Circles of Support - Starhawk

We are all longing to go home to some place we have 
never been - a place half-remembered and half-envisioned
we can only catch glimpses of from time to time.

Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak
with passion without having the words catch in our
throats.  Somewhere a circle of hands will open to
receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will
celebrate with us whenever we come into our power.
[And speak truth to power]
Community means strength that joins our strength to do
the work that needs to be done  Arms to hold us when we
falter.  A circle of healing.  A circle of friends.
Someplace where we can be free
[to be who we are, as we are.]

Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark

~

   Circle of Hands Mandala - Mystic Meandering
(unfinished)

 

Drop Into Freedom...

In my decline I have lost track
of how things are "supposed" to be...
of how things are "supposed" to "work" -
like life...

of finding my way to wherever it is that
I'm "supposed" to be going.

Somehow I've lost my "keys"...

I have grown weary 
of how things are...
of what I'm "supposed" to be doing...
of taking responsibility for things
I'm not responsible for...

of attachments to things that used to be important...

of the body and its ailments and loss of functioning...
of the *ideas* of "awakening" and "enlightenment"...
who "awakens"?
what "enlightens"?
Does it really matter?

Is this how impermanence works?

You lose your keys to things that don't really matter
so that at some point it all falls away
in its importance,
and you are liberated *from*
false ideas and premises,
from hopes and dreams
that keep you bound,
and you "drop"
into
Freedom

Mystic Meandering

April 2, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Sri Yantra

 

Graced With Gratitude...

Gratitude arises
like a warm flame
in the Heart;
a flame that
comes alive
on its own
from within

Overtaking me by surprise...

It's a gratitude of
unknown origin -
not contrived,
or cultivated,
but
deeply felt in the
core of my Being;
only awareness is 
needed...

A gratitude
not for being alive,
but for Aliveness ItSelf.
for the Aliveness that
is Life;
that dances and sings
the Cosmos
into being;
that imbues existence
with LIFE!

For the color and movement
of life being lived
in every minute detail;
for the opening and
unfoldment of life
that has its own
course,
its own
way,
unfolding Itself in
total freedom of Being

I am truly graced with Gratitude -

beyond words...

Mystic Meandering
October 2015

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Wandering Without a Trail...

Wandering without a trail,
my focus on finding The Truth
is realized as a self-made illusion.

Not needing to find yet another belief system;
no longer a need for a specific path
cut by others; not the illusion of 
future "enlightenment" through practices,
disciplines, or self-control...

Finding comfort in loosening the
constraints of  the "spiritual cocoon"
that I wrapped myself in for so long;
even the mantel of meditation
has become too heavy and is unraveling -
becoming frayed - like an old prayer shawl.

Reborn from the Chrysalis of my comforting beliefs,
finding freedom in Just BEing ME,
without suffocating concepts of dogma or doctrine,
or a defined "spiritual image"; instead, 
rediscovering myself...

Breaking free from the "spiritual" constructs;
the scaffolding of beliefs and ideas about
"spirituality" that propped "me" up;
caught in spiritual ideals and identities,
unable to fly...

Freed now from the cage of my own making
I can breathe, I can LIVE
intuitively, being moved from within,
listening for what calls to me...
discovering freedom in being open to where life goes,
as I wander without a trail...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 18, 2019

~

Photo - taken by my father 1952/53

~

"our grasp of truth.....may not last forever.

Hermann Hesse

 

Take Flight My Soul...

Take flight my Soul -
Be free...

Open to a larger freedom...

You are not bound by the constraints
of life circumstances;
imprisoned, or captive, nor
weighed down.

Choose a greater freedom
and take flight...

Set yourself free -
unfettered, unencumbered -

opening to ecstasy...

Mystic Meandering
April 23, 2023

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Free The Body - Gabrielle Roth

We are born into bodies that are fluid and free.
Yet for most of us, this state of grace is sadly short lived.
Judgement, emotional wounds, fear and loss become
stored deep inside our muscles and bones, leaving us
with shoulders that sag, hips that are locked, arms that
can't reach out, hearts that beat behind a stone wall.  When
we move our bodies we shake up firmly rooted systems of
thought, old patterns of behavior and emotional responses
that just don't work anymore.  Rhythm, breath, music and
movement become tools for seeing, then freeing, the habits
that hold us back.  When we free the body, the heart begins
to open.  When the body and the heart taste freedom, the
mind won't be far behind.  And when we put the psyche
into motion, it will start to heal itself.

Gabrielle Roth

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
rock balance

 

Waiting - Leza Lowitz

Art - Barbara Stone

You keep waiting for something to happen,
the thing that lifts you out of yourself,

catapults you into doing all the things you've out off,
the great things you're meant to do in your life,

but somehow you never quite get to.
You keep waiting for the planets to shift

the new moon to bring news,
the universe to align, something to give.

Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry the dishes, the job -
it all stacks up while you keep hoping

for some miracle to blast down upon you,
scattering the piles to the winds.

Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life.
Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking.

But all the while, life goes on in its messy way.
And then you turn forty. Or fifty.  Of sixty... [or 70] :)

and some part of you realizes you are not alone
and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom -

when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over,

it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched,

and when a caterpillar turns to butterfly
if the pupa is brushed, it will die -

and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg
it's because the thing is too small, too small,

and it needs to break out.

And midlife walks you into that wisdom

that is what transformation looks like -

the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life,

the yearning and writhing and pushing,

until one day, one day

you emerge from the wreck
embracing both the immense dawn

and the dusk of the body,
glistening, beautiful

just as you are.

Leza Lowitz

~

Many people die with their music still in them.
Too often it is because they are always getting
ready to live.  Before they know it, time runs out...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

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

 

The Path of Time - Andrew Colliver

Mercy, there have been revelations.
Grace, there has been realization.  Still you must
travel the path of time and circumstance.

The further you go, the more it comes back to paying attention.
The rough skin of the tallowwood, the trade routes of lorikeets,
a sky lifting behind the afternoon clouds.  Staying close to the
texture of things.

People can go before you and talk all they want,
but only one thing makes sense:
the way the world enters and finds its voice in you:
the place you are free.

Andrew Colliver

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo - from the internet

 

Wrapped in Wonderment - Miriam Louisa Simons

no longer working to get free

(or fix or heal or please)

no longer needing to understand

how any of this is possible

not to mention

knowable

I rest

entirely wrapped

in wonderment

Miriam Louisa Simons

Echoes from Emptiness

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Now We Are Free - Gladiator

 

Here is There - Fred LaMotte

 Spend thousands for enlightenment at the Ashram of Tantric Wine
Tasting?  Advanced flow-yoga at a seaside resort in Bali?  Or that
Advaita in a Tuscan Villa.  At this Saturday's workshop, the spiritual
teacher will teach us that there is no teaching and no one here to teach.
The $1200 course fee includes a complimentary green smoothie.

No thanks.

I must be getting lazy.  I've lost my longing for exotic spiritual 
destinations.  I just want to wander in the woods now, beyond my
dilapidated fence, listening to raindrops on ferns, no dakinis sculpted
on the entrance of my mind cave, no Tibetan runes on the limestone
walls of my emptiness, no echoes of vanilla dharma talks.....

Guess I'm getting old.  I just want to sing about the vastness of what
I don't know.  I want to open my eye - not the eye in my forehead but
the eye in the callous of my sole, pressing dark loam with a barefoot
kiss.  From where I stand on the slow turning earth, I can see that this
wheel rolls nowhere.  "Here" is already "there"...

I want to walk more gently over the planet, sighing without words,
and call it prayer.  And I won't turn gratitude into a technique,
because gratitude is simply me, breathing.  Me, honoring the moss-
bearded cedars.  They are very great gurus who give their priceless
teaching for free; a mist-green stillness.

The roots of their lineage truffle dirtward down to the first moment
of creation, entangled in the fungi of the void, close to the fountain
of wonder that gushes up from the center of every Now.

At midnight, soundless owl wings slice through the glory of night,
bright knives of Unknowing. Starlight seeps out of the wound, and
I am awakened.  I am thrice-awakened - here, there, and in each
particle of dust.  Parasam Gateh, beyond the beyond, right where

I am.  Coyote howl will be my song.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Fred LaMotte

Forest on Mt. Rainier

Free to BE - Fred LaMotte

The first discipline of non-violence is to honor every human
being as a unique soul-body, refusing to identify them by
race, gender, religion, or political party.

Yet just as much as right-wing movements, today's "progressive"
movement often promotes conflict and division by labeling
individual Persons by their group identity.  Some of us who
talk about "diversity" actually stifle it, because real diversity
is not to promote tribalism [or nationalism], but to recognize
the incomparable [unique] Personhood of individuals.
[As it also says in the Declaration of Independence.]

It is much easier to hate a category than a Person, whether
your animosity is toward Muslims or Christians, "black people",
or "white people", liberals or conservatives.

The beginning of world peace is to free each human soul-body
from racial, political, or religious abstractions.  Our incidental
association with a group is not who we really are.

I do not identify my Self [Eternal Being] as a color, as rich
or poor, capitalist or socialist, Republican or Democrat,
Christian or Pagan [or American].  I am neither "good" nor
"evil."  Those are just conceptual chains with which your mind
attempts to enthrall me.  But I am not your concept of me:
you are.

If you want to superimpose a group identity on me, that is your
act of violence against the singularity of my Personhood.  You
are free to label me, but I am also free...  I refuse to identify with
your label...

I Am who I Am...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance
(from a 2018 post)

[brackets mine]

Photo from Stillness Speaks

~

This is a newspaper clipping from 1968 that I still have.
The same year that Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy
were assassinated...

~

We are truly Free when we recognize our Eternal Beingness
in each other, and, the diverseness of our individuality
that expresses that Beingness, and treat each other with
respect and compassion...

The Paradox of Freedom - Amoda Maa

The closer we come to truth (and the closer we come to
living the truth), everything becomes paradoxical.  Yes, everything.
It's this and that.  It's human and divine.  It's messy and it's perfect.
it's time-bound and it's timeless.   It's relative and it's absolute.
It's form and formless.  Everything becomes paradoxical.

We start to live as this paradox, because truth is not an end point.
Truth is not an answer.  Truth is not a belief system.  Truth is an
open ended-ness within us.  And this is where freedom begins.

It's not a freedom that negates our human experience, with all its
changes, with all its ups and downs, with all its losses and heart-
breaks.  It's a freedom that allows us to live at peace with all of
it, even when it's not peaceful.  It's a deep acceptance of what is.

It's a freedom that wipes away all the cover-ups, everything we tell
ourselves in order to protect ourselves,  to pretend that we're safe,
to imagine a perfect destination.  It's a freedom that wipes away the
layers of defended-ness, all the strategies that we create - mental
strategies, emotional strategies, energetic strategies - to get what we
think we want from life in order to feel comfortable, in order to
feel special, in order to feel loved.  But these cover-ups end up being
our prison.  And there is no fulfillment in this self-created prison.

Fulfillment only comes when there are no cover-ups. It's the fulfillment
of internal freedom, and has nothing to do with the external.  You
could be in a jail cell, and still this freedom is available.

Amoda Maa

~

What really matters is your
capacity to turn towards the
tenderness of your heart in
the midst of that which
offends you.

Amoda Maa

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Carving out a "Path"...

Life is asking me to redefine "the path" - again - to deepen
into a "new" way of seeing, being and living.  I am
embarking on what feels like a new step into the unknown,
carving out a "path" for myself, opening to new directions,
new perspectives, new awareness.  Being open to what is
really living this Life called "me" - and - at the same time,
allowing myself to just be the way I am.  As Ramana Maharshi
said to those who were searching for the Truth of their being -
"Be as you are..."  In letting go of the need to look through a
particular "spiritual" lens, I realize how freeing it is to allow
myself to just be myself...  To not strive to know the Truth,
but to let it reveal ItSelf; to not strive to be "spiritual" or
"non-dual" - or "enlightened."  I can just be who I am  -
as that is who my true "Beingness" IS.  I don't have to be
self-conscious about using words like "I", "me", "my" - in
some kind of pseudo non-dual awareness - because...  It's all
just Beingness, pure Awareness, pure Consciousness, Source,
God, etc., expressing ItSelf.  There's no need to make a
distinction between self and Self.  It's all The Self...
Imagine that :)

I don't need to worry about whether I'm coming from the ego-
self because it's part of the whole package, part of the
wholeness that we are.  I only need to BE, and let
BEingness reveal ItSelf, express ItSelf, live Itself as "me."

It's not about "me" being "enlightened", or spiritualizing
everything, but seeing the True Nature of myself and
being authentic...

I continue to gradually shed the conceptual frameworks that
have defined and informed my "path" so far - the boxes of belief
that have tended to constrain this authentic expression of Self,
extricating my sense of self from the life dramas that have
preoccupied my mind.  This shift in consciousness may take
some time, and I don't know where I will land, realizing that
Life is truly a Sacred Adventure of just Being, and adventure
in lightness and boldness; of letting go of the sack of
insignificant items/beliefs that I've been carrying for so long...
It's a never-ending exploration...

Namaste
Mystic Meandering

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Graced with Gratitude...

Last night
Gratitude arose
like a warm flame
in my Heart;
a flame that
came alive
on its own
from within.

Overtaking me by surprise
as I lay there waiting for sleep...

It was a gratitude of
unknown origin -
not contrived,
or cultivated,
but
deeply felt in the
core of my Heart;
just there...

Only awareness was
needed...

It was a gratitude,
not for being alive,

but for Aliveness ItSelf,
for the Aliveness that
is Life;
that dances and sings
the Cosmos
into being;
that imbues existence
with LIFE!

For the color and movement
of life being lived
in every minute detail;
for the opening and
unfoldment of life
that has its own
course,
its own
way,
unfolding ItSelf in
total freedom of Being.

I am truly graced...
With Gratitude -
beyond words...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 2015


~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
street light through ice on window
2011