For A New Beginning - John O'Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

John O'Donohue

From: To Bless the Space Between Us

A Divine Puddle - Chuck Surface

When I and the world vanished, utterly,
And Ecstasy remained, as Nonexistent Existence,
I was not then a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist,
But an agnostic, though I lived, nonetheless...

With Unquenchable Longing.

It was after that Experience,
And the subsequent Presence in the Heart,
Of The Beloved's Perfume lingering,
That I began looking here and there...

Wondering if I was alone in this Affair of The Heart.

I sought throughout the various religions,
Some reference to this Dissolution and Bliss.
To Union, and Her Sweet Perfume lingering,
And found in each some Fragrance...

More so here, less so there.

But I also found, always, inevitably,
The dogma and orthodoxy of each,
The varied descriptions of "reality",
Their firm pronouncements of "truth"...

And I found myself unable to linger.

I wondered, in heartfelt consideration,
If I must pour this Molten Mystery, unformed,
Into a framework of belief, a temple of faith,
Forged by other Lovers, long ago...

And now held to by millions.

And I determined, in heartfelt consideration,
To leave my Experience Molten, unformed,
A Divine Puddle, without center or periphery,
Undefined, unexplained, remaining...

A most Beautiful Mystery, a puddle of Grace.

Now I dance through the villages of belief,
Like a madman, unfettered, a reveling child,
Splashing through the fountains of their Beauty,
Sidestepping, deftly, the muddy pools.

I continue to Love those aspects of each,
In which this Puddle finds Reflection,
In the Water of Love and Surrender,
The Beautiful Face of The Beloved.

For I am now, in the only sense that matters,
A Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist,
"I am in Love" as Hafez declared,
"But with whom I do not know."

Chuck Surface

Garden of The Beloved

Facebook

Walk any path, if your Heart moves you.
Love and revere teachings and teachers.
But Revere, above all, the still, soft voice
Of your own Heart.

Chuck Surface

Trust Your Vision - Ivan Granger

So often we pour ourselves intensely into life's purpose without
actually pausing to consider why we are doing what we are doing.
How is it a reflection of who we truly are?  How does it express
our specific qualities and role within the larger panorama?  What
does it imply about the fundamental nature of reality?

Rarely in the modern world are we encouraged to discover our
vision and dedicate ourselves to it.  To the prevailing mindset,
one's vision is thought to be intangible, suggesting something
that is a fantasy whose pursuit is narcissistic or even delusional.
The focus of life must be practical with goals that are approved
and easily measured.

That approach, while seemingly reasonable and safe, is
devastating to both the individual and to society as a whole.
While we certainly must live effectively within the physical
and social worlds that require a certain level of practical purpose,
we are not such stunted creatures that exist only on that level.
We are magical beings, here to embody immensity and love and
the will of the universe as it expresses itself uniquely through
each of us.

Vision is the way we discover our personal path through the world.
Vision is the way we come to know ourselves, allowing us to be as
we are, showing us how to act with strength and creativity in
service to our true [vision].

A vision is not the same as some fantasy or daydream.  A true
 vision is the voice of nature, the intention of the universe,
uniquely tuned to our soul.

The word "vision" can trip us up because we think of seeing
things that are external to our physical bodies, so we often
consider a vision to be external to us.  But vision in the
spiritual sense is the conscious mind's way to assign meaning
to the deep recognition of self as a harmonious expression of the
self-aware universe. In other words, vision is not so much about
seeing as it is about being.  A vision is a challenge to ourselves
to be more fully ourselves.  Vision is a vocation, the calling of
the soul to its true role.

The first question is, how strongly do we want to see?  And then
we must answer the second question, do we dare live the truth
seen?  Then again, what's the point to any other path but our own?

Ivan Granger
commentary on the poem
"Trust Your Vision" by Stephen Levine
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Sunset digitally enhanced...

Yearning - Rumi

One night a man was crying,
Allah! [God] Allah! [God]

His lips grew sweet with the praying,
until a cynic said,
'So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?'

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.

'Why did you stop praying?' [Khidr asked]

'Because I've never heard anything back.'

[Kidhr said]

 This longing you express
is the return message.

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

Give your life to be one of them.

Rumi
Original title: "Love Dogs"

~

Yearn for more.

...don't linger in any spiritual benefit
you have gained,
but yearn for more,
like one suffering from illness
whose thirst for water is never quenched...

Rumi

Whispers of the Heart - Stoneman, Rumi, Barrett

There is a whisper,
but it's louder than the wind.
It calls to us, "Come Home.
The story is over,
the pages are worn thin.
Come Home."

It's like a chant,
a sacred OM
underlying all else.

It requires not doing anything,
or going anywhere,
or becoming anything.

If only we see that we are this
whispering sound,
all else will dissolve
into peace.

Rafael Stoneman

~

Make everything in you an ear,
each atom of being,
and you will hear
at every moment
what the Source
is whispering
to you...

You are the beloved
of The Beloved...

and in every moment,
in every event of your life,
The Beloved
is whispering to you
exactly what you need
to hear and know...

Rumi

~

Put your ear to the wall of your heart...
Listen to the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are
very still...

Tom Barrett

"Devotion"...

An unexpected visceral longing arises -
again...
A primal Love and Longing for what cannot be named;
like a lover pining away for their "Beloved."
Its intensity nearly snuffs my heart out
and will only be revived by the Silence of "The Presence."

The Heart only wants to touch and be touched
by, "The Divine",
however defined, or undefined.
It only wants to dissolve into
the Sacred Silence of the Inner Room.
Nothing else matters...

Even when "spiritual seeking" ends,
this inexplicable Longing remains
deep within the Heart -
not heeding the dissuasive voices of
the minds of acquired knowledge,
or those who claim "enlightenment"
who would dismiss it,
discredit it,
and say there is no need for it;
as if I were a fool for longing.

It just is...

It is beyond words...

I allow the Longing to be...
following its irresistible pull -
drawing me more deeply inward
to Itself...

Letting go of external "spiritual" constructs
and the conceptual maps of what I assumed to be reality...

Instead

I listen - to The Heart of my heart that Longs for
the undeniable fragrance of "Her" Presence...
the warm touch of "Her" Invisible Hand
upon the Heart,
opening its "gates" to the rush of Love...

The Fire of Love's Longing will not be quelled until it is
quenched with the Golden Elixir of
The Ineffable Living Presence...

Even after seeking ends,
this Heart aches, at times,
to Remember;
to feel the felt sense of "Her";
to hear the whisper of "her" Voice;
to experience the indescribable perfusion
of this Immutable Reality
breathing in and out
through this body...

This Primal Love and Longing IS Devotion...

Unashamedly, I embrace it,
this Love, this Longing,
which at times immerses me in the
Illumined Glow of Love's Furnace...

It is an Invisible Path -
deepening into
the Mysteries of the Heart;
not an outward journey of seeking and arriving,
or finding,
but diving deep
into the
"Mystical Heart"
whose only language is
Love...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 2016

Note: "The Divine", as I use it here, is not an entity as such with a name "God" or "Goddess."  It is neither male nor female.  It is an Ineffable Presence, an "energetic signature", if you will, of "The Mystery."  When I use the term "Her", it refers to this "energy" that has a felt sense of being "feminine" - which is of course completely subjective, but experienced by many.

_/\_

Photo: Burning Fire Vortex
Craypas Oils
2011

Rest Your Heart In Love - Fred LaMotte

The purest meditation is just to rest in Love...

Our love is often toward what we know to be God.
The "toward" of love is like an in-coming or out-going breath.
Its flow may proceed from my heart toward the Divine,
or from the Divine toward my heart,
until the two tides equalize in one serenity;
the silence between breaths... inhalation kisses exhalation.

Words cease.
  Prayer becomes deep meditation,
 and there is no more "toward"...
It is effortless repose through love, as love...
Just be with the formless feeling.
The little thread of formless love expands to fill the cosmos,
because it has no boundary, no image.
In a moment, you have captured the ocean of love
in the cup of your heart.

The tiniest thread, the faintest impulse of love,
is a breath of the Cosmic Mother,
felt as a sense of the heart.
Surrender to that subtle intuitive sensation,
without attaching any picture or face.
This ripple of affection will lead you to the sea.
Depth calleth unto depth.
In the formless abyss of love, one depth touches another.
The depth of God merges with the depth of You.

If images of an Avatar or a Master appear, let them.
They are delightful bubbles playing on the surface of
love's formless ocean.
They are all facets of one diamond,
 the brilliance of your divine heart.
Your heart is a little hologram that contains the cosmos,
the forms of every Avatar, every God or Goddess.

Whatever sadhana we practice, just rest in the heart,
filling the empty silence where thought used to be.
This silent glory [of Love] is the substance of creation itself,
suffusing every cell of the body.
Then it pours out through our eyes, our words, and our hands
in blessing...


Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Excerpts from a blog post.
Fred's words, my format.

Upon Waking - David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.....

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world
in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of
the morning window
toward the presence of everything that can be,
what urgency calls you to your one love?

[.....]

David Whyte
Excerpt from:
"What to Remember When Waking"

~*~

Photo - A sheer window curtain

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

~*~

comments off

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

Remembering What You Love - Chuck Surface

“What is there to do,
but remember what you Love,
and ache with all your Heart,
however distant Heaven may seem,
however much a fairytale and a Dream.

What is there to do,
but rest, with each breath and heartbeat,
in that U n b e a r a b l e Longing,
which will not be consumed,
by the fires of doubt and despair.

For you did not choose to be stricken,
but simply found yourself afflicted,
with a Remembering beyond memory,
a Feeling beyond emotion.
A knowing beyond knowledge…

As yet unKnown.

What else…

For when faith fails, Longing endures,
when belief crumbles, Longing endures.
When other’s paths prove not our own,
Longing endures.

Longing… endures.

What…
But to remember what you Love,
however She presents Herself,
within the Secret Heart,
of your own unique Longing.

You are not cursed, weary Friend!
For this Longing, Unbearable,
is both Path and Guru,
for those of us so Blessed.
And Love…

The Key to the Gates of Heaven.”

Chuck Surface

Author’s note: Thank you, Sandhya Keller, for adding
 “A Remembering beyond memory” and
”A Feeling beyond emotion”;
both so important,
they simply had to be included.

~*~

I recently found the poems and writings of Chuck Surface
on his website Garden of The Beloved.
I was instantly smitten.

I encourage you to link over and fall in love...

PHOTO: Mandala Art

The Heart's Longing...

It is your destiny to be Love…
The only “purpose” is to BE – Love.

 Rest in Sacred Silence
where the ripples of luminescent Love
form and expand…

It is already there in your Heart ~
in the core of your Being.

Love is your sanctuary.

The longing of the Heart
 is there to
 draw
you
 in
.

.

.

It’s the longing of the Heart for that which is
 True,
Pure, Innocent, Whole,
and Alive
within
 you

It’s the longing for the Embrace of
”The Beloved.”

And…

It’s the call of “The Beloved;”
the pull of the Heart.

Follow the call…

The longing is your Innocence;
an innocent longing
 for The Mystery
of Divine Embrace.

Let that innocent longing carry you...

Come Home

Be at Home

In the Heart of “The Beloved.”

You are held there - deep within
the Divine Heart…

Thrive in that Embrace.

That is Home…

That is Love…

Mystic Meandering

Meditative Writings
circa 2004/2006

~*~

PHOTO: Mandala Art

Listening and Remembering - David Whyte

“In the first hardly noticed moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
and honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening
into the day
which closes
the moment
you begin your plans…

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live…

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others…

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

Now,

 looking through
the slanting light
of the morning window
toward the presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to
your
one
love?

~

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself
 heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
by
simply
listening

And the slow
remembering

~
~
~

[that]

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

[that]

Inside everyone
is a great shout
of joy
waiting
to
be
born

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the
new
life”

~

David Whyte

~

Excerpts from: “What to Remember When Waking”
and
”The Winter of Listening”

by David Whyte

From: The House of Belonging

Unconfined...

"We have not come here to take prisoners

but to surrender evere more deeply
to freedom and joy… 

We have not come into this exquisite world

to hold ourselves hostage from love.

  

Run, my dear, from anything

that may not strengthen
your precious budding wings.

  

 Run like hell, my dear,

from anyone likely to put a sharp knife
into the sacred, tender vision
of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend

those aspects…..
that stand outside of our house
and shout to our reason,
”oh please, oh please,
come out to play.”

  

 For we have not come here to take prisoners,

or to confine our wondrous spirits,
but to experience ever and ever more deeply
our divine courage, freedom and Light!"

  

Hafiz

Hafiz poem from Love Is A Place

Back to the Bare Bones...

Lately I’ve been feeling a need to get back to the basics in my “spiritual practice” – back to the bare bones. There is a sense of needing to clear the plate of old paradigms to make way for a clearer way of seeing and being. And - I’ve also been experiencing what I have been calling “depression” off and on for the last few weeks, or as the “Advaitin and contemporary non-dualists” say – depressing is happening… Probably as part of this clearing away…

“Depression” is a strange bedfellow, it can be many things. And I don’t treat this lightly. Sometimes I know her as melancholy, sometimes as heartache, and sometimes an overwhelming oppressive wave of molasses that pulls me under. I never know when she’s going to arrive, or in what costume, or when she’ll leave, nor specifically what it is about. Mostly it’s just kind of this nebulous feeling of deep sadness and longing in the heart. It shows up unexpectedly and stays a while, much like the other feelings that just show up – but I don’t notice them so much when it’s joy or happiness – only the “troubling” ones stand out and grab my attention. When I feel joy or happiness, or peace, I don’t think. Gee this is odd, I must do something about this! No, I am delighted that they came to call and think all must be right with the world or with myself *because* I *feel* “happy”… They reinforce the illusion that this personal “me” has done something “right” and is therefore happy – and therefore I feel the pressure to always be “happy“, to be optimistic – to get rid of “depression” so I can live up to my “happiness” , and start to believe I *deserve* to be “happy” all the time. When the Buddha said that the goal of life is to be “happy” I don’t believe he was talking about head over heels in love kind of happy, but internal “contentment” with life, which is a state of Being that never changes – that doesn’t come and go…

But – depression - well, it comes and goes – like all the other feelings do. It makes “me” (this little me) feel all wrong with the world and myself – unhappy, alone, sad. It’s quite dense actually – like a heavy hand gripping the heart with a pressing pressure – causing a heartache. But what is this heart aching *for*? You’d think with my husband’s new job there would be a sense of peace, optimism, even happiness. But no, a heaviness of heart pulls me deeply inward like a weight… I suspect it has something more to do with an internal orientation to life and being, than the externals of life circumstances – although that’s some of it too - clearing the underbrush of some heavy emotional burdens and beliefs that I’ve been unconsciously carrying for so many years around our life circumstances… And just maybe my husband’s recent return to work allowed all this to emerge…

“Non-dualisms” didn’t work - like: “There is no one here to be depressed.” Okay - so then why am “i” depressing, “i” asked my Self. Or - “i” do not exist – according to non-dualists - so how could “i” be depressed? So “*who* is depressed” then, who is depressing? Non-dual conundrums that keep me in my mind. Ahhh - maybe it is the mind, I thought… So I tried to convince the mind that it was only its thoughts, its beliefs, it stories that were causing this depressing feeling. The mind bought it for a while and then went back to its job – “depressing” – pulling me more deeply in… Even though I *know* intellectually that it is the *personality* of the mind that depresses, and that behind the little me-self personality that feels empty, full of insecurities, doubts, and depression is the Truth – the bare bones Truth of authentic Beingness that we are at the core… But the intellectual knowing didn’t help either… It has to be deeply *known* at the core…

So I sat, journal in hand, as is my style, and said – okay – here I am – show me who you are, show me where you want to go. I followed her inwardly, to see what she would reveal. I saw that she was a thread that ran all the way through my life that I hadn’t seen before– well more that I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge before. She was a golden river that ran through every phase and chapter of my life that held a familiar deep longing in the heart at every turn and bend – a longing for the Truth, somehow misconstrued as “depression”... Interesting that it was golden, not something dark and sinister…. There was no monster lurking under the surface. She took me down the rabbit hole, in a good way, allowing me to come face to face with my delusions… She helped me to see that my life has been a fantasy of distorted characters, stories and feelings that I have become attached to, and have gotten lost in, confused between what is Real and what is fantasy. I recognized that I had identified with the *feeling*, with the *personality* who *feels* depressed, empty, lost, wounded, separate from ones true identity.

Following the thread, I realized that “depression” was really my Heart calling. It was an invitation to follow the lifeline of the feeling all the way back to the Truth that lies beyond the feeling - all the way back to the bare bones Truth at the Heart of Being; which does not mean that by seeing this that “depression” left. Oh no. She’s still a companion, shadowing me on the road here. But it was seen that she’s not who I am. I had mis-identified myself *as* the shadow. In truth, she is a thread of love clearing an opening in my heart, calling me back to a direct encounter with the bare bones Truth…

The Open Path...

It may be that when we no longer
know what to do
we have come to our real work…

And when we no longer know
which way to go
we have come to our real journey…

Wendell Berry

~

We’re all just walking each other home.

Ram Dass

~

If you don’t write the things
deep inside your own heart
what’s the use of churning
out so many words…?

Ryokin

~

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me,
so that what [I have not] dared …
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing to you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s Book of Hours

Finding a Heart...

No, I’m not talking about the Tin Man following the road to Oz, hoping the Wizard would give him a heart. :) Although, after spending a week in the family vortex I thought I might need to find my way there…

I found this heart leaf lying on the kitchen floor in *exactly* this position on Friday afternoon.

I got back from my mother’s around 2pm, found the computer wasn’t connected to the server for some unknown reason, made a couple of phone calls trying to figure that out and couldn’t; put a load of laundry in, and went out to prune a few branches off the ailing River Birch in the front yard. Did another errand around 3pm, and when I came back found this heart leaf on the floor. It was as if I had been left a little gift of love, an enchantment from the “Wizard” Herself – without even looking for it…

How the heart got there I really did not know, until later when I saw the shoes I had been wearing out in the yard. They were caked with dead leaves on their bottoms from walking around in the damp dirt at the base of the Birch tree. Evidently one dropped off in the kitchen – just one – and just this one – the heart one… Whoa…

It really speaks for itself, don’t you think…

Love…

Just Love…

You are Loved…

Follow the Heart…

Open to the Heart…

You ARE Love…

Send Love…

BE Love…

♥


~*~


“Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man,
that he didn’t already have…”

A line from the song “Tin Man” - by America
1974

~*~

May we all *know* that we are Loved,
and that we are LOVE!

Heart Whispers...

Put your ear to the wall of your heart…
Listen to the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are
very still…


Tom Barrett


~


There is a whisper,
but it’s louder than the wind.
It calls to us, “Come Home.
The story is over,
the pages are worn thin.
Come Home.”

It’s like a chant,
a sacred OM
underlying all else.

It requires no doing anything,
or going anywhere
or becoming anything.

If only we see that we are this
whispering sound,
all else will dissolve
into peace.


Rafael Stoneman


~


Make everything in you an ear,
each atom of being,
and you will hear
at every moment
what the Source
is whispering
to you…

You are the beloved
of The Beloved…

and in every moment,
in every event of your life,
The Beloved
is whispering to you
exactly what you need
to hear and know…


Rumi


~*~


istock photo

Winter's Heart Magic...

Winter left me a gift of the Heart this morning in Jack Frost's
icy artistry...

Can you see the Heart? :)

Heart Excursion...

A “mantra” has emerged from the depths: “Follow the Heart” – the Heart of Hearts that is. It is the sense of paying attention to the deepest Heart that *knows* the Way – the Inner Compass - the silent space of Stillness, our Essential Nature. It’s about experiencing what *enlivens* the Deep Heart, what feeds and nourishes this Heart…

I want to feel Alive while I am alive. I want to be acutely *aware* of this Aliveness, this Heart that I am – listening deeply to Its hum – like the purr of a contented cat… But I’ve been feeling a little funky lately in our brown, dry winter – depressed, unsettled, feeling a lot of “heartburn” – but no purring… After a 3-week funk I was inspired by Genju’s blog (108zenbooks) when she started posting her “contemplative photography” on Monday of this week. The Deep Heart awakened from beneath the thick layers of molasses, and said: Let’s go on a photo excursion! And this Being suddenly came alive, wanting to play, to be in nature, to explore, to see Life with new eyes. So Monday I went on a Heart Excursion – to follow the Heart in order to feed it…

Now I am not a “photographer," and only have a little Kodak Easy Share digital camera, but it was the excursion that counted – nourishing the Heart. There is something in the act of taking pictures that makes me actually *see* my surroundings. I enter into curious interaction with Life. Seeing Life focused through the lens of a camera stills my mind and thrills this Heart; allows my whole being to settle into inner Stillness, to be at complete rest within my Self. Even with others walking past me on the path that day, I was in deep Silence. I was kissed by Silent Joy and the Heart purred - reminding me that this is why I/we are here – to *live* in full awareness of the Deep Heart; to be aware of and commune with the Deep Heart – to be *Alive* to Life - to *be* the Aliveness that Life is – and to walk in the Alive Stillness of the Heart…

Here are some photo highlights.










There are many blog sites out in the blogosphere that display inspiring photography that enlivens this Heart. One that I just found is Beyond the Fields We Know – beautiful winter photos and writings. Be sure to visit, and scroll down.