The Mysterious Virtue - Tao Te Ching

Nurture the darkness of your soul
until you become whole.
Can you do this and not fail?

Can you focus your life-breath until you become
supple as a newborn child?

While you cleanse your inner vision
will you be found without fault?

Can you love people and lead them
without forcing your will on them?

When Heaven gives and takes away
can you be content with the outcome?

When you understand all things
can you step back from your own understanding?

~

Giving birth and nourishing,
making without possessing,
expecting nothing in return.

To grow, yet not to control:

This is the mysterious virtue.

Tao Te Ching
translation by j.h. mcdonald

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Rest in the Breath - David Whyte

Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and
how we love to be.  To rest is to give up on the already
exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its
endless outward need to reward itself through established goals.
To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that
there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to
put it right; to rest is to fall back literally and figuratively from
outer targets, and shift.....to an inner state of natural exchange.

The template of natural exchange is the breath, the autonomic
giving and receiving that forms the basis and the measure of
life itself.  We are rested when we are living [that] exchange...

In rest is the sense of stopping, of giving up on what we've been
doing or how we have been being.  It is the sense of slowly coming
home...

Deep in the primal exchange of the breath, is the give and take,
the blessing and the being blessed and the ability to delight
in both.  In rest there is a sense of presence, a delight in and
anticipation of the world and all of its forms [in which]
receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.

A deep experience of rest is a perspective from which we are
able to perceive the outer specific forms of our work [and life]
and our relationships whilst being nourished by the shared
foundational gift of the breath itself.

Rested, we are ready for the world,
but not held hostage by it...

David Whyte

Excerpts from a writing called "Rest"
From the book: CONSOLATIONS

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Deeper Light...

One must dig deep
*through* the dark night
and mine the darkness
to find a Deeper Light -
within...

Aligning with the Breath of the
Inner Cosmos - the Rhythm of 
the Universe...

Releasing burdens and responsibilities
too heavy to carry - suffocating mind, body -
and dimming the light...

Breathe the Deeper Light
vibrating *inside* the darkness,

Shining through densified layers,
like a soft light shining through an
alabaster vase - a warm honey glow...

*This* Light - shone through stone -
lights the way to a Deeper Reality,
a deeper peace, and opens the body to
Deep Comfort...

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 13. 2024
Day 5 of "The Pause"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Cosmic Breathing...

photo - Johannes-Plenio at Unsplash

Sitting in the Silence of the Inner Landscape,
I suddenly realize the Cosmic Breath of Infinity
is slowly breathing this body -
breathing in... breathing out...

Held in the pause between breaths -
I recognize that "I" am being breathed
by an unheard Rhythm...

From the Inner Window,
at the edge of Infinity
I see beyond this world,
into the formless void,
beyond moon and stars,
into the Infinite Cosmic Ocean
that holds it all...

Aware of what is aware within:
Life - breathing ITself...

Every Breath is the Primordial Breath
rippling through space...

Hush
Be Silent 
Listen

and I hear:

Entrain with the Rhythm
that is breathing you...

Slow down and breathe
the Infinite Breath of the Cosmos -
that whispers -
All will be infinitely well...

Mystic Meandering
April 12, 2020

~

Photo - Johannes Plenio at Unsplash

 

Ride the Light Rhythm ~ ~ ~

Ride The Rhythm ~

The deeper Rhythm within you
that arises like warm liquid light
from the deepest part of your being.
Let it soothe you like a lullaby...

Put all your burdens of the heart to rest now
in The Rhythm: the heaviness of sorrow, the fear
of loss, the angst, the edginess,
and the grief...

Feel them integrate with The Rhythm.
Feel the fluidity that arises in the body ~

loosening the constraints of form...

Breathe with The Rhythm ~

as you are breathed by The Rhythm...

No intention, no agenda, no expectation ~

just listening to the whispers of The Rhythm
in total immersion in The Rhythm...

Ride the Rhythm ~ ~ ~

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 8, 2021

This is the gift of The Silence...
We listen, we hear, we Ride ~ ~ ~

_/\_

 

Fully Human, Fully Divine - Kathleen Knipp

Without ignoring or denying the story of our lives, we
can relax and experience that which is beyond story
through the simple practice of attuning to body and breath.
We can open the lens wider than our dramas and traumas
and reconnect with Source.

We find ourselves in our humanness, our extraordinary
fragility and our extraordinary resiliency - both.  And can,
without denying the story of "my life", the events, the
response I may be having to these events, without ignoring
that, without denying that, we can also open to that which
is beyond this story.  And it is so easy to forget, it's so easy
to have the events of our lives move into the foreground and
just fill the whole field with the dramas and traumas.  And
without ignoring or denying them, we can open the lens
wider and we can, through practice, reconnect with our Source.
It might not be easy.  We do that by beginning to feel our bodies,
feeling each part of the body and experience the sensations,
using all of our senses, while also accessing our inner sanctuary
to feel supported.

Noticing the breath and falling into the rhythmic cycling of
the breath, in a moment of suspension where we can rest.
When life presents its challenges, which it does, we can rest
in the rhythm of the breath - feel its caress.

...[there] may be the sense of slipping below the surface of
turbulence.  Sinking deeper and deeper to an absolute stillness.
Stillness so profound that it is impossible to disturb that which
is beyond time, sinking deeper to the very Source.  The Source
that reveals itself and conceals itself and emerges in infinite
forms... and begin to sense the infinite and the finite expression
as you - this unique set of patterns that form into a sense of me...

Kathleen Knipp
Excerpt from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
Fully Human, Fully Divine

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Current of the Breath - Kathleen Knipp

.....set aside our habitual way of being,
befriend our woundedness, our fragility -
personally and collectively.

Be in the place of utter receptivity, listening to the sound of
our own Heart.  Feel its pulsation, that's not uniquely your own -
not just the physical beating.  The unique heartbeat is just an
expression of the pulsation of Aliveness that just is - infinitely
recreating Itself in each moment.  Sense the breath [the rhythm
of the breath], absorbed in the sensation of the cycle of breath.
It nourishes, it revitalizes, it sustains the body, and it disappears.

Breath washes through the stuck and sticky places, soothing
the places that hurt, whether physical, emotional, or psychological,
softening resistance, resolving tension.

Receive breath as a soothing balm - the current of breath -
flowing into a vast ocean of pure Awareness - beyond words,
beyond understanding.

The breath animating this form, this body
is infinite and finite...

Excerpt from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
The Gift of Breath
by Kathleen Knipp

You might also like this wonderful Yoga Nidra Meditation
called Deep Rest, especially in these chaotic times.
  It's one of my favorites.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering