The Inner Flame - Duran, Lanzetta, Granger

If we can hear LIFE we can hear Silence
because the in intensity of this pure energy
manifests itself through the sound of
Existence.

Yolande Duran

~

Rather than a detriment, it can be healthy to be alone.
In solitude, we can find the Heart of hearts,
the inextinguishable flame that burns brightly within.

The call to silence and solitude occurs int he depth of
the soul and is not dependent on or subject to whether
the seeker resides in a monastic enclosure, wears the
proper religious garment, or spends hours in prayer
[or meditation].

Beverly Lanzetta

~

You must step outside society's norms.
You must be willing to abandon everything...

every fixed perception of reality...

True holiness comes from the direct experience
of communion - not from following prescribed actions.

Ivan Grander
Poetry Chaikhana

 

What's Your Bias? - Brian McLaren

People can't see what they can't see.
Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall,
trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.
No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,
unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias...

Confirmation Bias:  We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities.  As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn't fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer s simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It's almost impossible to see what our community doesn't, can't or won't see.

Complementary Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I'll be hostile to yours.  If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I'll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don't know how much (or little) we know because we don't know how much (or little) others know.  In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are.  As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can't be seen from where I am right now.  But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias:  I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false.  I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don't notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don't have intense and sustained personal contact with "the other", my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It's hard to see something when my way of making a living require me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

Brian McLaren
from - Why Don't They Get It?  Overcoming Bias in Others.

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet

 

"Why We Hate" - Steven Spielberg

There is a very interesting 6 episode series that we recently
watched on The Discovery Channel called
"Why We Hate", explaining the human capacity for hate. The
series titles are: Its Origins, Tribalism, Tools and Tactics,
Extremism, Crimes Against Humanity, and Hope.  Maybe
some of you have seen it as well...  It was produced by
Steven Spielberg and Alex Gibney of The Discovery Channel.

It is a provocative documentation of human's hatred toward
one another.  Episode 6 includes discussions with a neuro-
scientist, Emile Bruneau, that proved to be an eye-opener
for me, and brought some self-awareness.  He related it to
the brain and certain neural pathways, calling it
"biological hate" and how we can, in a sense, retrain the
brain through meditation! [which doesn't require that you
belong to a particular religion].  That despite our conditioning,
our environment, our *learned* prejudices, our isms, our "tribe"
[which would include our "religious" tribes, not just our race
and ethnicity] we can *unlearn* our innate, conditioned
capacity for hate for those we *perceive* to be different from
"us." The Us vs them mentality.

If you are on Comcast/Xfinity you can watch it On Demand.
You can also watch it on Amazon Prime, which requires
membership, although you can evidently pay to watch individual
episodes.  In which case watch episodes 5 & 6 and you'll get
the most important parts.  The first episodes are good, but a
little slow.  On the computer you can go to
Discovery.com/shows/why-we-hate and you can view episodes
there on "DiscoveryGo."  We were able to watch the Trailer
for free...

It's worth the watch!

Here's the link to the Trailer with Steven Spielberg
on "DiscoveryGo"

Death and Rebirth - Matt Licata

In each moment the sacred process of death and rebirth is playing
out within us.  With each breath, something in us is dying: some
aspect of who we think we are, or what we're doing here, the death
of an old dream, or an idea about how it was all going to turn out.

In the face of this dissolution, the question isn't so much how can
we be reborn, but will we participate in death fully, and with an
open heart, paving the way for new forms to emerge, trusting that
rebirth will take place according to a timeline originating far away
in the stars.

In times of transition, our tendency is to rush to rebirth, back into
the known, in an urgent attempt to cure, maintain, or heal that
which is dying, that which longs for transformation [within us.]
It is so natural to resist falling apart in our need to put it all back
together.  But it is only from the core of the womb of death - a
death tended to consciously - that rebirth can come into being.

The invitation, which we can at times hear clearly, during the dark
of night, in the slowness and the depths, as we move in and out of
states of sleep and dream, is to not abandon death...  To not short
circuit the intelligence that death is, and to remember that rebirth
is not possible without dissolution.

Allow death some time to unfold, to share its poetry and its
fragrances, which are not partial, but of a light that is whole.
In those times in our lives, when things are being rearranged
and reorganized inside and around us, we can attune to what
is truly being asked, to allow the forms of love safe passage to
continue their journey.  And equally allow them to dissolve...
Give them permission to dance and play and participate fully
in the sacred return...

Matt Licata

Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...

It's ending... and as TS Eliot said: "in my end is my beginning."

It's ending, the meandering - not because I have reached a "goal"
or the "end" of wondering what is True, or achieved "fulfillment"
of Being - quite the contrary...

What has been needs to end -
the disillusionment,
of years on the "spiritual treadmill" -
caught in the futility of trying to understand, to get somewhere,
to be other than "me", a "better" me, or no-me at all...
Going in circles,
rewinding myself through the same conundrums
over and over again,
trying to believe what others say is True...

Acceptance has set in...

Acceptance of myself as "I" am - the whole of "me"
without the need for a "spiritual identity" - another facade;
just "me" - living, breathing, being -

without the comforting certainties of "knowing" the answer
to the questions.

Feels freeing - actually,
letting go of old identities,
old masks, old myths about
how it's all sposed to be;
whether "this" is just a dream of duality,
or - if there's really a non-dual existence of the Divine
and "me"...

But can't do that mind trip anymore...
I can only see what I can see
and let the rest go...

The pursuit has ended...

No more trying to "become"
"enlightened", "illumined", "liberated"

to appease the mind's fantasies
about "spirituality."

No more rose colored glasses,
no more "Lucy in the sky with diamonds",
no more Yellow Brick Road,
with the "Wizards" of an illusionary Oz pulling the strings...

Subtly, I fell into the same mind traps

over and over again -
wanting, longing, searching,
waiting
for that elusive final epiphany -
the dissolving of the "me" in Ecstasy...

But there was nothing;
no rainbow,
or pot of gold;
no "radiance of Being" shining...

Just "me" - still "me"...

So -
Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...
I'm laying down the burden of "spirituality"...
and simply allowing myself to Be...

Now...

at last

I am...

finally free...

Mystic Meandering
April 16, 2018

Namaste
_/\_

~*~

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again,
I won't look any further than  my own back yard,
because if it isn't there, I never really lost it
to begin with." :)

Dorothy
From the Wizard of Oz

The Descendant Current - Matt Licata

Let us not forget the descendant current, flowing into the unlit
places, the underworld, and the dark caverns of the psyche.  The
realm of dream, fantasy, imagination and creativity.  The
invitation here is one of embodiment - into the contradictions,
the chaos, and the deflation we must confront on any journey of
depth.

There is a cultural fantasy that we are supposed to know what to do
with our lives, that things, are supposed to be clear, that we are
supposed to feel solar and heroic and in control of the feelings that
wash through us.  But Love is full-spectrum and will equally
employ the energies of not-knowing, disappointment, and
reorganization as part of its revelation here.  The process of
dissolution is non-negotiable.  It is by way of this sacred washing
of the known that new forms can find their way here.

Inside the vessel of life, encrusted, worn out ideas and opposites
are washed away, such as silence over noise, oneness over multiplicity,
quiet over inner revolution, crystal clarity over shaky uncertainty, and
power over vulnerability.  While we may have our conditioned
preferences, Love does not share these biases and will use the entirety
of the emotional and phenomenal world to reach us.  Even in the
darkness, the numbness, the chaotic, and the mud, the wild,
untamed activity of the soul erupts.

It is natural and ordinary to disconnect from the downward movement
as we overly identify with the ascending, the upward, the light, and
the transcendent.  In the rush to exit immediate experience - for
something that is higher, purer, less messy, and less contradictory -
we turn from the waters of life and lose touch with Essence.

While it is natural to have a bias for one current over another, let us
not do so as the expense of fragmentation.  In ways the mind may
never fully understand, there is a luminous middle place where the
currents intertwine.  It is buried in a secret chamber inside your
own heart.  

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Vortex Art

Digitally altered
2011

Untitled - Danna Faulds

Put up no resistance to the day as it unfolds.
Watch the play of opposites, your likes
and dislikes, thoughts you would draw
close and those from which you would
recoil.  What if, for this moment, you let
it all be as it is?  What if you interfere
with nothing?

Become the subject - vast, bare, always
aware. Of course there are objects.  Do
not try to shut them out or change what
is.  Sense impressions, circumstances,
the day's events move forward on the
wheel of time while you are timeless, the
silent subject of the whole, pure
potential, simply there.

When the entire universe blazes into
being, take it all inside yourself, without
exception.  When the only word is "Yes,"
when your point of view dissolves into
every viewpoint and no viewpoint at all,
when the Big Bang is happening in
every instant, you are fully and finally
alive.

Danna Faulds
from the introduction to Limitless
2009

Unbearably Holy - Matt Licata

Today may not be the day for answers,
but let your heart break open to the vastness
of the questions, the longing, the burning, the uncertainty;
the sense that a miracle is here,
just beyond the veil, but how to reach it?

How to fully show up and participate
in your immediate experience
and be fully alive...

All the teachings.....and worn out ideas about who you are
and why you've come here, about the true source of meaning...
At times, can be overwhelming...
The questions that once had answers...only a tenderness remains,
with no sign or resolution.

Only a burning where the questions once existed...

An old vision seems to be dissolving...
There is no life without the willingness to fully participate
in the shattering and the death of an ancient dream.
No life without embodiment to the vulnerability
as it surges in its eternal forms within you.
Perhaps it was never resolution you were after,
but the pure surging of life.

The heartbreak found here is not a mistake,
but to let your heart break open to the vastness
of the questions.
To fall to the ground as a humble lover of the mystery.

Trust in the flow of your immediate experience,
exactly as it is,
and participate in the raging truth that nothing is wrong with you...
For what you are is unbearably Holy...

Matt Licata

Matt's words, my format.
This is also a synthesis of two
different posts:
Unbearably Holy
and
A Humble Lover of the Mystery

~

Photo - Vortex Art Digitally Altered.

Losing The Maps - Mark Nepo

Just when we’re softened by the years,
when we have enough experience to see
for ourselves, our maps are torn from us.
This can be frightening, but there’s
divine timing in the dissolution of a
stubborn mind, the way an inlet waits
on the last rock to crumble so it can
find its destiny in the sea.  Losing the
way set out by others is necessary so we
can discover for ourselves what it means
to be alive.  Now we can burn the clothes
others have laid out for us, [other’s maps of reality]
 not in anger but to light our way.  Now we can let the
soul spill its honey on the unleavened life
we’ve been carrying.  Now we can rise.

Mark Nepo

Poem from: Inside the Miracle

The Portal of Wholeness - Matt Licata

At times, you may be asked to travel into the very groundless and contradictory landscape of the emotional world, without any understanding of what is being asked of you.  It is so open here, but simultaneously disorienting to the mind that is longing for answers.  It is as if everything you were so sure about only days before has fallen away…

Unmetabolized feelings, orphaned sensations, and vivid images are surging in the somatic field, seeming disconnected and…..chaotic.  But things are not always as they seem as you approach the threshold of wholeness. The invitation has been made: trust in the process of disintegration and the intelligence of immediate experience.

Yes, it may always be disturbing to stay embodied to the burning feelings and sensations that appear alongside the dissolution of old dreams and the way you thought it was all going to turn out.  But in the commitment to meet what is appearing with presence, you may discover that this destruction is sacred, unbearably creative, and soaked with reorganizing wisdom.

Before you turn from the confusion and scramble to transform or heal it with learned process, open into the uncertainty, the hopelessness, and the breaking of your heart.  It is there you will find life, longing to erupt and shatter the dream of partiality [fragmentation].  For each visitor of the inner and outer worlds is unfolding in the radiant [moment] as an unprecedented portal of wholeness…

Matt Licata

~

Photo - reflection of the sky on the hood of a car
Photo upside down :)

The Pull of Consciousness Window

For the last month I have been experiencing a huge pull from within; an intense version of the “Inside-Out” experience that I referred to in the “Inside-Out” post. It is what a friend called “the pull of Consciousness.” I have described it in my journal as a “pull to Freedom.” It’s as if Consciousness ItSelf pulls ‘self’ into ItSelf, essentially reclaiming Itself. Consequently there is a sense of collapse of the ‘outer’ into the Inner, or the outer dissolving *in* the Inner.

This “outer” expression – self - is losing its sense of separateness from the “Inner” and seems to be collapsing *into* that which doesn’t have a name: into Unknowable Beingness - into the Mystery - into the NO-thing-ness - into Existence prior to expression; sinking into the space of Awareness – dissolving – falling into Freedom, the recognition of the Freedom of Awareness. Well almost. :) It feels a little like alchemy. There’s a process going on here – a process of recognition, of Seeing how things really are: That it is not that *I* am ‘That’, but that *That* is all there is! – undisturbed Aware Consciousness… Whew, what a ride!

Although this may all *sound* wonderfully blissful, this “pull of Consciousness” vortex actually feels like a death – a death that is also a birthing. There is a *deep* sense of surrender – of succumbing actually - to this inner pull of Awareness; not necessarily to the “present moment”, or to “life as it is”, but to the Tao – the Flow – the movement of Aware Consciousness within, and how *It* wants to Flow. There is a willingness here to move with this pull of Consciousness on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis; a willingness to not be able to see where I’m going or how I’m getting there; to not seek relief – but to just be with this experience and allow it to go where it does until it pulls ‘me’ (Itself) all the way through...

And it’s not so much the death of ‘self’ (me) as it is death of the *perception* of self – a dissolving of orientation, of thought patterns, of identities, of attachments. It’s a “surrender” - a “succumbing” - of all that was held in this system of separation before. It is not “awakening,” it is a dying into Reality.

This “death” is like the famous metaphor of the wave sinking back into the Ocean - finding The Rhythm again, finding the calm resonance within the Rhythm of the Ocean of Awareness – Home. The wave cannot move *except* for the Rhythm of the Ocean within. So I follow the pull into quiet Awareness – most of the time :).

For brief moments, here and there, there is a dissolving of perceptions, where I recognize that I am not the body-mind. But patterns of the body-mind, of the “me,” are still working themselves through. They are rising to the surface. And there is a tendency to want to suppress them. But the need to be swallowed up by Awareness – to fall into Freedom is greater – most of the time :).

Abandoning the *idea* of a separate ‘self’, the scaffolding of the ‘self’, for THIS, this spacious Awareness that dances *through* conceptual reality is Freedom. Yet, there is not the *sense* of being freed *from* anything. There is only the recognition, however brief at the moment, that the pull of Consciousness is a pull to Freedom – inner Freedom. It is recognizing that Awareness is Freedom; that Consciousness aware of ItSelf is Freedom.

~*~

“…pure Consciousness will pull you back. It is not that you will enter it… but when It pulls you It has made the choice to pull you Home…..This is Home, the holy company of the Self. The most holy association is to be as you are [the Self] – this is Freedom.” Papaji

~*~


FunQi Art™ - Christine

I can’t take full credit for this art looking like it does.
The original is a beautiful shade of blue,
(which I will post on the next blog post). When I took the picture,
with a light shining on the picture and the flash of the camera,
this is the way it came out! Almost ethereal… Amazing…
I was awestruck. My husband explained the science of it:
The picture is only a mirror of the light that shines on it.
It can only reflect the light that comes to it…
Hmmmmm….