The Disguise...

 "She" - the Cosmic Primal Energy of all Life -
is hidden among us in the disguises She wears...

She" - the Primordial One,
Sometimes conceals Herself
Sometimes reveals Herself
through everyone as they are:
all expressions of Herself
in disguise...

Through this mystery we find
our way back to Who we are -
by simply being ourselves,
the Natural expression of ourselves...

And you recognize, at the core of your Being,
that you are Her - the Primordial One,
disguised in a body, playing yourself...

Mystic Meandering

March 7, 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Infinite Unfolding - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The Mystical Path
takes one into the depths of the Heart.
It leads you from the known to the unknown,
and then further into
the unknowable,
into a darkness brighter than
any light.

Nothing can prepare you for the Heart's journey,
for the places it can take you,
the depths and the heights
that are within you.
So many times  you think you are crazy,
bewildered and lost.
There are few signposts,
often little sense of direction.
It is our own unique journey.

It takes us to places where there are no
books or stories, no words to comfort us,
except the story of our own Heart,
our own confusion, longing and love.

We awaken to the simple and fundamental truth
that there is nothing other than 'God.'
Even the idea of a path is an illusion...

~

So what is this love story that unfolds within
the Heart of a Mystic?

How much of "our story" is [really] "God's story"?

...all one story,
One Light
split into many fragments,
yet always remaining
One Light...

This one story
is lived in millions of ways,
each story a unique fragrance of Love.
Every cell in creation lives its own love story -
its longing for the Source.
Human beings have the capacity
to make this story conscious,
to know the nature of their
hidden longing.

There can only ever be
one story,
because
there is only one Beloved,
and yet
we are part of this story;
our little "i"
must also be
a part of
The Beloved...

Infinitely Unfolding

Excerpts from:
Fragments of a Love Story
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic

~

Please  note: I have taken excerpts from  the book
and arranged them in the form of a prose poem.

~

Photo: Mystic Meandering
Lotus Heart Stained Glass piece digitally zoom blurred

The "Inner Other" - Matt Licata

Relationship has an uncanny ability to illuminate those parts
of ourselves that we have lost touch with - the orphans of the
emotional world, and the emissaries of our unlived lives.  They
remind us of the two great relational fears -
of being abandoned or overwhelmed by the other.

As we deepen ["spiritually"]... we may discover that the "other"
is not only those fellow travelers that we meet [or our mates/lovers/
partners], but that there is also an "inner other" who also longs to
be known, to be held, and to be a part of the love story of our lives.
The "other" yearns more than anything for intimacy, to no longer
be shut out, and to enter union with us
exactly as we are.

The lost sadness, the disallowed joy, the unmet rage, the repressed
grief.  The barely remembered peace, the dissociated despair, the
forgotten beauty.  These ones are alive and will continue their
journey to find you.  They will never give up and will continue to
take form as your lovers, family members, and friends, including
those who irritate you the most.

The invitation of The Beloved, in each of its forms, is to step fully
into the crucible of relationship where we no longer limit the
mystery of love's expression, resisting the temptation to have the
fires of love conform to our requirements.  And to open to the
reality that perhaps the purpose of relationship is not to provide
consistent feelings of safety, certainty, connection, and validation.

The Beloved has not come to confirm what we think love is - or
the ways we have come to believe we must be seen - but rather
to introduce us to the creative terrain of the unknown, and to the
poetic depth of our own hearts...

Matt Licata

~

Art - Heart within Heart
Craypas oils - done with fingers

?2009

Sacred Outrage - Rupert Spira

...look behind the resistance you feel to what is happening.
See if the resistance comes from Love of Truth...  If it does then
 it is not an egoic resistance to what is.
It is Sacred Outrage because you know that things are
not in line with Love.

Love is God's Being [Pure Beingness] shining through us.
We are the modulation of that Infinite Being...
Everyone has something unique to offer...
Each person will be motivated to express Love and understanding
in different ways - some as activists, some as teachers, writers,
artists, poets, doctors, nurses, etc...
Don't inhibit your action with pseudo non-dual reasoning.
Resistance at the relative level of existence is necessary.
Ask: What is my resistance motivated by - fear and neuroses,
or Love and Intelligence...
Act from the place of Love and understanding.
Engage...
 from the Heart.

Rupert Spira

~

We weep when light does not reach our hearts.
We wither like fields if someone doesn't
rain their kindness upon us.

Meister Eckhart

~

Trust that a thread of love
operates in everything
and listen deeply 
for this Love…

Adyashanti


Act from Love...

We need to discern how to live life with peace
and equanimity in our current culture of hatred
and violence; not creating and "resisting" an "enemy"
in the "other", but finding compassionate courage to
work for that which is aligned with the Truth of our Being,
who we really are in our Heart, as individuals and as a country.
The first step is to meet and acknowledge our own
prejudices, hatred, and violence within ourselves,
that gets expressed in subtle and not so subtle ways
in our day-to-day lives - our indifference to another's suffering
 under the guise of  "spirituality."

_/\_

Inside the Fairy Tale - Matt Licata

It's not so much that we need (or even can) get out of the matrix,
the developmental-cultural-historical lens through which we have
come to perceive what we call "reality."

Instead, begin to see it clearly, in all its nuance, subtlety, and
dream-like luminosity.  How am I imagining myself, others, and
the world?  What is the myth in which I am living, through which
I am seeing?  What is the story I'm telling, who are the gods and
goddesses I am traveling with?

Am I willing to take the risk to dream a new dream?  To differentiate
from the voices I have inherited from a world that has forgotten the
mysteries.  To listen to the new poetry as it pours out of the stars.

While we may never be able to fully step outside the matrix and
 report back as a neutral observer and "detached witness"
(another fantasy of modern consciousness), we can play within it,
dance inside and around it, allow ourselves the freedom to
 hide and seek, and the imagination to get lost and to be found.

We can get messy, fall apart, be vulnerable, fail well, fail with heart,
forget and remember, dissolve and come back together. And set aside
the fantasy that one day we'll come to some safe, secure, knowing
resolution to the wildness of love and its contradictory, untamed,
and relentless activity.  That one day we'll become a "master" at life,
wiggle into some invulnerable/untouchable state, tucked away and
protected from the reality that the rug can and will be pulled out
from underneath us in each unfolding moment.

To fully participate in the dream without falling into trance. And
even if we fall into trance, to dare to see it, too, as none other
than "the Beloved" in disguise.

It's really like being a character in our own fairy tale, with all the
mythical and archetypal beings by our side, curious as to what the
crazy love-struck boy or girl is going to do next, in awe of the
human form and the inseparability of matter and spirit.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - via No Mind's Land

You May Dream Dreams

Multiplicity and Oneness - Kripal and Licata

Each human being is two, that is, each person is simultaneously
a conscious constructed self or socialized ego and a much larger
complexly conscious field that normally manifests only in
non-ordinary states of consciousness and energy, which the
religious traditions have historically objectified, mythologized,
and projected outward into the sky as divine, as "God", or
introjected inward into the human being as nirvana, brahman, or
located in some sort of experienced paradoxical state that is
neither inside or outside, as in the Chinese Dao...

Jeffrey J. Kripal
Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought

via - Markings

~

We are neither "separate" nor "one", but the erupting holding
field in which the energies of "separate" and "one" interpenetrate
and dance the relative into being.  The allies of multiplicity are not
at war with oneness, but fellow travelers with them on a journey of
wholeness. While we may have a bias for oneness over multiplicity,
it would appear that Love does not share this bias and is ready at all
times to employ either equally as its envoy here.  The freedom we
 are longing for will never be found in the eradication of the
unwanted, but only in attunement to the Love
and the information it carries.

The goal is not to eliminate multiplicity and scramble to replace it
with oneness, but something a bit messier, more creative, more fertile,
more earthy.  A bit more risky, not as clean, white, solar, or safe.

When we become too literalized in our fantasies of unity and oneness
 - and also in those of multiplicity and separation - we lose touch with
the mystery that these concepts can only point to...

We can play in the mountain peaks of unity and oneness, and also
in the rich, lush generative meadows of separation and multiplicity,
without taking sides.  Willing to fully participate in each,
as equal expressions of the Beloved.

Matt Licata

~
photo - Face Reflection Mandala
2013