Trust the Presence that Holds it All - Amoda Maa

Be courageous enough to meet life from the unknown - without
a safety net, without hope, without past, and without future.

Without the hope of salvation - without running away from or
running toward anything in your mind - you are forced to fall into
an open space of Being-ness.

And in this openness, you fall out of time and out of imagination,
right into the present.

In other words, you become present - you become totally available 
to the essential Being-ness of life.

In presence, you and life have collapsed into each other - there is
no longer a "future life," it's all happening now.

In this eternal now, you and life are one - and when you are one
with what is, how can you possibly fear what is?

It's like fearing your self, and that's ridiculous - because your self,
the Being-ness that you already are, never leaves you.

Being-ness is totally dependable - it is always here.

Now you are in touch with a deeper kind of trust -  one that is 
not based on something.

It is no longer a conceptual trust, but one that is inherent in the
nature of presence.

It is inherent in the nature of life, because life is always what is
here in the present - it can't be anywhere else.

This deeper trust has no meaning to the mind, but complete
meaningfulness to your natural state [or Essence of Being].

And even if you fail, even if life leads you to a seeming dead-end,
even if you are handed an unwanted circumstance, even if you
don't get to you desired destination of perfect happiness, even
if you heart is broken open over and over again - you will still
trust the Presence that holds it all.

Amoda Maa

words I needed to hear - with thanks to Michel at 
No Minds's Land

~

Photo - Dorothea on the Beach at Sunrise

 

"Shadow Love"...

 Don't be fooled by the magician's love -
a shadow love that uses love to manipulate and control.

Your responsibility is to be real, authentic -
maintaining integrity -
unshattered by feigned affection...

There is great healing in this.

Don't allow love to be a pawn, manipulated
by deluded hearts of
misdirected energies and perceptions.

Don't aspire to love - but aspire to be real.

When love is just a covering,
a pretense, it dissipates.
Let love's shadow dissipate to reveal
what's beyond...

There is something beyond "love"
as we define love.

It is Presence...

Being genuinely present from
the Core of your Being...

Love is that Presence - loving us...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2004

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Your Outlook Matters - John O'Donohue

Sometimes when we look out, the world seems dark.
War, violence, hunger and misery seem to abound.
This makes us anxious...  What can I do in my private little
corner of life that could have an effect on world events?
Believing ourselves to be helpless, we hand over our
power to forces and systems outside us that then act in
our names; they go on to put their beliefs into action; and
ironically their actions are often sinister and destructive.

We live in times when the call to real presence is urgent.
We need to rediscover the careless courage, yet devastating
simplicity of the little boy who, in the middle of the
numbed multitude, in naive Socratic fashion, blurts out:
"But the emperor has no clothes."
When spoken, the truth can bring down citadels of falsity.

The spirit of a time is incredibly subtle [or not], yet a hugely
powerful force.  And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit
of all individuals.  The way you look at things is not actually
a private matter.  Your outlook actually and concretely affects
what goes on.  When you take back your power and choose
to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your
creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of
renewal and encouragement in the world.  In this way, even
in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent
of transformation in a broken, darkened world.

John O'Donohue
From: To Bless the Space Between Us
(written in 2008!)

~

Intuitive Art - Mystic Meandering

If you look closely you can see little "beads"
scattered in the painting and the larger one in the purple heart.
They are Snowflake Obsidian from a bracelet I once wore,
and just happened to find them in a little plastic cup.  I had placed
them in a particular order on the painting that was lying on
my work table, and then accidentally hit the canvas, scattering
the little beads over the black and white swirls of the painting. 
I left them where they were, and glued them to the painting. :)

The properties of Snowflake Obsidian are:
Brings about balance, removes negativity from
 a space or person, and  promotes a sense of calm and
 inner centering - where our real power lies.

Amazing!

"Shadow Love..."

Don't try to cover things over with a pretense of love...
a shadow love.

Just let things be as they are.
Your responsibility is to be real, authentic -
maintaining integrity.
There is great healing in this.
Maintain your integrity through authenticity.

Go beyond the shadow of love...

Don't allow love to be a pawn, manipulated by the
fingers of delusion,
misdirected energies and perceptions.

Don't aspire to love - but aspire to be real.

Be clear and transparent.

When love is just a covering,
an egoic pretense, it dissipates.
Let love dissipate to reveal what's beyond
love's shadow...

Don't be fooled by the magician's love.

There is something beyond "love"
as we define love.
It is Presence.
Being genuinely present from the place
of authenticity...

Love is that Presence living us...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2004

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Upon Waking - David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.....

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world
in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of
the morning window
toward the presence of everything that can be,
what urgency calls you to your one love?

[.....]

David Whyte
Excerpt from:
"What to Remember When Waking"

~*~

Photo - A sheer window curtain

Pain and "The Way of Things..."

The last few days I’ve become acquainted with pain and “the way of things” – as spiritual teacher Ram Dass calls it - which sounds much nicer than the dismissive phrase - “it is what it is” - that I have often heard in terms of the way life goes.

Today I was supposed to take my mother for her eye surgery.  But as it turned out my sister and husband had to take on that responsibility when my back went into spasm last Friday night, after another 3 hour doctor’s appointment with my mother and an hour’s drive on either end.  It was a pain worse than any I remember.  It went up the right side of the spine and around the right side of the rib cage.  Despite self-massage, back rubs, heat packs, ice packs, stretching, energy work, trying to find a comfortable position, praying my muscles would release their grip, the pain remained intense.  I finally gave in to pain medication at 5:10 am Saturday morning - after no sleep, and playing musical chairs all night.  The medication knocked me out for a couple of hours, leaving me feeling drugged – but the pain returned.  It wasn’t done with me yet…     

In the ensuing days I speculated that this must be my unconscious emotional resistance (and not so unconscious) J contracting against life as it is.  On the other hand, I thought, it may have simply been a matter of body mechanics, sitting in the car, and those uncomfortable waiting room chairs.  And on the other hand, if everything is exactly as it should be, then maybe this was a larger Universal Intelligence (which I would like to believe there is J) telling me I didn’t need to be in control, on top of things, always available, feeling responsible; that it was time to let go, to release this old role that tends to keep me in knots and a little “wired” as my mother and sister have recently alluded to, suggesting that my “presence” was not necessarily “helpful.” J That was an interesting reflection in the mirror. J

Or – just maybe – for the moment - it was just “the way of things”: Life playing Itself out as it does with no hidden meaning, agenda, or conclusion…  And yet I do feel like I was given an opportunity here to see things differently  – about myself and my assumed roles; as well as seeing the need to take care of myself both emotionally and physically and not try to be super woman for my family.  I also became aware that no matter how one *tries* to be “present” or helpful, if it cannot be done from a deep place of Presence, and only comes from the place of personality/ego, then it’s best to just back out of the way…  In this case, I was literally “taken out” – for whatever reason.

Pain has an interesting way of bringing us to our knees, dissolving defense mechanisms, and our self image: those lofty *ideas* we have of ourselves, like being “spiritual” or “helpful” or “present”, demanding that we surrender to the moment as it is – to look at things as they really are, including ourselves and how others see us – and being willing to see the truth of it.  Although will have to say I wasn’t that philosophical about it at the time.  I had no higher thoughts of “spirituality.”  I was just a person in pain, in the immediate experience of pain, tyring to do my best to ride the wave: sometimes resisting the pain, and sometimes remembering to breathe into the experience, allowing it to be what it was in the moment.   Resisting, allowing, resisting, allowing, again and again and again, all the while taking my pain medication with gratitude J, until the muscles finally let go of their grip - yesterday.  *I* was not the one “letting go.”  No matter how I *tried* to control the letting go by trying to relieve the pain, it had its own way, and its own time evidently.

And so it goes…  Pain, family dynamics, and life in the moment…  The way of things…

Allow

by Danna Faulds

“There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado.
Dam a stream,
and it will create a new channel.
Resist, and the tide will sweep you
off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry you
to higher ground.
The only safetly lies in letting it all in –

the wild with the weak;
fear, fantasies, failures and successes.
When loss rips off the doors
of the heart,
or sadness veils your vision
with despair,
practice becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being,
the whole world is revealed
to your new eyes.”

~

Photo:

Rain on screen through window
looking out at the back yard

The Sea of Unconsciousness

Sometimes I feel like I’m swimming in the Sea of Unconsciousness. Being so engaged with my sister over the last 6 weeks, after her “accident,” has been an eye-opener you might say. It’s given me a fly-on-the-wall view of the play of the unconscious with its drama, and what happens when we are unwilling to “wake up” and not continue to sleep-walk through life. It has given me a clearer perspective of how we are “victimized” by our unwillingness to “wake up” – “victimized” (I hate this word) by our own unconscious behaviors – and how this sleepwalking keeps us from making the appropriate choices - like acting on our own behalf. Choices that I don’t think we abdicate when we “wake up” and become more conscious of who we really are. We still have to make life choices. And sometimes that requires a “fierce presence” with the way things are – the way things “go down” you might say.

In this Sea of Unconsciousness, where we don’t *recognize* the Inner Being, the True Self, the Knowing Awareness that we are, we allow others and “the system” (whatever system you want to refer to, including the ego-system) to determine our lives, and the outcomes. We pay the consequences of our unconscious behavior – and that of others as well. In this Ocean of Unawareness we ignore the “wake-up calls” – or at least try to sidestep them and return to our comfort zone. I’ve seen my sister do this on a number of occasions – pretending that “the system” will take care of everything and this (experience) will all go away. Then feeling victimized by “the system” when “the system” doesn’t work on her behalf, because it actually requires that she *do* something on her own behalf – like asking pertinent questions, finding out what is required of her, answering important phone calls, returning voice messages, and submitting applications that will help her pay her hospital and doctor bills….

Not acting on one's own behalf creates incredible drama and a victim story that goes something like: this shouldn’t be happening to me and I shouldn’t *have* to deal with this or *do* anything about it because “*he* did this to me!” - not recognizing our own unconscious behaviors that got us into this situation in the first place.

Being present with life as it is seems very different than allowing the unconscious to drive our decisions…

BEING with life as it is – consciously - is different than just “going with the flow” of the drama of life – with the usual maneuvers of avoidance, resistance and denial when life doesn’t flow the way we want and we don’t want to face what we need to face – further perpetuating the unconscious sleep walk – falling back into familiar patterns.

I have always thought that significant emotional events, traumatic events, change people – wake us up. Sometimes this has been my personal experience. But what I’ve also observed is that initially, when one is feeling wounded, traumatized and vulnerable, there seems to be this inner urge to live life differently, to make necessary changes. People seem to soften, become more open and receptive. But over time, as healing happens, as one begins to “recover” from the wounds of trauma – whether physical or emotional, or both - the personality mechanism takes over again and there is a slow sinking back into the Sea of Unconsciousness - the habitual unconscious behavior patterns that have created the drama to begin with.

We were also the” experiencers” (I refuse to use the word “victim”) of others’ unconscious behavior this week. My husband’s car was broken into Sunday night and a lot of his video equipment for his business was stolen. Another wake up call you might say – to become conscious – to be more aware, to not be so careless with what is left exposed in the car - the practical stuff of life; the no-brainer stuff. But also a “wake-up call” for my husband to move through life differently – with more awareness, to pay attention to his direction in life, to what he really values in life, to not leaving himself vulnerable and exposed, to not being taken advantage of, to not letting the unconsciousness of others determine his direction. (All the things I’ve been learning with my sister as well.) The freaky part – they took our garage door opener. They know where we live. That triggered my unconscious stuff about feeling vulnerable, unsafe and needing to be vigilant – which is not a bad thing really, as long as I don’t take it into hyper-vigilance and allow the anxiety to create more drama and trigger the unconscious need to control. (Although I have to admit – my pattern is that when there is a crisis I usually go into control mode.) Both these experiences have certainly given me an opportunity, an invitation really, to practice awareness, to be present and to *live* from a place of Presence - not fear; to not let the unconscious – mine and others - determine how I move through life. And, to act on my own behalf when needed.

In this Sea of Unconsciousness experience I’ve been noticing where I am still sleepwalking through life, where I don’t want to look, to wake up. Through this experience it has become clear that I want to accept the invitation to see those places within myself that want to stay asleep, that want to hide in the shadows of my psyche. I want to accept the challenge to not engage in the drama of the unconscious – mine or others. Not an easy task. There are many undertows and riptides to pull me back in. The gravitational pull of the unconscious is very strong…

But so is this urge to “be fully awake” - to *live* fully awake…