Balance - MacIver & Levey

Your inner world guides you without you knowing it.
Our thought patterns determine the quality of our lives.
That inner process works at the depth of each of us
carrying the meaning that has been trying to establish
itself in our existence.  It embodies the potential of who
we are when our life expresses itself as a whole.
Silence helps...

A sign of balance is a comfort with silence, both Silence
within and silence without.

Rod MacIver
Artist/Writer
Heron Dance

~

Balance can be sensed in terms of the waves of the Ocean.
...at a deeper level, the changing tides of such "waves" are balanced
by the profound reality of an unchanging "Ocean" within you;
Just as the Ocean is the water that forms all waves, 
The Ocean within you is the universal reality or essence
that dwells within all beings... 

[Some call this the Silence]
 Discovering the Ocean is vitally important for the
 discovery of balance, because it
provides a place of peace for you to return home to, despite
the chaos of the day.

...keep balanced on the waves of our challenging lives...

Joel and Michelle Levey
From: Living in Balance

~

Personal Note:  For many years the Inner Silence was my refuge.
Then life fell out of balance about 2 years ago through unexpected
life circumstances and I was unable to *access* the Silence,
or maintain balance, literally.
My energy and body are really out of whack.
Returning to doing my funky art vortexes seems to be helping
to find a sense of inner balance again, but I need to rediscover
the deep Inner Silence of Being and align with that.
One step at a time...

MM

~

Photo - Wave Vortex
Craypas oil with fingers
Mystic Meandering
Aug 2024

 

Silence Calls To Us - Nathalie Delay

Art: Meganne Forbes

It's interesting to observe how hard it is to stay alone,
in silence, without distractions.
We are afraid to be face-to-face with ourselves.
Face-to-face with our impatience, our agitation, our worry.
Face-to-face with the depth of our being.
We are afraid to dive into the infinite space of our true nature,
when no attribute nor any - story covers it up.
And yet it calls to us in silence,
but we don't listen.

And yet we have an acute and painful longing for it,
like exiles too long cut off from their homeland.
So, instead of trying to fill the space which has appeared,
let us give ourselves over to silence, to the absence of certainty.
Let us not miss the incredible opportunity to be,
in all simplicity and humility
and taste the nectar of pure presence
when there are no more expectations, only the gift of self.
Let us not miss this unique chance to taste the substance of the 
moment when no superfluous activity waters it down.

Nathalie Delay.com

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Art: Meganne Forbes

 

Who Are You? - Thomas Merton

Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your

name.

Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
Are You?
Whose Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet).  Do not
think of what you are
still less of

What you may one day be.
Rather
be what you are (but who?)
Be the unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,

and all things live around you
speaking to your own being,
speaking by the Unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

I will try, like them, 
to be my own silence:
And this is difficult.
The whole world is secretly on fire.
The stones burn, even the stones.
They burn me.

How can man be still or listen to all
things burning?  How can he dare 
to sit with them when
all their silence

is on fire?

Thomas Merton
In Silence

with thanks to  Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Song is Still Here - Fred LaMotte

Spend a little time today
getting lost.
Find your way
without rudder or sail
across the mud puddle
in your back yard.

Meet me on the shore.
We will find shelter
in each other's breath.
There is a mountain
of silence inside you,
and inside the mountain
a cave of silence
where you'll find the bones
you left here
before you were conceived.
We've had other bodies, friend,
but no other song.

Listen.
The song is still here

inside the bones
inside the cave
inside the mountain of silence
inside you.

Spend a little time today
getting lost.
Find your way
without rudder or sail
across the mud puddle
in your back yard.
Meet me on the shore.
We will find shelter
in each other's breath.
There is a mountain
of silence inside you,
and inside the mountain
a cave of silence
where you'll find the bones
you left here
before you were conceived.
We've had other bodies, friend,
but no other song.
Listen.
The song is still here
inside the bones
inside the cave
inside the mountain of silence
inside you.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Still Point - Rod MacIver

The source of your [authentic] power is your still point.
Your power comes from harmony with your inner world.
That relationship is nurtured in silence, in solitude, in reflection.

Joseph Campbell said much depends on knowing who you are
and what you want out of life.  The self-knowledge requires
reflection, quiet time to nurture and build.  Before expending energy,
build energy.  Spend time in contemplation, in a pre-verbal state
of receiving, waiting for guidance.

The still point is that place of quiet reflection, meditation or
prayer, time for rest and relaxation and contemplation.

