"Truth" - LaMotte & Goethe

With general truth our minds swell up,
assuming the abstraction to expand us and
make us smarter.  But a mind turgid with beliefs
is neither clear nor useful.  It is a gray intellectual
thicket that prevents real empathy, real presence.
The general truth, in fact, makes us smaller, because
it confines awareness to a conceptual box
which our ego must argue and defend.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

We can never directly see what is true, that is, identical with
 what is divine: we look at it only in reflection, in example,
in the symbol, in the individual and related phenomena.  We
perceive it as a life beyond our grasp, yet we cannot deny
our need to grasp it.

[.....] the highest achievement of the human being as a thinking
being is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere
what is unknowable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goeth

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Accepting reality - a meandering...

As I awoke one morning recently, it came to me in my
half sleep that I had to accept death...
That my current life experience may be the
beginning of my end -
and that I need to accept that...

My body and mind immediately relaxed...

I get that it's not about getting my life back, as I have been
wanting, but about accepting the impermanence of my life;
of everything basically, including this particular life
circumstance; my *ideas* about how life is supposed to be,
or recovering my life, restoring it to what it was before...

I've heard this all before,
through different spiritual traditions,
but this time it came from within
and was organic,,,

It's about accepting impermanence,
accepting death; death of ways of life,
death of beliefs, death of ways of being,
death of the body...

Not trying to recapture, or restore everything
to the way it was - so that I can "finish" my life...

But letting go of the idea that Life has to be/go
a certain way...

There was great *relief* in realizing this
- a profound acceptance of reality...

I felt freed of everything that has bound me:
ways of thinking, perspectives, feelings about life...

And also realized that I have been resisting the little
deaths in my life - the changes that create disruption.

*Everything* changes, *everything* dies,
that is - changes form; form transforms itself
continuously...

It is the natural way of life itself;

it *is* the reality.

I'm going to die (my body that is) at some point and
maybe this life circumstance is just the
precursor to that,
the doorway to that...

But I keep trying to make this current experience
change, to stop in some way - resisting it -
when in reality it is an opening.

I was almost euphoric,
because changing my perspective means the end of
suffering, struggle, trying to make things happen, trying
to have a "spiritual" perspective about it all,
trying to find a way *out* of my experience...

(although this shift is gradual, as I discovered)...

Everything is impermanent, transient...

I'm accepting (ongoing) that reality...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 8, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Dissolving Illusions - Ivan Granger

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 they 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 [be] 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.  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 May Sarton
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

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

 

Perspective, Perception & Interpretation - Ted Chiang

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous 
grammar.  Every physical event was an utterance that could be
parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other
teleological, both valid, neither one disqualified no matter how
much context was available.

It's like the famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an
elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or
a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on  her chest.  There is
no "correct" interpretation; both are equally valid.

But you can't see them both at the same time.

Ted Chiang
Stories of Your Life and Others

with thanks to Whiskey River

for photo too :)

~

We each have unique stories, perspectives, perceptions,
 and frameworks of interpretation of Reality.
 I celebrate our diversity - our unique waves/expressions on
the Greater Ocean of Being...

MM

 

A Cosmic Perspective - a meandering...

We are told in certain "traditions" that everything is Consciousness,
Awareness, Eternal Beingness, The Essential Self...  Plug in
whatever works for you - "God", The Ineffable, The Unknown, etc.
"IT", they say, is everywhere at the same time, aware of
everything that is occurring all at once.  I actually had this
experience while sitting in a doctor's waiting room.  I was
suddenly aware of what was AWARE of me sitting there -
and that "IT" was everywhere, awaring everything in the room.
It was "me", but also a greater "Awareness" than my own.

The mind can't really fathom such abstractions, so it creates words,
creation stories, and images, like "God", Buddha, Shiva, and other
deities, which personifies (person-ifies) what cannot be person-ified,
to try to explain what cannot be explained - including words like
Beingness, Consciousness, and Awareness... :) Non-dual language.

There is just this pure Space of Awareness, they say - what my
husband calls the "Portal of Eternity."  Works for him :)  I
experience "IT" as an alive Space of Silence within.  Everything
is felt to be suspended in, and infused with this Silence that just IS -
including you and me.  A mystery...

The "trick", as I'm discovering ever slowly, is to see from a
Cosmic Perspective, rather than the "Earth mind" that only sees
the "Earth mind" as real; does not see the bigger picture of being
suspended/infused in/with "The Infinite", but only thinks its
immediate reality is real - when it is only a part of a much larger
Cosmic Reality - of which the Earth experience is a part.  As my
husband says, the dynamics of the Cosmos has its own way -
and you can't manipulate it.  There's something bigger going on here.

How would life change for humanity if we started to see our lives
in this way,  from the perspective of Cosmic Consciousness that
sees the whole picture?  What would happen if we started viewing
each other from the Cosmic Perspective?  Something I fail at 
miserably - continuing to be distracted by the externals of life, on
the surface of life - entangled in the emotions that creates.

But maybe this Cosmic Perspective is the dis-entanglement from 
the matrix of our personal life dramas - to see all of existence from
a different perspective - to see the Infiniteness and True Nature of
all things - of all Existence.

We are breathed by the Cosmic "Spirit", if you will. Some call it
The Silence, or even The Holy Spirit...  I feel IT when sitting in the
Space of Silence within - the Still Point.  This, for me, is intimacy
with my "Eternal Being" - this sense of intimate connection through
the breath of Silence.  This energy/vibration runs through the whole
body, is in every cell.

"IT" is what we abide in naturally and don't even realize it.  We
are not always aware of it, don't have a felt sense of it,distracted
 again and again by the externals of life and living.  Pure Cosmic
Energy is what we breathe, and what breathes us, is what bathes the
cells, and permeates "our" world.  This "Divine Energy" of Life
continues on after death, but we focus on the  physicality and not
the Universal Energy that sustains and animates the body - that
which never dies.  We only see personalities playing out their roles
here, not the Beingness, or True Nature, or Essence of the "person."

At least from my perspective :)

It seems all so esoteric and yet we can feel the realness of "The
Mystery" of it - experientially - through our awareness, or direct
experience of IT.  In the Silence of Being I can feel this Infinite
Energy, the Universal Source coursing through my body - and
know that THAT is who I am, at the core of my being - not my
person-ified identity...

And yet, I remain distracted by this external identity that clouds
the Cosmic Perspective...

Mystic Meandering
Taken from my Journal notes
2014

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

More Reflections on Time, Space and Reality - Albert Einstein

Concerning matter, we have been all wrong.  What we have
called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered
as to be perceptible to the senses.  Matter is spirit reduced
to a point of visibility.

Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes
by which we think.  Physical concepts are free creations of the
human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by
the external world.  Time does not exist - we invented it.  Time
is what the clock says.  The distinction between the past,
present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.  I 
think 99 times and find nothing.  I stop thinking, [if this is possible],
swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes
 a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the
solution comes to you and you don't know why.

We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our
bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.

When you examine the lives of the most significant people who
have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds
through them all.  They have been aligned first with their spiritual
nature and only then with their physical selves. 

One thing I learned in a long life: that all our science, measured
against reality, is primitive and child-like.  We still do not know
one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds
are hidden of which we are unaware. 

I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the
universe through my rational mind.  I'm not an atheist.  Anyone
who interprets my scientific theories this way, did not understand
them.  The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.  We
are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled
with books in many languages.

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion.  It will
transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology.

When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe
resonate with it.  Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can
only be changed from one form to another.  Everything is energy
and that is all there is.  This is not philosophy.  This is physicals.

Albert Einstein

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Ruptured Reality - Pema Khandro Rinpoche

We are always experiencing births and deaths [and other significant losses].  There is something radical about these changes in our reality.  There is a total rupture in our 'who-am-I-ness', and we are forced to undergo a great and difficult transformation.

In bereavement, we come to appreciate at the deepest, most felt level exactly what it means to die while we are still alive.  These are the moments when gaps [or in-between states] appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives.  These interruptions in our normal sense of certainty are that state in which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us.

Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it means to be disrupted, to be entombed between death and rebirth.  We often label that a state of shock [or fracture].  In those moments, we lose our grip on the old reality and yet have no sense of what a new one might be like.  There is no ground, no certainty, and no reference point - there is, in a sense, no rest.  In that radical state of unreality we need - not just logic, but something beyond logic, something that speaks to us in a timeless, non-conceptual way.

The more we learn to recognize this sense of disruption, the more willing and able we will be to let go of this notion of an inherent reality and allow that precious pot to slip out of our hands.  Rupture is taking place all the time, day to day and moment to moment; in fact, as soon as we see our life in terms of successive changes, we dissolve the idea of a solid self grasping onto an inherently real life.  We start to see how conditional 'who-I-am-ness' really is, how even that does not provide reliable ground upon which to stand.

At times like this, if we can gain freedom from the eternal grasping onto who I am and how things are - our default mode - then we can get to the business of Being.  Until now, we have been holding on to the idea of an inherent continuity in our lives, creating a false sense of comfort for ourselves...  By doing so, we have been missing the very flavor of what we are.

The cause of suffering can be boiled down to grasping onto [or believing in] a fictional, contrived existence.  But what does that mean?  If we really come to understand, then there is no longer even a container to hold together our normal concepts, to make them coherent.

Reality as we thought we knew it is disrupted; the game of contriving an ideal self is suddenly irrelevant.  We experience a disrupted reality, a direct experience of disruption felt at the core of our being.

When we suffer disruption, we find we just can't play that game anymore.  It's really about recognizing the value of giving up the game, which we play without even giving it a second thought.  But when we are severely ill, and we have to cede control over our own body to strangers, holding it all together is not an option.

There are times like these in our lives - such as facing death [or other losses] - when we are no longer able to manage an outer image, no longer able to suspend ourselves in pursuit of the ideal self.  It's just how it is.  In these times of crisis we just don't have the energy to hold it all together.  When things fall apart, we can only be who we are.  Pretense and striving fall away, and life becomes starkly simple.

The value of such moments is this:  we are shown that the game can be given up and that when it is, the emptiness that we feared, emptiness of the void, is not what is there.  What is there is the bare fact of being.  Simple presence remains - breathing in and out, waking up and going to sleep.  The inevitability of the circumstances at hand is compelling enough that for the moment, our complexity ceases.  Our compulsive manufacturing of contrived existence stops.  We're forced into non-grasping of inherent reality.  The contrived self has been emptied out along with contrived existence and the tiring treadmill of image maintenance that goes along with it.  What remains is a new moment spontaneously meeting us again and again.  There is an incredible reality that opens up to us in those gaps if we just do not reject rupture.

But what's underneath our experience of rupture?  If here is no inherent existence to hold on to, then what is the ultimate reality?  This unanswered question drives a lot of us.  If we don't know the answer, then life becomes a primordial anxiety...  The extent to which we know [experience] what's underlying everything - is the extent to which life becomes bearable.

In the raw, broken-open state, this place where we let go of all the games, there is actually a great sense of relief, a knowledge that we don't have to do that anymore, to be that.  There can be a feeling of getting to the heart of things, a juxtaposition [a reorientation] of real and unreal.  That's the beauty of not grasping onto inherent reality.  If we can find ways to disrupt our own habit of clinging to our continuity story, to just strip it all down, then what we find in any bare moment is creative, instantaneous playfulness.

Emerging from the [in-between state], we re-enter the flow of life...  A new kind of openness becomes available to us.  We have lost our delusions of our contrived self image and a secure and solid state of reality and value the pause of the [in-between] as it makes apparent the Silence that underlies everything - that makes all sounds more vivid, and clarifies the end that we will now be beginning...

Pema Khandro Rinpoche
Excerpt from - "Breaking Open in the Bardo"
article in Lion's Roar

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
(color digitally inverted)

 

A Sliver of Reality - Kim Manly Ort

Our experiences and consequently our perceptions, gives us
a limited view of the world, a sliver of reality, if you will.
It's a valid sliver, but only a sliver.  Thought of in this way,
It's a wonder any of us can find similarities of experience
and understanding with others...

I'm all about seeing clearly, but each of us sees clearly differently,
depending on our identity (selected experience) and worldview.
For the past couple of years, I've been noticing what others
choose to believe and asking why.  I'm not exactly sure what to do
with some of the differences I have have difficulty understanding
or even how to talk to someone with a completely different
worldview.  I certainly have my own way of seeing and I find
some worldviews mind-boggling.  However, it's always a good
idea to question your own sliver of reality.

The Role of "Chance"

The musician and composer, John Cage, thought of "chance" as
something that happened to us, but also as something you could
invite into your life.  Why would you do that?  Because, if you
operate according to your own will or our story of how things are
or should be, you eliminate possibilities.

Cage invited "chance" into his life and [art].  The idea was to give
his will, his wants, his desired outcome a break and let "chance"
make a decision.  By using what he called "chance operations", he
could destroy his narrative, his particular point of view.  It's not that
his point of view wasn't worthy, just that it was limited and there
were a multiplicity of points of view he many not have considered.
It's a mindset where he let things be as they are without imposing
his own judgments on them.

Life is a dance with "chance"; always uncertain, often out of our
control, and this is scary.  We can embrace it, as John Cage did.
Whenever we feel our ego or rigid story is in charge, or we're
resisting reality and forming judgments, it's time to get curious
and ask questions like: "How else can I look at this?" or "What
other choice could I make?"  Why not let things be, invite "chance"
in, and explore the many possibilities that arise.

Kim Manly Ort
Writer, Photographer, Workshop Facilitator

~

"Life is like a box of chocolates,
you never know what you're going to get."

Forrest Gump

~

Personal Note:  What John Cage and Kim refer to as "Chance" I call
"The Mystery."  Some call it "Spirit", or even Intuition; tapping
into something greater than my self for Inspiration...  My husband
sees each day as a new life experience that offers a portal to Eternity,
if we let it, even the mundane, like mowing the lawn.  Sometimes he
will randomly choose from a list of possibilities for the day, or do
what he feels drawn to do that day.  Is that "chance" or opening to
the Field of "The Mystery" - or his own Intuition?  He says:
Intuition is the mainline to "The Universe."  It's how "The Universe"
communicates.  It's the flow of awareness that comes from
"The  Universe."

~

John Cage (1912-1992) was an American composer, music theorist,
writer, philosopher, and artist.  Cage studied Indian philosophy and
Zen Buddhism in the late 1940's, and the I Ching was a source of
reference for him, using it as a "random chance generator", as well
as a philosophical reference.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Moon and reflection in skylight 
a portal to eternity? :)

 

Contemplating The Mysteries - Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
One cannot help but be in awe when one
contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life,
of the marvelous structure of reality.  It is
enough if one tries merely to comprehend a
little of this mystery every day.
Never lose a holy curiosity...

Albert Einstein

~

We participate in an unfolding, dynamic reality.
There is no solid, static universe, reality is mutable -
affected by our perception of it.

Opening to the vast universe takes all ways of "knowing:"
the rigors of science, the powers of imagination, embodied
wisdom and mystical vision - and - accepting what still
remains unknowable...

The Institute of Noetic Sciences

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

What's Your Bias? - Brian McLaren

People can't see what they can't see.
Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall,
trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.
No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,
unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias...

Confirmation Bias:  We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities.  As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn't fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer s simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It's almost impossible to see what our community doesn't, can't or won't see.

Complementary Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I'll be hostile to yours.  If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I'll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don't know how much (or little) we know because we don't know how much (or little) others know.  In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are.  As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can't be seen from where I am right now.  But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias:  I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false.  I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don't notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don't have intense and sustained personal contact with "the other", my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It's hard to see something when my way of making a living require me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

Brian McLaren
from - Why Don't They Get It?  Overcoming Bias in Others.

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The Swan and The Frog - Dennis Holtje

Photo by Robert Woeger on Unsplash

There once was a beautiful white swan that came from the great
ocean to the North.  After being in the South for the winter, it
was ready for the return journey home.  So it took off and with
its big wing span and shining white feathers, it soared effortlessly
through the blue sky.  After a long while, and far along the journey,
the swan began to tire and came down to land for a rest.  It landed
right on the edge of a water well and let out a deep sigh.

In the bottom of this well there lived a frog.  The frog said, "Well,
who are you and where do you come from?"

"I am a swan, and my home is on the water of the great northern
ocean," answered the swan.

"Ocean?  How big is this ocean? asked the frog.

"Very big," said Swan.

"Is it this big?" Frog asked, taking two hops backward.

"No, much bigger," said Swan.

So the frog took five huge hops backward, saying,
"Is the ocean this big?"

Swan said, "No, it's much bigger than that."

And so the frog went around the entire well - his whole
reality, as he knew it - and asked the swan, "Now, is the ocean
as big as this?"  And the swan said, "No, it's much bigger,
much bigger!"

Thereupon the frog said, "Well, you're a fool and a liar!"
because he knew there could be nothing bigger than
 his world and his well.

Dennis Holtje
From: Light to Sound

 

 

Quantum Strangeness - Fred LaMotte

Here's another secret of quantum strangeness from the annals
of the quark.  All events, as to their quiddity, are equally
significant.

The daring leap of a tree frog from the spigot of your garden
hose, to her sanctuary in a pot of begonias, is as important as
the birth of a new political party, or an earthquake in Brooklyn.

The universe is not just as you see it, but as the frog sees it.
Your attention magnifies a breath of August breeze into a
hurricane; but for the frog, all human catastrophes are as
weightless clouds in a distant sky.  They pass soundlessly
overhead.

Why do you assume that your chief concern should be mine?
The liberal wants to convince me, the conservative wants to
convert me.  Neither allows me to create myself.  But that is
one task I can do better than anyone else.  Let me follow the
wondrous river of my own interest over all its rocks, through
the rough waters of responsibility and consequence, and I will
learn my lesson much better than you can teach me.

A Greek philosopher said, 'Be kind: everyone you meet is
fighting a great battle.'  A Jewish carpenter said, 'Judge not,
lest ye be judged.'  Here's another piece of advice: if you want
to see radical transformation in humanity, stop trying to change
each other.

Have you ever walked the labyrinth?  One who seems closest
to the goal may suddenly find their way veering far off.  When
two pilgrims pass, they don't know who is nearing the center,
and who is drifting further from it.  Compassion is precisely
this not knowing.  All they can do is bow...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Problems - Rigel Dawson

 Sometimes a problem is only a problem because you keep
trying to solve it.  Once you accept what can't be fixed,
it ceases to be a problem and simply becomes a reality
that exists...

Rigel Dawson
from pinterest

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

20-Watts of Energy - Robert Lanza

 Many of us fear death.  We believe in death because we
have been told we will die.  We associate ourselves with
the body, and we know that bodies die.  But a new
scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal
event we think.

One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain
observations cannot be predicted absolutely.  Instead, there
is a range of possible observations each with a different
probability.  One mainstream explanation, the "many
worlds" interpretation, states that each of these possible
observations corresponds to a different universe (the
'mutliverse').  A new scientific theory - called biocentrism -
refines these ideas.  There are infinite number of universes,
and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some
universe.  Death does not exist in any real sense in these
scenarios.

All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of
what happens in any of them.  Although individual bodies are
destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling- the "Who am I?' -
is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain.

But this energy doesn't go away at death.  One of the surest
axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be
created nor destroyed.....

The linkages between the various histories and universes
transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time.
Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting
either this or that result onto a screen. .....it's still the same
battery or agent [source] responsible for the projection.

According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard
objects we think.  Wave your hand through the air - if you
take everything away, what's left.  Nothing.  The same thing
applies for time.   Everything you see and experience
right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind.
Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything
together.

Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world.  In the
end, even Einstein admitted, "Now Besso (an old friend) has
departed from this strange world a little ahead of me.  That
means nothing.  People like this...know that the distinction
between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly
persistent illusion."  Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual
existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of
time altogether.

After the death of his son, Emerson wrote: "Our life is not
so much threatened as our perception."

Robert Lanza
Excerpt from The Huffington Post - Dec. 8, 2009

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"The Mystery" is more than real...

 What is this "Mystery" that
abides in the depths of me?

Who is "She" that lives me?

"She" rises up in me as Energy
from the very core of my Being,
letting Herself be known in Her whirling
through the spine - dancing me;
the heart quivering, the intensity breathtaking -
The Alive Presence of "The Mystery."

"She" is Here - in us - always,
making Herself known as the Infinite Source of all,
ever abiding within the 
subtle realms of Being.

Not just believed to be true,
but felt to be true...

For what we believe to be true
in our minds,
becomes our "truth" -
our view of "Reality"

until - our inner eyes open to see
"The Mystery" revealed,
as a subtler Reality beyond Form...

"The Mystery" - a subtle Reality
that can be felt
beyond matter reality -
beyond conceptual ideas of reality;
and experienced as
"more than real."

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 27, 2020

Shivoham
_/\_

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Photo - Aurora Borealis from a calendar

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May we all experience the healing subtler realms of Being
in the new year, giving birth to new perspectives - new ways
of seeing and being in the world...

Changing Perceptions of Reality - Ivan Granger

One must remain in the Vastness,
alert and lucid,
Letting one's gaze encompass
the infinite sky,
As though seated on the summit
of a mountain,
open to all the horizons.

by Shabkar
from - Tibetan Poems of Shabkar,
Translated by Matthieu Ricard

I am acutely aware of the anxiety felt by everyone -
concerns about Covid-19, uncertainty about jobs and
the economy in general, the increasingly messy political
situation, all surrounded by pressures of isolation.  Whatever
worries you may be feeling are being shared by many.  Even
in uncertainty and isolation, there is connection and community
and, therefore, strength.

...everything is an opportunity for awareness.  Even in moments
of fear, we [can] always be asking ourselves, what can I learn
from this?  How can I use this moment as a way to step free from
limited ways of thinking...?

One observation that comes to mind is that when society is moving
along in expected ways we are much more likely to align with
the group mind.  The group mind asserts that reality is a certain way
and the routine functioning of day-to-day life seems to confirm it, so
we enter into the shared psychic current - for good and for bad.  We
can list many of the ways that are good, but it also lulls us into a
rather narrow band of perception and self-awareness.  When those

outer certainties, which were never certainties in the first place,
change, when the rhythms of the human world shift and become
less predictable, the fear we feel is more fundamental than the
question of a paycheck or health concerns;  it is a fear that
reality is falling apart.  It is worth reminding ourselves that
Reality [the Vastness] itself is never vulnerable and the only

thing that changes is our agreed upon description of it [our
tribal mentality].  We are being coaxed to see reality in a new
way, to see different aspects of reality, to see a wider view of
reality...

The challenge is to quickly adapt our awareness to the new
terrain, to recognize its regular features, to find what is familiar
and identify what is new, to be at home in a more opens space.

...the less rigidly we hold to some idea of how things used to
be or "should" be and, instead, allow our minds to acclimate to
what is happening, the more naturally and confidently we can
step forward.

As conscious beings we always want to perceive as clearly as
we can.  We want to perceive as much of reality as we can.  And
we must remind ourselves that what we call reality is just a
mental model of what actually is.  When that mental model is
shaken, we can try to prop it up exactly as it was before, but more
rickety and at a tenuous angle, or we adjust it.....to reflect a new
understanding.

 We have a chance to review our assumptions and assess which
 ones don't stand up to the scrutiny of stress.  We are invited
to embrace possibilities that had previously been rejected. 
We can use this time for redefinition and improved perception.

Moments of uncertainty are a genuine opportunity to update
our descriptions of reality, both personally and collectively,
in order to more fully reflect the immensely mysterious space
of being we inhabit together.

The big challenge is not to shut our eyes as our vision expands.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

[brackets mine]

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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

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Photo - taken by my brother

Through Time...

My life is but a passage through time;
a zephyr ~~~~

smoke and mirrors that seem real;
a role to play, a story to unwind...

Sometimes burdened by the density of matter reality,
with its never ending mentations, and entanglements
of the personality;

baggage carried from the past;
paradoxes of the present;
perceptions of "Reality" that don't quite fit
the keyhole - waiting to be unlocked.

At times the mysteries of the Cosmos call me to
ethereal flights, and I play in the
 cosmic dance of timelessness...
Free of the passage of time.
Free of the persona, the story line,
that carries me through time...

Mystic Meandering
August 23, 2019
3am

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Photo - Mystic Meandering

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

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