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Come meander with me on the pathless path of the Heart
in these anecdotal,
sometimes inspiring, sometimes personal meanderings of the Heart's opening in the every-day-ness of life...
Showing posts with label The Great Mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Great Mystery. Show all posts

Monday, April 14, 2025

Finding the Rhythm - a meandering

 



”A balanced life is based on its own rhythm. 
If you don’t set your own rhythm, and have the discipline
 to follow it, your life will move at the speed of
the culture around [you], which moves too fast. 
The space we make for quiet time affects our thought patterns
and, in turn, the quality of our lives.
To what extent is the rhythm of your life a result of…..adapting…..
to the flow that surrounds [you]." 
Rod MacIver

 Or I would even say, to the people around you. Have we entrained
 to the people around us – living their rhythm?  I  know I have…

I feel a resonance with his words, knowing that I needed to find
 that sense of the larger Inner Rhythm again,
 not just my own personal daily rhythm with life,
but the Flow with the Inner Being, commonly called the Tao,
 the undercurrent flow of Life within – from which all movement
arises.

The only way I know to do this is to turn within to The Silence
where  The Rhythm of the Inner Being is felt – the Rhythm of Silence
 ItSelf.  Being in The Sacred Silence is what brings me joy,
and a felt sense of Presence.   Finding that Inner Rhythm,
The Silence of Being, is “Divine Communion.” 
 This, for me, is the True Rhythm, the Rhythm of Pure
 Being ItSelf – the deep undercurrent of Life that animates all life
 – which is The Silence.
  This is what calls to me – over and over again.

But the hypnosis of the world keeps me magnetized to the ways
 of the world and pulls me out of this deeper way of living and
 knowing. We are conditioned to be drawn to the external drama
 of the world, to chew on it, teethe on it…  It’s the pablum
 of the matrix we live in.  But no one trains us to turn within
 to the Quiet Inner Presence of Silence. 
And so we follow the rhythm of the world (the civilized, political,
 chaotic world), with its hypnosis of separation from our Inner Being,
instead of turning  inward to the Awareness of the Inner Rhythm;
to that interior space of The Rhythm of the “Great Mystery”
 that pulsates Its Aliveness within us, and does not depend
on a name, label, or identity – or the world’s rhythms…  

Mystic Meandering
2015
 
~

Mandala Art:  Mystic Meandering
 Bliss Lotus Mandala
2013

Sunday, July 23, 2023

The Portal of the Ineffable...


Rendezvous with the Great Silence
through the Inner Window
of your Heart -
the portal of  "The Ineffable."

Sit quietly and listen deeply,
with no agenda or expectation,
leaving the window of your heart open -
waiting for the song of "The Sacred"...

Feel the caress of Silence begin,
like a breeze,
inviting you in
with Her gentle breath,
breathing in your Heart...

The Silence that is always there
opens HerSelf to you - always -
blessing...
Turn inward to the Inner Window,
bow to the Sacred Silence within and
enter the Cosmic Mystery,
Her endless Vastness...

Settle into the Rhythm of the Primordial Silence.
Feel the soft dance of intimacy absorb you,
in this silent rendezvous...

Nothing disturbs The Great Silence.
Nothing disturbs the depths of It.
Nothing prevents Its Song
from being sung...

Everything occurs within this Great Mystery.
All life, all breath, all death, all movement of life...

In the intimate awareness of the presence of The Sacred
know that everything is living according to Its
Natural Order, is following Its
Natural Rhythm,
the Rhythm of Life living ItSelf.,
including the life you think you have created...

All life is being lived by the Great Mystery...

All is the pulse of Silence...

The pulse of the Cosmos.


Mystic Meandering
May 2016

_/\_

~

Photo - Northern Light Swirls of an
Aurora Borealis over Yellow Knife Canada.
(sent to us by a "friend" of a "friend")


Thursday, December 1, 2022

"it happens" - Kathleen Knipp


.....in our "practice" of life, we can just rest back and experience
how it's being done.  We don't have to do life, life happens in
whatever way it happens.  [But] we claim the activity that
happens as something volitional.

Observe the belief, explore the belief that I am in control, that
 I am the "doer" [of what happens].  Question the belief.
Life is happening, just as breathing is happening or thinking is
happening.

What would it feel like to slide out of the picture into an
observer position, being aware of thoughts that are generated
by the mind and emotional states that arise and pass - watching
it all happen.  It plays out like an old show on a big screen.
Step back and watch with a sense of curiosity.  See yourself as a
"character" that you observe - watching, observing, noticing all
the different sensations of the body - the different experiences.
Have compassion for your "character."  Life is changing out of
our control, our expectations, our wants.

Surrender to the Great Mystery, beyond comprehension, before
time, before conceptualization; inexplicable but palpable.
Source reveals itself in all of its different manifestations - as
profound tranquility and turbulence, as mind stuff, as breath
and body: the totality of all of its expressions.
Rest deeply in this knowing.

Kathleen Knipp
Excerpts from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
"it happens"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering



 

Sunday, June 26, 2022

A Mysterious Engagement - Terence McKenna


Do not dwell in the mistakes of the past.  Do not lose yourself
in the castles of the future and do not give your authenticity
away
to experts, gurus, government commissions, bosses,
wives, mates - take back your mind and body and begin to
engage with the fact that you are alive, you are going to die.
Nobody knows what being alive is and nobody knows what
dying is.  You're involved in a mysterious engagement where
every living moment presents you with mystery, opportunity,
and wonder.
  There is no mundane dimension, really.  If you
have the eyes to see it, it's all transcendental. 

Terence McKenna

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo by Cate Kerr
Beyond the Fields We Know



 

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Pure Cosmic Joy...


Standing in the nakedness of new innocence,
at the edge of a swirling star-gate,
I prepare to step into a vastness beyond destiny.

Through the portal of the Cosmic Heart I came ~
My Soul catapulting me
Into an invisible Sanctity...
From the veils of illusion and shadow I emerged ~
Teetering on the rim of a Greater Reality ~
still unknown to me...

Fledgling at this Gateway of the Unknown.
Swaddled in a golden mantle of light.
Re-birthing my innocence in a twilight sleep of delight.
Bathed in the tranquil fluid of the Invisible Womb.
Awaiting re-birth...

Ready to surrender traditions of the mind,
beliefs, theories of knowing,
and all concepts of "reality" - that bind.
And enter a Greater Mystery
where my heart is free and mind is clear ~
Unencumbered by psychological dynamics
and densified fear.

No longer separate, fragmented and torn.
Sacred Union about to be re-born.
Light of Light, Heart of Heart.
Matter and Spirit merge in
star-kissed cosmogony 

Where everything is seen as "The Mystery" ~
And Love is understood in its entirety ~
Fulfilled in the simplicity of just Being...

Pure Cosmic Joy...


Mystic Meandering
Aug. 25, 2000


~

Photo - from the James Webb Telescope



 

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Embracing Your Wholeness - Oriah


Embracing your wholeness is the greatest gift you can give...
Christine Wushke
Freely Human

~

All things are made of the same sacred presence - stillness...
All things emanate from and return to and are never
separated from a vast sacred wholeness...

This spaciousness that we are is not indifferent to the
suffering that we feel when we have forgotten what we are.
It reaches out to us, calls to us...

It is the Great Mystery.
It is what we are made of, and what everything and everyone
is made of.  It is what we participate in with every breath...

We will never be happy or truly be able to live and love fully
until we find our way of living from an awareness of the deep
stillness at the center of what we are... 
- Our Essential Nature -
which is wakefulness, awareness, love, peace, truth , beauty...

Look at your own life from within, that sense of quiet stillness
that you are.  You will see this inner essence, this innocence,
like a bright thread woven throughout the center of your life.

Living it consciously is why you are here...



~

Photo from a greeting card



 

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Soul Fury - Shams Tabriz


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







 

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Which Door? - Aurelius Symmachus


 We all look up to the same stars;
The same heaven is above us all;
The same universe surrounds us all.
What does it matter by what
system of knowledge
we seek to know
the truth?

Not by one path alone
may we attain to
so great a secret.


Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
A Roman Statesman

~

Photo from the Internet

Monday, June 21, 2021

Innately...


 Everything lives according to
its Innate Rhythm:
The flowers know when to bloom -
innately...
The leaves leaf out of the trees -
innately...
die and go dormant
innately...

So too our own body lives and dies
in sacred cycles of opening, unfolding, and
falling apart - innately; a lifespan...
Reorganizing its energy in different ways -
innately...

And "we", we continue our innate pull to Wholeness.


Dying is in the life of everything...

The Grand Mystery of Life living ItSelf...
...innately.


Mystic Meandering
Summer Solstice 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering


Sunday, May 9, 2021

The Cosmic Dance...


 I have conversed with the Universe,
contemplated and cogitated,
ascended and descended,
polarized, conceptualized and spiritualized;
dis-membered and re-membered -
and still, I find no -
"plan"...

Only vastness and immensity,
beyond theory, framework and perception.
The Greatest, Grandest Mystery
in an ever unfolding nebula,
procreating itself in billowy clouds
and golden streams of stardust
in and endless infinity...

A golden thread weaves through space
without beginning or end, through
the Silence beyond creation, through
Sound beyond sound, and
Light beyond light...

Matchlessly weaving its Eternal vibration
through timelessness,
into time and times beyond time,
with one theme braided into its
unending spiral
through dimensions,
distortions, and
dysfunctions...

~ Love ~

From this divine, mysterious weave
we dance the dance of duality,
complete in our light and our dark
within a vast Cosmic Love
of Divine Embrace...


Mystic Meandering
1999

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering


Monday, July 29, 2019

The Golden Thread...


I have conversed with the Universe,
commiserated and cogitated;
ascended, descended;
polarized, conceptualized and spiritualized;
dis-membered and re-membered ~
and still I find no "plan" ~

Only Vastness and immensity
beyond theory, framework and perception.
The Greatest, Grandest Mystery
in an ever unfolding nebula;
procreating itself in billowy clouds
and golden streams of stardust in a
beginningless infinity.

A golden thread weaving through space,
through the Silence beyond creation,
through Sound beyond sound,
and Light beyond light.

Matchlessly weaving its Eternal Vibration
through timelessness,
into time, and space beyond time,
with one theme braided into its
unending spiral
through
dimensions, distortions, dysfunctions -

~ Love ~

From this divine, mysterious weave of Love
we live our reality,
and dance the dance of duality:
our light and our dark.
One thread within the
Cosmic Fabric...

Held by Love...

Mystic Meandering
1999

~

Article about the above photo, The Golden Bridge
built in Vietnam



Friday, April 12, 2019

Heart-to-Heart Resonance - Eric Baret and Rumi


The heart is yearning to be open.
When a heart meets an open heart,
when a match approaches a lighted match,
it rejoices in unity, in the flame...
This is called transmission.
But nothing is transmitted.
No one transmits, no one receives;
There is [just] heart-to-heart [resonance].
There is only one heart.

Eric Baret

~

Some souls have gotten free of their bodies.
Do you see them?
Open your eyes for those who escape to meet
with other escapees, whose hearts associate in a way
they have of leaving their false selves to live
in a truer Self...

Rumi
From: Escaping to the Forest

~

What does pre-eternity mean to you?
What is your origin?  The Source?
What is spirit? 
Spend your life finding out your own state.
Those 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.
I want someone with a living pulse,
a living friend...


Excerpts from the Sayings of Shams Tabriz
Soul Fury
Rumi and Shams Tabriz on Friendship
Coleman Barks


Friday, March 1, 2019

Silence - The Mystery of Wholeness - Sardello


There is a Living Silence that hears the cry of the Soul.

Abandon surface impressions and patterns.
Abandon what has become comfortable, and embrace a
sacred depth of being that asks us to enter that which is wholly
unknown and that which fosters genuine metanoia.  This Holy Silence
creates an inner clearing that makes room for new life, including
living, breathing Silence.  In this dimension where time has become
space, life is enlivened.

We are fortunate to have night's solace.  In the silence that is created
by the dark of night...that melancholy time, when the stars remind
us of the Silence of "God" - here we can lean into the unknown,
setting aside life's demands and tasks, and 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 its holy echoing and resonance, its
calling forth a knowing that is from the Soul.

The Silence sends us on a different pilgrimage.  It guards the
heart's fire and teaches us to speak from within with a
language that is imbued with the Sacred.  Words thus nurtured
in this Holy Silence fly forth to lead us back to the Silence from
which we were born...

As we enter the mystery of Silence, its presence resonates
throughout the fibers of our flesh to the soul inwardly and
to the cosmos outwardly.  The inward silence of solitude meets
up with the Great Silence of Cosmic Wisdom.  When we do not
cultivate this, we lose access to the presence of the Silence.
Without silence we are lost and cannot get still enough to find
our way back.

Silence bears the wholeness we keep looking for while we do
not know exactly what we are looking for.  It is around us and
within us.  It goes to the deepest depths of the Soul and to the
outermost reaches of the cosmos and continuously unites the
two at the centering place of our Heart.  Here everything comes
alive again as if for the first time.  We may be shocked to notice
we had not even realized we had lost ourselves.  And feel a new
attunement to Spirit as a directly felt reality.
The Silence is palpable.

In Silence everything displays its depth.  We are part of the depth
of everything around us.  We see that separation between
ourselves and the world is an illusion.  We and the world each
mirror the other within the depths of the Soul.

Silence is not merely the void from which things spring up, it is
a living presence.  The deeper we enter into Silence the more we
become aware that this living presence is primary.

Robert Sardello
From: Silence - The Mystery of Wholeness
from the Introduction and Chapter 1


Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Silence of Love - Rumi Revealed


Art by Rassouli


Rumi embodied the expression of love in a way that brought
heaven to earth.  He became part of the great mystery, the unity,
and the oneness that awakens the heart from a deep sleep to reveal
the divine truth of who we are...

The greatest of human achievements have not evolved from the
words expressed by a person manifesting greatness, but from the
depth of the Silence...

Silence is the ultimate presence of God.
The essence of love and creativity exists in Silence and not in the
words that are derived from the rational mind.  Every word evolves
from Silence, every sound proceeds from Silence, and every thing
that is created has originated from Silence.  All become the living
word of life itself.

Life is illuminated when the lips are closed, and the heart begins
to speak.


Rumi has given more value to "silence" for those on the path of
enlightenment than other mystics.  Many of the poems in the
Divan of Shams end with the words "Be silent", or some other
descriptive phrase about being silent.  His most mystical poems
and those with deeper meanings often reflect the importance of
Silence.  Perhaps some of the best advice in his poetry is when he
tells himself to be silent as he feels the emergence of the rational
mind interfering with his ecstatic state.  He usually stops the poetry
and goes into Silence when that happens.

.....poetry to him is conversation with love.  It is in
Silence that love most easily finds the way to the heart.  It is in
Silence that love is given the freest passage.  The expression of the
message then has the perfect clarity of truth. If we open our mouths
to speak, and our words do not come from love, then we should
say nothing.

Silence is pure essence, while talking is like a cover surrounding
the essence.  The deep ecstasy of the spiritual journey harbors the
beauty hidden inside.  Silence has many concealed advantages,
and the simplest one is that it relieves apprehension and doubt
and frees a person to embrace an inner peace.

There is sacred Silence inside everyone where a divine conversation
can be heard.  Be silent and listen to the whispers of love within
the heart that long to be expressed and feel the tranquility and
freedom love can bring.

What matters in life is what is true and the moments that are real,
moments when love is felt and experienced, when a connection
is made through love, whether it is another person, or when
feeling the presence of Divine Love.  Pure love is everything,
and it flows from a deep and sacred Silence...

Excerpts from: Rumi Revealed
from the chapter: Silence of Love
direct translations and mystical expressions
by Rassouli

Rassouli is also an exceptional artist

Saturday, July 28, 2018

The Compass Of My Soul - Chuck Surface


I've read so much of the Great Paths,
Resonating here, with this,
Finding myself uneasy there, with that,
Until setting each tome aside...

'Twas You I found, wordless, within.

I've traveled far, to famed teachers,
Being uplifted here, by this,
Finding myself disturbed there, by that,
Until, leaving those places...

'Twas You I found, speechless, within.

I've sojourned in the villages of faith,
And in each discovered jewels,
In the rubble heaps of dogma,
But always, my sandals caked in mud...

'Twas You I found, Sparkling, there.

Beyond the safe harbors of orthodoxy,
In the deep waters of The Great Mystery,
Tossed in Dread Tempests of Unknowing,
Unanchored, Rudderless, Adrift...

'Twas You I found, the Compass of my Soul.

Chuck Surface



~

Photo from Chuck's FB page



Sunday, April 29, 2018

In The Autumn Of Life (excerpt) - Chuck Surface


In the Autumn of life...
I no longer care for "knowledge of",
In words, concepts and theories,
For the highest knowledge possible
Remains but yet another veiling.

And yet...
The mind continues as it has,
Reveling in its noble quest,
Behaving according to its nature,
Only now, knowing full well the futility.

In the Autumn of life...
I no longer care for "understanding",
Arriving at logical "conclusion",
For the deepest understanding possible,
Remains but yet another veiling.

And yet...
The mind continues as it has,
Devouring whatever crumbs might fall,
From the Table of The Great Mystery,
Only now, knowing full well the futility.

[.....]

And yet, in the Autumn of life...

I see the Blessing is born of our entirety:
The mind's desperate need to Know,
The Heart's desperate desire to Feel,
The Soul's desperate longing for Union...

[.....]

Here... in the Autumn of life...


Chuck Surface
Excerpt: In The Autumn Of Life




Friday, February 16, 2018

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...



Sunday, October 29, 2017

Live In Wonder - Bach, Monroe, Einstein


It must happen to all of us...  We pack up what we've learned
so far and leave the familiar behind.  No fun that shearing
separation but somewhere within, we must dimly know
that saying goodbye to safety brings the only security
we'll ever know.

Richard Bach

Quote from: Live In Wonder
a journal book
by Eric Saperston

~

Take wrong turns.  Talk to strangers.  Open unmarked doors.
There are so many adventures that you miss because you are
waiting to think of a plan.  To find them, look for tiny
interesting choices.

Randall Monroe


Quote from: Live In Wonder
a journal book
by Eric Saperston

~

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existence.
One cannot help but be in awe when he
contemplates the mysteries of eternity,
of life, of the marvelous structures of
reality.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

Albert Einstein

Quote from: Live In Wonder
a journal book
by Eric Saperston

~

Photo - Leaves on grass, color digitally inverted






Friday, October 13, 2017

Make a Covenant with the Mystery - Tom Spencer



...make a 'covenant' with mystery - by learning to stand in
relationship to what is known and unknowable at the very
same time.  I believe the essential trait that makes this
covenant possible is the capacity for wonder...

One need not peer off into the heavens to stand in
relationship with the mystery of our existence.  That
mystery is unfolding around us continually in a countless
variety of ways.  Our task is to pay attention - to stand
'with' means standing 'ready' by keeping our eyes, hearts
and minds open.  Even the most ordinary of experiences
has the capacity to change our lives...

Tom Spencer
from "Some thoughts about Wonder"

~

Photo from the Internet


Monday, September 4, 2017

At the Mercy of A Greater Love...


I don't know who or what "The Beloved" is - really...
Some have called Her "God", "The Divine", some "The Mystery";
She has a multitude of names... and faces...
But She is so much more than any name, attribute, or description
we could ever bestow - although we do.

I only know that my whole being responds
when I call to
- "The Beloved" -
from the Heart.

She surges through the body;
tangible, organic movement
felt in the body and experienced in the senses;
"across the whole of being" - as a Friend says.
It's like a presence, without solidity or form;
more like a breeze that moves through,
caressing as it goes...

She/It/He is personal -
deeply touching the inner place of origination;
which some may call the soul,
with a tone that strikes a chord of resonance within,
blown by an unexpected wind...
to which we have seemingly been attuned...

I don't know who or what "The Beloved" is - really...
I "know" nothing at all...
I am only drawn to "The Beloved"
in all Her disguises;
at the mercy of a Greater Love
beyond belief...


Mystic Meandering
July 13, 2017

~

Photo -
This flowering plant just grew one year.
I have no idea what it is,
but notice the many faces :)