The Decline of My So-called life - a meandering...

The other day I got up as usual and did the usual morning routine
with my sister - I'm her caregiver...

I went upstairs to post a blog post - and needed to prepare
several photos for posting.

I sat in front of the computer, just staring at the screen,
not knowing what to do...

I had totally forgotten how to prepare a photo -
what the steps were.

I sat several minutes, blank, until I started to *try* to
 figure it out again...

I couldn't make my mind work!

I tried different things on the computer
until I began to recognize the steps...

It was a shock to me that my mind could do this! -
could go totally blank on something I've done
for 15 years!

I'll be honest, no amount of "spiritual practice" can

prepare you for the sudden, startling awareness of
your mind's (and body's ) decline -
"spirituality" will not save you
from the natural order of life and death...

It starts off slowly - forgetting this or that,
a memory here, a word or name there;
where you put this or that thing, finding it
eventually, but not in its usual place...

Nothing can prepare you for the frustration of
your decline...

When your legs don't want to work-
and you stumble and bumble across the floor;
Thoughts of wheelchair enter your mind -
or having to move to a one level home -
even worse - assisted living...

My once "got it all together", 
"I'm on top of things" life
is falling apart,
a little at a time -
has been for several years.

Then suddenly there's a cliff - and
Humpty Dumpty starts falling off the wall.
What's worse is I'm aware of it - and know

that: all the king's horses and all the king's men
will not be able to put "me" together again...

And so I breathe,
and try to remember 
that there is a Deeper Reality
beyond my experience,
and try to rest there...

But I wonder if I will forget that too...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 8, 2024

At least I can still write -
writing is my "therapy"
when falling apart :)
although the poetry
doesn't emerge 
like it used to...

 

Free The Body - Gabrielle Roth

We are born into bodies that are fluid and free.
Yet for most of us, this state of grace is sadly short lived.
Judgement, emotional wounds, fear and loss become
stored deep inside our muscles and bones, leaving us
with shoulders that sag, hips that are locked, arms that
can't reach out, hearts that beat behind a stone wall.  When
we move our bodies we shake up firmly rooted systems of
thought, old patterns of behavior and emotional responses
that just don't work anymore.  Rhythm, breath, music and
movement become tools for seeing, then freeing, the habits
that hold us back.  When we free the body, the heart begins
to open.  When the body and the heart taste freedom, the
mind won't be far behind.  And when we put the psyche
into motion, it will start to heal itself.

Gabrielle Roth

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
rock balance

 

Fear - The Drug of Despair...

I keep trying to change the all-consuming music
running in my head ~ coronavirus ~
and listen for the soothing tones of
the deeper Inner Rhythm that will subdue
the fear of the body-mind in theses
stressful times...

But now the sun is almost past the eve,
and the collective shadow has overtaken me,
with thoughts of the state the world is in now...
Sometimes losing perspective, the bigger picture...
Unable to see beyond the maze mentality...
Losing touch with the deeper Music within...

Fearing my own vulnerability,
as well as that of humankind.
Startled by scarcity of necessities.
Shocked by man's unkindness to man -
hoarding...

Triggered by a virus...

Exposing man's darker side:

its selfishness, arrogance and greed;
its fear of the unknown,
and death;

Not Buddha Nature...
Not Compassion,

nor Christ Consciousness -
but the primal brain of fear and
survivalist consumption...

Fear - the drug of despair...

The new "normal"...

We have to change the music...

Mystic Meandering
March 15, 2020

Photo via The Beauty We Love

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

For One Who is Exhausted, A Blessing - John O'Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.

Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

John O'Donohue
"A Blessing For One Who is Exhausted"
From - To Bless the Space Between Us

~

Thank you Michel !
No Mind's Land

Ending Suffering - Joan Tollifson

If we truly want to end suffering, we must move from our self-centered drama and story line, to the open surrender of "Thy will be done."  It involves a shift in attention - a shift out of the entanglement in and identification with the thought-stream - and open into awareness of Presence - a shift from thinking to sensing and awaring.  It involves a surrender, or opening, into the whole body-mind, a dissolving of the felt sense of separation, and duality, a melting into the spacious undivided, luminous and inseparable; noticing what is ever-present regardless of the experience that is arising.  

Surrendering is an opening of the whole body-mind, a dissolving of the solidity of the body-mind, a letting go into boundlessness, [realizing] that it is all appearing in a larger context - the open space of awareness.  The true "I" to which we all refer is ultimately this unbound awareness that is being and beholding everything.  We are not limited to the body-mind, and the body-mind is not really a separate, solid, autonomous "thing."  In fact there is no real boundary between "awareness" and "the body."  The words seem to divide what is actually seamless and whole.  So we don't need to deny the body or the person or relative reality, because all of that is appearing in a much larger context, and all of that is really very ephemeral and fluid and ungraspable...

There are many words for surrender: dissolving, opening, relaxing, softening, melting, letting go, resting, allowing, welcoming.  What matters is not the word or some idea of this, but discovering this for oneself experientially.  Surrender is a discovery that we each have to make for ourself.

In surrendering there is a letting go, an opening - allowing everything to be as it is, not resisting anything, and not trying to get anything.  Simply stay with the living reality itself, just as it is.  Awareness always allows everything to be as it is.  It never rejects or hates anything.  It is never really harmed or destroyed by anything that appears to happen in waking life.  All the apparent darkness and getting lost is always happening in this bigger, vaster context.  To realize this is to be free from suffering...

Joan Tollifson

Meditation and the self - Shinzen Young

...you can think of enlightenment as a kind of permanent shift
in perspective that comes about through direct realization
that there is no thing called "self" inside you.

Notice that I'm not saying that there is no self, but rather
no thing called a self.

Of course. there is certainly an activity inside you called
personality, and activity of the self.  But that is different
from a thing called the self.

Meditation changes your relationship to sensory experience,
including your thoughts and body sensations.  It allows you
to experience thoughts and body sensations in a clear
and unblocked way.  When the sensory experience of the
mind-body becomes sufficiently clear and uninhibited,
it ceases to be a rigid thing that imprisons your identity.

The sensory self becomes a comfortable home, not a jail cell.
That's why enlightenment is sometimes referred to as liberation.

You realize that the thingness of self is an artifact caused by
habitual nebulosity (cloudiness, haziness) and viscosity (density)
around your mind-body experience...

Shinzen Young
The Science of Enlightenment:
How Meditation Works

via: Markings

~

Photo - Amitabha
Buddha of Infinite Light,.
also called The Eternal Buddha

Solace...

What remains...
when all surface identities,
all beliefs and facades of truth have
proven to be untrue,
and the mental constructs begin to fail...
is a more softened, innocent perspective;
a simplified view of reality...

One begins to feel more,
viscerally,
the finer, subtler vibration
of the Ineffable;
which was here long before we were born...

There is no need to remember...
The mind and body may fail in their functions
may still contract
around old thought and feeling impulses
of the brain...
But trust that the Ineffable in you
Remembers Its Origins...

So Rest...
Let the mind float...

Be still, aware...
Keep feeling...
Keep listening inwardly,
for the Music,
The Divine Rhythm,
the pulse of the Universe
playing subtly,
the original Rhythm of your pre-conceived life...

Find solace in the Rhythm
that plays you;
the Breath within the breath
that breathes you;
the Rhythm of
That which is
eternally Present *in* you;
That to which you have
devoted your
Heart...


Mystic Meandering
April 22, 2016

~*~

The Rhythm of Sadness...

A deep rhythm of sadness
arises from within
this body-mind mechanism -
unexpectedly,
spontaneously,
inexplicably.

It rises even though
I “know”
that before thought and feeling
”I” am Eternal Beingness.

The rhythm of sadness
is not assuaged
with the knowledge
that “I am” That…

It will not be held back
by the sand bags of knowledge
from the caverns of the mind…

It matters not to
”The Eternal”
that sadness and grief
arise in the mechanism called

“me”,
like the tides of the ocean,
rising and falling
in a darkened harbor;
felt not seen…

It is all held in Its Awareness…

Knowledge of its existence
is of no consequence
to “The Eternal…”

It just is – sadness
rising and falling,
breathing
through
”me”

I follow the rhythm of sadness
as it rises through the gut
into the Heart
where it meets
The Rhythm
of

“The Eternal”
and
dissolves
~

~
~

into
rivulets
of energy;
decreasing in
intensity.

Only to rise again
another day, or
on the next tide…

Unbidden

Just a wave of living energy in
this body-mind…

~

Eternal Being
holds the rhythm of sadness
within

The Greater Rhythm of ItSelf…

as

“i” ride the waves…

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 20, 2015

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Note: The same thing is true for all “feelings”, all “states”,
even happiness and joy.  They all rise and fall, come and go
with the tides of life.  One is not immune to the “darker” feelings
or emotions just because one realizes their True Beingness…
There are always habituated patterns – i.e: “rhythms” – that arise
in the body-mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~