Between Two Houses - a meandering...

Sitting watching the evening news,
I looked out the living room window - to the space
between my neighbors' houses.

Looking through
the bare branches of the trees between their homes,
I saw the pinkish, orange, gold-yellow of the sunset
fading in the West.

It occurred to me, in that moment,
that no matter what is happening on the earth,
and my personal life - the Cosmos still "works"!
The sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the galaxies
all dance the Dance of the Cosmos -
for eons -

giving us beauty, wonder, and awe - and peace.
It's us humans that don't seem to be "working" well -
on this little planet - divided...

It also reminded me that there is a greater context
in which we live - a vaster Reality - hidden -
that I want to be aware of...

Sometimes this world seems so gray
- run by lunatics -
that I miss the beauty in
The Cosmos,
and in between spaces...

I really need to
look out my window more often! :)

And expand my view of the Universe...

Mystic Meandering
January 30, 2025

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
The photo was actually taken in April 2023

 

Deep Looking - Thich Nhat Hanh

Art: Barbara Stone

In spite of the lessons of the collective wisdom of
the world, we rarely satisfy our yearning to know
the Truth of our Existence.

The Mystical approach to the essential questions
about the meaning of life is quite different from
the normal way of learning things through written
teachings, rather, the mystical transmission of the
purpose of life comes through living life with
ever expanding awareness...

author unknown

~

When we practice deep looking, we receive help,
we receive understanding, we receive the
wisdom that makes us free.

Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddhist Teacher

 

The Portal of Discovery...

If there is "Enlightenment" perhaps it is when we can
accept that we are ever on the portal of discovery -
recognizing that we only have a glimpse of a larger
Reality...

"The Quest" then, is never really over.
There is no finish line, just an ever expanding
awareness of and deepening into our
True Beingness within the context of
a vaster Reality we have yet to discover.

from a conversation with my husband
12-30-24

~

Photo from the internet

 

Window Wonderments...

My Medicine is the Quiet and Stillness of the Night
at the window...

I hear crickets tonight and and smell wet grass.
I see all kinds of light from the neighborhood
and the big office buildings' lights on the horizon.
I feel the coolness of the night air...
I take a deep breath and begin to unwind...

Suddenly I hear the sound of a helicopter overhead...

Oh! - and I can see the moon!  When I lean way into
the screen and look East...

Partially hidden by clouds and tree leaves.
I try to take a picture, but the screen gets in the way...
So I just sit, head up against the screen,
watching the moon hiding in the wisps of clouds
passing by...

~

The Night is my Friend.
The Quiet, The Peace, The Stillness
The distant lights of worker bee buildings
and the warm glow of "home lights" in the
windows of the houses nearby...

The distant sound of late night traffic
that does not disturb;
the stately trees, silhouetted, motionless in
the Stillness with a single cricket chirping.

And the moon...

~

I look down from my second story perch.
I see that I must sweep the pea gravel in the
Zen Garden walkway below;
trampled by tree cutters dragging tree limbs;
Roofers and painters walking through,
carrying long ladders -
paying no attention to where they step,
or to the pavers that make the walking path -
trampling stone and gravel.

~

Watching the moon reminds me that we are
part of a larger Universe, a grand Cosmos - with
a bigger "story" - an expansive context - in which we live.
It fills me with wonderment at how the Universe works;
what "intelligence" created it all to make it work the way it
does, like clockwork.  Everything in its own function,
working together.  And why the earth is so crazy with
its human species creating chaos, suffering, and struggling...

~

I enjoy this "window time."

What I'm really trying to do sitting here,
late at night at the window, is to connect
with Source, The Silence of Existence;
to energetically *feel* it...

~

12:28 am -
Time to slip into sleep...
I shuffle the body to the bed
and lay down...

Peaceful having
communed with the Night...

Mystic Meandering
Aug 24, 2024

from notes written at the window :)

~

Photo - Moon hiding in the clouds
taken from the window
through the screen :)

 

Unbind My Eyes - Harlan Hubbard

Now I must break forth from my old self,
cast away old traditions,
unbind my eyes,

so that I may have a broader vision of truth;
so that I may come to this river, as I do today.
and not find it cluttered with emotions and thoughts of 
former days; or its shore lined with drift of cities.
I must see the elements as they are...

Harlan Hubbard

from his journal, quoted from
"Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life"

by Don Walls

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

 

 

Sacred Fog - Sarah Carlson

As one drops in
and widens,
there can be a sense
of being in a sort of
sacred fog.
There is a softness here.
Though that which
once anchored
has altered,
there is safety, too.
Rhythmic waves
create a gentle harmony
that blends with breath and heart.
Vastness may not be visible,
yet is both discernible
and inclusive.
This sacred fog
can allow for
that which aches or tugs
or threatens
to disperse
as light once more
works its way
around and through
from above.

Sarah Carlson
Meanderings of the Heart

Posted with permission of the author

Sarah is publishing her third book called:
Tender Light Softens,
which includes the above poem.
See her blog: Meanderings of the Heart
for more poems and info about her books.

~

Photo - Sarah Carlson

 

Rupture and Evolution - Arundhati Roy & Jeff Kober

What is this thing that has happened to us?
It's a virus, yes.  In and of itself it holds no moral brief.
But it is definitely more than a virus...
It has brought the world to a halt...  Our minds are still
racing..., longing to return to "normality", trying to stitch
our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture.
But the rupture exists.

Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the
past and imagine their world anew.  This one is no different.
It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
[one way of life to the next].  We can choose to walk through
it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our
avarice, our data banks and dead ideas... or we can walk
through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine
another world. [Another way of being in the world].

Arundhati Roy
Author - The God of Small Things

[brackets mine]

~

The Vedas tell us that change is constant, that the nature of
the relative world is continual change, always.  Like the weather...
But the Vedas also tell us that the changing nature of the
universe is always progressive.  Evolution is the only thing
that's ever happening here. Always.  Like rivers always flowing
downstream; regardless of how many curves and meanderings they
may take, they always reach the ocean.  Downstream flow is the
nature of water.  And evolution is the nature of consciousness.
Consciousness cannot help but evolve.  It cannot help but expand,
widen, deepen, grow.  This is its very nature.  Though we may
resist it or ignore it, pretend it isn't so, in fact it is so.  It always
has been, it always will be.

Jeff Kober
Meditator

~

Photo from the Internet

Changing Perceptions of Reality - Ivan Granger

One must remain in the Vastness,
alert and lucid,
Letting one's gaze encompass
the infinite sky,
As though seated on the summit
of a mountain,
open to all the horizons.

by Shabkar
from - Tibetan Poems of Shabkar,
Translated by Matthieu Ricard

I am acutely aware of the anxiety felt by everyone -
concerns about Covid-19, uncertainty about jobs and
the economy in general, the increasingly messy political
situation, all surrounded by pressures of isolation.  Whatever
worries you may be feeling are being shared by many.  Even
in uncertainty and isolation, there is connection and community
and, therefore, strength.

...everything is an opportunity for awareness.  Even in moments
of fear, we [can] always be asking ourselves, what can I learn
from this?  How can I use this moment as a way to step free from
limited ways of thinking...?

One observation that comes to mind is that when society is moving
along in expected ways we are much more likely to align with
the group mind.  The group mind asserts that reality is a certain way
and the routine functioning of day-to-day life seems to confirm it, so
we enter into the shared psychic current - for good and for bad.  We
can list many of the ways that are good, but it also lulls us into a
rather narrow band of perception and self-awareness.  When those

outer certainties, which were never certainties in the first place,
change, when the rhythms of the human world shift and become
less predictable, the fear we feel is more fundamental than the
question of a paycheck or health concerns;  it is a fear that
reality is falling apart.  It is worth reminding ourselves that
Reality [the Vastness] itself is never vulnerable and the only

thing that changes is our agreed upon description of it [our
tribal mentality].  We are being coaxed to see reality in a new
way, to see different aspects of reality, to see a wider view of
reality...

The challenge is to quickly adapt our awareness to the new
terrain, to recognize its regular features, to find what is familiar
and identify what is new, to be at home in a more opens space.

...the less rigidly we hold to some idea of how things used to
be or "should" be and, instead, allow our minds to acclimate to
what is happening, the more naturally and confidently we can
step forward.

As conscious beings we always want to perceive as clearly as
we can.  We want to perceive as much of reality as we can.  And
we must remind ourselves that what we call reality is just a
mental model of what actually is.  When that mental model is
shaken, we can try to prop it up exactly as it was before, but more
rickety and at a tenuous angle, or we adjust it.....to reflect a new
understanding.

 We have a chance to review our assumptions and assess which
 ones don't stand up to the scrutiny of stress.  We are invited
to embrace possibilities that had previously been rejected. 
We can use this time for redefinition and improved perception.

Moments of uncertainty are a genuine opportunity to update
our descriptions of reality, both personally and collectively,
in order to more fully reflect the immensely mysterious space
of being we inhabit together.

The big challenge is not to shut our eyes as our vision expands.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Knowing"

"You have no regard for stature"

someone once told me...

It's true - title, position,
knowledge, wealth and status
do not impress me,

because we really are all
the same fabric of Reality,

weaving our way through life,
given what we've been given,
each playing a different role;
each a different thread,
each carrying a different burden;
most of us running through life
with blinders on,
only seeing our self-importance,
or our suffering, our struggle -
waiting for others to see it too...
But "we" are mere facades,
masks in a sea of masks -
most of us not really seeing the Being
we truly are behind the mask,
within the shell we call ourselves;
stature or not...

No one really knows more "truth"
than you do, if you really look
inside yourself.
And yet we flock to and believe
the self-professed gurus of the day -
the vendors of "truth" -
and read their books, inhale their words
spoken into the air,
as if they have acquired something
that we have not...  something that we don't "know."

Speaking their clever philosophies about
"truth", "reality", existence;
walls of empty words...
How do they really "Know?"

Turning inward we realize that we also "Know",

because the same "truth" Lives within all...
Is that arrogant to say ;)

This does not mean that I don't respect those
who truly Know - from their own direct experience;
not just regurgitating what they think they "know"
from other gurus and books;
other cosmologies and theologies...

We may all use a different language, or different words
- but still -

deep inside we intuitively Know.
if we allow ourselves to "know",
knowing that "knowing" changes,
through the fluidity of ever-expanding awareness.

Sometimes we know that we "know" with clarity.
And sometimes we are muddled with uncertainty and
 "not-knowing."
And perhaps the truth is that we really don't know the "truth."

So we keep searching for just the right teacher, or teaching,

the resonant words, longing to fill the "gap" we feel;
although "they" will tell us there is no "gap."
Or we fall back into old beliefs, grabbing for the familiar
paradigms of reality that will give our minds
a sense of certainty of "knowing" once again.

I know, I've done it 100's of times...

But these scaffoldings must collapse...

"Knowing" is really about being comfortable with, and trusting
 our own Inner Life, our own Inner Being,
that holds the Inner Knowing, rising within from a
Greater universal Knowing - the Sacred Silence -
from which Knowing comes...

Listening inwardly, not mentally,
not *acquiring* knowledge,
but letting the timeless innate Knowing
teach us, infuse us...

In time emerging into true Self-awareness -
as the Pure Light of Knowing
lights us from within...

Mystic Meandering
Aug. 22, 2018

Namaste

_/\_

~

Photo via No Mind's Land

digitally altered