Dissolving Illusions - Ivan Granger

We are going through a collective process of disillusionment,
whether we like it or not.  We are being required to drop
our illusions and witness unpleasant truths, about ourselves
[individually and as a nation], and about the world around us.
We may ask: What have we ignored that has allowed such
fear and hatred to fester?  How have our political and social
systems become so damaged that they are unresponsive to
the needs of society?  What cruelties are encoded in society
that I have ignored or made excuses for?  How did we
imagine things were solid, when they are so fragile?  How
can my neighbor [or family members] believe such things,
and what is their hurt that I was blind to?  These are the
questions we are forced to ask now.

Painful though it may be, we can only be strengthened by
the process of disillusionment.  We want to drop our
illusions.  We want to see things as they are..

As a meditative exercise we can look at the reality we see,
the terrible and the beautiful together, and just sit with it;
[just be with it internally, meditatively].  It may break our
hearts, but we can just sit with it.  It may overwhelm us with
its immensity, but we don't run, we don't seek to merely feel
good.  Instead we just sit [be] with it.  We allow ourselves to
see and feel fully.  We watch our reactions to it, but are not
hooked by them.  In this way, we begin to inhabit a bigger 
reality.  Our personal sense of reality becomes more 
integrated and a truer reflection of what actually is.  As we do
this, we become more capable of fashioning healthier
 lives and healthier societies.

When I stop trying to assert some idea of how reality should work,
and just really notice what is.....everything just opens up.  The
heart opens in unexpected ways, making healing possible where
only walls seemed to stand.  It's easy to think that reality is
somehow broken, but when we really look, we discover that we
inhabit an improbable wholeness instead.  It's not entirely logical
amidst the world's fear and suffering, but look for yourself and see.
Really see.  Seeing the full picture, our actions become more 
effective and lasting.  Looking honestly, we become capable of
compassion and connection, where there was only anger and hatred....

Ivan Granger
Excerpt from a commentary on a poem by May Sarton
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
taken from inside, reflecting objects in the room in the window -
giving the illusion of another reality...

 

The Story of Akhilandeshwari - Laura Amazzone

Art: Peter Weltevrede

Akhilandeshwari is a South Asian Goddess figure in the Shakta
Tantric Tradition. According to that tradition She is a vast field of
 Consciousness - a force of Ultimate Reality - the Great Mother
Herself. 
 Her name means "Never not broken."

It is hard not to feel the brokenness of the world with all the
man-made crises, conflict, disasters and devastation happening in
the world; not to mention the personal dramas that play out in
 our lives.  We are all impacted by the global crises of these times.

What is needed to help find our way through?  How can our
breakdowns lead to breakthroughs? How do we approach the
challenges, pain and difficulty that overwhelm some of us? 
How do we transform our  own fears and personal  sense of
 impotence into something meaningful,
empowering and liberating?

[It is believed that] Akhilandeshwari can help us move through
the very challenges and difficulties in life.  She helps us to find
that  light of our Essence  through the cracks of the chaos.  She is
the power of the Sri Yantra, an ancient Hindu symbol of Union
 [with] Divine  Consciousness.

Brokenness seems to suggest separation, but if we look closely
 we can see  the felt sense of what is ever-present beneath the
cracks that  can lead to our own sense of internal balance and
union within.

One of Her many gifts is to remind us of the power to be
found in our brokenness.  From the Shakta Tantric perspective
 Akhilandeshwari brings and removes the pain and suffering that
 break  us down. She guards over all those experiences in life that
can knock  the wind out of us and send us reeling, crashing down,
 wondering how we will ever get up.  She brings and removes the
 deep sense  of brokenness, the crushing pressure on one's heart,
the endless mental anguish, to  remember what's Real.  Our
"Never not broken" experience  can be a fierce and painful
 process.  However, She gives us courage to face the many little
 deaths that happen repeatedly in  our life.  If we surrender and allow
 ourselves to go to the heart of our pain, we can find refuge in our
 vulnerability  and in our imperfections.

Spiritual growth and freedom can be gained through difficult
experiences and in the invaluable lessons they provide there is
always a gift in the pain we experience.

Akhilandeshwari is depicted as riding a crocodile, which represents
 our primal instincts, especially fear, and our false pretenses and roles
 we play to appear "perfect" and "whole."  She destroys all illusions
 and delusions, so we can come back to our Essence. The intensity
of our experience is to disorient our egos so that we drop our
attachments  and come into our authentic nature.

When we remember the unlimited Space behind our brokenness we
form new patterns and ways of being.  The journey that unfolds is
deep, mysterious, soul affirming and often intensely creative.

Akhilandeshwari breaks us down and from the depths of despair,
we come back to fullness and wholeness - our Essence.

Laura Amazzone

Excerpt from an article
Published Dec 2015 in the Sutra Journal

 

The Dancing Cry of the Soul - Rumi

Come to me, and I shall dance with you
In the temples, on the beaches, through the crowded streets
Be you man or woman, plant or animal, slave or free
I shall show you the brilliant crystal fires, shining within
I shall show you the beauty deep within your Soul
I shall show you the path beyond Heaven.

Only dance, and your illusions will blow in the wind
Dance, and make joyous the love around you
Dance, and your veils which hide the Light
Shall swirl in a heap at your feet.

Rumi
Excerpt from: "The Dancing Cry of the Soul"

~

Photo from the internet

 

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

 

Fantasies We Live By - Terry Pratchett

"You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

Really?  As if it was some kind of pink pill?  No. Humans
need fantasy to be human.  To be the place where falling
angel meets the rising ape.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little - ?"

Yes. As practice.  You have to start out learning to believe
the little lies.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty.  That sort of thing.

"They're not all the same at all!"

You think so?  Then take the Universe and grind it down to
the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and
then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy.
And yet (Death waved a hand).  And yet you act as if there
is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some...
some rightness in the Universe by which it may be judged.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point -"

My point exactly...

Terry Pratchett
From Hogfather

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Madman - Kahlil Gibran & Balthazar

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a
house-top cried, "He is a madman."  I looked up to behold
him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time.
For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my
soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my
masks no more.  And as if in a trance I cried,"Blessed,
blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

Kahlil Gibran

~

In an insane world you must be mad to be sane.  In an
upside down world true sanity appears as strange and
dangerous.  Things are so backwards that it seems impossible
to be happy, that it seems dangerous to love, that it seems as
madness to be honest and authentic.

In this absurd world the only thing that makes any sense is to
be radically authentic to ones self - even if it is the opposite
of society.

The Madman

The one who unquestioningly follows their heart is a madman.
The one who unfailing listens to the soul and heeds its urgings
is the madman.

The madman is dangerous - not that he will physically hurt you,
but he will shatter your illusions.  He is unpredictable, wild and
untamed.  You will feel uneasy around him because he does not
prop up your house of lies.

She cannot be contained or influenced.  You cannot bribe her
with money or status.  You cannot control her through fear or
desire.

The madman loves his madness, he does not reject it.  For he
knows that his madness is his treasure, is his very life-force
itself.  Only the twinkle in his eye betrays the chaotic
kosmos within.

He is mad precisely because he is not mad.
She is utterly natural, spontaneous, unburdened, innocent.

The mind is insane.  Society is insane.  And the mind is
society's conditioning in you.

"Normal" is to be profoundly inwardly sick.  Beneath nearly
everyone's smiley mask is a mount of pain, fear, sorrow anger,
anxiety, neuroticism, and insanity.  Everyone you see is a
dormant walking volcano that only doesn't erupt because
they have learned to suppress their inner energies.

It is the mind which is truly insane - the mind acting without
the lead of the heart and soul.

The Freedom of Madness

A man needs a healthy dose of madness, else he will never
do anything.....real.  If you want to be truly alive and truly
free you must be mad.

Mad to be oneself,
And mad enough to lose oneself.

Mad enough to risk everything for freedom, for truth,
for the heart, for love.

Mad enough to lose all respectability if it means staying
true to life and oneself.

Learn to love your madness, your primordial chaos.
Dare to be ecstatic, dare to be untamed.

Dare to be the Madman.

Excerpts from "The Madman"
Seth Balthazar

via - No Mind's Land

~

Art - "The Mask"
Mystic Meandering
Craypas oils
2009

A Symbolic Universe - Ernst Cassirer

...man lives in a symbolic universe.  Language, myth, art,
and religion are parts of this universe.  They are the varied
threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of
human experience.  All human progress in thought and
experience refines and strengthens this net.  Physical reality
seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity
advances.

