The Light of Breath - Hazrat Inayat Khan

We ordinarily think of the breath as that little air that we feel
coming and going through our nostrils; but we do not think of
it as that vast current that goes through everything, that current
which comes from Consciousness...

...it is written that first the Word [or Logos - the Word of The Divine]
was, and from the Word all things came [into being].  But before
the Word was the Breath, which made the Word. 

Behind the word is the much greater power: Breath.  If a person
wishes to study the self, to know the self, what is important is
not the study of the mind, of the thought, the imagination, nor of
the body, but the study of the breath.  The Breath has made the
mind and the body for its expression.  It has made all from the
vibration to the physical atom, from the finest to the grossest.

~

Breath is a light in itself, and it becomes projected like the beam
from a searchlight...   Breath is sometimes not different from the
light of the sun but even brighter than that. Breath being a light 
from another dimension, which is unknown to science today, it
cannot be visible to the ordinary physical eyes.

What people call the aura is the light of breath, but not everyone
sees it.  A radiant countenance is a proof of an aura which
illumi-nates it, and the lack of it is the lack of light in the breath.
 A seer sees the sign of a death more clearly and longer beforehand
than a physician can.  The reason is that the seer sees in the aura
of a person whereas the physician sees only the condition of the
body.  Many experience the phenomenon of the light of breath,
and yet doubt if it can be true, for they think it is perhaps an
imagination.  Others, who are capable of seeing that light,
confirm their doubt.  The Sufi, by the development of breath,
experiences this light, which becomes for him a proof of the
existence of that dimension which is unknown to the ordinary
world.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

From:  The Philosophy of Breath
and The Healing Papers

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Remember Your Essence...

Our Essence is the same Silence that suspends the Cosmos,
and the same Energy of the Stars...
We are the Hush of "The Mystery"
and the breath of Life itself...

Our Essence is embodied in every cell of the body...

Our Being is the Dance of the Aurora Borealis
and the unlit Light of the Sun...

generated through the inner radiance
of Shakti - the primal energy -
coursing through our bodies...

Our Essence is "Godness" seeking expression...
in human form;
it is the Essence of all matter reality -
Life living us...

May we all remember our Inner Light,
our Essence...

_/\_

Blessings to all in this Sacred Season of Light...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 16, 2023

~

Photo Mystic Meandering

 

Remember Your Essence...

Our Essence is the same Silence that suspends the Cosmos,
and the same Energy of the Stars...
We are the Hush of "The Mystery"
and the breath of Life itself...

Our Essence is embodied in every cell of the body...

Our Being is the Dance of the Aurora Borealis 

and the unlit Light of the Sun...

generated through the inner radiance
of Shakti - the primal energy -
coursing through our bodies...
Our Essence is "Godness" seeking expression
in human form;
it is the Essence of all matter reality...
Life living us...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 16, 2023

~

Blessings to all in these uncertain times
May we all remember our Inner Light,
our Essence...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Ceaselessly Being Written - Wendell Berry

We arrive here in this world having forgotten where we came from,
though something of a memory seems to remain: a whisper, a
distant shine like that of a house window at night on the far side
of the valley, perhaps what some have called "the inner light," to
guide us when finally we have been jolted awake.  And so we 
don't come from nothing.  But once here we don't know where we
are.  At first I learned the world as a book written, completed the
day before my birth, not to be changed by another pen stroke. 
And then I saw that some I know were departing from it, never
to return, and new strangers were arriving.  The newcomers, if
they stayed, would learn more of less of where they were.  And
then, in time, they too would depart, taking with them the sum
of all they had learned, leaving behind them maybe a few who
would remember them, and then the rememberers too would go 
and be gone.  I see in this order of things, nothing to complain
about.  I have been here long enough to watch the whole turn of 
the wheel.  I see that we are passing through this world like a
river of water flowing through a river of earth.  A far cry from a
written book, the world - to extend my desperate metaphor - is
a book ceaselessly being written, and not in a human language.
This too has not been submitted to our judgment, and it is not
for us to regret.  To give thanks seems truly to be the right
response, for as we come and go we learn something of love,
the gift and the giving of it, if we accept it...

