Distant Moons...

Maybe I'll go to a distant moon
off Jupiter after "I" die - and be
moon dust

or become an Aurora Borealis -
Making wave forms across the
night sky

or maybe just hang out in a star cluster
or rebirth myself in a Nebula,
or through a black hole into
another Universe

This life is only a portal to Eternity...

Mystic Meandering
Aug 29, 2022

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
2016

a section of a piece I did called "Emergence"
but noticed the several little white spots,
after I sprayed the canvas with water to
create the drip and melding affects, that
reminded me of "distant moons" ;) 

 

Liminal Thinking - Wurman and Gray

 Liminal means a doorway, or portal, or threshold,
not this or that, not the old way or new way,
but neither and both.  It's a state of ambiguity or
disorientation that precedes a breakthrough, a
new kind of thinking...

Liminal thinking is a kind of agility that enables you
to successfully navigate times of transition.  It
involves the ability to read your own beliefs and needs -
and the ability to continually change beliefs in order
to better meet those needs, and the needs of others...

Richard Saul Wurman
From the Forward to Liminal Thinking
by Dave Gray

~

Your beliefs inform your actions and your actions are
interpreted by others, and those interpretations become
the basis for their beliefs, which inform their actions...

"Story webs" create a shared world.  They are co-created
by the people who participate in them.  A "story web" gets
created through our own beliefs about an experience and
other people - and we create a shared world based on our
story webs.

Over time, these beliefs become deeply embedded habits
that become invisible; a complex, dense, interconnected
system of beliefs and behavior that become "social
agreements" that go unspoken and are not easy to
untangle.  The more we reinforce the habits [beliefs]
the more invisible they become, until one day they are
just "the way it is."  But - "the way it is" is
something we have created together...

Changing stories can change reality.
So what story are you choosing to believe?

Changing a shared world requires
changing its underlying beliefs...

Dave Gray
Excerpts from - Liminal Thinking

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Rupture and Evolution - Arundhati Roy & Jeff Kober

What is this thing that has happened to us?
It's a virus, yes.  In and of itself it holds no moral brief.
But it is definitely more than a virus...
It has brought the world to a halt...  Our minds are still
racing..., longing to return to "normality", trying to stitch
our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture.
But the rupture exists.

Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the
past and imagine their world anew.  This one is no different.
It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
[one way of life to the next].  We can choose to walk through
it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our
avarice, our data banks and dead ideas... or we can walk
through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine
another world. [Another way of being in the world].

Arundhati Roy
Author - The God of Small Things

[brackets mine]

~

The Vedas tell us that change is constant, that the nature of
the relative world is continual change, always.  Like the weather...
But the Vedas also tell us that the changing nature of the
universe is always progressive.  Evolution is the only thing
that's ever happening here. Always.  Like rivers always flowing
downstream; regardless of how many curves and meanderings they
may take, they always reach the ocean.  Downstream flow is the
nature of water.  And evolution is the nature of consciousness.
Consciousness cannot help but evolve.  It cannot help but expand,
widen, deepen, grow.  This is its very nature.  Though we may
resist it or ignore it, pretend it isn't so, in fact it is so.  It always
has been, it always will be.

Jeff Kober
Meditator

~

Photo from the Internet

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]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Zero - Jeannie Zandi

There is something that does not move no matter what comes,
no matter what will be lost.

I like to call it zero.  It's sitting in zero [the still point as TS Eliot
calls it].  It's sitting in Being.  It's so slow that it has stopped. And
it has a fierce fidelity to what is authentically unfolding in the
moment out of Being.  Here we stand with what's being born in
its tiny infancy, authentic and shyly showing itself, birthed from
Being.  No care for what it can be used for, where it's going, what
it means about you, me or someone else.  It simply stands without
a name, without a use, standing with that moment because it's
precious, because it's the Holy unfolding itself.

  We blow past the subtle petals of our unfolding, and
this holy birthing that's happening all the time through us.
But What emerges authentically is Holy.

In Being, we're not manipulating anything.  We're not trying
to go anywhere.  We're not trying to heal anything.  We follow
the thread of what's alive and we behold it in reverent silence,
even if every egoic hand wants to grasp it and turn it into
something.  The Holy is shining and peeking its head out...

We are not shown how to stay with the natural expression of
unfolding through us, though we were born knowing it.  As
we grew up, no one saw it, no one reflected it, stood with it,
protected it, had faith in it.....simply because it was.  We were
left in concept-land, zooming over our actual life; our own
organic unfolding.  Now we're stuck in our everyday minds
with our will trying to build something out of concept that
will never be as solid as what the Holy organically reveals.

We can stand in what emerges naturally from Being.  We
can slow down to the speed of Being, which is zero.  It has
nothing to show for itself.  It's simply a miracle as it is.
Everything that is zero is true.

It is Beingness flowing into Beingness. 
When we sit in zero [Being] there is only zero [Being],
and even what moves is still.  At some point you start to feel
 it as yourself.   It starts to wake in you...

  Stay true to the speed of Being.  Don't move unless Being
 moves [you], because you cannot leave that place and offer
anything real, and you're sick to death of ["spiritual"] manipulation
 and skipping over what's actually, purely and humbly here.

It's our zero, like a big dark hole
in the center of us that we thought was our problem. 
It's actually a portal to the Holy.  And through that empty
space of Being the Holy paints the world.

  But... we have forgotten -
how to rest as zero and stand in what's simple and authentic.
And out of fidelity to that Being [that we are], out of this
magnificent black hole, an inordinate amount of glory spills,
and each movement is the poetry of being in motion, while
utterly empty.

Jeannie Zandi

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - a mandala that my mother colored in 2016 at age 88
 digitally zoom blurred and color inverted - magic :).

Cosmic Bardo - Matt Licata

All the techniques, the teachings, the things to manifest, the new
beliefs to take on, the worn-out ideas about the true source of
peace, aliveness and flowing abundance.  Perhaps there were
once answers to these questions, but now there is no answer to
be found.  Only a burning where the questions once existed.

This burning is the doorway, the portal...

A cosmic sort of exhaustion can come at times, where we find
ourselves in the bardo between one moment and the next.  We
can't quite go back to the way it was, but the rebirth has yet to
appear.  There is a creativity in the liminal but it can seem out
of reach.  We are asked to marinate in the womb..., to tend to
the groundlessness, and find refuge in the unknown: to be
midwife to the darkened illumination.  There are signs and
symbols and guidance all around and inside us, but their
appearance is governed by a timeline written somewhere else.

As we bear witness to a new day, in awe at the gift that has
been given... the breath is here.  The heart is quivering.  The
birds have come.  Sounds from the other world, another
opportunity to hear, to behold the miracle of the senses.  The
sun has come up again.  The moon is hiding nearby waiting
her turn.  For just one moment, the veil parts and the
perfection is there awaiting our participation.

Your life is not an unending self-improvement project and
your heart is not a venture to be undertaken, mastered and
completed.  Perhaps today was never going to be the day
when you figured it all out, got all your questions answered,
or resolved the contradictions....  but to let your heart open
to the vastness of the question.  To fall to the ground as a
humble lover of the mystery.  And listen once again.

Matt Licata

~

Photo by my husband...

To Let the Light In - James George

What I'm coming to lately is an end-of-life conviction that
there is more to consciousness than what is produced in my
little head, or yours.  Both of us have the capacity, at times,
mysteriously, to get beyond whatever this small
consciousness is doing and telling us.  When we are able,
when we are sufficiently still and relaxed - letting it happen,
not doing it - we can receive a resonance from a greater
Consciousness.

...am I open to something that could be quite new, that is not
really coming so much from me as from this 'source consciousness'
that many traditions have called "I"?

I'm referring to the consciousness that manages to see what
things are, what I am, and to not get caught in the next reaction
or judgment or association - because all of these are functions;
and Consciousness is not a function.

Interviewer: When I experience an echo or hint of that
Consciousness, there's a distinct experience that something can
move through me.  And I even begin to feel impotent without
that sense of connection to a greater knowing.

JG: I think our entire culture has been rendered impotent by its
disconnection from that Consciousness, from anything that
we could really call sacred.

Without being in love with Consciousness, we can't reach it.
and it can't reach us while we're preoccupied with all that is
going on in our ordinary thought, our ordinary bodily habits,
sensations, movements, and our ordinary emotional reactions.
These are what I am calling functions.

It's as if we have two natures: a functional nature and what
many people have been calling a "spiritual nature" or soul.
But the language is suspect these days because we have been
so careful the last couple of centuries to separate from the
superstitions of the past that we have involuntarily cut
ourselves off from the sacred...

Like you, I am searching for who I am, and by now I know I am
not going to find an answer in my functional machinery, ticking
away automatically, but in my essential mind, just aware attention...

It is so important to understand awareness as a connector to
something greater than me, to my source, really.  My presence
is the doorway to that, even at the moment that I acknowledge that
I don't know who I am and see I my lack of presence.  But that is the
beginning of a real wish for it, a wish to Be...

And when I have that wish, then maybe something can reach me
that is of an absolutely different quality.  I may perceive it as an
axis of Light running down my physical body, which has a
different origin.

We have such resistance to even the theoretical idea that we
could, right now, be breathing an air charged with omnipresence
of Consciousness, the omniscience of Consciousness.  We've all
had, perhaps rarely, a direct experience of a moment when I knew
everything at once and I was aware, not just of what I'm calling
this present moment, but of past, present, future as one eternity.

These are just words at this moment.  But I remember it wasn't
just a word, it was a flash of light, of electricity from the top of
my head to my toes.  And it changed something in my cellular
structure that persists today.  I feel that now.

We really need to see ourselves as we are - not trying to change
anything...  How do I include all of me: mind, body, feeling?  All
the functions have to be integrated.  It's not a search to escape
from this altogether wonderful system of functions...

For a moment, stop thinking, start sensing and feeling, so as to
integrate all the parts.

When the mind becomes aware, there is clarity,  When the body
becomes aware, there is the sensation of life.  And when the
feelings become aware, there is the presence of Love.

So I let go, sense and listen, until something relaxes enough to
let the light in from a crack in my shell...

It's not a mental conception, but a deeper conviction that could
draw everything and everyone together...

James George
Excerpts from: To Let the Light In, A Conversation with
James George
in Parabola Magazine
To read the whole article click here.

James George is a retired Canadian Diplomat who served as
High Commissioner to India, and Ambassador to Nepal and Iran.
He has known many important spiritual teachers of the 20th century.

~

Photo - Light coming through the fingers of my hands
held together.  Photo turned on its side.

The Energy of Life - Naomi Stone

There is something wonderful
working in the world
and in the natural flow
of life...
an energy
that moves this existence
moment to moment...

Trying to name it or trying
to control it changes
the inner wisdom
and steals the wonder
of discovery...

Watch a child exploring
his world.
Touching...tasting...squealing
with delight starting
at the beginning

We are seldom taught
to trust it
because someone
wants to pay you to live
their ideas and answers...
or charge you for learning
them by luring you away,
away from the gift
of your own gloriously
divine heritage...

Suddenly...
you are entrapped...
doubting who you are
in a world where
everyone seems
to think they have the answers...

Live the awareness of the flow
and infinite portals
ever opening
around and within you...

Naomi Stone
Original title: "Spiraling Energies of Creation"

~

Art - Craypas oils
done with fingers
2012

Window Sitting - Night 3

I now eagerly look forward to my time at the window each night! I hope you all aren’t getting bored… I am just having way too much fun sitting each night, and writing about my experiences!

Night 3 is a Fall-like night with temps dropping into the low 60’s and a strong breeze that makes it feel chilly. So, in anticipation, I dawn my holey sweater – that is holes, not holy - :) and my holey socks for my midnight tryst.

I approach the window at the appointed hour with anticipation, wondering what awaits at this new found portal of awareness – like a clandestine rendezvous with a secret friend. Dare I say “lover.” Well a secret friend-lover that everybody has, that is. You know, the One called – “Silence” – the Vast, Spacious, Ubiquitous One…

It takes me longer to settle in for some reason. There is a restlessness and an angst rising in my gut. I fidget, trying to get comfortable in my seat. The sky traffic is heavy tonight. There are many blinking lights overhead, and the sound of a helicopter cuts through the night air. Three cars and a truck pass on the street. I can hear the rustle of the leaves in the trees more strongly as the wind blows more fully now. The smell of wetness fills the air from the rain earlier in the afternoon.

“Silence” is not readily apparent tonight. It eludes me – as vast as it is. So I put my elbows on the sill and cup my face with my hands and shut my eyes. I breath deeply – listen – and wait.

The wind blowing strongly through the leaves sounds just like the waves of the ocean – like the rising and falling sound of the waves as they crash onto the shore and then slide back into the sea. There is a similar rising crescendo that fades as the wind waves through the leaves…. I am mesmerized by the sound.

There is a lot of inner noise tonight as well. I am aware of sensations, feelings and discomforts rising in the body – like waves. There is the noise of “fear.” Imagination begins to create stories… Will there be a coyote? Will it jump the back fence? What was that shadow I just saw? Could there be somebody in the back yard? What if “Silence” doesn’t show up!? Ah – it’s just that boogieman - the mind. It likes to hide in the shadows and scare me…

I sit back into Stillness again, waiting for the entrainment with “Silence” – allowing my mind to drift.

Listening outwardly into the night becomes a deep inner listening for the sound of Silence within - listening for the footsteps of this silent lover on the stairs; waiting for the felt sense of the inner spaciousness of Love’s Presence. Sitting with heightened awareness, I notice the winds die down – externally and internally. Sinking below thought, feeling, and sensation I fall into the embrace of “Silence”- who has been waiting for me all along. I feel the Rhythm of Its breath like a breeze through the window of my Heart. Sitting back in the chair, I lean into the embrace, leaving the externals as they are, and find the familiar solace in “Silence” who has always been there – waiting for me to surrender. Awareness comes to rest within ItSelf.

Content, I give in to the call of sleep, and glide down the hall to bed…

~*~

"Step away from the story..."

There are phrases that create openings into greater Awareness. “Step away from the story” was one such phrase for me recently. It was said as part of a comment left by a fellow blogger commenting on the issue of drama that has been showing up at my door on regular basis. And for some reason when I read this phrase, something clicked. She said: “I've been working with the phrase ‘drop the content.’ It seems to help me step away from the story machine that feeds the drama and stay with the sensations and whatever emotions the sensations represent.”

Ah-ha – a light bulb went on about how the story machine runs: by focusing on the content and not seeing the *context* of the experience; running with the experience and not being present *to* the experience – allowing myself to be drawn into the machine.

I will admit I keep getting sucked back into the story machine with ongoing family drama issues. It’s taking quite a bit of awareness to remember the Greater Context in which this drama is playing itself out, to remember it’s all just life as it is. Life is story. Life is drama… There is greater awareness that comes in this “stepping away”, in seeing the Context, seeing and experiencing the Spaciousness that these stories appear in…

From a non-dual fellow blogger, to whom I posed the question about story and drama, came this response: “There is indeed no escape from drama, if by the word “drama” we simply refer to the constantly changing appearance of this life where we are all (as it appears) playing our separate parts. There is no escape from THIS, as it IS. There is, in other words, no escape from the appearance of the story of “my life” unfolding, as there exists no “my life” without a “me”, and there exists no “me” without the story/drama of “my life…. The idea that there actually exists a separate someone (“me”) to be walking [away] is intrinsic to the story or drama itself…” Hmmm… light bulb…

As I sat out under the “Buddha Tree” Saturday evening, I heard the sounds of nature, people, and things around me. My *mind* fixated on the sound of a dog barking. It managed to block out all other noise and I just fixated on “dog barking.” It was as if the backdrop in which the sound occurred was lost and all I heard was *noise.* And then judgment about noise, wishing someone would do something about their dog barking noise, disturbing my stillness! Ah! Story! Light bulb again.

So of course it occurred to me that I had become fixated on the story – to the exclusion of anything else. It’s like getting fixated on the clouds in the sky, but not being *aware* of the sky in the background. (Except it’s not really the “background” – it’s the space in which the clouds appear – the Greater Context). And sometimes it’s overcast. All you can see/experience is story, and you have to stay with it until the clouds either move on or dissipate – or – until you become aware that you are focused on the dramas occurring *in* the larger Context – not the larger Context itSelf. Ah-ha….

I know I create stories around life events, about whether it should be happening or not, and how it is affecting me, or disturbing me, or interfering with me, or how it makes me feel. It’s all a story about a separate sense of self *feeling* something about some *thing*; a separate sense of me feeling inadequate, angst, anger, irritated, or overwhelmed about a life event.

Clouds are inevitable. Noise is inevitable. So too it seems are stories and dramas. But they require a willing participant. When I *internally* “step away”, I am able to *see* more clearly that they are just clouds, just stories – just fluff floating through space with no *real* substance. In the spaciousness of the “Greater Context” there is no story. It’s just whatever is happening is happening with no conclusions, no judgments, no dramas about what is happening – just acceptance – “stepping away from the story” and opening to spacious Awareness…

~*~

Squirrel Energy

There is a new portal of awareness opening up here with the experience of assisting my sister after her accident in March. Well, there are many “new awarenesses” actually but the one I want to tell about is “squirrel energy”, as I thought it would offer a moment of amusement…

It occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that I have squirrel energy. If you’ve ever watched a squirrel you know what I mean. They’re a bit neurotic actually, a bit antsy and very vigilant – constantly looking for something – maybe the supposed nuts that they evidently believe they have buried in things – like the lawn, pots of dirt, under a tree – anywhere – they just evidently can’t seem to remember where, and evidently it drives them nuts! They jump from spot to spot on the lawn feverishly focused on the ground, looking, digging, doing, busy, busy, busy – gotta find those nuts! And then, being so preoccupied with what they’re fervently focused on, they suddenly jump and twirl in the air, like a whirling dervish, as if some ghost has bit them in the butt. And then just as frantically scurry up the tree for safety, and then get caught in pursuit of some distraction. Ah yes – squirrel energy – I know it well…

I have come to accept that life for me the last few weeks is just this way – squirrelly.

I enter my sister’s apartment fervently focused on helping and doing, checking this, checking that, doing what comes into my field of awareness in the moment: dishes, sweeping, cat box, refill the cat’s watering holes, trash out, vacuuming, change the sheets, general pickup, grocery, and “helping” my sister shower… Basically hovering while she showers, like a vigilant, antsy squirrel – hoping she doesn’t fall off her shower seat – like that could really happen...

I was worried that I wasn’t being “present” in this squirrel energy; that I’ve just been on automatic, being an automaton – only focused on what’s in front of me. But I realized that even in my squirrel energy I show up *in* the present moment - sharing the present moment *with* her. I *am* always present *with* her, not wishing it were different, but just doing what life asks of me in the moment… It was only afterwards that I would start to think that I wasn’t being present, or that my “squirrel energy” meant I was not being “present”; that somehow it had a detrimental effect on my sister, because it wasn’t necessarily calm – contained – but not calm. So I raised the issue with her about my squirrel energy and how I was concerned that it was not good for her. She surprised me with her humorous answer: “Not at all! I just sit back and watch you – amused and entertained” – she said laughing… Maybe squirrel energy *was* what was needed in the moment – not pious Christine trying to be “present” offering platitudes or prescriptions (which I have done btw) – but an amusing diversion in an otherwise difficult situation. It’s kind of like watching the squirrels out your window. They don’t change your reality, but they offer an amusing diversion.

My other discovery in all this: When you’re *in* the moment you don’t *think* about being *in* the moment - you’re just there – however you show up. You just do what has to be done. It seems to me that this is Presence too – even squirrelly Presence doing what it does…

I think I thought that practicing being in the “present moment” – aka: Presence - would feel more “spiritual,” but it’s really just being who you are with what is - with no “spiritual” overtones. Just Presence doing what is needed – whether it’s cleaning the bathroom, feeding the cat, emptying the trash, sweeping the floor. Presence is there exactly in that moment, doing what is called for, whether the “me” is actually *aware* of that or not – whether I’m feeling particularly “spiritual” about it or not…

My experience has also been that there’s no room for thought in *being* in the present moment. Every moment is the present moment. Life is a series of present moments. Life, as it is, is being lived in each moment - everything being just as it is… even the squirrels… They don’t *think* about being present to the moment – they just are!

I’m still steeping on this - the seeing and the *acceptance* of my squirrel energy as Presence itself – of being present in the moment… Of course I’d rather it was soft, cuddly Bunny energy, or strong, courageous Lion energy, but no – it’s just squirrel energy doing what it naturally does…

Now on to the next present moment :)