"The Cave"...

Entering "The Cave"

the place of deep inner Silence and stillness...

Relaxing...

Listening deeply for the Inner Voice.
Following its sound.
Finding its Rhythm in the fluid, instinctive
inner River...

It is the space of The Sacred...

This aware, awake space is curious and unafraid,
wants to engage, to see, to know,
to experience ~

...and be experienced...

This Space is deeply compassionate,
deeply open,

...and is waiting to be known...

Pure Awareness
flows through here ~

the life blood of The Sacred.
It flows around the obstacles of my mind,
and moves toward every disturbance,
filling every mind-made crack and crevice,
wanting to meet, soothe, comfort, and embrace.

In "The Cave"
there is only patience, listening
and deep rest...

It is a gentle refuge
that feels like Home...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 2010

Personal Note:  It's been a long time since I've
entered "The Cave."  I've missed it...

~

Photo - Art - Mystic Meandering
Craypas oils with fingers

 

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

 

Turn Inward...

Turn...

inward,

toward "The Silence;"
The Light in your Heart;
the space of Pure Awareness...

Turn from the voices of an unconscious world;
the voices of confusion, hatred, and ignorance;
the ones who distract you from *knowing*
the Truth of who you are...

~ Turn ~

Turn and Listen

in the deep Silence,
in the chalice of the Heart,
until you hear what needs to be heard...

Turn inward from the stimulation of empty words
being "sold" to the masses with the false delusions
of the Real, selling you their "frameworks" of reality,
leaving you empty...

Come - Sit in The Silence...

Sit in solitude...

Silently listening within...

Thrive in The Silence
of your own Being,
that waits for you to
Turn...

Mystic Meandering
April 2020

~

"There is a huge silence inside each of us 

that beckons us into itself, and the recovery 

of our own silence can begin to teach us 

the language of heaven." 

 Meister Eckhart

~~

Photo - the 2011 Full Moon through a skylight...
What captured my attention was the reflection of
what appears to be an "inner window" or door.
You can see the square-like image to the right of
the ball of light (moon).  In a sense it is what this
poem is about - turning inward through the inner
window/door, and meeting the Spaciousness that
 is always there...

Forest Wisdom - The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

One of the great discoveries of the Upanishads is The Self,
which is identical in all of us, the Life of all that lives.
Whenever we love we are really responding to The Self
within that person.  If we discover The Self in our own
consciousness, there will be no more [separateness].
This is the underlying theme of all mysticism.
Therefore, meditate on The Self - realize this
underlying Reality.

All existence - everything in the phenomenal world -
is "woven" in the Imperishable [The Self]...

From the introduction to The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
by Michael N. Nagler

~

The Self indeed is the light of man...

The Self, pure awareness, shines as the light within the heart,
surrounded by the senses...

When The Self takes on the body, [it] seems to assume
the body's frailties and limitations; but when it sheds
the body at the time of death, The Self leaves all these
behind.

...in sleep, the shining Self keeps the body alive
with the vital force of prana...

The Self is indeed Brahman [God],
but through ignorance people identify it
with the intellect, mind, senses, passions,
and the elements of earth.

...The Self freed from the body, merges in Brahman,
infinite life, eternal light.

Those who realize The Self enter into Peace...

Excerpts from The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
From - The Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran

Open to the Dark - Fred LaMotte

We don't need to construct a higher self or a happy face that
denies our pain, our world-weary anger, the devastating loss
we may feel this very moment.  We just need to open.

Open to the dark without resistance, breathing every chaffing
grain of sand into the softness of your heart.  Embrace each
jagged edge and splinter of the world.  Open down deep
to the core...

Unconditional vulnerability is invincible strength.  When we
touch our core, the dark broken flower that seemed so
heavy with the toxins of human fragmentation suddenly
blossoms into fragrant wholeness.  Why?
Because we no longer identify with the content of our
awareness, but Awareness itself.

Beneath the fleeting sensations of the world - some pleasant,
some painful - is the continuum of awakening, the clear mirror
underlying its reflections.  Whether the image is terrible or
sublime (or both?), the nature of the mirror never changes:
bottomless clarity, immaculate stillness.

Awakening is not a miracle.  Wide-open awareness requires
no belief, no transformation, no journey.  Yet this mirror
drowns every fleeting shape in the ocean of transparency
and compassion.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Solitude and the Consensus Trance - Ivan Granger

The idea of retreating into the desert or the forest always had a
romantic appeal to me, especially as a young man.

Thoreau's Walden was a close companion, and I regularly
reread his lines on living the essential life.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential acts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life...

Such a person experiences an intense need to silence the mind,
to settle the heart, and to sweep life clean of everything
unnecessary in order to feel that pulse that proves the living
presence beneath the skin of existence.

To accomplish this.....we want to retreat from the world.  But
what do we mean by "the world"?  We can loosely say it is
society, but that is too simplistic.  The world we are trying to
withdraw from is more of an idea of reality.  By withdrawing,
we are attempting to separate from the consensus trance.

It is the shared trance that we call the world, which [spiritual]
seekers instinctively withdraw from in order to see truly [clearly],
free from the pressures of society to remain within a limited
bandwidth of awareness.  When done with balance, steadiness,
and reverence, such withdrawal from the common bubble of
presumed reality can lead to surprising clarity, opening and bliss.

In the struggle to free oneself from the gravitational pull of
consensus reality, [we need to be careful that] we haven't
divided reality between what is sacred or true from the
mundane and illusory; be careful that we do not [exclude]
the vision of an undivided Whole.

The instinct to separate oneself in order to discover an
awareness that is pure and essential - whether through
literal retreat or some form of internal solitude - can be
enormously helpful along the spiritual journey; no longer
feeling trapped by [the trance's] gravitational pull and
artificial boundaries.

We come to recognize that the constricted space we know
as "the world" is not separate from the wider reality or
in opposition to it.
The Eternal is present in it all.

Ivan Granger
Part of a commentary written on a poem
from: The Dance of Bliss

An inspiring collection of poems from poets
and mystics from many traditions, accompanied
by Ivan's reflective commentaries.

The Hush of "The Mystery"

The Hushhhh of "The Mystery"
silently moves through time and form...
Life living ItSelf...

Can you feel it? -
this hush of Silence that moves through you,
even when you are not trying to...

It often comes in sudden,
unexpected
breezes of awareness,
wafting through your being -
in and out of your noticing,
but never really gone ~

It waits for you - to stop - and listen -

to sense Its Presence...

It invites you - to enter
the cosmic seduction of
Its Love,
to follow Its Silence,
more deeply,
into the cavern
of Its Heart
that awaits you
in the depths
of Its repose.

Succumb
to what awaits you
in
The Silence of "The Mystery" ~

Love's Illumination

_/\_

Mystic Meandering

2013

~

I use the term "The Mystery" here,
but one can call it" The Infinite, the Unknown,
the Ineffable, Consciousness, Pure Awareness,
The Unamable, The Beloved, and of course,
God...

~

"The Mystery" is Life ItSelf, ever unfolding,
ever revealing ItSelf. We are always in a state of
discovering "The Mystery" and what IT reveals to us -
ongoingly.  What IT offers each of us is unique,
yet universal; speaking directly to our Hearts...

When I speak of "The Mystery"
it is always from my own *experiences* of it,
for I am acutely aware that I *know* nothing
*about* "The Mystery", only how "The Mystery"
reveals ItSelf to me...

Namaste

~

Photo - A glass sphere in glass floral pebbles
back lit from underneath

The "Infinite In-Between"

Art by Mitra Banejad

Cradled in the "Infinite In-Between",
like the space between words, or
the breathless pause between thoughts,
that space of Stillness of Being -
Pure Awareness unfolding ItSelf
within me...

I bow before the Mystery,
the limitless, boundaryless Infinite
Beingness that just IS;
that lives ItSelf through/as this body-mind.

I cannot help myself.
I must bow inwardly before the Ineffable
that fills this being...
The pull of "The Beloved" is so strong...

I am prostrate within - unable to move;
not out of some false sense of piety,
or self-negation, or false effort to attain -
but out of sincere and genuine adoration
for that which can't be named or spoken,
but which is Alive within me.
My Heart kicks in recognition...

It is the Nameless that calls to me, from within.
The deep Presence of the pureness of Existence...
The Living, Breathing Being that "I" am;
not the surface persona of thoughts, perceptions,
and feelings...  but the deepest Essence of Being
ItSelf invites me inward to ItSelf...
How could "i" resist...

I willingly succumb, collapsing internally into the Formless,
and find myself fluidly suspended in Its Breath,
Cradled in Its Rhythm,
Dissolved in the purity of Being beyond being;
the quintessential "Infinite In-Between"
of untainted Knowing Awareness.

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 7, 2018

~

Note:  the phrase "Infinite In-Between" just rolled out onto
the page in the Silence the morning that I wrote this - and
then the poem emerged.  I know someone will tell me there is
no "in-between."  I understand.  Sometimes the words just
come as they come, prior to mind or definition.  In this case
there is no particular "meaning" for the phrase "Infinite In-Between"
except my experience of it that morning as described in the poem.
My only "intention" in writing is to inspire, as I am inspired to write.
May it do so, no matter if your mind wants to argue with the words.:)

_/\_

Namaste

~

Top photo of painting via
In The Garden Of the Beloved

Sublime Presence - Chuck Surface

The moment-to-moment Experience of existing,
Imbued with the Ecstasy of Pure Awareness,
Timeless, spaceless, objectless... selfless,
Diminished in its arising in Form,
But unmistakably "of" its Source,
Water from that Ocean, Light from that Sun.

To the Hindus...
The Ananda of Satchitananda.
To the Christians...
The Presence of the Holy Spirit.
To the Sufis...
The Perfume of The Beloved.

A river of Formless Pure Being,
Flowing effortlessly into form,
Into the Wellspring of the Heart,
Overflowing... flooding even the physical form,
With Fullness, Completion, and Bliss.

Not simply peace, happiness, and joy,
On the level of psychology and emotion,
Not simply a profound understanding,
An apperception born of knowledge,
But the Orgasmic Ecstasy of the Soul.

Not constrained to eyes shut "meditation",
But with eyes open,
Here...

In this Dream of manifest existence,
Formlessness Being, Shining into and as Form.

The Beloved, ever within us,
Her Heart beating in ours, as ours.
The Embrace of Shiva and Shakti,
The Ecstasy of their Union.
For others... the touch of God.

Untouched, unmoved, impenetrable,
By the ever-changing circumstances,
Of conditionality,
Even as storms rage,
In the realms of psychology and emotion.

Ever-present, as Unimaginable Grace,
Even in moments
Of deepest Sorrow,
Deepest Despair,
Deepest Fear.

This Ineffably Sublime Presence,
Shining as the true Sat Guru,
The True Murshid,
The True Teacher,
In the Cave of The Heart.

The Comforter,
The Teacher,
The Beloved.

Chuck Surface

Facebook

In The Garden of the Beloved

~

Photo from the Internet

Sunset over a wake on the Ocean..

Exquisite Silence

Sitting in my chair one morning there was a sudden,
spontaneous awareness of exquisite Silence
 permeating the room.

It was a tangible Silence
pulling me inward - inviting me into its intimacy -
absorbing me...

Then mind said:
the faucet in the kitchen sink is broken,
gotta get a new faucet.

Silence silently said;
Follow Me...

Mind said: there are several piles of laundry
needing to be done.

Silence quietly said:
Be absorbed in Me...

Mind said: clean your house!

Silence merely said:
Be undisturbed...

And so I sat - within Exquisite Silence -
undisturbed, absorbed, at peace -

communing with Silence in silence...
sensing it, tasting it, feeling it,
experiencing it...

Delighting in the Silence of Being...
Like the way of "the ancients" - like Rumi
who knew the intimacy of the
Rhythm of Silence in his whirling...

Experiencing Exquisite Silence is
experiencing the presence of Pure Awareness,
the simple Isness of Being - just Being...
which is never disturbed by thought,
while thinking occurs  simultaneously...
It's just Beingness being what It is -
Silence...

touching you,
whispering to your Heart to come and be still -
to listen...

Exquisite Silence is the thread that runs through everything -
infusing all life with its Quietness...

Following the Silence takes you to the Eternal Ocean of Being,
where Silence continuously rolls in upon ItSelf,

wave after wave...

What ecstasy to be absorbed in Exquisite Silence...

I didn't want to move from my chair,
but to move only as Silence moved me...

Everything else can wait...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Sept. 2012

Leaving The Shores of Belief - Mark McCloskey

Warning: Some may find this post controversial - depending on
your beliefs...

To leave the safe shores of where we think we are and venture into
the wide expanse of the sea of silent awareness itself is a scary
 proposition.  The abyss of eternity is too vast, too unknown, too big
 for many of us.  Yet, leave the shores of tradition, familiarity and belief,
 is what we must eventually do if we want to be totally free...

To allow for the realization of Pure Silence, the awareness of now,
the truth as it is, you must have a fresh unencumbered mind. 
This means not only surrendering the surface clutter or worries, 
anxieties, nostalgia, guilt, desires and fantasies, but you must abandon
 all your traditional beliefs, your concepts of religion, faith, hope
 and especially of God itself [as we have been taught to perceive "God." 
I have redefined "God" for myself many times.]
Remember you are realizing that which is eternal and present now,
 that which is beyond concept, beyond fabric.  We are looking
 together to see what not only holds the fabric of existence together,
but what allows the seams and stitches to be, what allows
 their very patterns.

For most of western humanity, God is merely a concept, a theology,
 an ideal or some super Being, someone to be placated, to be feared,
 to be worshiped, to be prayed to.  .....but to limit that which is infinite
Love itself to some vestigial object, to a being, a person,  someone or
thing we can name, provoke, control, possess is absolute silliness. 
That which encompasses all being is
Pure Silence.

That which is religion is merely human, words or thoughts about that
 which is beyond word, thought and worship.  Following a religious
 tradition, what is it that we are doing?  It seems to me that we are
 merely following somebody else's insights, whether that somebody
 is called Jesus, Buddha or Krishna or Mohammed.  All of these
 great men..... are pointing to something beyond themselves,
to something always here and something that is not philosophical
 or theological, to that which is within all, sustains all and is larger
 than all and that which is experienced by all.

To realize Pure Silence, you must abandon all thoughts [?],
even the beliefs that you have cherished forever.  Your beliefs are
 merely thoughts and what's more they originally were someone else's
 before they became your own.  To see or know or realize that which is
 infinity itself, we must come absolutely naked.  And in that complete,
destitute and utter nakedness, perhaps we may come to a simple
 glimmer of that which is, that which is you, that which cannot
be named  or sublimated into a teaching, or anything else...

This is a difficult thing to see because we believe in a thing called faith
 and belief and tradition.  We have been told by parents, friends,
churches,temples what the truth is.  But I offer you, very humbly,
 that truth cannot be contained by anyone, any thing,
any tradition, any belief. Pure Silence contains all of them...

If you can realize that, you will taste.....the essence of what every god,
every sage, messiah, prophet, teacher, poet, musician and scripture
 has been pointing to.  You will taste the freedom that you already are.
And no one, no authority, no system can challenge that
or take that away from you.
Pure Silence is a gift to you.

YOU are that which is eternal, infinite and love itself.
Just breathe in the gentle Silence...

http://www.puresilence.org/index.htm

~

NOTE:  brackets in text are mine

Personally I don't see it as an either/or issue.  It's not that dogmatic,
but is more a natural process, where "belief" is gradually peeled
away by grace, leaving the Ineffable...  As we move closer and closer
to the Pure Silence within, there is sometimes just a "letting go" or
dropping away of old beliefs and ideas about the way we *thought*
things were...
Whether there is a person "God" or not, I cannot say, although my
beliefs *about* God have changed, leaving the childhood images
of God and the religion of my childhood many years ago.  And yet,
there *is* something experienced beyond any belief or thought or
idea; perhaps it is the Pure Silence of Existence that he speaks of,
 or perhaps there is just a Great Mystery, called by many names...

Namaste

_/\_

Bare Awareness - Danna Faulds

Bare awareness
awake to its
true nature -
limitless and
vast, nothing to
grasp, no masks
or name tag.

What am I beyond
the answers of the
mind, outside
anything I can
find by seeking?

What is true
right now, and
what is transitory?

The witness watches
thoughts spin their
convincing stories
out of thin air and
doesn't care how
often I forget
that freedom is
the truth of being,
and no part of truth
is ever separate
from what is.

Danna Faulds
from: Limitless: 2009

~

Golden Sunset

Limitless Awareness - The Tibetan Book of the Dead

You must be ready to accept the possibility that there is a limitless
range of awareness for which we now have no words; that
awareness can expand beyond range of your ego, your self,
your familiar identity, beyond everything you have learned,
beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the differences
which usually separate people from each other and from the
world around them.

