Prayer is Listening - Soren Kierkegaard

As my prayer became more attentive and inward
I had less and less to say.
I finally became completely silent.
I started to listen

- which is even further removed from speaking.

I first thought that praying entailed speaking.
I then learnt that praying is hearing,

not merely being silent.

This is how it is.
To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking,
Prayer involves becoming silent,
And being silent,
And waiting until "God" [The Deep Silence] is heard.

 Soren Kierkegaard

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
2011

 

A Thousand Ways to Pray - Fred LaMotte

Smiling we know
is a form of meditation.
Weeping is also a prayer.
Worry is beseeching
the Whirler of All
for the things you don't want.
When you are angry or bitter,
the purest devotion is your belly
without naming it.
Let the fire of outrage
burn a hold through your forehead.
This is profound samadhi.
Be the thole.
Yes, there are ten thousand
ways to pray.
Today is sacred
because the planets are ajar.

Your horoscope looks like
the web of a spider
who fell into a plastic
Starbuck's cup
and imbibed caffeine.
The little dipper spills
mad lukewarm light,
making your plans collapse.
Your mind says, "everything 
is going wrong,"
but your gut just savors
the bitter, the salt, the sweet,
the flavor of a rainy sidewalk.

Be patient with indigestion, friend.
It is the sum of all prime numbers
dissolving in the taste 
of silence.

Angels of dust sprinkle themselves
over your cauldron of moon-blood.
Your mind gives up its pasquinade,
the falsetto soliloquy of reason
which is only the echo
of a voice that stopped speaking
before you were born.
Finally you can fall
into this breath,
the breath of grieving,
sighing, murmuring "yes"

to the dark.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

If you pray because
you believe it will
change the earth,
don't waste this
precious breath.
If you pray because
your mind is at war
with the way things are,
then solve your mind,
not the world.

Fred LaMotte

 

A Prayer...

Call my name...  Call my name...

My unborn name...

The name that only You know...

When I danced with the unnamed stars
and unknown galaxies...

Let me hear Your voice again...

Let me sink into Your depths...
Let me feel the warm glow of Your
hidden light...
Let me hear the soft sound of Your
unplayed music -
dancing through the Cosmos -
before You were called
Shakti, Shiva, The Buddha, Allah, The Christ;
or however You reveal Yourself,
in the land of myths and stories...

Let me rest in
Your Primal Energy at the Core of my Being,
That which infuses all life
and lights everything from within.
The Breath of the Eternal Source...

Amen

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 7, 2021

Photo from the Internet

 

Prayer for the World - Mirabai Starr

Beloved One,
Living Light,
Spirit of all that is,
Thank you for welcoming us
To this sacred circle,
Comprised of every hue on the spectrum
Of the human community.
Be with us now
As we lean in to hear your call.
Stay close as we stand up
To speak your message of unconditional love.

Divine Mother,
Embodiment of Mercy and Compassion,
Enfold us in your protective cloak
As we dare to take in the pain of the world.
Give us the courage and strength
To drop our preconceptions
And step onto the field of global strife
Armed with the flaming arrow of unconditional love.

Sacred Friend,
Hidden behind the eyes of the broken,
Reveal yourself,
Let us behold the beauty of your face
In all beings, everywhere, always.
Where once we perceived only the impossible,
Blinded by our desire for circumstances, people,
And our own sweet selves to be different,
Let us rest now in what is
Alert to your power to astonish us
With the global awakening of unconditional love.

Holy One,
We carry legacy of our ancestors
In the marrow of our own souls.
We are all reluctant prophets.
We must be called and called again,
And yet again.
We turn and turn away,
We yield and bow and rise,
Until at last,
Clasped by the ferocious wings of your angels,
We declare, Hineyni.
Here I am.
Make of me a vessel of your divine will,
The will of unconditional love.

Great Spirit,
True Self and No-Self,
Fill the hearts of our leaders
With humility and holy awe.
Embolden them not to turn away from the Other
But to lay down their weapons
And take the adversary in their arms.
Infuse them with the fire
That melts swords into ploughshares
And spears into pruning hooks.
Show them the secret passageway from hopeless conflict
Home to unconditional love.

Father-Mother God,
May the Children of Abraham and Sarah
At last fall silent in the face of your radiance.
May our hearts soar in remembrance.
May our knees bend and our bodies bow down,
And our spirits rejoice,
Overflowing with unceasing prayer,
Resounding and cleansing and blessing all the land:
There is nothing but you,
Nothing but God,
Nothing.

AMEN.

Mirabai Starr

written in 2015
during the Iran and US peace agreements


With thanks to Michel at No Mind's Land

~

Photo from the Internet
digitally altered

A Bridge to a Kinder World - Diane Walker

We pray today, not just for ourselves,
But for all in need of prayer.
We act, not just on behalf of ourselves,
But for those who will benefit.
...and we reach out today, not just to those
Whose opinions mirror our own,
But in hopes of building a bridge to a kinder world.

Diane Walker

Contemplative Photography

Photo and verse by Diane Walker

Quietude - Dada Gavand

So we have to work with ourselves and go directly to that core,
to that center, to that root wherein lies the whole secret and mystery
of life.  You need not depend upon anyone, or on any book, in fact not
on anything that is outside.  Just be quiet into yourself.  There will not
be any thought to imagine or demand a thing.  Simply be quiet
with the total fund of energy within, and in such quietude you are
going to discover something new.  You will then experience what
humility is, and what innocence is.  The mind which is quiet into itself
is innocent, humble, transparent and open to discover that which is real.

Then you will know what meditation is.  Meditation is not the chanting
or singing of devotional songs, nor the repetition of any word or
phrase. You will then be in a state of total surrender,
alone within yourself.

You have to be really alone and anonymous to be with the inner spirit.
When you are somebody, you are related to the world, you belong to
the world.  And as long as you are of the world, you cannot move
toward the inner spirit; you will have no relationship with it.  So to
have a contact with the spirit, you will have to be alone, on your own.
Then you will get a helping hand from within.  The whole secret is to
come back into yourself by gathering all your energy, and to be there
in quietude and silence.  To be in silence is to be near one's own inner
spirit.

To be in such silence within is the highest form of prayer.  Prayer is not
chanting or singing praises to someone, nor asking and begging for
rewards of the other world.  Desires and supplication of thought on any
level are not prayers.  The silence of one's own total energy in the inner
domain is the true state of prayer.  Such prayer finds its own reward in
a very mysterious way.  The innate energy, when it regains its balance
and stillness, finds its own fulfillment...

Dada Gavand
East Indian Mystic

From: Beyond the Mind

via: No Mind's Land

~

Photo - two shadows on a wall
digitally colored

For Winter Solstice - Matins - John O'Donohue

1

Somewhere, out at the edges, the night
is turning and the waves of darkness
Begin to brighten on the shore of dawn.

The heavy dark falls back to earth
And the freed air goes wild with light,
The heart fills with fresh, bright breath
And thoughts stir to give birth to color.

2

I arise today

In the name of Silence

Womb of the Word,

In the name of Stillness

Home of Belonging,

In the name of Solitude

Of the soul and the Earth.

I arise today

Blessed by all things,

Wings of breath,

Delight of eyes,

Wonder of whisper,

Intimacy of touch,

Eternity of soul,

Urgency of thought,

Miracle of health,

Embrace of God.

May I live this day

Compassionate of heart,

Clear of word,

Graciousness in awareness,

Courageous in thought,

Generous in love.

~ John O'Donohue

"Matins"

from To Bless the Space Between Us

Matins = Morning Prayer

Yearning - Rumi

One night a man was crying,
Allah! [God] Allah! [God]

His lips grew sweet with the praying,
until a cynic said,
'So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?'

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.

'Why did you stop praying?' [Khidr asked]

'Because I've never heard anything back.'

[Kidhr said]

 This longing you express
is the return message.

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

Give your life to be one of them.

Rumi
Original title: "Love Dogs"

~

Yearn for more.

...don't linger in any spiritual benefit
you have gained,
but yearn for more,
like one suffering from illness
whose thirst for water is never quenched...

Rumi

Scattered Heart - Omid Safi

The Prophet Mohammad was once asked what was the one essential
quality for prayers...  Many in the community thought they knew the
right answer.  Some thought the Prophet would say the proper
recitation of Arabic.  Others thought the answer would be lovely
memorization of Qur'anic chapters.  Yet others expected the answer
would be perfect ritual observations of prayer.

Muhammad's answer was: Presence in the Heart...

What is Presence?

It is not so much presence of God.
God is always present.
It is we humans who are absent from our own Heart.
[the spiritual Heart].  So much of our lives are spent in a
fractured state of Heart.  We are, too often, scattered.  We speak of
being scatterbrained.  The truth of the matter is that the scatteredness
is much more systemic.  We are scattered at every level: body, soul,
 mind, and spirit.  We do this to ourselves.  We throw ourselves
 to the past, often clinging to a past pain or trauma.  Or, we hurl
 ourselves towards the future, attaching ourselves to a hope for the
 future, or fear of losing something.
We are in the past, or in the future, everywhere but Here.
To pray with the Heart, to have presence in the Heart, is a remedy.
It is a healing, an unscattering.
This starts with mindfulness, with an awareness of the breath.
When we monitor our breath, simply observe the breath enter into
the heart, and emerge from the heart, our breathing slows down.
The heart rates slows.  Here is where we become whole:
our body, our breath, our spirit become One.
In that moment, in this breath, we are healed and whole.
And what a prayer there is in this breath.
What Presence...
God has always been present, waiting for us.
We ourselves become present, meeting God.
This is the Prayer of the Heart.

To pray the Prayer of the Heart we cannot be anxious about
 the past, or hopeful/fearful about the future.
  We have to be Present to our own Heart's state.

The Prayer of the Heart starts with us where we are: broken,
 fractured, and dis-united.  It takes us by the breath, and moves us
 along to unity, wholeness, and healing.

This is when we realize that tawhid (Unity) is not just about God,
but about our own Hearts becoming unified.
We have to become united [within].
Our inner division, being disconnected from our own bodies,
our own breath, our own Heart is only one part of our lack of unity.
That inner division is reflected in how we as a human community
are divided.  When we are not one with our own Heart, we cannot
see the full humanity of others.

The inner and outer are reflected in each other.  When we are
 internally divided, we will be externally divided.
  If we wish to be united as a human community, we have to
 strive for unity and healing at the
Heart level...

We need the Prayer of the Heart.
By whatever form we pray,
we need to become whole.
May it begin one breath at a time.
May it begin with me...

Omid Safi
excerpted from an article
entitled: The Prayer of the Heart
at: On Being

via;  No Mind's Land

Silence is Prayer - Zensho Wolfgang Kopp

Awareness of the Divine Essence as our innermost true Self
requires silence.
It is turning toward what lies hidden within -
to the internal - the all-embracing totality of Divine Being.
It is the way of meditation,
the way of inner silence before Spirit.

Remaining quiet before Spirit is a prayer of silence,
through which we listen to what secretly speaks to us
in the inner room of the heart.

What is hidden deep in our inner most being
 lies in silence and stillness,
and in the silence of the deep
springs the eternal, inexauastable, original
source of being.

Where words fall silent, the everlasting begins...

Wolfgang Kopp

From: Free Yourself of Everything

Beyond Words - Wu Hsin & La Motte

Silence is the most powerful instruction.
It is the global solvent in which all doubts
and questions dissolve…
It is the Silence that is eloquent,
not my words…

The Silence speaks louder than any words….
Words consistently fail to express the Ineffable…
Words produce concepts…

…bask in Silence and in so doing
discern the deeper meaning…
do not attempt to understand…

Let the words pass through you,
piercing through the mind and
through the intellect,
and returning to their true Source…

Excerpt from
Behind the Mind:
The Short Discourses
of Wu Hsin

God’s native language is silence.
To meditate is to listen to God’s words of silence,
God’s breath of silence…

[Meditative Silence] is the deepest prayer,
the deepest conversation,
like the movement of waters in the ground
before they spring up into light.
Meditation is not a mute silence,
an empty silence,
but a silence filled with the juice of mutuality,
the flow of yearning and love.

There are tides in silence.
There are voices in silence.
There is giving and receiving.
But there are no words.

This is the Mystery of our union with God.

Fred La Motte
Uradiance


Photos: Sunrise
taken by hubby

Sacred Signals...

Last week we were visited by an Owl three times in 4 days. I cannot tell you the feeling of sacredness that it elicits in me to hear the sound of an owl hoo-ing overhead at 12:30 am in the silence of the night. One night it sounded as if it was sitting on our roof, or at least in one of the trees that overhangs our roof.

Last week was particularly challenging – and continues on into this week. I reached a low point emotionally and spiritually due to the pull of the unconscious family dynamic (despite dancing squirrels and chirping crickets) and found myself praying for some “assistance” – dare I say for a “sign.” Oh dear… a sign?! Fatigue had settled in, and the felt sense of Divine Presence within receded. Sometimes the unconscious seems to drown it out. I am amazed at how easily I fall back into the sea of unconscious habituated patterns and cycles. And in doing so there was an emotional “surrender” of sorts, where I knew I couldn’t continue to rely on my own ego-strength, all those wonderful coping mechanisms I constructed over the years, but must give in to the workings of The Sacred Mystery. I’m discovering that is actually a good thing, as painful as it is, as it returns my awareness to a more authentic place of “openness” – not just in words, or theory, but in the depths of my being; not that I am at peace, or without fear and anxiety. I continue to deal with these latent tendencies on a daily basis, but… How do I explain… There was, in that moment of surrender last week, just a simple sense of allowing everything to be as it is. And in that moment of surrender, there was a sense of relaxation - noticing that everything *is* the way it is anyway. Life just lives – just unfolds. I mean, if you look at nature you see that Life just lives ItSelf. I know I’ve mentioned this before. I begin to see this more clearly - and then I lose sight of it again.

I couldn’t help but feel that the Owl showing up was my “sign” - a kind of sacred signal, if there is such a thing– like when we find little stone hearts along our path, or we hear or read just the right “teaching” that addresses an issue we are struggling with, or read an inspiring blog, or find a feather. Maybe there is a Supreme Intelligence that hears – maybe Existence cares deeply and compassionately for life – hears every sound, sees every movement, like the owl - and answers. I would like to believe that, rather than the belief in an impersonal, uncaring Emptiness. But my beliefs don’t really matter. I’m just interested in seeing how Life communicates with ItSelf – because everything we encounter is Life communicating with ItSelf…

The Owl came two nights before, the night before, and the night after my sister’s surgery last Thursday. It was as if “The Beloved” ItSelf had shown up to sing Its sacred song… It was a haunting, yet comforting sound as it echoed through the night; crickets singing backup.

As I listened to the patterned “hoos” (not hoots) I thought of the owl just sitting up there, watching, observing, listening, hearing, seeing *everything* in and through the darkness, illuminating the darkness with her in-sight; seeing the totality of everything from her vantage point. Good metaphor in these hectic days of feeling more contracted than expanded, needing a little objectivity, needing to see the bigger picture, needing equanimity, needing to wait on inner wisdom from a deep place of knowing before acting. It reminded me that I *can* find that place of inner Stillness within, again and again, if I get really quiet and listen to it. I know I *know* this, but with each life challenge it’s as if I have to find it all over again.

Hearing the sound, my heart felt cocooned in the echoes of the Owl’s Sacred song… It was as if it was calling me to drop into the Heart of Being and wrap myself in the Mantle of the Mystery, to remember this space and “stabilize” there (was the word that came), deepening into the sense of the Silent Knowing within again. I hope she comes back… Am sure I’ll need more reminders…

I thought I’d share a little of the Owl’s song. We had to shorten the intervals between hoos because they were too long. Her hoo-ing lasted an hour.

~

“Trust that a thread of Love operates
in everything
and listen deeply for this Love…

Existence listens
when we connect
from the Heart…”

Adyashanti

~

Just be available
unbounded
unfettered
unencumbered
(a post-it note)

~

“Love lurks in the white water”
(of the rapids of life).

Leslie Read

~

“There is a spontaneous and
benevolent power
behind the unfolding
play of the world…

Whatever you are pushing against
flows in effortless harmony…”

Mooji

Read an interview with Mooji

~

Photo: I have no idea what bird this feather
is from. If you can identify it, please do!