Ghosts? - Paul F. Eno

I don't believe that ghosts are "spirits of the dead" because I 
don't believe in death.  In the multiverse, once you're possible,
you exist.  And once you exist, you exist forever one way or
another.  Besides, death is the absence of life, and the ghosts
I've met are very much alive.  What we call ghosts are lifeforms
just as you and I are.

Paul F. Eno
Footsteps in the Attic

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Spirit Light"

~

My favorite grandmother passed 26 years ago yesterday.
My father passed 39 years ago tomorrow.
Although their bodies are gone something of them lives on
 somewhere, maybe not as the personas we remember,
although my brother insists that my father joins him on his
 motorcycle  rides quite frequently :) - not as a ghost that he sees,
 but a felt presence...  My husband's mother passed in Nov 2017. 
Two weeks after her death my husband and I both felt a strong
loving presence, and we both *knew* it was *her* presence -
how I don't know...  Not as a ghost or apparition, but as
 living presence.

A Mystery...

MM

 

Accepting reality - a meandering...

As I awoke one morning recently, it came to me in my
half sleep that I had to accept death...
That my current life experience may be the
beginning of my end -
and that I need to accept that...

My body and mind immediately relaxed...

I get that it's not about getting my life back, as I have been
wanting, but about accepting the impermanence of my life;
of everything basically, including this particular life
circumstance; my *ideas* about how life is supposed to be,
or recovering my life, restoring it to what it was before...

I've heard this all before,
through different spiritual traditions,
but this time it came from within
and was organic,,,

It's about accepting impermanence,
accepting death; death of ways of life,
death of beliefs, death of ways of being,
death of the body...

Not trying to recapture, or restore everything
to the way it was - so that I can "finish" my life...

But letting go of the idea that Life has to be/go
a certain way...

There was great *relief* in realizing this
- a profound acceptance of reality...

I felt freed of everything that has bound me:
ways of thinking, perspectives, feelings about life...

And also realized that I have been resisting the little
deaths in my life - the changes that create disruption.

*Everything* changes, *everything* dies,
that is - changes form; form transforms itself
continuously...

It is the natural way of life itself;

it *is* the reality.

I'm going to die (my body that is) at some point and
maybe this life circumstance is just the
precursor to that,
the doorway to that...

But I keep trying to make this current experience
change, to stop in some way - resisting it -
when in reality it is an opening.

I was almost euphoric,
because changing my perspective means the end of
suffering, struggle, trying to make things happen, trying
to have a "spiritual" perspective about it all,
trying to find a way *out* of my experience...

(although this shift is gradual, as I discovered)...

Everything is impermanent, transient...

I'm accepting (ongoing) that reality...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 8, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"Prepare for Death" - a meandering...

"Prepare for death" were the words I heard
whispered recently, unexpectedly.
I tried to ignore them,
not wanting to acknowledge them,
but wanting to keep them at bay - like
they hadn't been heard -
but they had...

This meandering is not meant to be morbid, just realistic,
even sobering - it is for me anyway...

Maybe the "reason" our bodies decline,
I thought, is because it is, in a sense, preparing
us for death... so that we recognize what's coming,
because we feel the body's fading, so we can start
detaching from the attachments we made in this world...

Most people I've encountered recently
don't like the mention of the word "death",
they react, as if it was a dangerous word;
like it's not supposed to happen, at least not now,
because our lives, for the most part, are still
oriented toward achievement and accomplishment,
materializing what we want, acquiring - and legacy.

Most are not ready to "let go" yet.

Evidently the word "death" - makes some people
very uncomfortable - let alone its actuality.

In pondering death,
the reality of impermanence,
I never thought I would back away,
but would welcome the
release...  I still do really...
But I wasn't expecting the words to waft
through me either...

And do they mean - literally?
Or metaphorically - like - *some*thing is
going to die in me?  Or a message that some*one*
will pass?  Or symbolically - like some aspect of
myself is going to fall away?

It is not clear...

As I continued to ponder its meaning
memories of those who have passed and their lives
floated through.  But those memories seemed like
another world - like looking through a window
into another time - which it is actually
- it *was* another time
that now seems unreal.

I want to be able to look through the window
into the past-death portal and what that's going to 
be like.  It seems we really can't know until we get
there, unless we are given glimpses, through meditation,
or mystical moments, or belief...
And I "believe" that *some*thing departs -
but what?

Spirit, Soul, Consciousness?
Returning to the "energy"
from which "we" arose?

a Mystery...

I have no clue really - just meandering here...

But I do think we feel death coming
in the waning of our body and energy; and the mind
unable to maintain its acuity, its cognition, its
memory of words...

We *are* given signs, but we try to fool ourselves
into thinking that if we just "live right",
pray/meditate enough,
exercise and eat "right";
believe the "right" religion,
we can put off the inevitable.

When it's time for me to "let go" of this world -
I hope I can relax and willingly walk over the bridge,
 through the portal into the Unknown...

Namaste

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
July 13, 2024

12:30am

~

Photo - Mystic Meanderng

 

Non-continuity - J. Krishnamurti

Photo - vincent guth on unsplash

Questioner: The fact that death stares everybody in the face,
yet its mystery is never solved.  Must it always be so?

Krishnamurti:  Why is there fear of death?

There is fear of death as long as there is desire for continuity
[of the] character, the name, and so on.  Fear comes into being
when this continuity is threatened through death.  So, there is
fear of death as long as there is the desire for continuity.

Death, the state of non-continuity, the state of rebirth, is the
unknown.  Death is the unknown.  So death remains a mystery.

Immortality is not the continuation of "me." [the character]
The me is of time.  So there is no relationship between the me
and that which is immortal, timeless.  That which is immeasurable
and timeless cannot be caught in the net of time [and
therefore never dies - and we are that timeless energy]

J. Kirshnamurti
excerpt from a talk in Bombay March 1948

[Brackets mine]

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo -Vincent Guth
Unsplash

~

For all the innocents who have passed in humankind's never ending
propensity toward war...

_/\_

Namaste

 

Pondering Impermanence...

The Eternal Being that inhabits the body is not aging -
but I am surprisingly surprised by the reality of the body's 
increasing decline: loss of memory, lack of stamina
and muscle functioning, etc...

I am on the off ramp and the inevitable dropping of the

body transition is surely coming...

Although grateful that the end of the body's struggles
is closer - (how close "she" doesn't know)
but wonders what that will be like;
to witness the death of her body
and the possibility of a 
"cosmic birthing" into a new "form"
of the Formless; or maybe dissolve back
into cosmic dust, or be absorbed by the
Vastness of the Eternal.
Sentience dissolving into the Eternal...

Who really knows...

All is transient here.
We're just passing through.
I shouldn't be surprised by this,
feeling the body's decline as I do -
but still -
every so often,
it gives me pause...

Mystic Meandering
2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"Inner Opening" - Ivan Granger

Most of us spend our entire lives avoiding an inner opening.
It is that quiet itch at the back of awareness that makes us
squirm and turn away.  And when it really presses on us,
it can arouse terror, as if we were facing down death.

...to approach it is to face death.  It is the death of our old
worldview, the death of patterned awareness, the death of
our limited notion of who we are.  All we thought ourselves
 to be stops - and so it is a sort of death.  To feel that grace
approaching , to welcome it, requires a wild sort of courage.

It requires courage and, yes, surrender.  We have this idea
that spiritual opening is a terrible effort.  No.  That unfolding
wants to occur within us.  The only effort is to let go of our
endless strategies to halt the process.  We all feel it, a gentle
prodding to let the heart open, to know ourselves truly, to be
present and radiate ourselves into the world.

That opening is insistent, trying to happen within us.  Call it
grace, if you like.  The question is before us: Do we
courageously accept the invitation?

For those of us who live in modern urban society, think how
hard it is to stop the ticking of the clock.  From an early age
we internalize the sense of time and progress and deadlines.
Yet, in doing so, we forget that these are all just concepts,
just one way to understand the unfolding of being and
experience.  That sense of time is a powerful tool for doing
and accomplishment, but it isn't inherently real.  It doesn't
have much to do with who or what we are.  There is a flow
of days and months, but they are the surface current of a
much deeper timelessness.

It is fascinating how we use the hyperactivity of thought to
define the world.  The other thing about thought: it creates time.
When thought settles down, we discover timelessness. ...the
mind comes to rest, not in the head, but in the heart.

Having come to rest, we remember.  It is not through intellection
but through stillness that we remember.  Remember.  Re-member.
To remember is to finally see how the apparent separation of
reality actually fits together in a single wholeness.  Discursive
thought can only ever examine pieces of the whole.  To re-member
is to have the full vision of Wholeness, as things actually are.
But this vision is found in timelessness and stillness, through the
quiet mind unfiltered.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The River of Silence - Kahlil Gibran

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind
and to melt into the sun?  And what is it to cease
breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides,
that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you 
indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountaintop, then shall
you begin to climb.  And when the earth shall claim your
limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran

~

You must seek nothing but the Source...

Rumi

~

Photo - my late blog friend Dorothea...
Walked into the Light - Jan. 17, 2021

~

In this season of honoring the rebirth of the Light;
in the cycle of birth, death and rebirth -

We don't have to physically die to experience the deep,
 restorative Silence - and dance


  MM

 

Death - J Krishnamurti

.....can you look at death without the image of death?
As long as the image exists from which springs thought,
thought must always create fear.  Then you either rationalize
your fear of death and build a resistance against the inevitable
or you invent innumerable beliefs to protect you from the fear
of death.  Hence there is a gap between you and the thing of
which you are afraid.  In this time-space interval there must be
conflict which is fear and anxiety...

Thought, which breeds fear of death says, 'Let's postpone it, let's
avoid it, keep it as far away as possible, let's not think about it' -
but you are thinking about it.  When you say, 'I won't think about
it', you have already thought out how to avoid it. You are frightened
of death because you have postponed it.

We have separated living from dying, and the interval between the
living and dying is fear.  The interval, that time, is created by fear.
Living is our daily torture, daily insult, sorrow and confusion, with
occasional opening of a window over enchanted seas.  That is 
what we call living, and we are afraid to die,  which is to end this
misery. We would rather cling to the known than face the unknown
- the known being our house, our furniture, our family, our
character, our work, our knowledge, our fame, our loneliness, our
gods - that little thing that moves around incessantly within itself
with its own limited pattern of embittered existence.

We think that living is always in the present and that dying is
something that awaits us at a distant time.  But we have never
questioned whether this battle of everyday life is living at all.
We want to know the truth about reincarnation, we want proof
of the survival of the soul, we listen to the assertion of clairvoyants
and to the conclusions of physical research, but we never ask, never,
how to live - to live with delight, with enchantment, with beauty
every day.

We have accepted life as it is with all its agony and despair and
have got used to it, and think of death as something to be carefully
avoided.  But death is extraordinarily like the life we know how to
live.  You cannot live without dying.  You cannot live if you
don't die psychologically every minute.  This is not an intellectual
paradox.  To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new
loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise
you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what
love is or what freedom is.

Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it
means to live.  We don't know how to live, therefore we don't 
know how to die.  As long as we are frightened of life we shall be
frightened of death.  The man who is not frightened of life is not
frightened of being completely insecure for he understands that
inwardly, psychologically, there is no security.  When there is no
security there is an endless movement and then life and death are
the same.  The man who lives without conflict, who lives with
beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to
die.

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Freedom from the Known

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

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

 

Suffering - Francis Weller

No one escapes suffering in this life.
None of us is exempt from loss, pain, illness and death.
How is it that we have so little understanding of [and empathy for]
these essential experiences?  How is it that we have attempted
to keep grief separated from our lives and only begrudgingly 
acknowledge its presence at the most obvious of time, such as
a funeral.

It is the accumulated losses of a lifetime that slowly weigh us
down - the times of rejection, the moments of isolation when we felt
cut off from the sustaining touch of comfort and love.  It is an ache
that resides in the heart, the faint echo calling us back to the times of
loss.  We are called back, not so much to make things right, but to
acknowledge what happened to us.

Grief asks that we honor the loss and, in doing so, deepen our
capacity for compassion.  When grief remains unexpressed, however,
 it  hardens, becomes as solid as stone.  We, in turn, become rigid and
stop moving in rhythm with the soul.... with the flow of life.  Grief is
part of the dance.

As we begin to pay attention, we notice that grief is never far from
our awareness.  We become aware of the many ways it arrives in
our daily lives. It is the blue mood that greets us upon waking.  It
is the melancholy that shades the day in muted tones.  It is the
recognition of time's passing, the slow emptying of our days.  It
is the searing pain that erupts when someone close to us dies -
It is the confounding grief when our life circumstances are
shattered by the unexpected....  the ground beneath us opens,
shaken by violent rumblings.  Grief enfolds our lives....

It is essential for us to welcome grief, whatever form it takes.
When we do, we open ourselves to our shared experiences in life.
Grief is our common bond.  Opening to our sorrow connects us
with everyone, everywhere.  There is no gesture of kindness that
is wasted, no offering of compassion that is useless.  We can be
generous to every sorrow we see.  It is sacred work.

Francis Weller

from The Wild Edge of Sorrow:
Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief;
The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Grace Comes...

Grace comes unbidden...

Her soft Presence comforts in the
coldest dawn and darkest night,

and sits with us when we are broken,

beaten down by the "life game"...

She is the antidote for an aching heart
and struggling body...

She hears your silent tears...
and walks with you...

Grace brings you love and kindness
to endure the crosswinds that bite...

Grace comes...

to bind the wounds from those
who tried to suffocate your voice,
who tried to kill your spirit...

She softens the heart
and clears the pain from your vision...

She is always with us,
even in the death of the body.
She is "the beautiful woman sitting on
the fence," come to take you "home."
or to your next "journey" - wherever
that may be...

She is singing your homing call...

There is nothing to do but surrender
and let Grace sing her song of Love
to your weary heart...

Listen...

Mystic Meandering
April 8, 2021

~

The reference to"the beautiful woman on the fence"
is something my mother experienced during her
dying process 3 1/2+ years ago...
Hospice said she was hallucinating, but we knew
she was "seeing."
She saw a beautiful woman sitting on the fence out her window,
at the top of a small incline.  On many occasions she said:
"the beautiful woman on the fence
has come to take me on my next journey."

Grace Comes...

~

Photo - blurred section of a painting
by Rod MacIver

 

The Mystery of Death...

We are a mist, a vapor that appears and disappears,
like an aurora borealis - here and gone;
a moment in the sky,
then absorbed into Space.

We are a breath of Spirit,
the Breath of Life Itself,
in-spired at birth,
expired in one long sigh at "death."

We are energy that dances in the wind -

for a time - and then gone.  Gone, gone, gone beyond,
absorbed by the Primordial Womb again.
"Returned" to Source.
Exhaled and inhaled by the Primordial Breath.

"We" go - Life Itself goes back to the Cosmic Womb
again, and again, and again - to the Energy
that suspends all life in Its Embrace...

Energy to Energy
Breath to Breath
Life to Life

One movement in the Dance of Life...

A Mystery...

Mystic Meandering

Sept. 2009

This was written only a few weeks after our old cat,
Yodi Bodhi "died."  

~

Photo - South Pole Aurora Borealis 
from the Internet

 

Reorientation - May Sarton

I am not ready to die.

But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.
I am moving
Toward a new freedom
Born of detachment,
And a sweeter grace -
Learning to let go.

I am not ready to die.

But as I approach sixty (73 😊)
I turn my face toward the sea.
I shall go where tides replace time,
Where my world will open to a far horizon.

Over the floating, never-still flux and change.
I shall go with the changes,
I shall look far out over golden grasses
And blue waters...

There are no farewells.

[.....]

May Sarton

With thanks to Death Deconstructed

Photo from the Internet

 

You can stop worrying now - Czeslaw Milosz

In advanced age, my health worsening,
I woke up in the middle of the night,
and experienced a feeling of happiness
so intense and perfect that in all my life
I had only felt its premonition.
It didn't obliterate consciousness:
the past which I carried was there,
together with my grief.
And it was suddenly included,
was a necessary part of the whole.

As if a voice were repeating:

"You can stop worrying now;
everything happened just as it had to.

You did what was assigned to you,
and you are not required anymore
to think of what happened long ago."

The peace I felt was a closing of accounts
and was connected with the thought of death.
The happiness on this side was
like an announcement of the other side.
I realized that this was an undeserved gift
and I could not grasp by what grace
it was bestowed on me.

Czeslaw Milosz

original title "Awakened"

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo from the internet

 

The Swan - Rainer Maria Rilke

This laboring of ours with all that remains undone,
as if still bound to it,
is like the lumbering gait of the swan.

And then our dying - releasing ourselves
from the very ground on which we stood -
is like the way he hesitantly lowers himself

into the water.  It gently receives him,
and, gladly yielding, flows back beneath him,
as wave follows wave,
while he, now wholly serene and sure,
with regal composure,
allows himself to glide.

Rainer Maria Rilke

with thanks to Death Deconstructed
and photo too...

 

Hey God - John Roedel

John: Hey God.

God: Hey John

John: Grief keeps sneaking up on me.

God: That's because grief is like a ninja.

John: When will it leave me alone?

God: Hopefully never.

John: Um. What?!

God: To grieve means that you have loved.
Grieving is one of the truest human experiences
that you will ever participate in.  It often arrives
without warning - like a late day summer storm -
obscuring the sun and drenching you in a downpour.
It is a gift, isn't it?

John: Uh, no.

God: Grab a pen and write the following four things down.

1) Grief can come and go as it pleases.
You gave it a key to your house at the exact moment you
gave your heart to somebody else.

2) Bereavement is the debt you must pay for having loved.
There is no getting over the loss of a beloved who is now
resting in the arms of endless love.  Grief has no expectation
date.  Despite the passing time, the phantom pain of mourning
is always one memory away from returning.

3) Of all the emotions you face, grief is the by-far stickiest.
It gets all over everything.  Like peanut butter, grief sticks
to the roof of your soul.

4) Grief is like an
afternoon thunderstorm
in late July.

It's the storm
that's always waiting
on the edges
of your most sunny
days to roll
across the horizon
and right over you.

The ghosts of your loved
ones who have died
are the clouds.

The webbed lighting

illuminating the
dark canvas sky is
their reminder to you
that life is just a
brilliant temporary flash
of time.

It's a reminder
to live now.
to be bold.
to be electric.

The pounding rain isn't your tears.
It's the hope of eternal life that
falls on you.

It's that downpour of hope that will
help you grow deep roots in love...

The gale winds
of these storms are
the messages from
those you have
lost to death that
are whispering
to you through the pines
the following psalm:

"It's okay, my love.  Eternity is holding  me.
Death isn't an end.  Death is a threshold.
I'm still here.  I never left.  Love doesn't die.
I remain.  There is no afterlife.  There is only life.
I'm here with you.  Love doesn't die."

It's all such an adventure!

John Roedel
from: Hey God, Hey John
a book about John's simple conversations with God...

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Emptying - Mark Strand

I empty myself of the names of others.  I empty my pockets.
I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.
At night I turn back the clocks;
I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do?  The hours have done their job.
I say my own name.  I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds.  How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am.  I change and I am the same.

I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

Mark Strand
(1934-2014)

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Our life force, like our flesh, never seems to issue away 
from us all at once.  Anyone who has been half dead can
attest to this.  What we call our soul can die in small quantities,
just as our bodies can be worn, amputated, and poisoned away,
bit by bit.  The lost parts of our souls are no more replaceable
than the lost parts of our bodies, life incrementally lifting
from life, just like that.

Anne Boyer

~

Photo - Painting by Nancy Proucher

 

Treading The Gate - Cate Kerr

Approach the gate as a pilgrim, a seeker,
wear sturdy boots for the craggy trail beyond.
Go cloaked and hooded against the wind,
blackthorn staff and lantern in your hand,
an abundance of candles in your pack
for the dusky nightfall hours ahead.

Bring the gifts and votive offerings for those who
dwell beyond the ancient threshold, bundles of sage,
clear water, kindling, earth and seaborn salt.
Bring flasks of tea, incense and bread,
tales and laughter to share around the fire
with those you meet along the way.

Travel light and make your journey by the moon,
taking the owls, true kindred, as your fierce
and tender companions.  Feel their soft breath
along your own wings, share in their dark
and watchful wisdom as you go.

Let the songs you sing as you are questing
be your own sweet music, and the stories
you spin by the fire in the nights ahead be the
narratives of your own wild and shining life,
this journey into an unknown land.

Listen to the night and be content, for you are not alone -
around you is a vast and singing throng.
The very stars are singing with you as you go.

Catherine Kerr
Beyond the Fields We Know

With thanks to Cate for her photo as well!

 

Learning From Trees - Grace Butcher

If we could,
like the trees,
practice dying,
do it every year
just as something we do -
like going on vacation
or celebrating birthdays,
it would become
as easy a part of us
as our hair or clothing.

Someone would show us how
to lie down and fade away
as if in deepest meditation,
and we would learn
about the fine dark emptiness,
both knowing it and not knowing it,
and coming back would be irrelevant.

Whatever it is the trees know
when they stand undone,
surprisingly intricate,
we need to know also
so we can allow
that last thing
to happen to us
as if it were only
any ordinary thing.

Grace Butcher

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The River of Silence - Kahlil Gibran

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind
and to melt into the sun?  And what is it to cease
breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides,
that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you
indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then shall
you begin to climb.  And when the earth shall claim your
limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

If we can hear life, we can hear Silence
because the intensity of this pure energy
manifests itself through the sound of existence.

Yolande Duran

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Everything is this Primal Energy - the Primal Source of life;
not a persona, or god, or goddess or even Pure Consciousness;
just the fluid Energy of Life running through all living beings.
We are that Energy...

MM

~

Photo - my late blog friend Dorothea...
Walked into the Light - Jan 17, 2021