An Inverted Reality - Misc.

The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe, 

because the axe was clever and convinced them that, because
its handle was made of wood it was one of them...

Turkish Proverb

~

We've been pulled into an inverted reality,
an alternate fantasy world
by a powerful narcissistic cult leader.
Up is down, and down is up.

author unknown

~

.....Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget

Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will...

Excerpt from the song"Vincent" by
Don McLean
about Vincent Van Gogh

~

Photo taken by my husband 

 

Loss Teaches You Everything - Issa

I lost many things in Costa Rica: physical stuff, psychological
baggage, spirituality (the idea that there is someone who should
get enlightened), weight, conditioning, civilization (the idea that
there is a certain way to be civilized, a norm to live by), 
domestication (the idea you should own a house/property and
own many physical things in order to be secure), sentimentality
of romance (it's apparently part of the play to have this experience
yet it has lost its sentiments).

It's when all is lost that all is found.  
When the illusion of the one who is doing her best to be in control,
to do the 'right thing', is gone.  When she is apparently gone life just
 flows magically, completely empty (nothing can be held onto,
prevented to change) yet fulfilling every need and desire as there
are no particular demands from anyone.  Life fulfills life as water
endlessly keeps flowing from a well to the sea.

Issa from Costa Rica

via - Uradiance

Photo - from Love is a Place

 

The Silence Inside the Illusion - Jack Kerouac

painting by joe maccer deviant art

Everything is ecstasy, inside.  We just don't know it
because of our thinking-minds.  But in our true blissful
essence of mind it is to know that everything is alright
forever and forever and forever.  Close your eyes, let
your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3
seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the
world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot,
which was taught in immense milky ways of cloudy
innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all.  It
is all one vast awakened thing.  I call it the golden
eternity.  It is perfect.  We were never really born,
we will never really die.  It has nothing to do with
the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves,
many selves everywhere, or one universal self.
Self is only an idea, a mortal idea.  That which
passes through everything, is one thing.  It's a
dream already ended.  There's nothing to be
afraid of and nothing to be glad about.  Do
you think the emptiness of space will ever
crumble away?  Mountains will crumble,
but the emptiness of space, which is the
one universal essence of mind, the one
vast awakenerhood, empty and awake,
will never crumble away because it
was never born...

Jack Kerouac


Thanks to The Beauty We Love

The Gentle Voice - John O'Donohue

When you take the time to draw on your listening-imagination,
you will begin to hear this gentle voice at the heart of your life.

It is deeper and surer than all the other voices of disappointment,
unease, self-criticism and bleakness.  All holiness is about
learning to hear the voice of your own soul.  It is always there
and the more deeply you learn to listen, the greater surprises
and discoveries that will unfold.

To enter into the gentleness of your own soul changes the tone
and quality of your life.  Your life is no longer consumed by
hunger for the next event, experience or achievement.
You gain a new respect for yourself and others.  You begin to see
through the enchanting veils of illusion that you had taken for
reality.  You no longer squander yourself on things and situations
that deplete your essence.  You know now that your true source
is not outside you.

Your soul is your true source,
 and a new energy and passion
awakens within you.

John O'Donohue
From: Beauty, The Invisible Embrace

via - The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - via - No Mind's Land

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

Be a Child of Fantasy - Pema Chodron

Regard everything as a dream/illusion/fantasy

Regard everything as transparent.
See *through* everything

See that everything is in transition,
always changing

Liberate concepts and beliefs

Let go of the need for an"answer"/solution

Rest in the nature of Essence ~
The Primordial State of everything

Be a child of fantasy
Be curious instead of afraid...

You are the sky.
Everything else ~

"it's just the weather."


Quotes from
Pema Chodron
Buddhist Teacher/author

~

Photo - have no idea what this is.
Think it was a "mistake" digitally altered. :)

Devotion - Nirmala

...When devotion has claimed you for its own
no longer any chance to stray
a brief fling with illusion no longer satisfies.
The truth demands utter fidelity...

All pain must be faced
and embraced as the true countenance of
your beloved.

All fear must be met
and recognized as the thrill of tasting
the unknowable.

All joy must be surrendered
and acknowledged as a gift with
no giver.

This union only requires telling the truth
even when the truth shatters your dreams
even when the truth leaves you emptied out
even when the truth reveals your counterfeit
existence...

[.....]

Nirmala
Gift With No Giver

via: Being Silently Drawn

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 discover the illusory nature of the ego.

The “I” is just an illusion, a veil of separation.

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 various pages
in the book and arranged them in the form of a prose poem.

~

Photo: Lotus Heart Stained Glass Zoom Blurred

See Beyond the Facade...

“We are here to awaken
from the illusion of our separateness…”

Thich Nhat Hanh

“Darkness does not become light,
for there is only light…

You are Life ItSelf undivided
from the power that moves the planets.”

Jeff Foster

“Only when the mind is completely free
from yesterday,
and is therefore not using the present
as a means to the future,
is it capable of receiving
the eternal…”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

“…behind this outer façade,
another life is going on in you.”

John O’Donohue

Photos during snow fall Friday night…
Top two photos are of a street light...
And what looks like a building in those photos
is a reflection on the glass of a wall hanging -
an illusion of a building...

Sunday's Shadow Shot

Today is my second submission to Shadow Shot Sunday on the Hey Harriet blog where people from all over the world share their photos of shadows. And where we get to experience how connected we all are through creative expression, like the interconnecting lines in the shadows in this butterfly picture.

This picture was taken at the Butterfly Pavilion in Broomfield, Colorado, north of Denver. The butterfly is actually sitting on one of the opaque glass window panels near the top of the pavilion. The shadow lines in this shot are from the seams of the window panels in the ceiling and beams from the building structure being “reflected” on the *opposite* side of this panel, giving the appearance that the butterfly is sitting on top of the shadow – how amazing! It creates quite an illusion. Kind of like life. What do we take to be real and what’s just the shadow of the real? Only the shadow knows :)

If you look really closely you can see a very faint shadow of the butterfly’s lower right wing on the glass.

Enjoy!

Heart Smiles – MeANderi
www.ASerenitySanctuary.com