What the Heart Really Wants...

 What the Heart really wants is...

to know "The Sacred" - as Friend...

When we take our seat in the Heart...

we find the Friend...

The Sacred is here...

When we take our seat in the Heart...

we are filled from within...

Embodied with Her Grace...

The Sacred is here...

When we take our seat in the Heart...

our face is Her Face, our body is Her Body...

We are reclaimed...

The Sacred is here...

~

Just take your seat...

You have found the Friend...

The Sacred is here...

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 7, 2021

With thanks to Mitch Rosacker of
Self Discovery Studio
for the line:

"When we take our seat in the Heart,
we find the Friend..."

Note: the line "The Sacred is here..." is
meant to be read as a whisper...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Step Through - Fred LaMotte

Painting by Joe-Maccer, Deviant Art

As you fall asleep tonight,
do not take this inhalation
for granted.
Honor her like a royal guest.
Make a spacious tent
of your flesh,
for She who contains
the galaxies
has come to dwell in you,
pouring her gift from the stars
down your backbone.
Each expiration will lead you
through a silver door,
a mirror of moonlight.
The key is silence.
Step through.
Follow her rainbow into the void
where wings of astonishment
will carry you from death to death.

A scent of blossoms
from the garden in your body
will guide you home,
enlarged by a memory
of stillness.
Neither come nor go
and She will lead you
from the mind to the Heart.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Original title "Shekinah"

True Purpose - Author Unknown

What is my purpose in life? - I asked "The Void"

"Your problem is that you equate your purpose with
goal-based achievement, like 'enlightenment.'
The Universe isn't interested in your achievements,
your concepts and beliefs...

Just your Heart...

When you choose to act out of kindness,
compassion and love, you are already aligned
with your true purpose..."

From Facebook
Author unknown

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

UnKnowing - Chuck Surface

"The great religions are ships,
Poets, life boats.
Every sane person I know,
Has jumped overboard."

Hafez

~

My mind has lost its will,
To seek knowledge and understanding.
It no longer dreams of resolution,
To a Mystery beyond comprehension.

For after impassioned consideration,
It has concluded, rationally, empirically,
That Unknowing IS the resolution,
Any sane person will come to.

And from this Pregnant Fact is birthed...

The mind's Surrender,
The Heart having long ago Drowned,
In Love.

Chuck Surface

Facebook

~

I'm not "meditating", but Remembering.
Not in thought or image of something known,
Outside myself, something "other" there.
But a Feeling of my Essence, my Soul, Here.

And in that instant of Remembrance,
Before words, thoughts, or images can arise,
The whole of my Being Sighs in Ecstasy...

Chuck Surface

excerpt from Yes, and Yes
Facebook

Rest In The Great Heart...

Rest in the Great Heart ~ and wait...
Entrust yourself to
the Heart of the Great Mystery ~
The Ineffable Mystery ~
Existence...

Let yourself be held by the
rhythm of the Cosmos.
Let it
take you ~ carry you
in its Breath...

Float in the rhythmic
fluidity of its unspeakable Presence
beyond time and space...

Be still...

Allow the "answers" to be revealed
in their own time
by the movement of
Existence,
the movement of Life ItSelf ~ within you...

Trust...

All is held in place by
the Great, ever-lasting
Mystery of Existence
like stars suspended in space...

Rest...

Let go
into the Mystery
the Unknown...
Be absorbed in it ~ by it
Dissolve in it...

Experience the pulse
of the Great Heart
that never
ceases
to
BE

from which we arose...


Mystic Meandering
Dec. 2015

_/\_

A Humble Lover of The Mystery

Scattered Heart - Omid Safi

The Prophet Mohammad was once asked what was the one essential
quality for prayers...  Many in the community thought they knew the
right answer.  Some thought the Prophet would say the proper
recitation of Arabic.  Others thought the answer would be lovely
memorization of Qur'anic chapters.  Yet others expected the answer
would be perfect ritual observations of prayer.

Muhammad's answer was: Presence in the Heart...

What is Presence?

It is not so much presence of God.
God is always present.
It is we humans who are absent from our own Heart.
[the spiritual Heart].  So much of our lives are spent in a
fractured state of Heart.  We are, too often, scattered.  We speak of
being scatterbrained.  The truth of the matter is that the scatteredness
is much more systemic.  We are scattered at every level: body, soul,
 mind, and spirit.  We do this to ourselves.  We throw ourselves
 to the past, often clinging to a past pain or trauma.  Or, we hurl
 ourselves towards the future, attaching ourselves to a hope for the
 future, or fear of losing something.
We are in the past, or in the future, everywhere but Here.
To pray with the Heart, to have presence in the Heart, is a remedy.
It is a healing, an unscattering.
This starts with mindfulness, with an awareness of the breath.
When we monitor our breath, simply observe the breath enter into
the heart, and emerge from the heart, our breathing slows down.
The heart rates slows.  Here is where we become whole:
our body, our breath, our spirit become One.
In that moment, in this breath, we are healed and whole.
And what a prayer there is in this breath.
What Presence...
God has always been present, waiting for us.
We ourselves become present, meeting God.
This is the Prayer of the Heart.

To pray the Prayer of the Heart we cannot be anxious about
 the past, or hopeful/fearful about the future.
  We have to be Present to our own Heart's state.

The Prayer of the Heart starts with us where we are: broken,
 fractured, and dis-united.  It takes us by the breath, and moves us
 along to unity, wholeness, and healing.

This is when we realize that tawhid (Unity) is not just about God,
but about our own Hearts becoming unified.
We have to become united [within].
Our inner division, being disconnected from our own bodies,
our own breath, our own Heart is only one part of our lack of unity.
That inner division is reflected in how we as a human community
are divided.  When we are not one with our own Heart, we cannot
see the full humanity of others.

The inner and outer are reflected in each other.  When we are
 internally divided, we will be externally divided.
  If we wish to be united as a human community, we have to
 strive for unity and healing at the
Heart level...

We need the Prayer of the Heart.
By whatever form we pray,
we need to become whole.
May it begin one breath at a time.
May it begin with me...

Omid Safi
excerpted from an article
entitled: The Prayer of the Heart
at: On Being

via;  No Mind's Land

Where We Began - Chuck Surface

Although we are often driven by sorrow,
To seek the end of sorrows,
It is the desire for Love,
and in the end, Love itself,
Which brings us to Freedom.

For when all Hope is lost,
And only Despair remains,
When all paths have failed,
And all efforts proven vain.

Then we sit alone, with nothing left.
Nothing, that is...
Except what moved us at the onset.
Our Own Shining Heart,
Our Own Inherent Love.

We wander for countless ages,
In the heartbreak of conditionality and causality,
Until, when grasping is exhausted,
We simply rest as the Love we Are.

Simply Here, where we began...

...always within...


Chuck Surface
In The Garden of the Beloved
Facebook

Utterly Absorbed - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

“We have become conditioned to think that God
is something other than ourself -
but there is no separate identity.
We are utterly dissolved in God -
in a state of deepening absorption.

There is nothing but God...
Everything is illumined with Divine Presence...

The Beloved is present,
not as a personal God or Creator,
but as something both
inexpressible and intimate,
and is recognized as something
inseparable from the self.

In moments of absorption
only The Beloved exists.
This primal awareness
of the Heart is the foundation.

Immerse the self in the heart
allowing the energy of love
to slow down the mind
and its thoughts, until
eventually we arrive
at a state of receptivity,
in which we patiently wait
within the heart
for the words
of our
Beloved;
experience
Divine Presence;
and merge deeper into
the Silence that belongs
to Love…”

Words of LLewllyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic
From: The Prayer of the Heart

I have taken his words from the book
and put them in prose poetry form.

~

Photo of sky and clouds color inverted

Rest in the Great Heart...

Rest in the Great Heart – and wait…
Entrust yourself to
the Heart of the Great Mystery ~
The Ineffable Mystery
That which infuses all life
with the greatest Mystery~
Existence…

Let yourself be held by the
rhythm of the Cosmos
Let it
take you ~ carry you
in its music

Be absorbed in its rhythmic
fluidity of Silent Awareness
beyond time and space…

And be still

Embrace your Fear
and allow ~
The “answers” will be revealed
in their own time
by the movement of
the Universe -
the movement of Life ItSelf ~ within you…

Rest in the Great Heart of the Mystery…

Trust…

All is held in place by
the Great, ever-lasting
Mystery of Existence
like the stars suspended in space…

Let go
 into The Mystery
the Unknown…

Be absorbed in it – by it
Dissolve in it…

Experience
the “energetic rhythm”
of the Great Heart
that never
ceases
to
BE

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Dec. 10, 2015

Be Where Love Is...

"My heart, sit only with those

who know and understand you.

Sit only under a tree

that is full of blossoms.

In the bazaar of herbs and potions

don't wander aimlessly,

find the shop with a potion that is sweet.

If you don't have a measure

people will rob you in no time.

You will take counterfeit coins

thinking they are real.

Don't fill your bowl with food from

every boiling pot you see.

Not every joke is humorous, so don't search

for meaning where there isn't one.

Not every eye can see,

not every sea is full of pearls.

My heart, sing the song of longing

like nightingale.

The sound of your voice casts a spell

on every stone, on every thorn.

First, lay down your head,

then one by one

let go of all distractions.

Embrace the light and let it guide you

beyond the winds of desire.

There you will find a spring and

nourished by its sweet waters

like a tree you will bear fruit forever."

 –Rumi

Via: Love Is A Place

I was lamenting to a friend recently about the dynamics of my family of origin and how challenging it is to be around an angry alcoholic who hates the world and acts with disgust toward everyone, making faces at both my mother and me...  TMI?  J  Maybe, but this is the reality of facing into life as it is…  I sometimes want to recoil, and find my heart contracting in the face of such disdain - not wanting to be wounded again, vowing that *I* do *not* have to endure this behavior - clearly failing in the "unconditional love" department. :)  And yet, I return and try to keep the Heart open once again...  But I also made this comment to my friend: “I need to be where Love is…” – as Rumi points to in his poem – to be in the unprotected ease and openness of people who *know* LOVE.  But do any of us really *know* Love - the pure Essence of Love…  Sometimes our families of origin are not where we find Love – the unconditional kind of Love that nurtures, and allows us to flourish.  I'm sure some of you have already experienced this…   And so, where do I find this Heart of Love, how do I come to know this Love more deeply myself, so that I may be present in and to a family who doesn’t *know* real Love, but is caught up in the matrix of their madness?   

It is in the deep Silence during meditative times that I experience this expansive Love the most.  We are immersed in this vast open *space* of Love that holds us and embraces us without condition - from within...  The Heart of Love is within. 

“And so the journey continues…  Your Heart takes you…..to an endless landscape of love that knows no boundaries.  And the wind is real and the snow continues to fall and the love continues, and will always continue.  So you can leave behind those old worn clothes that you called your existence, those ways you used to walk when you thought you were alive.  Because here in this place that is like no other there is the freedom you always knew, a freedom that belongs to love.

Do not be discouraged…..when the wheels of existence carry you always along roads you would rather not travel.  There is this other land, this landscape that belongs to love.  This is the place where the two seas meet [meaning where human and Divine meet], where existence reveals its secrets, where time uncovers what always was, even if you have never seen it before.

 You *are* the place where the two seas meet, where love is uncovered…  There is always this place, the vastness [of love] that calls to us.  Remember, it is always here.  It cannot be anywhere else."

 Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

From: Fragments of a Love Story


You might also be interested in reading the post:
Prickly Personalities 
about how I met this prickly situation two years ago...

