A Mystic's "Spirituality" - a meandering...

Being an unapologetic "mystic" at Heart, since childhood,
means for me experiencing the living Presence of Life that
animates all life.  Some call that God, the Divine, The Beloved,
the Ineffable, The Mystery, Pure Consciousness, Infinite Being,
Spirit, Brahman, The Tao, the Cosmos, etc.  It has many
 names and forms. It means being able to see and experience
 "The Mystery" in the everyday-ness of life; something I am still
admittedly trying to be more aware of - to be more aware of a
 felt sense of The Sacred in the Entropy of world affairs, in the
chaotic mundane personal affairs of life circumstances as they are;
 the requirements of daily living; in the must do's and have-to's that
always find their way to the top of my list, and seem to drive my
life...

As a "mystic" I long to experience the depths of Ultimate Reality -
immersing myself in the depths of Meditative Silence, listening
to the Hush of "The Mystery."  Something I have missed being
 able to do over the last 2 years due to life circumstances.
It seems I am on a dark passage now...
Some  may assume a "mystic" doesn't experience the darker
 feelings and frustrations of life - but is always in some catatonic
 state with The Beloved...  That has not been my experience.
I try to experience the darker emotions within the context of the
Greater Reality as part of the totality of life experience...

Some feel that a mystic should have special insights or powers,
or visions, or is only interested in seeking "mystical experiences."
But for me it is not in "seeking" experiences (I have very few of
them that just happen), but being aware of and open to the movement
 of "The Mystery" within me, through its many expressions, living in
 the intimacy of "The Mystery" and at times experiencing an
intimate encounter with what I know to be "The Divine", like my
Epiphany back in 2013, or through meditative writings", and 
celestial songs (poetry) where sometimes the words just fall
 out onto the page - surprising me...

Mystical "spirituality" acknowledges the universality of what 
most have come to call "God", The Divine, or Buddha Nature,
not associated with any particular faith, religion or practice,
but transcendent truth - realizing that humans, at the very core of
their being, are both Divine and human, formlessness and form,
spirit in matter, Timelessness in time...

Wayne Teasdale, a 20th century Christian Mystic, and author of
A Mystic Heart says: "Mystic spirituality draws us into the depths
or our Being, where we come face to face with ourselves, our
weaknesses, AND with the Ultimate Mystery,  Spirituality is not
external religiosity, confined to ritual and liturgy.  It is a way of life
that effects and includes every moment of existence...  It is a disposition
to a life of depth..."

He goes on - "How we make the journey is what spirituality is really
about - finding our own path.  This means finding a way to
 [awareness of] the vast unlimited [mystery] of The Divine,
 the Mystery within.
We are created for this 'spiritual journey' - the direct and
immediate experience of Ultimate Reality, which knows everything
as ItSelf.  Being infinitely aware, it knows in a unitive and universal
fashion through awareness...  The spiritual journey is essentially one of
discovering the roots of our true identity.  It is a process of returning
to the totality of Consciousness, from which we have arisen." 
(Wayne Teasdale)

Mystic Meandering
2016

~

"We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others.
[We must] take back our own listening,

use our own voice,
see our own Light"

Hildegard of Bingen

12th Century Christian Mystic

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

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

 

Plumb The Depths...

Do not be afraid to
plumb
the
depths
of 
your 
Being,
of

Truth;
to question
everything
you
have
learned

Take the journey deeply inward
to your beginnings - and endings;
to the Silent hum
in the Heart
of all Life
that sings,
and
see
for
your
self.

There are many caravans to follow,
those aspiring to "enlighten" or "awaken" you
with their words,
left like burning firewood to light your way,
along the road...

But only in Sacred Silence can the journey be made
to the Heart of Being;
to discover the depths of Being ~
of That which you are;
That which wants to 
*live*
within you...

Do not let fear stop your descent
into the Inner Vastness:
the deep Ocean within...

Be still,
and open...
Listening...

Follow the plumb line
of your breath,
past the Furies and the Sirens
into the soft ebullience
of Love
and quiet Joy
waiting for you,
like ethereal
liquid pools
of Light
drawing
you
in

Rest Here

In
the
depths
of
this
Alive
Silent
Spacious
Awareness

Listen to the endless
Rhythm already
holding
you
in the cradle
of
Peace

Feel
the
pervasive
contentment
of Life
Here
in
the
depths of
Sacred
Silence,
that animates
every cell,
every atom,
every sound,
every thought,

every feeling ~

until you *know*
THIS

*as*

yourself.

Simply Living...

Mystic Meandering
April 17, 2012

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
2010

 

Dance in the Depths...

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 Inner Stillness,
the Stillness of the Everlasting Deep within.
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 whispered to me
 Nov. 2016

~

I need to practice this again and again...

 

The Loom of Weaving...

Withdraw from the Loom of Weaving;
the mind-made threads, the mind-made
rhythms on the surface of life, and find
the Silent Thread
that weaves through all other threads.

The True Rhythm of Life

Stay with this silent, organic Rhythm
that flows through you.
Put all other synthetic threads aside and
follow the Silent Thread...

Follow the Deeper Rhythm...

Wait in Silence
until you feel the True Rhythm within...
The Rhythm of Silence.

Follow this Rhythm to the Source,
like a stream that Flows to the River,
that flows to the Ocean.
Find the Source in The Rhythm...

Where does it take you?

Into the depths of your self -
the depths of your Being,
the depths of Silence...

Attune to that Rhythm...

Mystic Meandering
Aug 27, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Meanderer's Way - a meandering...

Ever since I was a child I wanted to know God - a child's
understanding of a "religious" God, of course. I had a love
affair with Jesus, believing he would bring me to "God."
Then, as an adult, my search evolved and expanded to include
finding "myself", whoever she was/is :)  Then the search for
 Truth, Wisdom and Enlightenment - through Metaphysics,
Buddhism ( I was enamored with The Buddha, not Buddhism,
although there were many gems there that I have retained),
Advaita and Non-Duality, and Hinduism/Kashmir Shaivism.
with its many deities for all occasions. :)
I mean, what more could there be, right? 
While each had their own unique "Way", they
were really all the same "path," under different disguises,
with different emphases.

And now through all my many meanderings, I am feeling the
need to settle in, deepen into the Depths within myself and see
what's there; not by following yet another particular external
"spiritual" path - but listening deeply to the Inner promptings
 and opening to the Inner animating Life Energies, by spending
 time in the Great Silence - which has been difficult to do lately...

Being on a "spiritual path" has always felt like I was intentionally
going SOMEwhere, seeking "Some-thing" that I would find at
the "end" of my journey; like retirement after a life of working;
or the magical pot of gold at the end of the mythical rainbow; or
even the mystical "Holy Grail."   Or maybe even seeking an
"end" to suffering, pain, ignorance, my humanness, as I turned
 into  "Light" :), or even the end of seeking.  

But what if there is no such "path", no need for seeking the
 illusive big "S"-self that non-duality spiritual seekers are seeking? 
 I discovered for myself there isn't a big "S" "spiritual"-Self that
"we" become.  There is no other "Self" to "find/become." 
There's just our "Natural Self" or Essence that wants to be
discovered, recognized, known; that is playful, creative,
expressive and free...

The path of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening"/"Self-Realization"
(popularly known as "Non-Duality"), is much like all the other
paths I have taken throughout my life.  It's just another construct. 
 I found 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, and world.

Even if one follows "a path" there is no guarantee that we will
discover what we are looking for, and life will not suddenly 
become easy or flowing with bliss.  We won't necessarily lose
 our personality with its quirks, our conditioning, or our neuroses.
The "ego" doesn't die! - gasp...  It's all part of the package, our
uniqueness.  Ego is an interface with the Natural Self/Essence.

