Listen to the Inner Friend - Matt Licata

In times of liminality and transition, there is a unique invitation
delivered to each of us, form the inner Friend, to slow down and
open to what it might truly feel like to play and imagine once again.

To explore from that place of beginner's mind, re-opening to those
natural states of awe, wonder and the simple joy inherent in a few
moments of just Being, Being who and what we already are,
without having to turn our lives into some unending self-improvement
project.

While we can hold an intention to improve our lives, relationships,
and sense of self, which is intelligent, and kind, simultaneously to
spend some time each day in these less-structured experiences, ones
that aren't oriented in improvement, in getting a different experience.

Maybe for us that's being out in nature (perhaps without our electronic
devices) or writing down our dreams, or doing some type of yoga or
meditation or prayer or whatever that might be: Writing, dancing,
putting our hands in some sand...

Tending to the wild undomesticated aliveness of the sensual world.
An invitation of being emptied-out of the known, the frozen, and
the crystalized within us...

Taking time each day to interrupt the trance of the collective, the
pull into a survival-level restlessness, and return into our bodies,
and provide an inner temple in which we can feel, where that
which has remained unlived can come into embodied reality and
disclose its wisdom.

To attune to that emerging right-brain flow of image, feeling, 
sensation, and those states of communion, Union and Unity
[within]...

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Notice the reflection of the statue in the round sand frame,
The "Inner Friend"? ... :)

 

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

 

Still - and still moving - T.S.Eliot

"Home" is where we start from.  As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living.  Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after, 
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album.)
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity

....for a deeper communion.....

T. S. Eliot

from East Coker V, Four Quartets

With thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Still your mind in me, still yourself in me
and you shall be united with me,
the One Love, dwelling in your heart.

Bhagavad Gita

With thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Be Still and still moving - T.S. Eliot

Home is where one starts from.  As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living.  Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise.
In my end is my beginning.

~  T.S. Eliot

from East Coker - section V

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - created with a visualizer to the sound of music

 

A Sense of Presence - Howard Thurman

 The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines is to clear away
whatever may block our awareness of that which [some call]
God in us...

It will be in order to suggest certain simple aids to this end.

One of these is the practice of silence , or quiet.
As a child I was accustomed to spend many hours alone in
my rowboat, fishing along the river, when there was no sound
save the lapping of the waves against the boat.

There were times when it seemed as if the earth and the river
and the sky and I were one beat of the same pulse.  It was a
time of watching and waiting for what I did not know -
yet I always knew.

There would come a moment when beyond the single pulse
beat there was a sense of Presence which seemed always
to speak to me.  My response to the sense of Presence 
always had the quality of personal communion.

There was no voice.  There was no image.
There was no vision.

There was God.

Howard Thurman

from Disciplines of the Spirit

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

Personal Note:  I shy away from using the word "God"
in my own experiences now because it holds religious
connotations from the religion of my childhood
 that I no longer relate to.  I use names now that don't hold
  identifications with the word, such as "The Mystery",
"The Beloved", "The Ineffable", "The Sacred" etc. 
I especially like the words The Silence, or The Quiet
as representations of what I experience when I sit in silence
Encountering the deep Silence of Being for me feels like
encountering "God", like "personal communion."

I bask in The Sacred Silence, absorbed, feeling the sense
of Presence, of something vaster than an image of "God"
that I hold in my mind; something which is ever-
present, and personal...  The Deep Silence within is the
Heart of Being, "The Mystery", The Ineffable" - my refuge.

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

May Winter & Danna Faulds...

“I am everywhere present.
Seek me in the stately trees
or the melodies of sparrows
and you will surely find me.

Look for me in the Buddha’s smile,
the countenance of Christ,
the words of the Koran and
Sanskrit prayers…

I am always there.

Turn your attention to the sky where the
movements of the moon and stars
trace my beauty.

Experience true emptiness
and my presence permeates the void.
Now bring your focus closer to your Heart.
Grow still and find me within you.

Separation dissolves like salt water
when you experience your true identity
as me…

From knower and perceived,
seer and seen,
from two comes One.

Practice devotion and let go into the ocean
of my love,
or be the open space from which all things arise.

One and two,
duality and union,
ARE BOTH TRUE…

So I say to you
be jubilant,
and be at peace,
for inside you is
the seed and fruit,
the tree and root,

Choose to be in communion with me
and see the whole of this creation
infused with one energy…”

From: Prayer to the Infinite
Danna Faulds

~*~*~*~

Yes, we had snow in MAY! J

It’s Spring in Colorado…

We’ve been having buckets of rain all week,

which has been delightful! – and very unusual.

Then Saturday night rain turned to snow!

Although not the best photos,
taken at night through the windows, but

I thought I’d share them anyway…

Our lovely River Birch was nearly flattened…

And the long tendrils of the Silver Maple bowed in respect….

Winter’s Magic just kept hanging on…

What once looked like this just a day before… 

Turned to this – bending under the burden she bore…

She has since bounced back up J

Mother Nature’s Beauty

 reminding us that we’re not in control here J
except digitally maybe… LOL

May your life be filled with Love and Magical Moments...

Thrive in Sacred Silence...

The Sacred Silence of the night calls to me in the hours between 12mn and 1am – when the noise of life has settled.  It beckons me to the window to sit – in a kind of mystical communion with “the Divine” *through* the open window – a metaphorical opening to a larger Reality – that brings awareness of a larger Reality and shifts my paradigm while breathing in unison with the Breath of Life that breathes me - *aware* of a Sacred Presence.

My *Being* craves this Sacred Silence, as if craving ItSelf.  It is the same Sacred Silence that is within all things; the deep Rhythm of Silence that permeates all life.  And so I sit at the open window allowing myself to be breathed, to be touched by Silence, to be known by Silence…  The air is still – no sounds – no breeze – so quiet, only the smells of the night.  But the earth is not sleeping, it is alive with Sacred Silence!

In my experience there are “layers” of Silence that blend and merge (for lack of better words to describe what I experience).  Sacred Silence is not the same as being silent, or still, or the silence of doing quiet things that quiets the mind into stillness, even though these can become portals to a deeper awareness of Sacred Silence. Time in silence or stillness everyday without agenda is very therapeutic, clearing the mind and energy field.  But there is a deeper layer, a deeper space of Silence that brings awareness of the Sacred, and a direct experience of the Rhythm of that Silence that fills us, that feeds us, that nourishes one’s Being – and - is recognized *as* one’s very Being – one’s Divine Nature…

The Sacred Silence is my sanctuary, my sabbatical, and my sanity - the place where I lose my sense of self/me – my persona, my roles, my self-identities, my mind meanderings - and become truly Aware of what is really occupying this space called “me.”  I *need* this deep Sacred Silence to *thrive.*  In the deep Silence I can *hear* the silent voice of the Cosmos whispering in the night - instead of the “noise” of the requirements of daily life driving me…  At the window the veil opens to reveal a communion with The Sacred that is already taking place…  All I need do is show up – and surrender into “The Silence…”

Epiphany...

It seems that my “spiritual path” has been laced with small “epiphanies” and “divine flashes” of awareness, and “mini awakenings” over the years.  I had one of those moments last weekend when standing in the backyard.   I had stepped outside to be in nature for a while, connecting with the stillness and silence – taking it all in - noticing and feeling the connection.   I was in the process of taking some pictures of the shadows that the late afternoon sun in November was making on the fence, when suddenly the words: “There is nothing but ‘God’” ran unbidden and unexpectedly through the silence of my being.  Say What!  There was an immediate sense of *profound* peace, contentment and joy in my heart.  I even started to giggle to myself.  But I was also completely shocked by the word  - "God"– and my very tangible felt experience of it.

I have not used the "God" language in *years*, after leaving the religion of my childhood some 26 years ago , as it holds imagery of my Christian upbringing of a person in the clouds with white beard, and separateness.   It has so many old paradigm, somewhat fundamentalist “religious” connotations from my past, which made it all the more surprising that this was the word that floated through.  If the “voice” had said: “All there is is Awareness”, or “Consciousness”, or “Pure Being”, I would have gone, of course! – as those are the words that I most often use. You could also use words like Buddha Nature, the Divine, The Self, Brahman, the Ineffable, The Eternal, or the Infinite.   But I was jolted awake by the clear use of the word “God.”  As this phrase ran through me I had the image of a deep golden light, like a sunset that ran across the screen of my mind, as if to show me the depth and vastness of the word.  As it wasn’t the persona “God” image of my childhood.  No, it was an incomprehensible sense of vast, expansive, all-inclusive, infinite, ubiquitous Presence, with which I felt an immediate sense of *inherent* communion – not one which needed to be sought after, but that was already actively happening…  And with that realization came a profound sense of Grace…

It was also realized that it doesn’t matter if there is a sense of a “me” or “no-me.”  It is inconsequential.  It is just realized that all there is, is Infinite Existence that just IS – no matter what name or qualities we give It…

“…one awakens to the simple truth
that there is nothing other than God.
We are always with God.
Even the idea of a “path”
is an illusion,
because
 everything
 is
 God.”

Lllewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

Go
 IN &
 IN & IN

until you come to
 the pure Self-luminous,
the place of pure Being.

…see that behind all ‘this’
there is all ‘this’ in its OM,
its unmanifested form.

See the OMness of everything…”

Ram Dass
Hindu Spiritual Teacher

The liberating Truth is not static;
it is alive.

It cannot be put into concepts
and be understood by the mind.

The Truth lies beyond all forms
of conceptual fundamentalism.

What you are is the beyond…
It is awake and present,
here and now
 already.”

Adyashanti
Zen/Advaita Spiritual Teacher

~

Top Photo:
 Cray Pas Pastel oils

2010

Winter's Whimsies...

“Regard everything as transparent.
See through everything.

See that everything is in transition.

Liberate your concepts and beliefs.

Let go of the need for an “answer”,
a solution, a resolution…

Rest in the nature of Essence ~
The Primordial State of everything.

Be a child of fantasy.
Be curious instead of afraid…”


Quotes from Pema Chodron

When you can let yourself
really be
who and how
you are…
No one else
will have much
problem with it…

Practice letting yourself just BE!



Robyn Posin
For The Little Ones Inside

All life moves in cycles…

What has been
must often come apart
before what is to be
can come together…

Remember to honor
your courage
in the midst
of the
coming apart times.


Robyn Posin
For The Little Ones Inside

“What if we could really see the world
without a sense of separateness?

We must see what lies beyond
the perception of polarities…

Individuals are indivisible...
We are all “connected” through
our spacious Awareness…

Awareness is not about labeling different
”takes” on reality.
Awareness allows all ways of seeing to exist...
If you are rooted quietly in Awareness
you are fully aware of
the whole picture…”

Ram Dass
Be Love Now

“…..the deepest level of communication
is not communication, but communion.

It is wordless…

It is beyond words,
and it is beyond speech,
and it is beyond concept.

We discover we are already one.
But we imagine that we are not.

What we have to be
is what we already are…”


Thomas Merton

Serenity's Sanctuary - The Heart

What we look for in another is what our Being is:

unconditional Love – Acceptance – Compassion.

Everything that we long for is just an *expression*

of that longing of the Heart ~

For Being – For Love

which gets substituted with longing

for objects, things, people, experiences.

What’s behind it is an innocent longing for “Home”

~ Oneness with the Divine ~

Freedom.

Let your innocent longing carry you to

the still Heart of Being.

Be at Home in the Heart of Being

within you.

Come into deep communion with

the Heart of Being.

Recognize IT in you.

Being is like a lover who knows you intimately -

an intimate knowing that holds who you are

in deep acceptance.

You are embraced,

you are touched,

like smooth ripples on a pond

that gently caress everything in their path -

and kiss everything in their unfolding.

You are deeply Loved…

Sweet Serenity…

Notes from my journals 2005

Fun-Qi Art™ :) - Christine