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

 

Remaining Empty - Thomas Merton

Art by Ann Poucher

The true "contemplative" is not one who prepares his mind
for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but
is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never
 anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. 
He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation.
He does not demand light instead of darkness.  He waits in
silence, and, when he is "answered," it is not so much by a
word that bursts into his silence.  It is by his silence itself,
suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of
great power, full of the voice of [the Silence].

Thomas Merton
from: The Climate of Monastic Prayer

(one of the last books he prepared for publication)

~

Personal Note: Although I do not consider myself a
"contemplative", as a "Mystic", I have had similar
experience with silence/Silence.  The labels don't
really matter.  It is the "remaining empty" in silence,
listening without agenda, that allows for the "direct
experience" of the Ineffable - aka - the Voice of
The Silence...

The Blessing of The Deer - Jane Hirshfield

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.

And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible...

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished...

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken away from us.

I have disappointed.
I am sorry.  I knew no better.

[.....]

This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

Jane Hirshfield
Original title: "Standing Deer"
from The Lives of the Heart

Thanks to - The Beauty We Love

Honoring The Mystery - Mark Nepo

Somehow we have been dropped into the Mystery,
below our roles, and identities, fallen through our maps into
one stream of love.  Some moment or circumstance becomes
an unexpected doorway into the Mystery.  We never know how
it will appear, or how we will be drawn to it...

Honoring the Mystery is what opens us to the powers of wholeness -
this unknowable totality that we live in.  To honor the Mystery is
not just to glimpse the whole, or even acknowledge the whole, but
to live our days with [as] that wholeness...  Commit to leaning into
life until it drops you beneath your surface maps of reality...

Though we pray to the many faces of God, each is a changing
wave in the sea of Divine Being...  Any circumstance that
awakens us to that divine sea is a holy gift...

If courageous enough we might just slow down to the pace
of creation, where the pulse by which the mind thinks touches
the pulse by which the heart feels, and together they equal the
rhythm where Being plays in exact motion with all beings...

Nothing matters but emptying...

until the softness we call Spirit bubbles through the tongue
and words fail in utter adoration.
Nothing now but the need to be...

Mark Nepo
From: The Exquisite Risk

~

Photo - Water on Windshield through a car wash :)

Have You Met "The Beloved?" - Chuck Surface

If you have not yet met The Beloved,
And wonder where She might be found...

Look within.

Let your Attention journey to The Tavern,
At the Crossroads of Heart and Mind.

And look for Her there,
With the eyes of your Soul.

If you wander off down the road of Mind,
You'll only reach a "conclusion."

If you wander off down the road of Heart,
You'll lose yourself in the imagined.

Journey to the Tavern of The Beloved,
At the Crossroads of Heart and Mind.

And look for Her there,
With the eyes of your Soul.

For She is your Essence,
Dancing in the Heart of your Being.

It is Her Great Joy to pour Grace,
Into a Cup held forth Empty.

But you must hold forth your Cup.

If you lose yourself in chatter there,
You will miss Her Silent arrival.

If you seek stature among those gathered,
You will see only yourself.

If you must have fellowship,
Commune with your empty Cup.

If you must yammer,
Speak to Her as if She is already found.

If you must think, reminisce,
Of that which was known, then forgotten.

If you must daydream, imagine,
The vanishing of duality.

Wait there, at the Tavern of The Beloved,
The Mind starved, the Heart Drowned in Longing;

For if you have not yet met Her,
It is There that you will surely find Her.

Or rather, I should say,
It is there that She will surely find you...

At the crossroads of Heart and Mind.

Chuck Surface

Original title: "At the Crossroads of the Heart and Mind"

In The Garden of the Beloved Facebook

Garden of the Beloved Website

Honoring The Mystery - Mark Nepo

Somehow we have been dropped into the Mystery, below role,
fallen through our maps into one stream of love.
Some moment or circumstance becomes and unexpected doorway
into the Mystery,  We never know how it will appear, or how we will
be drawn into it...

Honoring the Mystery is what opens us to the powers of wholeness -
this unknowable totality that we live in.  To honor the Mystery is
not just to glimpse the whole, or even acknowledge the whole, but
to live our days with [as] that wholeness...  Commit to leaning into
life until it drops us beneath our surface maps of reality...

Though we pray to the many faces of God, each is a changing
wave in a sea of Divine Being...  Any circumstance that
awakens us to that divine sea is a holy gift...

If courageous enough we might just slow down to the pace of
creation, where the pulse by which the mind thinks touches the
pulse by which the heart feels, and together they equal the rhythm
where Being plays in exact motion with all beings...

Nothing matters but emptying...
until the softness we call Spirit bubbles through the tongue and
words fail in utter adoration.
Nothing now but the need to be...

Mark Nepo
Quotes from: The Exquisite Risk

~

Photo - Windshield going through car wash :)

Emptying - Mark Nepo

Experience is a river that never stops coming.
Often we need to empty ourselves of conclusions, judgments and
preconceptions in order to meet whatever comes our way...
The early monastic vow of poverty was based on the need to empty,
as a way to involve a deeper form of listening.
In its original intent we find that poverty of mind reflects a quietude
that can restore an inner emptiness.  Poverty in an inner sense means
a divestment of all the distractions that occupy the mind.  It means an
emptying of the interior belongings that keep us from the essential
experience of being that waits beneath all our human noise.

[We] must carry less - must put down the wounds that clog
 and weigh the heart.  We must risk being touched [by life].

[But] letting go is not just about putting things down.
On a deeper plane, letting go is about letting your heart crumble,
 about letting yourself be rearranged by the journey of being alive.
  To soften and crumble is not to die.  It simply allows us to change.
  It is a call to enter the unknown.

When we can admit who we are, and give voice to what lives inside us,
[all that we feel and experience], that very act opens us like an inlet
and lets the depths of being rush in.  For in admitting who we are lets
the mysteries of life enter us.
We are talking about the authenticity of being.

Mark Nepo

From - The Exquisite Risk: Daring To Live An Authentic Life

~

Photo - the bottom of a glass bowl...

Let Life Open You - Mark Nepo & MM

As you enter the day,
try not to reach for life...
Try to let life enter you.
Allow what touches you to
change your path...

Drop all reachings and simply open...
We have to settle into the wait
until we discover that there's
nowhere to go...

If we can survive the pain of being emptied,
a deeper place is cleared
in which the mystery can sing through us...
Each soul is a living flute
being carved by life to
a deeper and deeper song...

Uncover the mystery of strength by bringing
into focus a deeper sense of truth,
and your ability to step quite naturally,
with your heart...

Excerpts from Mark Nepo's book:
The Book of Awakening
(Mark's words, my format)

~

Trusting in the simplicity of Life,
let Life come to you...
Resting in simplicity,
Life will find you...

The more you trust Love
the more Life will
open up to you...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2004

~

Top Photo - digitally altered

"Broken"

“I” am “broken” – like the innards of a clock

that have worn down with time & ticking…

”I” am “broken” – the body/mind worn thin,

like thread-bare clothes – almost transparent…

”I” am “broken” – not fractured or fragmented,

the defenses merely decaying from too much use…

”I” am “broken” – scattered to the wind,

like the sand from a mandala – as if it were never there…

”I” am “broken” – like a shadow that is pierced by the light,

melting its darkness…

”I” am “broken” – beyond “fixing” – nothing to fix really,

being emptied…

”I” am “broken” – being broken – ongoing,

seeing beyond the “I” to what is really here…

Broken open…

Christine

March 31, 2010

Photo - Christine