Follow Your Own Map - Mark Nepo

Every time we talk to someone, there comes back to us a map
of expectation as to how we should respond...

We share a confusion:
we are often given direction.

We share a pain;
we are often given instruction.

We share a desire;
we are often given a plan.

The power of these unspoken maps should not be
underestimated.  For the endless gravities of expectation
we move in and out of govern most of our thinking and
summons most of our energy in denying them or complying
with them.  In actuality, underneath all the plans, pressures,
and expectations, underneath all the subtle guidance and nudging,
the next step is truly unknown...

Thus, our spiritual charge is to maintain the wonder of the
singular explorer that each of us is...

The freshest step has always come when we are brave 
enough to land at the end of what little we know,
breathing in new air, in reaction to no one...

Mark Nepo
From: The Book of Awakening

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
(Scrapbooking paper) 

 

The path of reality - Nathalie Delay

The path of reality is a non-path, because it is above all
an exploration of life int its wholeness... without falling
back on our models and our repetitive, comfortable
pat-terns.  It's a non-path.....because we recognize in
real time how we negotiate with reality, how we 
cling to a belief or to our need for control, and how this
outlook keeps us from being in tune with the moment 
and creates our suffering...

The path of reality does not require us to conform to any
model, because it is not attached to what we do, think or
feel.  It invites us to see how we behave with our opinions,
our emotions, and with living beings.

The path of reality is more than anything a path of self-
knowledge, not in the psychological sense but in the
most essential and profound sense there is.  It helps
us rediscover our absolute aspect while incorporating
the most human part of us. It brings us back to the
roots of our being, making a complete humanity
possible...

Nathalie Delay

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A New "Quest" - a meandering...

I get excited when there is new movement in my life...

When I awoke this morning there was a sense of a 
new "Quest" - a new "journey."

Don't know why - just felt it...

I wrote in my journal:
"A new journal book today,
maybe a new way of 'seeing',
a new 'journey'? - A journey of
discovery...
The "Quest, as I see it, is really an Exploration of a 
'Deeper Reality' within, for lack of a better
term." (It's just how it came to me...)

I have to be open, aware, and curious
to take this journey.

When I checked our video camera pics from
the night and morning, there was one of a hummingbird -
stopped directly in front of the camera,
looking right into it, flapping its little wings.
And within milliseconds darted off and away.

I giggled and played it several times -
giggling like a little kid each time.

Something stirred within me
that I hadn't felt in a long time...

I was suddenly filled with the nectar of life,
the magic of living;  inebriated with the joy of life again...

(missing for so long, bogged down, and feeling
imprisoned by life).

Today I felt totally gifted...   free....  joyful...

Had "The Universe" heard the unshed tears of my Heart?

I'm excited to be on this new journey of discovery,
exploring the depths within...

The "Deeper Reality" includes Joy - in the simple things;
an Inner Quiet of Being, and
the excitement and the innocent laughter of a child.
It is playful...

I want to see where this goes!

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 17, 2023

 

This Meandering That I do...

This meandering that I do, in the Great Inner Wilderness,
is not a mistake.  I am not lost.  I am unconfined by
tribe or herd, undefined by one religion or spiritual philosophy...
It is not floundering or aimlessness,
but a deep exploring of "The Mystery."

I am not renouncing anything, nor seeking anything, but
only allowing myself to feel the deeper Rhythm of the 
rich Inner Life...  And to rest there...

This is not an escape from the world, yet there is a need
to recede from that rhythm; leaving behind the surface
consciousness of the world that so often drives me/us
through life experience, and keeps me/us from deepening
into the Inner Rhythm - until I am able to intuitively and
instinctively feel that Internal Rhythm flowing in and through
 myself - naturally...

The Inner Wilderness is a space of remedial Silence for me
that soothes the Heart and Spirit.  It allows me to be
"anonymous" - without identity, role, or function - just resting -
allowing myself to be absorbed by the Silence of Being -
leaving everything else behind until I am fully immersed...

When in this space of deep Silence, I experience seamless
fluidity, that nothing can interrupt - not thought, thinking, the
external distractions of life, nor the deeply ingrained
emotional and mental patterns that still arise in the
every-day-ness of life...

I experience this meandering as the normal "play" of the
Formless in Form.  The Formless dances within us, in such
intimacy with us that at times I feel as if "The Beloved" is
as much in my shoes as I am in "The Beloved's."

The Beloved falls in love with ItSelf...
Inhabits ItSelf...
and loves the Form of ItSelf...
which is us...

Mystic Meandering
2021

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