The Rhythm behind the rhythm...

I've heard a deeper rhythm...
Composed of cello, viola and oboe, I think.
I heard it when I was in the kitchen
cooking dinner one night,
a few years ago,
and every other night after that,
for several weeks,
until it stopped...
when the noise of my life
became too loud - again,
and the weight of my weary heart
drowned it out...

There was no music playing on the stereo,
just the sound of the meal cooking,
and the sounds of daily living
outside the window:
children playing,
dogs barking,
lawn mowers,
power saws,
and birds -
chirping...

Underneath it all was a Rhythm
so melodious I could even hum it;
forgotten now...

I just listened, and hummed, with wonder...
Where was this coming from -
this music -
this slow, deep melodic rhythm,
drawing me into itself...

I didn't even have to try to listen,
it was just there

soft - in the distance,
barely audible,
as if in another room,
through another door,
maybe even in another realm;
a cosmic rhythm...

I knew then, somehow, that my own life rhythm
was hidden in this deeper Rhythm...

But I no longer hear it now;
drowned out by the 
noise of living
other people's 
rhythms -
and the endless
rhythms
of daily
existence.

But I know it is there -
playing somewhere.
I listen for it -
this deeper Rhythm,
that underlies
all other rhythms...

The Rhythm behind the rhythm...

Mystic Meandering
Nov, 5, 2015

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Culture of Noise - Yahia Lababidi

Perhaps more than ever before, it has become necessary to
speak up in praise of silence, as an attempt to redress the
balance in a cacophonic contemporary culture that appears
 suspicious of outright contemptuous silence.  Living as we
do, in the busyness of this modern world - hooked up, beeping
and under the false imperative of needing to keep in touch with
everything - we find ourselves in the unhealthy situation of 
losing our silences and the sustenance that comes with them.

So we desperately rush, hurling ourselves from one activity
to the next, without ever pausing to dilute the concentration
of our experience with reflection.

...erosion of silence in our lives is unmistakably connected
with our noise-ravaged nerves, of increased stress levels, as
well as increasingly shortened attention spans, which affects
our ability to both think and feel deeply in order to sift through
the deluge of stimulus that informs our hurried and harried days.

Previously a portal to silence, the culture of reading is currently
imperiled in favor of "information snacking" to accommodate
our hectic schedules.  This coupled with the media's shrill and
insistent competition for our attention, makes it necessary to
guard our silences even more vigilantly.

If French philosopher Blaise Pascal is correct, that all of
humanity's problem stem from man's inability to sit quietly in
a room alone,' then the proliferation of talk and reality shows
may be seen as symptomatic of our cultural malaise. Namely,
reality shows, which actually serve to distract us from reality,
or being present to ourselves, are precisely a reflection of
our collective 'inability to sit quietly in a room alone.'

.....noise too can be the absence of sound.  Noise is the silent
invasion of our inner space by the clutter of undigested
information and unsorted emotions that pile up throughout
the days and weeks. With our private spaces thus encroached
upon, we risk becoming alienated from ourselves until our
lives are something foreign to us.  Against the odds, of what at
times appears to be a conspiracy of noise, we must try to assert
our birthright to retreat, reflect, and regenerate.

Solitude tends to produce an understanding of our own
limitations, and forces us to seek our own counsel in dealing
with them.

Yet, silence, like any controlled substance, must be handled with
care.  Initiates, or masters of silence - such as solitaries, thinkers,
monks, hermits, and ascetics - have long known how to mine it
for fortitude and insight, or to arrive at ecstasis.  But it is up to
each individual to determine how much is desirable and useful...

Just as the monastery and institutionalized silence are not for
everyone, so too extended travels to the foreign land of silence

are not for tourists.  Striking out fearlessly into interior territories
is not for dilettantes, or those less practiced with deeper
experiences of prolonged silence...

The aim, then, is to try to find that healthy balance - between
silent fasts and noise feasts...

Yahia Lababidi
Excerpts from an article
called
"Notes on Silence"

With thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Unchanging Reality - Sattva Lynn

Art by Meganne Forbes

Don't try to control the noise;
just notice what is always Quiet -
which is the Noticing Itself.

That Noticing
is Loving Aliveness,
Pure Awareness or Light.

Only what is
total silence, stillness,
unmoving, and unchanging...
can possibly notice anything.

Or else it would be
another changing thing.
Therefore, what is unchanging
must be Eternal.

It must be Invulnerable -
meaning without influence.
It cannot be affected
or influenced in any way.
or it would change.

Just notice what is
always unmoving -
always Here to
notice anything at all.

That is where true power lies.
BECAUSE it does not change.
It is always what It Is.

Then you don't have to
try to control, alter
or overcome the noise
of thoughts and feelings,
and habits of identification.

You just keep noticing,
or open your heart
to the Unchanging Reality -
and ask inside how
to know it as your Self.

Sattva Lynn

With thanks to No Mind's Land

 

Sweet Scent of The Sacred...

Overcome with fatigue - exhausted,
I enter the Liminal Space of "The Sacred."
I listen for Her "voice" - Her Sound - Her vibration
in the space of Deep Rest...

...and find Her waiting...

Her sweet cedar fragrance briefly wafts through
the room and soothes my senses,
calming the "noise" in the body and mind...

In the Quiet, she whispers from within:

Let the mind rest in The Sacred,
take comfort in The Sacred.

There is nothing to do but let things unfold...

Nature is taking its course...
All will be made known in time,
and an "answer" revealed...

Stop everything:
all seeking for solutions
 to unsolvable dilemmas,
or attempts to shift consciousness.

Just allow the natural unfolding of all
circumstances in their own time...

Lay down all "spiritual trinkets"
that you "buy" into - to feel safe and
validated in your beliefs; to feel happy;
to feel "enlightened"; to feel "special."

Just cling to Me...

Communing with Me
in the Liminal Spaces
 all will be made clear.

Mystic Meandering

July 13, 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Silent Self - Thomas Merton

 There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing
precisely because it is so silent: it can't be spoken.
It has to remain silent.  To articulate it, to verbalize it,
is to tamper with it, and in some way to destroy it.

Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one which
is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this
inner, silent self.  We live in a state of constant semi attention
to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise
of what goes on around us all the time.
This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words,
a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half diluted;
we are not quite "thinking", not entirely responding, but we
are more or less there.

We are not fully present and not entirely absent,
not fully withdrawn, yet not completely available.

It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything
and we may in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and
resentment.  Yet we derive a certain comfort from the vague 
sense that we are "part of something"...

Although we are not quite able to define what that something
is...  and probably wouldn't want to define it even if we could.

We just float along in the general noise.
Resigned and indifferent,
we share semi-consciously in the mindless mind of Muzak
and radio commercials which pass for "reality."

Thomas Merton
from Love & Living

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~ 

Photo - Mystic Meandering

This little tulip (maybe 6"tall") is growing
in a planter tub amongst the weeds - 
the "silent self" amongst the "noise." :)

Have no idea how the bulb got there!

Never Not Broken - Gina Puorro

 These are strange times, sitting in this liminal space between
what was and what will be, a crossroads within both the micro -
and macrocosms.  I have been feeling a deep internal shakeup in
a way that I always do when met with something much greater than
me,  bringing lessons of my insignificance and an opportunity to
shapeshift.  There's  been less than glamorous insights into self;
meeting places of deep tension between my compassion and
intolerance, my flexibility and rigid worldview, my humility and
my desire to be right, my longing for and resistance to change,
where I remain open and where I shut down...  so much friction
between what feels like split personalities living in this body.
And, in the way that friction does, it's making many little fires
in me that need tending, so as not to be snuffed out, or burn me
right down to the ground.

I hear the call of many wise teachers and elders singing similar 
instructions; slow down, get quiet, be still, listen.

What if slowing down and finding stillness has nothing to do with
movement or speed and has everything to do with being completely
broken and not trying to pick up the pieces too quickly.  Rather
than striving for a greater capacity to hold more, aiming for total
incapacitation and surrender instead.  Perhaps it's a good time to
venerate Akhilandeshvari, Goddess of Never Not Broken; I hear
her asking us to sit with the wreckage and feel the sharp pangs of
loss and grief.  No expectations of the future, no instructions for
how to move forward.  A time to hospice ourselves through a good
death, and a long slow process of composting our former selves.

What if getting quiet has nothing to do with turning down the volume,
and more to do with a subtle attunement towards finding the sacred
amidst the noise and chaos.....

Invite the power of disruption that shakes us up and disorients us,
that opens portals, seducing us towards the in-between spaces and
to dance in the wild unknown.  To see creation and destruction as
necessary to each other's survival, and the inherent violence in
what we have named nature.  Let us be students of alchemy and
mischief, and to think and act in unorthodox ways as the wise fool.

Perhaps it is time for deep remembering and reclamation.  To sit
with the many troubles of being alive, to let go of reaching towards
any sort of arrival, victory, or stability, and meet each other in our
differences.  Let's stay shattered a while, and let ourselves spill up
and out of the many containers we have confined ourselves to; never
certain, never permanent, never alone, never not broken.

Gina Puorro

posted May 19, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Desert of Our Own Silence - Ron Rolheiser

 The Belgian spiritual writer, Bieke Vandekerckhove, comes by her
wisdom honestly.  She didn't learn what she shares from a book
or even primarily from the good example of others.  She learned
what she shares through the crucible of a unique suffering, being
hit at the tender age of nineteen with a terminal disease that
promised not just an early death but also a complete breakdown
and humiliation of her body enroute to that death.

Her attempt to cope with her situation drove her in many
directions, initially to anger and hopelessness, but eventually into
the deep well of silence, that desert that lurks so threateningly
inisde each of us.  Away from all the noises of the world, in the
silence of her own soul, inside the chaos of her raging, restless
insides she found the wisdom and strength not just to cope with
her illness but to also find a deeper meaning and joy in her life.

There are, as John Updike poetically puts it, secrets that are hidden
from health, though, as Vandekerckhove makes evident, they can
be uncovered in silence.  However, uncovering the secrets that
silence has to teach us is not easy.  Silence, until properly befriended,
is scary and the process of befriending it is the soul's equivalent of
crossing a hot desert.  Our insides don't easily become calm, 
restlessness doesn't easily turn into solitude, and the temptation to
turn to the outside world for consolation doesn't easily give way
to the idea of quiet.  But there's a peace and a meaning that can
only be found inside the desert of our own chaotic and raging
insides.  The deep wells of consolation lie at the end of an inner
journey through heat, thirst, and dead-ends that must be pushed
through with dogged fidelity.  

Here's how Vandekerckhove describes one aspect of the journey:
'Inner noise can be quite exhausting.  That's probably why so many
flee to the seduction of exterior background noises.  But if you want
to grow spiritually, you have to stay inside the room of your
spiritual raging and persevere.  You have to continue to sit silently
 and honestly until the raging quiets down and your heart gradually
 becomes quieted.  Silence forces us to take stock of our actual
manner of being human.  And then we hit a wall, a dead point. 
No matter what we do, no matter what we try, something in us
continues to feel lost and estranged, despite the myriad ways of
 society to meet our human needs.  Silence confronts us with
 an unbearable bottomlessness, and there appears no way out.
We have no choice but to align ourselves with the depth in us.

There's a profound truth: Silence confronts us with an unbearable
bottomlessness and we have not choice but to align ourselves with
the depth inside us.  Sadly, for most of us, we will learn this only
by bitter conscription when we have to actually face our own
death.  .....before this surrender is made, our lives will always
remain somewhat unstable and confusing and there will always
be dark, inner corners of the soul that scare us.

But a journey into silence can take us beyond our dark fears and
shine healing light into our darkest corners.  But as
Vandekerckhove and other spiritual writers point out, that peace
is usually found only after we have reached an impasse, a 
'dead point' where the only thing we can do is to "pierce the
negative.'