That is the heart speaking in the heart's language, and out of
a mystery so vast that order and chance may be reconciled
within it.  Because, for all we surely know, we come into our
times and places as much at random as leaves falling...

Wendell Berry

from How it Went - Thirteen more stories of
the Port William membership

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo -Mystic Meandering

 

Rekindling the Flame...

I'm rediscovering the Fire-Light that wants to come to life
again here; that wants to express and give voice;
and not be constrained by "spiritual" conundrums,
but the simplicity of the Light that Lives me -
without mentations and cogitations of words and concepts
that cloud and dim its Light...

Interesting that this is the cross quarter day between
Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  Celtic tradition
has it that Imbolc is celebrated in preparation of "giving birth" -
or re-birthing something new...
a rekindling of the inner Light; the inner Flame that is 
the expression of our deepest Being...

I feel the spark of Light shining...

Alegria!

Mystic Meandering

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Your Own Peculiar Light - Fred LaMotte

 Perhaps you didn't notice how, when you awoke
this morning, you took your first breath
from the other world, the world inside this one,
where atoms are not shadows but fragrances of color,

and flesh is the music that vibrates the Law
that can never be written in books.

It doesn't matter anymore if you are on the Left or Right,
Christian or Muslim, a do-er or non-doer.
You need not wear a veil here in this softer daylight.
The glow of your essential oil anoints the meadow,
greening branches, thickening fur.  The hungry ones

who need your touch are no longer driven away
by the deafening thrum of your thoughts, but gather
toward your musky pollen like bees.  It matters not
what master you follow, what party you join,
but how deeply you rest in your body,
aligning your heart with a certain star,
dissolving that distance with each exhalation.

The formless flower of the void opening her golden cup,
pouring nectar down your darkest furrows, bittersweet,
the taste of death and joy.  Arise, come, begin your task.

Earth is thirsting for the flavor of your own peculiar light.
It rainbows through your face as through the prism
of no other tears.  Hear a new song, don't ask whether
the voice arises within you, or in the dust-atoms
on your path, transforming wounds into destinations:

Shivoham, Shivoham, Chit Ananda Rupam:

Pure truth I am, pure truth I am,
the very form of awakened beauty...

Neither ask what you must do.  From now on
your work is to keep listening, keep listening
for this music in the heart of every stranger.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Imperceptible...

 That which infuses Nature
is imperceptible - seemingly hidden.

The Ineffable is subtly imperceptible -
yet present in existence as its
Natural Essence -
in its Beauty -
in its Effulgence -
as if lit from within...

Manifest reality is held in the
imperceptible movement of the gentle Rhythm
of Time and Season;
alive, not on its own - but
through the Pulse of Light that lives it.

All life is being lived
by this subtle Pulse of Light -
our Natural Illumined Essence.

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 2020

~

Photo by Cate Kerr
from Beyond the Fields We Know
used by permission

~

Welcome the Rhythm of Autumn!

What Remains - Danna Faulds

Despite illness of body and mind,
in spite of blinding despair
or habitual belief,
who you are is whole.

Let nothing separate you from the Truth.
The soul, illumined from within,
longs to be known...

Undying, untouched by fire, or
the storms of life,
there is a place inside
where stillness and abiding peace reside.

You can ride the breath to go there.

Despite doubt or hopeless turns of mind,
you are not broken.

Spirit surrounds, embraces,
fills you from the inside out.

Release everything
that isn't your true nature.
What's left?

the fullness of light...

Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner
From the poem" "Birthright"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Spirit and Mind - Etty Hillesum

Spirit and mind should feed each other.  What you must
not do is rely on some external certainty, and that means
being secure in yourself and at peace with yourself, but
also that your mind is allowed to explore what makes life
hang together, not because you want to achieve something
or you want to succeed at something that interests you, but
because you happen to have been created with a passionate
and honest concern for what goes on in the world, and
above all for what goes on in your inner world.

You shouldn't live on your brains alone but on deeper, more
abiding sources...  You should gratefully accept your brains
as a precious tool for delving into what problems your soul
brings forth... And have ever greater trust in intuition...

Etty Hillesum
from: Etty Hillesum - Essential Writings

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Quartz Crystal with reflection of light

Among The Trees - Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple", they say,
"and you too have come into the world to do this,
to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine."

Mary Oliver

via - The Beauty We Love

~
Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Inside Door - Jan Richardson

You have looked
at so many doors
with longing,
wondering if your life
lay on the other side.

For today,
choose the door
that opens to the inside.

Travel the most ancient way
of all:
the path that leads you
to the center
of your life.

No map
but the one
you make yourself.

No provision
but what you already carry
and the grace that comes
to those who walk
the pilgrim's way.

Speak this blessing
as you set out
and watch how
your rhythm slows,
the cadence of the road
drawing you into the pace
that is your own.

Eat when hungry.
Rest when tired.
Listen to your dreaming.
Welcome detours
as doors deepen in.

Pray for protection.
Ask for guidance.
Offer gladness
for the gifts that come,
and then
let them go.

Do not expect
to return
by the same road.
Home is always
by another way,
and you will know it
not by the light
that waits for you

but by the star
that blazes inside you,
telling you
where you are
is holy
and you are welcome
here.

Jan Richardson

https://janrichardson.com/

via - No Mind's Land

The Whole of the Soul - Ralph Waldo Emerson

...We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles.
Meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is
equally related; the eternal one.  And this deep power in which
we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts,
is the soul...

...All goes to show, that the soul of man is not an organ, but animates
and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of
memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and
feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the
master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and 
the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object
are one.  We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the
which they lie - an immensity not possessed and that cannot be
possessed.  From within or from behind, a light shines through us
upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing,
but the light is all...

A man is a facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and good abide.
What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting
man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents
himself.  Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is,
would he let it appear through his action, would make your knees bend.
When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes
through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection,
it is love...

...The soul circumscribes all things.  As I have said, it contradicts all
experience.  In like manner it abolishes time and space.  The influence
of the senses has, in most men, overpowered the mind to that degree,
that the walls of time and space have come to look real and
insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world,
a sign of insanity.  Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the
force of the soul...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
From: Essay IX The Over-Soul
1841

~

Photo - South Pole Aurora

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

Illuminating the Way - Matt Licata

...there is something illuminating the way, but just what this is
cannot often be apprehended by ordinary means.
There is no external map here that you can rely on, only the
one that is written inside you.  While at times we sense the
presence of this inner guidance, it often comes by hidden
and symbolic means.  We must learn to listen for it in a
non-ordinary manner, not  just with our ears but with the
wisdom of the body, with the cells of the heart.

The mysteries of separation and union are already wired
into you... We are invited to meet them, in an inclusive embrace
of life -  the wholeness that we already are...

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Sunlight through a thinning cutting board...

The Inner Sanctuary Door...

When I posted my first blog post of this year – The Call to Silence – I did not know that *I* was being called to open to the Inner Sanctuary of the Heart.  Sometimes these promptings come below the level of consciousness, when I least expect them.  My “sub-conscious” evidently came out in the last phrase of that post: “May we all have a year of transformative Silence in our Inner Sanctuaries, giving birth to an open Heart” – as this is what *I* wanted as well – an open Heart.  Those words were meant for me as much as anyone else that might read them.

