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...

Zero - Jeannie Zandi

There is something that does not move no matter what comes,
no matter what will be lost.

I like to call it zero.  It's sitting in zero [the still point as TS Eliot
calls it].  It's sitting in Being.  It's so slow that it has stopped. And
it has a fierce fidelity to what is authentically unfolding in the
moment out of Being.  Here we stand with what's being born in
its tiny infancy, authentic and shyly showing itself, birthed from
Being.  No care for what it can be used for, where it's going, what
it means about you, me or someone else.  It simply stands without
a name, without a use, standing with that moment because it's
precious, because it's the Holy unfolding itself.

  We blow past the subtle petals of our unfolding, and
this holy birthing that's happening all the time through us.
But What emerges authentically is Holy.

In Being, we're not manipulating anything.  We're not trying
to go anywhere.  We're not trying to heal anything.  We follow
the thread of what's alive and we behold it in reverent silence,
even if every egoic hand wants to grasp it and turn it into
something.  The Holy is shining and peeking its head out...

We are not shown how to stay with the natural expression of
unfolding through us, though we were born knowing it.  As
we grew up, no one saw it, no one reflected it, stood with it,
protected it, had faith in it.....simply because it was.  We were
left in concept-land, zooming over our actual life; our own
organic unfolding.  Now we're stuck in our everyday minds
with our will trying to build something out of concept that
will never be as solid as what the Holy organically reveals.

We can stand in what emerges naturally from Being.  We
can slow down to the speed of Being, which is zero.  It has
nothing to show for itself.  It's simply a miracle as it is.
Everything that is zero is true.

It is Beingness flowing into Beingness. 
When we sit in zero [Being] there is only zero [Being],
and even what moves is still.  At some point you start to feel
 it as yourself.   It starts to wake in you...

  Stay true to the speed of Being.  Don't move unless Being
 moves [you], because you cannot leave that place and offer
anything real, and you're sick to death of ["spiritual"] manipulation
 and skipping over what's actually, purely and humbly here.

It's our zero, like a big dark hole
in the center of us that we thought was our problem. 
It's actually a portal to the Holy.  And through that empty
space of Being the Holy paints the world.

  But... we have forgotten -
how to rest as zero and stand in what's simple and authentic.
And out of fidelity to that Being [that we are], out of this
magnificent black hole, an inordinate amount of glory spills,
and each movement is the poetry of being in motion, while
utterly empty.

Jeannie Zandi

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - a mandala that my mother colored in 2016 at age 88
 digitally zoom blurred and color inverted - magic :).

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

Simply Living...

I've been basking in a "new", and not so new, "revelation" that
life is a story being lived by Life ItSelf'; that *I* am being lived:
that we *are* the living story of Life.

Life lives the story of "me" that I've identified with all these years,
and believed, for a while at least, that "I" needed to be
"enlightened" - and have once again returned to the sense that
"I" am "simply living."

In this "revelation" there is an internal "letting go" - or
"giving up" - or some would say "surrender"...
And as a wise friend recently explained:
"In that, an ancient tension and stress is released.  And in the
deepest instance of 'giving up', even the somatic aspect of
our being feels a tremendous relief, and a Serene Emptiness
where that contraction had formerly been felt; as much in
our physical body as in our subtle energetic nature.
Struggle ceases, no longer driven by the engine of
dissatisfaction with 'what is', with 'how we are.'  No longer
driven by the engine of self-judgment and self-qualification,
by the desire to be better or worthy, or finally 'understanding'
or 'apperceiving' by the desire for 'enlightenment.'"

This articulates my current experience perfectly...

~

And I wrote this back in 2011

There is only the immediacy of the current moment -
just living that experience, whatever that experience is,
however it unfolds, without the sense of a separate "self"
striving for something "better", or to *do* anything to
improve it, or become "enlightened."

"We", the "Beingness" that we are, just experiences
whatever is occurring without a framework or reference
point, or concept...
It's just Life being life!

It is Existence experiencing ItSelf as "me", or "you" -
as an occurrence within ItSelf...
Simply Living...

We, as waves on the Ocean of Existence, are continually
occurring - unfolding fluidly, seamlessly,  Yet, a
"construct" of "self" can emerge *if/when* there is a belief
in a "self" that can hold onto the present moment - trying
to grasp what cannot be grasped.  But the current experience
cannot be grasped, for as soon as we try to capture it we
re-enter the struggle of "self"...

The present moment is unending, constantly reverberating
through the *concept* of time, and is what the wrinkle of
time happens *in* -
the Timeless Ocean of Existence.

And so the realization seems to be that we simply recognize
Life living ItSelf  as us - seeing the Luminous in everything -
recognizing that we ARE that
Luminosity of Life...

...simply living.

Namaste

_/\_

photo - from a greeting card

Tell us of Pain - Khalil Gibran & Nisargadatta

And a woman spoke saying:

"Tell us of Pain"

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your
understanding.  Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun,
so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily
miracles of life, your pain would not seem less wondrous
than your joy.  And you would accept the seasons of
your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons
that pass over the fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of
your grief.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within heals
your sick self.

Therefore, trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence
and tranquility.  For his hand, though heavy and hard, is
guided by the tender hand of the Unseen.

And the cup he brings,
though it burn your lips,
has been fashioned of the clay
which the Potter has moistsened
with His own sacred Tears.

Khalil Gibran

The Prophet


~

The real world is beyond the mind's ken;
we see it through the net of our desires,
divided into pleasure and pain,
right and wrong, inner and outer.
To see the universe as it is,
you must step beyond the net.

Look at the net and its many contradictions.
You do and undo at every step.
You want peace, love, happiness
and work hard to create pain, hatred and war.
You want longevity and overeat,
you want friendship and exploit.
See your net as made of such contradictions
and remove them...
Your very seeing them will make them go.

Nisargadatta

Leaving The Shores of Belief - Mark McCloskey

Warning: Some may find this post controversial - depending on
your beliefs...

To leave the safe shores of where we think we are and venture into
the wide expanse of the sea of silent awareness itself is a scary
 proposition.  The abyss of eternity is too vast, too unknown, too big
 for many of us.  Yet, leave the shores of tradition, familiarity and belief,
 is what we must eventually do if we want to be totally free...

To allow for the realization of Pure Silence, the awareness of now,
the truth as it is, you must have a fresh unencumbered mind. 
This means not only surrendering the surface clutter or worries, 
anxieties, nostalgia, guilt, desires and fantasies, but you must abandon
 all your traditional beliefs, your concepts of religion, faith, hope
 and especially of God itself [as we have been taught to perceive "God." 
I have redefined "God" for myself many times.]
Remember you are realizing that which is eternal and present now,
 that which is beyond concept, beyond fabric.  We are looking
 together to see what not only holds the fabric of existence together,
but what allows the seams and stitches to be, what allows
 their very patterns.

For most of western humanity, God is merely a concept, a theology,
 an ideal or some super Being, someone to be placated, to be feared,
 to be worshiped, to be prayed to.  .....but to limit that which is infinite
Love itself to some vestigial object, to a being, a person,  someone or
thing we can name, provoke, control, possess is absolute silliness. 
That which encompasses all being is
Pure Silence.

That which is religion is merely human, words or thoughts about that
 which is beyond word, thought and worship.  Following a religious
 tradition, what is it that we are doing?  It seems to me that we are
 merely following somebody else's insights, whether that somebody
 is called Jesus, Buddha or Krishna or Mohammed.  All of these
 great men..... are pointing to something beyond themselves,
to something always here and something that is not philosophical
 or theological, to that which is within all, sustains all and is larger
 than all and that which is experienced by all.

To realize Pure Silence, you must abandon all thoughts [?],
even the beliefs that you have cherished forever.  Your beliefs are
 merely thoughts and what's more they originally were someone else's
 before they became your own.  To see or know or realize that which is
 infinity itself, we must come absolutely naked.  And in that complete,
destitute and utter nakedness, perhaps we may come to a simple
 glimmer of that which is, that which is you, that which cannot
be named  or sublimated into a teaching, or anything else...

This is a difficult thing to see because we believe in a thing called faith
 and belief and tradition.  We have been told by parents, friends,
churches,temples what the truth is.  But I offer you, very humbly,
 that truth cannot be contained by anyone, any thing,
any tradition, any belief. Pure Silence contains all of them...

If you can realize that, you will taste.....the essence of what every god,
every sage, messiah, prophet, teacher, poet, musician and scripture
 has been pointing to.  You will taste the freedom that you already are.
And no one, no authority, no system can challenge that
or take that away from you.
Pure Silence is a gift to you.

YOU are that which is eternal, infinite and love itself.
Just breathe in the gentle Silence...

http://www.puresilence.org/index.htm

~

NOTE:  brackets in text are mine

Personally I don't see it as an either/or issue.  It's not that dogmatic,
but is more a natural process, where "belief" is gradually peeled
away by grace, leaving the Ineffable...  As we move closer and closer
to the Pure Silence within, there is sometimes just a "letting go" or
dropping away of old beliefs and ideas about the way we *thought*
things were...
Whether there is a person "God" or not, I cannot say, although my
beliefs *about* God have changed, leaving the childhood images
of God and the religion of my childhood many years ago.  And yet,
there *is* something experienced beyond any belief or thought or
idea; perhaps it is the Pure Silence of Existence that he speaks of,
 or perhaps there is just a Great Mystery, called by many names...

Namaste

_/\_

God Pours Light - Hafiz

God
pours light
into every cup,
quenching the darkness.

The proudly pious
stuff their cups with parchment
and critique the taste of ink

while God pours light...

And the trees lift their limbs
without worry of redemption,
every blossom a chalice.

Hafiz, seduce those withered souls
with words that wet their parched
lips

as light
pours like rain
into every empty cup
set adrift on the Infinite Ocean.

Hafiz