Child of the Milky Way - Chet Raymo

I am a child of the Milky Way.  I am made of the dust of stars.
Every atom in my body was forged in a star.  When the
Universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for
the wood and the fish for the pond.  When the first galaxies
fell into luminous clumps. already matter was struggling
toward consciousness.

The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush.  If there is
a voice in Sagittarius, I'd be a fool not to listen.  If "God's"
voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I'll pick up my ears.
If night's faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I'll sit
back on a dark hillside and wait and watch.  A hint here and
a trait there.  Listening and watching.  Waiting, always waiting
for the tingle in the spine.

Chet Raymo
from The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage

with thanks to Cate Kerr
Beyond the Fields We Know

Photo - Cate Kerr

~

How can you explain the mystery of the Inexplicable?
You can only surrender to it...

My "medicine" - my wild comfort -
is the wonderment and splendor
of the Infinite Cosmos...
It soothes my Soul

MM

_/\_

 

Mysterious Interchanges - Victor Hugo

He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring,
comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the
skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of
the constellations, and the invisible splendour of God,
opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the 
Unknown.

In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when flowers
of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center
of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of
the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps
have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something
depart from him, and something descend upon him, mysterious
interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the
Universe.

Victor Hugo
Les Miserables

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Night's Solace - Cheryl Sanders Sardello

We are fortunate to have night's solace in the silence that is
created by the dark.  Here we can lean into the unknown,
setting aside the oppressive weight of our carefully
constructed version of who we think we are.  We can
remember how to see in the dark with our ears,
perceiving the Silence in the holy echoing and resonance,
its calling forth a knowing that is from the Soul. 
The Silence sends us on a different pilgrimage.

Cheryl Sanders Sardello
from - Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Portals to the Soul - Matt Licata

The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go through the dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.

Stanley Kunitz
The Testing Tree

~

As we move through the second half of life, a new voice will
often emerge, pouring out through our longing, our grief, our
anger, and our disappointment.  A figure from deep in the soul.

To hear and respond to the call, we have to slow down and 
listen through the veil, beyond the noise and density of the
collective...

It takes courage to listen to the soul and to take it seriously.
To cultivate a real devotion to the messages it is sending us.
We are called into this devotional place by way of our
dreams, our study and practices, and through prayer, ritual,
dance, art, creativity, and being a parent, a teacher, a lover,
and a friend (and Caregiver).

It can be a lonely journey at times, if there is no one who can
truly understand us.  We turn to look for the Friend though they
are not there.

But the Friend is near, even if unable to be seen.

Holding and tending this aloneness, and the grief that
accompanies it, lies at the very heart of the process of
 death and rebirth, and the truth that all healing is
relational in its essence.

There can be no unity or oneness without there first being
an experience of separation.  Otherwise, union would have no
meaning.  They co-arise together, where a subsequent union
lays the seeds for a more subtle separation, and then a more
subtle union, and on and on.

Separation and multiplicity are just as holy as oneness and
union; they are equally valid emanations of the Beloved.

There is no end to the depths of the human heart.  We don't
wiggle into some sustained transcendent state where we're
"permanently" awakened, gone beyond the reality that the
Beloved will pull the rug out from underneath us, in order
to draw us nearer, and to reveal more of its essence.

In the end, [The Beloved] seems quite uninterested in our
fantasies of permanent transcendence.

Even as we may yearn to rise above our embodied
sensitivities, emotional wounding, and relational trauma,
on the alchemical path they are the prima materia, the
required matter, and portals into the depths of the Soul.

Matt Licata

~

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
2011

 

A Non-Path Path :) - a meandering...

I am feeling the need to settle deeper into the interior, and 
rediscover a sense of the inner Truth of Myself; not by following
a particular external path - but by intuitively listening to the 
Inner Voice; by spending time in Quietude, and "The Silence"
(which I crave, but so easily avoid by getting distracted on
non-essential things.).

"The Quest" - for me then - is to discover the Deeper Reality of

Myself.  I have forgotten how to be ME!  In a sense, what I was
"designed" for; one could say my Soul's "calling"...   Some call it
the Self (or Higher Self), but I get hung up on those words, because
the big "S" Self is not another self hidden somewhere inside us with
a big S on it that we have to "become"/discover.  But it's the discovery
of, a remembering of, having a felt sense of, the authentic, natural
self, beyond mind, beyond religion, beyond "spirituality."  Who are
 we really?   What is the "Deeper Reality"? I thought maybe I knew, 
but I haven't really met Her - yet...  Hopefully I will find the Deep
Quiet of the Heart, and the Illuminating Light of the Soul.

The path of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening"/"Self-Realization",
particularly what is popularly known as "Non-Duality, wasn't
IT for me, with its attraction to the mind and its abstractions and
mind games. It is just another construct, a belief system.  I found
out that the "Emperor has no clothes!  And I'd rather not describe
Truth by a negative - with no-me, no-self, no other, no world - as
Truth  is all inclusive - including duality, me, self, other, humanity,
and the world.

Even if one follows a "spiritual path" (which can be any path), life
will not suddenly become easy or flowing with bliss, although there
may be little epiphanies and "awakenings" here and there. We won't
necessarily lose our personality with its quirks, and become an
emotionless automaton. We won't lose our conditioning, or our 
neuroses.  Our thoughts will not stop, neither will our surface
struggles, or our pain, or our stories.  Walking "a path" doesn't even
guarantee that we will actually *see* life differently, or suddenly
find our "purpose" - as if there is only one.  But no one tells you
this about "the path."  It has to be a self-discovery, even if we have
a "Teacher", a "Path", or use a "Teaching" to help point the way.

It is different for everyone, of course.  I'm only reflecting on my
own experience here...

Years of seeking, realization, recognition, and then forgetting, and
then seeking again, then remembering, and then forgetting again, etc.,
brought me to the realization that discovering (or rediscovering) the
Essence of who I am is, for me, through awareness of and deep
intimacy with "The Silence" within; through continually coming
back to "The Silence of Source" - the space of Stillness, and
innate Wisdom - which of course is wherever we are at the 
moment, not off in the distance somewhere.  It's not a place.
"The path" doesn't *go* anywhere.  There is no reward at the end.
It's an inner pathless path...  And that's my "path" - again :)
rediscovering the inner Silent Truth of Myself, directly;
experiencing the underlying Rhythm of Existence Itself, and
within that the Truth of Myself...

Mystic Meandering
April 2024

~

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road,
and nothing more;
Wanderer, there is no road.
The road is made by walking...

By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path that will
never be trod again...

Wanderer, there is no road -
only wakes upon the sea..."

Antonio Machado

~

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest in peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the [inner] self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then
return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature...

Returning is the motion of the Tao.

Lao Tzu

~~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
taken at the Denver Botanical Gardens

 

This Moment in Time - Jorie Graham

What I tell my students, when they feel singularly unfortunate to
be born in this moment, is this is your moment, the moment your
soul showed up incarnate.  In this world.  It is an astonishing moment
to be alive.  You could have been born into a lull - instead you were
born into a tipping point. It's your one life and you've entered it at
a flexion point - a point when everything you do matters.  How
often in history does a soul get to live in such an era?  Don't waste it.
Show up for it.  With everything you've got.  Some will invent,
some will organize, some will witness, some will grieve, some
will console.  Live this life now.  Even if in fury and grief, live it.

You don't want to die not having lived.  It's incredibly easy to find
a way around experience rather than through it.  But you will have
cheated yourself out of ..... your life.  You are
here now.  Now is the time to live fully, not hide, not escape.

Jorie Graham

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Your "Soul's Task" - Gary Zukov

What does it feel like to remember your soul's task?

When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what you
are doing, when your activities and actions become gratifying
and purposeful, when what you do serves both yourself and
others, when you do not tire within but seek the sweet
satisfaction of your life and your work, you are doing what
you were meant to be doing.  The personality that is
engaged in the work of its soul is buoyant.  It is not burdened
with negativity.  It does not fear.  It experiences purposefulness
and meaning.  It delights in its work and in others.
It is fulfilled and fulfilling.

from: The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukov.

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~*~

The past offers itself up
to feed the soul that seeks fullness [fulfillment]
by continuously reclaiming itself.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

 

A Great Light - Jay Ramsay

I saw a great light come down over London,
And buildings and cars and people were still
They were held wherever they were under the sky's
Clear humming radiance as it descended --
Everywhere, in shops, behind desks and on trains
Everything stopped as the stillness came down
And touched the crown of our heads
As our eyes closed, and the sky filled us
And our minds became the sky --

And everyone, regardless of crime, class or creed
Was touched; as slowly we began to stir
Out of this penetrated light-filled sleep
Dizzily as the hand completed its dialing,
And the train lurched forward
And I saw faces looking at one another questioning,
I saw people meeting eye to eye and standing
Half amazed by each other's presence
I saw their mouths silently shaping the word why
Why didn't we know this? and yet knowing
They already knew, and without words
We all stood searching for the gesture
That would say it --

As the lights went green, we drove on...

Jay Ramsay

from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around
the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology) Edited by
Ivan Granger at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Excerpts from Ivan Granger's Commentary:

.....one of the things I really like about this poem - it can be read
as a collective moment of awe, or of spiritual awakening- or a
city-wide encounter with a UFO... 

  It's not really clear what is happening, just that there is a
 shared moment of stillness and wonderment.  Everyone stops and
 is confronted with a dazzling, otherworldly reality.  What's actually
happening seems less important than the shared experience. 
Not only is this a witnessing of something that transcends the
 day-to-day existence, but there is also a recognition of fundamental
 connection with everyone else.

Then, of course, the lights turn green, and the business of living
continues.  But perhaps those people carry with them just a bit 
more sacred wonder into their daily activities...  and who knows
the many subtle, far-reaching ways it will continue to radiate out
through our lives?  This is how private experiences of transformation -
otherworldly or of the inner world - quietly transform the world.

.....we are visitors here, not permanent residents.  Our time on earth is
limited.  We may not know our departure date... best to stop

 and do what we came here to do. 
Offer a helping hand.  Share a smile. 
Do what the soul always wanted to do.
And discover the secret heart of things.

Ivan Granger

~

Many live challenged lives now...
The greatest gift we can give
each other is our compassion...

MM

~

Photo with thanks to The Beauty We Love

 

Pilgrimage - The Upanishads

Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely
adrift and alone.  From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman,
[the spiritual life principle of the universe, or Soul. or Essence

inherent in the real self of the individual]...  The self-luminous.
abiding point - underlying the whirlpool of transient feelings,
emotions, and delusions...

As the sun lights the world even when clouded over, "the
Immutable" is never seen but is the Seer; it is never heard
but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is
never known but is the Knower.

The Unpanishads

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Take Flight My Soul...

Take flight my Soul -
Be free...

Open to a larger freedom...

You are not bound by the constraints
of life circumstances;
imprisoned, or captive, nor
weighed down.

Choose a greater freedom
and take flight...

Set yourself free -
unfettered, unencumbered -

opening to ecstasy...

Mystic Meandering
April 23, 2023

~

Photo from the Internet

 

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...

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

I fall into sleep, into the deeper
 Rhythm of the Sanctuary of the Soul -

and rest...

Mystic Meandering 
Nov. 25, 2022

~

Photo - Mandala Art
Mystic Meandering
2013

 

 

The Dancing Cry of the Soul - Rumi

Come to me, and I shall dance with you
In the temples, on the beaches, through the crowded streets
Be you man or woman, plant or animal, slave or free
I shall show you the brilliant crystal fires, shining within
I shall show you the beauty deep within your Soul
I shall show you the path beyond Heaven.

Only dance, and your illusions will blow in the wind
Dance, and make joyous the love around you
Dance, and your veils which hide the Light
Shall swirl in a heap at your feet.

Rumi
Excerpt from: "The Dancing Cry of the Soul"

~

Photo from the internet

 

Open the Window to Your Soul...

Open the window to your Soul..

Let your Soul breathe;
enclosed and encrusted too long
in the musty air
of an unlived life...

Listen to the birds calling to you,
just outside the window of your Soul.
Hear the sounds of Nature thriving with Life!
And the silent steps of the neighbor's cat
walking the fence - stopping to peer in at you -
through the window...

Open your eyes to the magic of Life being lived,
just outside the window to your Soul...

Breathe in the Living Cosmos that enfolds you here...
Feel the Soul wind caressing you - vibrating your Heart.
Hear the voice of "The Mystery" whispering -

Come - Play!

Open your window!

Come alive again!

Mystic Meandering
May 6, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Soul Fury - Shams Tabriz

Art by Andrew Ostrovsky

born in Odessa, Ukraine
lives in the U.S.

What is your origin?
The Source?What is spirit?

Spend your life finding out...
other mysteries will come clear.

"God" is depth.  And you, you are also deep.
The same depth is in you.

Don't worry about terminology, pre-existence,
the original face, spirit, soul.

Search within yourself,  The great mystery is there.

Excerpts from the Sayings of Shams Tabriz

from: Soul Fury by Rumi and Shams Tabriz

With thanks to No Minds's Land

 

Say I Am You - Rumi

I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel.
I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branched.
Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.

Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose and nightingale lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift and the falling away.

What is and what is not.
You who know Jelaluddin,

You are the one in all...

Say I am you.

Jelaluddin Rumi
Coleman Barks Translation

~

What hurts the soul?
To live without tasting
the water of its own essence.

Rumi
Coleman Barks Version
from the Mathnawi I

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Tend to Your Soul - Matt Licata

Art by Joe Maccer at Deviant Art

There are times in each of our lives when a chapter comes to
an end, when we find ourselves on the precipice of rebirth
and renewal.  Something has dissolved - the dream of me and
my life and the way it was all supposed to turn out - but it's
not yet clear what's going to arise from the ashes to take its
place.  As disorienting as these times of transition can be, they
are evidence of a sacred process occurring deep in the personal
and collective soul.

The question now for so many of us is: what is it that the soul
wants? Not what I thought I wanted, what I should want, or what
others want for me, but what is calling to me from the depths of
who and what I am, into a life of new vision, purpose and meaning?

As we engage in this holy reassembling, it can be so easy to lose
track of our home base, whether we imagine this center as the
palace of the soul, or the light of the spirit...  The great poets,
alchemists, wayfarers, and mystics have declared that the path is
everywhere, but it can take a slowing down and a cleansing of 
our perceptions for this to become a living reality.

The very foundation of transformation and healing is our capacity
to slow down and bring new levels of awareness to our experience,
as a way to cut through the billions of moments of habitual
consciousness and collective networks of trance. In the Daoist
alchemical text, The Secret of the Golden Flower, we are invited
to "turn the light around," which is an evocative metaphor for
inner work as alchemists of our own lives.

The reality is that most of us were not trained to practice embodied,
compassionate self-attunement and our increasingly electronic,
speedy, and fragmented world does not always provide a sensitive
holding environment in which to be a true friend to ourselves.

The spiritual path is a matter of direct revelation,
of primary first-person experience, and must be lived... 
Contrary to the beliefs of a world steeped in networks of
transgenerational trauma and trance, our unique sensitivities,
vulnerabilities, and eccentricities are not obstacles to our path,
but are the very path itself.

The soul is always calling to us, but often in ways that are hidden
to ordinary perception.

What is it calling you to?

Matt Licata

From: Tending the Soul

 

Moving Into Love - Danna Faulds

On this voyage of
the soul, may we be
bridge builders,
our common ground
visible beneath the
surface differences.

May we braid the
threads of reconciliation
into a chain of possibility
that joins, heals, and
includes what once
seemed separate.

May our shared prayer
be answered: to grow 
so open that there is
no "them" or "us"
only...moving
always into
love.

Danna Faulds
From: Limitless

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Fierce Grace - Matt Licata

The Soul is always communicating with us.  The great Friend
is always looking for us, in the hope of drawing us nearer,
but often in ways that are unexpected and even bewildering
to the part of us that believes it's in control.

There are times in our lives when the most precious beliefs
and realizations fall apart and dissolve...  What was so clear
only days or weeks ago is transformed to dust.

In order to get our attention, the Soul must at times upset and
dissolve the status quo, turning inside out the dreams and
fantasies of me and the life I thought I was living... causing us
to see that perhaps we have no idea who and what we are, what
a relationship is, what the Divine is, and where we will find
meaning.

The reassembling of our world is a sacred process...

As we deepen our inquiry, we might start to see this activity
of somatic and psychic restructuring as the expression of a
certain kind of grace... not the sweet, flowy, and expansive
grace that is our favorite kind, but a grace that is fierce and
wild and can have a certain disassembling energy to it.

It is the [fierce] grace of Kali, or that of the wrathful Tibetan
goddesses, a raging grace, a creative and destructive
reorganization of consciousness.
But it is grace nonethless.

Matt Licata 

~

FunQi Art - Mystic Meandering

2012

 

Nighttime is for "The Beloved" - Ivan Granger

The stories we tell ourselves are the stories of the Soul,
the way the self understands itself.  In dreams and stories
we reformulate our perception of the world, deepen it.  And
in doing so the psyche becomes more dynamic and alive to
its own possibilities.

Nighttime is when we normally sleep and dream.  Most people
imagine life shuts down at night, but a lover [of The Beloved]
knows better.  When the rest of the world rests, the lover [of
The Beloved] finds those sweet illicit moments with The Beloved.
Even if it's just a glimpse, a smile through the window's lattice,
that is what the lover lives for.  We light up, we catch fire 
in the night.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

Note: "The Beloved" also refers to The Divine, The Sacred,
God, The Mystery - or however one calls it for themselves.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Well at the Core of Your Soul - Fred LaMotte

The golden wellspring of your intuition is the true Master,
the true Guru, the true spiritual Friend.  Any "spiritual teacher"
or guide who does not lead you to this well [within], and
invite you to drink from it, is no one to follow.  Why should
you pay money, or give away your power, to someone to tell
you what you can only learn from your own intuition?  When
the true Teacher reveals the wellspring at the core of your
being, he, or she, walks away silently, and leaves you to gaze
into the waters of your own infinite Shakti, the unfathomable
healing waters of your power.....the trembling ripples of silence
into the stars.

And when you want to sit with that Teacher, or with the Christ,
or with any of the Rishis, you will find them here, sitting by
the well.  Not in any temple or ashram, but here, in the golden
radiance of the hollow spring at the core of your soul...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering