An Inner Journey - Rod MacIver

A journal chronicles a journey
And the journey itself is home.

The journey in search of deeper awareness
The Source within
An inner journey that is not abandoned
Is its own triumph, its own work of art.

The journey itself is home.

~

There is an inner myth guiding each of our lives,
generally unknown to us.

Use your journal to explore that,
to explore the journey [the myth].

The value of journaling is the process of self-exploration
and self- nurturing [or self inquiry]

What is seeking to unfold in your life?

Ultimately the "goal" is to live in harmony
with your inner life [your Inner Being].

Rod MacIver

From: The Song Within

Heron Dance

~

Personal note:  I have been journaling as part of my
"journey" for over 40 years, as part of my "spiritual path",
a sort of "spiritual inquiry" and reflection...
For me “journaling” is not only about bringing mindfulness
 and awareness to my life, relationships, and spirituality,
but is a meditative practice to turn that awareness
 to the deeper space of inner Silence… 

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Broken Can Blossom - Sarah Carlson

My gaze drifts out
the kitchen window
as I ponder an issue
I have been grappling with
for quite some time.
My body is a bit tense,
but my eyes are soft
as my focus is actually within.
Slowly, ever so slowly,
my attention is captured
by a plant on the windowsill.
Not just any plant, though.
An orchid that had been cherished
by my mother
and hasn't bloomed since
her death almost two years ago.
There's a stem with several buds
and a branch, almost fully separated,
that bends around the back of the pot.
I turn it slowly,
breathe in deeply
as my eyes focus
on a blossom that had been
quietly seeking the sun
without my knowing.
A slow smile extends
throughout my being.
Ah yes,
the broken can blossom.
And when they do,
there is beauty that is
intricate and profound
and deeply genuine.
What a gift for all
who choose to see.

Sarah Carlson
Meanderings of the Heart

Posted with permission from the author

Photo by Sarah Carlson

 

Liminal Space - Alan Seale

 Liminal space is the waiting space.  That space between an
end and a beginning.  That space and time when we are
no longer where we were, yet we are not yet in a new place.
A space that can feel empty, where we can feel lost and
confused.  Yet when we are fully present to this waiting
time - when we are willing to accept this seeming emptiness
without conditions and let it talk to us - what has been
hidden can slip quietly into the open.  What has been a
mystery begins to be understood.  The "waiting space"
becomes a discovery space.

It can feel like you are caught in between.....you realize 
that something is going on in your inner awareness.

It is a "crossing over" space.  It's a transition space,
that can take many forms...

Liminal space can cause us to question the very core of
our beliefs...  It shakes us out of our habitual lives,,,  It
draws us out of what we have known...  The liminal space
is an invitation to surrender.....and navigate the uncertainty,
trusting that we will be supported...

This is the space where a new reality can be born.  It's a space
where we can finally let go of a way of being, a role, an identity,
or a belief, so that something new can be created [born]... letting
something completely dissolve, leaving us open and free to
discover what is waiting for us...

Alan Seale
Excerpts from: Transformational Presence

read the full article here

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
reflection of light in a shadow on the kitchen counter :)

Holy Helpers - Donna Iona Drozda

There is a deeper realm, there is an unseen world.
There is for each one of us.....unseen Holy Helpers
and Inner Guides - Mighty Companions...

...be still

See what arises to meet you when you listen with your
inner ears and see with your inner eyes.  See what
happens when you lift above the fray...

There is an aliveness, an alive world rich in beauty
flowering below the surface and beyond the horizon...
There is a softer, subtle music playing...

Donna Iona Drozda
Artist and Life Coach

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Changing Perceptions of Reality - Ivan Granger

One must remain in the Vastness,
alert and lucid,
Letting one's gaze encompass
the infinite sky,
As though seated on the summit
of a mountain,
open to all the horizons.

by Shabkar
from - Tibetan Poems of Shabkar,
Translated by Matthieu Ricard

I am acutely aware of the anxiety felt by everyone -
concerns about Covid-19, uncertainty about jobs and
the economy in general, the increasingly messy political
situation, all surrounded by pressures of isolation.  Whatever
worries you may be feeling are being shared by many.  Even
in uncertainty and isolation, there is connection and community
and, therefore, strength.

...everything is an opportunity for awareness.  Even in moments
of fear, we [can] always be asking ourselves, what can I learn
from this?  How can I use this moment as a way to step free from
limited ways of thinking...?

One observation that comes to mind is that when society is moving
along in expected ways we are much more likely to align with
the group mind.  The group mind asserts that reality is a certain way
and the routine functioning of day-to-day life seems to confirm it, so
we enter into the shared psychic current - for good and for bad.  We
can list many of the ways that are good, but it also lulls us into a
rather narrow band of perception and self-awareness.  When those

outer certainties, which were never certainties in the first place,
change, when the rhythms of the human world shift and become
less predictable, the fear we feel is more fundamental than the
question of a paycheck or health concerns;  it is a fear that
reality is falling apart.  It is worth reminding ourselves that
Reality [the Vastness] itself is never vulnerable and the only

thing that changes is our agreed upon description of it [our
tribal mentality].  We are being coaxed to see reality in a new
way, to see different aspects of reality, to see a wider view of
reality...

The challenge is to quickly adapt our awareness to the new
terrain, to recognize its regular features, to find what is familiar
and identify what is new, to be at home in a more opens space.

...the less rigidly we hold to some idea of how things used to
be or "should" be and, instead, allow our minds to acclimate to
what is happening, the more naturally and confidently we can
step forward.

As conscious beings we always want to perceive as clearly as
we can.  We want to perceive as much of reality as we can.  And
we must remind ourselves that what we call reality is just a
mental model of what actually is.  When that mental model is
shaken, we can try to prop it up exactly as it was before, but more
rickety and at a tenuous angle, or we adjust it.....to reflect a new
understanding.

 We have a chance to review our assumptions and assess which
 ones don't stand up to the scrutiny of stress.  We are invited
to embrace possibilities that had previously been rejected. 
We can use this time for redefinition and improved perception.

Moments of uncertainty are a genuine opportunity to update
our descriptions of reality, both personally and collectively,
in order to more fully reflect the immensely mysterious space
of being we inhabit together.

The big challenge is not to shut our eyes as our vision expands.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Guest - Kabir

The Guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure [despair] goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no-one has shaken,

inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through with in all parts by a
single sort of love.

How hard it is to feel that joy in all our bodies!

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away.

How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joy
he sings inside his own boat.
His poems amount to one soul meeting another.
These songs [poems] are about forgetting dying and loss.
They rise above both coming in and going out. [birth and death].

Kabir

from: Ecstatic Poems

Thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

The following is part of a commentary on the above poem
that I found this morning on line.  Author Unknown...

~

God is already in you; the True God, not the man made
image of God, not god of the temples, and the churches,
and the synagogues and the mosques and the gurudwaras...

The god that man has imagined in his own image, the god
that man made according to his own wishes, the god that is
nothing but the projection of man's mind and desires...
  That god never really existed.[because "God" is much
vaster than our personal limited images of who/what
 "God"is.]
The untrue [image] MUST cease for the truth to be.

Those who know the True God, know God as the fragrance
of life, the perfume of existence, the very ground of being.
For them God is not a concept, not a theory, not a hypothesis.
For them God is an existential experience.  For them God
is not separate from man, for them God is man's innermost
core...  God is nothing but your own depth [your Core Being]
trying to manifest itself.  God is not an ideal.
God exists as you - as life.

Life is eternal.
Life is immortal.
It changes forms, just like the waves in the ocean go on changing
but the ocean remains.  Bodies come and go, but your innermost
[Being] remains always there.  And that is God.

God is not to be worshiped, but realized.  There is no need to make
temples for God.  You have to learn to look within.
The temple is already there; It cannot be destroyed.

God is always your interiority...

The Guest is within you, but you have to turn in...
You have to become more conscious of your Consciousness.
You have to become more aware of your Awareness.
A point of stillness comes where you are simply aware of
your [inner] Awareness...

When Awareness [the Core Being] is the only content of your
awareness, that is the moment when The Guest is found...

author unknown

The Elastic Now - Ira Progoff

Now is not limited to the immediate instant. It is not just
'here and now', not just the spot on which we stand, nor
this moment when we speak.  Our Now moment is elastic...

The Now of our life thus becomes more than a moment.
It is as long or short as the situation of each life requires,
and it includes the most recent part of the past that is a
meaningful factor *in* the present.  This forms the period
that [we call] Now, our most recent relevant past as it
moves in the present.

For each person, the elastic Now has a different content,
and a different duration.  Whatever [the experience] is
[in our lives] it is the Now for us...  It is the particular
present moment in which we find ourselves.  The present
moment of our lives may cover a short period or a longer
period.  Whatever its duration, whatever its content, whether
it is pleasant or painful..... it is unique to all of us. 
The period of Now varies with each individual.
 It is a movement of life...

Let yourself feel the inward *movement* of your life as it
has been taking shape in this present period.  Hold yourself
in a condition of openness in which no particular thoughts
are dominating your mind.  Be silent. 

Sit in the stillness - feeling the movement of life.
Sit in the quietness - an inward awareness comes.
There is an inward sensing of the tone of our life in this
present movement of our lives...

Ira Progoff

~

By "Here" I don't mean the present space.
Time is in the mind.
"Here" is somewhere within where the mind cannot reach.
Presence is always here and you are always That.
This "here" is not the opposite of "there."
"There" is nowhere, it is your Heart.

When the mind is still all comes back
to the Heart.

All the cosmos is but a speck
in your Heart.

Papaji

Perfect Pleasure...

To be aware of the inner Presence of "The Divine"
gives great pleasure;
the perpetual awareness of Awareness...

To be blessed with the Grace of "Presence"
gives great Contentment;
the realization of ones Divine Nature...

To be embraced by the Silence of "The Infinite"
gives Bliss;
the Peace that passes understanding...

To rest in your "Divine Nature"
gives Perfect Pleasure;
the greatest Happiness...

To know the Ineffable Perfection of Being,
the felt experience of Divine Pleasure within;
is Love...

Mystic Meandering
January 28, 2018

~

Photo - Mandala Art
done by my 90 year old mother
(digitally zoom blurred for affect :)

Limitless Awareness - The Tibetan Book of the Dead

You must be ready to accept the possibility that there is a limitless
range of awareness for which we now have no words; that
awareness can expand beyond range of your ego, your self,
your familiar identity, beyond everything you have learned,
beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the differences
which usually separate people from each other and from the
world around them.

Walter Evans-Wentz
The Tibetan Book of the Dead

~

It's not so much that we don't have a self, rather it's that
the self we do have is not a thing.  It is an impermanent,
fluctuating activity, a process not a particle, a verb not a noun.

Shinzen Young

The Science of Enlightenment:
How Meditation Works


via - Love Is A Place

Silence is Prayer - Zensho Wolfgang Kopp

Awareness of the Divine Essence as our innermost true Self
requires silence.
It is turning toward what lies hidden within -
to the internal - the all-embracing totality of Divine Being.
It is the way of meditation,
the way of inner silence before Spirit.

Remaining quiet before Spirit is a prayer of silence,
through which we listen to what secretly speaks to us
in the inner room of the heart.

What is hidden deep in our inner most being
 lies in silence and stillness,
and in the silence of the deep
springs the eternal, inexauastable, original
source of being.

Where words fall silent, the everlasting begins...

Wolfgang Kopp

From: Free Yourself of Everything

Upon Waking...

I woke this morning - Untroubled...
I awoke this morning with a heart of Gratitude...

It was just there -
undisturbed by the mind...

I was just Peace.
I was just Awareness,
Empty Pristine Awareness...

There was only Openness -
with/about life...
I didn't want to start thinking - I thought,
for fear I would contract;
and laughed at the thought...
It dissipated...

I became aware again
of
Open Awareness...


I woke this morning feeling FREE;
not Freedom FROM anything -
just Freeness - unencumbered...
I was Freeness Itself...

I woke this morning feeling LOVE;
as if I could reach out to everyone and Love them!

This could be dangerous - I thought...
Had I ever felt this way before!?

I didn't contract in the thought.
Instead -
there was a natural urge for love and kindness
that kept bubbling up
from somewhere inside...

I awoke this morning feeling  - JOY!

Quiet Joy...

Internal Joy...

I did not conjure any of these up!
I did not meditate on them,
or practice them...
They were already there...
They just happened!
I was graced - unexpectedly
when I wasn't looking...

I didn't want to lose this -
this gratitude, this joy for life;
this unfettered Freeness.
Yet I didn't want to grasp at it either;
this new way of experiencing life.
I let it sit inside,
aware that it was not happening TO me,
but was taking place inside...
It had nothing to do with me at all!
Something was coming alive within...

Was this "The Kiss of The Mystery"?
Most assuredly...
unbidden...

And the realization arose from the Silence:
One cannot "Awaken" one's self.
One's self does not "awaken" - but
Something inside us
 Opens
for no apparent reason,
spontaneously...
and creates in us a new way of seeing and being
in the world...

Good Morning!

Mystic Meandering
July 5, 2016

~

Photo taken by my brother

"No More!"...

I heard a voice of a young child as I was waking from sleep yesterday morning.  It yelled “No More!”  The voice came from *inside* - How strange I thought.  I wondered if this was a message for me, or, if it was me screaming from the inside – “No More!” – enduring a particularly stressful time at this moment in life. Or was it my inner psyche calling out to a world gone mad; witnessing a species apparently turning against itself, apparently trying to destroy itself in so many different ways – or so it seems.  And the rest of us – onlookers – enduring the dance of darkness that plays itself out – forced to face the darkness within and without.  I pondered this all day, turning my awareness inward to the fear inside – repeating the phrase internally – “No More!”  At the end of the day’s reflection was the sense that sometimes all we can do is endure the way life is – day to day.  And I wondered why - why that is true, why is it that we must “endure” such pain, such suffering, both within and without…  But there was no answer….

 Maybe the voice was from a dream I didn’t realize I was having.  And maybe that really is what life is – a dream we don’t realize we’re having – that we must endure for as long as the dream lasts, until we are awakened from the dream by a voice saying “No More!”…  I don’t know…  I cannot presume to know anything anymore…

~

Below is a “poem” I wrote from my meditative writings
sometime between 2004 and 2006 that gives a
different perspective.

Entropy

The shadows have come to roost

and

 *everything*

 is

 collapsing

~

~

~

~

The tides and ripples of entropy will continue

until all is returned to Source again ~

the Primordial State:

Pure Life Energy…

Entropy is not necessarily a bad thing.

It is the way of Existence.

It is a

T

E

L

E

S

C

O

P

I

N

G

 of everything that is,

back to its original Source/State;

a re-homing of all that was created in form,

the conceptual structures,

so that only

the Eternal

Essence

 remains

Do not be alarmed by the seeming destruction

of what you have *believed* to be real.

The false must be released, shed – like dross.

In this there is a sense of chaos, destruction, loss, and death;

the crucible affect;

a state of alchemy,

the refinement of all things in existence

to its Original Nature.

Nothing is lost in the process.

All is coming Home.

The

Divine

 Outbreath

Has

 Been

 Re-called.

Bring your awareness to the place of Stillness within.

Don’t try to create order in the chaos.

But be still and let the chaos pass.

”Order” is found in the Stillness,

in returning to deep Stillness

The healing of mankind

is

 in

 the

 *recognition*

 Of

 The

 Truth

 of its Eternal Essence -

Infinite Beingness…

Entropy is the crucible of that healing…

Allow it…

~

The invitation

 is to expand our view of reality

and return to the *awareness* of

our Eternal Being…

Mystic Meandering

taken from my

Meditative Writings

written between

 2004 and 2006

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
Meditative writings
October 2015

~

Photo: street light through ice on window
2011

The Hush of "The Mystery..."

The Hush of “The Mystery”
silently moves through time and form…

Can you feel it? -
this silent hush
that embraces you
that communes with you
even when you don’t know it!?

It waits for you to stop and listen -
to sense Its Hush
surrounding you,
infusing you -
beyond hearing,
beyond seeing,
beyond knowing

It comes in sudden,
unexpected
breezes of awareness
wafting through your being -
in and out of your noticing,
but never really
gone ~

It invites you to enter
the cosmic seduction of
Its Love,

to

follow Its Silence
more deeply,
into the inner cavern
of Its Heart
that awaits you

 in the depths
of Its repose

Succumb
to what awaits you
in
the Heart of “The Mystery”

Love’s Illumination

~*~

Mystic Meandering
based on a poem written in 2013

Revised Version May 29, 2015

~

I use the term “The Mystery” here, but one can call it:

The Infinite, the Unknown, the Ineffable,

The Unamable, the Ultimate Reality, The Beloved,

and, of course,

God.

~

Photo: A glass sphere sitting in glass floral pebbles

back lit from underneath.

~

“The Mystery”, like Life ItSelf, is ever unfolding,
 ever revealing ITself.
We are always in a state of discovering “The Mystery”
and what IT is revealing to us - ongoingly.
What IT offers each of us is unique, yet universal:

Speaking directly to our Hearts…

When I speak of “The Mystery”, as in this poem
 or the previous one,
 it is always from my own *experience* of it,
 for I am acutely aware
that I *know* nothing *about* “The Mystery”,
only how “The Mystery” reveals ItSelf to and in
 my Heart…

Namaste…

Irritation Window

I love my “window sitting” practice. And I love sharing the experiences here. I have not missed one night since I started on August 2nd. It nourishes me and provides needed insight and awareness – more so than regular “sitting meditation” for some reason, and I find that interesting. The small wood chair at the window in my “office/work” space has become my sanctuary, my sacred space, more than my meditation space (in another room in the house). I normally approach the window with a sense of anticipation, curious as to what my experience will be for the night. But last night I approached the window with irritation.

Our neighbor next door has been doing some major remodeling in his home. Friday night he was up till after midnight pounding on walls and carrying the debris out to a huge metal dumpster in his driveway, which creates a rather loud, piercing echoing sound when he throws large chunks of wall into it – startling me just as I slip into stillness. Fortunately I got a reprieve Saturday night. But last night he was at it again. The back porch light was on as well – lighting up the whole back yard. I come to the window to sit in the dark, to experience the night and the silence of the night, which gets me in touch with the inner Stillness, and allows me to feel the Heart of Awareness. I’ve gotten used to my quiet space and I don’t want it disturbed. I am feeling a little territorial – and irritated – and am tempted to yell out the window: Hey you, knock it off! Do not keep a tired, grumpy woman from sitting at her window! It seems I have taken ownership of the night as “my space.” But of course, the night belongs to everybody, I cannot claim it as my own, and this is evidently part of the experience…

I purposely waited til 12:30am to sit last night, thinking that surely he would be done by then… But no – he is a night owl like me… I’d sit all night if I could function the next day… So I sat, disturbed and irritated, jostled by every sound, feeling like this was never going to work! Then I stopped focusing my attention on the distractions *outside* the window, and brought my attention inward – to the inner window - and was able to find the thread of Stillness that runs through there. I think maybe that’s the point in sitting, whether at window or on zafu. It takes the focus off the distractions and irritations, and the stories I tend to create – like how dare my neighbor disturb my nightly ritual! - and brings me back to inner Awareness – to the pure, delightful, alive River of Stillness within.

And now to the window… We’ll see what tonight brings :)

~*~

Let us take this moment

to dive beneath the cultivated veils

or our misperception.

Let us embrace

what the heart knows without knowing,

the eyes sense without seeing,

what the ears hear

without hearing…

Adyashanti