The Portal of Discovery...

If there is "Enlightenment" perhaps it is when we can
accept that we are ever on the portal of discovery -
recognizing that we only have a glimpse of a larger
Reality...

"The Quest" then, is never really over.
There is no finish line, just an ever expanding
awareness of and deepening into our
True Beingness within the context of
a vaster Reality we have yet to discover.

from a conversation with my husband
12-30-24

~

Photo from the internet

 

What are we? - Misc

 

A fleeting, intricate presence riding a tiny speck of water and
rock, out here in the dark, sailing the ship of wonder ever
more deeply into the void from which we came, that is our
true home and mysterious destination.

Whitley Strieber  & Jeffrey J. Kripal
The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained

Photo - Johannes Plenio 

with thanks to Love Is  A Place

A person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing
river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing
constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.

Carl Rogers
Becoming a Person

With thanks to Love Is A Place

Photo - Mystic Meandering

We are slowed down sound and light waves; a walking bundle of
frequencies tuned into the cosmos.

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

Albert Einstein

with thanks to Love Is A Place

Photo Mystic Meandering

A person is neither a thing nor a process, but an opening
through which the Absolute can manifest.

Martin Heidegger
Love Expands

With thanks to Love Is A Place

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Window Wonderments...

My Medicine is the Quiet and Stillness of the Night
at the window...

I hear crickets tonight and and smell wet grass.
I see all kinds of light from the neighborhood
and the big office buildings' lights on the horizon.
I feel the coolness of the night air...
I take a deep breath and begin to unwind...

Suddenly I hear the sound of a helicopter overhead...

Oh! - and I can see the moon!  When I lean way into
the screen and look East...

Partially hidden by clouds and tree leaves.
I try to take a picture, but the screen gets in the way...
So I just sit, head up against the screen,
watching the moon hiding in the wisps of clouds
passing by...

~

The Night is my Friend.
The Quiet, The Peace, The Stillness
The distant lights of worker bee buildings
and the warm glow of "home lights" in the
windows of the houses nearby...

The distant sound of late night traffic
that does not disturb;
the stately trees, silhouetted, motionless in
the Stillness with a single cricket chirping.

And the moon...

~

I look down from my second story perch.
I see that I must sweep the pea gravel in the
Zen Garden walkway below;
trampled by tree cutters dragging tree limbs;
Roofers and painters walking through,
carrying long ladders -
paying no attention to where they step,
or to the pavers that make the walking path -
trampling stone and gravel.

~

Watching the moon reminds me that we are
part of a larger Universe, a grand Cosmos - with
a bigger "story" - an expansive context - in which we live.
It fills me with wonderment at how the Universe works;
what "intelligence" created it all to make it work the way it
does, like clockwork.  Everything in its own function,
working together.  And why the earth is so crazy with
its human species creating chaos, suffering, and struggling...

~

I enjoy this "window time."

What I'm really trying to do sitting here,
late at night at the window, is to connect
with Source, The Silence of Existence;
to energetically *feel* it...

~

12:28 am -
Time to slip into sleep...
I shuffle the body to the bed
and lay down...

Peaceful having
communed with the Night...

Mystic Meandering
Aug 24, 2024

from notes written at the window :)

~

Photo - Moon hiding in the clouds
taken from the window
through the screen :)

 

Wild Portals of Unknowing - Fred LaMotte

"God leads every soul by a separate path." - John of the Cross

I cannot possibly know what is most important; that which will
transform me.  If I already know what it is I will never be free,
because I have packaged "liberation" as knowledge, in the tight
wrapper of a concept.  This means that spiritual transformation
can never become a program, a technique, or a course that I take.

The moments that liberate me are wild portals of unknowing,
when the blue sky of wonder outshines any cloud it contains;
vast emptiness shifts into the foreground; techniques, traditions,
concepts cultivated in the past, dissolve...

[.....]

The best meditation evaporates into amazement.  The best mantra
melts into silence.  The best guru dances in the mist at the edge of
a meadow, and disappears into your longing heart, where true path
has no beginning....

No, I cannot possibly tell what is most important - how a blue
moth disguises herself in a petal of lupine, why cascade lilies
frolic in a rainy mountain meadow, what the hermit thrush means
to silence.  I cannot know when the golden sun will burst my chest
wide open, turning the small dark chamber of self-doubt into a
boundless empyrean.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

Photo - Vortex Art
2011

The Deep "I" - Tim Freke

How we experience life depends on how conscious we are.
When we only pay attention to the surface of life
we're only superficially awake.  But when we look deeper
we can become deep awake...

I'm conscious of being alive...
But what is life?
I am experiencing this moment,
but what is this moment?

See the world with curious eyes.
Become intensely aware that you exist...

I am the mysterious presence called "I" that is
experiencing a stream of experiences.

But what is this "I"?

The Deep I is Awareness...
It has no tangible form...

We connect with each other Deep I to Deep I
all the time.  We are the Presence of Awareness that
can't be seen.  We are the formless spirit connecting through form...

Deep I to Deep I

When we see that, we become deep awake...

Tim Freke
Philosopher
Excerpts from his video
"The Deep Awake Life"

~

Photo - Eye of God Mandala
2013

Multi-view Window

“Window sitting” calms me. It seems I am more aware, not only of what is happening all around me, but there’s more awareness of what is Aware within me, of what is seeing through these eyes with night vision – and day vision…

“Window sitting” keeps me “sane” – meaning - it enables me to meet the day with equanimity. It allows me to see life through a different lens – the lens of awareness; a multifaceted lens, like the fresnal lens of a lighthouse that allows for limitless light reflection over greater distances. And – it allows me to see through multiple windows as well, like a lighthouse with a 360 degree view through different panes of glass. This multi-view window of awareness keeps me sane in the sense that it seems to be keeping me from being swallowed up by story, by drama, by others, by thinking, by life circumstances… This window of awareness gives me a broader view, one in which the story of a separate “me” is beginning not to matter anymore…

Listening

inwardly and outwardly,

simultaneously.

Awareness

within and without,

simultaneously.

Just sitting

Just listening

Just aware-ing

Just Seeing…

New portals of awareness open up…

~*~

The picture is from a calendar we once had.

The photographer is unknown.

It is the Haceta Head Lighthouse in Oregon.

Awareness Moments

Every new experience becomes a new awareness moment,

and every awareness moment opens a portal to a new level of awareness…

Like walking through a field of tall grass, having to part the grass

as you go, to make your way - with each step

the path is made evident by the awareness.

When you part the grass, you open up the path to

a new experience - a new awareness.

Each parting of the grass, each step through life,

*is* the present moment.

Each new experience *is* the present moment.

You have to be receptive to what is revealed

in the parting of the grass,

what the new portal of awareness offers…

You can’t control what’s there.

You can’t control what is revealed.

But you can be receptive to what the moment offers…

Every moment is the present moment.

Every step *through* life is an opening

to the present moment.

It’s a chain of awarenesses that allows greater awareness

of the whole…

Wisdom from my husband in conversation today…

Photo – Christine

view through skylight

The Framework of Interpretation

My husband and I were talking this past weekend, as we often do. We often engage in deeper, more philosophical discussions about “life.” That is what attracted me to him in the first place! After 31 years we are still able to go there, to meet each other in the depths, even though our paths have seemingly taken us in different directions. Like the poet Robert Frost wrote, we are kind of like two roads that diverged into the woods, each of us taking a less well-traveled path in our own way. And even though we are both on “different paths” we still manage to somehow converge here and there, to cross each other’s pathways. Sometimes my husband has a hard time when I talk more “mystically”, more abstractly, what he calls “ooga-booga” language. And I continue to be enamored with the wisdom that sometimes pours forth from his being.

During our discussion out of his mouth poured: “The moment is the experience, not the framework we put around it to interpret it. So don’t frame the experience or circumstance with interpretation.” Something caught my attention there – the “framework of interpretation” – and I realized how much I do this. How I have erected this framework of interpretation through which I see life, creating a scaffolding of ideas, beliefs, opinions and judgments – a frame of reference that frames everything I see. Like when you go on vacation and spend your entire time behind the lens of a camera, taking pictures of the experience, but never really experiencing it. And so the interpretation of things becomes the frame of reference through which life is seen, instead of the direct experience of living it from moment to moment.

The same is true of “spirituality” it seems. My tendency is to hold on to a particular frame of reference through which to experience “Truth.” “The Mystery” just is. It’s not my image of what it should be, or what it should look like. It’s not in my identities that I project onto it or identifications with particular belief systems. “The Mystery” is authentic in and of Itself, is the reality of what is, not the image I was conditioned to believe. And so it seems my challenge is to see beyond the identity I give it, the image of it, into “The Mystery” Itself – seeing how “The Mystery” reveals Itself without the interpretation, without the framework that I have constructed around it. It was as if in my husband’s words I was being invited to look beyond the scaffolding of interpretation – the stories, the thoughts, the ideas, the images, even the languaging of “It” that keep me in my comfort zone, that keep me from seeing directly.

It seems this requires being open to actually *experience* It – to actually *see* It without the pre-conceived ideas/beliefs *about* It. And for me although the “religious” framework has been gone for many years, there’s still evidently a scaffolding in place, a framework where I try to extract a particular interpretation from the experience of “The Mystery,” instead of just *seeing* it for what it is.

As the conversation continued, my husband then said: “We all stand at the portals of Awareness.” I gasped. These words spoke to me so clearly. He said we are like children looking through a peephole in a fence. A child will look through a peephole and tell you what they see, they don’t worry about being “qualified” to say it, and they don’t interpret what they see. Innocence just sees.

Like my husband so profoundly said – we all stand at the portals of Awareness, of SEEING. Are we curious enough to look, to peak through and see, to go beyond the familiar frameworks? Do we really want to *see* what is beyond the scaffolding, beyond the stories that we tell, the beliefs we believe that keep us in our comfort zones – that keep us from seeing through the Portal – to “The Mystery”…

(for other related readings this week see Liminal Light and this unlit light)