Trust the Presence that Holds it All - Amoda Maa

Be courageous enough to meet life from the unknown - without
a safety net, without hope, without past, and without future.

Without the hope of salvation - without running away from or
running toward anything in your mind - you are forced to fall into
an open space of Being-ness.

And in this openness, you fall out of time and out of imagination,
right into the present.

In other words, you become present - you become totally available 
to the essential Being-ness of life.

In presence, you and life have collapsed into each other - there is
no longer a "future life," it's all happening now.

In this eternal now, you and life are one - and when you are one
with what is, how can you possibly fear what is?

It's like fearing your self, and that's ridiculous - because your self,
the Being-ness that you already are, never leaves you.

Being-ness is totally dependable - it is always here.

Now you are in touch with a deeper kind of trust -  one that is 
not based on something.

It is no longer a conceptual trust, but one that is inherent in the
nature of presence.

It is inherent in the nature of life, because life is always what is
here in the present - it can't be anywhere else.

This deeper trust has no meaning to the mind, but complete
meaningfulness to your natural state [or Essence of Being].

And even if you fail, even if life leads you to a seeming dead-end,
even if you are handed an unwanted circumstance, even if you
don't get to you desired destination of perfect happiness, even
if you heart is broken open over and over again - you will still
trust the Presence that holds it all.

Amoda Maa

words I needed to hear - with thanks to Michel at 
No Minds's Land

~

Photo - Dorothea on the Beach at Sunrise

 

The Language of Invisible Vibrations - Hazrat Inayat Khan

Color and sound are not only the language in which one
communicates with the life without, but also the language in
which one communicates with the life within.  One might ask
how it is done.  We can see the answer in certain scientific
experiments.  Special plates are made, and by speaking near
such a plate marks are made upon the plate with sound and
vibrations.  Those marks make either harmonious or in-
harmonious forms.  If that is true, then every person, from
 morning till evening, is making invisible forms in space by
what he says. He is creating invisible vibrations around him
 and so he is  producing an atmosphere.  Therefore it is that
 one person who may come into the house, and before he speaks
you are tired of him, you wish to get rid of him.  Before he
 has said or done anything you are finished with him, you would
 like him to go away, for in his atmosphere he is creating a sound;
 a sound is going on which is disagreeable.  There is another person
 with whom you feel sympathy, to whom you feel drawn, whose
friendship you value, whose presence you long for; harmony
is continually created through him.  That is sound too.

If that is true then it is not only the external signs, but also the
inner condition which is audible and visible.  Though not visible
to the eyes and not audible to the ears, yet it is audible and
visible in the soul.  We say: "I feel his vibrations.  I feel the person's
presence.  I feel sympathy, or antipathy towards that person."
There is a feeling, and a person creates a feeling without having
said anything or done anything.  What you are speaks louder than
what you say.  "It is life itself which has its tone, its color, its vibration.
It speaks aloud."

Hazrat Inayat Khan
Vol. 2, The Mysticism of Sound and Music
7. The Spiritual Significance of Color and Sound

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"The Companion" - a meandering...

"The Companion" is unidentifiable, nameless,
identity-less - and - indwells us.
"The Companion" is a felt sense of Presence within;
beyond all concepts of "God", religion, deity, or
enlightenment...

"The Companion cannot be reduced to a name, or
label - it's beyond that...
You can't wrap it, or trap it, in a conceptual framework.
It's beyond concept...

"The Companion" is a felt resonance...
that helps align us with the internal frequency of
our Essence, our Being, our Soul -
even when we don't recognize it.

It's what attunes us to the Essence of our Being -
inexplicably...

"The Companion" is always within us;
noticed as an inner stillness
when we pay attention to it.
It's been there all along - comforting.

We just haven't been aware...

~

Companion from the Unseen
Mysterious Friend of the Heart
You comfort me, and sustain me
and free me from my darkest night.

Mystic Meandering

Sept. 28, 2022

Written after a conversation with my husband
about something we were both experiencing back
in Sept - and we called it "The Companion" to give
a sense of what if feels like within - but which is
beyond even that description...

~

Photo - Northern Lights from a Calendar 

 

Courage - Fra Giovanni

[.....] The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet
within our reach, is joy.  There is radiance in darkness, could
we but see.  And to see we have only to look...

Life is a generous giver.  But we, judging its gifts by their
covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard.  Remove
the covering, and you find beneath it a living splendor, woven
of love by wisdom...

Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings
it to you.  Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, the gift
is there and the wonder of an overwhelming presence.  Your
joys too, be not content with them as joys.  They, too, conceal
divine gifts.

Life is full of beauty beneath its covering, you will find earth
but cloaks your heaven.  Courage then to claim it.  But courage
you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,
wending through unknown country home.

Fra Giovanni
1513

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

"We're just walking each other home."

Ram Dass

~

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....

 

Epiphany - 2013

It seems that my "spiritual path" has been laced with small
"epiphanies" and "divine flashes" of awareness, and "mini
awakenings" over the years.  I had one of those moments
back in 2013 when standing in my backyard.  I had stepped
outside to be in nature for a while, connecting with the stillness
and silence - taking it all in - noticing and feeling the connection.
I was in the process of taking some pictures of the shadows 
that the late afternoon sun in November was making on the fence,
when suddenly the words: "There is nothing but 'God'" ran
unbidden and unexpectedly through the silence of my being.
Say what!  There was an immediate sense of profound peace,
contentment, and joy in my heart.  I even started to giggle to
myself.  But I was also completely shocked by the word - 
"God" - and my very tangible felt experience of it.

I had not used the "God" language in years, after leaving the
religion of my childhood some 26 years before this, as it holds
imagery of my Christian upbringing of a person in the clouds
with white beard, meting out judgment.  It has so many old
paradigms, somewhat fundamentalist "religious" connotations
from my past, which made it all the more surprising that this
was the word that floated through.  If the inner "voice" had said:
 "All there is, is "Awareness," or "Consciousness, " or "Pure Being,"
 I would have gone, of course! - as those are the words that I often

use, abstract as they are. I also have used words like Buddha Nature,
The Divine,The Self, Brahman, The Ineffable, The Eternal, or
The Infinite. But I was jolted awake by the clear use of the word
"God." As this phrase ran through me I had the image of a deep
golden light, like a sunset, that ran across the screen of my mind,
as if to show me the depth and vastness of the word.  As it wasn't
 the persona "God" image of my childhood.  No, it was an
 incomprehensible sense of vast, expansive, all-inclusive, infinite,
 ubiquitous, Alive Presence, with which I felt an immediate sense of
  inherent communion - not one which needed to be sought after,
 but that was already actively happening...  And with that
realization came profound sense of Grace...

It was also realized that it doesn't matter if there is a sense of
a "me" or "no-me"; if one "concentrates" or not, or meditates,
or not.  It is inconsequential.  It was just realized that all there is,
is Infinite Existence that just IS - no matter what name or
qualities we give It...  or how we discover it for ourselves.

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
2013

~

Art: Mystic Meandering
Ethereal Vortex
Done with fingers and Craypas oils
2010

 

What I Must Tell Myself - David Whyte

[.....]

I have only this breath
and this presence
for my wings
and they carry me
in my body
whatever I do
from one hushed moment
to another.

I know my innocence
and I know my unknowing
but for all my successes
I go through life
like a blind child
who cannot see,
arms outstretched
trying to put together
a world.

[.....]

Watching the geese
go south I find
that
even in silence
and
even in my home
alone
without a thought
or a movement
I am part
of a great migration
that will take me to another place.

[.....]

When one things dies all things
die together, and must live again
in a different way,
when one thing
is missing everything is missing,
and must be found again
in a new whole
and everything wants to be complete,
everything wants to go home
and the geese travelling south
are like the shadow of my breath
flying into the darkness
on great heart-beats
to an unknown land where I belong.

David Whyte
Excerpts from - "What I Must Tell Myself"
From: The House of Belonging

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Essence of who you are simply exists - Rosacker

The body is a bio-organic sensing vehicle that *you*
are experiencing. It's designed to feel feelings and
have thoughts and experience emotions and have
experiences; all of which are temporary.

Everything in the physical dimension has a 
beginning, a duration, and a completion.

It is temporary...

The Essence of Being is not temporary...

There is This that you are,
that is non-physical, that remains as it is
unaltered and unharmed;
will always be eternal existing Presence.

The Essence of who you are simply exists...

You have always been This -
the continuum of existence is you,
not limited to a body.

Excerpts from "Living Practice"
a guided meditation
by Mitch Rosacker
of Self Discovery Studio

~

Photo Mystic Meandering

 

"Shadow Love"...

 Don't be fooled by the magician's love -
a shadow love that uses love to manipulate and control.

Your responsibility is to be real, authentic -
maintaining integrity -
unshattered by feigned affection...

There is great healing in this.

Don't allow love to be a pawn, manipulated
by deluded hearts of
misdirected energies and perceptions.

Don't aspire to love - but aspire to be real.

When love is just a covering,
a pretense, it dissipates.
Let love's shadow dissipate to reveal
what's beyond...

There is something beyond "love"
as we define love.

It is Presence...

Being genuinely present from
the Core of your Being...

Love is that Presence - loving us...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2004

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Your Outlook Matters - John O'Donohue

Sometimes when we look out, the world seems dark.
War, violence, hunger and misery seem to abound.
This makes us anxious...  What can I do in my private little
corner of life that could have an effect on world events?
Believing ourselves to be helpless, we hand over our
power to forces and systems outside us that then act in
our names; they go on to put their beliefs into action; and
ironically their actions are often sinister and destructive.

We live in times when the call to real presence is urgent.
We need to rediscover the careless courage, yet devastating
simplicity of the little boy who, in the middle of the
numbed multitude, in naive Socratic fashion, blurts out:
"But the emperor has no clothes."
When spoken, the truth can bring down citadels of falsity.

The spirit of a time is incredibly subtle [or not], yet a hugely
powerful force.  And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit
of all individuals.  The way you look at things is not actually
a private matter.  Your outlook actually and concretely affects
what goes on.  When you take back your power and choose
to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your
creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of
renewal and encouragement in the world.  In this way, even
in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent
of transformation in a broken, darkened world.

John O'Donohue
From: To Bless the Space Between Us
(written in 2008!)

~

Intuitive Art - Mystic Meandering

If you look closely you can see little "beads"
scattered in the painting and the larger one in the purple heart.
They are Snowflake Obsidian from a bracelet I once wore,
and just happened to find them in a little plastic cup.  I had placed
them in a particular order on the painting that was lying on
my work table, and then accidentally hit the canvas, scattering
the little beads over the black and white swirls of the painting. 
I left them where they were, and glued them to the painting. :)

The properties of Snowflake Obsidian are:
Brings about balance, removes negativity from
 a space or person, and  promotes a sense of calm and
 inner centering - where our real power lies.

Amazing!

"Shadow Love..."

Don't try to cover things over with a pretense of love...
a shadow love.

Just let things be as they are.
Your responsibility is to be real, authentic -
maintaining integrity.
There is great healing in this.
Maintain your integrity through authenticity.

Go beyond the shadow of love...

Don't allow love to be a pawn, manipulated by the
fingers of delusion,
misdirected energies and perceptions.

Don't aspire to love - but aspire to be real.

Be clear and transparent.

When love is just a covering,
an egoic pretense, it dissipates.
Let love dissipate to reveal what's beyond
love's shadow...

Don't be fooled by the magician's love.

There is something beyond "love"
as we define love.
It is Presence.
Being genuinely present from the place
of authenticity...

Love is that Presence living us...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2004

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Sound of The Genuine - Howard Thurman

There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for
the sound of the genuine in yourself.  And if you cannot hear it,
you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching,
and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that
you had never been born...

You are the only you that has ever lived;
your idiom [your unique signature]  is the only idiom of its
kind in all of existence and if you cannot hear the sound of the
genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the
ends of strings that somebody else pulls...

There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of
the genuine in yourself, and sometimes there is so much traffic going
on in your minds, so many different kinds of signals, so many vast
impulses floating through your organism that go back thousands of
generations, long before you were even a thought in the mind of
creation, and you are buffeted by these, and in the midst of all of this
you have got to find out.....Who you are...  How the sound of
the genuine come through to you...

The sound of the genuine is flowing through you.  Don't be deceived
and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams,
your ambitions, so that you don't hear the sound of the genuine in you,
because that is the only true guide that you will ever have, and if you
don't have that you don't have a thing.

You may be famous.  You may be whatever the other ideals are which
are part of this generation, but you know you don't have the foggiest
notion of who you are, where you are going, what you want.
Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in
yourself.

Now there is something in everybody that waits and listens for the
sound of the genuine in other people.  And it is so easy to say that
anybody who looks like him or her, anybody who acts as this person
acts, can't hear any sound of the genuine.  I must wait and listen for
the sound of the genuine in you.  I must wait.  For if I cannot hear it,
then in my scheme of things, you are not even present.  And everybody
wants to feel that everybody else knows that she is there.

There is something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine
in your mother, in your father, in the people you can't stand, and if
you had the power you would wipe them out.  But instinctively you
know that if you wipe them out, you go with them.  So you fight for
your own life by finding some way to get along with them without
killing them.

