Stand Still. Listen. - Kathleen Knipp

I returned to the cabin at dusk.  As I was unlocking the door,
I heard a panicked voice leave a message on my answering
machine (yes, an actual answering machine - remember
those?)  My guest, who had set out for a hike with promises
to turn back early, was lost.  Very lost.  Darkness falls quickly
in the winter desert; the temperature can drop 20 degrees in an
hour.  She'd gathered her altitude, longitude, and latitude from 
her technology, but her data points did not reveal the trail.

So, I did what any experienced hiker would do.  I commanded
her to stop speaking and to listen carefully.  Then, I read her
a poem.

It was the same poem I'd received almost a decade earlier from
a wise and seasoned outdoorswoman one evening when I had
gotten turned around in the woods behind my home in Quebec.
It begins:

"Stand still.  The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here...
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers..."

By the time I'd ascended 500 feet, running full throttle with
my headlamp lighting up loose rocks, roots, and downed
trees - hazards for chronically sprained ankles - we made
contact again.  She had located the elusive path shortly after
our call and was now making her way down.

Stand still.  Listen.

When we can't find our way, we try our best to figure out
what to do.  We look for solutions, consult, gather information.
Do I turn left or right?  Speak up or hold silence?  Innovate or
uphold tradition?...

Listening - true listening - is not an activity.  It's not about
listening to something,or even for something.  It's not
listening to the mental chatter or the wisdom of the body.
Rather, it's about dropping into the primacy of experiencing,

into the field of pure receptivity, free from egoic interference.
It's resting in complete availability until the next step becomes
perfectly clear.

Listening.  It's what I teach.  It's what I practice.  It's what I
humbly learn and relearn daily through my own missteps and
moments of distraction.  When I fall into the habit of believing
that "I" can figure it out, that "I" make the decisions, that "I"
must find my way, the field narrows and"I" end up running
around in circles.

"Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.
You must let it find you."

Kathleen Knipp
Pathless Yoga

The poem "Lost" by David Wagoner

~

Photo taken by my brother
at Sunday River Ski Resort
in Maine.  He is a volunteer
ski patrol there...

~

Personal Note:

I love this piece by Kathleen.  It moved me deeply, not only
for it's message but because Kathleen did not give a "non-dual"
answer, dismissing her predicament, she gave a loving, caring,
compassionate answer to the woman who had gotten lost on
the trail - by reading comforting words from a poem about
 not being lost, about standing still and listening to the trees
 for the way to go.
And then Kathleen took action and went to help her friend
in trouble.  She acted with love from her heart...

In these very troubling times around the world, we need to
support each other in dealing with the reality we are faced with
 - in our  seeming"lostness"; as we navigate
a way "Home..." and remember our Infiniteness...

MM

The Inner Sanctuary - St. Teresa of Avila

There is a secret place.
A radiant sanctuary...

This magnificent refuge is inside you.

Enter

Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway.

Be bold.  Be humble.

Put away the incense and forget the incantation
they taught you.  Ask no permission from the
authorities.

Slip away...

Close your eyes and follow your breath
to the still place that leads to the invisible path
that leads you home.

Listen...

Softly, the One you love is calling...

Listen...

At first you will only hear traces of his [her] Voice.
Love letters he [she] drops for you in hiding places -
in the sun dipping down below the horizon,
in the nameless sorrow that fills your heart when you
wake in the night and remember that the world has gone
to war and you are powerless to break up the fight.

Let the idle chatter between friends drop down to
what matters.

Listen...

his [her] Voice will come closer.
A whisper you're almost sure is meant for you
fading in and out of the cacophony of thoughts
clearer in the silent space between them.

Listen...

Be brave and walk through the country of your own
wild heart.

Be gentle and know that you know nothing.

Be still...

Listen...

Keep walking...

Crossing the moat [threshold] between this world and that...

This is The Beloved reclining in the innermost chamber,
waiting for you...

The Beloved has chosen for his [her] dwelling place
the core of your own being because that is the single
most beautiful place in all creation.

Enter the center of your Soul...

Excerpts from the Introduction to:
The Interior Castle
by St. Teresa of Avila

translation by Mirabai Starr

[brackets mine]

~

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering

2024

 

Feel. Sense. Listen. - Matt Licata

The capacity to mourn and to grieve the death of an old
[perspective/view of life] is the portal to a new life, and one
that so many of us in our contemporary world have lost
contact with.  To go into the broken and to feel, to honor the
shards and shattered pieces of soul, to not pathologize them
and to not  urgently scramble to put it all back together.
For they are holy and complete in their brokenness...

Perhaps they need not to be "put back together," but held
in presence and in love.

In a more subtle way, we may discover a moment which is
"in between" the light and the dark, the known and the unknown,
lunar and solar - an opening into liminal space, where we come
into direct contact with something mysterious and vast...

[We can] train ourselves to recognize this inner space and its
qualities, to trust and listen to its non-ordinary, non-rational
wisdom and allow it to cleanse our perception...

...in this way, as the veil parts just a bit and we begin to lift
out of the collective matrix, we may start to see, in an
embodied, experiential way, that the soul is always speaking 
to us...

This communication will at times come by way of experiences
of beauty, joy, connection, and peace.  Through states of flow,
awe, wonder and pure Being.

But this dispatch from The Beloved from the Soul, will at times
emerge as an eruption of the dark, of the lunar, out of the
underworld and the somatic unconscious, and can be fierce
and untamed.  It doesn't conform to who and what we think we are,
what this world is, what "God", or the Divine is.

[It can express as] a surge of activation in one of our relationships,
out-of-the-blue experiences of depression or anxiety, an
unexplainable symptom in our body, the collapse of the known.

To perceive this also as grace is not easy and will ask everything
of us.  Stay in your body.  Feel. Sense. Listen.
Something important may be emerging, to be illuminated and held,
just underneath the threshold of consciousness.

Step into the unknown, and listen...

Matt Licata

~

Photo by my husband :)

 

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 Work of Love - Mark Nepo

It is not the work of love to change people,
or force their growth in our direction.
The work of love depends on giving others
a sense of safety in the world, nurturing their
confidence to lean into life and the unknown...

But how do we listen and be with those who
have fallen through the ice?
Stay close and keep them warm, resisting the
urge to prematurely solve the situation.  If
nothing can be done, sit with them and
withstand the urge to abandon those who
seem stuck.  Offer your tent and stay till
the way out presents itself, not forcing a rescue.

Mark Nepo
Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

At The Well of "The Sacred"...

At the Well of "The Sacred"
The OM of Existence is heard;
the deep OM -
the Primordial Song and Rhythm
of the Universe...

At the Core of everything is
the sound of OM -
vibrating...

The Primordial Sound of Life
that reverberates through the Cosmos...

Looking into the Sacred Well within
I can hear OM playing - humming -
vibrating...

I come to the Well of "The Sacred" to listen;
to replenish Mind, Body and Soul;
To be Filled;
To feel the Presence of "The Sacred;"

To reclaim my Wholeness again...

Mystic Meandering
April 6, 2023

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Thresholds - John O'Donohue

Like Spring secretly at work within the heart of Winter,
below the surface of our lives
huge changes are in fermentation.
We never suspect a thing.
Then when the grip of some
long-enduring winter mentality
begins to loosen,
we find ourselves
vulnerable
to
a
flourish
of
possibility

and we are suddenly negotiating
the challenges

of
a threshold...

At any time you can ask yourself:
At which threshold am I now standing?
At this time in my life, what am I leaving?
Where am I about to enter?

A threshold is not simply a boundary;
it is a frontier
that divides two different territories,
rhythms, and atmosphere.

Indeed, it is a lovely testimony
to the fullness and integrity
of an experience or a stage of life
that intensifies toward the end
into a real frontier
that cannot be crossed without
the heart being passionately
engaged
and
woken up.

At this threshold
a great complexity of emotion
comes alive:

confusion,
fear,
excitement,
sadness,
hope.

This is one of the reasons
such vital crossings
were always clothed in ritual.

It is wise in your own life
to be able to recognize and acknowledge
the key thresholds;
to take your time;
to feel all the varieties of presence
that accrue here;
to listen inward
with complete attention
until you hear
the inner voice

calling you
forward:

The time has come
to cross.

John O'Donohue
Excerpts from: To Bless the Space Between Us
(I put the excerpts into prose poem format)

~

...I find myself navigating the challenges of a major
threshold - an unexpected visitor has arrived, creating
an unexpected threshold and transition in life -
from a fairly quiet, slower paced, contemplative lifestyle,
now thrown into the role of a caregiver for a sibling, who
requires my constant attention - while the TV runs all
day long; background noise to a life thrown into chaos

I am having to find my own little quiet sanctuary both within
myself and in the house; as my house is no longer
my "sanctuary."

My life is cluttered with noise - full of distractions and
interruptions that muddle the mind with the over-stimulation.

And I wonder, why I must cross this particular threshold at this
time in my life - my elder years.  And how do I navigate and
negotiate the challenges that are being presented and still
maintain a sense of sanity...

It has been a difficult threshold for sure: exhausted and
stressed most of the time - unable to keep up the pace;
needing to remember to "step back", to disengage from the
emotions that are rising up, and bring my attention to the
Essence of my own Being; not allowing the stress and
anxiety to engulf me - and the new way I am living -
which is so foreign to my own rhythm with life,
and with my soul...

I know many of you out there have been "caregivers" for
a family member.  I would be interested in hearing your experience
 and how you were able to transition into a new way of living
without losing yourself - your own rhythms with life...

You can email me at:
mysticmeandering@gmail.com

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Grace Comes...

Grace comes unbidden...

Her soft Presence comforts in the
coldest dawn and darkest night,

and sits with us when we are broken,

beaten down by the "life game"...

She is the antidote for an aching heart
and struggling body...

She hears your silent tears...
and walks with you...

Grace brings you love and kindness
to endure the crosswinds that bite...

Grace comes...

to bind the wounds from those
who tried to suffocate your voice,
who tried to kill your spirit...

She softens the heart
and clears the pain from your vision...

She is always with us,
even in the death of the body.
She is "the beautiful woman sitting on
the fence," come to take you "home."
or to your next "journey" - wherever
that may be...

She is singing your homing call...

There is nothing to do but surrender
and let Grace sing her song of Love
to your weary heart...

Listen...

Mystic Meandering
April 8, 2021

~

The reference to"the beautiful woman on the fence"
is something my mother experienced during her
dying process 3 1/2+ years ago...
Hospice said she was hallucinating, but we knew
she was "seeing."
She saw a beautiful woman sitting on the fence out her window,
at the top of a small incline.  On many occasions she said:
"the beautiful woman on the fence
has come to take me on my next journey."

Grace Comes...

~

Photo - blurred section of a painting
by Rod MacIver