Rod MacIver
Heron Dance
Excerpt from his latest post in his Art Journal

~

Still point = sanity :)

~

Within each of us , there is a silence, a silence as vast as
the universe,  And when we experience that silence, we
remember who we are...  It is a paradox that we encounter
so much internal noise when we first try to sit in silence.

Gunilla Brodde Norris

With thanks to Heron Dance

~

photo Mystic Meandering

 

The Voice of Silence Within - Fred LaMotte

Upon emerging from meditation.  I was moved to share this:

The world is not in chaos.  Minds are in chaos.
There is a place we need to return to: the wellspring of our own
intuition, the starry depth in our core.  This is the real Guru, the
true Friend, the true Master.  Throw the penny in this little mind
into that well, which has been silently bubbling up for countless
lifetimes, in a hidden glade, the wildest glen of your ancient brain.
Fall into this yearning hollow, all the way down your spine,
through your rib cage into the solar plexus.  You are just a ripple
of silence trembling into the galaxy.  Who will guide you to this
well?  The true Friend.  She leads you not to herself, but points 
beyond words to your own heart.  Listen to the voice of the Silence
inside silence.  A real Guru reveals this murmuring spring in the
valley of your chest,through a whisper, a touch, or their mere
presence.  They then walk away, freeing you to name the Mystery
for yourself, as you gaze into the unfathomable waters of Shakti,
the healing current of your own awakened grace.  Whenever you
want to come to this forest pool and sit with your Guru, or the
Christ, with Buddha, or with any of the Rishis, you find them
waiting here, nearer than your pulse.  Not in any temple or
ashram, but in the golden dark inside the inward spring of
Divine Love, overflowing with the nectar of emptiness,
gushing stars, pouring out the fierce wild atoms of your body,
for no reason but to dance.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo from the Internet 

 

"Ways of Seeing" - Interview with David Whyte

...I recognized in my Zen meditation moments of inhabiting
a greater identity.  The real discipline is to remain in that
greater identity and to sustain that sense of presence - so that
you see the essence of [things] that affects you very deeply when
you allow yourself to watch and deepen that attention...

What is asked of human beings on a daily basis, is to get out
of ourselves by paying attention to things other than ourselves.
To see in a way which is other than the way we have used to
name the world, other than the way we have been taught to see
the world, and then as a result have ourselves be seen by the world.

As in all great contemplative traditions, the  most nourishing thing
you can do is pay attention to [you immediate environment], but
it will also break your life apart, because the fixed identity that
had named the world and wanted it to be a certain way, in order
to prevent us from experiencing heartbreak, is found to be too
small.  To name/label is a smaller way of seeing.

Our way of staying safe is to assign names to what in fact cannot
be named.  It is the precise reason why poetry is so difficult to
write.  Because you're actually going to a part of you that doesn't
know what to say.  ...you are going to a part of you that radically
doesn't know and you are going to pay attention and observe 
from that place.  Then at that meeting place between what you
think is you and what you think is not you, that is where the
conversation happens.  And when you speak that conversation
out loud it comes out as poetry.  It is the same undoing of your
surface personality...

Interviewer: So how does one perceive the essence of things?

...listening is a deep form of looking...  I am looking at something
to see what it is saying to me, without imposing a voice upon it.

The implication of truly seeing is that the rest of the world must 
be perceiving the miraculous in you.  Which is quite humbling.
The only place to hold that sense of miraculousness without ego
is in silence...

Perhaps once you have established a relationship with silence,
with deep seeing and listening, then you can live in a way in
which you are not harmed by constant contraction [from noise
and chaos].  There is a reason why monasteries are quiet places.
There is a reason why artists go to quiet places, even when it is
just a quiet room to create.

Excerpts from "Ways of Seeing" - Interview with
David Whyte
by Judith van Leeuwen
From See All This
Sept 2022
with thanks to Kim Manley Ort

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

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
May 2015

~

"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 directing to our Hearts...

When I speak of "The Mystery"
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 this Heart...

Namastse

_/\_

~

Photo - South Pole Aurora Borealis

 

The Voice of Silence Within - Fred LaMotte

Upon emerging from meditation, I was moved to share this:
The world is not in chaos.  The mind is in chaos.  
There is a place we need to return to: the wellspring of our
own intuition, the starry depth in our core.  This is the
real Guru, the true Friend, the true Master.  Throw the
penny of this little mind into that well, which has been
silently bubbling up for countless lifetimes, in a hidden
glade, the wildest glen of your ancient brain.  Fall into
this yearning hollow, all the way down your spine,
through your rib cage into the solar plexus.  Now you
are just a ripple of silence trembling into the galaxy.
Who will guide you to this well?  The true Friend.
She leads you not to herself, but points beyond words
to your own heart.  Why should you give away your
power to any other who claims to teach you what can
only be learned at the soundless fountain inside you?
Listen to the voice of the Silence inside silence.  A real
Guru reveals this murmuring spring in the valley of your
chest, through a whisper, a touch, or their mere presence.
They then walk away, freeing you to name the Mystery
for yourself, as you gaze into the unfathomable waters
of Shakti, the healing current of your own awakened grace.
Whenever you want to come to this forest pool and sit with
your Guru, or with the Christ, with Buddha, or with any
of the Rishis, you find them waiting here, nearer than 
your pulse.  Not in any temple or ashram, but in the golden
dark inside the inward spring of Divine Love, overflowing
with the nectar of emptiness, gushing stars, pouring out
the fierce wild atoms of your body, for no reason but to
dance.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Knock-Knock...

What if I quit knocking at the door of
The Beloved - address unknown...
Would The Beloved still come?

Why do I keep trying so hard?
Doesn't The Beloved already know that I'm here?

So why do I need to keep coming to the door,
begging, like a beggar in the night,
whispering outside the door;
like throwing stones at a window,
trying to entice my "lover" to notice that
I am standing outside - waiting -
unseen, unheard...

knock-knock

What if I quit knocking at the door?
Would The Beloved not hear the longing of my Heart?

Would The Beloved still come?

~

...a door within my Heart opens as if by its own accord...
The Beloved is here - waiting for me
in the deeper Silence at the Core of my Being,
at the Inner Door,
where only a whisper is heard...

Maybe I was knocking at the wrong door...

knock-knock

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 5, 2022

~

Photo - yes that's me :)

 

Feeling Old - a meandering...

I feel old...

But I now enjoy sitting in "aloneness" in the
inner wilderness of silence - just being -
in an empty house without distraction;
with no need for "doing"...

I listen more deeply, and notice more;
like the ceiling fan, that's always been there,
creating a small breeze that caresses my skin.
(After all that's what it's for :))

I hear the sounds of nature merging with the
highway hum into one sound through the window
where I sit; and don't get irritated by 
a world of busyness breaking through the quietude,
sitting in the "aloneness" in the
inner wilderness of silence.

I breathe deeply into a deeper transcendent Silence within -
my comfort and solace.

I feel old...

When I catch my mirrored reflection
looking back at me...
I see an old woman in T-shirt and sweats.
(Well, fairly old :))
At least I still recognize her/me;
a shadow image of what I used to be...
With her old eyes, worn out body and bedraggled look...

I feel old...

When I have to pull out my deceased mother's old walker
from the closet to get to the bathroom at night,
easily losing my balance...

I somehow know I have begun
my end...

Unattached to physicality or self-image - yet still,
the reality of "endings" sets in...

I feel old...

Because the "spiritual questing" of my younger years
for "the truth", for the next "spiritual trinket", is gone.
(You notice I didn't say I'm "done." :))

Wanting only to rest in the Sacred Silence within;
that soothes this body and mind.

I feel old...

But I'm not ready for the rocking chair on the back porch,
although a hammock under the trees in the backyard 
would be nice - rocking to a melody by the Moody Blues
 while I watch the clouds and maybe even the stars -
knowing that even when
the owl calls my name
and this body is gone,
"I"
(well not "me" exactly, but you know what I mean)

"I" am still somewhere
in the Great Cosmos
that fills the space I leave...

Mystic Meandering
Aug 24, 2022

"In my end is my beginning" - T.S. Eliot

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Silent Stream...

Come to Rest in the Silent Stream...
In the Inner Stream of Silence, the place of Deep Rest...

The Silent Stream is your refuge...
Letting go of the surface chaos,
moving into deeper rhythms;
the Flow and Rhythm at the core of your Being...
Allow your body to rest and align with that Rhythm...

More than ever now, you need Deep Rest and Deep Silence...

Do not allow yourself to be disturbed or disrupted by anything,
including your own emotions..

Nothing else matters now, except taking refuge in
the Silence of Deep Rest...
There you are held... cradled beyond
comprehension - only felt, and experienced...

Rest in the deeper Mystery of Being...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Sept. 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Attend to Inner Silence - Adyashanti

...attend to the inner silence of your being is what Being itself
calls you to do.  In many ways, silence is the greatest teacher
and most wise teaching.  The call of the heart never confines
itself to the mind's ideas...  It follows the impulse of silent
intuition, which is so much better aligned with what the
moment dictates.  Leave the mind to do what it is best at,
and look to the wisdom born of silence for inner guidance
relating to things of the spirit.

Adyashanti

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Cosmic Meditation - Robert Rabbin & Adyashanti

Meditation doesn't promise anything
It isn't a strategy,
It simply is.

When we exist within meditation,
there is no room for strategies of
becoming, achieving, attaining, owning.

Within meditation,
Silence is the only strategy,
because everything [just] is...

Robert Rabbin

With thanks to No Mind's Land
for photo too :)

~

Real meditation is not about mastering a technique
True meditation is letting go of manipulating our experience.
Stop seeking something more or better or different, and turn
your attention inward to the awake Silence that you are...

Adyashanti

 

Create Silence - David Whyte

 The object in meditation and all of our contemplative
disciplines is silence.  But...  that silence is in order for
you to perceive something other than yourself -
what you've arranged as yourself to actually perceive
this frontier between what you call your self and what you
call other than your self,  whether that's a person or a landscape.

One of the greatest arts of poetry is actually to create silence
through attentive speech - speech that says something in
such a way that it appears as a third frontier between you and
the world, and invites you into a deeper and more generous
sense of your own identity and the identity of the world...

Poetry is the verbal art-form by which we can actually create
silence...

Silence is frightening, an intimation of the end, the graveyard
of fixed identities.  Real silence puts any present understanding
to shame; orphans us from certainty; leads us beyond the
well-known and accepted reality and confronts us with the
unknown and previously unacceptable conversation about
to break in upon our lives.

In silence, Essence speaks to us of Essence itself and asks
for a kind of unilateral disarmament, our own essential
nature slowly emerging as the defended periphery
atomizes and falls apart.

As the busy edge dissolves we begin to join the conversation
through the portal of a present unknowing, robust vulnerability,
revealing in the way we listen, a different ear, a more perceptive
eye, an imagination refusing to come too early to a conclusion,
and belonging to a different person than the one who first
entered the quiet.

David Whyte
Poet
from - Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and
Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Photo by Aaron Burden

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

Still Mind - Hazrat Inayat Khan

 Where is the voice of "God" [The Sacred] heard?  In silence.
The seers, the saints, the sages, the prophets, the masters,
they have heard that voice which comes from within by
making themselves silent.  I do not mean by this that because
one has silence one will be spoken to; I mean that once one is
silent one will hear the word, which is constantly coming from
within.  When the mind has been made still, a person also
communicates with everyone he meets.  He does not need many
words: when the glance meets he understands.  Two persons
may talk and discuss all their lives and yet never understand
one another.  Two others with still minds look at one another
and in one moment a communication is established between them.

Where do the differences between people come from?  From within.
From their activity.  And how does agreement come?  By the
stillness of the mind.  It is noise which hinders a voice that we hear
from a distance, and it is the troubled waters of a pool which hinder
us seeing our own image reflected in the water.  When the water
is still it takes a clear reflection; and when our atmosphere is still
then we hear that voice which is constantly coming to the heart
of every person.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Sufi Teacher, Poet and Musician

with thanks to No Mind's Land
Photo also via No Mind's Land

A Sense of Presence - Howard Thurman

 The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines is to clear away
whatever may block our awareness of that which [some call]
God in us...

It will be in order to suggest certain simple aids to this end.

One of these is the practice of silence , or quiet.
As a child I was accustomed to spend many hours alone in
my rowboat, fishing along the river, when there was no sound
save the lapping of the waves against the boat.

There were times when it seemed as if the earth and the river
and the sky and I were one beat of the same pulse.  It was a
time of watching and waiting for what I did not know -
yet I always knew.

There would come a moment when beyond the single pulse
beat there was a sense of Presence which seemed always
to speak to me.  My response to the sense of Presence 
always had the quality of personal communion.

There was no voice.  There was no image.
There was no vision.

There was God.

Howard Thurman

from Disciplines of the Spirit

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

Personal Note:  I shy away from using the word "God"
in my own experiences now because it holds religious
connotations from the religion of my childhood
 that I no longer relate to.  I use names now that don't hold
  identifications with the word, such as "The Mystery",
"The Beloved", "The Ineffable", "The Sacred" etc. 
I especially like the words The Silence, or The Quiet
as representations of what I experience when I sit in silence
Encountering the deep Silence of Being for me feels like
encountering "God", like "personal communion."

I bask in The Sacred Silence, absorbed, feeling the sense
of Presence, of something vaster than an image of "God"
that I hold in my mind; something which is ever-
present, and personal...  The Deep Silence within is the
Heart of Being, "The Mystery", The Ineffable" - my refuge.

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Wrapped in Silence - Rumi

 Last night,
I begged the Wise One to tell me
the secret of the world.

Gently, gently, he whispered -
"Be quiet,
the secret cannot be spoken
it is wrapped in Silence."

All is known in the Sacred Silence

Rumi

Original title: "Last Night"

from the collection
Whispers of the Beloved
translated by Maryam Mafi & Azima Melita Kolin

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

May Peace Prevail Within Our Hearts!

The Desert of Our Own Silence - Ron Rolheiser

 The Belgian spiritual writer, Bieke Vandekerckhove, comes by her
wisdom honestly.  She didn't learn what she shares from a book
or even primarily from the good example of others.  She learned
what she shares through the crucible of a unique suffering, being
hit at the tender age of nineteen with a terminal disease that
promised not just an early death but also a complete breakdown
and humiliation of her body enroute to that death.

Her attempt to cope with her situation drove her in many
directions, initially to anger and hopelessness, but eventually into
the deep well of silence, that desert that lurks so threateningly
inisde each of us.  Away from all the noises of the world, in the
silence of her own soul, inside the chaos of her raging, restless
insides she found the wisdom and strength not just to cope with
her illness but to also find a deeper meaning and joy in her life.

There are, as John Updike poetically puts it, secrets that are hidden
from health, though, as Vandekerckhove makes evident, they can
be uncovered in silence.  However, uncovering the secrets that
silence has to teach us is not easy.  Silence, until properly befriended,
is scary and the process of befriending it is the soul's equivalent of
crossing a hot desert.  Our insides don't easily become calm, 
restlessness doesn't easily turn into solitude, and the temptation to
turn to the outside world for consolation doesn't easily give way
to the idea of quiet.  But there's a peace and a meaning that can
only be found inside the desert of our own chaotic and raging
insides.  The deep wells of consolation lie at the end of an inner
journey through heat, thirst, and dead-ends that must be pushed
through with dogged fidelity.  

Here's how Vandekerckhove describes one aspect of the journey:
'Inner noise can be quite exhausting.  That's probably why so many
flee to the seduction of exterior background noises.  But if you want
to grow spiritually, you have to stay inside the room of your
spiritual raging and persevere.  You have to continue to sit silently
 and honestly until the raging quiets down and your heart gradually
 becomes quieted.  Silence forces us to take stock of our actual
manner of being human.  And then we hit a wall, a dead point. 
No matter what we do, no matter what we try, something in us
continues to feel lost and estranged, despite the myriad ways of
 society to meet our human needs.  Silence confronts us with
 an unbearable bottomlessness, and there appears no way out.
We have no choice but to align ourselves with the depth in us.

There's a profound truth: Silence confronts us with an unbearable
bottomlessness and we have not choice but to align ourselves with
the depth inside us.  Sadly, for most of us, we will learn this only
by bitter conscription when we have to actually face our own
death.  .....before this surrender is made, our lives will always
remain somewhat unstable and confusing and there will always
be dark, inner corners of the soul that scare us.

But a journey into silence can take us beyond our dark fears and
shine healing light into our darkest corners.  But as
Vandekerckhove and other spiritual writers point out, that peace
is usually found only after we have reached an impasse, a 
'dead point' where the only thing we can do is to "pierce the
negative.'

In her book, The Taste of Silence, Vandekerckhove recounts how
an idealistic friend of hers shared his dream of going off by himself
into some desert to explore spirituality.  Her prompt reaction was not
much to his liking: 'A person is ready to go to any kind of desert.
He's willing to sit anywhere, as long as it's not his own desert.'  
How true.  We forever hanker after idealized deserts and avoid our
own.

The spiritual journey, the pilgrimage, the Camino we most need to
make doesn't require an airline ticket....  The most spiritually
rewarding trip we can  make is an inner pilgrimage, into the desert
of our own silence.

As human beings we are constitutively social. ...but there's a certain
deep inner work that can only be done alone, in silence, away from
the noise of the world.

Ron Rolheiser

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - via No Mind's Land