In her book, The Taste of Silence, Vandekerckhove recounts how
an idealistic friend of hers shared his dream of going off by himself
into some desert to explore spirituality.  Her prompt reaction was not
much to his liking: 'A person is ready to go to any kind of desert.
He's willing to sit anywhere, as long as it's not his own desert.'  
How true.  We forever hanker after idealized deserts and avoid our
own.

The spiritual journey, the pilgrimage, the Camino we most need to
make doesn't require an airline ticket....  The most spiritually
rewarding trip we can  make is an inner pilgrimage, into the desert
of our own silence.

As human beings we are constitutively social. ...but there's a certain
deep inner work that can only be done alone, in silence, away from
the noise of the world.

Ron Rolheiser

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - via No Mind's Land

The "Noisemakers"...

 I have entered a desert place...
The desert of "noisemakers",
both internal and external;
creating stress and tension
in the mind and body;
from the dramas others have created
denying that they are the Elephant in the room;
going from crisis to crisis - drowning out
the Great Silence within.

The "noise" robs you of the felt sense of "The Mystery."
The veils of stress cloud the clarity of energy and perspective.
They rob you of what feeds the soul and nurtures the very
Essence of your Being.

Impossible you say?
But have you experienced it...  this drowning in "noise"...

One can get lost in the stress of too much "noise" if one is
not aware - not vigilant of the "noisemakers";
the thoughts and people that create distress in your life...

We cannot let the "noise" of others' dysfunction and disease
disrupt and distract, nor invade the deep Silence and Stillness
of our Being, and Indigenous Wisdom;
distorting our life energy with their "noise'!

We must tend to the Essential Nature of our very Being -
finding tender nurturance there from the
weariness of the world and its "noise"...

We need to feel the lightness of "The Mystery" again,
and reclaim the Sanity and Clarity
of the Stillness of the Quiet place...

And leave the "noisemakers" drowning in their own "noise."

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 4, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Solitude - Zat Rana

"All of man's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly
in a room alone..."

Blaise Pascal

According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, we dread
the boredom and instead choose aimless distractions, and we can't
help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false
comforts of the mind.

We never learned the art of solitude.  And now we live in a world
where we're connected to everything except ourselves.  Everything
 that has done so much to connect us has simultaneously isolated us.
We are so busy being distracted that we are forgetting to tend to
ourselves, which is consequently making us feel more and more
alone...

Never being alone is not the same as never feeling alone.  The less
comfortable you are with solitude, the more likely it is that you
won't know yourself.  And then, you'll spend even more time
avoiding it to focus elsewhere.  In the process, you'll become
addicted to the same technologies that were meant to set you free.
Just because we can use the noise of the world to block out the
discomfort of dealing with ourselves doesn't mean that this
discomfort goes away.

Almost everybody thinks of themselves as self-aware.  They
think they know how they feel and what they want and what
their problems are.  But the truth is that very few people really
do.  And those that do will be the first to tell you how fickle
self-awareness is and how much alone time it takes to get
there.  In today's world, people can go their whole lives
without truly digging beyond the surface level masks they
wear...[How interesting that we are required to wear masks
these days.] We are increasingly out of touch with who we are...
[Maybe this is why so many are having a hard time with
the "stay-at-home" orders - feeling confined, like their freedom
 has been taken away - acting out].

Almost anything that controls our life in an unhealthy way
finds its roots in our realization that we dread the nothingness
of nothing.  We can't imagine just being rather than doing.  We have an instinctive aversion to simply being.   And there-
fore, we look for entertainment, we seek company, and if
 those fail, we chase every higher highs.

We ignore the fact that never facing the nothingness is the same
as never facing ourselves.  And never facing ourselves is why
we feel lonely and anxious in spite of being intimately connected
to everything around us.

