Break For Freedom - David Whyte

To remove ourselves entirely and absolutely, abruptly and
at times uncompromisingly is often the real and radically
courageous break for freedom.  Unsticking ourselves from
the mythical Tar Baby, seemingly set up, just for us, right
in the middle of our path, we start the process of losing
our sense of falsity, of ridding ourselves of illusions, of
letting go of our self-manufactured enemies, and even our
false friends, and most especially the false sense of self
we have manufactured to live with them.  We make
ourselves available for the simple seeing of ourselves
and our world more elementally and therefore more clearly
again.  We withdraw, not to disappear, but to find another
ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to
step, and from which to speak again, in a different way, a
clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember as our own.

David Whyte
Excerpt from an essay - "Withdrawal"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Break Into Freedom - David Whyte

To remove ourselves entirely and absolutely, abruptly and
at times uncompromisingly is often the real and radically
courageous break for freedom.

Unsticking ourselves from the mythical Tar Baby, seemingly
 set up, just for us, right in the middle of our path, we start
the process of losing our sense of falsity, of ridding ourselves
of illusions, of letting go of our self-manufactured enemies,
and even our false friends, and most especially the false 
sense of self we have manufactured to live with them.  We
make ourselves available for the simple seeing of ourselves
and our world more elementally and therefore more clearly
again.  We withdraw, not to disappear, but to find another
ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to step,
and from which to speak again, in a different way, a clear,
rested, embodied voice we begin to remember as our own.

David Whyte
Excerpt from an essay - "Withdrawal"

~

Inside this new love, die...
Your way begins on the other side.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone born into color.
Do it now...

Rumi

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Our Fundamental Nature - Zen Master Daehaeng

The invisible energy of the Universe
is our Fundamental Nature, our underlying Essence,
the True Self, the Mind of the mind.  It is the
Essence that moves us; is not separate from the
"false self".  Our "True Self" is the basis of the "false self."
 There is nothing that is not my-self.
If I know something, the Universe knows it; nothing
is secret.  "The work" is to experience this True Nature
for yourself; to completely rely upon our True Nature,
our inherent Nature.

Entrust everything that confronts you, both good
and bad, to that Fundamental Inherent Nature.

~

Truth does not depend upon the existence of the
teachings of an "enlightened" person.

~

Inside death, life already exists.  And inside life,
death already exists.
Death is just putting on a new set of clothes.

Zen Master Daehaeng

Korean Buddhist

Excerpts from - No River To Cross

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

Let everything touch your Heart
and see how your view of the world changes.

MM

Heart-to-Heart Resonance - Eric Baret and Rumi

The heart is yearning to be open.
When a heart meets an open heart,
when a match approaches a lighted match,
it rejoices in unity, in the flame...
This is called transmission.
But nothing is transmitted.
No one transmits, no one receives;
There is [just] heart-to-heart [resonance].
There is only one heart.

Eric Baret

~

Some souls have gotten free of their bodies.
Do you see them?
Open your eyes for those who escape to meet
with other escapees, whose hearts associate in a way
they have of leaving their false selves to live
in a truer Self...

Rumi
From: Escaping to the Forest

~

What does pre-eternity mean to you?
What is your origin?  The Source?
What is spirit? 

Spend your life finding out your own state.
Those other mysteries will come clear.

God is depth.  And you, you are also deep.
The same depth is in you.

Don't worry about terminology, pre-existence,
the original face, spirit, soul.
Search within yourself.
The great mystery is there.

I want someone with a living pulse,
a living friend...

Excerpts from the Sayings of Shams Tabriz

Soul Fury
Rumi and Shams Tabriz on Friendship

Coleman Barks

Creating Enmity - J. Krishnamurti

Surely that thing which you fight you become.  If I am angry
and you meet me with anger what is the result?  More anger.
You have become that which I am.  If I am evil and you fight
me with evil means then you also become evil, however
righteous you may feel.  If I am brutal and you use brutal
methods to overcome me, then you become brutal like me.
And this we have done for thousands of years.  Surely there
is a different approach than to meet hate by hate.  If I use
violent methods to quell anger in myself then I am using
wrong means for a right end, and thereby the right end
ceases to be.  In this there is no understanding.  Anger is
to be understood; it is not to be overcome through violent
means.  Anger may be the result of many causes and
without comprehending them there is no escape from anger.

We have created the enemy, and becoming ourselves the enemy
in no way brings about an end to enmity.  We have to understand
the cause of our enmity and cease to feed it by our thought,
feeling, and action.  This is an arduous task demanding constant
self-awareness [and Self awareness] and intelligent pliability,
for what we are society is...  The enemy and the friend are
the outcome of our thought and action.  We are responsible for
creating enmity and so it is more important to be aware of our
own thought and action than to be concerned with the foe and
the friend, for right thinking puts an end to division.
Love transcends the friend and the enemy.

J. Krishnamurti
from: The Book of Life

via - The Beauty We Love

Vulnerability - Rumi and Wilber

I was going to tell you my story...
but waves of pain drowned my voice.
I tried to utter a word but my thoughts
became fragile and shattered like glass.
Even the largest ship can capsize
in the stormy sea...

let alone my feeble boat,
which shattered to pieces leaving me nothing
but a strip of wood to hold on to.

Small and helpless, rising to heaven
on one wave of love and falling with the next.
I don't even know if I am or I am not.
When I think I am, I find myself worthless,
when I think I am not, I find my value.
Like my thoughts, I die and rise again each day...
at last I surrender...

Rumi

~

Authentic spirituality is revolutionary.
It does not legitimate the world,
it breaks the world;
it does not console the world,
it shatters it.  And it does not render
the self content, it renders it undone.

Ken Wilber

Ordinary Enlightenment - "G", Shinzen Young & Jeff Foster

There are many different definitions of mysticism, but a narrow
description of mysticism is known as the "perennial philosophy",
or "perennial wisdom."  [That Truth is Universal & Eternal].
In this sense, mysticism indicates the dying of the illusion
of selfhood into the greater reality of God, Nirvana, Dao, or a
number of other concepts representing the deathless and
indefinable part of us that is often called the Void. [or Emptiness].

It is the "death" [dissolution] of the individual ego into the
indescribable that characterizes the perennial wisdom. [Or rather]
it is the giving up of identifying with being the individual ego/self.

God, as the mystic understands the term, does not correspond at all
to the commonly held beliefs involving an anthropomorphic deity
gazing down on humanity from on high.  For the mystic, God is
much more subtle and immediate.  In mysticism, God is not a
separate being to us, rather the very "being-ness" that lies
 at the heart of everyone. 

The mystical process, whatever traditions or methods it uses, is
ultimately aimed at breaking through the prison of mortality into

freedom of what both the Buddha and Japanese Zen Master Bankei
called the Unborn.  Living as the Unborn we are no longer tied to
[attached to] a false sense of ego/self... but are liberated as the very
Awareness that is the heart of every being in the universe.

Excerpt from: "Buddha and Religion: Mysticism"
Buddha Space
Read the full article here

This blog also has other interesting topics!

~

Even for a deeply "enlightened" person, the experience of contact
with Flow and Emptiness does not necessarily go uninterrupted.  It
may happen frequently during the day, but not necessarily continuously.
Even a very liberated person still spends a lot of time experiencing
the world in the ordinary way.

What then is the difference between an ordinary person and a liberated
person?  The difference is a matter of freedom.  An "enlightened"
person has the ability to experience self and world as a Source wave.
And when they are not experiencing things that way, they understand
why that is the case. It is just because they are not paying close
attention...

Shinzen Young - The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

via Markings

Pay attention! :)

~

There is no fixed path to enlightenment.  Enlightenment is not a
destination, a goal, a final resting place at the end of a long journey -

that's the mind's version of enlightenment.  Nobody is the authority
on your path - no teacher, no guru, no religious leader.  Nobody can
tell you the right 'way' for you...

Jeff Foster

via The Dawn Within

~

Photo from the Internet

Zeitgeist...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark of night,
I awake...

Inexplicable dread overtakes me...

.....a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time?

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Fear and Violence.

But those who know the beauty of true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus" cannot
shatter the pristine Light of a radiant Cosmos,
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and movement of
a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds;
by the ineptness of fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

Zeitgeist - the defining spirit of the time, or culture.

~*~

Yet another mass school shooting Weds here in the US,
moving me to tears - children killing children once again;
and what humanity is doing to itself is heartbreaking...
The more my heart opens, the more I feel the emotional
pain of those who have been traumatized for life by
the shadow side of humanity.

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded hearts and help us to endure our
wounded society...

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - I don't remember what this is a picture of
but it seemed fitting...

For Light - John O'Donohue

[.....]

In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.

That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.

When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.

That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The Mystery continues to dwell,
Glimmering in fugitive light.

When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.

When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.

When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.

As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.

And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
of a found word.

John O'Donohue
From: To Bless the Space Between Us

~

Photo - Mandala Art

What Is Left To Say - Lisel Mueller

The self steps out of the circle;
it stops wanting to be
the farmer, the wife, and the child.

It stops trying to please
by learning everyone's dialect;
it finds it can live, after all,
in a world of strangers.

It sends itself fewer flowers;
it stops preserving its tears in amber.

How splendidly arrogant it was
when it believed the gold-filled tomb
of language awaited its raids!

Now it frequents the junkyards
knowing all words are secondhand.

It has not chosen its poverty,
this new frugality.
It did not want to fall out of love
with itself.  Young,
it celebrated itself
and richly sang itself,
seeing only itself
in the mirror of the world.

It cannot return.  It assumes
its place in the universe of stars
that do not see it.  Even the dead
no longer need it to be at peace.
Its function is to applaud.

Lisel Mueller

via Poetry Chaikhana

see Ivan's commentary on
Lisel's poem here

~

Photo - Face Reflections Mandala

2013

The "Good Dark" - Ivan Granger

What is the "Good Dark"?
The Light is so often considered one of the attributes of the Divine,
but we forget that dark too is also a metaphor...  The Eternal is
sometimes called dark because IT is beyond the ability of the limited
intellect to see.  It is the realm where there is no longer separation;
nothing is seen as separate from That [the Eternal].  It can feel like
a shining darkness.  So the Sacred Dark, the Good Dark, is God,
the Eternal, that exists in its mysterious, invisible, indefinable form.
Vast beyond comprehension.  [It is the Eternal] that gathers
everything, even light, into ItSelf.  This is the darkness where
there is great joy,  This is the immense Mystery...

If we understand the Divine to be that living, mysterious darkness,
then we finally recognize ourselves as the same as that darkness.
[The light and dark being the same - think Yin-Yang, where the
light is contained within the dark and the dark within the light.]
In the 'half-light' [partial understanding] we are still distracted by
our own faces, we are confused, more aware of ourselves than the
holy mystery we touch.  We become like a young lover, too
self-conscious to simply lose oneself in the embrace of the Beloved.

...[when] we have no face of our own *separate* from That [our face
before we were born], then we can melt silently into the Good Dark,
into the mystery of the Divine.  Your face gets erased [the persona, or
mask] - the false self, the little me, the ego.  This is the place where
concepts fail, where reality is no longer parceled out into dichotomies
of good and bad, right and wrong, (no division of opposites)...  There
is nothing (except the Divine Wholeness that is all things). The ego-
mind is no longer able to segment reality.  Underlying the complex
 diversity of creation is a single Unity.  And within that Unity, the
 individual is not separate or different from the vast Divine.
  There is no separation between individual self and the center of all
selves...  Just Pure Being...

If you can settle deeply into this awareness [that there is nothing
except Divine Wholeness, beyond the mask], then you will find
yourself drinking the ecstasy of true love-wisdom!

Ivan Granger, Poetry Chaikhana
[brackets mine] (parentheses his)

~

We are from the fathomless depths,
the "darkness" of "The Deep"
*before* Light began...
*from* which Light emerged...
We *are* the Deep Ananda of
The Divine...

without knowing how or why...
without the need for certainties,
for *answers*; only the
ever-available Presence of
Divine Love...Pure Bliss
Pure Blessing

Mystic Meandering
January 30, 2017

Ineffable Experience - Bob Berman

An experience began that no words could convey.
It was ineffable and life-altering.  The best I can say is that "I" was
suddenly gone, replaced by the certainty of being the entire cosmos.
There was absolute peace.  I knew with total confidence, not
logically - because, "I" was no longer present - that birth and death
do not exist.  That all is perfect eternally, that time is unreal, and that
all is one.  The joy was beyond anything I could have imagined.
The to-the-marrow certainty could perhaps be better described as
a recognition, and an ancient familiarity of being Home.

There was no sense of a separate "me", an observer looking out
upon the world.  I was whatever my eyes gazed upon.  It was as if
my consciousness had previously been long confined, like a canary
in a little cage, and that a false sense of being a separate, isolated,
thinking individual had now vanished.  Objects were no longer
separate items existing in space; instead, everything was the
 same continuum.  When a person came into view, I was this person.
The universe was one entity for all time.  There were not billions of
humans and animals.  There was one living, deathless entity.

Bob Berman
from: Beyond Biocentrism: Rethinking Time, Space,
Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death

by Bob Berman and Robert Lanza

Via - Markings

~

Underlying the complex diversity of creation is a single Unity.
And within that Unity, the individual is not separate or
different from the vast Divine.  There is no separation between
individual self and the center of all selves... just Pure Being...

Ivan Granger - Poetry Chaikhana

Break for Freedom - David Whyte & Rumi

To remove ourselves entirely and absolutely,
abruptly and at times uncompromisingly is often
the real and radically courageous
break for freedom.
Unsticking ourselves from the mythical
Tar Baby, seemingly set up, just for us,
right in the middle of our path,
we start the process of losing our sense of falsity,
of ridding ourselves of illusions,
of letting go of our self-manufactured enemies,
and even our false friends,
and most especially the false sense of self
we have manufactured to live with them.

We make ourselves available for the simple seeing of ourselves
and our world more elementally and therefore more clearly again.
We withdraw, not to disappear, but to find another ground
from which to see; a solid ground from which to step,
 and from which to speak again, in a different way,
 a clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember
as our own...

David Whyte
Excerpt from an essay -"Withdrawal"

Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running from Silence.

Rumi
"Become the Sky"

~

Top Photo - Ceiling Abstract
taken looking up where several ceiling levels
come together, also a ceiling beam, and a rod
with a hanger on it :)  Color inverted.

Bottom photo - Through the glass of a greenhouse ceiling. 

The Primal Mystery - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Everything is illumined with Divine Presence.
The Beloved reveals [ItSelf] through life's myriad forms...

We make an image of the Divine to suit us,
to give us comfort and security,
to contain the pain of being human.
All images gradually fall away,
for they too are veils of separation,
denying the truth of union.

How can the Beloved be separate?
And when we call out to God
who calls out to whom?

Our cry is itself the Beloved's,
crying out to ItSelf...

The Mystery is that the Beloved calls to [ItSelf]
within our Heart...

The mystical path is the journey Home -
a return journey in which we "die" to
the false self and rediscover our
essential union with God -
the primal Mystery...

Real "spiritual awakening"
is the awakening of the heart
in which the Divine comes alive
within us through Grace...

Words of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic
From: The Prayer of the Heart
I merely put the words together in prose poetry form

~*~

God is a metaphor for a mystery

that absolutely transcends all human
categories of thought.

Joseph Campbell

~*~

Photo: Mandala Art
"Into Infinity"
Mystic Meandering

The Shifting Shadows of Life...

The self is just a shadow, a mist, a thin layer of the real...

I’ve been noticing the long shadows lately, although it seems early in the season.  These photos are from November.  The shadows call to me for some reason.  They seem longer than usual for this time of year, maybe a sign of my aging… J  They evoke melancholy, but also unexpectedly soothe.  They are enchanting, bringing me into the space of Infinite Isness - just Being.  As I watch, they move and change within minutes, coming and going, eventually dissolving and disappearing - like the shadow self that we think is real - the form and the Formless intersecting.  Somehow I find this strangely comforting - this dance of shadow and light…

“I am a terminal commuter…
The things I once believed in
are no longer there,
no longer exist…”

Author Unknown

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency…

All is visible and all elusive…

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names…

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself…

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go.
I am a pause.

Octavio Paz

“Your self-identity is a shadow,

the divine is a boundless,
loving presence
that takes you
into
ItSelf…”

Open the Door

Wayne Teasdale
The Mystic Heart

Solitude...

“Solitude is the furnace of transformation.
Without solitude
we remain victims of our society
and continue to be
entangled in the illusions
of the false self…”

Henri Nouwen

“The great omission in American life is solitude;
not loneliness,
for there is an alienation
that thrives most in the midst of crowds,
but [it is] that zone of time and space,
free from outside pressures,
which is the incubator
of the spirit.”

Marya Mannes

“Awareness of the Divine Essence as our
innermost true Self requires silence…
It is turning toward what lies hidden within -
to the internal - the all-embracing totality
of Divine Being.
It is the way of meditation,
the way if inner silence before Spirit.

Remaining quiet before Spirit is a prayer of silence,
through which we listen to that which secretly speaks
to us in the inner room of the heart.

What is hidden deep in our innermost being
lies in silence and stillness,
and in the silence of the deep
springs the eternal, inexhaustible, orginal
source of all being.

Where words fall silent,
the everlasting begins…

Wolfgang Kopp
From: Free Yourself of Everything

“Spiritual joys come only from solitude.

A little while in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given…”

“To be one with the truth for just a moment
is worth more than the world and life itself…”

Rumi

~
~
~

PLEASE NOTE:

  I am not suggesting that we all live a cloistered life of solitude and silence!J 

I don’t think I could even do that! 

 But it is about being with our deeper inner Self/Being,

 listening and hearing the deeper Voice of Silence

 and responding to the inner movement of That.

  We can be in solitude while cleaning or creating.

  And sometimes that Voice speaks to us through the voice of
others, as these quotes here did for me,

 and as so many of you do through your blog posts. J 

 I merely wish to point out that

 part of the angst and entropy we are experiencing in the world

 is due to a lack of spending time in solitude and silence,

 becoming aware of and getting to know our deeper,

 mostly unknown, Divine Self/Spirit/Beingness…