The Real Virus...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark night,
she awakes...

Inexplicable dread overtakes her...

... a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time...

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions,
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a
boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Racism,
Fear
 and
 Violence.

But those who know the beauty of
true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus"
cannot shatter the pristine Light of
a radiant Cosmos;
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and
movement of a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds
and the ineptness of
fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded lives and help us endure what
is happening in our country and the world...

Namaste

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Out Beyond Polarities - Rumi & Babka

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field.  I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in *that* grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense...

Rumi

The great Persian poet and Sufi Mystic, Rumi, speaks in
this poem of a field, a clearing, a place empty of divisiveness,
empty of opposition, empty of what we think is certain.

Violence reverberates throughout the world in strains so familiar
that we often are complacent when there is another headline.

We don't often consider how our collective guilt extends the cruelty
and division in the world.  We are guilty of the failure to be
compassionate, and the polarity between the secular and the sacred,

and the unwillingness to be spiritually curious about our shared
responsibility for the violence we see in the world, [in the form of]
poverty, racism, homophobia; the violence of certainty, which claims
the superiority of being 'right'; the violence of oppression,
of absolutes, of nationalism.

We must meet each other in the space where we are all beyond
right and wrong [beyond polarities]... surpassed in the simplicity
of tenderness, the attentive word, the awareness that we each live,
in every moment, exposed to death.

We must practice deliberate compassion.
Each of us deserves to be valued and held as we are,
where we are...

Susie Paulik Babka, PhD

Associate of Religious Studies

Excerpt from an article she wrote in the Huffington Post,
"Out Beyond Ideas: A Field of Empathy in Response to Violence"
about the violent death of her father and 4 others in a
cycling accident.

Politics and Meditation - Fred LaMotte

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

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

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

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

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

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

Zeitgeist...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark of night,
I awake...

Inexplicable dread overtakes me...

.....a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time?

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Fear and Violence.

But those who know the beauty of true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus" cannot
shatter the pristine Light of a radiant Cosmos,
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and movement of
a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds;
by the ineptness of fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

Zeitgeist - the defining spirit of the time, or culture.

~*~

Yet another mass school shooting Weds here in the US,
moving me to tears - children killing children once again;
and what humanity is doing to itself is heartbreaking...
The more my heart opens, the more I feel the emotional
pain of those who have been traumatized for life by
the shadow side of humanity.

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded hearts and help us to endure our
wounded society...

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - I don't remember what this is a picture of
but it seemed fitting...