Fortunately, there is a solution.....  When you surround yourself
with moments of solitude and stillness, you become intimately
familiar with your environment in a way that forced stimulation
doesn't allow. [Forced socialization]  The world becomes richer,
the layers start to peel back, and you see things for what they
 really are, in all their wholeness, in all their contradictions,
 and in all their unfamiliarity.

You realize there are other things you are capable of paying
attention to than just what makes the most noise on the
surface.  [Solitude] allows you to discover the novelty in things
you didn't know were novel; it's like being an unconditioned
child seeing the world for the first time.  It also resolves the
majority of internal conflicts.

Without realizing the value of solitude, we are overlooking the
fact that, once the fear of boredom is faced, it can actually
provide its own stimulation.  And the only way to face it is to
make time to just sit... with our thoughts, with our feelings, with
a moment of stillness...

Zat Rana

Excerpt from: "The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You"
an article in Medium.com

[brackets mine]

~

Your solitude will be a support and a home for you,
even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances,
and from it you will find all your paths...

Rainer Maria Rilke

Excerpt from: Letters to a Young Poet #1

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Mind Games...

Tired of noisy words,
the "spiritual abstractions"
cleverly strung together
by word-crafters espousing
their mind games - not
from the simplicity of their Heart,
but the complexities of their minds;
having been absorbed by too many
conceptual ideas: "there is only here
and Now"; "there is no other"; "there
is no me"; "'i' does not exist -
creating a phantom reality from those concepts
and ideas on which to hang your mind;
plying their paradoxes into 'non-dual' jargon.

Once a player in "The Mind Games",
I now seek refuge in the simplicity of the Heart,
and a more "direct experience" of what cannot be
defined by words and abstractions; not philosophical,
existential conundrums that boggle and confuse, but
a simple truth,
untethered and unencumbered...

I'd rather step into the unknown
and be free, than be tethered to the
certainties of noisy words and abstract
mind games that parade as truth.

Without those, I am free to BE - who I am,
as I am;
a unique expression of "The Ineffable Mystery" of Life
that animates my being -
living from the simplicity of the Heart...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 14, 2019

~

Photo from the Internet
digitally altered

Talk/Sound and Silence - Kahlil Gibran

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your
heart, you live in your lips.

Sound is a diversion and a pastime.

For thought is a bird of space,
that in a cage of words may indeed
unfold its wings, but cannot fly.

Kahlil Gibran

~

There are those among you who seek the talkative
through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes
their naked selves and they would escape.

And there are those who talk
and without knowledge of forethought
reveal a truth which they themselves
do not understand.

And there are those who have
the truth within them, but they tell it not
in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells
in rhythmic silence ~ ~ ~

Kahlil Gibran

Thanks to Dorothea Mills

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Silence Heals the Brain - Azriel ReShel

The value of silence is felt by everyone at some point in their life.
Silence is comforting and nourishing...  It opens you up to
inspiration, and nurtures the mind, body and soul.  Meanwhile
the madness of the noisy world is drowning out our creativity,
our inner connection [to Source] and hampering our resilience.
Science is now showing that silence may be just what we need
to regenerate our exhausted brains and bodies.

Studies show that noise has a powerful physical effect on our
brains, causing elevated levels of stress hormones.  Sound
travels to the brain as electrical signals via the ear.  Even
when we are sleeping these sound waves cause the body to
react and activate the amygdala, the part of the brain associated
with memory and emotion, leading to the release of stress
hormones.  So, living in a consistently noisy environment will
cause you to experience extremely high levels of these
harmful hormones.

The brain recognizes silence and responds powerfully...
Many meditation teachers and practitioners can attest to this.
 The brain recognizes silence.  Two hours of silence per day
prompted cell development in the hippocampus, the brain
region related to the formation of memory, involving the senses.
And when you are in an environment with lower levels of
sensory input, the brain can 'recover' some of its cognitive
abilities.

While noise creates stress, silence relieves stress and tension
in the brain and body.  Silence helps our cognitive resources,
while noise makes us lose our concentration, decreases
cognitive powers and motivation, as well as overall brain
functioning.  The ancient spiritual masters have known this
all along; silence heals, silence takes us deeply into ourselves,
and silence balances the body and mind.

