There is Music in Us - Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us.  Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.

The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets.  It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.

What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,

can hear them breathing.

Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells the flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

Jack Gilbert, 1925-2012
Horses at Midnight Without a Moon

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Me on path into the woods

 

Reflections in the Wilderness - Sigurd F. Olson

Life in the wilderness, especially when one is alone, is a continual
contemplation and communion with God and Spirit regarding
eternal values.  One does not have to assume any particular
stance, invoke incantations, repeat over and over again words
such as Om, chant, or sing.  To me these are merely hypnotic
devices used to bring the mind into focus and into the realm
of silence by those who do not have the privilege of living in
situations where peace is all around them.  There is no doubt
of the efficacy of such ways of preparation or they would not
be followed by hundreds of thousands, but when quiet is all
around, with no sounds but natural ones - bird songs, wind,
washing of waters against shores - the stage is always set for
meditation and reflection, whatever one may choose to call
it.  Man may not be conscious of contemplation or seeking
wisdom, for often no revelations come.  Normal and
unplanned contemplation comes as softly as the falling rain
or the first snows in late fall when the entire world is waiting.
While no great answers may come at these times, they do
infiltrate occasionally and unobtrusively into one's
consciousness, but usually there is simple a sense of peace,
removal, and a happiness beyond understanding.

Sigurd F. Olson
Reflections From The North Country

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

Although I may not wander in the wilderness, 
this is why I like the Quiet late at night,
when the house is quiet and I can settle into
a deeper communion with the deep Quiet within -
not always, but often, occasionally hearing
the echo of an owl in the trees... and fall
into sleep...

MM

 

Be A Wanderer - Fred LaMotte

"Not everyone who wanders is lost" ~ Tolkien

I am most aware and most present when I am wandering,
when I am a pilgrim.  I find myself most vulnerable, alive,
and open then.  Not when I claim the kingdom of "Non-
Duality," but when I wander in the wonder of duality, the
both-ness of being on the Way and arriving at the same
time.

There is something authoritarian to me about "Non-Duality,"
and those who claim to be instantly enlightened just by 
saying that all is One.  Oneness can be very oppressive
when it is a "spiritual teaching," when it is not lived as a
journey of constant opening and discovery.  Yet for a
journey, there must be the dynamics of twoness.  There must
be eternity, and not-yet...

Those who claim to be "non-dualists" never deign to call
themselves seekers, disciples, or devotees.  They are only
content to call themselves "spiritual teachers."  Their message
is, "I have arrived."  But doesn't being-there get rather smug,
rather boring, when there is no more to [discover] and no more
wandering to unfollow?

.....a pathless Way is different than being "lost."  Those who
feel lost assume there is a destination.  They are dissatisfied
 with where they are, because there must be somewhere better. 
 But wanderers discover beauty in each step.  They never and
always arrive.  This is the lively paradox, the blessed not-yet,
of enlightened Duality...

The Gnostic Jesus doesn't say "Follow me." pointing up
to a final resting place.  He shows me the never-ending 
labyrinthine spiritual power of waylessness.  If I follow,
I follow the one who leaves no footprints on the water.
Each breath is the end and the beginning of my pilgrimage.

I learned this not from Jesus, but from his favorite and most
beloved companion, Mary Magdalene.  She became my 
anam cara, my Friend, when I was wandering down the
Medieval pilgrimage routes through southern France, 
knowing not at all what I was looking for.  And I had no
idea about herstory, for it has been submerged in history.

After the first Easter, she became a wanderer.  She was lost
at sea in a rudderless boat, tossed up on the shore in southern
France, at what is now Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.  A pilgrim,
a stranger, she found herself with no map, and no rudder for
her boat.  That is how we all find ourselves.  She finally
arrived at the beginning of her journey, awakening Christ-
Consciousness in the Western world, before theologians
and evangelists were ever invented.  And even now, she is
the Friend who blesses me when I am most fallen and far
from any path.

I must say, in  my old age, as I no longer try to go anywhere,
it is delightful to realize that such great soul-beings as Jesus,
Mary, Krishna, Radha, Qwan Yin, Lakshmi,Gurudev,
are not mere archetypes or abstract symbols in some pablum
of "non-duality."  They are living Persons I can know in
the wonder of friendship.  I bump into them somewhere out
in Rumi's meadow, when I abandon the destination,
and become a wanderer.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Survivors of Solitude - John O'Donohue

They are to be admired those survivors
of solitude who have gone with no maps
into the room without features,
where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,
no path of danger to a cold summit
to look back on and feel exuberant,
no clarity of territories yet untouched
that tremble near the human breath,
no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores
to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,
no friendship of other explorers
drawn into the dream of the unknown.

No.  They do not belong to the outside worship
of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior
space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,
where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human
and a poultice of silence pulls every sound
out of circulation down into the ground,
where in the panic of being, each breath unravels
an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind,
shawls of thought fall off, empty and lost...
...and the end of all exploring is the relentless
arrival at an ever novel nowhere.

John O'Donohue
From: Echoes of Memory

Original title - "Nowhere"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Wandering Free...

Wandering the woods without a trail,
my focus on finding The Truth
is realized as a self-made illusion.

Not needing to find yet another belief system;
no longer a need for a specific path
cut by others; nor the illusion of
future "enlightenment" through practice,
discipline, or self-control...

Finding comfort in loosening the
constraints of the "spiritual cocoon"
that I wrapped myself in for so long;

even the mantel of meditation
has become too heavy and is unraveling -
becoming frayed... like an old prayer shawl.

Reborn from the Chrysalis of my comforting beliefs,
finding freedom in just BEing ME,
without suffocating concepts or a defined
"spiritual image"; instead finding my true Face...

Breaking free from the conceptual "spiritual"
constructs; the scaffolding of beliefs and ideas
about "spirituality" that propped "me" up;
caged in spiritual ideals, unable to fly...

Freed now from the cage of my own making,
I can breathe, I can LIVE
intuitively, being moved from within,
listening for what calls to me...
discovering freedom in being open to where life goes,
as I wander the woods without a trail...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 18, 2019

~

With gratitude to Debbie whose email inspired
this poem and her phrase: "wandering the woods
without a trail."

No False Steps - Agnes Martin

Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous
delays and wanderings off the track I want to say
that they are not what they seem to be.  I want to
say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are
not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error;
and it all has to be done.  That which seems like a
false step is the next step.

Agnes Martin

Writings

Artsy

~

Photo - a rock pathway, color inverted...

Outside The Walls - Chuck Surface

Mystical Experience, Divine Communion,
Is not confined to the many villages of religion,
Or to philosophical systems, however profound,
However revered their expounders.

For there are those who Wander,
Outside the walls of scripture and stricture,
In the Wilderness of Not Knowing,
Whose Hearts are, none the less…

Illumined with Grace.

Far from the village,
Road vanished into path,
Path vanished into hillside,
Hillside vanished into Vastness…

The Known vanished into Wonder.

For these Wilderness Wanderers,
There are no descriptions of reality,
No systems of belief or faith,
And the name of God is…

”Great Mystery”

And yet, like a Wellspring, their Hearts overflow,
Whenever they find, wherever they find,
In sources so-called “sacred” or “profane”,
That which invokes Within…

The Presence of The Beloved.

Neither a She, nor a He,
Nor a concept of belief of faith,
Or in any way “Known” in word or image,
But Known, palpably, viscerally…

In the Heart’s Direct Experience of Grace.

Here… within the Manifest Being,
Wherein Shines the Garden of The Beloved,
As the Ineffable, Intoxicating Sublimity,
The Inexpressible Ecstasy of…

The Great Mystery.

Chuck Surface

 ~

In The Garden of The Beloved

Chuck Surface on Facebook

Photo provided by Chuck Surface

Wilderness Wanderers...

The following poem was created from an email dialogue I had with
  Chuck Surface last month.

Most of the words are his, some are mine, and some a synthesis of
 the essence of the dialogue. I was so inspired by his message
 that I couldn’t help putting the words together in poem form.

  I merely played with the words as they sang to my Heart…

 He has kindly given his permission for me to post it here…

Wilderness Wanderers

We, of the Wanderers Tribe,
wander The Vastness

of
The Unknown…

instinctually
 seeking the warmth
and shelter of a council fire.

Wandering from encampment
to encampment
we recognize the gifts of each;
we learn and are blessed,
but find ourselves
riding on once again
into

The

 Wilderness…

As is our human nature,
we seek again and again
for the comfort and shelter
of an encampment
with which our Heart resonates

 and our Being finds affinity.

But time and again
the constraints of
the “known” and “accepted”
descriptions of
”reality’ and “truth”
are more than we can bear,
and The Vastness
calls to us…

Wilderness Wanderers
will never be at
Peace or Illumined
within the constraints of
 any council fire

Vagabonds of the Heart,

we are not aimless,
but seek only the Heart’s Truth,
beyond  tradition,
beyond definition

We know that however much our
human nature craves
comfort
warmth
nourishment
and
fellowship,
these
will not be satisfied
in the encampments…

For we are Wilderness Wanderers
wandering the
Immeasurable
V a s t n e s s
of
The Great Mystery

And
 if we are Graced,
we find there
ones such as ourselves…

Wandering…

Together,
yet in solitude,
we band of Vagrants
sit…

…within and as the Great Mystery…

Unsheltered by
concepts
theories
and
conjecture

Nomads by Nature
We are blessed to be

simple
Wanderers

Mystic Meandering
January 29, 2015

With Gratitude to Chuck…

~*~

I am going to be wandering in the Inner Wilderness
 for a while,
taking a break from blogging,
refocusing inward again toward the Silence and Love

 of the Great Mystery, the Inner Cosmos; playing

 in the delight and Joy of just Being – Just living
Dancing with the Universe -
intuitively moving *with* Life…

Maybe I will find you wandering there too
in the Inner Wilderness… J

Namaste

~*~

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Photo: Northern Lights in Yellow Knife Canada
in the Northwest Territories…