Balance: Noticing the Opposites - iRest

Artist- Puisi

Our experience always changes.  We have idealized
expectations of what we think life is supposed to be.
Life will do what life does, despite trying to
control our experience.

Balance is born out of transformative embrace of the
fullness of life in its ups and downs, not dependent
upon on external life circumstances.

Flow with the waves of life, noticing the *sensations*
in the body, exploring the opposites in the body,
the heaviness and lightness; feeling both sensations
in the body at the same time; as well as opposite
emotions and beliefs.

Every experience has an opposite.
Once explored and underlying sense of well-being
and ease can shine through, a true balance emerges.

Trying to control our experience [causes stress],
instead set life free to be what it is through allowing
life to be as it is, in balance and harmony with the
opposites, through the simplicity of noticing.

From an iRest meditation
from a free meditation series
through the iRest Institute

~

Photo - Art by Puisi

 

Reality Rupture - Pema Khandro Rinpoche

The Tibetan term bardo, the "intermediate state" [or the
in-between state], is not just a reference to the afterlife.  It
also refers more generally to moments when gaps appear,
inter-ruptions to the continuity that we otherwise project onto
our lives.  The interruptions in our normal sense of certainty
are what is being referred to by the term bardo.  To be precise,
bardo refers to that state in which we have lost our old reality

and it is no longer available to us. [there is no going back].  
There is a total rupture in our who-I-am-ness.

We have been holding onto the idea of an inherent continuity
in our lives, creating a false sense of comfort for ourselves on
artificial ground.

Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it
means to be disrupted...  In these moments we lose our grip on
the old reality and yet have no sense what a new one might be
like.  There is no ground, no certainty, and no reference point -
there is, in a sense, no rest.

There is rupture in our reality...

A direct experience of disruption felt a the core of our being,
and there is no longer any use manufacturing artificial security.

The bardo teachings are really about recognizing the value of 
giving up the game, which we play without even knowing it.
We hold pictures/images of our ideal self in an ideal world.  We
imagine that if we could only manipulate our circumstances or
other people enough, then that ideal self could be achieved, and
in the meantime we pretend to have it together... and pursue
reality as we think it should be...

When we suffer disruption. we find we just can't play the game
anymore.  Holding it all together is not an option.

Death and loss are great teachers, if we can open to the
experience of profound disruption.

Without some way of managing this experience, this unsettling
discontinuity, punctuated by occasional disruptions to the very
idea of our being, we never know if we are going to show up....

We contract with our wounded sense of self, and are dissociated
from our true nature, and make frantic efforts to create something
more ideal, more secure, more definite.

In a raw broken-open state, this place where we let go of all
games, there is actually a great sense of relief available to us,
a knowledge that we don't have to do it anymore - to *be* that;
and find way to disrupt our own habit of clinging to our
continuity story.

Emerging from the bardo, we reenter the flow of life with a
new sense of groundlessness: it is clear that "later" is not always
a luxury that will be available to us...  The perspective gained
in the bardo cuts through petty concerns.  It cuts through delusions
so that whatever we contact, we do so with raw presence, without
the denial of impermanence.  A new kind of openness becomes
available to us.

The rupture of the bardo inevitably leads to whatever is next and
appreciating the [losses] in our lives, and the bardo for what it is -
the pause - the end that clarifies what exactly we will now be
beginning...

Impermanence is not just an illuminator of loss.  It is the illuminator
of newness, the ever-unfolding moment and its creativity....

Pema Khandro Rinpoche

excerpts from
"Letting Go In the Bardo"

from Lion's Roar

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

It Floats Us - Ivan Granger

The vast flood
Rolls onward
But yield yourself,
And it floats you upon it.

Ikkyu

Day after day, experience after experience, terrors and tragedies,
joys and victories, everything  - life.  It can feel like an onslaught.

Most of us learn to dampen down the awareness in order to cope
and mimic those around us.

Yet even with dimmed senses we feel overwhelmed.

But yield yourself,
And it floats you upon it.

This is the liberating wisdom of surrender.

Most of our intense efforts in life, whether directed toward work,
family, even spirituality, are about trying to control the flow
of life.  We want to master the flood, bring it under our will.
We want to tame it so we can be safe.

But it never really works.

The lifelong effort is like a duck on a great river who imagines
he controls the current by the action of his paddling feet.

When he happens to face downstream - Amazing!  The river goes
just where he commanded!  When he turns left or right, he imagines
that he needs to increase his effort and improve his technique to get
the river flowing where he wants.  And when he turns downstream -
Calamity!  He has lost control of the river.

Or...  he can just sit on top of the river and let its current carry him.

Yielding ourselves to this great river, no longer imagining that we
can control it, we can finally begin to discover its true nature and
direction - and beauty.  We come to see its flow as a unifying harmony
and not a threat. Importantly, we notice our natural buoyancy.  
We are built to float upon it.

Commentary by Ivan Granger
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
(didn't have a picture of a duck :)

 

Life as it is - a meandering

Religion is a heavy mantle some people wear -
robes of ritual, dogma and doctrine...

Advaita is a heady game some people like to play -
self/no-self?

Non-duality - a conundrum -
not two - but not one...

I'm tired of all these heavy "games" I've played
in the "Spiritual Game"...

It's time for me to just step out of the way -
to let myself unfold -
and not entangle myself in the many webs
that constrain and constrict that Flow.

Maybe some ancient saint or sage had it all figured out -
maybe not...

My inner sage tells me it's about acceptance,
about empathy, compassion; about living life as it is
the best I can without living up to some "spiritual"
ideal: Someone else's beliefs, someone else's "way",
someone else's "truth"; the "right" perspective, or
"right" thinking... 

Needing to listen to the
deeper Rhythm of my own Soul/Essence/Being...

But strong primal instincts arise,
unable to "spiritualize"
the rawness of emotions into - pretty language...

The practicality of Buddhist Wisdom draws me now -
not as a religion or belief system, but as day to day
wisdom for getting through...
The wisdom of accepting what is, of just being present,
of mindfulness, of caring and compassion, of stepping
out of the way of the experience and just seeing what unfolds,
letting go of expectations, the need for solutions,
 and the need to control - allowing life to happen
as it does...

No more lofty goals of "enlightenment" -
just fulfilling the requirements of ordinary daily living
in the midst of global and personal chaos
- in my new role as "caregiver" -
doing what needs to be done
as life keeps living itself
 as it is...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 12, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Hubby and Emmy sleeping....

 

The Time Is Ripe - Ajahn Chah

Now you too must learn to be satisfied with the many years
you've already depended on your body.  You should feel that
it's enough.

You can compare it to household utensils that you've had for
a long time - your cups, saucers, plates and so on.  When you
first had them they were clean and shining, but now after using
them for so long, they're starting to wear out. Some are already
broken, some have disappeared, and those that are left are
deteriorating: they have no stable form, and it's their nature
to be like that.  Your body is the same way.  It has been
continually changing right from the day you were born,
through childhood and youth, until now it has reached old age.

Allow the mind to let go of its attachments.  The time is ripe.

Even if your house flooded or burnt to the ground, whatever
the danger that threatens it, let it concern only the house.  If
there's a flood, don't let it flood your mind.  If there's a fire,
don't let it burn your heart.  Let it be merely the house, that
which is external to you, that is flooded and burned.  Allow
the mind to let go of its attachments.
The time is ripe.

It is the same with your wealth, your possessions, and your
family -  they are all yours only in name; they don't really 
belong to you, they belong to nature.

It's like the water of a river.  It naturally flows down the
gradient; it never flows against it, that is its nature.  If a
person were to go and stand on a river bank and, seeing the
water flowing  swiftly down its course, foolishly want it to
flow back up the gradient, he would suffer.  Whatever he was
doing, his wrong thinking would allow him no peace of mind.
He would be unhappy because of his wrong view, thinking
against the stream.

Find your real home...

Ajahn Chah

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Embrace the Losses - John O'Donohue

May you know that absence is alive with hidden presence,
that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.
May the absences in your life grow full of eternal echo.

May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere,
where the presences that have left you dwell..
May you be generous in your embrace of loss.
May the sore well of grief turn into a seamless flow
of presence.

May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and
twilight are one - within the Great Belonging.

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

Original title: A Blessing for Absence

~

In memory of my mother
who passed from this life into
the "secret Elsewhere"
one year ago today...

~

And this goes out to all
who have experienced loss
around the world in our ongoing
coronavirus crisis...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
"Mom's last wave"

Challenging the Fantasies - Daryl Bailey

Life is a moving, shifting, dancing event.
Forms [or beliefs] aren't the truth of existence.
The non-duality [Advaita] view is not the one truth view
of existence.  It is one of the mysterious expressions of
existence.  Existence is just happening.  The dance of thought
is totally automatic.

