Humility - Brian Doyle

 

You cannot control anything.
You cannot order or command everything.
You cannot fix and repair everything.
You cannot protect [people] from pain
and loss and tragedy and illness.
You cannot be sure you will always be
employed, or healthy, or relatively sane.

All you can do is face the world with quiet grace.

When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story
in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or
several at once, sometimes;  when we are older we take on
other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you
and I both know men and women who become trapped in
the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately
imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to
escape who they no longer wish to be;  but finally, I think, if
we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with
humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief....
and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and
true about humility.

Humility does not mean self abnegation, lassitude, detachment;
it's more a calm recognition that you must trust in that which
does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly
ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture.  You
must trust that you being you matters somehow...

[and that]

.....pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy...

[and]
You do your best to reach out tenderly and touch and elevate as
many people as you can reach...

You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath
you draw.  Humility is the road to love.  Humility, maybe, is
love.  That could be.  I wouldn't know; I'm a muddle and a 
conundrum shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder,
trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards
of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.

Brian Doyle

Excerpts from the chapter - "The Final Frontier"
From: One Long River Song

~

Photo from the Internet

Follow Your Own Map - Mark Nepo

Every time we talk to someone, there comes back to us a map
of expectation as to how we should respond...

We share a confusion:
we are often given direction.

We share a pain;
we are often given instruction.

We share a desire;
we are often given a plan.

The power of these unspoken maps should not be
underestimated.  For the endless gravities of expectation
we move in and out of govern most of our thinking and
summons most of our energy in denying them or complying
with them.  In actuality, underneath all the plans, pressures,
and expectations, underneath all the subtle guidance and nudging,
the next step is truly unknown...

Thus, our spiritual charge is to maintain the wonder of the
singular explorer that each of us is...

The freshest step has always come when we are brave 
enough to land at the end of what little we know,
breathing in new air, in reaction to no one...

Mark Nepo
From: The Book of Awakening

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
(Scrapbooking paper) 

 

Choice - Jeff Foster

Friend, please, do not try to decide now.  Do not shut
any possibility out of your heart.  Honour this place
of not-knowing.  Bow before this bubbly  mess of
creativity.  Slow down. Breathe. Sink into wonderment.
Befriend the very place where you stand.  Any decision
will make itself, in time.  Any choice will happen when 
your defences are down.  Answers will appear only
when they are ready.  When the questions have been
fully honoured and loved.  Do not label this place
indecision.  It is more alive than that.  It is a place
where possibilities grow.  It is a place where uncertainty
is sacred.  There is courage in staying close.  There is
strength in not knowing.

Friend, please know there is simply no choice now.
Except to breathe, and breathe again, and
trust this Intelligence beyond mind.

Jeff Foster

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Go Further - Danna Faulds

Go further than your mind can reach,
further than your words can speak.
Go further than you know, outside of
your control.  Break your conditioning...

Like a twig plucked from a tree, carried a
great distance, and woven into a crow's
nest, you have no idea of your real destiny.

Keep going until there is nothing left, and
you are empty and bereft.  Hold that open
space.  Inhabit the place of not knowing
until grace tugs on your awareness and
says "Follow me into the center of chaos
and serenity.  Follow me to what you've
always been and always will be."

The truth of you is far beyond what you
imagine, simultaneously deathless and
here to be lived, then surrendered back
into the Infinite.

Danna Faulds
From: Limitless

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Turning Into The Not-Knowing - Matt Licata

There is a certain death that occurs as part of the healing
process, a part of us unable to survive illumination.  As we
turn the light around, according to one Daoist alchemical
text, a piece of soul will fall away.

While it is tempting to spin out of the uncertainty and
quickly into rebirth, there is wisdom and purity within
the reorganization which we cannot bring into embodied
knowing if we patch it all up prematurely.

The dissolution itself is initiation as it offers vision and
feeling not available in the put-back-together-state.  An
old part of ourselves that has accompanied us for so long,
a fellow traveler is no longer permitted to continue the
journey by our side.  This prior soul-companion can be
another person or it can be a member of the inner family.

Somehow, we're asked to bear witness to the crumbling of
an old dream - my life and the way I was so sure it was
going to turn out.  This is the holy alchemical operation of
putrefactio, a sacred process that is evidence of.....fierce grace.

In order to be initiated, we must slow down, and turn into
the not-knowing.  To take some time to mourn the
reassembling of our world,  to grieve all that we will
inevitably lose as we heal and awaken.

To tend to the pieces of the soul, the shards of the heart,
and the fragments of the psyche that are being rearranged,
to honor the role they have played, for standing by us for
so long, and providing refuge during difficult times.

To lament the loss of their companionship and allow them to
continue into whatever realm is next for them, [and give them]
permission to travel and experience new things.  Even if we
 are unable to "accept" this, we can touch the ground where
 they once were, and bow.

To stand in awe at this process, despite the profound pain and
grief, to care for all of it as we allow the Mystery to reveal
itself in deeper and deeper ways.  To know that healing and
awakening is messy, glorious, and full-spectrum... and is not
only an act of creation, but one of destruction as well.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Natural State - U G Krishnamurti

 The natural state is not the state of a self-realized God-realized 
man. It is not a thing to be achieved or attained, it is not a thing
to be willed into existence; it is there - it is the living state.
This state is just the functional activity of life.  By 'life' I do not
mean something abstract; it is the life of the senses, functioning
naturally without the interference of thought.

This state is a state of not knowing; you really don't know what
you are looking at.  I may look at the clock on the wall for half
an hour - still I do not read the time.  I don't know it is a clock.
All there is inside is wonderment.  The whole of my being is
like a single, big question mark.  It is a state of wonder, of
wondering, because I just do not know...  The knowledge of it -
all I have learned - is held in the background...

You can never understand the tremendous peace that is always
there within you, that is your natural state.  Your trying to
create a peaceful state of mind is in fact creating disturbance
within you.  You can only talk of peace, create a state of mind
and say to yourself that you are very peaceful - but that is not
peace.  So there is no use in practicing peace, there is no reason
to practice silence.  Real silence is not a dead state of mind that
spiritual seekers think. Silence is bubbling all the time - the 
energy, the life - that is its quality.  You may ask how I know.
I don't know.  Life is aware of itself, if we can put it that way -
it is conscious of itself...

UG Krishnamurti

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Our  Luminous Essence
is,just waiting to be discovered...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Be Undone - Clare Blanchflower

photo by Martin Stranka

 In the willingness
to be so fully undone
For all strategies to end
Surrender is here...

To see and be seen
in the light
of what is

To rest
as undefended
presence
at the feet of Life

Being humbled
again and again
As threads
of defense
dissolve
and the true power
of Being
is embodied
Life living ItSelf

A pure power
that wants nothing
A power
that says
I don't know...

And the eternal heart
beats in
silent reverence

Clare Blanchflower
Original title - "Devotion Is"

Wanting A Way & Nowhere To Go - Richard Wehrman

Not yet, the not knowing
says, now is not the time
to know, this is what I've
given - uncertainty -
as your mind tries to scale the glass
mountain, impenetrable;
not glass, but quartz, not
quartz, but diamond, clear,
all the way through, but no
way to get in or out, not by
looking for a door, for a key;
frozen in the this or that,
wanting a way - your way -
when ways, plans, paths,
maps and agendas, are
destinations past, continents
left behind, earlier stages of
evolution, your childhood,
your schoolyards, your old
ways of loving; what is coming
you can't know, it has no
existence, the formless has
nothing to offer, as something
arrayed in the future, only
this arriving now, gone as
you try to grab on, arriving
again and again, unknown,
brilliant and new.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here

He was crossing an unknown
land, one he no longer knew,
though the landmarks were
identifiable and familiar; it was
the mystery of what stretched
before him, as the distance
lessened, as time in the outward
sense contracted, but inwardly
expanded and deepened, as
goals and achievements hour
by hour, day by day, lost their
imperative, and what he had once
set as a destination had been
passed with only slight remarking.
Now he had no where to go, and
the distance between somewhere
and nowhere was steadily
decreasing; in a similar manner
his excitement, his sense of
the immensity of some thing he
could not name grew, as though
that which he searched for
his whole life unknowing, and
which he called by many names,
which had been refracted by
art, music, certain writings...
by men of gravity and honor,
drew near, but was none of these.
And he felt the thrill,
and it hummed in the air.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here

~

Photo taken by my husband
 on a hike many years ago :)

Profound Not-Knowing - Jeff Foster

One of my favorite things to do is to sit with my elderly father 

who has Alzheimers.  It's a beautiful thing to just sit in a place
of profound not-knowing with him, a place where I do not
know what to say or do.  I sit, without expectation, without
trying to 'fix' him, or manipulate his experience in any way.
I just listen, without trying to make things better in the moment,
without playing the role of  'the one who knows'.
I am simply available to him.
I don't need to 'know' anything in this place...

And here, I notice a deep and profound acceptance of any wave
of frustration or sadness that appears in the ocean of experience.

And this seems to be what true relationship is at its very core -
meeting, really meeting in the moment, without hope, without
a future, without expectation, without a story.  Coming face
to face with - yourself. 

Nisargadatta Maharaj says:

"What remains is the great sadness of compassion"

It is not cold detachment and neo-Advaita
world-rejection, but the intimacy of the most unspeakable kind.

Jeff Foster

Excerpt from The Beauty We Love

Contemplative Experience - Thomas Merton

Contemplation is not trance or ecstasy, or a tendency to find
peace and satisfaction in liturgical rites; nor is it the hearing
of sudden unutterable words, nor the imagination of lights;
not the emotional fire and sweetness that come with religious
exaltation  It is not enthusiasm, not the sense of being "seized"
by an elemental force and swept into liberation by mystical
frenzy...

Contemplation is no pain-killer.

It is life itself - fully awake, fully alive.
It is spiritual wonder.
It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness
of life, of being.

It is gratitude for life,
for awareness and for being.
It is a vivid realization that life and being
proceed from an invisible, transcendent
and infinitely abundant Source.

Contemplation is, above all, awareness of
 the reality of Source.

And in that realization, the contemplative suffers the
 anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what "God" is.
This is great gain, because "God" is not a what",
not a "thing."
That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of
contemplative experience...realizing that there is no
such "thing" as "God", because "God" is neither a
"what" or a "thing", but pure Who [Pure Being],
the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs
into awareness [being].

Thomas Merton
Christian Monk

From: New Seed of Contemplation

~

Personal Note - His description is somewhat
different from the "mystical experience".  Still -
I relate to some of his description.  In the end, "It" is
 all Pure Beingness/Pure Awareness/Pure Consciousness.

"Unknowing knowing" - St. John of the Cross

I entered the unknown,
and there I remained unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

Where I entered I knew not,
but seeing myself there,
not knowing where,
great things then made themselves known.
What I sensed I cannot say,
for I remained unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

In this peace and purity
was perfect knowledge.
In profound solitude
I understood with absolute clarity
something so secret
that I was left stammering,
all knowledge transcended.

So deep was I within,
so absorbed, so transported,
that all senses fled,
and outer awareness fell away.
My spirit received the gift
of unknowing knowing,
all knowledge transcended.

He who reaches this realm
loses himself,
for all he once knew
now is beneath his notice,
and his mind so expands
that he remains unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

And the higher he rises
the less he knows;
That is the dark cloud
that shines in the night.
The one who knows this
always remains unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

This knowing by unknowing
is of such exalted power,
that the disputations of the learned
fail to grasp it,
for their knowledge does not reach
to knowing by unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

Of such supreme perfection
is this knowledge
that no faculty or method of mind
can comprehend it;
but he who conquers himself
with this unknowing knowing,
will always transcend.

And if you are ready to receive it,
this sum of all knowledge is discovered
in the deeper ecstasy
of the Divine Essence.
Goodness and grace
grant us this unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

St. John of the Cross
(1542-1591)
Original title: "I Entered the Unknown"
From: This Dance of Bliss
by Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

"Knowing"

"You have no regard for stature"

someone once told me...

It's true - title, position,
knowledge, wealth and status
do not impress me,

because we really are all
the same fabric of Reality,

weaving our way through life,
given what we've been given,
each playing a different role;
each a different thread,
each carrying a different burden;
most of us running through life
with blinders on,
only seeing our self-importance,
or our suffering, our struggle -
waiting for others to see it too...
But "we" are mere facades,
masks in a sea of masks -
most of us not really seeing the Being
we truly are behind the mask,
within the shell we call ourselves;
stature or not...

No one really knows more "truth"
than you do, if you really look
inside yourself.
And yet we flock to and believe
the self-professed gurus of the day -
the vendors of "truth" -
and read their books, inhale their words
spoken into the air,
as if they have acquired something
that we have not...  something that we don't "know."

Speaking their clever philosophies about
"truth", "reality", existence;
walls of empty words...
How do they really "Know?"

Turning inward we realize that we also "Know",

because the same "truth" Lives within all...
Is that arrogant to say ;)

This does not mean that I don't respect those
who truly Know - from their own direct experience;
not just regurgitating what they think they "know"
from other gurus and books;
other cosmologies and theologies...

We may all use a different language, or different words
- but still -

deep inside we intuitively Know.
if we allow ourselves to "know",
knowing that "knowing" changes,
through the fluidity of ever-expanding awareness.

Sometimes we know that we "know" with clarity.
And sometimes we are muddled with uncertainty and
 "not-knowing."
And perhaps the truth is that we really don't know the "truth."

So we keep searching for just the right teacher, or teaching,

the resonant words, longing to fill the "gap" we feel;
although "they" will tell us there is no "gap."
Or we fall back into old beliefs, grabbing for the familiar
paradigms of reality that will give our minds
a sense of certainty of "knowing" once again.

I know, I've done it 100's of times...

But these scaffoldings must collapse...

"Knowing" is really about being comfortable with, and trusting
 our own Inner Life, our own Inner Being,
that holds the Inner Knowing, rising within from a
Greater universal Knowing - the Sacred Silence -
from which Knowing comes...

Listening inwardly, not mentally,
not *acquiring* knowledge,
but letting the timeless innate Knowing
teach us, infuse us...

In time emerging into true Self-awareness -
as the Pure Light of Knowing
lights us from within...

Mystic Meandering
Aug. 22, 2018

Namaste

_/\_

~

Photo via No Mind's Land

digitally altered

Unknown Territory - Matt Licata

At times, our reference points will be taken away, revealing
a shimmering, pregnant, endarkened void.  What were so
clear about just a few days ago is nowhere to be found.  The
inspiration in our spiritual lives, our deepest insights and
realizations - recycled in the activity of the vast - somehow
no longer reachable.

The solid ground [of beliefs] we once took refuge in has
disintegrated underneath us, sending us into unknown
territory.  We were so sure were beyond breaking yet again,
that we finished all that, but the Beloved is not interested in
maintaining the status quo.  It is the nature of all form to
disintegrate, so that new forms may emerge.

Between the worlds.....longing for an end to the contradictions,
we find ourselves in the liminal, but how do we rest there? How
could we be asked to surrender more?

It can seem that we are falling apart, but were we ever together
to begin with?  Is that even the right lens from which to attempt
navigation? Or were we always something more whole?
Today may not be the day for answers, but to let your heart
break open to the vastness of the questions.

Something is longing to be born, in you, as you, as the poetry
of your life and as the gifts you will share with others.  Lay
your hands on your heart.  Listen.  Receive.  There are blues
coming into existence that have never made their way into this
dimension.  Oranges, reds, yellows, and purples that have been
sent to remind you of the rarity and outrageousness of one human
heart...

Stay right here.  Don't move from this moment.  Open your senses.
Step into the Mystery.  See through the veil.  Everything that has
ever happened and everyone you have ever met, has led up to this
moment.  Trust in the fires of disintegration and renewal, and in the
timeline that is written within the cells of your heart...

Matt Licata

Choice/No Choice - Jeff Foster

It's not that you have no choice.
Rather, the 'chooser' is the fiction.

It's not 'you' who chooses or doesn't choose.
It's life itself.  You are inseparable from life itself.
Undivided from the totality.

A star explodes.  The grass grows.  A mother gives birth.
A war begins, ends, begins.  A relationship breaks down.
People come together, fall apart.  An old wound heals.
Hearts open, close, open.
Like breathing.  Like the ocean tides.

We believe that we have a choice,
or we believe that we don't.

The planets spin.  The rain falls and stops falling.
Did we choose, or were we chosen?

Could it have been any different?
Can the rain fall backwards?
Can we un-say what we have said?
Can we un-read this poem?

Choice, no choice.  Those thoughts fall away too.
Into silence.  Into stillness.
Into the vastness of Being.
Into...

Beyond choice or lack of it, you are.

And you take the next step, or you do not.

Or you take the next step
of not knowing which next step
you will take.

And out of the not knowing,
the path becomes clear
if only
for a moment.

And then the Universe
begins again.

Jeff Foster

~

photo via No Mind's Land

The Descendant Current - Matt Licata

Let us not forget the descendant current, flowing into the unlit
places, the underworld, and the dark caverns of the psyche.  The
realm of dream, fantasy, imagination and creativity.  The
invitation here is one of embodiment - into the contradictions,
the chaos, and the deflation we must confront on any journey of
depth.

There is a cultural fantasy that we are supposed to know what to do
with our lives, that things, are supposed to be clear, that we are
supposed to feel solar and heroic and in control of the feelings that
wash through us.  But Love is full-spectrum and will equally
employ the energies of not-knowing, disappointment, and
reorganization as part of its revelation here.  The process of
dissolution is non-negotiable.  It is by way of this sacred washing
of the known that new forms can find their way here.

Inside the vessel of life, encrusted, worn out ideas and opposites
are washed away, such as silence over noise, oneness over multiplicity,
quiet over inner revolution, crystal clarity over shaky uncertainty, and
power over vulnerability.  While we may have our conditioned
preferences, Love does not share these biases and will use the entirety
of the emotional and phenomenal world to reach us.  Even in the
darkness, the numbness, the chaotic, and the mud, the wild,
untamed activity of the soul erupts.

It is natural and ordinary to disconnect from the downward movement
as we overly identify with the ascending, the upward, the light, and
the transcendent.  In the rush to exit immediate experience - for
something that is higher, purer, less messy, and less contradictory -
we turn from the waters of life and lose touch with Essence.

While it is natural to have a bias for one current over another, let us
not do so as the expense of fragmentation.  In ways the mind may
never fully understand, there is a luminous middle place where the
currents intertwine.  It is buried in a secret chamber inside your
own heart.  

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Vortex Art

Digitally altered
2011

The Liberated Soul - Marguerite Porete

I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love...
...and the Soul is God by condition of Love,
thus I am God by divine nature...

(The liberated soul) loses her name in the one in whom she
is melted and dissolved.  Thus she would be like a body of
water which flows from the sea.  And when this water returns
to the sea, it loses its course and its name, and is now in the
sea where it rests...

This Soul is always in full sufficiency, in which she swims
 and bobs and floats, is surrounded by divine peace, without
any movement in her interior, and without any exterior work
[effort] on her part.

(The liberated soul) is at rest without obstructing the outpouring
of divine Love.  She no longer seeks God through penitence, nor
through any sacrament; not through thoughts, nor through words,
nor through works, nor through divine understanding, nor through
divine love, nor through divine praise.

Her will is planted in the One...  She is dissolved into that prior
existence where Love has received her.

She has fallen into certainty of knowing nothing and into
certainty of willing nothing.  And this nothingness...gives her
the All...

Marguerite Porete
14th Century French Mystic
Her writings, of which the above is only a
small excerpt, were considered heretical.
She was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310.

Porete's vision of the Soul is one of ecstatic union with God...
Once united with God the Soul's will becomes that of God's.

Interestingly 200 years later St. John of the Cross
expressed an almost identical view of the nature of the
Soul's union with God in his Ascent of Mount Carmel, i.e.
that once united with God the Soul's will becomes that of God's,
but he was not denounced as a heretic.

Source - Western Mystics
via No Mind's Land

~*~ 

The naked, open, loving, Self-aware, luminous Being
within, our Essential Nature, is God...
God is The Silence within us...
God is the Self...

Rupert Spira
Contemporary Non-Dual teacher

~

Photo - rainbow light on wall

Embrace Groundlessness - Joan Tollifson

In our mental world, we worry about the meaning or
meaninglessness of life, we wonder about our purpose, we
judge and evaluate ourselves and compare ourselves to others,
we seek escape from the vulnerability and the pain and the
heartache that life inevitably brings, and we seek exciting and
pleasurable experiences that will thrill us and maybe also
enhance our self-image in our own eyes or in the eyes of others.
We go on long journeys, sometimes for decades, searching for
enlightenment, or the perfect partner, or the perfect place to live,
or the perfect career, or the perfect friends.

But meanwhile, right here, there is the utter simplicity and
 wonder of life itself - the sounds of rain, the freshness of the air,
the ache of grief, the taste and texture of this moment, just exactly
as it is.  And it never stays the same, for everything is always
changing.  The universe literally begins anew in each moment.
And really, this moment is all we have.  But we so often ignore
this vital reality, overlook or dismiss it.  We don't really notice the
wonder and the beauty of it, even the wonder and beauty in its
sharper, darker, more bitter and challenging forms.  We want
something else, something bigger and better, more exciting or
more pleasurable, or simply different.

As many of you know, I'm working on a fifth book now, a book
that explores death and growing old.  But it has another aspect
now as well, namely the end of my long search for transcendence,
and the embrace of groundlessness and not knowing - waking up
to the simplicity of being just this moment, exactly as it is. Not
knowing what all this is or why it's happening or what will happen
next.  Living in groundlessness, rather than desperately trying to
find ground in some transcendent metaphysical ideology - e.g.,
that Consciousness is all there is, or that Consciousness precedes
the brain and Mind precedes matter, or that awareness is ever-
present even after death, or that I am boundless awareness and
not a person, or whatever that transcendent ideology might be.

I could always see quite clearly that these were all actually beliefs
and not verifiable facts.  But sometimes, when self-doubt is a deeply
ingrained psychological pattern, we override our own intelligence
and insight and doubts again and again, and swallow what others
who seem more enlightened are telling us.  And sometimes, even
when we tell ourselves (and others) that our search has ended, we
are actually still seeking.

Yes, I can feel a sense of boundless awaring presence, the spacious
openness of here-now that has no center and no boundaries.  I can
feel this vast listening silence, and the emptiness at the core of
everything.  When I look, it is obvious that we can never experience
anything outside of consciousness, and that every experience is an
experience in and of consciousness.  But there's a metaphysical leap,
some teachers call it "higher reasoning," that moves from these
direct insights into the metaphysical conclusions I mentioned
(e.g., Consciousness is all there is, Consciousness precedes the
 brain, I am awareness and not a person, and so on.)

I can even sense into being the Ultimate Subject, that which
remains beyond everything perceivable and conceivable.  These
 were never just intellectual ideas in my head, there were felt
experiences, intuitive realities. So, they seemed real.  And they
 were real as experiences.  But that's all they were: sensations,
 intuitions, experiences.  And when mixed together with
 metaphysical ideas that I was imbibing from the Advaita world,
it was easy enough to arrive at the conclusion that I am boundless
 awareness, infinite consciousness, impersonal presence or
 the Ultimate Subject beyond all experiences - and it was easy to
overlook  the fact that I had taken a leap from direct experiencing
 into metaphysical belief.  And I'm not saying any of these beliefs are
 false,  only that they are based on what is actually simply another
experience, another sensation, another intuition, another idea. 
They have, through "higher reasoning," reached a philosophical
conclusion that is in no way verifiable as Ultimate Truth. 
But we cling to these conclusions in our search to avoid
groundlessness, uncertainty, vulnerability, lack of control, and
the reality of not knowing.  We turn them into Ultimate Truth.

Of course, when I was dispensing this kind if teaching, I would have
insisted that it wasn't "just another experience, another sensation,
another intuition or another idea." I would have insisted that it was
That in which all experiences appeared and disappeared.  It was the
unchanging, ever-present, ground of being.  And I could easily
experience it that way.  After all, everything appears in awareness.
It's truly easy to hypnotize ourselves or to be hypnotized by
teachers, and it's  so easy to slide over from direct insight and
experiencing into metaphysical conclusions and beliefs.  It's a subtle
line we cross, and we don't always see it, especially when we are
surrounded by a whole subculture that is reinforcing the belief system
and the assumption that some metaphysical idea is actually Truth.

In such transcendent teachings as Advaita, which come out of
Hinduism, one is no longer a mere mortal or a person, no longer a
vulnerable body or a vulnerable human mind, but instead, one is
boundless awareness, infinite consciousness, God - unconditioned,
indestructible, imperishable, free.  Again, I'm not saying this is all
untrue.  In fact, I feel that such teachings do point to certain realities
about life - that there is something right here that is  open and free
and unconditioned, and that the universe (or whatever this is) is
infinite and eternal, and that we are a momentary expression of
something much larger.  Death may be the end of "me" and "my
story" and my particular movie of waking life - I assume it will be -
but it's not the end of this larger wholeness of which "Joan" is a
momentary and ever-changing movement, like a wave on the ocean.
The fear of death comes from being exclusively identified as the
wave, and imagining the wave to be a solid, fixed, independent,
separate thing rather than a flowing movement of the ocean.

But if we go to the opposite extreme and deny the reality and the
preciousness of this body-mind-person, this unique and unrepeatable
wave that will never happen again in exactly the same way, and if
we try to identify exclusively as the whole ocean and not the wave,
we miss something very important.  We miss the actual living reality
of our life - the taste of tea, the sounds of rain, the smell of garbage,
a burning pain in the gut, the bright red fire truck streaking past,
the joyous companionship of a good friend or a beloved dog and
the grief when they die.  We miss the actual life of this moment;
the raw, unmediated aliveness of this very moment, just as it is.

Joan Tollifson

Walk The Divine Life - Clare Blanchflower

What will it take
to rest
all your weight on to the foot
that walks the divine life?

What will it take
to saturate the
fear of living
With the peace
of loving presence?
To dance in
the freedom of reality

Dive deeper
than this surface
of mind that thinks
it knows something
Stop questioning
the grace that life
is spilling out
and rest
Listen
Be

What will it take
to feel,
to truly feel
it all
Right down to the
transparent
bones of clarity
And admit
you know not
what to do
Know not how to
live
Crack open

Rest your forehead
to the ground
Bow at the feet of life
In the glory of
your personal
disempowerment
Meet the true power
that you are
The richness
of love
that swoons in the
heart of Being

Allow praise
to dance on the
tip of your tongue
Allow gratitude to tumble
from your lips
Trust that
the idiosyncrasies
of life
are happening
for you
by you
are you

Fall into the silence that is
roaring with aliveness
Drowning out
the voice in
your head that wants you
to dance a small dance
in a circle
around and around

What will it take
to recognize
that life is
blessing you with
the honour
of unfolding
from your smallness
into the largesse of Being
Whole

Allow awe to take up residence
Be taken
by your unknowing
May the tears of surrender
swirl into a river of flowing love
that carries you
right to the heart of your
inner most Being

Clare Blanchflower
Original title: "Fierce Grace"

~

Photo - Incredible contemporary art piece
that the photo does not do justice to...

My interpretation?:

One standing single-pointed
helping the other to take the step...

Love and Surrender - Chuck Surface

These days, with more behind than ahead,
I do not yearn to solve the Mystery of Life,
Or come to "enlightenment" or "awakening."

Those words long ago lost all meaning,
And the Great Mystery has proven,
Beyond all doubt, Unknowable.

These days I Cherish two things:

The Sacred Presence in The Heart,
That Ineffable Sublimity,
which Illumines the Experience of Being:

Love.

And the Enlivened Serenity of the mind,
Though ever awash in Wonder,
Surrendered to Not Knowing.

Love... and Surrender.

Having these,
What care is there of attainment,
Or "levels" of enlightenment?

Having these,
What care is there for states of being,
Created and sustained conditionality?

Having these,
How can one bear arid discourses,
Seeking to prove this "Truth" or that?

Having these,
What "spiritual desire" can arise
Save...

Love's desire to Bless.

I've grown so weary of all else "spiritual."

These days, with more behind than ahead,
This Mystery within a Mystery is content
To breathe in Love, and breathe out Surrender.

Chuck Surface
In The Garden of the Beloved
Facebook

~

...in the course of my life, I found,
No finality in the milestones come to along The Way.
No flag planted, no summit attained.
And however Profound each milestone,
More should not be made of them,
than should be made,
Each being merely a juncture...
On a Journey of Endless Enlightening.

Chuck Surface

~

Photo - sent to us by a friend many years ago.
The Fawn's mother had been killed...

There Is Always An Open Doorway - Licata

Perhaps Life has no interest in us living up to some image.
It doesn't need or want us to be "perfect", or "divine",
 or "awakened", or "healed."  Or manifesting all the things
 we think we want...
It is only ever offering its invitation to fall heart-first
into an immense field of not-knowing - not knowing how to live,
not knowing how to accept, not knowing how to "get awakened",
not knowing how to "heal," and not knowing how to resolve
the ways of love...
And in this not-knowing,
life is there waiting for us,
 revealing its mysteries...

You are so exhausted, so tired of chasing around some fantasy
of a "spiritual" life that you were told was the right one
by some teacher, author, or expert who has figured it out
and come to some fundamental resolution to love
and its untamed creative wildness.

You are longing for rest.
To rest in your True Being.

In the very center of your heart,
there is always an open doorway.

It has nothing to do with wiggling into some conditioned
state of consciousness, other than the pure one that is here,
or with seeking some mythical sustained transcendent experience,
or with any sort of movement beyond the messy world of intimacy,
confusing unresolvable love, and human vulnerability.
It wants so badly for you to walk through, to meet for the first time,
this unbearable longing to go home,
to behold for the first time the
miracle of this precious human body,
of *these* thoughts,
of *these* feelings,
of *these* passing states of consciousness,
exactly as they have been given by an unseen grace.

For in just one moment of caring enough -
of somehow resisting the call to exit this experience for another -
what you see is that it is all made of love,
crafted out of the substance of love,
all the way through,
from inside-out and outside-in.
And no matter what the details,
love has somehow configured itself
as your unique life,
and has offered itself as a gift...
waiting for you to enter inside and hold it,
exactly as it is...

Matt Licata

(Matt's words, my format)