Time Passage...

So much of this life gone-by now;
remembering previous chapters
of the Fiction called "my life",
as if they never really happened -
or did they...
Some so distant in the mind they
are more like dreams, some nightmares;
and the characters I played - some good,
some bad.

Now nearing the end of the story I am an elder
character, losing her grip on life and time,
wondering what death will be like.
Will there be awareness after death?
Or, like a mist, will I dissipate back into the
Cosmos with no memory of this "journey"
on this planet spinning in a galaxy in space?
Maybe become an Aurora Borealis -
Pure Energy -
Pure De-Light...

How strange this novel turned out to be,
more drama and struggle than I would have liked,
but also more poetic than prose...

Mostly the story didn't go
the way I had in mind...
In this passage through time...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 1, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"it happens" - Kathleen Knipp

.....in our "practice" of life, we can just rest back and experience
how it's being done.  We don't have to do life, life happens in
whatever way it happens.  [But] we claim the activity that
happens as something volitional.

Observe the belief, explore the belief that I am in control, that
 I am the "doer" [of what happens].  Question the belief.
Life is happening, just as breathing is happening or thinking is
happening.

What would it feel like to slide out of the picture into an
observer position, being aware of thoughts that are generated
by the mind and emotional states that arise and pass - watching
it all happen.  It plays out like an old show on a big screen.
Step back and watch with a sense of curiosity.  See yourself as a
"character" that you observe - watching, observing, noticing all
the different sensations of the body - the different experiences.
Have compassion for your "character."  Life is changing out of
our control, our expectations, our wants.

Surrender to the Great Mystery, beyond comprehension, before
time, before conceptualization; inexplicable but palpable.
Source reveals itself in all of its different manifestations - as
profound tranquility and turbulence, as mind stuff, as breath
and body: the totality of all of its expressions.
Rest deeply in this knowing.

Kathleen Knipp

Excerpts from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
"it happens"

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Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Role I Play - Wislawa Szymborska

[.....]

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it's mine.  I can't exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play's all about.

Ill prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can't conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for hammy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can't take back,
stars you'll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run -
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But her comes Friday with a script I haven't seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage).

You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations.  Oh no.
I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there's no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I've done.

Wislawa Szymborska

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo via Death Deconstructed