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 from either the mountain-
top, or with nose to the ground; or suddenly find our "purpose" -
 as if there was only one.  But no one tells us this about "the path.
  It has to be discovered for ourselves - even if we have a "Teacher",
or use a "Teaching" to point the way...  We still have to travel
our own unique way...

Years of seeking, realization, and recognition brought me to an old
realization that rediscovering the Essence of who I am, the Natural
Self within a Divine Cosmology, is through awareness of and deep
intimacy with the Great Silence within; (the 4th "key" that I found
on the way, although should probably be the first) through
continually coming back to the space of Silent, Still, Innate Knowing -
which of course is wherever we are, 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 the "path"
that I keep returning to :) - rediscovering this deep inner Silence
again and again - remembering the underlying Rhythm of the 
Cosmos ItSelf - humming in and through me...

Ommmmmm....

_/\_
Namasate

Mystic Meandering
updated Aug 18, 2023

It's never ending... :)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

 

Pathless Pilgrim - a meandering...

I am a "pathless pilgrim" - and yet there is focus...
I now know I am not "called" to any particular 
"spiritual path", although I have meandered down many
over the course of my life.  I am no longer "seeking"
anything "out there" - not "God", nor even "enlightenment."
  And still, there is a sense of a "pilgrimage" of sorts; an
exploration of the Inner Landscape of "The Mystery."
Plumbing the depths of the mystery of Being within
and experiencing how that unfolds within me -
or better, how it unfolds me...

It has become a way of life actually, a continuous unfoldment,
an ongoing "returning" to the core of my Being; that silent,
still core of Being within, from which my life arises and
emerges as "me."

For what is "God" but that Eternal Essence within;
the Eternal OM of Existence - the Infinite Sound of Being;
the Emptiness that isn't empty; the Silence that isn't silent;
the Stillness that isn't still, but pulsates with The Rhythm of
Life, the Primal Energy that flows within us and through
Existence.  It is the genderless spaciousness of Primordial
Energy where there is no separation or union, just the 
Source of Being...

Mystic Meandering
Feb, 8, 2014
June 2023 - ongoing & unfolding

~

Photo from the Internet

 

A Deeper River - Dada Gavand & Angeles Arrien

You cannot meet God through the mind,

nor experience the timeless through time.

Thought cannot touch the transient.
Only the freedom from thought
and from mental cravings and ambitions
does the energy become
whole, tranquil and pure.

Such inner purity and humility
will invite the hidden divinity.

The pure consolidate energy
with its silence and fullness within
awaits in readiness to meet the divine,
to experience that which is beyond the mind.

There across the region of time
beyond the frontiers of the mind,
within the sanctuary of silence,
resides the supreme intelligence,
the timeless divine.

Dada Gavand

~

I trust the Mystery.  I trust what comes in silence
and what comes in nature where there's no diversion.
I think the lack of stimulation allows us to hear and
experience a deeper river that's constant, still, vibrant,
and real..

Angeles Arrien

~

The Silence of Source is the deepest River.
I must find the deeper River within again,
and listen to Its Voice.

MM  4-20-23

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The "Good Dark" - Ivan Granger

What is the "Good Dark?

The Light is so often considered one of the attributes of the
Divine, but we forget that dark too is also a metaphor...  The
Eternal is sometimes called dark because IT is beyond the
ability of the limited intellect to see.  It is the realm where
there is no longer separation; nothing is seen as separate
from That [The Eternal].  It can feel like a shining darkness.
So the Sacred Dark, the Good Dark is the Eternal, that
exists in its mysterious, invisible, indefinable form.  Vast
beyond comprehension.  [It is the Eternal] that gathers
everything, even light, into ItSelf.  This is the darkness
where there is great joy.  This is the immense Mystery...

In we understand the Divine to be that living, mysterious 
darkness, then we finally recognize ourselves as the same
as that darkness. [The light and dark being the same - think
Yin-Yang, where the light is contained within the dark and 
the dark within the light.]  In the 'half-light' [partial under-
standing] we are still distracted by our own faces, we are 
confused, more aware of ourselves than the holy mystery
that we touch.  We become like a young lover, too self-
conscious to simply lose oneself in the embrace of the
Belove.

...[when] we have no 'face' [identity] of our own separate
from That, then we can melt silently into the Good Dark,
into the Mystery of the Divine.  This is the place where
concepts fall, where reality is no longer parceled out into
dichotomies of good and bad, right and wrong, (no division
of opposites)...  There is nothing (except the Divine Wholeness
that is within all things).  The ego-mind is no longer able to
segment reality.  Underlying the complex diversity of
creation is a single Unity.  And within that Unity, the
individual is not separate or different from the vast Divine.
There is no separation between individual self and the
center of all selves...  Just Pure Being...

If you can settle deeply into this awareness, then you will
find yourself drinking the ecstasy of true love-wisdom.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

[brackets mine] (parentheses his)

~

We are from the fathomless depths,
the "darkness" of "The Deep"
before Light began...
from which Light emerged...
We are the Deep Ananda of
The Divine...
without knowing how or why...
without the need for certainties,
for answers ; only the
ever-available Presence of
Divine Love...Pure Bliss
Pure Blessing
OMmm...

Mystic Meandering
January 2017

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

 

"Sacred Silence"...

I come to sit - called by "The Silence" within -
to rest in the deep Core of my Being,
my refuge...

to listen to the "Sacred Silence" of an Alive Cosmos;
to be held in that Rhythm ~ the in-breath and out-breath
of Life...

Lately,
I come to sit - to mourn the losses of life
and losses of ways of life in a a troubled world;
to mourn the living and the dead,
for the suffering they have endured;
for the collective grief - 
unending grief...

But mostly,
I come to sit - to feel the depths of Sacred Silence;
to be immersed in the vast Stillness of the Inner Cosmos;
to lay the burdens of the heart down -
and just rest...

Held and supported by the Universe in
some mysterious way...

Mystic Meandering
March 20, 2022

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The Unfathomable Deep - Edward Thomas

I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep 
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travelers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.

Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends,
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter and leave alone
I know not how.

The tall forest towers;
its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf;
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.

Edward Thomas
1878-1917

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo by Cate Kerr
Beyond the Fields We Know

 

Mighty Mother - AE (George William Russell)

Unto the deep the deep heart goes,
It lays its sadness nigh the breast:
Only the Mighty Mother knows
The wounds that quiver unconfessed.

It seeks a deeper silence still;
It folds itself around with peace,
Where thoughts alike of good and ill

In quietness unfostered cease.

It feels in the unwounding vast
For comfort for its hopes and fears:
The Mighty Mother bows at last;
She listens to her children's tears.

Where the last anguish deepens - there
The fire of beauty smites through the pain:
A glory moves amid despair,
The Mother takes her child again.

AE (George William Russell)

Irish Poet and Painter

with thanks to Death Deconstructed
and photo too...

 

Under the Words - Eckhart Tolle

Underneath the surface appearances, everything is not only
connected with everything else, but also with the Source of all
life out of which it came.  Even a stone, and more easily a flower
or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to
yourself.  When you look at it or hold it and let it be without
imposing a word or mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder,
arises within you.  Its essence silently communicates itself to you
and reflects your own essence back to you.  This is what great
artists sense and succeed in conveying in their art.  Van Gogh
didn't say: "That's just an old chair."  He looked, and looked,
and looked.  He sensed the Being-ness of the chair.  Then he sat
in front of the canvas and took up the brush.

When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a
sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long
time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became 
possessed by thought.  A depth returns to your life.  Things
regain their newness, their freshness.  And the greatest miracle
is the experiencing of your Essential Self as prior to any words,
thoughts, mental labels, and images.  For this to happen, you
need to disentangle your sense of I, of Being-ness, from all
the things it has become entangled with, or identified with...

The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things,
people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality
becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the 
miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you.
In this way, cleverness may be gained, but wisdom is lost, and
so are joy, love, creativity, and aliveness.  They are concealed in
the still gap between the perception and the interpretation.  Of
course we have to use words and thoughts.  They have their own
beauty - but do we need to become imprisoned by them?

You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly
believing that when you have attached a word to something, you
know what it is.  The fact is: You don't know what it is.  You have
only covered up the mystery with a label.  Everything has
unfathomable depth.  But all we can perceive, experience,
think about, is the surface layer of reality.

Do you think that combinations of words could ever explain
who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even
what a tree or stone is in its depth?

Eckhart Tolle
From - A New Earth

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Place of Rest - Frank Ostaseski

We often think of rest as something that will come to us
when everything else in our lives is complete: at the end of
the day, when we go on holiday, or get through our to-do
lists.  We imagine that we can only find rest by changing our
circumstances.  [But] we can find a place of rest within us,
without having to alter the conditions of our lives.

This place of rest is always available to us.  We need only 
turn toward it.  It is experienced when we bring full attention,
without distraction, to this moment, to this activity.  After
some time of doing this, we can come to know this
spaciousness as a regular part of our lives.  It manifests
as an aspect of us that is never sick, is not born, and does
not die...

When we are caught in a time driven mentality or tumbling
unconsciously from one moment to the next, we become a
prisoner of our thoughts.  We get trapped in a jail of our own
construction. We want to spin plates, juggle balls, and live
two dreams at once.  We end up being addicted to busy.  We
confuse rest with non-productivity, and laziness.  We race 
from one activity to the next.  Yet we do it all in a continuous
 state of partial attention, imagining we are accomplishing
more, when in reality we are living less.

Rest is found when we are present instead of letting our
minds wander through the hallways of fear, worry and
anxiousness.  Rest comes when we become more by doing
less, when we don't allow the urgent crowd out the important.
It is the result of a decluttering of the mind and decoupling
from fixed views.

If we drop beneath the surface of our minds, we encounter
a vast, serene calmness.  We don't need to be swept away
by the surface currents.  We can find a natural place of rest...

Surface mind reacts.  When you travel into the calm depths,
the place of rest, you can act from a place of wisdom and
compassion, allowing whatever needs to happen, happen...
We surrender our strategies and resistance and open to
what is unfolding...

We come to rest in the depth of our Essential Nature.

Frank Ostaseski
From: The Five Invitations

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Desert of Our Own Silence - Ron Rolheiser

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Rolheiser

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - via No Mind's Land

A Quiet Spirit - Henry David Thoreau

 When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature,
I am reminded by the serene and retired spirit in which it
requires to be contemplated, of the inexpressible privacy of life -
how silent and unambitious it is.
The beauty there in mosses will have to be considered from
the holiest, quietest nook.

My truest, serenest moments are too still for emotions...

~

To be calm, to be serene!
There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath
of wind; there is the calmness of a stagnant ditch.  So it is
with us.
Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never 
were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some 
unconscious obedience to the all-just laws,
so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal
and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.

~

I awoke into a music which no one by me heard.
Whom shall I thank for it?  I feel it a blessing.
To the sane man the world is a musical instrument.
The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure.

Henry David Thoreau

taken from a journal entry, June 22, 1851

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Grief as passageway of the Soul - Matt Licata

Grief is not something we "get over" by following pre-prescribed
stages, but a partner that we dance, play, honor, argue and weep
with as the cycles unfold.  It's appearance and the ways it longs
to be tended are unique for each psyche, heart, and nervous
system.

The timeline for this voyage is not knowable by the psychiatric
community, nor by insurance panels, or teachers of spirituality,
but is birthed in the heavens.  To rush, force, or pathologize
the experience of grief is to work against nature.

The grieving process [for all forms of loss] may not have an
endpoint or state of completion in which we come to some final
resolution, where we "finish" and land in some untouchable [more
spiritual] place, free from our embodied vulnerability, somatic
aliveness, and from falling apart and breaking open yet again.

While some may hold this fantasied end state as a goal which
comes about as we "master" [or "spiritualize"] life, the heart is
not interested in mastery.  But in entering the mystery in more
subtle and sensitive ways.

The heart itself is endless, and the visitors of grief may companion
us in their various forms for a lifetime.  Not come to harm, but
to reveal a portal into depth.  Shifting shapes, circulating, and
rotating, as they open and close passageways in the landscape of
the soul.

Grief is not so much a process that we "make it through", but a non-
linear unfolding, shepherd and emissary of the unknown.  It moves
not by way of straight line, but by that of circle and spiral.

Matt Licata

~

It is not an error
that you have been born
 a sensitive human being,
with a tender nervous system
and a heart that is sometimes
broken.

The tenderness there,
the shakiness, the grief...

not an error
to be remedied

or cured...

[or spiritually bypassed]

But a doorway to Essence,
a portal to Life.

Matt Licata

A Deeper Intelligence - Amoda Maa

There's an intelligence that's deeper than thought
and more intimate than concept.

There's an intelligence that weaves together
the substance of your body,
the tapestry of your life,
and the majesty of your light.

It's the same intelligence that
makes the stars shine,
the planets dance,
and new suns to be born.

It's the same intelligence that
makes a bird sing,
a flea jump,
and a microbe eat up pathogens.

It's the intelligence that holds you
whilst you fall apart,
whilst you bear the unbearable,
whilst you endure the suffering of ignorance...

This intelligence has never not been here,
in the deep you.

It's just that you looked the other way.
You gave your allegiance to an imaginary intelligence,
an external authority believed to be true because
they told you so.

You ignored your true knowing for the knowledge of beliefs
force fed to you by those you thought were in power.

And those beliefs became your thoughts
and you believed those thoughts
to be your master.

But, my friend, the time has come.
The time for you to look within,
to go deeper than thought,
to turn away from imagined authority.

To become your own master...
of that which is truly alive in you...

Because, my friend, when you know the unshakability
of the openness of your true nature,
you will no longer give you power away and
you will no longer be threatened
by that which is not true.

You will irrevocably know
that there is no one and no thing that can take away
that which is your birthright... your aliveness,
the naked fact of your being-ness,
that makes life possible.

And you will live by this aliveness,
you will live by this intelligence,
you will live by the truth of your unshakable presence...
...come what may.

This, my friend, is how you
rise as truth in the face of lies.

This is how you are born into a new world
as an old one crumbles.

It is time, my friend...

Amoda Maa

with thanks to:
Dorothea Mills
Ocean Speak

~

Photo - Aurora Borealis over Yellow Knife Canada
from the internet

Infinite Unfolding - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The Mystical Path
takes one into the depths of the Heart.
It leads you from the known to the unknown,
and then further into
the unknowable,
into a darkness brighter than
any light.

Nothing can prepare you for the Heart's journey,
for the places it can take you,
the depths and the heights
that are within you.
So many times  you think you are crazy,
bewildered and lost.
There are few signposts,
often little sense of direction.
It is our own unique journey.

It takes us to places where there are no
books or stories, no words to comfort us,
except the story of our own Heart,
our own confusion, longing and love.

We awaken to the simple and fundamental truth
that there is nothing other than 'God.'
Even the idea of a path is an illusion...

~

So what is this love story that unfolds within
the Heart of a Mystic?

How much of "our story" is [really] "God's story"?

...all one story,
One Light
split into many fragments,
yet always remaining
One Light...

This one story
is lived in millions of ways,
each story a unique fragrance of Love.
Every cell in creation lives its own love story -
its longing for the Source.
Human beings have the capacity
to make this story conscious,
to know the nature of their
hidden longing.

There can only ever be
one story,
because
there is only one Beloved,
and yet
we are part of this story;
our little "i"
must also be
a part of
The Beloved...

Infinitely Unfolding

Excerpts from:
Fragments of a Love Story
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic

~

Please  note: I have taken excerpts from  the book
and arranged them in the form of a prose poem.

~

Photo: Mystic Meandering
Lotus Heart Stained Glass piece digitally zoom blurred