Walter Evans-Wentz
The Tibetan Book of the Dead

~

It's not so much that we don't have a self, rather it's that
the self we do have is not a thing.  It is an impermanent,
fluctuating activity, a process not a particle, a verb not a noun.

Shinzen Young

The Science of Enlightenment:
How Meditation Works


via - Love Is A Place

Perfect Unfolding - David Carse

The ultimate understanding is a seeing
and a knowing rather than a comprehending.
And it does satisfy all questions,
though not answer them.
Answers become as irrelevant
as the questions themselves;
both cease in the seeing.

Do not judge the questioning or the longing,
the seeking or the sadness,
the impatience or the resistance,
the opening or the letting go.
It is all the perfect unfolding as it is;
only watch it and know you are not that.

You are Loving Awareness in which all this arises.
You are Quiet Compassionate Space in which the life
that you think of as 'yourself' unfolds.

The Still Expanse of Acceptance between the thoughts
is All That Is.
That is What You Are.
Let the Love that is this Stillness that You Are
Embrace you,
Overcome you.

David Carse
from - Perfect Brilliant Stillness
no longer in print


Via - No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Folds in a curtain
photo turned on its side

Wonderment - Naomi Stone

When we truly arrive in that vast space
of who we are in purity of being
as we are created to be,

we are the living beauty of an expanding sanctuary,
we are life aware of itself
fluid
changing,
we are the flow of a shifting

transparency

of spirit

the bliss of an unseen kiss

felt in the

rising mist of existence
dissolving in the pure eternal joy
of this eternal moment
of
a thrilling transforming
ever changing
wonder...

Naomi Stone

~

Personal note: My own experience is that
"arriving" simply means we come to see/
recognize the Pure Beingness that we are.
We are, as Naomi says, "Life aware of itself."

~

Photo - Fat globules in a pan of water,
digitally altered :)

Paradox - Danna Faulds

Neti-Neti, translates as 'not this, not this.' The basis of classical
yoga, neti-neti is the way of negation.  It is a path that reveals
who I really am by cutting away all the things I am not.  I am not
this body or this migraine pain.  I am not my thoughts, even when
the inner voices grow so loud they drown out everything else.
I am not my personal stories or opinions.  I am not the fear that
threatens to swallow me, not my wisest and most insightful
writing, or even the most profound 'aha' to come out of my
spiritual practice.

The only problem is that after walking the path of neti-neti
for a time, I chafe against saying 'no' to everything.  At my
core there is a 'yes' that must be embodied and expressed...

Asmi-Asmi is the flip side of neti-neti.  Translated as 'this too,
this too', asmi-asmi is a practice that comes from tantra - the
path of immanence.  Identifying with the whole, I find spirit,
truth, and oneness everywhere...  I am this aging body on
its slow march toward death.  I am everything my senses can
experience and more. I am this mind and its dramatic machinations.
I am the yearnings of the heart, and the full spectrum of feelings,
and the peace that passes understanding.  I am the worst of my
poems, and the best.  I am the infinite reach of nature, sky and
stars.  The only word that matters on this path is 'Yes.'  I include,
include, include until the individual 'me' blips out, leaving
only unity.

My personal preference has always been for sensory experience,
embodiment, and inclusion.  For that reason, I resisted the practice
of neti-neti because it felt dry and life-denying.  I wasn't interested
in transcendence if it came at the expense of being fully alive in
my body and actively engaged in life.  Fortunately, I overcame
my resistance and discovered that when I really focused on bare
awareness, on what was not thought, not sensation, not my
personal accumulation of conditioning and beliefs, I landed in
a very spacious place of pure potential.

Exploring that potential, it occurred to me that practicing at
either end of the spectrum - neti-neti or asmi-asmi  - might
result in the same experience.  Inquiring deeper, I asked myself
if ultimate negation and absolute inclusion could exist
simultaneously.  'That's impossible', my rational mind answered.
'It's happening', my experience whispered softly in my ear.
In that moment, I fell into a profound inner silence - the silence
that flashes into existence when opposites unite.  Outside of time,
I disappeared into the limitless.

Perhaps I can best describe my current practice as 'both/and.'
Instead of focusing only on neti-neti, or giving myself entirely
over to the practice of asmi-asmi, I am plumbing the depths
of paradox where 'no' and 'yes' coexist.