He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images,
in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see
or know anything except by the interposition of this
artificial medium.  His situation is the same in the
theoretical as in the practical sphere.  Even here man does
not live in a world of hard facts, or according to his immediate
needs and desires. He lives, rather, in the midst of imaginary
emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in
his fantasies and dreams.  'What disturbs and alarms man,'
said Epictetus, 'are not the things, but his opinions and fantasies
about the things.'

Ernst Cassirer

German Philosopher

From - An Essay on Man:
An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

via - The Beauty We Love

~

Fun-Qi Art - 2009

Craypas oils
done with fingers

Awakening From Our Illusions - Ivan Granger

I am so aware of how much frustration people feel over the dark
turn in politics in recent years.  As an American, how do I
understand the racist, proto-facist, violent forces emerging within
my own country?  At the same time, similar tendencies are
appearing in the UK, India, the Philippines,
and several other nations.

While harmful forces must be answered with courage in the public
arena, I want to suggest that there is something important happening
on another level, as well: an enforced awakening.

We are going through a collective process of disillusionment,

whether we like it or not.  We are being required to drop our illusions
and witness unpleasant truths, about ourselves [individually and
as a nation], and about the world around us.  We may ask: What
have we ignored that has allowed such fear and hatred to fester?  How
have our political and social systems become so damaged that the
are unresponsive to the needs of society?  What cruelties are encoded
in society that I have ignored or made excuses for?  How did we
imagine things were solid, when they are so fragile?  How can my
neighbor [or family members] believe such things, and what is
their hurt that I was blind to?  These are the questions we are
forced to ask now.

Painful though it may be, we can only be strengthened by the
process of disillusionment.  We want to drop our illusions.
We want to see things as they are...

As a meditative exercise we can look at the reality we see,
the terrible and the beautiful together, and just sit with it;
[just be with it internally, meditatively].  It may break our hearts,
but we can just sit with it.  It may overwhelm us with its
immensity, but we don't run, we don't seek to merely feel good.
Instead, we just sit with it. 
We allow ourselves to see and feel fully.
We watch our reactions to it, but are not hooked by them.
In this way, we begin to inhabit a bigger reality, a fuller reality.
Our personal sense of reality becomes more integrated and a
truer reflection of what actually is.  As we do this, we become more
capable of fashioning healthier lives and healthier societies.

When I stop trying to assert some idea of how reality should work,
and just really notice what is.....everything just opens up.  The heart
opens in unexpected ways, making healing possible where only
walls seemed to stand.  It's easy to think that reality is somehow
broken, but when we really look, we discover that we inhabit an
improbable wholeness instead.  It's not entirely logical amidst the
world's fear and suffering, but look for yourself and see.  Really see.
Seeing the full picture, our actions become more effective and lasting.
Looking honestly, we become capable of compassion and
connection, where there was only anger and hatred...

Ivan Granger
Excerpt from a commentary on a poem by Mary Sarton
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - taken from inside, reflecting objects in the room
in the window - giving the illusion of another reality...

Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...

It's ending... and as TS Eliot said: "in my end is my beginning."

It's ending, the meandering - not because I have reached a "goal"
or the "end" of wondering what is True, or achieved "fulfillment"
of Being - quite the contrary...

What has been needs to end -
the disillusionment,
of years on the "spiritual treadmill" -
caught in the futility of trying to understand, to get somewhere,
to be other than "me", a "better" me, or no-me at all...
Going in circles,
rewinding myself through the same conundrums
over and over again,
trying to believe what others say is True...

Acceptance has set in...

Acceptance of myself as "I" am - the whole of "me"
without the need for a "spiritual identity" - another facade;
just "me" - living, breathing, being -

without the comforting certainties of "knowing" the answer
to the questions.

Feels freeing - actually,
letting go of old identities,
old masks, old myths about
how it's all sposed to be;
whether "this" is just a dream of duality,
or - if there's really a non-dual existence of the Divine
and "me"...

But can't do that mind trip anymore...
I can only see what I can see
and let the rest go...

The pursuit has ended...