That day I found Chuck Surface’s poem - Remembering What You Love at – Garden of the Beloved – and I was smitten.  Chuck speaks the language of an Illumined Heart, and the Inner Sanctuary Door to my Heart began to open in response.  In fact, that day the Door FLUNG open wide with causeless, immaculate JOY.  And then just as quickly closed again a day later, leaving my Spiritual Heart languishing…  I have no idea why…   Several dark days followed…  Having tasted such sweet openness and then contraction, the Heart felt like it was going to be broken open or crushed – neither happened.  But we won’t go to the shadowlands today. J  Suffice it to say that the shadows of the heart, all those aspects of myself that had been orphaned from Love over the years through conditioning, i.e: – the emotional baggage that had yet to be claimed - also arose with intensity.  This is not uncommon.  But new Life also stirred within…

Everyone has a unique path.  For me I realized that what was needed was/is a permanent, sustainable opening of the Inner Sanctuary of the Heart; an opening into/of the True Heart of "Divine Love."  The sanctuary doors have opened from time to time over the years, giving me glimpses of what it feels like to live with an open Heart…  Like the post on Incubating Love last year – when my Inner Heart spontaneously opened to an Amaryllis flower…  But most of the time the Heart has remained behind electrical fences and thick walls, defending it from breaking – except - the fences and walls have kept it from breaking open.

Sometimes I have felt a little like a cat - managing to slip past the fences, making it to the Sanctuary Door, out of curiosity, out of naïvete and a disillusioned sense of “awakening” or “enlightenment” - but I never found any lasting “enlightenment” behind the curtain in the land of OZ, which I no longer desire anyway – after all my “trying” to get in… J   After all, these too are only concepts.

I often feel like I don’t KNOW anything anymore, feel I have not REALIZED anything at all, in all my years of being on a “spiritual path.”   It’s as if all that I have experienced until now, all the things I have believed and “knowledge” I have acquired were just stepping stones leading to the Sanctuary Door of the Heart…

 I am now in a place of not knowing anything with certitude, patiently waiting at the Door, like a cat.  And I’m okay with that as that seems to be my unique path – meandering in the Infinite Mystery of “The Beloved” (kind of like these words :) - knocking at many doors until the Inner Door opens…  Loosening the sense of self-identity and strong attachments as I go…  I’ve listened to many “spiritual wizards” over the years pulling the levers, purveyors of “Truth”, some misguided misinterpretations of “the Truth", not real nourishment…   After a while their words sounded empty.  Their words did not open the Inner Heart – until I read the poetry and writings of Chuck Surface – and even then, the Door only opened for a moment, giving me a taste of the Heart Light – wanting more.

So now what?  Now that I have confessed my shortcomings… J

I simply continue…stoking the embers of the Heart, waiting for “the Beloved” – the secret Guru of the Inner Heart - to open the Sanctuary Door from within…   It does not open “on demand” with a remote control.  *I* cannot make the Door open…  It is not by volition (personal will) or force, but only by grace and surrender to the movement of “The Beloved” from within, opening the Door from the inside in Its own time…  Oh I “know”, on some level, who I really am – my “true identity” – beyond the ego-identity, although I keep forgetting.  There is awareness that I am the Formless in Form, Spirit, Awareness, Consciousness, Life ItSelf – but knowing is not enough. It has to be a felt experience.

My True Heart remains in a bud – waiting to be infused with the GLOW of Love’s Light…  That is the true Longing – to remember the Original Love that we were before we were born, before the need to guard the heart; waiting for That Love to light up the Heart from within…

How interesting that I was drawn to post about the Heart – about Love – in the last few posts…   Now I want to truly experience the open Heart of Love…  And maybe I have said too much here – too personal maybe for some…  Maybe this was only meant to be a whisper to “the Beloved” – Come, open the door to my Heart… 

"...Remember,
the entrance door to the sanctuary
is inside you..."

Rumi

35 Years...

Two Upon the Shore of Life

"Like pebbles side by side
upon the sand,
together we’ve endured
the push and pull
of time’s relentless waves.

Still hand in hand, we stand,
where all is moveable, unmoved.

Unending love has made us one
against the toss and tow
of wind and sea.

Now smoothed and polished
by the rain and sun,
our separate lives
are shaped in unity…

You are still you in ways that
have not changed
since we were brought
together long ago.
I am still I.

And time that rearranged
our features
cannot dim the heart’s
deep glow:

We shine together
in this time and place,
each one the light
upon the other’s face.”

(author unknown)

You are truly my
Divine Embrace…

~

Dec. 29, 1978