"Downtime" - Rod MacIver

A crucial consideration in creating a [creative and authentic] life,
 is downtime.  By downtime I don't mean just time away from
the work.  I don't mean time to run errands or time to watch TV,
but time for reflection and solitude.  Time to let your mind
just wander to wherever it wants to go.  Time to absorb whatever
messages the larger universe might want to send.  Time to give
the messages deep inside your inner world an opportunity
to bubble up.

Without downtime [solitude], and it does require discipline and
planning, you lose touch with yourself.  You lose perspective on
the challenges of your life, and they start to take over.  You lose
access to your creative juice.  You may think that what you are
doing is dealing with pressing issues, and that those issues are so
important that you can't afford time away, but the message your
inner world will receive is that it is not valued.  It will then
retreat, and your [creative] work, your life, will lose power.

All the major setbacks in my life have come after a protracted
period of addressing pressing issues and not taking time off to
relax my mind and gain perspective.

Rod MacIver
Artist 
Heron Dance

~

Photo from the Internet

Happy July :)

Has anyone got an igloo I can use ?

LOLOLOLOL

 

Insanity...

My face hurts
Maybe from the mask I wear
that belies a deeper truth;
that hides the scream I feel inside,
and a piece of my Soul that has died;
and the clenched fist in my gut - anticipating
the evening's chaos -
by the sound of ice clinking in a glass;
and the heart's deep ache
for my True Life not being lived.

It withered in the daily madness of the drama of
"the visitor" in my house that I am captive in;
dancing too close to the edge
of my sanity...

I must reclaim the authentic Life hidden inside
this dance with the dark.
"It's time to turn the lights on!" and clearly see
what's really going on here.
And free myself from this insanity...

Mystic Meandering
May 23, 2023

The line in the last stanza:
"It's time to turn the lights on!" is
from Sarah Carlson's poem - Apple Blossoms and Snowflakes.
The words were spoken by her 2 year old grandson :)

What a wonderful metaphor to see clearly...

~

When we don't see clearly there is insanity...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Broken...

I'm going to hang a shingle out -

"Not Available Today
Taking Care of Myself.
And don't ask me about tomorrow..."

We'll see how far I get with that.

I'm finally being honest with myself,
and everybody else - well almost...

Is this unloving, uncompassionate;
to save one's sanity;
to not put others first;
to not be self-sacrificing...

I finally "let go" of having to be available,
trying to be available
I finally just stopped...

No more clenched teeth,
no tight jaw -
well almost
Tension drains from the body...
I stare into nothing

But it didn't last...
The "hungry ghosts" kept gnawing at me
with their crises...

~

Numbing sleep is wearing off...
And the ache in the stomach is
coming back, or maybe it's hunger -
or maybe I just can't stomach life the way it is anymore...

I cannot engage in life "as it is" anymore.
"Acceptance" of it is only cursory, momentary.
There are no "magic keys."

A change is needed...

Life as it is, as I'm living it, is a spirit killer
and I can't apply more "spiritual band aids"
- I bleed right through them.

~

So here I am in bed - waiting
for a different life to rise up within me;
one that nurtures and sustains me...

I'm  not able to attend to life,
I need Life to attend to me...
Is this self-centered, narcissistic,
indulging in my dark side?

Or Life-centered...
I don't know...

I only know I'm broken...
Coming face to face with my brokenness...

Although the "spiritual pundits" will
tell me "I" can't be broken;
that somewhere within there is an
"unbrokenness" that can't be broken;
once found, never lost.

But the broken pieces are still there...

So I'm embracing my brokenness
and letting it be real,
letting it be seen - no longer hidden
behind "spiritual words."

"Not Available"
"Broken"

Mystic Meandering

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Mysterious Engagement - Terence McKenna

Do not dwell in the mistakes of the past.  Do not lose yourself
in the castles of the future and do not give your authenticity
away to experts, gurus, government commissions, bosses,
wives, mates - take back your mind and body and begin to
engage with the fact that you are alive, you are going to die.
Nobody knows what being alive is and nobody knows what
dying is.  You're involved in a mysterious engagement where
every living moment presents you with mystery, opportunity,
and wonder.  There is no mundane dimension, really.  If you
have the eyes to see it, it's all transcendental. 

Terence McKenna

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo by Cate Kerr
Beyond the Fields We Know

 

Retrieving Joy - Matt Licata

 Many of us have lost the capacity to access and embody
"positive" experiences, such as contentment, pleasure,
creativity, empathy, and connectedness.

Some of us have even disconnected from the simple
experience of joy, a spontaneous sense of elation at
being alive.  I was once working with a man who was
suffering from depression.  What we discovered during
our time together was how unsafe it was for him to
express joy, how the experience of simple delight
became tangled in his nervous system with danger
and the likelihood of incredibly painful rupture with
critical figures in his life.

There were times we would become aware of his very
simple, childlike causeless joy coming to the surface...
We were able to explore it together.  Slowly and safely.
With no judgment or shame.  Repairing those broken
circuitries of love, empathy, presence and warmth.

Being together in this...he came to see how he had
equated feeling full of life and natural states of delight,
interest, play, and spontaneity with being judged and
rejected.  Over some time, he began to unwind this
organization and was able to slowly re-awaken and
touch the natural joy he had disconnected from at
an earlier time in his life.

To retrieve the lost joyous little boy and girl is an
act of love, really,not only for one's self but for all
of life.

Matt Licata, Ph.D.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

Personal Note: It may seem strange to post about joy when
so many are still suffering from the ongoing pandemic and
the craziness still occurring in this country culturally, socially,
and politically...  It sometimes feels as if our "natural joy" has
been suffocated by a systemic entropy.  I'm still feeling a bit
unsettled from getting emotionally caught by the violent chaos
and rhetoric, and the realization that what has been, the
"scaffolding" of social order, is collapsing - right before our eyes...

And yet, internal "joy" comes - occasionally - and goes...
In the midst of it all - an unexpected causeless joy...

and with that
Gratitude for living
arises from within...

_/\_

MM

Eccentricity - Nick Bantock

Eccentricity is underrated.  I'm not talking about the, Look
at me, I'w wearing strange clothes and waving my arms
around trying to get attention, sort of behavior, but a kind
of eccentricity that frees-up people to be individuals,
rather than nodding clones.

Being a genuine eccentric means.....your mind passes
into new territory.  And once you've entered that unique
space, staying with it, and not worrying how others may
interpret your preoccupation...

It takes courage to open your eyes wide and express
what you see and feel in a way that gives you and others
the permission to articulate, create and challenge the tired
norms that neuter and suffocate...

After all, what do you have to lose?  And think what there
is to gain, if not a world of possibility.

Nick Bantock
Facebook

via - Donna Iona Drozda

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

On Being Authentic - Elizabeth Lesser

The irony of hiding the dark side of our humanness is that our
secret is not really a secret at all.  How can it be when we're all
safeguarding the very same story?  That's why Rumi calls it an
Open Secret.  It's almost a joke - a laughable admission that each
one of us has a shadow self - a bumbling, bad-tempered twin.
 Big surprise!  Just like you, I can be a jerk sometimes.  I do
 unkind, cowardly things, harbor unmerciful thoughts, and
mope around when I should be doing something constructive. 
Just like you, I wonder if life has meaning; I worry and fret
 over things that I can't control; and I often feel overcome
 with a longing for something I cannot even name.  For all of
 my strengths and gifts, I am also a vulnerable and insecure
 person, in need of connection and reassurance.  This is
the secret I try to keep from you, and you from me, and in
doing so, we do each other a grave disservice.

Rumi tells us that the moment we accept what troubles we've
 been given, the door will open.  Sounds easy, sounds attractive,
but it is difficult, and most of us pound on the door to freedom
 and happiness with every manipulative ploy save the one that
actually works.  If you're interested in the door to the heavens
opening, start with the  door to your own secret self.  See what
 happens when you offer to another a glimpse of yourself.  Start
slowly. Without getting dramatic, share the simple dignity of 

yourself  in each moment - your triumphs and your failures, your
 satisfaction and your sorrow. Face your embarrassment at being
human, and you'll uncover a deep well of passion and compassion.
  It's a great power, your Open Secret.  When you heart is undefended
you make it safe for whomever you meet to put down his/her
burden  of hiding, and then you both can walk through the
 open door.

Elizabeth Lesser

from: Broken Open

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Sound of The Genuine - Howard Thurman

There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for
the sound of the genuine in yourself.  And if you cannot hear it,
you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching,
and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that
you had never been born...

You are the only you that has ever lived;
your idiom [your unique signature]  is the only idiom of its
kind in all of existence and if you cannot hear the sound of the
genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the
ends of strings that somebody else pulls...

There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of
the genuine in yourself, and sometimes there is so much traffic going
on in your minds, so many different kinds of signals, so many vast
impulses floating through your organism that go back thousands of
generations, long before you were even a thought in the mind of
creation, and you are buffeted by these, and in the midst of all of this
you have got to find out.....Who you are...  How the sound of
the genuine come through to you...

The sound of the genuine is flowing through you.  Don't be deceived
and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams,
your ambitions, so that you don't hear the sound of the genuine in you,
because that is the only true guide that you will ever have, and if you
don't have that you don't have a thing.

You may be famous.  You may be whatever the other ideals are which
are part of this generation, but you know you don't have the foggiest
notion of who you are, where you are going, what you want.
Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in
yourself.

Now there is something in everybody that waits and listens for the
sound of the genuine in other people.  And it is so easy to say that
anybody who looks like him or her, anybody who acts as this person
acts, can't hear any sound of the genuine.  I must wait and listen for
the sound of the genuine in you.  I must wait.  For if I cannot hear it,
then in my scheme of things, you are not even present.  And everybody
wants to feel that everybody else knows that she is there.

There is something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine
in your mother, in your father, in the people you can't stand, and if
you had the power you would wipe them out.  But instinctively you
know that if you wipe them out, you go with them.  So you fight for
your own life by finding some way to get along with them without
killing them.

There is something in you that waits and listens for the sound of the
genuine in other people.  And if you can't hear it, then you are
reduced by that much.  If I were to ask you what is the thing that you
desire most in life, you would say a lot of things off the top of your
 head, most of which you wouldn't believe but you would think that
you were saying the things that I thought you ought to think
 that you should say.

But I think that if you were stripped of whatever there is in you that is
literal and irreducible, and you tried to answer that question, the
answer may be something like this: I want to feel completely
vulnerable, completely naked, completely exposed and absolutely
 secure... [i.e. to be my Authentic Self].

This is what you look for in your children [if] you have them, this is
what you look for in your husband if you get one.  That I can run the
risk of radical exposure and know that the eye that beholds my
vulnerability will not step on me.  That I can feel secure in my
 awareness of the active presence of my own [uniqueness].

So as I live my life then, this is what I am trying to fulfill.  It doesn't
matter whether I become a doctor, lawyer, housewife.  I'm secure
because I hear the sound of the genuine in myself and having learned
to listen to that, I can become quiet enough, still enough, to hear the
sound of the genuine in you.

Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if I hear the sound
of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come
up in you.  So that when I look at myself through your eyes having
made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall
that separates and divides will disappear and we will become as one,
because the sound of the genuine makes the same music.

Howard Thurman

from a 1980 commencement speech at Spelman College

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

"Don't ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come
alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people
who have come alive..."

Howard Thurman

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
The inside of a large earthenware pot
digitally colored...

The Code of Authentic Living - Joan C. King

Physics teaches us that, at its essence, everything is energy.
We are beings of energy.  A mysterious life force, made up of
the Source Energy that reverberates within each molecule is
in every cell of the body.

Source Energy animates every living being and [is] eternally
creative, ever seeking new dimensions, relentlessly pursuing
new expressions...

Source Energy is our link to the creative energies of the
Universe.  We thrive when our actions and interactions are
aligned with the energy that animates and sustains our cells.

Out of the Source Energy of the Void, the energy that powers all
creation, the energy that resonates within our cells, something
new is being born at every transition in life...  A new reality is
unfolding from the field of possibility.  At moments of transition,
the vortex of creative energy that is our life force is activated.
Its waves carry the blueprint that informs every new aspect of
our lives.  If we surrender to the vortex of energy Cellular Wisdom
will direct us on a path that leads to emerging new dimensions of
our lives...

We cannot find this energy in our minds, because our thoughts
are not our actual experience.

Any journey within leads, paradoxically, to heightened awareness
of the expansive energy which permeates all life.  The energy
that we encounter when we look inside ourselves is the same
energy that guides the movement of the heavenly spheres - the
stars, galaxies, universes.  Each living being has a characteristic
profile of energy frequencies expressed within his or her body, but
our spirits are not confined by physical limits.  Our individual
energies pulse in and out of the sea of all energy...  When we tap
into that confluence of energy we arise renewed, knowing that
the energies in our bodies are moving within the harmonies of
vast cosmic music.  There's nothing that you have to do to earn
the presence of Cellular Wisdom [i.e. Source Energy], for it is
nothing less than the essence of who you are.

Joan C. King
From - The Code of Authentic Living

~

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for
the sound of the genuine in yourself.  It is the only true guide
you will ever have.  And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your
life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.

Howard Thurman

~

Photo - Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering
2012

Authentically You - V. Erickson, Nepo & MM

Often times, a person will think they know you by piecing
together tiny facts and arranging those pieces into a puzzle
that makes sense to them.  If we don't know ourselves
very well, we'll mistakenly believe them, and drift toward
where they tell us to swim, only to drown in our own
confusion.

Here's the truth: It's important to take the necessary steps
to find out who You are [our True Beingness] because
you hold endless depths below the surface of a few facts
and pieces and past decisions.  You aren't only the ripples
that others can see.  You are made of the Ocean...

Victoria Erickson
Author of - Edge of Wonder

~

What it really comes down to is the clearness of heart
to stop defining who you are by those who have hurt you
and to take up the risk to love:
to live at the vibrant edge
of being spirit in the world
exploring the intoxicating quandaries
of being alive,
accepting the grace of our
humanness...

Mark Nepo
From - The Exquisite Risk:
Daring to Live an Authentic Life

~

It's about being enlivened from within;
being fiercely true to the core of our Being:
Compassion, Love and Pure Aliveness...

Open to how That wants to express ItSelf -
allowing the Dynamic Mystery that we are
to express ItSelf from deep within...
Not needing to take a stand on anything,
but finely attuned to the Heart of Love -
discovering a deeper Wisdom...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Sept 2016

~

Art - Craypas Oils
done with fingers

2012

The Madman - Kahlil Gibran & Balthazar

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a
house-top cried, "He is a madman."  I looked up to behold
him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time.
For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my
soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my
masks no more.  And as if in a trance I cried,"Blessed,
blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

Kahlil Gibran

~

In an insane world you must be mad to be sane.  In an
upside down world true sanity appears as strange and
dangerous.  Things are so backwards that it seems impossible
to be happy, that it seems dangerous to love, that it seems as
madness to be honest and authentic.

In this absurd world the only thing that makes any sense is to
be radically authentic to ones self - even if it is the opposite
of society.

The Madman

The one who unquestioningly follows their heart is a madman.
The one who unfailing listens to the soul and heeds its urgings
is the madman.

The madman is dangerous - not that he will physically hurt you,
but he will shatter your illusions.  He is unpredictable, wild and
untamed.  You will feel uneasy around him because he does not
prop up your house of lies.

She cannot be contained or influenced.  You cannot bribe her
with money or status.  You cannot control her through fear or
desire.

The madman loves his madness, he does not reject it.  For he
knows that his madness is his treasure, is his very life-force
itself.  Only the twinkle in his eye betrays the chaotic
kosmos within.

He is mad precisely because he is not mad.
She is utterly natural, spontaneous, unburdened, innocent.

The mind is insane.  Society is insane.  And the mind is
society's conditioning in you.

"Normal" is to be profoundly inwardly sick.  Beneath nearly
everyone's smiley mask is a mount of pain, fear, sorrow anger,
anxiety, neuroticism, and insanity.  Everyone you see is a
dormant walking volcano that only doesn't erupt because
they have learned to suppress their inner energies.

It is the mind which is truly insane - the mind acting without
the lead of the heart and soul.

The Freedom of Madness

A man needs a healthy dose of madness, else he will never
do anything.....real.  If you want to be truly alive and truly
free you must be mad.

Mad to be oneself,
And mad enough to lose oneself.

Mad enough to risk everything for freedom, for truth,
for the heart, for love.

Mad enough to lose all respectability if it means staying
true to life and oneself.

Learn to love your madness, your primordial chaos.
Dare to be ecstatic, dare to be untamed.

Dare to be the Madman.

Excerpts from "The Madman"
Seth Balthazar

via - No Mind's Land

~

Art - "The Mask"
Mystic Meandering
Craypas oils
2009

An Infinite Number of New Beginnings - Jeff Foster

In your attempt to be an 'adult',
you lose touch with your inner child.
In your rush to b the 'expert',
you disconnect from the amateur you,
the inner lover, innocent and wild.

In your quest for security,
your run from insecurity,
bury your anxiety, crush your doubts,
until one day they explode all over the place,
and make a mess of your nice, 'ordered' life.

Don't confuse the role you play
with who you truly are.
Don't confuse the adaptation with the actor,
the changing weather with the vastness of sky.

Your true identity lies in Presence...
And wonder.
And creativity.
And an infinite number of new beginnings.

Each moment.
Each canvas.
Each Now.

Jeff Foster

~

Jupiter, Venus, Moon - June 2015

Balance - Ursula Le Guin

Do you see how an act is not like a rock that one picks up
and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it.

When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears
it heavier.  When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond,
and where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed.
On every act the balance of the whole depends.
The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light,
all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do,
is well done, and rightly done.  All these act within the
Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's
sounding, to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight,
all they do is done within the balance of the whole.

But we... we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and
the wind do of their own nature.  We must learn to keep the
balance.  Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance.
Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.

Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore

via - Beyond the Fields We Know

~

Maybe we just need to keep learning how to live with each other
in a balanced way...

MM

~

The stars are like letters which inscribe themselves at every
moment in the sky.  All things depend on each other.
Everything breathes together.

Plotinus
CE 204/5-270

~

Photo - Funky art with "Scratch and Sketch Artist's Tile."
Represents balance, but also - how everything we do or
say reverberates out, affecting all beings...

Being Authentic - Elizabeth Lesser

The irony of hiding the dark side of our humanness is that our
secret is not really a secret at all.  How can it be when we're all
safeguarding the very same story?  That's why Rumi calls it an
Open Secret.  It's almost a joke - a laughable admission that each
one of us has a shadow self - a bumbling, bad-tempered twin.
Big surprise!  Just like you, I can be a jerk sometimes.  I do unkind,
cowardly things, harbor unmerciful thoughts, and mope around
when I should be doing something constructive.  Just like you,
I wonder if life has meaning;  I worry and fret over things that I
can't control; and I often feel overcome with a longing for
something that I cannot even name.  For all of my strengths and
gifts, I am also a vulnerable and insecure person, in need of
connection and reassurance.  This is the secret I try to keep from
you, and you from me, and in doing so, we do each other a grave
disservice.

Rumi tells us that the moment we accept what troubles we've been
given, the door will open.  Sounds easy, sounds attractive, but it is
difficult, and most of us pound on the door to freedom and happiness
with every manipulative ploy save the one that actually works.  If
you're interested in the door to the heavens opening, start with the
door to your own secret self.  See what happens when you offer to
another a glimpse of who you really are.  Start slowly.  Without
getting dramatic, share the simple dignity of yourself in each moment -
your triumphs and your failures, your satisfaction and your sorrow.
Face your embarrassment at being human, and you'll uncover a deep
well of passion and compassion.  It's a great power, your Open Secret.
When you heart is undefended you make it safe for whomever you
meet to put down his/her burden of hiding, and then you both can
walk through the open door.

Elizabeth Lesser
from: Broken Open

~

...the person you think of as "yourself" exists only in you, and
even you don't really know who that is.  Every person you meet,
have a relationship with, or make eye contact on the street with,
creates a version of "you" in their heads.  You're not the same
person to your mom, your dad, your siblings, [that] you are to
your coworkers, your neighbors, or your friends.  There are a
thousand different versions of yourself out there, in people's minds.
A "you" exists in each version, and your "you", "yourself", isn't really
"someone" at all.

Commentary on a chapter in a book called
One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
by Luigi Pirandello