A Mystic's "Spirituality" - a meandering...

Being an unapologetic "mystic" at Heart, since childhood,
means for me experiencing the living Presence of Life that
animates all life.  Some call that God, the Divine, The Beloved,
the Ineffable, The Mystery, Pure Consciousness, Infinite Being,
Spirit, Brahman, The Tao, the Cosmos, etc.  It has many
 names and forms. It means being able to see and experience
 "The Mystery" in the everyday-ness of life; something I am still
admittedly trying to be more aware of - to be more aware of a
 felt sense of The Sacred in the Entropy of world affairs, in the
chaotic mundane personal affairs of life circumstances as they are;
 the requirements of daily living; in the must do's and have-to's that
always find their way to the top of my list, and seem to drive my
life...

As a "mystic" I long to experience the depths of Ultimate Reality -
immersing myself in the depths of Meditative Silence, listening
to the Hush of "The Mystery."  Something I have missed being
 able to do over the last 2 years due to life circumstances.
It seems I am on a dark passage now...
Some  may assume a "mystic" doesn't experience the darker
 feelings and frustrations of life - but is always in some catatonic
 state with The Beloved...  That has not been my experience.
I try to experience the darker emotions within the context of the
Greater Reality as part of the totality of life experience...

Some feel that a mystic should have special insights or powers,
or visions, or is only interested in seeking "mystical experiences."
But for me it is not in "seeking" experiences (I have very few of
them that just happen), but being aware of and open to the movement
 of "The Mystery" within me, through its many expressions, living in
 the intimacy of "The Mystery" and at times experiencing an
intimate encounter with what I know to be "The Divine", like my
Epiphany back in 2013, or through meditative writings", and 
celestial songs (poetry) where sometimes the words just fall
 out onto the page - surprising me...

Mystical "spirituality" acknowledges the universality of what 
most have come to call "God", The Divine, or Buddha Nature,
not associated with any particular faith, religion or practice,
but transcendent truth - realizing that humans, at the very core of
their being, are both Divine and human, formlessness and form,
spirit in matter, Timelessness in time...

Wayne Teasdale, a 20th century Christian Mystic, and author of
A Mystic Heart says: "Mystic spirituality draws us into the depths
or our Being, where we come face to face with ourselves, our
weaknesses, AND with the Ultimate Mystery,  Spirituality is not
external religiosity, confined to ritual and liturgy.  It is a way of life
that effects and includes every moment of existence...  It is a disposition
to a life of depth..."

He goes on - "How we make the journey is what spirituality is really
about - finding our own path.  This means finding a way to
 [awareness of] the vast unlimited [mystery] of The Divine,
 the Mystery within.
We are created for this 'spiritual journey' - the direct and
immediate experience of Ultimate Reality, which knows everything
as ItSelf.  Being infinitely aware, it knows in a unitive and universal
fashion through awareness...  The spiritual journey is essentially one of
discovering the roots of our true identity.  It is a process of returning
to the totality of Consciousness, from which we have arisen." 
(Wayne Teasdale)

Mystic Meandering
2016

~

"We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others.
[We must] take back our own listening,

use our own voice,
see our own Light"

Hildegard of Bingen

12th Century Christian Mystic

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Religion and Spirituality - Wayne Teasdale

There is a difference between
religion and spirituality.
Spirituality refers to an individual's
solitary search for and discovery of
the Absolute or the Divine...

[however one knows that to be]
It involves direct mystical experience of "God"
[however one knows that to be],
or realization of the vast Awareness.
Spirituality carries with it a conviction
that the transcendent is real...

Religion is more a social organism of
worship and ritual...

We need direct contact with The Divine or Ultimate
Mystery.  The focus of Religion is on worship at a
corporate level - carriers of tradition rather than
the mystical life...

Spirituality can be profoundly transformative when it
inspires in us an attitude of surrender to The Mystery.
Spirituality draws us into the depths of our Being,
where we come face to face with ourselves, our
weaknesses and the Ultimate Mystery.

Religions depend on institutions to make decisions for
us through conformity to external religiosity and the
safe routines of liturgy and ritual.

The necessary shifts in consciousness requires a new
approach to spirituality that transcends past religious
cultures of fragmentation and isolation.
We don't need to go into monasteries to become mystics.
We need only to realize and activate that Essential part
of our Being...

How we make the journey is what spirituality is all
about, using all the resources from all the religious 
traditions available to us...

Finding our own path.

Finding a way to relate to the Divine [however one knows
that to be].  The evolution of an individual's spirituality
is a mysterious and intimate matter.  It originates in the heart,
in deep stirrings that represent an insatiable longing of the 
heart [for Source]...

We are created for the spiritual journey...

Wayne Teasdale
from: Mystic Heart

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Dimension of the Soul - Matt Licata

Part of the challenge of practices and orientations organized
exclusively around returning to the background field or
context of awareness is that we can lose touch with the
richness of the inner world, the wisdom of creativity...in the
sparkle of the imagination.

We spend so much time [mentally] interpreting and understanding
our experience that we lose touch with the magic of just one
present moment with the aliveness of the senses and more 
intuitive knowing...  Through imagination and creativity a new
poem is received, a new story is able to tumble out of the stars
into, through and as our lives.

The "spiritual journey" is by its very nature radically unique...
It must be explored by way of primary, first-person experience.

Contemporary spirituality is filled with all sorts of ideas and
concepts about what it means to be "spiritual" and we must 
find the courage to question even the most sacred of these ideas,
trusting the path of direct revelation as we come to have more
and more confidence in our own unique experience.  There are
infinite number of  ways to open to, touch, and enter the mystery,
and the right way for us might look quite different from others,
even our "spiritual teachers."

At some point on our journey, we might hear a call to set aside
the beliefs, teachings and practices we've gathered throughout
our lives and rest.  This "rest" is not passive, cold, or resigned
but lit up from within...  we open to a more paradoxical
invitation that comes roaring out of thundering silence.  Just
what this is must be discovered by each of us in the fire of our
own direct experience.  We cannot take anyone's word for it.

In this "rest" we are taken inside a dimension of experience
where we honor the entirety of what we are - [we are] drawn to
 bring more awareness to this dimensions of experience. 
 Something mysterious, magical, alive and sacred is wired into
this moment by its very nature and carries the fragrance of the
holy.

...something is granted permission and space to emerge - exactly
as it is.  We are invited into a deeper, richer exploration of the
dimension of the soul; re-entering the state of pure wonderment.

Matt Licata

From: A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves In Difficult Times

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Inter-Spiritual Heart - Mirabai Starr

For decades I was conditioned to believe that to engage a mature
spiritual life I needed to "pick one tradition and go deep," which
implied that my attraction to the teachings and practices at the
heart of all religions was superficial and indolent.  Also, that the
path of non-dualism - with its affirmation of undifferentiated
consciousness - was superior to my devotional disposition.  Also,
that my experience of longing for God was an illusion - some
kind of unconscious blend of unresolved childhood abandonment
and magical thinking.  In other words, the energy that fueled my
journey was predicated on a perfect storm of delusional inclinations.

It was only when the fire of loss swept into my life and burned the
scaffolding to the ground that all conceptual constructs came
tumbling down and these insidious messages revealed themselves
as 1) unkind, and 2) untrue.  From the ashes of grief a transfigured,
more authentic self began to arise, and she felt no obligation to
choose sides.  She was a Jew and a Sufi, a believer and an agnostic.
She practiced Vipassana and Centering Prayer, observed Shabbat
and received communion.  She rested in blessed moments of
unitive consciousness and sang the praises of Lord Krishna.

I am not alone.  A 'tribe" of people is coalescing around the world
to celebrate a reorientation from religious separation to inter-
spiritual connection.  While many of us have been pilgrims on this
path for decades - sometimes feeling alone in the wilderness,
sometimes gathering with others who are similarly drawn to the
sacred in every single holy house we encounter - now, at last, our
numbers seem to be reaching a tipping point and what was a
fringe phenomenon is become a global movement.

The inter-spiritual path is characterized as much by what it is not
as what it is.  It is not a new religion; in fact many of its most
enthusiastic adherents consider themselves "spiritual but not
religious."  It has no creed or dogma, no tenets or prohibitions. No
special attire sets it apart and so single symbol represents its core
philosophy.  It's "membership" is as diverse as the full spectrum
of humanity.  It is not about belief...

Mystical poetry transcends theological distinctions and neutralizes
ideological ultimatums.  Love poems to God do not describe 
Ultimate Reality: they evoke it.  The poems of the mystics slip
past the thought-guardians and batter down the gates of the heart.
In crying out to the Holy One, the ecstatic poets offer us a direct
connection with the object of our Soul's deepest desire, and ours.

Mystical poetry generates a sacred field, and invites us to step in.

It is here, in the center of the perennial paradox, that it becomes
obvious all spiritual paths emanate from and return to the same
Universal Heart.

Mirabai Starr

read full article here

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

El Shaddai - Fred LaMotte

Art by Joe Maccer on Deviant Art

Myriad names of God swirl from the womb of holy silence.
Just so, stars spiral from a black hole at the center of the galaxy.
Yet all the black holes in the cosmos are one and the same fertile
void.  This star-birthing singularity, the infinite hush of the maternal
dark, is not far away.  It is the core of your being, the bindhu at the
center of your heart.

In Jewish Kabbala, the Great Seal of Protection is a mandala
containing 72 divine names.  We can find similar mantra-mandalas
made of Tibetan and Sanskrit letters.  In the untranslated letters of
St. Pachomias, "father of Christian monasticism", I have seen such
mandalas of syllables written in Old Latin.  They were possibly
derived from the Demotic, the language of Egypt, home to the
wisdom schools of Christian Gnosticism.  In all these mystical
traditions - Indian, Tibetan, Hebrew, Christian - the names are
bija mantras, healing sound-vibrations used in meditation.

In the Old Testament , the Lord tells Abraham that, "my name is 
El Shaddai," usually translated God Almighty.  But the etymology
is uncertain.  As with many sacred Hebrew words, there are alternate
roots, each with its own significance, resulting in parallel
commentaries. These multiple roots are complimentary,
not contradictory.

One root of Shaddai means "fertile field, uncultivated wilderness."
This would suggest the other divine names, which are the very
energies of creation, spring from a wild impregnable field to which
the intellect of man may lay no claim - or what Christian mystic
Ruysbroeck called, "the wayless wilderness of the Godhead."

...in the most popular etymology of the Hebrew word, Shaddai means
"mother's breasts."  El Shaddai is the "God who is like a mother's
breasts," the feminine power.  So countless worlds, innumerable
energies, and all the names of God are born of one Mother,
who is the divine Silence.  This Silence we may experience,
 but never "know."  For this is the

Silence of The Beloved...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

 

...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

_/\_

Mystical Spirituality...

Being an unapologetic "mystic" at Heart, since childhood, means
for me experiencing the Living Presence of Life that animates all
life.  Some call that God, The Divine, The Beloved, The Ineffable,
"The Mystery", Consciousness, Infinite Being, Spirit, Brahman,
The Tao, etc., etc., etc.  It has many names and forms.  It means
being able to see and experience "The Mystery" in the every-day-ness
of life; something I'm still "working" on - being more aware of the
Sacred in a chaotic world, in the mundane personal affairs of living;
the requirements of daily life: in the must do's and the have-to's
that always find their way to the top of my list, and seem to drive
life...

A "mystical spirituality" pertains to direct experience with Ultimate
Reality/The Divine/"The Mystery"...  Some may assume that a
 "mystic" doesn't experience the darker feelings and frustrations with
living the Cosmic Dance of life.  That has not been my  experience. 
A "mystic" just experiences them within context of the Greater Reality
 - and learns to embrace them as part of the totality of  experience. 
Some feel that a "mystic" has special insights, or powers,  or visions, 
or is only interested in seeking "mystical experiences." 
For me it is not about seeking experiences, but being open to the
movement of "The Mystery", the movement of Consciousness
through its many expressions, and at times experiencing an intimate
 encounter with what I know to be "The Divine", like my Epiphany in
Nov. 2013, or Waking Up To Bliss like I did recently, or "meditative
writings" many years ago, and poetry that sometimes just spills
 out onto the page.

Mystical Spirituality acknowledges the universality of what most have
come to call "God," "The Divine", or Buddha Nature (Dharmakaya),
not associated with any particular faith, religion, or practice, but a
transcendent truth - realizing that humans, at the very core of their
being are both "Divine" and human; formlessness and form, spirit
in matter, Timelessness in time...  This "union" takes place within
ourselves with the realization that we are not a separate entity from
our Divinity, from Consciousness ItSelf, needing to grovel our way
back - but that "comm-union" is always happening.  There is always
only the movement of "Divinity" through life, through us.  There is
 no other "Higher" Self to search for.  It's all Here within us...

Wayne Teasdale, a 20th Century Christian Mystic, and author of
A Mystic Heart, says:  "Mystical Spirituality draws us into the depths
of our Being, where we come face to face with ourselves, our weakness
AND with the Ultimate Mystery.  Spirituality is not external religiosity,
not confined to ritual and liturgy.  It is a way of life that affects and
includes every moment of existence.  It is a disposition to a life of depth."

He goes on - "How we make the journey is what spirituality is really
about - finding our own path.  This means finding a way to/awareness
 of the vast unlimited Consciousness of The Divine, The Mystery
within. We are created for this 'spiritual journey' - the direct and
 immediate experience of Ultimate Reality, which knows everything
 as ItSelf. Being infinitely aware, it knows in a unitive and universal
 fashion through awareness of no distance between ourselves and
 the Ultimate Mystery...  The spiritual journey is essentially one of
discovering the roots of our true identity.  It is a process of the totality
 of Consciousness, from which we arise.

He further says - "Everything is part of an undivided wholeness where
each being reflects this totality.  Non-duality means 'not two, and yet,
not one.'  [I know this is not the traditional Advaita/Non-dual
definition, but it is my experience as well.]  That is, the relationship
 between Divine Reality and human being is a subtle distinction,
but not a separation. And so the relationship is said to be non-dual.
Human beings are essentially Divine." [or Pure Consciousness, etc.]

Wayne Teasdale
20th Century Christian Mystic
from - A Mystic Heart

~

"We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others.
[We must] take back our own listening,
use our own voice,
see our own Light."

Hildegard of Bingen
12th Century Christian Mystic

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering