The Cosmic Spirit Lifts Us - Hermann Hesse

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.

Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

Hermann Hesse
translation by Richard and Clare Winston

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Dancing In The Fire - Jennifer Welwood

There will always be voices that promise you greatness and glory;
They call out from the worldly marketplace;
They call out from the spiritual marketplace;
They call out from the bigger-better-more marketplace.

Do not buy their false promises, or purchase their ephemeral wares;
What fulfills for a moment is not worth the price of your soul.
There are heights that will lift you,
but not when you try to ascend them;
There are powers that will fill you,
but not when you make them your own.
There are treasures, and there are imitations of treasures.
If you have lost your true gold, at least turn away from the glitter.

Want only what is true.
This will lead you to the well of your deepest sorrows.
Follow the passageway, all the way down;
Become the dark emptiness of your core.
Be still.  Don't measure the waiting.
Be still.  Let the fire show you its secret heart;
A strand of clear light running through you.
Gather yourself there, and the luminous universe opens.

In the vast expanse, fathomless, infinite ocean of light,
lose yourself, and find yourself, and become what you already are.

Jennifer Welwood
Original title "Renunciation"

~

We can descend into the fire of direct experience of our feelings.
It is within the very core of this holy fire, in the alchemical crucible
of the body where the naked, groundless somatic territory of
illumination occurs, where healing emerges, and a new pathway
of love, care and compassion unfolds and illuminates within you.

Matt Licata

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
Woman Whirling in the Fire
(looking from overhead)

Craypas Oils
2012

 

Tattered Truth - Thomas Merton

We are all convinced that we desire the truth above all.
Nothing strange about this.  It is natural to man, an intelligent being,
to desire the truth. But actually, what we desire is not "the truth"
so much as "to be in the right."

To seek the pure truth for its own sake may be natural to us, but we
are not able to act always in this respect according to our nature.

What we seek is not the pure truth, but the partial truth that justifies
our prejudices, our limitations, our selfishness.  This is not "the truth."
It is only an argument strong enough to prove us "right."
And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction that
somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong.

Why do we want to prove them wrong?

Because we need them to be wrong.  For if they are wrong, 
and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth: our selfishness
becomes justice and virtue: our cruelty and lust cannot be fairly
condemned.

We can rest secure in the fiction we have determined to embrace as
"truth."  What we desire is not the truth, but rather that our lie
should be proved "right," and our iniquity be vindicated as "just."

No wonder we hate.  No wonder we are violent.  No wonder we
exhaust ourselves in preparing for war!

And in doing so, of course, we offer the "enemy" another reason 
to believe that he is right, that he must arm, that he must get ready
to destroy us.

Our own lie provides the foundation of truth on which he erects
his own lie, and the two lies together react to produce
hatred, murder, disaster.

Thomas Merton

from - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
"Tattered Truth"

 

What's Your Bias? - Brian McLaren

People can't see what they can't see.
Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall,
trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.
No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,
unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias...

Confirmation Bias:  We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities.  As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn't fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer s simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It's almost impossible to see what our community doesn't, can't or won't see.

Complementary Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I'll be hostile to yours.  If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I'll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don't know how much (or little) we know because we don't know how much (or little) others know.  In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are.  As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can't be seen from where I am right now.  But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias:  I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false.  I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don't notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don't have intense and sustained personal contact with "the other", my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It's hard to see something when my way of making a living require me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

Brian McLaren
from - Why Don't They Get It?  Overcoming Bias in Others.

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet

 

What's Real? - a meandering...

Tired of the weariness of existence 
and the "games" that people play...

Lost all longing for, or any sense of devotion to 
any "spiritual" entity. All "spiritualities" seem to be just
explanations and theories about existence; all the many
theologies, dogmas, doctrines, disciplines, traditions,
religions & practices; Karma, reincarnation, and
anything else humans have come up with to try to "explain"
how it all is - "The Truth of Existence..."

Are we just another species replicating itself...
Are we a dream...
Or - Are we Source morphing ItSelf into human form...

Is it really true that our True Nature is
 kindness & compassion & love...
There seems to be an inherent ignorance of that Nature...

What makes humans believe that a "God" - any one
"God" - is "right", or "in control..." It's all the same
 "God-energy" anyway - in essence - prior to manifestations

 of a personal "God" that we choose to name...

Is it true that there is only Pure Consciousness
manifesting ItSelf in all expressions so that "IT"
can experience humanity and all the experiences 
here in this realm -
over and over and over again...

My meanderings lead me to ask: Why - why after
billions of experiences in billions of manifestations
would "IT" (Consciousness) want more of the same
experience...Why does "IT want to keep manifesting
ItSelf just to experience limited human life in its
vulnerability...  Hasn't "IT" learned enough already...

It is a belief to help explain this existence, but you have
to believe it is true...

And am tired of all beliefs and theories and explanations
that leave me empty, disconnected - spiritually disoriented...

What is there that actually reveals the "Truth of Existence..."
"Direct Experience" you say...

But we all have different experiences of that too...

And who came up with all these concepts, theories and
conjectures, that we are supposed to just believe in...
Some ancient "sage" meditating in a cave?

I do miss not having an "explanation story" to believe in,
or a "God" to believe in, but - still want to know what
the Truth really is...

Is there something in us called Essence, Pure Being, Pure
Consciousness?  And if so, why don't we know this
Beingness, this Essence that we are...

Some say we have supposedly "forgotten" - concealing
the "Truth" of who we are from ourselves...
Why would we do that...

Why do we spend a lifetime seeking for what we already are...
Like looking for your cat, thinking it might me under the chair,
when all along it's been sitting in your chair watching you
search for "it"...

You have to be invested in what you believe in;
that it's true.  Even if it isn't...

And we all believe something different...

Having hope for a "better" reality, or a "better" you -
"enlightenment"- is the universal manipulation...

On the other hand, I don't believe that there is only
this reality - "just this..."
What of mystical experiences...

And believing in God/Guru only gives us a feeling of
worthiness, rightness - or unworthiness and "wrongness";
of being loved, special - or even condemned...

It's still all about "you" -
not what's Real...

So - what is "Real..."

The proverbial existential question...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Meanderings
June 27, 2021

P.S. - All that is required to "know" the "Truth"
is to enter the deep "inner space" and discover
the Heart of our own Being for ourselves...

Or is that just a belief too :)

~

Photo from the Internet
"Time Tunnel"

 

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

The Paradox of Freedom - Amoda Maa

The closer we come to truth (and the closer we come to
living the truth), everything becomes paradoxical.  Yes, everything.
It's this and that.  It's human and divine.  It's messy and it's perfect.
it's time-bound and it's timeless.   It's relative and it's absolute.
It's form and formless.  Everything becomes paradoxical.

We start to live as this paradox, because truth is not an end point.
Truth is not an answer.  Truth is not a belief system.  Truth is an
open ended-ness within us.  And this is where freedom begins.

It's not a freedom that negates our human experience, with all its
changes, with all its ups and downs, with all its losses and heart-
breaks.  It's a freedom that allows us to live at peace with all of
it, even when it's not peaceful.  It's a deep acceptance of what is.

It's a freedom that wipes away all the cover-ups, everything we tell
ourselves in order to protect ourselves,  to pretend that we're safe,
to imagine a perfect destination.  It's a freedom that wipes away the
layers of defended-ness, all the strategies that we create - mental
strategies, emotional strategies, energetic strategies - to get what we
think we want from life in order to feel comfortable, in order to
feel special, in order to feel loved.  But these cover-ups end up being
our prison.  And there is no fulfillment in this self-created prison.

Fulfillment only comes when there are no cover-ups. It's the fulfillment
of internal freedom, and has nothing to do with the external.  You
could be in a jail cell, and still this freedom is available.

Amoda Maa

~

What really matters is your
capacity to turn towards the
tenderness of your heart in
the midst of that which
offends you.

Amoda Maa

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Who Really Sees - J. Krishnamurti

Who sees exactly what is taking place in the world,
and who really wants to find out if God, truth, is
an actuality or merely a clever invention of the priest?

And there must be individual human beings who have
completely broken away from the collective, from society,
who are free from conditioning, not in layers or spots,
but totally, for it is only such individuals who can find
out what truth or God is -

Not the man of tradition, not the man who does japa,
rings bells, quotes the Gita, and goes to the temple
every day.  It is the irreligious people who do that.

But the man who really wants to find out what this
extraordinary movement of living is must not only
understand the process of his own conditioning, but
be able to go beyond it.

Because, the mind can find out what is true only when
it is free from all conditioning, not when it merely
repeats certain words or quotes sacred books.
Such a mind is not free.

J. Krishnamurti

From - Collected Works

via - The Beauty We Love

Personal note:  I recognize that I am so far from this - but this *is* what "I" wants - the complete "recognition" of ItSelf - the True Self - whatever one knows that to be in themselves that is beyond conditioning of who we *think* we are...   Each of us will come to that in our own way...  Namaste...

My friend, I am not what I seem.
Seeming is but a garment I wear -

The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of Silence.
and therein it shall remain for ever more...

My path is not thy path,
yet together we walk, hand in hand...

Kahlil Gibran

Excerpt from:" I am not what I seem"

Subtle Truth - Lao Tzu

Why scurry about looking for the truth?
It vibrates in every thing and every not-thing,
right off the tip of your nose.  Can you be still and see it
in the mountain? the pine tree? yourself? 
Don't imagine that you'll discover it by accumulating
more knowledge.  Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt
makes you ravenous for more knowledge.
You can't get full eating this way.
The wise person dines on something more subtle:
He eats the understanding that the named was born from the unnamed,
that all being flows from non-being, that the describable world
emanates from an indescribable source.  He finds this subtle truth
inside his own self...
So who can be still and watch the chess game of the world?
The foolish are always making impulsive moves,
but the wise know that victory and defeat are decided by something
more subtle.  They see that something perfect exists before any
move is made.  This subtle perfection deteriorates when
artificial actions are taken,
so be content not to disturb the peace.
Remain quiet.
Discover the harmony in your own being.
Embrace it.
If you can do this, you will gain everything,
and the world will become healthy again.

Lao Tzu

via - The Beauty We Love

The Open Door - Danna Faulds

A door opens.  Maybe I've been standing here shuffling my weight
from foot to foot for decades, or maybe I only knocked once.
In truth, it doesn't matter.

A door opens and I walk through without a backward glance.
This is it,then, one moment of truth in a lifetime of truth; a
choice made, a path taken, the gravitational pull of Spirit
too compelling to ignore any longer.

I am received by something far too vast to see.  It has roots in
antiquity but speaks clearly in the present tense. "Be," the
vastness says.  "Be without adverbs, descriptors, or qualities.

Be so alive that Awareness bares itself uncloaked and unadorned.
Then go forth to give what you alone can give, awaken to love
and suffering, unburdened by the weight of expectations.

Go forth to see and be seen, blossoming, always blossoming
into your magnificence."

Danna Faulds

~

Art - craypas oils
?date

Truth is an Oasis - Jinendra

Truth is a pathless Oasis
Who can show you the path?
Have faith in yourself...
And begin the inner walk

To experience Truth
Put all aside
All that you have heard
All that you have ever read
All knowledge of scriptures
and the philosophical tenets
Put them all aside

[.....]

Just simply be Aware
Of the Reality within you...
Observe through your Inner Eyes

As the inner walk progresses
Awareness of space
and time ceases

Always remaining Equanimous
Alone you walk ... ...
and walk ... and ... walk
To the deeeeeepest depth
Of your mind and heart
To arrive at the Whole Truth

To live truthfully
Let each moment of Truth
Bring you to the next moment
of Truth

And so, from this moment's Truth
to the next moment's Truth
From Truth to Truth ... to Truth
On this pathless path you move
Until you finally arrive
In this pathless journey
To the Oasis of Truth

As you continue your "inner walk"
The observer merges with the observed
In a flash is revealed the Unknowable
The Truth - the Self is now Known
Beyond all doubts

[.....]

Now don't hold on
to your preconceived ideas and beliefs
Let go of all your old conceptions
You will understand and see
the meaning that hides behind these words

The Truth brings total synthesis...
Inward-Outward you now exist
In total peace and harmony

Be aware and perceive rightly

Then the words come alive and become meaningful
If not, they are like writings on water
Soon to disappear into meaninglessness!

Jinendra
Center for Sustainable Happiness

Photo and text via No Mind's Land

"Knowing"

"You have no regard for stature"

someone once told me...

It's true - title, position,
knowledge, wealth and status
do not impress me,

because we really are all
the same fabric of Reality,

weaving our way through life,
given what we've been given,
each playing a different role;
each a different thread,
each carrying a different burden;
most of us running through life
with blinders on,
only seeing our self-importance,
or our suffering, our struggle -
waiting for others to see it too...
But "we" are mere facades,
masks in a sea of masks -
most of us not really seeing the Being
we truly are behind the mask,
within the shell we call ourselves;
stature or not...

No one really knows more "truth"
than you do, if you really look
inside yourself.
And yet we flock to and believe
the self-professed gurus of the day -
the vendors of "truth" -
and read their books, inhale their words
spoken into the air,
as if they have acquired something
that we have not...  something that we don't "know."

Speaking their clever philosophies about
"truth", "reality", existence;
walls of empty words...
How do they really "Know?"

Turning inward we realize that we also "Know",

because the same "truth" Lives within all...
Is that arrogant to say ;)

This does not mean that I don't respect those
who truly Know - from their own direct experience;
not just regurgitating what they think they "know"
from other gurus and books;
other cosmologies and theologies...

We may all use a different language, or different words
- but still -

deep inside we intuitively Know.
if we allow ourselves to "know",
knowing that "knowing" changes,
through the fluidity of ever-expanding awareness.

Sometimes we know that we "know" with clarity.
And sometimes we are muddled with uncertainty and
 "not-knowing."
And perhaps the truth is that we really don't know the "truth."

So we keep searching for just the right teacher, or teaching,

the resonant words, longing to fill the "gap" we feel;
although "they" will tell us there is no "gap."
Or we fall back into old beliefs, grabbing for the familiar
paradigms of reality that will give our minds
a sense of certainty of "knowing" once again.

I know, I've done it 100's of times...

But these scaffoldings must collapse...

"Knowing" is really about being comfortable with, and trusting
 our own Inner Life, our own Inner Being,
that holds the Inner Knowing, rising within from a
Greater universal Knowing - the Sacred Silence -
from which Knowing comes...

Listening inwardly, not mentally,
not *acquiring* knowledge,
but letting the timeless innate Knowing
teach us, infuse us...

In time emerging into true Self-awareness -
as the Pure Light of Knowing
lights us from within...

Mystic Meandering
Aug. 22, 2018

Namaste

_/\_

~

Photo via No Mind's Land

digitally altered

Losing the Maps - Mark Nepo & Kastrup

Just when we're softened by the years,.
when we have enough experience to see
for ourselves, our maps are torn from us.
This can be frightening, but there's divine
timing in the dissolution of a stubborn mind,
the way an inlet waits on the last rock to crumble
so it can find its destiny to the sea.  Losing the
way set out by others is necessary so we can discover
for ourselves what it means to be alive.  Now we can
burn the clothes others have laid out for us, [other's
maps of reality, other's agendas], not in anger, but
to light our way.  Now we can let the soul spill its
honey on the unleavened life we've been carrying.
Now we can rise.

Mark Nepo

Poem from: Inside the Miracle

[brackets mine]

~

All explanations are myths whose truth-value we
assign subjectively.  They are true only in so far
as we say they are true.  They are stories we
conjure up and tell ourselves in order to make sense
of the disconnected, context-free phantasmagoria of
present perception.  It makes no sense to proclaim
any explanation for the present to be objectively true...

Bernard Kastrup
More Than Allegory
via - Markings

The Pathless Path - reloaded...

This post was originally written in 2011
but is still timely for me...

I find the older I get the more I want to experience Truth directly,

and leave the many trodden "spiritual paths" that I've been on all my
life behind.  Even as a child I wanted to know "God" - a child's
understanding of God.  Then my search evolved and expanded to
include finding "myself" - whoever that was :), the Truth, Wisdom,
peace of mind, and last, but not least, the search for "Enlightenment."
They are all the same"path" under different disguises.  And now,
through all these many paths, I am feeling the need to settle, deepen,
and re-discover a sense of inner Truth; not by following a particular
external path - but by intuitively listening to the voice of my Heart;
experiencing Inner Beingness directly, through spending time in
Silence (which I avoid so easily).  Now if Life would only cooperate
and provide a less chaotic, disruptive, distracted life!  Just kidding -
maybe...  :)

 Being on a "spiritual path" implies that one is going somewhere,
seeking "Some - *thing*" at the end of the journey - like
retirement after a life of working; or a magical pot of gold at the end
of the mythical rainbow; or even the mystical "Holy Grail."  Or maybe
one is even seeking an end to something, like suffering, pain,
ignorance, their humanness, or the end of seeking.  But what if there
was no need for "a path",, no need for seeking the illusive big
"Some-thing" that spiritual seekers seek?  I find myself in this place
of questioning - again...  I have been down the "seeking road" -
many times.

The path of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening"/"Self-Realization",
particularly the path of what is known as Advaita or "Non-Duality",
has lost its luster, its pull, its certainty for me - much like the other
paths I have taken throughout my life.  It's just another construct.
  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, world.

Even if one follows "a path" (which can be any 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 neuroses. 
Our thoughts will not stop, neither will our surface struggles, or
 our pain,  or our stories.  Walking "a path" doesn't even guarantee
 that we will  actually see life differently from either the mountain top,
 or nose to the ground;  or suddenly find our "purpose" -
as if there's only one. But no one tells us  this about "the path."
 It has to be a Self-discovery - for ourselves -  even if we have a
"Teacher" or follow a "Teaching"  to point the way.

Years of seeking, realization, recognition, and then forgetting, and then
remembering, and then forgetting again - brought me to the realization
that discovering (or rediscovering) this Being Self/Truth that we are,
 is through awareness of and deep intimacy with The Silence within;
through continually coming back to the Heart of Being - the space of
Silent, Still, innate Wisdom - which of course is wherever we are at the
moment, not off in the distance somewhere.  It's not a place. 
"The path" doesn't go anywhere.  There is no reward at the end. 
It's an inner pathless path...  And that's my "path" - rediscovering
 this inner Silent,  Aware Wisdom.  It's an inner pathless path
 of remembering; remembering the underlying Rhythm of
 Life ItSelf -

Ommmmmm...

"A mystic is content with nothing less than
to touch the Truth in its most universal purity"

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

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

Returning is the motion of the Tao.

Lao Tzu

~~

Photo - taken by my father
1952/53

Ordinary Enlightenment - "G", Shinzen Young & Jeff Foster

There are many different definitions of mysticism, but a narrow
description of mysticism is known as the "perennial philosophy",
or "perennial wisdom."  [That Truth is Universal & Eternal].
In this sense, mysticism indicates the dying of the illusion
of selfhood into the greater reality of God, Nirvana, Dao, or a
number of other concepts representing the deathless and
indefinable part of us that is often called the Void. [or Emptiness].

It is the "death" [dissolution] of the individual ego into the
indescribable that characterizes the perennial wisdom. [Or rather]
it is the giving up of identifying with being the individual ego/self.

God, as the mystic understands the term, does not correspond at all
to the commonly held beliefs involving an anthropomorphic deity
gazing down on humanity from on high.  For the mystic, God is
much more subtle and immediate.  In mysticism, God is not a
separate being to us, rather the very "being-ness" that lies
 at the heart of everyone. 

The mystical process, whatever traditions or methods it uses, is
ultimately aimed at breaking through the prison of mortality into

freedom of what both the Buddha and Japanese Zen Master Bankei
called the Unborn.  Living as the Unborn we are no longer tied to
[attached to] a false sense of ego/self... but are liberated as the very
Awareness that is the heart of every being in the universe.

Excerpt from: "Buddha and Religion: Mysticism"
Buddha Space
Read the full article here

This blog also has other interesting topics!

~

Even for a deeply "enlightened" person, the experience of contact
with Flow and Emptiness does not necessarily go uninterrupted.  It
may happen frequently during the day, but not necessarily continuously.
Even a very liberated person still spends a lot of time experiencing
the world in the ordinary way.

What then is the difference between an ordinary person and a liberated
person?  The difference is a matter of freedom.  An "enlightened"
person has the ability to experience self and world as a Source wave.
And when they are not experiencing things that way, they understand
why that is the case. It is just because they are not paying close
attention...

Shinzen Young - The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

via Markings

Pay attention! :)

~

There is no fixed path to enlightenment.  Enlightenment is not a
destination, a goal, a final resting place at the end of a long journey -

that's the mind's version of enlightenment.  Nobody is the authority
on your path - no teacher, no guru, no religious leader.  Nobody can
tell you the right 'way' for you...

Jeff Foster

via The Dawn Within

~

Photo from the Internet

When it is one-sided - Hermann Hesse

I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard
as a joke or foolishness...

It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true!

That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into
words when it is one-sided.  Everything is one-sided which can
be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided,
all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness.

When the exalted "Gotama" [Gautama] spoke in his teachings
of the world, he had to divide it into "Sansara" [Samsara] and
Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering, [and freedom
from suffering, into "enlightened"and "unenlightened"].  It cannot
 be done differently, there is no way for him who wants to teach.

But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us,
is never one-sided.

A person or an act is never entirely "Sansara" [Samsara] or
entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely
sinful.  It does really seem like this, because we are subject to
deception and the confines of time, which causes us to adhere
to one fixed belief and does not account for the fullness of truth.
Every entity carries in it the potential for its opposite and so the
world is considered complete.  And so we must love the world
in its completeness...

...love, oh Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing
of all.

Hermann Hesse
From: Siddartha

via - The Beauty We Love

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Yin-Yang Mandala

Inquire Into Truth - Adyashanti

By inquiring into truth, we are led ever deeper into the
unknown, beyond beliefs and ideas, to the very core of
who and what we are...  This inquiry challenges us by
taking us out of our heads and into the heart of our deepest
experience of being, which is beyond limitations of body,
mind and conditioning.  Telling the truth is the secret of
all true spirituality, and in order to tell the truth you must
find out what truth is.

We are in need of a practical mysticism that reveals not only
the deepest core of being, but also addresses how to relate
from that core in the event called "life."  We do not need
another set of how-to instructions, which are so popular
within our modern consumer culture of quick fixes.  What
we need is an ever-deepening inquiry into how spirit
dances *as* this very life, for what we call life is but an
expression of spirit and therefore fully spirit itself...
manifesting as *all* of life and beyond.

Adyashanti

A Wish for the World - Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear...
Where knowledge is free...
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls...
Where words come out from the depths of Truth...
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit...
Where the mind is led forward...
into ever-widening [inclusive] thought and action...
Let my country [the world] awake...

Excerpt from Verse 35 of the Gitanjali
by Rabindranath Tagore

~

Only the inspired should make decisions
that effect the lives of many,

never a man who has not held God in his arms
and become the servant of unity...

St. Teresa of Avila
(1515-1582)

Let the Mind Be the Mind - Danna Faulds

Let the mind be the mind...

Behind its restless activity,
just one layer deeper is stillness,
and beneath even that,
is an ocean of mystery and truth.

Swim in this eternal sea
until you know yourself
to be infinity,
and bring that knowing
back into your day.
Why struggle to be what
you already are?

Let the mind be the mind,
but don't bind yourself
to its limited reality.

Trust your experience of vastness.
Trust the truth that never
loses potency
or disappears
in fear.

Let the mind be the mind
and identify not with thought
but with Silence...


Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner and Poet
From: Limitless

~*~

Still your mind in me,
still yourself in me,
and without a doubt
you shall be united in me,
Lord of Love,
dwelling in the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

Love's Invitation - Naomi Stone...

Truth has a way of meeting us
in the bracing winds
of freedom

we let loose and cry out
shattering the air
with a pierceing
sound
that arises from
the unspoken
and unknown spaces
within ourselves

the call is felt around the world
and beyond
words may not reach
another
and the tears may not
be shared
by a friend

but the salty flood
from our eyes
helps us find the lightness
of being
as we rise
toward the sun
of silence
where we
can breathe

the wilderness is fresh
and so real
it will not welcome
pretenders
but rips the veil
from our
disguises
and helps us face
the fears
we hide from
ourselves

the games are over
and we face
a beauty
that forces us to
choose
to be real
or die
to who we might
have been
if we had escaped
whatever it is that confines
and holds us
captive

love invites
us to fly without wings
to soar
to dance and find
our joy
daring to
embrace
truth as a friend
a light
that awakens
and touches us with
a beauty that
humbles
and exalts us
that we might behold
the radiance
of our being

the surprise awaits us
unfolding
moment to moment
when we
surrender
to
the truth
hidden in the light
of love

Naomi Stone

Photo: This is either a double exposure
or a picture of a sunset and the flash
went off by mistake :)