There is something in you that waits and listens for the sound of the
genuine in other people.  And if you can't hear it, then you are
reduced by that much.  If I were to ask you what is the thing that you
desire most in life, you would say a lot of things off the top of your
 head, most of which you wouldn't believe but you would think that
you were saying the things that I thought you ought to think
 that you should say.

But I think that if you were stripped of whatever there is in you that is
literal and irreducible, and you tried to answer that question, the
answer may be something like this: I want to feel completely
vulnerable, completely naked, completely exposed and absolutely
 secure... [i.e. to be my Authentic Self].

This is what you look for in your children [if] you have them, this is
what you look for in your husband if you get one.  That I can run the
risk of radical exposure and know that the eye that beholds my
vulnerability will not step on me.  That I can feel secure in my
 awareness of the active presence of my own [uniqueness].

So as I live my life then, this is what I am trying to fulfill.  It doesn't
matter whether I become a doctor, lawyer, housewife.  I'm secure
because I hear the sound of the genuine in myself and having learned
to listen to that, I can become quiet enough, still enough, to hear the
sound of the genuine in you.

Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if I hear the sound
of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come
up in you.  So that when I look at myself through your eyes having
made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall
that separates and divides will disappear and we will become as one,
because the sound of the genuine makes the same music.

Howard Thurman

from a 1980 commencement speech at Spelman College

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

"Don't ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come
alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people
who have come alive..."

Howard Thurman

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
The inside of a large earthenware pot
digitally colored...

Recognize Your Eternal Self - Mooji

The mind fears...
What is the message in fear?
Find the message in fear...

Fear empties itself as soon as there is revelation...

YOU (theTrue Self) are before the movement
of fear that arises...

Realize your Self that is before time,
before phenomenon...

Wake up to the recognition of your Eternal Self.
[That is] the Awareness in which fear occurs.

Just keep quiet...

Don't identify with the reactions and interactions,
just feel your Existence and let the fear burn off...

Identify with the Presence that sees,
and stay with this Presence,
and you'll come to a place of
complete [internal] Stillness...

There is Stillness in that space of fear...

When fear is met
what expands is a sense of spaciousness...

There is an intuitive sense that you and the
spaciousness of Stillness are one.

There is no separation...

In this place your mind of fear will not have
much power because you're in your Natural State
of Awareness.

Mooji

~

"On acquiring strength of vision she recognizes
the Universe as Her very own Self"

verse 15, The Pratyabhijnahrdayam

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

When I am not present to myself - Thomas Merton

When I am not present to myself,
then I am only aware of that half of me,
that mode of my being which turns outward
to created things.

And then it is possible for me to lose myself among them.
Then I no longer feel the deep secret pull
of the gravitation of love which draws my inward self
toward "God." [The Unmanifest]]

My will and my intelligence lose their command of the
other faculties.
My senses, my imagination, my emotions,
scatter to pursue their various quarries all over the face
of the earth.

Recollection brings them home.
It brings the outward self into line with the inward spirit,
and makes my whole being answer the deep pull of love
that reaches down into the Mystery...

Thomas Merton

from - No Man is an Island

via - The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - by Jacqueline Riman Photographer/Artist

via - No Mind's Land

Stillpoint Presence - John Welwood

If you look directly into the experiencing consciousness itself,
what you find is a silent presence that has no shape, location or
form.  This nameless, formless presence - in, around, behind
and between all our particular thoughts and experiences - is
what the great spiritual traditions regard as our True Nature,
the Essential Self, or Holy Spirit...

Be-ing means resting in the flow of this Presence, which is
awake, open and responsive.  This dynamic fluid openness
provides a direct channel to the heart of Life...

Our [unconditioned nature] lies much deeper than our
conditioned personality and behavior, which are always a
mix of positive and negative tendencies.  It lies in the essential
openness at the core of our nature [Being].
It is the stillpoint Presence.

In turning away from our [essential nature] we throw away our
own jewel-like essence and then express that alienation in
everything we do.  This is the plague that is ravaging humanity.

John Welwood
from: Love and Awakening

John was a Spiritual Psychotherapist
known for integrating Western Psychology
and Eastern Spiritual Wisdom

He passed Jan 17, 2019

~

Photo - Mandala Art
2013

True Emptiness - Dorothy Hunt

True Emptiness - which we could also call formless Spirit -
fills the universe and is filled by the universe.  It contains
everything, yet is not separate from a single moment's arising,
or dissolving.  What I am calling Emptiness is simply empty of
self, and empty of definition.  The word "Emptiness" is not
really it, neither are any of our ideas about it, including the
ones I use to try to point to the Mystery that is Unnamable
and indefinable.  To be emptied of our attachment to
definitions and concepts - especially our self-concepts - is
to be unburdened, whole, fluid and free to truly be.

