celtic tradition
has it that Imbolc is celebrated in preparation of "giving birth" -
or re-birthing something new...
a rekindling of the inner Light; the inner Flame that is 
the expression of our deepest Being...

I feel the spark of Light shining...

Alegria!

Mystic Meandering

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

This Shines On - Miriam Louisa

 This shines on
whether I'm in bitch mode or radiating benevolence
whether I'm depressed or enjoying equanimity
whether I'm achingly weary or frolicking tirelessly.

This shines on
whether my bookshelves are stacked with scriptures,
chick-lit, crime or porn
whether my shoes are microfiber or leather, my coat cotton or mink
whether my fridge is piously vegan or robustly carnivore.

This shines on
whether my philosophical tendencies veer towards the
 scientific and secular
or the mystical and metaphysical
whether I'm a closet optimist disguised as a cynic
or a knee-jerk nay-sayer, jus sayin

Don't be fooled.  This shines on
- pristine, incorruptible -
regardless.

This shines on
whether you agree with me as you scan these words
or jump to defend your own view
whether you accept me as a flicker of the vast Light that we are
or turn your back on our inextricable intimacy.

This shines on
and in, and from, and through, every perception,
every experience and every face and fact of World
known by human and non-human Knowingness
|(and I exclude nothing, no thing in creation
from that capacity of Knowingness.)

This shines on
The sages call it Reality, but beware: it's not a thing, an object
or even a state.  To name it is to turn from it, but it could care less.
It shines on regardless.

Miriam Louisa Simons
This Unlit Light
and

Echoes of Emptiness

With thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Cosmic Birth - Rumi

Drink the word of Wisdom
for it has become veiled light
so that you may become able
to receive the unveiled Light,
to behold without veils
that which is hidden now...

Taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.

And traverse the sky like a star,
that you may journey unconditioned...

Thus you came into being from non-existence...

...like a star without a name...

Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights...

Rumi

taken from two different translations;
Reynold A. Nicholson
The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi
and
Coleman Barks
Mathnawi III

~

Photo from the internet

The World in Different Light - Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.  The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Lisel Mueller
1924-2020

Original title - "Monet Refuses Operation"

"Her poems are 'a testament to the miraculous power
of language to interpret and transform our world'
and 'a testament that invites readers to share her vision
of experiences we all have in common: sorrow,
tenderness, desire, the revelations of art, and
mortality - 'the hard dry smack of death against the glass'"
(Washington Post)

Lisel Mueller was a German born American Poet.
Her family fled the Nazi regime in 1939 when she was 15.
She worked as a translator and academic teacher.  She
began writing poetry in the 1950's, publishing her first
collection in 1965.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
street light through ice on window...

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

What Remains - Danna Faulds

Despite illness of body and mind,
in spite of blinding despair
or habitual belief,
who you are is whole.

Let nothing separate you from the Truth.
The soul, illumined from within,
longs to be known...

Undying, untouched by fire, or
the storms of life,
there is a place inside
where stillness and abiding peace reside.

You can ride the breath to go there.

Despite doubt or hopeless turns of mind,
you are not broken.

Spirit surrounds, embraces,
fills you from the inside out.

Release everything
that isn't your true nature.
What's left?

the fullness of light...

Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner
From the poem" "Birthright"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Threads of Connection - Rig Veda

There is an endless net of threads throughout the Universe.
The horizontal threads are in space.
The vertical threads are in time.
At every crossing of the threads,
there is an individual,
and every individual is a crystal bead.
The Great Light of
Absolute Being
illuminates and penetrates
every crystal bead.
And every crystal bead reflects
not only the the light from every other crystal
in the net, but also every other reflection
through the entire universe...

The Rig Veda

The earliest Veda text

~

Photo - Mandala Art
Indra's Net of Jewels

Among The Trees - Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple", they say,
"and you too have come into the world to do this,
to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine."

Mary Oliver

via - The Beauty We Love

~
Photo - Mystic Meandering

Into The Twilight - Winter Solstice

There is a seamless "edge" when twilight comes...
And a twinge of longing when the
light wanes into twilight,
the edge of the veil;
that threshold between
light and dark...

A knowing that this life
is waning into twilight too,
from one state into another,
forever re-forming Itself...

Tree branches wave in the wind
in homage to the light
dimming in the West...

Owls hoo - calling the night
into existence
from the East;
prophets of twilight
standing at the edge
where ending meets beginning
and beginning, ending...

Twilight
the in-between,
as Life cycles through time,
through light and dark,
through living
and dying.

This night we stand at the edge of time,
and timelessness beyond time...

peering through
for a glimpse
of the
Infinite Light
that knows no dimming
and no night;
only Its own Eternal Radiance
of
Being...

This Light we are...

Mystic Meandering
Winter Solstice
Dec. 21, 2012

What Wants to Come - Richard Wehrman

Out of that space that she
could not command, could
not direct, could extract
nothing from, except what
was given by the space itself,
out it came - what wanted
to come in its own way - and
she.....

the one along on the hurtling
ride, though space itself
was Silence itself, unmoving,
unmoved, unmovable - yet
it drew her in, into its very within,
she.....
who had been with-out, powerless,
hands pressed
against the glass of its sides,
like Alice to the looking-glass,
then she fell.....
was lifted in, was absorbed
into all she saw,
the all that was, that is,
heard, smelled, touched, tasted,
though none of these senses were,
only the clear light,
flooding the field, the transition
of the seasonal air, as Summer
shimmered into non-existence,
and clarity stood in silent
reveling: color and light and
form, falling upon her...

Poem - Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here

~

Top Photo via No Mind's Land

Bottom Photo - mine - a mistake, color enhanced
Can you see the form of a woman in pink with
arms outstretched? :)

The Whole of the Soul - Ralph Waldo Emerson

...We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles.
Meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is
equally related; the eternal one.  And this deep power in which
we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts,
is the soul...

...All goes to show, that the soul of man is not an organ, but animates
and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of
memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and
feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the
master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and 
the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object
are one.  We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the
which they lie - an immensity not possessed and that cannot be
possessed.  From within or from behind, a light shines through us
upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing,
but the light is all...

A man is a facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and good abide.
What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting
man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents
himself.  Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is,
would he let it appear through his action, would make your knees bend.
When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes
through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection,
it is love...

...The soul circumscribes all things.  As I have said, it contradicts all
experience.  In like manner it abolishes time and space.  The influence
of the senses has, in most men, overpowered the mind to that degree,
that the walls of time and space have come to look real and
insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world,
a sign of insanity.  Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the
force of the soul...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
From: Essay IX The Over-Soul
1841

~

Photo - South Pole Aurora

Zeitgeist...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark of night,
I awake...

Inexplicable dread overtakes me...

.....a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time?

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Fear and Violence.

But those who know the beauty of true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus" cannot
shatter the pristine Light of a radiant Cosmos,
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and movement of
a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds;
by the ineptness of fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

Zeitgeist - the defining spirit of the time, or culture.

~*~

Yet another mass school shooting Weds here in the US,
moving me to tears - children killing children once again;
and what humanity is doing to itself is heartbreaking...
The more my heart opens, the more I feel the emotional
pain of those who have been traumatized for life by
the shadow side of humanity.

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded hearts and help us to endure our
wounded society...

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - I don't remember what this is a picture of
but it seemed fitting...

Travel Lighter - Rumi

Be foolishly in love,
because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence
except through a love exchange.

If someone asks, But what is love?
answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those
who have escaped the questions
of free will and fate....

Love and lover live in eternity.
Other desires are substitutes...

How long do you lay embracing a corpse?
Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in Spring dies in the Fall,
but love is not seasonal.

With wine pressed from grapes,
expect a hangover.
But this love path has no expectations.

You are uneasy riding the body?
Dismount, Travel lighter.
Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror
reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry
that comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed
or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own
without any judgement of them.

Be pure emptiness.
What is inside that? you ask,
Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets
That they keep.

Rumi

excerpts from: No Expectations

~

Photo - Mandala Art
digitally altered

For Light - John O'Donohue

[.....]

In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.

That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.

When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.

That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The Mystery continues to dwell,
Glimmering in fugitive light.

When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.

When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.

When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.

As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.

And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
of a found word.

John O'Donohue
From: To Bless the Space Between Us

~

Photo - Mandala Art

Light Will Split You Open - Hafiz

Light will someday split you open
even if your life is now a cage.

Little by little, you will turn into stars.
Little by little, you will turn into
the whole sweet, amorous universe.

Love will surely burst you wide open
into an unfettered, blooming new galaxy.
A life-giving radiance will come.

You will become so free
in a wonderful, secret
and pure Love that flows
from a conscious, one-pointed,
Infinite Light.

[.....]

O look again within yourself,

[.....]

and spin in Eternal Ecstasy...

Behold the Beautiful One
from the vantage point of Love.
He is conducting the affairs
of the whole universe
in a tree house - on a limb
in your heart.

Hafiz

From: The Subject Tonight is Love

It is said that the above poem reflects Hafiz's
mystical experience into cosmic consciousness.

For Christmas - Silent Benediction - Eloratea

It came unexpectedly.
Descending from the unseen regions,
above the highest mountain tops,
behind the distant.....realms,
from the hidden abode of the Light of the world...

It came down silently.

And Silence came upon the whole field,
gentle, profound, even substantially perceptible in its
insubstantiality.
Firstly touching, embracing and uplifting everything
in its strong hold;
standing in itself without any support,
extending without limits, in all directions and
dimensions.
And peace and serenity suffused the field,
releasing like fragrance, a feeling of timeless freedom
and great joy.
And everything was coming out of that Silence,
and returning back to it;
as one seamless, dynamic...unfolding,
from one eternal fountain,
as one weightless field of Life,
one unobstructed and ceasless
refraction of Light.

Eloratea

~

Silent Night
Holy Night
Sleep in Peace

~

The Gift of "The Quiet"