Celebrating Uniqueness - Hermann Hesse

I revere trees when they live in tribes and families, in forests
and groves.  And even more I revere them when they stand alone.
They are like lonely persons.  In their highest boughs the world
rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they don't lose themselves there,
they struggle with all the force of their lives for only one thing:
to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their
own form, to represent themselves.

A tree says:  The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took
with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique
the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar
on my bark.  I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my
smallest special detail.

Hermann Hesse
Notes and Sketches

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Tree Refection in pond color inverted..

~

NOTE: For my Follow.it followers
there was a typo error
in the 4th line down which should
have read:
"but they don't lose themselves there..."
I was unable to edit it on your follow.it copy.
Sorry about that :)

 

The Unseen World - Rumi and Misc.

\

Everything you see has its roots
In the unseen world.

The forms may change
Yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
Every sweet world will fade,
But do not be disheartened.

The Source they come from is Eternal,

Growing, branching out,
Giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?
That Source is within you
And this whole world
Is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
Its waters are ever-flowing;
Do not grieve,
Drink your fill!

Don't think it will ever run dry,
This is the endless Ocean.

Rumi

~

From the earliest times, it was understood that the visible
world implied the existence of an invisible world, where
everything was infused with the supernatural and the felt
sense of the sacred.

Thomas Yellowtail expressed: "A man's attitude toward the
nature around him, and the animals in nature, is of special
importance, because as we respect our created world, so 
also do we show respect for the real world that we cannot
see."

Through the traditional wisdom of American Indians we
learn that there are ways of knowing that are obtained
through the earth that allow human beings to listen and
learn directly from the Great Spirit.

Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
Parabola Magazine
Fall 2017 Issue: "The Sacred"

~

Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there
is nothing but the spirits of all things.  That is the real world
that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something
like a shadow from that one.

Black Elk

with thanks to Love Is A Place 
for all entries today

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Light through empty water bottles
on the counter :)

 

The Universe is a Story - Swimme & Tucker

The Universe is not simply a place, but a story -
a story in which we are immersed, to which we
belong, and out of which we arose...

The story has the power to awaken us more deeply to
who we are - we are the universe in the form of a human

And every time we are drawn to look up into the
night sky and reflect on the awesome beauty of the
universe, we are actually the universe reflecting on
itself.

And this changes everything...

A new integrating story has emerged.
It is a story of transformation through time.
It is challenging our understanding of who we are
in the universe.

Are we here by chance, by necessity, by serendipity,
or on purpose?

Swimme and Tucker
From: Journey of the Universe

~

Everything is ultimately a story.

My life is a story,
your life is a story,
all occurring within the vast
Cosmic Ocean...

The Story of the Eternal is being lived

here...

The Ineffable Mystery of the Universe
takes a journey through
the story of life - as us...
The "Divine Drama" is our story -
and our "story" is the "Divine Drama" ...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2013

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Soul Friend - John O'Donohue

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding
of love and friendship.  One of the fascinating ideas here
is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is
anam cara.  Anam is the Gaelic word for Soul and cara
is the word for friend.  So anam cara in the Celtic world
was "soul friend."

In everyone's life, there is a great need for an anam cara,
a soul friend.  In this love, you are understood as you are
without mask or pretension.  The superficial and functional
lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you
can be as you really are.  Love allows understanding to
dawn, and understanding is precious.  Where you are
understood, you are at home.

The anam cara experience opens a friendship that is not
wounded or limited by separation or distance.  Such
friendship can remain alive even when the friends live
far away from each other.  Because they have broken
through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul
level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed.  When
the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured.

Even across the distance, two friends can stay attuned to
each other and continue to sense the flow of each other's
lives.  With your anam cara you awaken the eternal.

John O'Donohue

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Pondering Impermanence...

The Eternal Being that inhabits the body is not aging -
but I am surprisingly surprised by the reality of the body's 
increasing decline: loss of memory, lack of stamina
and muscle functioning, etc...

I am on the off ramp and the inevitable dropping of the

body transition is surely coming...

Although grateful that the end of the body's struggles
is closer - (how close "she" doesn't know)
but wonders what that will be like;
to witness the death of her body
and the possibility of a 
"cosmic birthing" into a new "form"
of the Formless; or maybe dissolve back
into cosmic dust, or be absorbed by the
Vastness of the Eternal.
Sentience dissolving into the Eternal...

Who really knows...

All is transient here.
We're just passing through.
I shouldn't be surprised by this,
feeling the body's decline as I do -
but still -
every so often,
it gives me pause...

Mystic Meandering
2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Universe's Story - Misc.

...the universe is not simply a place but a story,
a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong,
and out of which we arose.

This story has the power to awaken us more deeply to who we are.
For just as the Milky Way is the universe in the form of a galaxy,
and an orchid is the universe in the form of a flower,
we are the universe in the form of a human.

And every time we are drawn to look up into the night sky
and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe,
we are actually the universe reflecting on itself.

Journey of the Universe
Brian Swimme and Mary Evenlyn Tucker

~*~

The Absolute is both unmanifest and dynamic creative force.
From the creative force everything arises;
both the world as well as personal consciousness.
Everything is a play [story] of consciousness,
not an unreal illusion.

Excerpt from an article by
Jan Easman

~*~

Everything is ultimately a story.
My life is a story,
your life is a story,
all occurring within the vast cosmic
Ocean of Consciousness.
The story of The Eternal is being lived
here...

The Ineffable Mystery of the Universe
takes a journey through
the story of life - as us...
The "Divine Drama" is our story -
and our "story" is the "Divine Drama"...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2013

~*~

The real mystery is how It
unveils Itself within us;
how the Beloved makes Itself known
to ItSelf in the fragile container of the 
human being.

In the midst of the Divine Drama
there is a human story to be told.
But it's all "God's" story
being lived in human form...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

A mystery :)

 

Roots in the Unseen - Rumi

Everything you see has its roots
In the unseen world.

The forms may change
Yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
Every sweet word will fade,
But do not be disheartened.

The Source they come from is Eternal,
Growing, branching out,
Giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?
That Source is within you
And this whole world
Is springing up from it.

The Source is full,

Its waters are every-flowing;
Do no grieve,
Drink your fill!

Don't think it will ever run dry,
This is the endless Ocean.

Rumi

~

Photo taken by my brother
somewhere in Canada :)

 

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

 

Awe - Abraham Joshua Heschel

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization
that things not only are what they are but also stand, however
remotely, for something supreme.  Awe is a sense for the
transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery
beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world
intimations of the divine...to sense the ultimate in the
common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing
the stillness of the eternal.  What we cannot comprehend
by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Longing...

The Longing of the Heart is there to draw you in.
It's the Longing for that which is true, pure,
innocent, whole and Alive within you...

It's the Longing for the embrace of the Eternal Being
that animates your being...

It's the call of "The Beloved."

Follow the call...

~

The Longing is your Innocence;
an innocent Longing for
Divine Intimacy;
the Eternal recognizing ItSelf in you...

~

It is the Self calling ItSelf back to ItSelf,
like the rhythm of the Ocean pulling the waves
 back to Itself from the shore;
reclaiming ItSelf...

Let your innocent Longing carry you to
your Eternal Being within...
Thrive in the depths of Its Stillness there...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
c. 2004-2006

~

Photo/Art - Mystic Meandering

Pondering Impermanence...

With my mother's death last year and now with the COVID
Pandemic - feeling surrounded by death - I have become more
aware of my own mortality, especially at my age, with a body
malfunctioning, broken since birth.

So I have been pondering "death" - not morbidly, but with a
sense of the reality of the impermanence of this life of
physicality.  What can you do...  It's going to happen...
It's just the nature of time for things to fall away in the
cycle of life...

~

A few months ago, in my ponderings, I wrote this -

The "I" (the Eternal Being) that inhabits this body is not aging -
but "i" am surprised by the body's increasing decline - knowing
where it is headed - the inevitable...

death...

Saddened by the prospect -
although grateful that the end
to the body's struggles is closer -
how close "she" doesn't know -
but wonders what that will be like;
to witness the death of her body
and the possibility of a
"cosmic birthing" into a new "form"
of the Formless; or maybe dissolve
back into cosmic dust, or be absorbed
by the Vastness of the Eternal.
Sentience dissolving into the Eternal...

Who really knows...

All is transient here.
We're just passing through.

I shouldn't be surprised by this,
feeling the body's decline as I do -
but still -

gives me pause...

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 23, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Real Virus...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark night,
she awakes...

Inexplicable dread overtakes her...

... a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time...

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions,
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a
boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Racism,
Fear
 and
 Violence.

But those who know the beauty of
true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus"
cannot shatter the pristine Light of
a radiant Cosmos;
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and
movement of a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds
and the ineptness of
fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded lives and help us endure what
is happening in our country and the world...

Namaste

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

...Lalla - Ivan Granger - Rupert Spira

I have traveled a long way seeking God
but when I finally gave up and turned back
there He [She] was within me!

Lalla
14th Century Mystic
of the Kashmir Shaivism tradition

For so many mystics it is this way.  After intense searching
without "success",  what can be done but give up or collapse?
Yet a special thing happens at that very moment.  We drop
our expectations, our hopes, our projections about this
external thing called "God" [Self/Enlightenment].  For the
first time we have truly let go of the story we've been telling
ourselves about what "God" is...  It is only then that the
scales fall way from our eyes.

We stop straining to look, and finally see.
And we see the Eternal already here, within.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

After the current of seeking gives up and sinks back down
into the depths of the Ocean of which it is itself a
modulation, it finds the peace for which it was in search...

Rupert Spira

~

Photo - Colored in Mandala
digitally blurred
Mystic Meandering

~

Nothing is more important in these polarizing, unsettled
 times than directly experiencing the Presence of our
Eternal Being within, and knowing that we *are*
that...  That's what will get us through... 
I endeavor to *feel* this Presence daily...
Try to find a quiet space to be in each day
and enter the Quietness within
and just breathe

Namaste

_/\_

Rhythm of Sadness...

A deep rhythm of sadness
arises from within...
unexpectedly,
spontaneously,
inexplicably.

It rises even though
I "know"
that before thought and feeling
"I" am Eternal Beingness.

The rhythm of sadness
is not assuaged
with the knowledge
that "I am" That...

It will not be held back
by the sand bags of knowledge,
from the caverns of the mind...

It matters not to
"The Eternal"
that sadness and grief
arise in the mechanism called
"me",
like the tides of the ocean,
rising and falling
in a darkened harbor;
felt not seen...

It is all just held in Its Awareness...

Sadness
is of no consequence
to "The Eternal..."
It just is - sadness
rising and falling,
breathing
through

me

I follow the rhythm of sadness

as it rises through the gut
into the Heart
where it meets
The Rhythm
of

"The Eternal"
and
dissolves
~
~
~

into
rivulets
of energy;
just energy,
decreasing in
intensity.

Only to rise again
another day, or
on the next tide...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 20, 2015

~

Sadness is not something you need to fix,
cure, or transform.  It need not be healed but held.
You need not shift sadness into some "higher" state or
apply teachings so that it will yield into something else.
For it is complete and pure on its own.

With the fire of awareness and the ally of your breath,
touch your heart...
Go on a journey into the core of the feeling, the sensation,
images and the raw, shaky life that is longing to be held.
And listen.

It is by way of this journey that sadness will be revealed to
be what it is, a bridge into the the universal heart, a messenger
of power, mercy, and fierce compassion...

Matt Licata

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.

Wholeness - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

You search to find what the heart has always known, that there
are no boundaries to love.  Finding this leaves us on the edge
of our own expectations unaware of the simplicity of the
unknown.  For so long we have searched hoping, expecting
to find something - a realization that was longed for.  Always
you thought there was something to seek, a journey to make.
Now you stand on the precipice looking over the horizon of
your self.

Here there is no seeking, no looking, nothing to reach for, no
path to follow.  But within there is an answer, not in form, but
in substance.  There is a bigger wholeness hidden, waiting,
watching from behind our thoughts.

The wholeness has an unexpected purpose.....from across time
and beyond space.  There is another presence, another pattern,
not hidden, but unrevealed.  There is a tender sense of Silence.
In the moment of our own silence we are welcomed.  We need
to allow the Presence to become present, not in defined
moments, but in a flow.  The river is here.  The Silence,
unbidden, is always present; nothing is defined or captured.
This world is infused with this "other" - steeped in timelessness.

In that Isness, everything is included.  You, The Beloved,
the object of your prayer, and the will to unfold the Eternal
into the present, to cross the borders of time and space, and
saturate the now with Eternity.

Yet there is no "other."
You waited for someone to come, always you waited;
always waiting at the bus stop for the bus that never comes,
because there is nowhere to go.  You are fortunate to
disbelieve everything.

The world spins around a place of Silence.
You need to enter that Silence, and wait in the
Eternal Presence, for The Eternal that is already here,

amused with our seeking, with our thinking God is "other."

We only struggle with our self...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic

Take from: Fragments of a Love Story

~

Photo - glass ball with bubbles

Zeitgeist...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark of night,
I awake...

Inexplicable dread overtakes me...

.....a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time?

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Fear and Violence.

But those who know the beauty of true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus" cannot
shatter the pristine Light of a radiant Cosmos,
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and movement of
a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds;
by the ineptness of fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

Zeitgeist - the defining spirit of the time, or culture.

~*~

Yet another mass school shooting Weds here in the US,
moving me to tears - children killing children once again;
and what humanity is doing to itself is heartbreaking...
The more my heart opens, the more I feel the emotional
pain of those who have been traumatized for life by
the shadow side of humanity.

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded hearts and help us to endure our
wounded society...

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - I don't remember what this is a picture of
but it seemed fitting...

The Soul of the Whole - Emerson

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
Meantime, within man is the soul of the whole;
the wise silence; the universal beauty,
to which every part and particle is equally related;
the eternal One...

And this deep power in which we exist, and whose
beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of
seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle,
are one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
from The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The Over-Soul"

via: The Beauty We Love
and Love is a place

~

Photo - White Orchids color digitally inverted

Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu) - Heysinger

The way that can be over trod is not the Eternal Way.
The name that can be named is not the Everlasting Name,
which Nameless brought forth Heaven and Earth,
which named, if any may,
the Mother of all myriad things of time and space became.
Thereby we sound eternally the mystery divine,
but only without desire to sound,
for if desire abide,
the portals of the issuing host our baffled sight confine.
And deep within the eternal veil
the mystery shall hide.
These two, the Nameless and the Named,
they differ but in name.
For in their vast progression from
the deep they are the same.
The deep of deeps, from whose eternal
gate all spirit came.

Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu
Translation by I.W. Heysinger - 1903

Lao Tzu was a famous Chinese Philosopher
who founded Taoism.
Taoism is about living in harmony with
the flow of Life ItSelf, in tune with your True Nature...
 intuitively.

The Eternal Longing - John O'Donohue

As a human our daily experience is riven with fracture and
 fragmentation.  We wander like a nomad from event to event,
 from person to person, unable to settle anywhere for too long.
  The day is a chase after ghost duties; at evening we are exhausted.
  A day is over, and so much of it wasted on things that meant so
 little, duties and meetings from which our heart was absent.
  Months and years pass, and we fumble on still incapable of
 finding a foothold on the path of time we walk.  A large
portion of our activity distracts us from remembering
 that we are a guest of the universe to whom on life has been
 given.  We mistake the insistent pressure of daily demands
 for reality and our more delicate intuitive nature wilts...

Our longing is numbed, and our belonging becomes merely
 external; an external attachment to people, places and things.
 Our way of life has so little to do with what we feel and love
 because of the many demands on us and responsibilities we have.
  We are dragged in so many directions away  from true belonging:
 the living and passionate intimacy with the soul. [Heart]

True belonging is not ownership.  True belonging comes from within,
from the harmony between the outer forms of belonging and the inner
 music of the soul.  We have forgotten the true depth and spiritual nature
 of intimate belonging.  We have become exiled from the intimacy of
 true unity with ourselves, each other and creation.  We have fallen out
 of rhythm with life. We need to rediscover ascetical tranquility
 [Silence].  It is our minds that make our lives so homeless...

There is a resonant heart in the depth of Silence that responds to our
 longing. When your true Heart speaks, the echo will return to assure
 you that every moment of your presence happens in the shelter of an
invisible circle. There is a divine restlessness in the human heart...
 This restlessness will never be  finally stilled by any person, project
 or place.  The Longing is eternal. All our longing is but an eternal
 echo of the Divine Longing...

Excerpt from Eternal Echoes
by John O'Donohue