To be empty means we are open; to be empty means we are
available for whatever or whoever is in front of us; to be
empty means we are not stuck anywhere, but can experience
the fullness and the flow of life unhindered.  Our seeing is
empty until it lands on an object, is it not? Our freedom,
inherent wisdom and selfless love arise right out of
Emptiness...

For a moment, just allow yourself to be the emptiness, open
and without definition, yet intimate with the moment as it is.
You might discover a vast and spacious Presence that feels
more real, more connected, more meaningful and lovingly
your truest Self than anything you could ever imagine.  And
even though the mind cannot say exactly what this is,
something knows; something in you remembers.
And what remembers tenderly holds anything that may arise
to be seen, experienced or liberated...

Dorothy Hunt
Buddhist Teacher

 

Be Still and Know - Pir Elias Amidon

Imagine you are alone...
You feel the stillness inside of things...
There are no sounds, except the almost-never-heard
hush of things being.

You sense the stillness on all sides
and an identical stillness within you.
The voice of your thoughts sounds thin, metallic.

You remember a phrase - "Be still, and know."

You let your body be motionless, quiet.
A quiet body at ease relaxes the persistence of thoughts.
Then you feel the still, empty openness "behind" each of
your senses, the openness in which your senses arise.
You relax into that openness.
This motionless is not definable -
it is not a sensation.  Nevertheless it has an almost
kinesthetic effect on you, as if it is vanishing you,
the receiver, the photographic plate that records your
experience, this "one" becomes transparent.
You relax and let be. Now unbidden comes the stillness
of Presence, the stillness of a clearness that is always here,
behind and within everything.  It is what allows everything
to show up.  It is empty too, not made out of anything, yet
it is awesome and radiant.

It is empty Presence without form,
appearing as all form...
Knowing is not thinking.
It is Presence being present
to Presence.

Be still, do nothing. Let be.
No need to figure anything out.
Relax...

A sense of peacefulness opens in you,
vast and without dimension -
vast, peaceful tranquility without dimension...

...and you remember the Real...

Pir Elias Amidon
A Sufi
From Free Medicine

~

Photo - The Lone Skier
 taken by my brother...
Sunday River Ski Resort
Bethel, ME
early morning

The Sky Remained Blue - Richard Wehrman

He saw there was nothing to
do with the blue sky, no act to
perform with the leaves speaking
in the high branches, nowhere
to take the fallen leaves curled
into brown upon the dry grass;
they as well needing nothing from
him, other than his presence,
his being, which was not his
to take away, to withhold, to
give to some other.  They were
each the all of it, arising wherever
arising occurred; they filled the
silence with their being silence,
his silence and theirs was the
same.  The dancing sunlight,
the sounds of men making and
doing in the world - these also
were the silence sounding itself,
calling to him in his semi-separation,
whispering the right way, the way
to slide in to that which was out,
to enfold them all and to be
enfolded, to holds hands all the
way back to the beginning, and
ahead to the infinite yet-to-be,
intimately each the all.  And
the sky remained blue, and the
birds called, as he, and all the
leaves above him, listened.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here
Original title: He Listened

"The Silence" Calls

"The Great Silence" calls to me again,
pulling me out of the mental chaos of the world trance.
The familiar Presence of the Unamable wafts over
my Heart like a gentle breeze -
opening the space,
unlocking the doorway to deeper Stillness of Being,
pulling me inward to a deeper Silence...

A strange peace overtakes me.  Ananda?

I settle within, floating
through the day, unperturbed;
acutely aware of the Presence of "The Silence"
within my Heart; the healing balm for a troubled soul.

I have not "chosen" this,
this "pulling" into the Great Silence.
It came unbidden...

pulling me into Its pure Stillness of Being,
wrapping Its invisible, gentle, loving hand
around my Heart...

I merely followed the pull...

listening to "the call" more intently...

hearing the clear sound of Silence,
feeling the Purity of Peace,
and the gentle breath of The Beloved...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 1, 2018

~

If we can hear Life,
we can hear Silence
because the intensity
of this pure energy
manifests itself through
the sound of existence.

Yolande Duran

~

picture of a Blue Castle

the Interior Castle :)

Solitude - Fred LaMotte

...fall into the space between thoughts.
This space is Presence.
It is Eternity.
It is the Self.

It is in solitude that love becomes
self-luminous, omnipresent.
Solitude is our "refresh" button.
Solitude refreshes our sanity.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance