Ageless and Brainless :) - a meandering

Last week I had two MRIs,
one for the brain, (to see if I actually had one :))))
and the other the lumbar spine because of the problems
I've been having with balance and walking and tingling
in my legs, and ache in the sacrum...

The night of the MRIs I had a felt sense that there is something
within that doesn't *feel* 75.  I guess what the non-dualists
call "The Self."  It's like there's something inside the body-me
that doesn't age - is Ageless.  Maybe some call it the Soul.
The Inner Being, the Inner Spirit, The Essence, The Ineffable, etc.

But it's like I became *aware* of its Presence.
I woke? :):):):)

I'm aware that my/the body *is* aging, declining, losing its
functioning, including my brain/mind.  But there is this other 
"me" (non-dualists won't like that) - which isn't another "me" -
which isn't "me" - but something that isn't aging - watching all
this happen - which I now call "The Watcher" :)
But which is also known as The Source, the Infinite Self, and
sits at the very Core of my Being behind the Heart...

But this awareness of that didn't make "me" *feel* any better
physically.  Physically I'm still declining...

~

It also occurred to me, in that same flow that night, that the
brain *has* to be connected to, or *is* the mind.
(I have been told otherwise - that the mind is not the brain.)
You can't locate the mind - although people seem to point to
the head.  But it's apparently free-floating somewhere,
I guess... :)

But the brain has a "thinking" function...
I contemplated that the mind and the brain may not be
separate entities...
because... when the brain (the physical organ) starts to not
function properly, then the "thinking" function (of the brain)
is diminished or diminishing.  Thinking becomes garbled,
mixed up and unclear.  You lose cognition.
Then there's also a memory function of the brain, which also
deteriorates and you lose your memory because that section of
the brain has lost its functioning.  And there is a language function,
that when it declines you begin to lose your words, etc.
Hopefully you get where I'm going. :)

The mental functions apparently correlate information,
which become thoughts (?)

Where are these thoughts coming from now - once the brain
starts to deteriorate - is there a separate thing called mind - that
thinks....  hmmmmm

Geez - maybe I need an MRI of the brain more often.
It seemed to open up a new pathway?  LOLOLOL

Just ramblings, I know - with a little humor on the side...

But still....
something to ponder....

Mystic Meandering
April 5, 2025

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Children of "The Mystery"...

 As children of "The Mystery"
we wander - sometimes from refuge to refuge,
belief to belief,
trying to find what we originally are -
our Original Face,
our Indigenous Nature - beyond tribe;
not of place or time - but
before beliefs, concepts, dogma and doctrine.
We search until we recognize that
Inherent Nature within again and again;
until we have a felt sense of that which
animates our very being; until that
Intrinsic Fundamental Nature
shines through;
until we feel it as that
which we Are - "The Mystery" - in form -
embodied...

Not unknowable, but viscerally tangible...
the intuitive "knowing" of what we Innately Are -
our Living Naturalness...

And our being delights in the recognition -
as "The Mystery" responds with delight in us!
with playfulness and song!
- at being recognized...

Liberated!

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 20, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
I was sitting across the room from the window one morning
with the window open, and saw this "Spirit Face" looking in...
the play of light and shadow on the bushes outside the window.
Hope you can see her.  I sat in awe and wonder as "she" peered
through the window with shadowy eyes, looking downward
to the left...

~

What I call "The Mystery" in this poem has many names.
Sometimes I have called it Eternal Being, True Self, True
Nature, Source, The Silence, The Universe, Core Being,
our Essence, The Beloved, and so on...

The Play of Perceptions - Nancy Neithercut

"Awakening" is utterly uncaused...

All trying or trying not to try merely perpetuates the illusion
of something to get or some-one to "get it."

There's nothing you can do to "get it."

There is no path, no method, no practice.

"Awakening" is not a belief or understanding.
It is not about getting rid of beliefs.

You cannot erase yourself.

It does not happen in the character [called "self/me"].

It is a shift that occurs in the brain.

The brain imagines things like gods and selves.
We try all kinds of things to join together the separate
pieces to create unity - but all trying merely perpetuates
the illusion that some-one is trying - chasing their tail.

You may have had a glimpse of the feeling that life is
just doing itself [living itself], this edgeless centerless flow,
and you will do anything to try to get it  [the feeling] back.

Yet trying merely perpetuates the illusion.

All of life always occurs by itself.

It is intuited and cannot be captured with words or knowing
in a conventional sense because it is beyond belief,
imagination or understanding - and although there may seem
to be techniques in order that you may feel this, all these
techniques do is give you the idea of it...

This recognition, this deep knowing feeling tone of
seamlessness... embraces the mind with the  most wondrous
sense of awe.

It is an unfathomable, untouchable, un-pinpoint-able edgeless
vast expanse ever emerging never done nor undone,
seamless, fleeting, momentary, without time nor non-time,
neither moving nor non-moving - that has no name or
 non-name, unknowable yet deeply felt.

There is not me, not two, not one.
All we can know is that there is an un-interrupted,
invisible symphony of what we call perception and the
simultaneous recognition of it.  It is known and felt deeply -
the pulsating aliveness vibrantly appearing as anything and
everything.

There is no separate thing called life.  You are simply
Awareness [Beingness] aware, aware through a
symphony of perceptions, the streaming of you, of me,
of we...

[This recognition] is the end of everything you held to be
true about yourself and your world, including the ideas of
truth...

Nancy Neithercut

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

"Everything is a play of perception.
Life is an ongoing exploration of this
dance of perceptions."

Mitch Rosacker
Self Discovery Studio

~

Mandala Art - Mystic Meandering
2013

Which do you see - a crescent moon
or a caricature profile of a baby's face ? :)

Sing to me the Song...

Sing to me the Song of the Heart,
as you have heard it...

Do you know that song?

Has "The Mystery"
kissed your Heart?

Does It fill your body?
Does It Sing to you?

Sing to me Its lullaby that
sings through you -
in soothing syllables of sound,
lyrical and refined,
emerging from an unknown
place deep within you -
that brings you back to life again.

Sing to me that song - the one
that enlivens your very being,
and warms you like the sun.

Let me be moved by those melodies
playing from the depths
of our Inner Being.

Sing to me that song,
the one that makes the body
tingle with delight, with recognition,
and remembrance of
our true origins...

Sing to me that song...

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 6, 2020

~

Friends are those people who know
the words to the song
in your heart and sing it
back to you when you have
forgotten the words.

Anonymous

~

Photo from the Internet

Recognize Your Eternal Self - Mooji

The mind fears...
What is the message in fear?
Find the message in fear...

Fear empties itself as soon as there is revelation...

YOU (theTrue Self) are before the movement
of fear that arises...

Realize your Self that is before time,
before phenomenon...

Wake up to the recognition of your Eternal Self.
[That is] the Awareness in which fear occurs.

Just keep quiet...

Don't identify with the reactions and interactions,
just feel your Existence and let the fear burn off...

Identify with the Presence that sees,
and stay with this Presence,
and you'll come to a place of
complete [internal] Stillness...

There is Stillness in that space of fear...

When fear is met
what expands is a sense of spaciousness...

There is an intuitive sense that you and the
spaciousness of Stillness are one.

There is no separation...

In this place your mind of fear will not have
much power because you're in your Natural State
of Awareness.

Mooji

~

"On acquiring strength of vision she recognizes
the Universe as Her very own Self"

verse 15, The Pratyabhijnahrdayam

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Consciousness" is Vibration - Joan Ruvinsky

Kashmir Saivism (pronounced shaivism), specifically the
School of Recognition, assumes Consciousness, not matter
or energy, to be the basic stuff of the universe and that
manifestation is simply Consciousness vibrating at
grosser and grosser frequencies.  Spirit becomes Matter.
Divine Awareness solidifies from the formless through
denser mind and senses, all the way to the densest, most
basic elements of earth, water, fire, air and space.  The
world shines as the embodiment of the Divine Mother,
the eternal feminine - the Ultimate Reality...

Everything becomes potentially a doorway to the Infinite -
since it is simply a coagulation of this Infinity, in a play of
unfolding and refolding...

~

All manifestation, things, people, occurrences, effects and
affects are made of the self-same Consciousness [Infinite
Beingness] coagulated into form.

All pairs of opposites emerge from, are enfolded in and are
made of Pure Consciousness [Beingness].  Everything is
Consciousness[Beingness].  Everything happens.
Consciousness does not have a point of view.

Duality proceeds in non-duality.
It's not either/or - it's both/and.
The Infinite contains everything.

There is nothing that is not swept up in this fundamental
movement of Being-in-form.

~

"Consciousness" can also be called Awareness, Universal
Consciousness, Being, The Divine Feminine, The Divine
Mother from which manifestation materializes
according to the culture and background of Kashmir
Saivism.  It is also referred to as "This" - meaning
the Omnipresence of Ultimate Reality without
image or name.

~

Steep in the Unfathomable,
let the Mystery communicate ItSelf...

Joan Ruvinsky
Excerpts from -
The Recognition of our Own Heart
Pratyabhijnahrdayam

Love this book! :)

Read a "review" by Miriam Louisa Simons
at This Unlit Light

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
 Mandala Art

"The Hymn of Creation" - The Rig Veda

Then even nothingness was not, nor existence.
There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it?  Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?

There was neither death nor immortality,
nor was there then the torch of night and day.
The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.
There was that One then, and there was no other.

At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.
All this was only unillumined water.
That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
arose at last, born of the power of heat...

But after all, who knows, and who can say
whence it all came, and how creation happened?

The gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

Whence all creation had its origin,
he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows - or maybe he does not know.

~

The Rig Veda is one of the oldest texts [creation stories]
dating from somewhere between 4000 and 2000 BC

~

This version is from a wonderful book for the serious
explorer of the Truth of Existence called,
The Recognition of Our Own Heart:
Pratyabhijnahrdayam

by the late Joan Ruvinsky.

It is a modern day interpretive translation of
the Pratyabhijnahrdayam -
loosely meaning "Primordial Recognition" -
from the 11th century Kashmir Shaivism tradition.

The basic concept of Kashmir Shaivism is that an
individual's existence is the unlimited manifestation of
Universal Consciousness (the Luminous Unmanifest)
that embodies everything.
It is also available on Amazon here.

Beyond the World's Horizons - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Beyond the horizons of the world is a place that few know,
a place without borders, without loss or gain...  Something
within you mysteriously recognizes this primal emptiness,
the vast unknowing, the wonder of what is not.

There is no substance to form even images.  And yet, there is
a belonging that is stamped in the core of one's being, a belonging
that nothing can break.

Far away [from this place] is a place called existence.  It's full of
dreams. of opportunities, of life and death.  But here, in the world
beyond, there are no such dramas...  When all is dissolved, lost,
undone, we are what we [truly] are.

But the tears call us back into what people call life, into the strange
substance that weaves itself into form.  Yet even when we seem
stranded on this shore of existence, we can never forget that place
beyond the worlds that is always with you [within you].  It is at
the end and the beginning of every breath, more primal than even
silence...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

Excerpt from: Fragments of a Love Story

~

Let me sit here on the threshold of two worlds,
lost in the eloquence of silence...

Rumi

~

Photo - Sunset reflected on the top of the car

taken by my husband

Entropy...

The shadows have come to roost
and
everything

is
collapsing

~
~
~

~

The tides and ripples of entropy will continue
until all is returned to Source again ~

the Primordial State:
Pure Life Energy...

Entropy is not necessarily a "bad" thing.
It is the way of Existence.

It is a telescoping of everything that is,
back to its original Source/State;
a re-homing of all that has manifested in form,
the conceptual structures,
so that only
the Eternal Essence
remains...

Do not be alarmed by the seeming destruction
of what you have believed to be real.
The false must be released, shed - like dross.
In this there is a sense of chaos, destruction, loss, and death;
the crucible affect;
a state of alchemy,
the refinement of all things in existence
to its Original Nature.

Nothing is lost in the process.

All is coming Home.

The
Divine
Out-breath
Has
Been
Re-called.

Bring your awareness to the place of Stillness within.
Don't try to create order in the chaos.
But be still and let the chaos pass.
"Order" is found in the Stillness,
in returning to deep Stillness of Being.

The healing of mankind
is in the recognition of the
Truth of our Eternal Essence -
Infinite Beingness...

Entropy is the crucible of that healing.,,

Allow it...

The invitation
is to expand our view of reality
and return to the awareness of
our Eternal Being...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
written between
2004 and 2006

~

Photo - A pan of grease blobs
zoom blurred...  :)

Repose - Fred LaMotte

...your body and mind
are only very small creatures swimming in the vast
un-created waters of your Self,
who was awake in its own radiance
before the worlds were made.

Indeed, your Self shines through your body.
Your Self shines through your mind.
Your Self shines through the Moon and Sun.
Your Self pervades the stars and the space beyond
the stars.

The body grows old and dies.
The mind dissolves each moment.
But the Self is a continuum that neither comes nor goes,
neither sleeps nor awakens,
changeless and eternal
to every being, more intimate than "I" to "Am."
The Self does not think, feel, or perceive,
but witnesses the thought, feelings and perceptions
that arise and subside in the depths of your stillness,
like clouds in the blue sky.
Motionless yet moving all creation,
silent yet inspiring all harmony,
the Self is beyond birth and death,
beyond happiness and sorrow,
beyond light and darkness.
The Self is pure bliss.
Therefore repose
in the infinitesimal bindhu
at the core of your heart
between the out-breath and in-breath.
There you will enter the dwelling
of the eternal Self
who outshines the universe.
In that space you have no enemy, no fear, no blame,
neither past nor future,
for in that space the earth is created afresh with each inhalation.
Whether you name the Self
Bodhichitta, Christ Consciousness, Shiva, or Guru
makes no difference at all.
What matters is just resting here
as you gaze into the eyes of The Beloved,
even when The Beloved takes the form of a stranger
or an enemy.

This gaze is the victory.
This gaze is the healing.
This gaze is peace.
And to see through the eyes of the heart
is to see your Self in every Thou.
Now, friend, it is time
to stop looking for that place
and start looking from that place.
Truly, the Self is pure bliss.

Fred LaMotte

Ineffable Experience - Bob Berman

An experience began that no words could convey.
It was ineffable and life-altering.  The best I can say is that "I" was
suddenly gone, replaced by the certainty of being the entire cosmos.
There was absolute peace.  I knew with total confidence, not
logically - because, "I" was no longer present - that birth and death
do not exist.  That all is perfect eternally, that time is unreal, and that
all is one.  The joy was beyond anything I could have imagined.
The to-the-marrow certainty could perhaps be better described as
a recognition, and an ancient familiarity of being Home.

There was no sense of a separate "me", an observer looking out
upon the world.  I was whatever my eyes gazed upon.  It was as if
my consciousness had previously been long confined, like a canary
in a little cage, and that a false sense of being a separate, isolated,
thinking individual had now vanished.  Objects were no longer
separate items existing in space; instead, everything was the
 same continuum.  When a person came into view, I was this person.
The universe was one entity for all time.  There were not billions of
humans and animals.  There was one living, deathless entity.

Bob Berman
from: Beyond Biocentrism: Rethinking Time, Space,
Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death

by Bob Berman and Robert Lanza

Via - Markings

~

Underlying the complex diversity of creation is a single Unity.
And within that Unity, the individual is not separate or
different from the vast Divine.  There is no separation between
individual self and the center of all selves... just Pure Being...

Ivan Granger - Poetry Chaikhana

Go Deeper...

You have to become more interested in the silent background
than in the foreground of phenomena;
thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences…. etc.

Most people are focused on the forground…
but the Self is discovered in the background.
The Self is the source from which the phenomena spring
and the ground in which this display of phenomena
is happening…

When you rest in the background,
you can taste your Self.

You just give yourself up to it.

Adyashanti

You must want to know your Self more than anything…

Discovering your Self beyond all concepts,

what remains is Infinity in all directions….
our true nature….

Learn to be quiet inside,
allowing the entire Cosmos to
effortlessly express Itself…

Sally Ross

Silent Meditation Today

Go deeper
Past thoughts into silence.
Past silence into stillness.
Past stillness into the heart.
Let Love consume all that is left of you.

Kabir

~

Bottom Photo:
Bottom of a cup of tea

Come to Sit...

Come

to

sit,

to remember

the Silence within;

the vast Emptiness,

that is still and aware ~

just Be-ing…

Come

to

sit,

amongst the clutter of the mind,

between the chaos and confusion

on the waters of life,

amidst the disturbances in the flow

that are hard to navigate…

Come

to

sit,

in Stillness.

In the respite

that connects us to all that is true

in this life experience

and the vast Spaciousness

that is beyond

the disturbances of the mind;

the malfunctions of this body;

and the less than benevolent

intentions of others…

Come

to

sit,

emptied out in the space of

awake, aware Emptiness.

Remembering…

Recognizing the Self ~ again.

Receding into the Great Unknown,

like a wave back into the Ocean,

feeling the fullness of the Embrace…

Come,

Sit…

~*~

Mystic Meandering
copyright

May 30, 2010

photo – my May calendar page