The healing benefits of nature and stillness are well documented,
but now we can add to this quest for health and well-being,
the nourishment of our brains.  The simple, yet ancient
experience of silence could just be the healing balm we need
to quell our crazy modern lifestyle...

Azriel ReShel
Excerpt from an article entitled:
Silence is Vital for our Brains Well-Being
at https://upliftconnect.com/

via - No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Inside a large seashell  

Aloneness - John O'Donohue

It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness.
Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to
quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you.  The
Mystic Thomas Kempis said that when you go out into the
world, you return to having lost some of yourself.  Until you
learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise
of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you
will only become empty and weary.  When you face your
aloneness, something begins to happen..... a sense of true
belonging.  This is a slow and open-ended transition...
In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home
within your life.  It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you
rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows
begin to open outwards to the world.  No longer on the run
from your aloneness, your connections with others becomes
real and creative.  You no longer need to covertly scrape
affirmations from others or from projects outside yourself.
This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.

John O'Donohue
From: Eternal Echoes

The Deepest Silence - John Roger Barrie

The eloquence of the deepest silence echoes from the eternal.

Originating there and reverberating through the ripples of time
and space.  It bursts forth in shimmering waves, forming light
and color, shadow, and dimension.  But it remains unchanged.
Never affected by the slightest permutation of outer phenomenon,
silence interweaves the temporal but is forever untouched by it.

Ever abiding within and without, overlaid with the mutable
patchwork garment we know as the visible universe, silence forms
the woof and warp of all things seen and unseen.  Yet at any instant
it is immanent and accessible.  To the mystic, silence is the ground,
the core of reality.  All else relates to and emanates from it.

The deeper elements in all religions point to this silence.  It is God,
it is Buddha; it is Allah.  But, to paraphrase Lao Tzu, to name it
is to elude its essence.  It can only be experienced.

How can we not experience that which always envelops and
permeates us?  Merely affirming its existence will not garner for us
its experiential realization.  It is spiritual practice [like meditation]
that provides us with the means to fine tune our faculties so that we
perceive it for ourselves.  Such practice enables us, in due course,
to experience a blistering, conscious realization of silence that
suffuses the core of our being.

By embarking on the spiritual path, an aspirant is attempting to
encounter silence firsthand.  This is the quintessential journey in
life - the inner sojourn.  It is returning to a source long ago forgotten
but often glimpsed unawares.  Recapturing that which flitters on the
periphery of awareness is the goal of the mystic.  The mystic
consciously dives into silence, at first unfelt.  With repeated practice
it becomes a living, palpable Presence filled with immeasurable
vitality and boundless, nondual continuity.  But what causes this
gradual revelation?

First we need to discover why we do not experience silence.
The simplest answer is that we are habituated to noise.  We are
addicted to novelty, sensation, to ourselves.  Fuss and commotion,
mental chattering and outer stimulation occupy our minds from
dawn to dusk.  The twentieth-century Japanese Zen master Nan-in
rightly noted that we are overflowing with our own ideas and
opinions.  When one is clattering away on a keyboard sixteen hours
every day, the capacious pockets of silence are kept well at bay.  We
thereby deafen ourselves to the underlying silence we would 

otherwise clearly hear.

By intentionally quieting our restless minds and calling a temporary
halt to the random noise - inner and outer - to which we are subject,
we create an environment conducive to the manifestation of silence.
Welling up from within, this silence subtly engulfs us, drowning out
all the noise of existence.

When constantly engaged at the forefront of our minds, our awareness
restlessly flutters about from thought to thought, sensation to
sensation, thus pushing out silence.  The effort required to break
through the surface waves of the mind forges an inward path
 to the deepest levelsof silence.  When deliberately sustained....this
 inner drilling displaces the obfuscatory debris that clutters the mind
 with a matrix of noise. When all mental ruminations are at last
exhausted, genuine silence emerges.

But, many prefer the comfort of noise, the bustling of crowds, the
constant engagement of new thoughts and interesting repartee.
To embrace silence means splicing off a certain arena of the
familiar and venturing into uncharted territories.  While one
may fruitfully participate in communal spiritual activities, quite
often the deeper stages of this voyage are undertaken by oneself.

To keep the mind occupied with external concerns is to point the
inner compass in an outward direction.  This is the most subtle trap
to which the feeble mind continually succumbs.  For to interact
constantly with the objects of the senses is to eclipse entirely the
realm of silence, which is first experienced within.  When
repeatedly accessed, the decibel level of true silence will deafen
the resolute mystic.

Ever elusive yet all pervading, silence is known by those who take
the leap.  The adventuresome hiker seeks areas untrampled by the
masses.  The successful inner voyager treks to the precipice, and
then, having encountered  the Unknowable, brazenly discards map and
compass and boldly treads onward.  The yearning heart echoes the
cry that seized the Psalmist:
"Be still and know that I am God."

John Roger Barrie
Excerpt from Parabola

via - No Mind's Land

~

Photo -
 Northern Lights over Yellow Knife, Western Territories, Canada

Solitude - Zat Rana

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly
in a room alone."

Blaise Pascal

According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, we dread the
boredom and instead choose aimless distractions, and we can't help
but run from the problems of our emotions into the false comforts
of the mind.

We never learned the art of solitude.  And now we live in a world
where we're connected to everything except ourselves [Selves].
Everything that has done so much to connect us has simultaneously
isolated us.  We are so busy being distracted that we are forgetting to
tend to ourselves [Selves], which is consequently making us feel
more and more alone.

Never being alone is not the same as never feeling alone.  The less
comfortable you are with solitude, the more likely it is that you won't

know yourself [Self].  And then, you'll spend even more time avoiding
it to focus elsewhere.  In the process, you'll become addicted to the
same technologies that were meant to set you free.  Just because we can
 use the noise of the world to block out the discomfort of dealing with
ourselves doesn't mean that this discomfort goes away.

Almost everybody thinks of themselves as self-aware.  They think
they know how they feel and what they want and what their problems
are.  But the truth is that very few people really do.  And those that do
will be the first to tell you how fickle self-awareness is and how much
alone time it takes to get there.  In today's world, people can go
 their whole lives without truly digging beyond the surface-level  masks
 they wear...  We are increasingly out of touch with who we are...

Almost anything that controls our life in an unhealthy way finds its
roots in our realization that we dread the nothingness of nothing.  We
can't imagine just being rather than doing.  We have an instinctive
aversion to to simply being.  And therefore, we look for
entertainment, we seek company, and if those fail, we chase
even higher highs.  [Even "spiritual" highs].

We ignore the fact that never facing the nothingness is the same as
never facing ourselves [Selves].  And never facing ourselves [Selves]
is why we feel lonely and anxious in spite of being so intimately
connected to everything around us.

Fortunately, there is a solution.....  When you surround yourself with
moments of solitude and stillness, you become intimately familiar with
your environment in a way that forced stimulation doesn't allow.  The
world becomes richer, the layers start to peel back, and you see things
for what they really are, in all their wholeness, in all their
contradictions, and in all their unfamiliarity.

You realize there are other things you are capable of paying attention to
than just what makes the most noise on the surface.  [Solitude] allows
you to discover the novelty in things you didn't know were novel; it's
like being an unconditioned child seeing the world for the first time.  It 

also resolves the majority of internal conflicts.

Without realizing the value of solitude, we are overlooking the fact that,
once the fear of boredom is faced, it can actually provide its own
stimulation.  And the only way to face it is to make time to just sit...

with our thoughts, with our feelings, with a moment of stillness,
[with our Self]...

Zat Rana

Excerpt from: The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You

an article in "Medium", an online Salon for sharing ideas.

Medium.com

[brackets mine]

The Rhythm behind the rhythm...

I've heard a deeper rhythm...
Composed of cello, viola and oboe, I think.
I heard it when I was in the kitchen
cooking dinner one night,
a few years ago,
and every other night after that,
for several weeks,
until it stopped...

when the noise of my life
became too loud - again,
and the weight of a weary heart
drowned it out...

There was no music playing on the stereo,
just the sound of the meal cooking,
and the sounds of daily living
outside the window:

children playing,
dogs barking,
lawn mowers,
power saws,
and birds -
chirping...

Underneath it all was a Rhythm
so melodious I could even hum it.
I just listened, and hummed, with wonder...
Where was this coming from -
this music -
this slow, deep, melodic rhythm,
drawing me into itself...

I didn't even have to try to listen,
it was just there
soft - in the distance,
barely audible,
as if in another room,
through another door,
maybe even in another realm;
a cosmic rhythm...

I knew then, somehow, that my own life rhythm
was hidden in this deeper Rhythm...
But I no longer hear it now;
drowned out by the
noise of living
other people's
rhythms -
and
the endless
rhythms
of daily
existence.

But I know it is there -
playing somewhere.
And I listen for it -
this deeper Rhythm,
that underlies
all other rhythms...

The Rhythm behind the rhythm...

Love mysteriously playing its song...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 5, 2015

~

Photo - the inside of a sea shell

digitally altered

Listen for the Silence - Fred LaMotte

In the white noise
of many opinions
I long to hear the silence
creatures make
when they are listening.

There is no thought,
only the mysterious harmony
of trees and raindrops.

Invisible things appear.

The deer step gently
out of the mist.

When we listen,
the heart opens
fearlessly.

[.....]

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

Interfaith Chaplain
Instructor of World Religions
Shaman

~

For those who celebrate the Solstice/Yule
may you hear the Silence of Life
singing in your Heart...

_/\_

Heart Summons - Rumi

In the silence between your heartbeat
bides a summons.
Do you hear it?

Name it if you must,
or leave it forever nameless,
but why pretend it is not there?

Leave that which is not,
but appears to be.
Seek that which is,
but is not apparent.

Rumi

What in your life is calling you,
when all the noise is silenced,
the meetings adjourned...
the lists laid aside,
and the Wild Iris blooms
by itself
in the dark forest...

What still pulls on your soul?

Rumi

The Second Music - Annie Lighthart

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,

one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard

yet always present.

When alll other things seem lively and real

this one fades.  Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound

of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.

If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft

that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful.  I stop and stop again

to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.

All this is in it and will be gone.

I set my ear to it as I would

to a heart.

Annie Lighthart

~*~

Also see my post A Deeper Rhythm

~*~

Photo - The inside of a seashell 

A Deeper Rhythm...

I’ve been hearing a deeper rhythm lately…
Composed of cello, viola and oboe.
I heard it when I was in the kitchen
cooking dinner one night,
a few weeks back,
and every other night after that
until recently
when the noise of my life
became too loud.

There was no music on the stereo,
just the sound of the meal cooking,
and the sounds of daily living
outside the window:
children playing,
dogs barking,
lawn mowers,
power saws,
and birds -
chirping…

Underneath it all was a Rhythm
so melodious I could even hum it,
but I just listened, with wonder…
Where is this coming from -
this music -
this slow, deep, melodious rhythm,
drawing me in…

I didn’t even have to try to listen,
it was just there
soft – in the distance,
barely audible,
as if in another room,
through another door,
maybe even in another realm…

I knew somehow that my own life rhythm
 is hidden in this deeper Rhythm…
But I keep losing it,
drowned out by the
*noise* of living
other people’s
rhythms -
and
the external
rhythms
of
life

But now I know it is there -
somewhere,
in an experiential way,
and I listen for it -
this deeper Rhythm,
that underlies
all rhythms..

The Rhythm behind the rhythm…

Mysteriously playing…

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 5, 2015

~*~

“The real music happens between the notes…”
Louis Armstrong

~*~

Photo: Mandala Art
Original: Winter’s Jewel Mandala
radially blurred