The Interior Voyage - Charles Wright

Photo Art - Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

We've all led raucous [noisy, chaotic] lives,
some of them inside, some of them out.
But only the poem you leave behind is what's important.

Everyone knows this:
The voyage into the interior is all that matters.

Whatever your ride...

Charles Wright

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo Art - Johannes Plenio

Unsplash

 

A Non-Path Path :) - a meandering...

I am feeling the need to settle deeper into the interior, and 
rediscover a sense of the inner Truth of Myself; not by following
a particular external path - but by intuitively listening to the 
Inner Voice; by spending time in Quietude, and "The Silence"
(which I crave, but so easily avoid by getting distracted on
non-essential things.).

"The Quest" - for me then - is to discover the Deeper Reality of

Myself.  I have forgotten how to be ME!  In a sense, what I was
"designed" for; one could say my Soul's "calling"...   Some call it
the Self (or Higher Self), but I get hung up on those words, because
the big "S" Self is not another self hidden somewhere inside us with
a big S on it that we have to "become"/discover.  But it's the discovery
of, a remembering of, having a felt sense of, the authentic, natural
self, beyond mind, beyond religion, beyond "spirituality."  Who are
 we really?   What is the "Deeper Reality"? I thought maybe I knew, 
but I haven't really met Her - yet...  Hopefully I will find the Deep
Quiet of the Heart, and the Illuminating Light of the Soul.

The path of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening"/"Self-Realization",
particularly what is popularly known as "Non-Duality, wasn't
IT for me, with its attraction to the mind and its abstractions and
mind games. It is just another construct, a belief system.  I found
out that the "Emperor has no clothes!  And I'd rather not describe
Truth by a negative - with no-me, no-self, no other, no world - as
Truth  is all inclusive - including duality, me, self, other, humanity,
and the world.

Even if one follows a "spiritual path" (which can be any path), life
will not suddenly become easy or flowing with bliss, although there
may be little epiphanies and "awakenings" here and there. We won't
necessarily lose our personality with its quirks, and become an
emotionless automaton. We won't lose our conditioning, or our 
neuroses.  Our thoughts will not stop, neither will our surface
struggles, or our pain, or our stories.  Walking "a path" doesn't even
guarantee that we will actually *see* life differently, or suddenly
find our "purpose" - as if there is only one.  But no one tells you
this about "the path."  It has to be a self-discovery, even if we have
a "Teacher", a "Path", or use a "Teaching" to help point the way.

It is different for everyone, of course.  I'm only reflecting on my
own experience here...

Years of seeking, realization, recognition, and then forgetting, and
then seeking again, then remembering, and then forgetting again, etc.,
brought me to the realization that discovering (or rediscovering) the
Essence of who I am is, for me, through awareness of and deep
intimacy with "The Silence" within; through continually coming
back to "The Silence of Source" - the space of Stillness, and
innate Wisdom - which of course is wherever we are at the 
moment, not off in the distance somewhere.  It's not a place.
"The path" doesn't *go* anywhere.  There is no reward at the end.
It's an inner pathless path...  And that's my "path" - again :)
rediscovering the inner Silent Truth of Myself, directly;
experiencing the underlying Rhythm of Existence Itself, and
within that the Truth of Myself...

Mystic Meandering
April 2024

~

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road,
and nothing more;
Wanderer, there is no road.
The road is made by walking...

By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path that will
never be trod again...

Wanderer, there is no road -
only wakes upon the sea..."

Antonio Machado

~

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest in peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the [inner] self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then
return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature...

Returning is the motion of the Tao.

Lao Tzu

~~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
taken at the Denver Botanical Gardens

 

Inner World - John O'Donohue

It is strange to be here.  The Mystery never leaves you alone.
Behind your image, below you words, above your thoughts, the
silence of another world waits.  A world lives within you.  No
one else can bring you news of this inner world.  Through our
voices, we bring out sound from the mountain beneath our
soul.  These sounds are words.  There are so many talking all
the time, loudly, quietly, in rooms, on streets, on TV, on radio,
in the paper, in books.  The noise of words keeps what we call
the world there for us.  We take each other's sounds and make
patterns and predictions, benedictions, and blasphemies.  Each
day, our tribe of language holds what we call the 'world' together.
Yet the uttering of the world reveals how each of us relentlessly
creates.  Everyone is an artist.  Each person brings out sound
out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.

Humans are new here.  Above us, the galaxies dance out toward
infinity. Under our feet is the ancient earth.  We are beautifully
molded from this clay.  Yet the smallest stone is millions of years
older than us. .....the silent universe seeks echo.

An unknown world aspires towards reflection.  Words are oblique
mirrors which hold your thought.  You gaze into these word mirrors
and catch glimpses of meaning, belonging shelter.  Behind their
bright surfaces is the dark and the silence.  Words are like the god
Janus, they face inwards and outwards at once.

If we become addicted to the external our interiority will haunt
us.  We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or
deed can still.  To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our
vulnerable complexity.  In order to keep our balance, we need
to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known 
and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together.
No one else can undertake this task for you.  You are the one
and only threshold of your inner world.  This wholesomeness
is holiness.  To be holy is natural; to befriend the worlds that
come to balance in you.

Behind the facade of image and distraction, each person is an
artist in this primal and inescapable sense.  Each one of us is
doomed and privileged to be an inner artist who carries and
shapes a unique world.

Human presence is a creative and turbulent sacrament, a 
visible sign of invisible grace.

John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering

2011

 

Into the Forest - a meandering...

"The Forest" traditionally is a threshold symbol of entering
the unknown, the deeper nature, or the spiritual world.  In
fairy tales it usually represents a passage through difficulties
and an opportunity for "transformation" of some kind.  I also
see it as a sanctuary, refuge, a place of deepening. This entering
the "Dark Forest" happens sometimes when I have lost
(intentionally or otherwise) the frameworks, or beliefs,
 which have given structure to my life; when I must find my own
 way, and be true to the call of the Soul, despite the difficulties
 encountered.  Shamans, poets, holy men and women sought
refuge in the forest, as a healing place.  Going into The Forest
represents a return to Primordial Being - beyond societal,
cultural, conceptual and spiritual frameworks; beyond dogma
and doctrine... In a way, it is like returning to the child's heart
of innocence - just following the longing of the Heart once
again; trusting that I will emerge from "The Dark Forest" with
clarity.  As a child I often went into the woods next to our
house to just sit, to listen and commune with nature, and 
write poetry - at the ripe old age of 11 :)  It was a place of
directly experiencing what I knew then to be "God."  Now
known by many other names...

And since I don't have a "Dark Forest" handy to enter, and I'm
spooked by things that go bump in the night, my "Forest" will
have to be the Interior spaces - navigating the inner Forest of
the Unknown - as well as the difficult practicalities of everyday
living that I'm now faced with.   It will be an interesting 
sojourn, if I can pull it off...  What better time of year
than approaching the Winter Solstice to go within...

Mystic Meandering
originally written 6-22-2019
updated Dec. 6, 2023

~

The familiar horizon has been outgrown;
the old concepts, ideals,
and emotional patterns no longer fit.
The time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.

You enter the forest at the darkest point
where there is no path.
Where there's a way or a path
it is someone else's path; each human being
is a unique phenomenon.

The idea is to find your own way...

Joseph Campbell

~

Midway upon the journey of life
I found myself within a dark forest,
for the straightforward pathway
had been lost...

Dante Alighgieri
The Inferno

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"Lanterns of Light"...

Sinking deeper into the calming comfort
of the rich darkness of the universe within;
floating into the depths of the inner Cosmos,
"lanterns of light" appear suspended in the dark:
stars - at the interior frontiers of beginnings,
before time, before relative reality, before "I" began,
in the space of Pure Silence...

Where the unmanifest spirals ItSelf into form;
into galaxies of molten stardust
rotating ever so slowly through the universe;
that also somehow became "me"!
For no reason - except
the pure pleasure of Being,
the pure pleasure of existing.

This fantasia of Existence,
fancied and composed of
stardust and galaxies of liquid light
dancing through the universe
inhabits this body...

Light and matter
vibrating together, in resonance,
like a tuning fork - enlivening this body,
all bodies, everywhere.

A symphony of Wonderment...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 27, 2017

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

In Rhythm With Your Soul - John O'Donohue

Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity.

You should belong first in your own interiority.  If you belong,
and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that
deep, unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable
when your outside belonging is qualified, relativised, or taken
away.  You will still be able to stand.....on the ground of your
soul where you are not a tenant, where you are at home.

John O'Donohue
From: Anam Cara

I think that we are infinitely greater than our minds and we are

infinitely more than our images of ourselves.  One of the sad
things today is that so many people are frightened by the
wonder of their own presence.  They are dying to tie themselves
into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined
identity that other people have actually settled on for them.
This identity may be totally at variance with the wild energies
that are rising inside their souls.  Many of us get very afraid
and we eventually compromise.  We settle for something that
is safe, rather than engaging the danger and wildness that is
in our own hearts

John O'Donohue
From: Walking in Wonder

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Weaving of New Cloth - Matt Licata

At times, the wisest, most skillful, and most compassionate
action is to establish a boundary with another person.  To
stand up and assertively say No.  To move in an empowered
and swift way to protect our own integrity.  To privilege our
own autonomy and interiority. To meet narcissism, abuse, and
neglect with a fiery, fierce, and direct response.

This is not only the case with "external" others - other people
in our lives - but also with the multitude of "internal" others -
from the interior landscape.

You might recognize them by their predictable refrain: "There is
something wrong with you.  You have failed. No one will ever
love you unless you change and become someone different.  You
are not okay.  You have fallen short.  You have done life wrong.
You are no good. You do not belong.  Your sensitivities and
eccentricities are not welcome here."

These are the voices of the past, the shadow of a culture of
materialism and greed, of the lineages of transgenerational
trauma and trance.  The voices of disembodiment, insensitivity,
of a societal and global ego that has fallen out of communion
with the natural world, the body, and the imaginal [mystical] realms.

These internal visitors, to an open and sensitive nervous system,
must also be met with the boundaries of discernment.  To 
realize those moments when we fall out of wisdom-presence of
the here and now, into the time machine of the "there and then."

[We need to] reclaim our own basic goodness, and not merely
accept their conclusions, reality tunnels, and the lenses through
which they have come to see things.  But cleanse our perception
with clear-seeing and the wildness of love.

To take the risk of telling a new story, dreaming a new dream,
spinning out a new tale, weaving a new cloth.  And to allow
ourselves to be turned by the great Weaver Herself...as new
vision is revealed, as we become that vessel in which She
can come alive here again.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Step Into What You Are - Matt Licata

 At times, the most wise and soulful action is to establish a
boundary with another.  To stand up and assert what it is
that we need.  To move in an empowered and swift way to
maintain our integrity.  To privilege our autonomy.  To
meet narcissism, abuse, misattunement, and neglect with a
fierce embodied response.

This is not only the case with "external" others, but also
with the multitude of "internal" others as they emerge as
voices, figures, and images in the interior landscape.

As we wake in the morning, wander through the day, in
liminal states and at the entryway to sleep and dream...
we may notice their presence, arriving quietly in one
moment and as firestorm in the next - telling us:

"There is something wrong with you.  You have failed
again. You have done life wrong. You are unworthy of
mercy, of grace.  You are beyond redemption.  You are
unlovable and unwanted.  You do not belong here."

The images and voices of the past, shadow emanations
of authorities, cultures, and lineages of intergenerational
trauma and trance.  The voices of a realm that has forgotten
the holy, the sensitive, the eccentric, and raging uniqueness
of the heart.

But in a moment when perception is clear and a glimpse
is given from behind the veil, it is seen that the visitors
come not to harm, but to reveal.  But they, too, must be
met with boundaries of clear seeing.  To not accept what
they say at face value, but to enter into dialogue and to
find the way into what is most true.  To not merely accept
their conclusions, proposed tunnels of reality, and the
psychic lenses through which they have come to see...

But step into what you are.  To live in and from that as
your poetic offering to a weary world.  To take the risk
of telling a new story, dreaming a new dream, and
weaving new cloth.  And to allow yourself to be toned
and tuned by the great Weaver herself...
breathing and sensing and listening as a new vision is
unearthed.

Matt Licata, Ph.D.

~

Photo: Art - Mystic Meandering