No more trying to "become"
"enlightened", "illumined", "liberated"

to appease the mind's fantasies
about "spirituality."

No more rose colored glasses,
no more "Lucy in the sky with diamonds",
no more Yellow Brick Road,
with the "Wizards" of an illusionary Oz pulling the strings...

Subtly, I fell into the same mind traps

over and over again -
wanting, longing, searching,
waiting
for that elusive final epiphany -
the dissolving of the "me" in Ecstasy...

But there was nothing;
no rainbow,
or pot of gold;
no "radiance of Being" shining...

Just "me" - still "me"...

So -
Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...
I'm laying down the burden of "spirituality"...
and simply allowing myself to Be...

Now...

at last

I am...

finally free...

Mystic Meandering
April 16, 2018

Namaste
_/\_

~*~

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again,
I won't look any further than  my own back yard,
because if it isn't there, I never really lost it
to begin with." :)

Dorothy
From the Wizard of Oz

The Secrecy of My Own Being - Thomas Merton

The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me
by my own estimate of what I am.  My idea of what I am is
falsified by my admiration of what I do.  And my illusions
about myself are bred by another's imagined greatness.

If I do not know who I am, it's because I think I am the sort
of person everyone around me wants to be.  Perhaps I have
never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what
everybody else seems to want to become.  Perhaps if I only
realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire,
I would really begin to live after all.  I would be liberated from
the painful duty of saying what I really do not think.  [or feel :)]

Thomas Merton

~

Photo - a recent Spring snowfall
1:30am

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. 

Snow Dusting...

We had a dusting of snow over night,
along with the magic of Adobe Fireworks :)

"It's our illusions that dissipate *about* reality..."

Les Collins

"It doesn't really matter what role
the Infinite plays.
The Absolute and the Relative
are both true."

Ken Wilber

Reflections...

Had wonderful rain late last night and 3 rain storms again today. We don’t get a lot of rain here so when it comes I feel inspired, refreshed and renewed.

My sister didn’t need me to come today, so I took advantage of the “time off” and decided to go for a walk in nature along a canal and open space area. I took my camera.

As soon as I got about half way over the foot bridge that crosses the full flowing canal at this time of year, I automatically took in a deep breath, as if my body knew I was entering another realm – the peace and tranquility of Nature. I snapped a few pictures of a tall branchey Cottonwood against the crisp blue sky (future blog photo), and then proceeded down the wide path that parallels the canal. I was met by a woman dressed in pink being pulled along by what appeared to be an all white German Shepherd dog. She had seen me snapping pictures of the bright yellow dandelions along the side of the path (which didn’t come out well) and she stopped to comment on that. She told me that she was from France (I could hear an accent), had lived in Brazil most of her life, and had spent 25 years in Washington DC. She didn’t appear to be that old to me!

She commented on the beauty of the wild flowers (do dandelions fit into that category? I thought they were weeds) and the cherry blossom trees, while her dog sniffed at me. The dog was not interested in our wildlife conversation and so started pulling the pink lady away while she tried to continue the conversation. I actually started following *her* so I could hear what she was saying… She finally gave up and just said –“Have a nice day.” I returned the salutation, turned and went on – snapping photos – appreciating her friendly gesture and connection.

Up around the bend were my favorites – a couple of Canadian Geese. The geese are nesting now. Eggs had been laid on a high cement piling in the middle of a wildlife refuge pond (picture not clear enough to show you). As I walked I could smell the pungent fragrance of pine and a small crabapple tree in bloom, and stopped there to snap a picture of a bee pollinating (future blog photo).

All along the path there were puddles from the morning rain. Near the end of my walk, close to where I turn around and head back, I spotted a particular puddle (above) with the reflection in it. Not shadows. Reflection. It was like peering into a different realm. What an amazing gift from Nature! I was fortunate to be able to capture this because on my way back the sun was too bright, and the light just glared off the surface, obliterating the reflection… Hmmm – there must be meaning in there somewhere…

Here are 2 more reflection pictures that captured my eye from the wildlife refuge pond.

They caught my attention because they made me wonder, what is real and what is illusion? And how do we know the difference? It seems one is just the reflection of the other – but which one… Ah – the Mystery of Nature… :)

They predict more rain tomorrow and Saturday! Oh boy! I’m giddy!