Love Letter to my Body...

Dear Body,

After 75 years I am aware of your fragility and impermanence,
and yet you still struggle to remain -
as difficult as that has become...

I know this life experience has been very hard for you...
I will do my best to take care of you - to comfort you...
Body, just rest now; allow yourself to sink down
and relax - sleep...

You don't have to keep it all together...

(deep breath and body releases its tensions)

I know you suffer - and I'm sorry for
how you labor and struggle.

You have done well to house me here with all that
you have been through - and I have taken you for
granted.

I will help you as much as I can while you still continue
to support me here...

I am sad that you are declining - my companion.

I don't know how much longer you can sustain me here.
I am sorry that I haven't always treated you well;
not eating the right foods; indulging in what *tastes* good
to the palate - and gave me comfort.

Needing care for yourself - you help me to caregive another -
draining your life energy...
But you just keep going as best you can...

I will give you rest and comfort now...
In the elder years...

With deep gratitude...

Your Indweller...

Mystic Meandering
Jan 25, 2025

~

Photo - moi 
1949

 

Blessings In the Chaos - Jan Richardson

 

To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be
 a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,

that go with you
even to the 
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you

cease.
Let what divides you
cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes
and demeans,
and let depart
all that keeps you
in its cage.

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.

Jan Richardson

The human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness,
a place where everything comes together,
where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform
into vision, where damage will be made whole,
where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise,
where the travails of a life's journey will enjoy a homecoming.
To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a
person now.

Jan Richardson

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
Medieval Mandala

Rest in the Breath - David Whyte

Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and
how we love to be.  To rest is to give up on the already
exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its
endless outward need to reward itself through established goals.
To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that
there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to
put it right; to rest is to fall back literally and figuratively from
outer targets, and shift.....to an inner state of natural exchange.

The template of natural exchange is the breath, the autonomic
giving and receiving that forms the basis and the measure of
life itself.  We are rested when we are living [that] exchange...

In rest is the sense of stopping, of giving up on what we've been
doing or how we have been being.  It is the sense of slowly coming
home...

Deep in the primal exchange of the breath, is the give and take,
the blessing and the being blessed and the ability to delight
in both.  In rest there is a sense of presence, a delight in and
anticipation of the world and all of its forms [in which]
receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.

A deep experience of rest is a perspective from which we are
able to perceive the outer specific forms of our work [and life]
and our relationships whilst being nourished by the shared
foundational gift of the breath itself.

Rested, we are ready for the world,
but not held hostage by it...

David Whyte

Excerpts from a writing called "Rest"
From the book: CONSOLATIONS

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Embrace The Day...

Rest, Dear Heart, Rest...

Embrace the day with Rest,
with clarity, with ease of mind...

Feel the warm, fluid rhythm
of Life around you;
upholding you,

carrying you
through the day,
landing you safely
on evening's shore,
through the twilight
and into the night...
And out of the darkness
a shining light...

Rest, Dear Heart, Rest...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 29, 2018

~

Photo - Embracing the Day Mandala Art
Mystic Meandering

The Mandala Art was done as part of an "8 Day Challenge"
I did back in 2018
presented by
Donna Iona Drozda

She is currently doing an online series of video presentations called:
Exploring the Creative Energy Levels here.

Reminding me that creativity also brings harmony and balance to
body, mind and soul...

~

"Dance and Endure what comes to meet you on the path."

Donna Iona Drozda

~

"We must be willing to let go of the life we've planed, so as to
have the life that's waiting for us."

Joseph Campbell

 

The Ocean and The Wave - Fred LaMotte

...a wave does not need to go anywhere to merge with the sea.
No distance ever exists between the wave and the water.  At
it's peak, the wave may appear to be an individual, but at its
base, every wave is already the whole ocean.  Therefore, no
energy is required for a wave to return to its resting state. As 

the wave returns, in fact energy increases.  The practice of
meditation is not an effort to rise upward: it is settling down
to rest in the simplest state.

Meditation is not concentration, but de-concentration.
When the wave settles into the sea, it does not become
more concentrated, but gracefully expands into boundlessness.

Returning to the sea, a wave makes a gentle sound, sizzling
cool, fresh over sand.  As mind settles back into Source, there
is a faint whisper: the sound of the finite dissolving into the
Infinite...

Real meditation is not an attempt to rise above the physical
body.  Meditation is listening to what the body actually is:
infinite spiritual energy.  For every photon and atom of the 
body is permeated with the same creative sound - waves merging
with the sea...

The sea whispers in the wave:
so the Almighty whispers in every particle of the body.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance
excerpt from his post:
"What the Ocean Whispered to the Wave"

~

Photo from the Internet

~

Day 4 of "The Pause"

 

Collision - May Sarton

For a long time now, every meeting with another human being
has been a collision. I feel too much, sense too much, am
exhausted by the reverberations after even the simplest
conversation.  But the deep collision is and has been with my
tormenting and tormented self [mind]....
I hope to break through into the rough rocky depths,
to the matrix itself.

