Solace...

What remains...
When all surface identities,
all beliefs and facades of truth have
proven to be untrue,
and the mental constructs begin to fail...
is a more authentic, softened, innocent perspective;
a simplified view of reality...

One begins to feel more,
viscerally,
the finer, subtler vibration
of the Ineffable;
which was here long before we were born...

There is no need to remember...

The mind and body may fail in their functions,
may still contract
around old thought and feeling impulses
of the brain...
But trust that the Ineffable in you
Remembers Its Origins...

So Rest...

Let the mind float...

Be still, aware...

Keep feeling...
Keep listening inwardly,
for the Music,
The Divine Rhythm,
the pulse of the Universe

playing subtly,
the original Rhythm of your pre-conceived life...

Find solace in the Rhythm
that plays you;

the Breath within the breath
that breathes you;
the Rhythm of
That which is
eternally Present in you;
That to which you have
devoted your
Heart...

Mystic Meandering
April 22, 2016

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Mind's Dreamscape...

Dream images pass through the mind -

stories, events, experiences,
of past, present and yet to come,
weaving their memories through
the vast vault of the brain;
chemicals playing with the neurons
and synapses.

Dramas of the dreamscape
come and go daily.
Thoughts from the mental kingdom
come and go second by second,
like coded messages keyed out over the
wires by a clerk in an abandoned
ghost town - long gone - long dead.

They are merely images of the mind -
only thoughts - surface activities
moving through the mechanism of time
with the speed and feel of electricity,
disturbing a tranquil stillness within
with static thought waves
that we take to be real,
lost in the dreamscape of the world,
spinning on the wheel of life,
believing the abstract mind.

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 24, 2005

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Pure Cosmic Joy...

Standing in the nakedness of new innocence,
at the edge of a swirling star-gate,
I prepare to step into a vastness beyond destiny.

Through the portal of the Cosmic Heart I came ~

My Soul catapulting me
Into an invisible Sanctity...
From the veils of illusion and shadow I emerged ~

Teetering on the rim of a Greater Reality ~
still unknown to me...

Fledgling at this Gateway of the Unknown.
Swaddled in a golden mantle of light.
Re-birthing my innocence in a twilight sleep of delight.
Bathed in the tranquil fluid of the Invisible Womb.
Awaiting re-birth...

Ready to surrender traditions of the mind,
beliefs, theories of knowing,
and all concepts of "reality" - that bind.
And enter a Greater Mystery
where my heart is free and mind is clear ~

Unencumbered by psychological dynamics
and densified fear.

No longer separate, fragmented and torn.
Sacred Union about to be re-born.
Light of Light, Heart of Heart.
Matter and Spirit merge in
star-kissed cosmogony 

Where everything is seen as "The Mystery" ~

And Love is understood in its entirety ~
Fulfilled in the simplicity of just Being...

Pure Cosmic Joy...

Mystic Meandering
Aug. 25, 2000

~

Photo - from the James Webb Telescope

 

What Are Your Beliefs? - Dave Gray

 Beliefs are not reality.  They are not facts.
They are constructions.  You construct your beliefs,
even though for most people this is an unconscious
process, and they hold you captive.  Your beliefs form
the fundamental model that you use to navigate the
world.

By beliefs I mean everything you know [or think you know].
All beliefs are approximations [of reality/truth]. because the
whole of reality is unknowable.  None of us can ever
completely understand.

A belief is something you hold in your mind, a kind of map
or model of external reality.  But just as maps and models
can be wrong, so can your beliefs.

When people confuse their beliefs with reality, they get
into [political and religious] arguments and conflicts, 
sometimes even wars.

We are all blind.  We may be able to grasp pieces of the truth,
but the whole truth about reality is unknowable [in the sense
of not being intellectually understandable by the mind].

Any understanding we can gain of the world will be limited
by our point of view.  We are each constrained by the boundaries
of our own experience [conditioning] - which form our beliefs.

Beliefs may seem like perfect representations of the world, but,
in fact, they are imperfect models for navigating a complex,
multidimensional, unknowable reality.

We create beliefs about reality to reduce its infinite complexity,
in order to make it easier to understand [or explain, or justify].

Dave Gray
Excerpts from: Liminal Thinking

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Traveler - Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden

The traveler who finds his road blocked by a river will use
a raft to reach the opposite shore, but, this shore, once
reached, he will not take the raft on his shoulders while
continuing his journey.  He will abandon it as something
which has become useless.

The raft represents the different kinds of methods, intellectual
training, or moral discipline, which are available as means to
bring the seeker of liberation to the "other shore."  On this shore,
both have lost their value; they bear no relation to the conditions
existing on the "other shore" and, like the raft in the parable,
they are only a useless burden...

To go beyond virtue and vice, opinions and beliefs, is to go
beyond the mental constructions which are built by the mind,
unceasingly, and to recognize, by transcendent insight, that
they are void of reality.  It is also to recognize, by transcendent
insight, that which has been imagined as practicing virtue,
surrendering to vice, as holding opinions and elaborating theories,
as traveling towards a goal and reaching a goal, is nothing but
an inconsistent phantom, devoid of reality.

Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden
from - The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhists Sects

with thanks to  - The Beauty We Love

~

I have been a seeker and I still am,
but I stopped asking the books and the stars.
I started listening to the teaching of my soul...

Rumi

~

Photo - taken by my brother

"Unknowing knowing" Commentary - Granger

The following is the commentary by Ivan Granger that
accompanied the previously posted poem:
"Unknowing knowing"/"I Entered the Unknown."
I thought it might be helpful...

He says:

...the poem's archaic use of the word "knowing" implies a
general sense of knowledge acquired through reason and the
testimony of the senses.

The Spanish Saint, [St. John of the Cross] is speaking about
the mystical idea of "unknowing", the state in which all
concepts and mental filters have been set aside.  In that state
of unknowing, we rise above the elaborate constructions of the
logical mind and come to rest in pure awareness ("knowing by
unknowing").  He is contrasting true, unfiltered knowing, gnosis,
with the mere accumulations and organization of information.

To be unknowing in this sense is to encounter every instant
entirely as it is, in pure wonder, without projections, without
anticipation or agitation.  [Whereas] the intellectual mind.....
is always processing, analyzing and making everything fit
within its comprehension.  In interprets.
Awareness can step beyond the intellect to fully apprehend
reality...

This state of supreme unknowing is not perception in the sense of
drawing in and interpreting exterior input through the senses.  In
normal perception, the intellect sifts and sorts that sensory data
and formulates it into a working hypothesis of what reality is.

...the mystic's unknowing is the centered awareness of unfiltered
reality.....without an egoic agenda.  The full awareness in this
state of unknowing does not sift reality, it bathes in it.

"The transcendence  of "knowledge".....is found to be an
experience of "the deepest ecstasy/of the Divine Essence."
[as St. John of the Cross calls it].

Ivan M Granger
Commentary from: This Dance of Bliss

Poetry Chaikhana

A Unitive Place...

In these sometimes harsh, divisive times
one must dive deep and refocus
on the depths of the Stillness of Being within oneself,
moving inward beyond the polarities of existence
where nothing is disturbed, nothing harmed...

There we will find a deeper unitive place of Restful Presence,
knowing that externally it's just the duality of existence
playing itself out in the construct of time...

In the Primordial Womb of Stillness,
in which matter reality exists,
everything is allowed...

The world will go the way it goes -
life will continue to unfold as it unfolds -
the light and the dark will continue to dance together -
in time bound reality.

If we focus only on the divisive chaos we will
react out of the mind-created contractions of fear and ignorance...

If we are able to experience the depths of this True Silence,
the Silence of the Everlasting Depths of Existence,
we can experience what's beyond the outward mentations
of chaos and fear:
- the Silence that holds the Cosmos together -
- that is the Cosmos -

the enduring Silence of the Universe within all form;
the pure Stillness of Being...

The Unitive Place...

In this deep Silence that sustains Existence
we Rest...in the True Heart of That which animates Life...

The True Timeless Heartbeat of Reality...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 5, 2018

~

Photo - Vortex Art
2011
Craypas Oils
done with fingers

Intuition as Mystical Illumination - Henri Bergson

The real world, the world revealed during mystical illumination,
is not like our everyday world and within it our everyday ways
of knowing and understanding simply don't work.

...the philosopher Henri Bergson realized this earlier in the century.
Bergson argued that while excellent for enabling us to maneuver
through the world, the intellect is not very good at grasping reality,
When we try to do this, it slips through our fingers.

What is time?  Where does space end?
Our minds are numb when faced with these questions...

What is needed for this, Bergson said, was intuition, which is a way
of getting inside the world, knowing it from within.  The
 intellect looks at things from the outside and analyzes experience
 into parts. That is good for obvious uses, but it is useless if we
want to grasp the reality [nature] of things.  The intellect falsifies
 reality to a great extent in order to make it manageable...

What seems to happen in mystical moments is that we see the world
through intuition, not intellect...

From: Gary Lackman - Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of
Colin Wilson

Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941) was a French Philosopher
He is known for his influential arguments that processes of
immediate experience and intuition are more significant than
abstract rationalism for understanding reality.

Intuition - the act or faculty of knowing without the use of
rational processes; immediate cognition.  Sharp insight...

And I would also add a personal note here:
There are different comprehensions of reality
because of the limitations of the mind/intellect;
different ways of seeing the same reality;
different ways of perceiving the same reality.

It is a fallacy to believe that there is no "other" world,
when Quantum Physics has proved there is a subtle,
energetic world that infuses and informs this reality.
There is a "mystery" behind all this - and not just the "this"
that we see - but something behind what we see with our
superficial seeing...
Who/What is seeing...
All is not what it seems...

~

Photo - rainbow lights on a wall... :)

An Unseen Hand...

I took these pictures of the "mittens" over a period of weeks
on my "twilight walks" from January to February 2012.

I first found them on the ground behind a bench.
I picked them up and laid them out on the bench
hoping their owner would see them...

The next time they had been only slightly moved
and covered with a light dusting of snow...

Then ~

neatly laid together
at one end of the bench;
one holding the other
as if content to wait
for their owner to
retrieve them...

I left them as they were...

On the next visit one was on the bench,
delicately laid out
in this dainty hand position,
almost as if an invitation to sit...

and the other on the ground
in the shape of the peace sign,
as if to say everything is okay...

Once again I left them as they were,
wondering what unseen hand
was sculpting them...

After two large snow falls
and a couple of weeks of
60 mile an hour winds
I found one here

sculpted into the ice...

And finally, out of curiosity,
I made a quick trip back to the park
that March to see if I could find them again...

And there they were on another bench,
flattened and weather-worn...

So I did a little sculpting of my own
in a funky finger mudra :)

We are all each other's "unseen hand",
appearing and disappearing when needed,
lifting each other's spirits,
unknowingly shaping,
influencing and rearranging
life perspectives
in slight and subtle ways,
through our presence...
Each offering something
in our own way,
inviting each other to sit a while;
offering signs of encouragement
and inspiration,
lending each other
a hand
to extricate each other
from the frozen constructs of our minds;
melting away the outmoded concepts that
keep us frozen
with the warmth of a
loving "unseen hand"...

Thank you to the "unseen hands"
in my life
who have inspired and opened
this Heart...

_/\_

Solace...

What remains...
when all surface identities,
all beliefs and facades of truth have
proven to be untrue,
and the mental constructs begin to fail...
is a more softened, innocent perspective;
a simplified view of reality...

One begins to feel more,
viscerally,
the finer, subtler vibration
of the Ineffable;
which was here long before we were born...

There is no need to remember...
The mind and body may fail in their functions
may still contract
around old thought and feeling impulses
of the brain...
But trust that the Ineffable in you
Remembers Its Origins...

So Rest...
Let the mind float...

Be still, aware...
Keep feeling...
Keep listening inwardly,
for the Music,
The Divine Rhythm,
the pulse of the Universe
playing subtly,
the original Rhythm of your pre-conceived life...

Find solace in the Rhythm
that plays you;
the Breath within the breath
that breathes you;
the Rhythm of
That which is
eternally Present *in* you;
That to which you have
devoted your
Heart...


Mystic Meandering
April 22, 2016

~*~