In the light and laughing space
where Not-This and All-This
are both true, the whirl of
thought dissolves. The mind
drowns in paradox.  Awareness
neither reaches out, nor reaches in,
and times hangs suspended.

Danna Faulds
Excerpt from the introduction to her book
Limitless - 2009

Riding A Pale Horse...

A Pale Horse of an unpredictable destiny
arrived at my door recently;
an intense illness,
causing the body to feel disembodied
and disconnected from Source...

It invited me to ride...

I was anxious, unsure of where it would take me.
But I had no choice,
I had to ride;
to ride the illness out - half willingly, half resisting.

Strangely, all awareness of "Presence" vanished.
as if I had been cowled to the Truth
that I had "known" for so long -
or thought I knew -
that ultimately we are Pure Awareness...
But "I" was caught in the body-mechanism
and its struggle...

Frightened

I rode - as if in a weird dream,
through a strange land of un-awareness,
while still *trying* to be aware
of "The Truths"
that I had known...

But they eluded my senses, my awareness, my mind -
even my Heart...

Confused

I rode for 3 weeks - empty,
until, fatigued,
I faintly felt the exuberance and euphoria of Life
bubble up from within...
The veil of un-awareness had briefly lifted...
and with it, the shattering of all certainties
I once held to be true;
a burning away of the dross
in the alchemy of fever...

The fever broke
and I relaxed...

into Gratitude...

just Gratitude...

- and breathed...

Sometimes that's all you can do...

fall into Gratitude and Breathe...

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
January 27, 2017

Utter Stillness...

Utter Stillness,
within and without,
comforts, nurtures,
claims me...

Sweet repose in this Stillness...
beyond noise,
beyond feeling,
beyond thought,
beyond story.

Utter Stillness does not anticipate,
does not seek.
It just IS...
awareing,
seeing,
knowing.

To *reside* in Utter Stillness
is pure Being,
pure Awareness,
pure Life...

From the Spaciousness of Utter Stillness
life is just experienced...

no conclusions,
no interpretations,
no judgments,
no reactions,
no labels...

Just Life being lived...

Utter Stillness...

Sweet Refuge...

Mystic Meandering
2010

Ebb and Flow - Ivan Granger

When the face of Ever-Presence is known,
all concreteness spontaneously fades away...
Kelsang Gyatso

The vivid appearance of the external world can become a trap
for the distracted mind.  We can get caught in constant reaction,
running after pleasure, running from pain.

In the truly natural state, awareness is at rest, perceiving without
tension, encountering reality without an overlay of stories,
without attraction or repulsion.
In that Pure Awareness, life becomes a flow of events and
interactions, not pushed by the self-will of likes and dislikes.

We are simply as we are...
Events simply unfold...

...life experience; its waning and waxing is simply its natural flow.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~*~

Our lives are like rivers.
Eventually they go where they must,
not where we want
them to...

From the movie - "Empire Falls"

Dissolving Conflict - Mark Nepo & Fred La Motte

When you dare to hear my fear in the recesses of your heart,

you recognize it as your secret that you thought no one else knew.

And that unexpected wholeness - that moment of unity
is.....the mysterious oneness of spirit.

Everything - you and I and the people we mistrust
and even the things we fear -
everything at heart follows the same beat of life
pulsing beneath all the distractions and preferences
we can create.

We must put down the burdens that we carry...
What we hold onto keeps us from being
fully aware of our Sacred Beingness...

Enter through the door of your worries, anxieties, and fears...

We each have an unencumbered spot free of fear,
an umbilical spot of grace.
To know this spot of Inwardness
is to know who you are - not by
surface markers of identity -
but by feeling the Infinite...

This is the only thing worth teaching:
how to uncover that original spot
and how to live there...

Allowing the current of another's Inwardness to connect
with your own is the beginning
of intimacy...

...we become each other,
...we all feel the same agony,
...we all see the same wonder,
though we all speak in
a different voice

Mark Nepo
Excerpts from: The Book of Awakening

I merely put them together into this format

~*~

You are space itself,
the ever-expanding infinity of
pure awareness,
where all points of view dance and dissolve
into silence...
When we realize we are that space
a deep Listening will pervade every atom,
and conflict will evaporate into compassion...

Fred La Motte
Uradiance

~*~

Your most secret wound is the doorway...

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana