Balance: Noticing the Opposites - iRest

Artist- Puisi

Our experience always changes.  We have idealized
expectations of what we think life is supposed to be.
Life will do what life does, despite trying to
control our experience.

Balance is born out of transformative embrace of the
fullness of life in its ups and downs, not dependent
upon on external life circumstances.

Flow with the waves of life, noticing the *sensations*
in the body, exploring the opposites in the body,
the heaviness and lightness; feeling both sensations
in the body at the same time; as well as opposite
emotions and beliefs.

Every experience has an opposite.
Once explored and underlying sense of well-being
and ease can shine through, a true balance emerges.

Trying to control our experience [causes stress],
instead set life free to be what it is through allowing
life to be as it is, in balance and harmony with the
opposites, through the simplicity of noticing.

From an iRest meditation
from a free meditation series
through the iRest Institute

~

Photo - Art by Puisi

 

The Ocean and The Wave - Fred LaMotte

...a wave does not need to go anywhere to merge with the sea.
No distance ever exists between the wave and the water.  At
it's peak, the wave may appear to be an individual, but at its
base, every wave is already the whole ocean.  Therefore, no
energy is required for a wave to return to its resting state. As 

the wave returns, in fact energy increases.  The practice of
meditation is not an effort to rise upward: it is settling down
to rest in the simplest state.

Meditation is not concentration, but de-concentration.
When the wave settles into the sea, it does not become
more concentrated, but gracefully expands into boundlessness.

Returning to the sea, a wave makes a gentle sound, sizzling
cool, fresh over sand.  As mind settles back into Source, there
is a faint whisper: the sound of the finite dissolving into the
Infinite...

Real meditation is not an attempt to rise above the physical
body.  Meditation is listening to what the body actually is:
infinite spiritual energy.  For every photon and atom of the 
body is permeated with the same creative sound - waves merging
with the sea...

The sea whispers in the wave:
so the Almighty whispers in every particle of the body.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance
excerpt from his post:
"What the Ocean Whispered to the Wave"

~

Photo from the Internet

~

Day 4 of "The Pause"

 

Trust...

Religion is a vehicle;
Spirituality is a vehicle;
Metaphysics is a vehicle;
A Guru/Teacher is a vehicle;
Quantum Physics is a vehicle;
Creativity and Art is a vehicle;
Yoga and Meditation is a vehicle;
and maybe Psychology is a vehicle;
tending to our traumas and wounds;
Maybe telling our stories of challenge
and difficulty is also a vehicle for us to
discover what is true for ourselves...

We don't have to follow a prescribed path,
or one teacher, or one way, or one story, but
use all "ways" to access the truth of existence;
the truth of your Being...

Life itself is the vehicle...

Trust your own way...
Trust your own experience...

Sometimes that means we have to go to the
darker places within for the truth to be revealed...

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 21, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Thousand Ways to Pray - Fred LaMotte

Smiling we know
is a form of meditation.
Weeping is also a prayer.
Worry is beseeching
the Whirler of All
for the things you don't want.
When you are angry or bitter,
the purest devotion is your belly
without naming it.
Let the fire of outrage
burn a hold through your forehead.
This is profound samadhi.
Be the thole.
Yes, there are ten thousand
ways to pray.
Today is sacred
because the planets are ajar.

Your horoscope looks like
the web of a spider
who fell into a plastic
Starbuck's cup
and imbibed caffeine.
The little dipper spills
mad lukewarm light,
making your plans collapse.
Your mind says, "everything 
is going wrong,"
but your gut just savors
the bitter, the salt, the sweet,
the flavor of a rainy sidewalk.

Be patient with indigestion, friend.
It is the sum of all prime numbers
dissolving in the taste 
of silence.

Angels of dust sprinkle themselves
over your cauldron of moon-blood.
Your mind gives up its pasquinade,
the falsetto soliloquy of reason
which is only the echo
of a voice that stopped speaking
before you were born.
Finally you can fall
into this breath,
the breath of grieving,
sighing, murmuring "yes"

to the dark.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

If you pray because
you believe it will
change the earth,
don't waste this
precious breath.
If you pray because
your mind is at war
with the way things are,
then solve your mind,
not the world.

Fred LaMotte

 

Meditation- LaMotte & Chopra

Real meditation does not 'by-pass' pain. Meditation
penetrates into the nectar of pain.  Meditators do not
rise above pain, they surrender to its core.  At the center
of pain is the flowering of boundless energy.  Ananda isn't
a passing mood or a temporary emotional state.
Ananda is the juice of pure Existence.
It glows in the dark, the beyond within.  Transcendence is
not above.  It is the hollow in the seed.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Meditation isn't something otherworldly.  It is quite natural
and effortless.  Meditation mode exists in everyone.

Meditation is a journey, not just a calm break from one's
daily routine.  It's an inner journey of "waking up" (becoming
more conscious, more aware).  It affects every aspect of your
well-being.

There is a difference between shallow silence and deep silence.
Deep silence takes you deep into silent Awareness - reconnecting
to the totality of Consciousness.

As meditation unfolds you see that Existence can take care of you.
"Life"/Consciousness always knows what to do.

Deepak Chopra

Excerpts from: Total Meditation

~

Anxiety, fear, trauma, stress cause us to be out of focus with
the Sacred within, and we become distressed.  We have to keep
refocusing on the Sacred within - often through meditation -
allowing the Sacred Energies to embody us...

Be at peace...

Everything is taken care of...
No need to worry or stress about anything.
Everything is "covered" (taken care of)
forever and ever...

Focus only on the Sacred Energies
at the Core of your Being...
There is nothing you can do...

Trust the Energies...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Sept. 17, 2021

~

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

Weight Shift - Ram Dass

If we can imagine a wheel whose rim is the cycle of births and deaths,
all of the 'stuff' of life, conditioned reality, and whose center is
perfect flow, formless no-mind, the Source, we've got one foot with
most of our weight on the circumference of the wheel, and one foot
tentatively at the center.

That's the beginning of awakening.  And we come in, and we sit and
meditate, and suddenly there's a moment when we feel the perfection
of our Being and our connection.  Then our weight goes back on the
outside of the wheel. Over and over and over, this happens.

Slowly, slowly the weight shifts.  Then the weight shifts just enough
so that there is a slight predominance on the center of the wheel, and
we find that we naturally just want to sit down and be quiet, that we
don't have to say , "I've got to meditate now," or "I've got to read a
holy book." or "I've got to turn off the television set," or "I've got to
do... anything."  It doesn't become that kind of discipline anymore.
The balance has shifted.

And we keep allowing our lives to become more and more simple,
more and more harmonious.  And less and less are we grasping at
this or pushing that away...

[We are no longer trying to make anything happen.]

Ram Dass

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - digitalized Mandala Art

2013

To Meditate or not to Meditate - Amoda Maa

To meditate... or not to meditate?

Is a dedicated mediation practice the only road to
"enlightenment"... or is the direct rout of recognizing
"what is already free" a better way?  Should all effort be
put into achieving a "higher state of consciousness?... or is
it best to simply let go of any effort to do anything at all?

If I discipline myself to meditate, should I sit (preferably
cross-legged) once a day... or is it twice or maybe three times?
And should I watch my breath... or is it my thoughts, or my
sensations?  Maybe I should chant in Sanskrit... or Hindi or
Japanese?  Maybe I should repeat the sacred OM from my heart...
or is my belly a better place?  Maybe I should send loving
thoughts in every out-breath... or visualize golden light from
my third eye?  Maybe I should try to focus on the gaps between
thoughts... or maybe I should just try to stop thinking all together?

And if I make no effort, how do I "awaken"?  Isn't there something
I need to do?  How do I transcend thinking?  How do I shift into an
"awakened state?"  Maybe if I read enough books or listen to enough
spiritual teachers, I will "get it"?

To meditate... or not to meditate?  The question is a conundrum
to the mind that seeks satisfaction.  The mind seeks a definitive
answer, as if this would bring an end to mind's unease.  The
personhood seeks certainty, as if the certainty of "spiritual
progress" would bestow a badge of worthiness or specialness.

But the question of meditation cannot be answered by the mind.
It can only be realized when Silence has become the bedrock of
your life.  This Silence is not about closing the doors, turning off
the phone and lighting candles.  Nor is it to do with trying to get
rid of your thoughts [or your ego, or the notion of I/me]...
or imagining the perfect sanctuary of peace.

This Silence happens when you stop giving attention to the
narratives that wrap themselves around your experience of reality.

This Silence happens when you turn towards tenderness every time
an unwanted feeling enters your inner landscape.  This Silence
happens when you have surrendered all resistance to what is.
This Silence happens when you are no longer the center of your
universe, when you have become without a center and [you realize
that] the whole universe is in you.  Without resistance, there is
no inner conflict, no inner division, no outside and no inside, no
barrier and no boundary.

When you know your true nature as Silence, there is no need to
do meditation... [because] you ARE meditation.  True meditation
is a state of Being.  It is your natural open state, there is nothing to
move away from and nothing to move towards.  You are simply
and irrevocably here.  There is no longer a question... because
in Silence all questions fall away.

So, it is not about whether you meditate or not.  It's about whether
you can fall into the Silence that is always here prior to your
ideas of what meditation is, or what it can give you, or where
it can take you.  Whether you sit in deep stillness or whether you
are doing something in this world, [the requirements of daily living]
 this Silence is always here... it is in you as Being-ness [your inner
Beingness]. Beingness does not need to do meditation... 
It IS meditation...

I am often asked whether I meditate or not... and I sort of shake my
head, unable to give a definitive answer.  Did I used to do meditation?
Yes.  Until meditation swallowed me up and all that was left was
Silence.  Now the whole of life is meditation, without doing a practice,
without trying to get anywhere, without trying to change anything.
Now... I AM meditation.

So perhaps it is wise to ask a different question...  how can I meet
the world [live my daily life] as Silence?  Perhaps the question
will turn the mind around from its horizontal searching into the
verticality of Being that is always here.  And then you discover
what true meditation is...

Amoda Maa

with gratitude to Michel at No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Loss - Richard Wehrman

More and more he felt
that those things he thought
he controlled, those powers
he believed he once had, were
slipping away; his capacities
to do diminished, his thoughts
multiplied and went in their
own directions, his ability to
remain one-pointed, to
meditate, ended in sleep.  He
judged himself harshly, but
letting that go, he found he
ended up with less and less,
whereas when he was younger
his imagination told him, by
this time, he would be stronger,
more focused, accomplished
in wisdom and knowledge.
Yet here he was, a snowman
melting away.....
This black mood matched
the time of year, and that was
reassuring: to understand
that everything is stripped
away before anything new
can be born.

Richard Wehrman
from: Being Here

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Snow Bunny - eventually
took shelter in the brush
near the tree. 

Awakening From Our Illusions - Ivan Granger

I am so aware of how much frustration people feel over the dark
turn in politics in recent years.  As an American, how do I
understand the racist, proto-facist, violent forces emerging within
my own country?  At the same time, similar tendencies are
appearing in the UK, India, the Philippines,
and several other nations.

While harmful forces must be answered with courage in the public
arena, I want to suggest that there is something important happening
on another level, as well: an enforced awakening.

We are going through a collective process of disillusionment,

whether we like it or not.  We are being required to drop our illusions
and witness unpleasant truths, about ourselves [individually and
as a nation], and about the world around us.  We may ask: What
have we ignored that has allowed such fear and hatred to fester?  How
have our political and social systems become so damaged that the
are unresponsive to the needs of society?  What cruelties are encoded
in society that I have ignored or made excuses for?  How did we
imagine things were solid, when they are so fragile?  How can my
neighbor [or family members] believe such things, and what is
their hurt that I was blind to?  These are the questions we are
forced to ask now.

Painful though it may be, we can only be strengthened by the
process of disillusionment.  We want to drop our illusions.
We want to see things as they are...

As a meditative exercise we can look at the reality we see,
the terrible and the beautiful together, and just sit with it;
[just be with it internally, meditatively].  It may break our hearts,
but we can just sit with it.  It may overwhelm us with its
immensity, but we don't run, we don't seek to merely feel good.
Instead, we just sit with it. 
We allow ourselves to see and feel fully.
We watch our reactions to it, but are not hooked by them.
In this way, we begin to inhabit a bigger reality, a fuller reality.
Our personal sense of reality becomes more integrated and a
truer reflection of what actually is.  As we do this, we become more
capable of fashioning healthier lives and healthier societies.

When I stop trying to assert some idea of how reality should work,
and just really notice what is.....everything just opens up.  The heart
opens in unexpected ways, making healing possible where only
walls seemed to stand.  It's easy to think that reality is somehow
broken, but when we really look, we discover that we inhabit an
improbable wholeness instead.  It's not entirely logical amidst the
world's fear and suffering, but look for yourself and see.  Really see.
Seeing the full picture, our actions become more effective and lasting.
Looking honestly, we become capable of compassion and
connection, where there was only anger and hatred...

Ivan Granger
Excerpt from a commentary on a poem by Mary Sarton
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - taken from inside, reflecting objects in the room
in the window - giving the illusion of another reality...

Politics and Meditation - Fred LaMotte

The irony is this, that the greatest energy and healing we can
bring to our world today is not through political opposition,
not by feeding the polarization of energy between two sides,
and not by repeating the narrative of hate that each party
constructs about the other; vilifying each other...

This is precisely NOT the time to be swept into the negative
energy of party politics.  Let go of all such anxious thinking
and simply rest the mind in the Heart.
in the Heart is unity, not division.
The practice of meditation is a life-line to free our hearts
[and minds] from this endless strife and division.

When we practice the most ancient form of meditation, to
simply rest the mind in the Heart, we are practicing the most
radical politics.  We are dissolving the dysfunction and healing
the national wound.

The revolution is to breathe.  The radical act is to be present.
Rest the mind in the Heart.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

This of course doesn't mean that we don't have our opinons
about what is happening in our country, but I know that
"sitting meditation" helps me to keep perspective and calm the mind.
It is exquisitely depolarizing...  :)

Quietude - Dada Gavand

So we have to work with ourselves and go directly to that core,
to that center, to that root wherein lies the whole secret and mystery
of life.  You need not depend upon anyone, or on any book, in fact not
on anything that is outside.  Just be quiet into yourself.  There will not
be any thought to imagine or demand a thing.  Simply be quiet
with the total fund of energy within, and in such quietude you are
going to discover something new.  You will then experience what
humility is, and what innocence is.  The mind which is quiet into itself
is innocent, humble, transparent and open to discover that which is real.

Then you will know what meditation is.  Meditation is not the chanting
or singing of devotional songs, nor the repetition of any word or
phrase. You will then be in a state of total surrender,
alone within yourself.

You have to be really alone and anonymous to be with the inner spirit.
When you are somebody, you are related to the world, you belong to
the world.  And as long as you are of the world, you cannot move
toward the inner spirit; you will have no relationship with it.  So to
have a contact with the spirit, you will have to be alone, on your own.
Then you will get a helping hand from within.  The whole secret is to
come back into yourself by gathering all your energy, and to be there
in quietude and silence.  To be in silence is to be near one's own inner
spirit.

To be in such silence within is the highest form of prayer.  Prayer is not
chanting or singing praises to someone, nor asking and begging for
rewards of the other world.  Desires and supplication of thought on any
level are not prayers.  The silence of one's own total energy in the inner
domain is the true state of prayer.  Such prayer finds its own reward in
a very mysterious way.  The innate energy, when it regains its balance
and stillness, finds its own fulfillment...

Dada Gavand
East Indian Mystic

From: Beyond the Mind

via: No Mind's Land

~

Photo - two shadows on a wall
digitally colored

A Pause for Gratitude...

A Pause for Gratitude...

Gratitude for the Beauty of the Natural World

with its contrasts...

For the Joy of Imagination and Play

And Meditative Moments

For Moments with Mom - coloring

one of her mandalas

she is blind in one eye and losing her sight in the other
and yet she colors!

For Mystical Moments

And an unexpected November Rose

Whether you celebrate the American Thanksgiving or not,
may Peace, Joy, and Gratitude sit at your table today...
and every day...

Meditation and the self - Shinzen Young

...you can think of enlightenment as a kind of permanent shift
in perspective that comes about through direct realization
that there is no thing called "self" inside you.

Notice that I'm not saying that there is no self, but rather
no thing called a self.

Of course. there is certainly an activity inside you called
personality, and activity of the self.  But that is different
from a thing called the self.

Meditation changes your relationship to sensory experience,
including your thoughts and body sensations.  It allows you
to experience thoughts and body sensations in a clear
and unblocked way.  When the sensory experience of the
mind-body becomes sufficiently clear and uninhibited,
it ceases to be a rigid thing that imprisons your identity.

The sensory self becomes a comfortable home, not a jail cell.
That's why enlightenment is sometimes referred to as liberation.

You realize that the thingness of self is an artifact caused by
habitual nebulosity (cloudiness, haziness) and viscosity (density)
around your mind-body experience...

Shinzen Young
The Science of Enlightenment:
How Meditation Works

via: Markings

~

Photo - Amitabha
Buddha of Infinite Light,.
also called The Eternal Buddha

Rest Your Heart In Love - Fred LaMotte

The purest meditation is just to rest in Love...

Our love is often toward what we know to be God.
The "toward" of love is like an in-coming or out-going breath.
Its flow may proceed from my heart toward the Divine,
or from the Divine toward my heart,
until the two tides equalize in one serenity;
the silence between breaths... inhalation kisses exhalation.

Words cease.
  Prayer becomes deep meditation,
 and there is no more "toward"...
It is effortless repose through love, as love...
Just be with the formless feeling.
The little thread of formless love expands to fill the cosmos,
because it has no boundary, no image.
In a moment, you have captured the ocean of love
in the cup of your heart.

The tiniest thread, the faintest impulse of love,
is a breath of the Cosmic Mother,
felt as a sense of the heart.
Surrender to that subtle intuitive sensation,
without attaching any picture or face.
This ripple of affection will lead you to the sea.
Depth calleth unto depth.
In the formless abyss of love, one depth touches another.
The depth of God merges with the depth of You.

If images of an Avatar or a Master appear, let them.
They are delightful bubbles playing on the surface of
love's formless ocean.
They are all facets of one diamond,
 the brilliance of your divine heart.
Your heart is a little hologram that contains the cosmos,
the forms of every Avatar, every God or Goddess.

Whatever sadhana we practice, just rest in the heart,
filling the empty silence where thought used to be.
This silent glory [of Love] is the substance of creation itself,
suffusing every cell of the body.
Then it pours out through our eyes, our words, and our hands
in blessing...


Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Excerpts from a blog post.
Fred's words, my format.

Allow Everything Meditation - Adyashanti

In this form of meditation you are not leading the way,
you're not controlling.
It's almost like being a passenger in a car.

Instead of controlling your experience,
you're a passenger to your experience.

You're watching it and letting it be however it's going to be.
When you're more a passenger to your experience,
you can watch what naturally happens,
when you have no idea of what should happen
or where you're going.

You'll naturally come into more of a state of listening.
Listen, watch, see what happens.
Just allow awareness to flow wherever it wants to;
to be aware of whatever it wants to be aware of.

As you allow awareness to go where it wants,
rather than where you want it to go
it unwinds your thoughts, it unwinds your mind,
and your body.

So instead of seeing where you can direct awareness,
you're actually seeing where awareness will take you
when you let it go wherever it wants.

Nothing is held onto. Nothing pushed away.
Allow everything to take its natural course.

Make no effort to enhance or sustain anything.

Just have the notion that you will continue to allow
everything to be, as it is, as it wants to be,
and that you will continue to allow awareness
to go where it wants to go...

Adyashanti
An excerpt from his guided meditation.
from the CD set: "Spontaneous Awakening"
2005

Silence is Prayer - Zensho Wolfgang Kopp

Awareness of the Divine Essence as our innermost true Self
requires silence.
It is turning toward what lies hidden within -
to the internal - the all-embracing totality of Divine Being.
It is the way of meditation,
the way of inner silence before Spirit.

Remaining quiet before Spirit is a prayer of silence,
through which we listen to what secretly speaks to us
in the inner room of the heart.

What is hidden deep in our inner most being
 lies in silence and stillness,
and in the silence of the deep
springs the eternal, inexauastable, original
source of being.

Where words fall silent, the everlasting begins...

Wolfgang Kopp

From: Free Yourself of Everything

Beyond Words - Wu Hsin & La Motte

Silence is the most powerful instruction.
It is the global solvent in which all doubts
and questions dissolve…
It is the Silence that is eloquent,
not my words…

The Silence speaks louder than any words….
Words consistently fail to express the Ineffable…
Words produce concepts…

…bask in Silence and in so doing
discern the deeper meaning…
do not attempt to understand…

Let the words pass through you,
piercing through the mind and
through the intellect,
and returning to their true Source…

Excerpt from
Behind the Mind:
The Short Discourses
of Wu Hsin

God’s native language is silence.
To meditate is to listen to God’s words of silence,
God’s breath of silence…

[Meditative Silence] is the deepest prayer,
the deepest conversation,
like the movement of waters in the ground
before they spring up into light.
Meditation is not a mute silence,
an empty silence,
but a silence filled with the juice of mutuality,
the flow of yearning and love.

There are tides in silence.
There are voices in silence.
There is giving and receiving.
But there are no words.

This is the Mystery of our union with God.

Fred La Motte
Uradiance


Photos: Sunrise
taken by hubby

The Call to Silence...

Stepping over the threshold of another year (in time only J) I am feeling a call to Inner Silence even more strongly than usual - for the past few days especially, but even before that…  It is a call to Meditative Silence, a deep Cosmic kind of Silence that is the ground of our Being that permeates us all – and connects us all.  Spending time in deep Silence opens all the “channels” within to a deeper awareness of the Eternal Beingness that we all are…

I have not been honoring this call to Meditative Silence in the past year as much as I need to, living mostly on the surface of life much of the time, driven by life’s demands.  So I am re-committing myself to the deeper Rhythm of the Great Ocean of Silence within.  An illness this last month has given me the opportunity.  I start the morning before rising with a breath meditation, breathing into the Hara/Lower Dantian, following the movement of the silent Chi that flows through my body. I feel its expansiveness and its strength as I lay there.   Then I rise, and schlep downstairs to my chair at the window, if I don’t get distracted by blogging, emails, hubby or house. J

I quietly sit, following the breath again, bringing awareness to a deeper space of Silence within, until I am aware of what is Aware in me – the pure Awareness that just IS.  Deep Silence opens this field of Awareness beyond form. It is from this deep space of Silence that all life, all creativity, all expressions of Being - including “longing” and this sense of “me”, arise – and is where the Truth of Existence lies…

I know that many who are committed to the Truth of Being are feeling it too – this call to Meditative Silence – this need to commit to something deeper in our selves and in our lives – to dedicate ourselves to the ground of Being, whether we call it Silence, God, Emptiness, Consciousness, Love, or Truth. 

A call to Silence is a call hOMe…

May we all have a year of transformative Silence in our Inner Sanctuaries…

Giving birth to an open Heart…

“Listen with your Chi

Be open
Open Awareness takes over
letting everything come and go,
letting Reality flow in…

Give up your attachment to your self -
the constructed self.
Surrender to the inevitable
movement of The Way…”

Edward Slingerland
Professor of Asian Studies
University of British Columbia
Canada

Top Photo:  This wintry scene was created from frost formed on
 the window pane that was covered on the inside with a piece o
vellum.  The vellum has stars embossed on it. 

It's snowing stars!
The shadow of the frosty image was projected onto the back
of the vellum against the window by the afternoon sun.

The “woods” in the background are actually streaks on the window! :)

You can also see what looks like a pond in the middle.
It’s magic!