Photo:  My new Amaryllis in full bloom!

Evoking Love J

Incubating Love...

Love was not a language spoken in my family growing up.  Consequently, I do not *see* myself as a particularly “loving” person – in the sense of being demonstrative in my expressions of love.  An astrologer once told me that I probably found it easier to express anger than to express love, as she read my astrology chart.  Sad but true…  We can blame it on the stars J LOL… 

But – L~O~V~E has been knocking on my door again lately, trying to get me to open and cross the threshold…  I can feel the Heart space subtly awakening, and natural, more spontaneous expressions of Love are coming through…  I assure you that expressions of love here have always been genuine! But there has been a shift to another space of Love now.  I hope you know what I’m saying here…

I certainly understand that from an “enlightened” point of view “Love” *is* our True Nature (Divine Nature). And I am learning the *essence* of that “Love” through my “spiritual process” – opening to that Divine space of Love within more and more fully - awakening to the flower of the Divine Self – the Lotus in the Heart…

Yesterday I tapped into a boat load of love listening to the *crazy* Happy Song by Pharrel Williams on YouTube – dancing through the house - feeling love for Life arising from the core once again.  You kinda have to be in the mood to listen to this :~) but love comes in many disguises.  And it's the *vibration* of happiness that it creates inside that matters... 

Love was also recently inspired in me by a beautiful blog post by Aarathi Selvan called“Love is the background to it all.”  Please do check it out.  Her post is what inspired me to post Make a Journey of Love.  In her post she says that Love is the “background” for everything, and asks us to change our perspective, to see life as a “journey of love” – to find those things in life that invoke love within us.  That is the journey I wish to be on now – to become more aware of and open to the experience of a deeper Love that lies within; the Love that infuses all Life, that is the Ground of all Existence.  And so I have been journaling about what invokes Love within me each day for the last 8 days.  I like the word “invoke” as it implies what calls Love forth, what awakens that inner sense of Love in us…  Not surprisingly I found it is the simple things of life – like a flower. 

With the blooming of the Amaryllis, before my recent illness, I unexpectedly tapped into that quiet space of love…   I found myself feeling a “love connection” to the Amaryllis blossoms.  I would talk to them each morning in soothing cooing sounds, stroking the long stem with tender loving strokes, being present to the flower in a quiet act of giving and receiving love.  How easy it was to open the Heart to a flower!  Or was it the flower opening my Heart!?  Ahhhhh - I think that was it…  J

Maybe this is what Love really is: an unguarded open quiet space of Presence – experiencing and expressing the *vibration* of Love that is there; meeting life and people from this quiet space of energetic Love that just is.  Love is not something that can be conjured up, or forced – but its vibration can be *felt.*

There is a vibration of Love “incubating” within.  And I am allowing myself to *feel* and *expand* into that space.  Unconditional love does not come from the “ego”, the mind, the personality, or “practice” – but through awareness of the quiet space of Inner Beingness; the cocoon of the Heart, where we draw Love from – the elixir of Life ItSelf.

Have you hugged a plant today? J

~*~

Excerpt from: “The Heart”
by Jeff Foster

“The heart is an unlimited room
There is always enough room
for the contents of this moment.
The highest joy,
the deepest agony,
thoughts that won’t stop spinning.
The heart can hold it all.
Embrace is all it knows.
Space is its nature.
It needs no time.
It asks nothing.
It gives everything in return.
It is home...

for all those lost parts of yourself
for all the abandoned pieces
of the puzzle of ‘you.’

They gave you a name
before you were named.
And that name was Love…”

Do I *Really* Want To Love...?

That was the surprising question that arose as I was watching a documentary called “Cultivating Loving Awareness” on video the day after Thanksgiving.  The question for me means:  Am I willing to surrender to what Love asks of me?  I *say* I want to be a presence of Love, but I continue to *react* with frustration to the challenges of family dynamics and living life – wanting it to be different than it is.

The video is essentially about unconditional love.  And while watching it, after the usual frustrating Thanksgiving family experience, it hit me that I really am unable to love in that way – unconditionally; not able to see very clearly with the eyes of the Heart. There wasn’t a lot of that growing up.  We were wired to be critical, to judge, to be opinionated, to correct others we deem wrong, to defend our sense of self, to want things to be the way we want them, to get *others* to be the way we want them to be, to hold ourselves separate from “others”- and to fight others to maintain that sense of separateness.  You know, the typical American family, which sounds a lot like the world we see right now. J  Our minds and hearts have been wired by fear, not open-hearted unconditional love – mainly because most of us didn’t receive that kind of love growing up, but were raised by fearful beings who had no clue what unconditional love was like themselves!  But it occurred to me that my family dynamic, as it is now, has become the vehicle for unconditional love to be learned, for this crusty shell of a heart to break open – by being presented with challenging family/life situations – and - being *willing* to be opened by them.  It means giving up my mental images and expectations of how I want “family” (or the world) to be.

But do I really *want* to love unconditionally - to allow Love to open me?  Or - do I just want to continue to complain about how it is, and play my role in the drama – which is much easier to do… Loving unconditionally takes awareness and consciousness, a break in the personality patterns, a willingness to want to step out of the usual dynamic of relating.  And I am at a point where I am really looking at this, as it doesn’t appear that “unconditional love” is suddenly bestowed like fairy dust just because one *wants* to be loving, or because one is on a “spiritual path” – even though I know that’s where it leads.  For now, it seems that *opportunities* are being presented to open the heart *through* navigating the difficult dynamics of family and life.  At least that’s how I see it this week J

Recently I caught myself in this little mind game of wanting someone else to *do* something *about* her life situation, so the rest of us don’t have to suffer the consequences of her choices.  I have not been able to just love this person unconditionally, just allowing her to be who she is, but want her to conform to what *I* want her to be, or to do – so that her life doesn’t impact me (and others) in a negative way; a self-centered motivation that only keeps me spinning my wheels - and suffering.  And of course, I am getting nowhere with her either in this way.  She continues to be who she is, to do life the way she does, and I continue to want her to be something other than that.  And nothing is happening.

It also occurred to me, after watching the film, that maybe all she really needs is to be loved as she is…  Isn’t that what we are really looking for – this unconditional love – this all embracing acceptance for who we are – warts and all – being seen, and loved anyway; the full monty of open-hearted LOVE!!!   But opening the heart fully to another in this way feels scary and vulnerable when one is used to hiding their heart…  But that *is* the path…

So I guess the real question is:  Am I willing to surrender and let go into Love?  Am I willing to be opened to that Love… What if I knew my Self as loving awareness?  What would that feel like?  I don’t know… But maybe it’s worth finding out…

“We affect others by loving them.”

Ram Dass

Photo: Yes, those are little heart leaves :)
Cottonwood tree leaves are heart shaped...

Love is a Bowl...

“This is Love…

Simple, bare awareness
that is already open,
accepting,
encompassing…


An honest,
courageous,
willingness
to be
open
(vulnerable)
to
the whole
tidal cycle
of our
life
experience,

moment by moment…


Allowing the entirety
of our experience to sit
in a bowl
of
awareness.

…a spacious
containing
of all
that is…”


Genju


With gratitude to Genju at 108zenbooks
for these beautiful words that I used from
her post “Love”
to create this poem…

Please see her post
for the full context
and a wonderful practice
in awareness…

We are all held in the bowl of the Heart!
Love to all my wonderfully wise
companions on the Road…

Domesticity - The Mundance - Part 2

"Inside this new love,

die.

Your way begins on the
other side.

Become the sky.
Take an axe to the
prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone
suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
Your old life was a
frantic running
from silence."

~ Rumi

I have a friend with whom I used to share tea and talk with over a period of several months last year. We would discuss “spiritual stuff.” He has a wonderful art studio/sanctuary where we’d meet. He goes to his studio nearly every day to do art that is not for sale – just art for arts sake, read, sit in meditation for hours, talk with friends, or otherwise live his Heart’s desires, following the creative muse, and, in my mind anyway, the “spiritual life.” (Gee - I wonder what his wife does!? Keeps the home fires burning no doubt!) I raised the issue of the “Mundance” with him one time. He very nicely “invited” me to see that the mundane was just as “sacred” as what we determine to be the more “spiritual” activities. He assumed the role of a “teacher” and gave an example of when he stayed at an ashram and was required to scrub the floors of one of the buildings every day. He wanted a job in the “temple” itself – but was relegated to the more mundane areas and activities – for which he was rather bummed and irritated. (Isn’t that my point?!) He had to scrub the toilets and floors until he learned the lesson that the “mundane” activity is just as “sacred” as working in the temple. And then he was allowed a job in the temple. Hmmmm – sounds rather patriarchal to me, perpetuating old paradigms of efforting and working hard to *earn* the reward of “enlightenment” – domesticating the sacred fire that burns within. Isn’t this just more conditioning? And – doesn’t *he* get to retreat to his studio (temple) when life gets a little too mundane?! (I am not a feminist by any stretch of the imagination.):)

While I understand that everything is sacred, that there is no separation between the mundane and the “spiritual”, that only thought makes them separate and unequal, to me it feels deeper than just this division of the mind. It’s as if my Being is trying to free Itself from the confines and constraints that IT is experiencing – like a Divine Discontent. It’s like “I” am trying to break out of a “role”, an “identity”, the conditioning that constrains my Being, that has kept me dancing to a tune that I feel out of sync with – and soar to the Heart of Being. (I'm a "Mystic" remember...) I experience the mundane dance as a complete waste of life affirming energy. But once again that’s my mind - a mind-made story that I tell myself about how deadening domesticity is. I know, after awakening – chop wood, carry water… But somehow that doesn’t feed my Heart…

Men – in general – it seems, are able to follow a “spiritual path” more easily. (Or maybe this is just another delusion.) Jesus, Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta come to mind. I have not studied the lives of these teachers so I may be mistaken here, but it seems they pretty much followed the “call” of their Heart, if you will. Jesus left his parents at age 12 to seek the wisdom of “God”, Buddha left his young wife and child to discover the Truth of Existence, Ramana left home at age 16 to live at the base of Mt. Arunachala to become “Enlightened.” Nisargadatta left his family for 5 years to study with a teacher (although he also worked to support his family during that time). These men devoted their lives to “enlightenment”, awakening, spirituality, “the path”, Self-realization, Truth, in whatever ways they could. I wonder what the modern day enlightened women do, like Gangaji, Neelam, Pamela Wilson, Mukti and many others. Do they spend their days in meditation – living monastically - writing words of wisdom, teaching others “Truth”? Do they do their own domestic duties, or do they have a cadre of people (other women?) surrounding them, willing to cook, clean and otherwise do the duties of the mundane… And does it really matter? – No… I realize this is *my* issue…

So it would seem a little time sitting with this is in order. Maybe it’s as simple as time management, discipline, shedding some bad habits, and an attitude adjustment. That’s probably part of it – and something I’ve started working on – bringing awareness to those areas. Asking: What is this *really*? And, what is needed here? But it feels much deeper than the surface solutions – as beneficial and practical as they are… But what’s underneath this?

It *feels* like the call of the Heart once again: the Self calling the Self to itSelf again and again *through* the veils of the mundane. It’s as if there’s an “entrainment” with a deeper dance that is needed here; a birthing into a new rhythm with life… Not shunning the mundane, not sacrificing my Self, but honoring the call of the Heart –the homing call; dancing the Rhythm of the true Self; *abiding* in the Heart of Being where everything is congruent…

May we all abide in the Song of the Heart -

intimately dancing “The Dance.”

~*~