The "spiritual journey" is one long journey of disappointment
because you're gonna find you can't have endless pleasure,
can't have "understanding" of existence, can't have a sense of
"self", a sense of life where you're always secure and confident.
Life will present situations that are confusing.

Life is an event that is presenting itself and we are part of that
expression.  It's part of the movement of the universe; a dynamic
function. Life will play out the way it plays out;
it's all just happening.  Just acknowledge the movement - the event.  

Life takes care of itself - a formless happening as form, as story.
It is the Formless expressing itself.  You are being expressed in form.
It's all the dance of formless expressions of existence.  We are
the legitimate expression of existence, just as we are.  

The whole process that you think you are is just happening
and you're not making it happen.  There is just the happening of this
moment.  Awakening is a total fantasy.  Everything is just happening
on its own and we are an expression of that happening.
When we see that we can rest.

Spiritual traditions project ideas of what we're supposed to be...
Don't believe in the explanations, or that any of the explanations
have any real truth to them...

We don't have a perfect life with endless bliss.  We just acknowledge
this amazingly mysterious happening that nobody can
comprehend.

There are moments of joy, as well as sadness, or unhappiness.
You endure it in the way you endure it, in your own unique way.
It's just the way it is expressing itself; just the way it's expressing
"me."  The Flow of Life ItSelf...

Daryl Bailey

Trajectory of Life - Richard Wehrman

He was surprised
to see the gray clouds,
for the sunrise was clear
with blue sky, and he
assumed, as he always had,
that the sky moved
as the sun moved, east
to west, yet here the clouds
came, traveling west to
east, and he thought of
the trajectory he imagined
his life took, of birth
to death, infancy to old age,
and he wondered if he
had missed something,
if the winds moved
differently than he supposed,
if death also traveled
toward life, if there were
more currents than he
could imagine; and if
imagining itself, setting
a distinct course, one he
planned in advance, kept
him from seeing, if he
were at this moment
actually growing younger,
at the same time he grew
older; if he was in fact
moving in ways he could
barely sense, into another
life, into other worlds.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here
original title: Traveling

You Think You Have Time - Gunaratana

We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us.
We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we
mistake those mental objects for reality.  We get so caught up in
this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We
spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal flight
from pain and unpleasantness.  We spend our energies trying to make
ourselves better, trying to bury our fears.  We are endlessly seeking
 security.   Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by
untouched and unnoticed...

Henepola Gunaratana

Buddhist Monk

Life is a Dynamic Expression - Darryl Bailey

Life is a moving, shifting, dancing event...
and we are part of that movement.
Life will play out the way it plays out,
it's all just happening.
Life is a dynamic function, doing what it does.
Just acknowledge the movement, the event;
the Flow of Life ItSelf...

Everything in existence is a legitimate expression of Existence.

We are the legitimate expression of Life, of Existence,
of this great mysterious happening.
just as we are...
Each different and unique in our expression.

When we see that, we can rest...

Acknowledge the wild, exotic expression that you are,
in your uniqueness.

Darryl Bailey

Excerpt from video talk:
Challenging the Fantasies

photo image via Stillness Speaks

~~

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when
one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life,
when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within
oneself?  If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes
truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding
and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such
paradox.  One must live in the middle of contradiction, because
if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing
questions.  You continue to live them out, making your life a
worthy expression of leaning into the light...

Barry Lopez
From: Arctic Dreams

via: Beyond the Fields We Know

The Courage to Trust Life - Jeff Carreira

To make no effort at all requires only trust; unbroken trust in life -
unguarded, undefended, and open.  ...making the profound effort
to do nothing at all, the only thing left is pure experience of being.
You are abiding at the very essence of what it means to be
alive and aware.

Underneath the fear, the pain, the worry and self-concern,
the living source of life is untarnished and pure.  The source of
our being is not the pain and suffering.  It is the expansive flow
of life.

When we are free of our compulsive concern with everything
that is wrong we discover that life truly is a miracle even if
bad things happen.  We are free to experience pain and suffering
without losing touch with the inherent goodness of life.  We
must find the courage to let go of our current sphere of [self]
concern so that we can discover a deep and profound trust in life...

Jeff Carreira

Let it go - Danna Faulds

Let go of the ways you thought life
would unfold; the holding of plans
or dreams or expectations - Let it
all go.  Save your strength to swim
with the tide.  The choice to fight
what is here before you now will
only result in struggle, fear, and
desperate attempts to flee from the
very energy you long for.  Let go.
Let it all go and flow with the grace
that washes through your day whether
you receive it gently or with all your
quills raised to defend against invaders.
Take this on faith: the mind may never
find the explanations that it seeks, but
you will move forward nonetheless.
Let go, and the wave's crest will carry
you to unknown shores, beyond your
wildest dreams or destinations.  Let it
all go and find the place of rest and
peace, and certain transformation.

Danna Faulds
From: Go In and In
2002

In the Core of the Contradictions - Matt Licata

At some point, how you thought it was all going to turn out
will crumble away into dust.....all that remains is your raw
burning heart...

It is the nature of form to take birth, to dance, to play, and then
to fall back into the unknown.  This is not some sort of cosmic
error, but the way of things - creative, intelligent, and a reflection
of universal flow.

Relationships, work, family, friends, our health ... ideas about
ourselves, others, and the world.  What we thought would
provide ongoing meaning and purpose. Even what we were so
 sure about just a few days ago - the great realizations, discoveries,
 and insights about who we are, what is most true, what will
 provide lasting peace... no longer quite as convincing.  A dream
 has vanished and has not yet been replaced by a new vision.
 But inside the shards of the broken world, pure

life awaits.

All form must end, departing through a portal into darkness, so that
new forms may emerge from the crucible of clear space.  But what
is emerging in the womb of Now is not knowable ahead of time,
and is not subject to our hopes, fears or fantasies of control.
While the mind will struggle with the wrathful nature of this truth,
the heart knows... the body knows...

See that the death of form is filled with erupting particles of life,
with magic, and with the fragrance of the holy.  You can relax...
and rest inside the core of the contradictions.  Here, the chaos
and the glory are one.

Matt Licata

The Days are Round - Jean Giono

Days begin and end in the dead of night.
They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which
lead to ends - arrow, road, a person's life...
They are shaped round, in the manner of eternal things...

Civilization tried to persuade us we are going towards something,
a distant goal.  We have forgotten that our only goal is to live,
to live each and every day, and that if we live each and every day,
our true goal is achieved.

All civilized people see the day beginning at dawn or a little after,
or a long time after or whatever time their work begins;
this they lengthen according to their work,
during what they call "all day long;" and end it
when they close their eyes.
It is they who say the days are long.

On the contrary, the days are round.

Jean Giono
Rondeur Des Jours
French Novelist

~

For Summer Solstice and the Natural Cycles of Life

~

Photo taken by my brother somewhere in New Hampshire

Unbearably Holy - Matt Licata

Today may not be the day for answers,
but let your heart break open to the vastness
of the questions, the longing, the burning, the uncertainty;
the sense that a miracle is here,
just beyond the veil, but how to reach it?

How to fully show up and participate
in your immediate experience
and be fully alive...

All the teachings.....and worn out ideas about who you are
and why you've come here, about the true source of meaning...
At times, can be overwhelming...
The questions that once had answers...only a tenderness remains,
with no sign or resolution.

Only a burning where the questions once existed...

An old vision seems to be dissolving...
There is no life without the willingness to fully participate
in the shattering and the death of an ancient dream.
No life without embodiment to the vulnerability
as it surges in its eternal forms within you.
Perhaps it was never resolution you were after,
but the pure surging of life.

The heartbreak found here is not a mistake,
but to let your heart break open to the vastness
of the questions.
To fall to the ground as a humble lover of the mystery.

Trust in the flow of your immediate experience,
exactly as it is,
and participate in the raging truth that nothing is wrong with you...
For what you are is unbearably Holy...

Matt Licata

Matt's words, my format.
This is also a synthesis of two
different posts:
Unbearably Holy
and
A Humble Lover of the Mystery

~

Photo - Vortex Art Digitally Altered.

Keeping Perspective

I take comfort in this video by Nicholas Buer,
reminding me that no matter what is taking place on planet
earth, or the circumstances of our lives, and how the paradigms
of our culture are shifting, for some not in directions we
want to go, we are part of a Greater Reality.
Whatever we experience is taking place in a larger context.
Beyond the polarization of politics, there is always the awe
and mystery of an inclusive, radiant cosmos...
Be sure to click on the Full Screen icon.

The Art of Living - Henry Miller

The art of living is based on rhythm -
on give and take,
ebb and flow,
light and dark,
life and death.

By acceptance of all aspects of life,
good and bad,
right and wrong,
yours and mine,
the static, defensive life
which is what most people
are cursed with,
is converted into a dance,
'the dance of life,'
metamorphosis.

One can dance to sorrow or joy;
one can even dance abstractly.
But the point is that
by the mere act of dancing,
the elements which compose it are
transformed;
the dance is an end in itself,
just like life.

The acceptance of the situation,
any situation,

brings about flow,
a rhythmic impulse towards
self-expression.
To relax is the first thing
a dancer has to learn...
It is the first thing any one has to learn
in order to live.

It is extremely difficult,
because it means surrender,
full surrender.

Henry Miller
The Wisdom of the Heart
(Mr. Miller's words, my format)

via: No Mind's Land

The Flow of Life - Matt Licata

We are always in the flow of life.

It is the idea that there is some "us" on one side
and something called "flow" in some other place,
that is a great trance that seems to be unique
to the human experience...

Usually when we talk of being
"in the flow,"
we mean that we like the feelings,
sensations, and experiences
which are arising in our experience.
If there are more
vulnerable, intense, groundless, unresolvible,
or unideal feelings,
then we this as clear evidence that we are
"out of the flow."

And so the war begins.
The dream of abandoning the non-flow
to return to the flow as quickly as possible.

Perhaps it is only in the willingness to fully participate
in our immediate experience, exactly as it is,
that the nature of the flow will be revealed.

It is not something you will get to one day,
as some sort of acquisition,"
when you line up all of the right experiences,
when you successfully abandon and replace
what is here for something else.

The flow is right here,
utterly inseparable from what you are,
and is revealed in your unconditional commitment
to the truth of your immediate experience.

When you are willing to bring your embodied curiosity,
openness, acceptance and presence
to whatever is arising in the immediacy of now,
the question of how to feel more flow ceases to arise.

In this embodied openness the path is everywhere,
even in those places we least expect.
What you are left with is what you are,
which is love itself.

Allow love to astonish you...
Allow it to craft you
as a vessel of aliveness,
in which it can pour out
into this world.
There is no flow separate from that.

Matt Licata

(Matt's words, my format)

Ebb and Flow - Ivan Granger

When the face of Ever-Presence is known,
all concreteness spontaneously fades away...
Kelsang Gyatso

The vivid appearance of the external world can become a trap
for the distracted mind.  We can get caught in constant reaction,
running after pleasure, running from pain.

In the truly natural state, awareness is at rest, perceiving without
tension, encountering reality without an overlay of stories,
without attraction or repulsion.
In that Pure Awareness, life becomes a flow of events and
interactions, not pushed by the self-will of likes and dislikes.

We are simply as we are...
Events simply unfold...

...life experience; its waning and waxing is simply its natural flow.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~*~

Our lives are like rivers.
Eventually they go where they must,
not where we want
them to...

From the movie - "Empire Falls"

The Return Journey - In Memoriam...

My Dad
birthed into form - April 23, 1924
returned to formlessness - Nov. 4, 1985

My Beloved Maternal Grandmother
birthed into form - April 30, 1905
returned to formlessness - Nov. 2, 1998

The Journey of Return

By Dorothy Hunt

When The Beloved wants to take you Home,
extend  your hand to the welcoming
even though your body may be trembling
and your mind may want to flee;
even though those around you grieve,
and you yourself have mourned, even before they,
the changing form of your body.
Tears are not the final truth
though they will come and go
like stars that need a dark sky to be seen.

Death is not a failure of a mind
that is not strong enough,
or positive enough, or pure enough.
Those who hold such views are simply
masking fear with ideas of being in control.
We are being lived by the Creator of this life.
Do you really think a finite mind can change
the mind of God?  Jesus tried and failed.
”Please take this cup from me!” He begged,
as we all do in the midst of anguish.

But anguish, fear, or deepest grief
cannot alter Who you really are.
The beautiful Spirit that extended Itself
in space and time, and called Itself by your name,
is simply ready to return, unencumbered by a body,
to Its vast and spacious Unborn Self,
that kisses you at birth,
and holds your hand in death,
and never for a moment
forgets you are Itself.

The mind imagines you are leaving,
but where could you truly go?
You are Life Itself!  Unceasingly flowing,
moment to moment unfolding Yourself.
A body is born; a body dies; but you do not.
Deep within your heart, you know this Truth.
Rest there…
Rest in the knowing that opens your Heart
to all that IS,
that loves Itself in all that comes
and returns Itself in all that goes.

Dorothy Hunt

Zen Buddhist