Ordinary Enlightenment - "G", Shinzen Young & Jeff Foster

There are many different definitions of mysticism, but a narrow
description of mysticism is known as the "perennial philosophy",
or "perennial wisdom."  [That Truth is Universal & Eternal].
In this sense, mysticism indicates the dying of the illusion
of selfhood into the greater reality of God, Nirvana, Dao, or a
number of other concepts representing the deathless and
indefinable part of us that is often called the Void. [or Emptiness].

It is the "death" [dissolution] of the individual ego into the
indescribable that characterizes the perennial wisdom. [Or rather]
it is the giving up of identifying with being the individual ego/self.

God, as the mystic understands the term, does not correspond at all
to the commonly held beliefs involving an anthropomorphic deity
gazing down on humanity from on high.  For the mystic, God is
much more subtle and immediate.  In mysticism, God is not a
separate being to us, rather the very "being-ness" that lies
 at the heart of everyone. 

The mystical process, whatever traditions or methods it uses, is
ultimately aimed at breaking through the prison of mortality into

freedom of what both the Buddha and Japanese Zen Master Bankei
called the Unborn.  Living as the Unborn we are no longer tied to
[attached to] a false sense of ego/self... but are liberated as the very
Awareness that is the heart of every being in the universe.

Excerpt from: "Buddha and Religion: Mysticism"
Buddha Space
Read the full article here

This blog also has other interesting topics!

~

Even for a deeply "enlightened" person, the experience of contact
with Flow and Emptiness does not necessarily go uninterrupted.  It
may happen frequently during the day, but not necessarily continuously.
Even a very liberated person still spends a lot of time experiencing
the world in the ordinary way.

What then is the difference between an ordinary person and a liberated
person?  The difference is a matter of freedom.  An "enlightened"
person has the ability to experience self and world as a Source wave.
And when they are not experiencing things that way, they understand
why that is the case. It is just because they are not paying close
attention...

Shinzen Young - The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

via Markings

Pay attention! :)

~

There is no fixed path to enlightenment.  Enlightenment is not a
destination, a goal, a final resting place at the end of a long journey -

that's the mind's version of enlightenment.  Nobody is the authority
on your path - no teacher, no guru, no religious leader.  Nobody can
tell you the right 'way' for you...

Jeff Foster

via The Dawn Within

~

Photo from the Internet

The Liberated Soul - Marguerite Porete

I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love...
...and the Soul is God by condition of Love,
thus I am God by divine nature...

(The liberated soul) loses her name in the one in whom she
is melted and dissolved.  Thus she would be like a body of
water which flows from the sea.  And when this water returns
to the sea, it loses its course and its name, and is now in the
sea where it rests...

This Soul is always in full sufficiency, in which she swims
 and bobs and floats, is surrounded by divine peace, without
any movement in her interior, and without any exterior work
[effort] on her part.

(The liberated soul) is at rest without obstructing the outpouring
of divine Love.  She no longer seeks God through penitence, nor
through any sacrament; not through thoughts, nor through words,
nor through works, nor through divine understanding, nor through
divine love, nor through divine praise.

Her will is planted in the One...  She is dissolved into that prior
existence where Love has received her.

She has fallen into certainty of knowing nothing and into
certainty of willing nothing.  And this nothingness...gives her
the All...

Marguerite Porete
14th Century French Mystic
Her writings, of which the above is only a
small excerpt, were considered heretical.
She was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310.

Porete's vision of the Soul is one of ecstatic union with God...
Once united with God the Soul's will becomes that of God's.

Interestingly 200 years later St. John of the Cross
expressed an almost identical view of the nature of the
Soul's union with God in his Ascent of Mount Carmel, i.e.
that once united with God the Soul's will becomes that of God's,
but he was not denounced as a heretic.

Source - Western Mystics
via No Mind's Land

~*~ 

The naked, open, loving, Self-aware, luminous Being
within, our Essential Nature, is God...
God is The Silence within us...
God is the Self...

Rupert Spira
Contemporary Non-Dual teacher

~

Photo - rainbow light on wall

"First" (excerpt) - Chuck Surface

[.....]

First...

Turn your wandering Attention within,
and find the Self within your self...

Find it not by "thinking about" it,
But by Feeling with the Whole of your Being.
What you are, Where you are,
Before the feeling of you, the person, ever arose...

[.....]

You are the formless, unmanifest Mystery,
And... you are all that appears.
From, within, and as that Mystery,
As it moves into Creation.

Once you have poked a hole in Heaven,
It will shine into your manifest Experience,
Of space, time, and objects.
Here... in this Dream of duality.

And in time, that Wellspring in your Heart
Will Dissolve the residues
of the salt doll "self",
In those living Waters.

Knowledge... is... insufficient.
Many "know" intellectually,
That they are formless Pure Being,
But continue to "feel" themselves bound...

For such "knowledge" is nothing more than "belief."

To cut the Knot...
"Find the 'I' Feeling and rest there",

As Ramana [Maharshi] said.
Not by looking at a conceptual "picture"...

But by diving deep, in Feeling, in Experience.

Throughout the day, as you can Remember,
Turn Attention within, turn Feeling within,
And forgetting all concept, theory, and conjecture,
Investigate the nature of Where and What you are...

And Resting there...
Moved by that Ancient Longing...
Dissolve in and as The Unknowable Mystery...
That you are.

[.....]

Chuck Surface

Facebook

To read the entire poem click
here then scroll down in the left margin
to Aged Poems - which are listed alphabetically.

~

Photo - pic of clouds turned on end. 

Hermitage of Silence...

As I sit...meditating...breathing...
I feel the familiar subtle pull inward,
carrying me
to the deep Silence within;
the Inner Hermitage...

I recognize the spacious Emptiness
of Pure Beingness -
Pure Awareness.
I hear the silent call
of an inaudible Voice.
and feel Its magnetic pull,
drawing me
ever more deeply
in
~
~

~

a death spiral
that leads to birth

There is no choice but to succumb. . .

Dying into the Inner Reality. . . 

Dissolving the perception of self. . .

In this space of quintessential Quiet
all mental agitation,
all emotional reactiveness,
all verbalization of thought
...cease

There is only the deepening
space of Silence;
a Holy enclave of Silent repose
prior to expression,
with no need for the habituated outward
movement of the mind.
Only listening...
to the inherent Silence of
an ineffable language... known intimately
to those who hear...

In this all-pervasive Stillness,
"I" am absorbed... by
the Primordial Womb
into the Vastness
of
Silence...

my Hermitage...

Mystic Meandering
May 1, 2016


Photo: snow against window
taken from the inside
leaving this womb-like affect

~*~

"...we die to the person we think we are.
Again and again we die to our limited sense of self
in order to step into the vaster dimension of our being.....
[We] are driven to venture into the depths."

Hafiz

Melted - Mary McGovern

Something just melted in the story of me.

Like a warm balm, the softness spread

over muscles and bone and fascia.

Whispering - "It's okay, it's okay..."

The mantle of knowing slipping

off shoulders, the sweet relief

of no judgment, no opinion, no idea.

What is good or wrong?

I cannot say, not even for "me."

And this is the deep solace of emptiness.

Full of tender sigh, deep breath,

grateful tear.

I cannot know.

 I cannot know. 

And gratitude explodes silently again...

Mary Mc Govern

Grace Is Now

Collapse the Scaffolding...

Allow everything to collapse…
All the structures that you have erected,
that you cling to;
beliefs, opinions, self-images, self-identities;
self-definitions;
what you *think* you are;
believe you are;
want life to be;
desire to have;
and feel about
your ‘self.’

Collapse everything
that you hold onto
as your ‘self.’

Collapse into the Ineffable Mystery of Being;
with no sense of I am this or that;
no sense of a separate ‘me’;
just pure Life
expressing
the
stream
of
Living
moving
in,
through,
and as
’you.’

Collapse into the Fullness
of
Emptiness,

of
Silence,

of
Stillness…

Experience what’s
beyond the structures
that you’ve tried
to hold in place for so long
with your scaffolding:
your “ego”,
your “personality”…

Feel the Vastness of Being when there’s
nothing to cling to…

No identity
No self-image
No plan
No concept of life
No belief
No opinion
No judgment
No *sense* of 
’self’
to hold
’you’
up.

When the false scaffolding collapses

What is “behind” this “you”
that you *think* you are?

Nothing but the Ineffable Mystery of Life ItSelf…

~ ♥ ~

Mystic Meandering

Meditative Writings

July 2011

Utterly Absorbed - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

“We have become conditioned to think that God
is something other than ourself -
but there is no separate identity.
We are utterly dissolved in God -
in a state of deepening absorption.

There is nothing but God...
Everything is illumined with Divine Presence...

The Beloved is present,
not as a personal God or Creator,
but as something both
inexpressible and intimate,
and is recognized as something
inseparable from the self.

In moments of absorption
only The Beloved exists.
This primal awareness
of the Heart is the foundation.

Immerse the self in the heart
allowing the energy of love
to slow down the mind
and its thoughts, until
eventually we arrive
at a state of receptivity,
in which we patiently wait
within the heart
for the words
of our
Beloved;
experience
Divine Presence;
and merge deeper into
the Silence that belongs
to Love…”

Words of LLewllyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic
From: The Prayer of the Heart

I have taken his words from the book
and put them in prose poetry form.

~

Photo of sky and clouds color inverted

Let Go and LIVE...

Let go

Let it all go:

Hope for the future.
Regret for the past.
Expectations for the present.

LIVE

Embraced in the space of
 Divine Emptiness,
resting at the still-point

with no conceptual framework for your life.
No scaffolding of thought or plan
to hold “you” together…

Dissolve in the great Ocean
 of your Infinite Beingness…

LIVE

without requiring life to be different,
without wanting to change what is
to suit you…

LIVE

Surrendered and emptied out
of the way your conditioned mind
 tells you that life must be…

Let go of your attachment to
 your inexhaustible patterns of fear
that keep you safe, but confined…

Let go

 into the Living Stream
that already carries you…

LIVE

Mystic Meandering

June 2014

The Shifting Shadows of Life...

The self is just a shadow, a mist, a thin layer of the real...

I’ve been noticing the long shadows lately, although it seems early in the season.  These photos are from November.  The shadows call to me for some reason.  They seem longer than usual for this time of year, maybe a sign of my aging… J  They evoke melancholy, but also unexpectedly soothe.  They are enchanting, bringing me into the space of Infinite Isness - just Being.  As I watch, they move and change within minutes, coming and going, eventually dissolving and disappearing - like the shadow self that we think is real - the form and the Formless intersecting.  Somehow I find this strangely comforting - this dance of shadow and light…

“I am a terminal commuter…
The things I once believed in
are no longer there,
no longer exist…”

Author Unknown

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency…

All is visible and all elusive…

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names…

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself…

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go.
I am a pause.

Octavio Paz

“Your self-identity is a shadow,

the divine is a boundless,
loving presence
that takes you
into
ItSelf…”

Open the Door

Wayne Teasdale
The Mystic Heart

Let Yourself Dissolve...

“You are pure…

Nothing touches you.

Let it all go,
the body and the mind.

Let yourself dissolve…

 Like bubbles in the sea.

All the world arises in you.

Know you are the Self.
Know you are one.

Let yourself dissolve…

You are one and the same
In joy and sorrow,
hope and despair,
life and death…

You are already full

Let yourself dissolve…”

From the Ashtavakra Gita

Translation: Thomas Byrom

The Ashtavakra Gita
is a classical Advaita Vedanta Text


"Supreme  Reality alone exists,
the Pure Consciousness within
and beyond all finite forms of
consciousness,
the primordial,
evolutionary
Divine Energy...
They are not two."

Ramakrishna

~*~

Photo:
A cut glass of water with the light of a candle
shining through behind it.
In a sense symbolizing the Infinite
within the finite...
I also saw that it created
a beautiful sunset reflected on water...
Can you see it? :)
A warm tribute to solstice,
and the radiance of Light that we are,
no matter what ocean
and which solstice
you celebrate :)