May Sarton
from - The Journal of a Solitude

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

It may be silent here, but in the back of my mind is
 a clamor of human voices, too many needs, hopes, fears.
I hardly sit still without being haunted by the "undone."
I often feel exhausted...  How to summon the vitality
needed?  Life requires the power to endure constant adversity.

May Sarton
from - The Journal of a Solitude

~

[It is] never a waste of time to lie down and rest even
for a couple of hours.  It is there that images float up
[insights, awarenesses, creativity]

May Sarton
from - The Journal of a Solitude

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Dance In the Depths - a meandering...

In these turbulent times with its upheaval
on the surface of life,
dive deep...
into the Stillness of Being within,
where nothing is disturbed, nothing is harmed...

Dance in the Depths...

Externally it's all "The Mystery" playing
in the construct of time - the Unmanifest in form.

In the Greater Context in which life takes place,
everything is allowed...

The world will go the way it goes -
life will continue to unfold the way it unfolds -
the light and the dark will continue to dance together
in time-bound reality.

But do not focus only on the chaos;
the mind-created contractions of fear...

Instead...  Turn Within...

Experience the depths of True Stillness,
the Stillness of the Everlasting Deep.
Discover what's beyond the chaos and fear
- what holds the Cosmos together:
the enduring hum of Aliveness within all form...
We are held in that Rhythm of Stillness that
sustains Existence,  that IS Existence.
Rest... 
In the Embrace of That which animates Life...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Nov. 2016

~

Photo from istock.

 

The Rhythm of Rest...

I flow on the swells of the Great Sea.
Out beyond the thought stream,
in the deep calm of the Stillness
rising and falling in the endless, subtle
rhythmic movement beyond time;
a Stillness that ebbs and flows naturally.

Here is the gateway to deep Rest,
an attunement with the deep inner Silence,
where everything falls into
the Rhythm of Rest.

I allow myself to be taken by
"The Rhythm",
suspended in the mystical breath of the Cosmos,
the Silence of pre-existence.

Its Stillness holds me, sustains and supports me -
Is deeply Me...

And I realize everything is suspended in this 
Essential Rhythm of Life.
In some mysterious way,
We breath, and are breathed by
"The Rhythm."

Immersing myself in "The Rhythm"
I deeply Rest
in harmony with the Universe...

Ommmmmm......

Mystic Meandering
2022

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

2018

 

The Comma - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

All afternoon, each time
I think I should hurry,
I pull out a comma,

such humble punctuation,
and I invite it into the moment,
and the comma does

what it always does, which
is to invite a pause, a small pause,
of course, but a pause long enough

to breathe, to notice what else
is happening, a slight
suggestion that right here

is a perfect place to rest,

yes, how funny I never noticed
before the comma itself

looks as if it's bowing, nodding

its small dark head to what is,

encouraging us to find

a brief silence and then,

thus refreshed, go on.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

from All the Honey

Art by Mori Yuzan
(color digitally inverted)

with thanks to The Beauty We Love
for post and picture :)

 

The Solace of Solitude...

My Soul needs the solace of Solitude,
finding Its Rhythm again
in the deep silent space of "Home";
The Sacred Silence within...

The comfort of the deep Silence
brings everything into perspective;
an inner stability...

I breathe into my Soul
and my Soul breathes into me...
a mutual breath...

I fall into the slumber of a deeper
Rhythm of the Sanctuary of the Soul -

and rest...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 25, 2022

~

Photo - Mandala Art
Meditating Monks
Mystic Meandering
2013

 

The Golden Silence...

The Deep Silence calls to her
in the waking moments;
the "remedy" for all that
disturbs, contracts and constricts,
that blinds her from the Way...

It whispers to her:

Loosen the robes of religion you have worn -
that bound you.
Untie the shoes of "spirituality" -
that don't fit now.
Lay down all the "apparel" - the outer garments -
that have burdened you.

Dare to be naked...

Laying in the early morning silence,
she brings her tattered self to the deeper
dimension of the Golden Silence within;
careful not to get lost in the shadowy caverns
of the unconscious mind along the way...

In the space of Deep Silence she hears:

Just be still and wait...
Trust the Flow of Life
Wait for the pieces to fall together.
Observe the metamorphosis
that is taking place inside you
through
your internal "wranglings"
and your unbearable struggles;
like a butterfly trying to break through
its hard chrysalis - wanting to be free...

Be patient - do not resist what is...

It will all be okay - is okay...

Cross the threshold of your troubled mind
and step into the still waters of the Golden Silence within,
your Primordial Home...

Rest here...

Unscathed...

Mystic Meandering
May 31, 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering