Time Turns...

Something keeps me wakeful.
Something compels me to keep writing -
to tinker with the words I am given
from within...

~

Captives to time -
Time turns into another year -
a difficult passage in view -
with its increasing chaos and intensity.

...no one's immune to the
ongoing energetic chaos that pervades
the planet...

The world changes quickly...
life goes by in a blink...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 30, 2024

Welcome to a "new" year...

~

Photo - Reflection in Clock face
Mystic Meandering
 

 

Beyond a Timeline...

I rest in the Silent spaces of the Soul -
in and out of time,
beyond a timeline,
where existence transcends
time, flowing in the stream
of the eternal Cosmos,
just outside the noise
of troubled waters...

Quietude that nourishes
body and Soul.

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 2, 2024

~*~

In this spiritual world there are no time divisions
such as past, present and future; for they have
contracted themselves into a single moment of
the present where life quivers in its true sense.

The past and the future are both rolled up in this
present moment of illumination, and this present
moment is not something standing still with all
its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on.

D.T. Suzuki, 1870 - 1966
On Indian Mahayana Buddhism

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Light shadows on a wall...

 

Hold Steady - HAEVN

Sunrays touch the coastline
On the cutter shows the dust
Long nights are gone with the river
The water has been waiting long enough

We float on the river of time
Hold steady, hold steady
The sea comes 'cause the summer forced out the cold
The boat fought the change of tides
Hold steady, hold steady
Storm for hours, and rainy days

And all our lives we"re told
the stream will take us home

Sunrays touch the coastline
Warm our feet, show the glare
We walk through the sand in the warm night
The water will take the weight from us

And all our lives we're told
the stream will take us home
And all our lives we're told
the stream will take us home

[.....]

HAEVN

Symphonic Tales

To listen to this song beautifully sung
with symphony
click on this You Tube link

https://youtu.be/KpxFLMKXzBk?si=syofoFB377o-idxe

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Time Passage...

So much of this life gone-by now;
remembering previous chapters
of the Fiction called "my life",
as if they never really happened -
or did they...
Some so distant in the mind they
are more like dreams, some nightmares;
and the characters I played - some good,
some bad.

Now nearing the end of the story I am an elder
character, losing her grip on life and time,
wondering what death will be like.
Will there be awareness after death?
Or, like a mist, will I dissipate back into the
Cosmos with no memory of this "journey"
on this planet spinning in a galaxy in space?
Maybe become an Aurora Borealis -
Pure Energy -
Pure De-Light...

How strange this novel turned out to be,
more drama and struggle than I would have liked,
but also more poetic than prose...

Mostly the story didn't go
the way I had in mind...
In this passage through time...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 1, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Elusive Present Moment - St. Augustine & Ostaseski

"Now" is neither in time nor out of time.
The elusive present moment is measured by the tick-tock time
of a clock, which we humans have invented, nor is it separate
from past or future.  There is no time line, at least not as we
conventionally think about it.

St. Augustine (paraphrased)
from - The Five Invitations

~

Hope....is not a wish to be fulfilled, or a plan to be formulated
and executed, but in how we meet the ever-changing moment.

The present moment could best be described as the flow of life.
We are continually being shaped by it and we are shaping it
through the way we meet and respond to it...

Frank Ostaseski
The Five Invitations

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Wheel of Time - Einstein & Ostaseski

We trust that time is linear.
That it proceeds eternally, uniformly,
Into Infinity.

But the distinction between
past, present and future is
nothing but an illusion.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow
are not consecutive, they are connected
in a never-ending circle.

Albert Einstein

~

Like a confluence of great rivers,
our lives are a series of different moments, joining
together to give the impression of one continuous flow.
We move from cause and effect, event to event, one point
to another - which gives an outward impression that our
lives are one continuous, unified movement.
In reality, they are not.

Each moment is born and dies.  And in a very real way we
are born and die with it.  Creation and destruction are two
sides of the same coin.

Frank Ostaseski
The Five Invitations

~

Photo - Mom's Mandala
a mandala that she colored in
several months before she died in March 2019.

 

More Reflections on Time, Space and Reality - Albert Einstein

Concerning matter, we have been all wrong.  What we have
called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered
as to be perceptible to the senses.  Matter is spirit reduced
to a point of visibility.

Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes
by which we think.  Physical concepts are free creations of the
human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by
the external world.  Time does not exist - we invented it.  Time
is what the clock says.  The distinction between the past,
present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.  I 
think 99 times and find nothing.  I stop thinking, [if this is possible],
swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes
 a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the
solution comes to you and you don't know why.

We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our
bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.

When you examine the lives of the most significant people who
have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds
through them all.  They have been aligned first with their spiritual
nature and only then with their physical selves. 

One thing I learned in a long life: that all our science, measured
against reality, is primitive and child-like.  We still do not know
one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds
are hidden of which we are unaware. 

I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the
universe through my rational mind.  I'm not an atheist.  Anyone
who interprets my scientific theories this way, did not understand
them.  The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.  We
are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled
with books in many languages.

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion.  It will
transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology.

When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe
resonate with it.  Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can
only be changed from one form to another.  Everything is energy
and that is all there is.  This is not philosophy.  This is physicals.

Albert Einstein

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Time is Limited - Steve Jobs

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living
someone else's life. Don't be trapped by
dogma. which is living the results of other
people's thinking.  Don't let the noise of others'
opinions drown out your inner voice.  And 
most importantly, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition.  They somehow
already know what you truly want...

Steve Jobs

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Reflecting on Time - Daria Bocicova

Time as we know it in our everyday lives is, essentially,
an idea based on a sensation based on an observation, which
in turn, is based on our knowledge and memory of the state
or condition before the measurement of that change.  Time is
the feeling that we experience when we see some kind of
change...

When people think that celestial changes are seasonal changes
associated with the Earth's position around the Sun are time,
it's like thinking that a fish swimming in an aquarium is water.
In fact, a tank is like space, and water is like time.  Water fills
the tank, and it's everywhere.  If it wasn't, the fish wouldn't be
able to move and would be dead, despite all the space in the
aquarium...

Time itself is neither linear nor circular.  It does not flow or
move but allows others to do so.  So the cycles we observe
have nothing to do with time, except that time will enable
them to exist.  Time is attached to each part of space, forming
a space-time continuum, and as everything moves, vibrates,
changes, it is related to the fact that time is a dimension
that allows all cycles to exist...

Daria Bocicova - physicist
excerpts from an article  in The Plant News

with thanks to Under My Umbrella and Beyond

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
The time was actually 2:32pm :)

 

The Path of Time - Andrew Colliver

Mercy, there have been revelations.
Grace, there has been realization.  Still you must
travel the path of time and circumstance.

The further you go, the more it comes back to paying attention.
The rough skin of the tallowwood, the trade routes of lorikeets,
a sky lifting behind the afternoon clouds.  Staying close to the
texture of things.

People can go before you and talk all they want,
but only one thing makes sense:
the way the world enters and finds its voice in you:
the place you are free.

Andrew Colliver

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo - from the internet

 

Cosmic Dream - John O'Donohue

In the beginning was the dream...
In the eternal night where no dawn broke, the dream deepened. 
Before anything ever was, it had to be dreamed...  Every single
thing is somehow the expression and incarnation of thought.

If we take Nature as the great artist of longing, then all presences
in the world have emerged from Her mind and imagination.  We
are children of the Earth's dreams.  It's almost as if Nature is in
dream and we are her children who have broken through the dawn
into time and place.  Fashioned in the dreaming of the clay, we
are always somehow haunted by that, we are unable ever finally
to decide what is dream and what is reality.  Each day we live in
what we call reality, yet life seems to resemble a dream.  We rush
through our days in such stress and intensity, as if we were here to
stay and the serious project of the world depended on us.  We
worry and grow anxious - we magnify trivia until they become
important enough to control our lives.  Yet all the time, we have
forgotten that we are but temporary sojourners on the surface of
a strange planet spinning slowly in the infinite night of the cosmos.

There is no definitive dividing line between reality and dream.
What we consider real is often precariously dream-like.  And
even our grip on reality is tenuous...

John O'Donohue
From: Eternal Echoes

Photo from the Internet

 

Wait for the Empty Playground - Li-Young Lee

 Wait for evening.
Then you'll be alone.

Wait for the playground to empty.
Then call out those companions from childhood:

The one who closed his eyes
and pretended to be invisible.
The one to whom you told every secret.
The one who made a world of any hiding place.

And don't forget the one who listened in silence
while you wondered out loud:

Is the universe an empty mirror?  A flowering tree?

Is the universe the sleep of a woman?

Wait for the sky's last blue
(the color of your homesickness).

Then you'll know the answer.

Wait for the air's first gold (that color of Amen).
Then you'll spy the wind's barefoot steps.

Then you'll recall that story beginning
with a child who strays in the woods.

The search for him goes on in the growing
shadow of the clock.

And the face behind the clock's face
is not his father's face.

And the hands behind the clock's hands
are not his mother's hands.

All of Time began when you first answered
to the names your mother and father gave you.

Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.
Then, you can trade places with the wind.

Then you'll remember your life
as a book of candles,
each page read by the light of its own burning.

Li-Young Lee

Poem: "Become Becoming"

From: Behind My Eyes

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Thread - William Stafford

There's a thread you follow.  It goes among
things that change.  But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.

Tragedies happen, people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do to stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford
from - The Way It Is, 1998

William Stafford's journey with words began most
mornings before sunrise.  This simple poem was
written 26 days before he passed.

One of his students, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye wrote:
"In our time there has been no poet who revived human
hearts and spirits more convincingly than William Stafford.
There has been no one who gave more courage to a
journey with words, and silence, and an awakened life."

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - from the Internet
This is an actual bridge in Vietnam
color digitally altered

The Winter of Life...

You know, I discovered recently that time has a way of
catching us unaware...

Even though spiritually speaking "time" is only a construct,
the body lives in a time-bound reality, subject to "time"
and deterioration...

I meandered into my 70's last October,
eyesight diminished, and hard of hearing -
What?  Are you talkin' to me?
Guess that means hearing aids...
Are you kidding me!? - resistance set in...

But here it is...  The Winter of my life has arrived,
catching me a little off guard.  I don't know why,
I see it in my hands...

It was as if some switch went off (or on) in my body
 when I turned 70 that whispered -  "body - old."

I could feel it in my body.  Actually, I felt my body
beginning to wind down years ago, but 70 was more
distinct, more of a palpable - "click" - as if time
started counting down - in earnest.

And then there was a fall in November,
a stumble that laid me up for a month!
And then some kind of respiratory "flu" in
December - the cough lasting 6 weeks!
All taking its toll on the body.
Even though I know "I" am not my body -
still...  it's wearing out;
this vehicle that has carried me this far...

Others have told me aging is all in your head.
meaning the mind.
But, the mind is going too!  Acuity left when
I wasn't looking, and memory is fogged in.
Maybe I'll forget that I'm getting old. :)
That's the biggest shocker - feeling old,
and not remembering things...

Scary

The furniture seems a little lower than it was;
harder to get up... toilet too.
It's harder to get around - stiffness has replaced
what fluidity I knew.  The grey hair has set in
around the edges.  And I see where I'm headed in
the faces of other "older women" now...

I wonder - will this "aging" affect my sense of
"knowing" the "Spirit" that animates this body?
"The Mystery", the Ineffable, Pure Awareness,
Consciousness, The Silence, "God", the Self;
however one calls IT.

Will I forget it all - that I've tried so hard to
remember...

That's my biggest "anxiety" -
If I "lose" my mind
will I remember Who "I" Really Am -
the Essence of "me"...

Do I even know that now...

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 24, 2020

~

There is a touching innocence in
the mystery of the human self.
Even after thousands of years of
experience and reflection,
we still remain a mystery to ourselves.
There is something deeply unpredictable
and unfathomable.
...Even when you approach yourself tenderly
with the candle of receptive and reverential
seeing, all you achieve is a glimpse...

John O'Donohue
from - Eternal Echoes

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Wanting A Way & Nowhere To Go - Richard Wehrman

Not yet, the not knowing
says, now is not the time
to know, this is what I've
given - uncertainty -
as your mind tries to scale the glass
mountain, impenetrable;
not glass, but quartz, not
quartz, but diamond, clear,
all the way through, but no
way to get in or out, not by
looking for a door, for a key;
frozen in the this or that,
wanting a way - your way -
when ways, plans, paths,
maps and agendas, are
destinations past, continents
left behind, earlier stages of
evolution, your childhood,
your schoolyards, your old
ways of loving; what is coming
you can't know, it has no
existence, the formless has
nothing to offer, as something
arrayed in the future, only
this arriving now, gone as
you try to grab on, arriving
again and again, unknown,
brilliant and new.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here

He was crossing an unknown
land, one he no longer knew,
though the landmarks were
identifiable and familiar; it was
the mystery of what stretched
before him, as the distance
lessened, as time in the outward
sense contracted, but inwardly
expanded and deepened, as
goals and achievements hour
by hour, day by day, lost their
imperative, and what he had once
set as a destination had been
passed with only slight remarking.
Now he had no where to go, and
the distance between somewhere
and nowhere was steadily
decreasing; in a similar manner
his excitement, his sense of
the immensity of some thing he
could not name grew, as though
that which he searched for
his whole life unknowing, and
which he called by many names,
which had been refracted by
art, music, certain writings...
by men of gravity and honor,
drew near, but was none of these.
And he felt the thrill,
and it hummed in the air.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here

~

Photo taken by my husband
 on a hike many years ago :)

Through Time...

My life is but a passage through time;
a zephyr ~~~~

smoke and mirrors that seem real;
a role to play, a story to unwind...

Sometimes burdened by the density of matter reality,
with its never ending mentations, and entanglements
of the personality;

baggage carried from the past;
paradoxes of the present;
perceptions of "Reality" that don't quite fit
the keyhole - waiting to be unlocked.

At times the mysteries of the Cosmos call me to
ethereal flights, and I play in the
 cosmic dance of timelessness...
Free of the passage of time.
Free of the persona, the story line,
that carries me through time...

Mystic Meandering
August 23, 2019
3am

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

In The Garden of Time - Chuck Surface

[.....]

Some of our deepest wounds,
Are judgments, self-inflicted,
Endless paper cuts upon our spirit,
Made by an inherently imperfect 'self',
Despising its imperfection.

When in fact, the green-stemmed fruit,
The infant petals in a sheltering bud,
Are as they should be, in their time,
On schedule to arrive, in their time,
In this Dream of passing seasons.

For here, in The Garden of Time,
What is not yet, becomes what is,
And what is, becomes what was,
And our manifest Being, ever ripening,
Is not yet, now, as it will be, then.

On this Path of Love and Surrender,
Tend gently the seedling of the Heart,
Doing the needful, as you are able,
But then Surrender, giving yourself over,
Sweet unripened...

To The Beloved Gardner.

Chuck Surface
In The Garden of The Beloved Facebook

Journey Out of Time - Ram Dass, Rupert Spira, Elias Amidon

Time is a box formed by thoughts of the past and future.
When you're not dwelling in the past or anticipating the future,
but are just here - you're outside of time.
Dwelling in the moment is dwelling in Eternal Presence.
  From within here... you are not being in time. 
You [just] Be, and time goes by, as if you were
standing on a bridge, watching it all go by.

Ours is a journey toward simplicity, toward quietness, toward a
kind of joy that is not in time.  In this journey out of time, we
are leaving behind every model we have had of who we thought
we were.  This journey involves a transformation of our being.
It's a journey that takes us from primary identification with our
psyche to identification with our souls, then to identification
with God, and ultimately beyond any identification at all.

Life is an incredible curriculum in which we live richly and
passionately as a way of awakening to the deepest truths of
our being.  As soul, I live in the moment, in each rich and
precious moment, and I am filled with contentment.

Ram Dass
from Polishing the Mirror:
How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart

~

The Eternal Now,
when seen through the mind,
appears as time.

The Now is our Self.
We are not present in the Now.
We are the Now.

The Now is not a container that contains our Self
along with everything else.
It is our Self, Eternal Presence...

Rupert Spira

~

Let your heart be like the sky,
that transparent, that close.
Touch everything.  Be so quiet
against each leaf, each face.
Where lovers move, be there.
Where bullets strike, be there.
Around each voice, be that air.
Now you know how God feels.

Pir Elias Amidon

You Think You Have Time - Gunaratana

We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us.
We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we
mistake those mental objects for reality.  We get so caught up in
this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We
spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal flight
from pain and unpleasantness.  We spend our energies trying to make
ourselves better, trying to bury our fears.  We are endlessly seeking
 security.   Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by
untouched and unnoticed...

Henepola Gunaratana

Buddhist Monk

Into The Twilight - Winter Solstice

There is a seamless "edge" when twilight comes...
And a twinge of longing when the
light wanes into twilight,
the edge of the veil;
that threshold between
light and dark...

A knowing that this life
is waning into twilight too,
from one state into another,
forever re-forming Itself...

Tree branches wave in the wind
in homage to the light
dimming in the West...

Owls hoo - calling the night
into existence
from the East;
prophets of twilight
standing at the edge
where ending meets beginning
and beginning, ending...

Twilight
the in-between,
as Life cycles through time,
through light and dark,
through living
and dying.

This night we stand at the edge of time,
and timelessness beyond time...

peering through
for a glimpse
of the
Infinite Light
that knows no dimming
and no night;
only Its own Eternal Radiance
of
Being...

This Light we are...

Mystic Meandering
Winter Solstice
Dec. 21, 2012