Love Letter to my Body...

Dear Body,

After 75 years I am aware of your fragility and impermanence,
and yet you still struggle to remain -
as difficult as that has become...

I know this life experience has been very hard for you...
I will do my best to take care of you - to comfort you...
Body, just rest now; allow yourself to sink down
and relax - sleep...

You don't have to keep it all together...

(deep breath and body releases its tensions)

I know you suffer - and I'm sorry for
how you labor and struggle.

You have done well to house me here with all that
you have been through - and I have taken you for
granted.

I will help you as much as I can while you still continue
to support me here...

I am sad that you are declining - my companion.

I don't know how much longer you can sustain me here.
I am sorry that I haven't always treated you well;
not eating the right foods; indulging in what *tastes* good
to the palate - and gave me comfort.

Needing care for yourself - you help me to caregive another -
draining your life energy...
But you just keep going as best you can...

I will give you rest and comfort now...
In the elder years...

With deep gratitude...

Your Indweller...

Mystic Meandering
Jan 25, 2025

~

Photo - moi 
1949

 

Real Acceptance - Henry Rollins

If the world gives you the blues, if you wake up in the
middle of the night with waves of fear and senseless
panic washing over you, I am your friend.  If you're
overcome by a desperation that makes your mouth
open for a scream that never comes out but just freezes
your face in mute despair, then you and I have something
in common.  If you can't understand them for the life of
you, even though you've tried so hard, when that
dislocation makes you feel like you're the only one of
your species on the planet, I know I can confide in you.
If this endless ghetto of lies and heart break, this life-
long run of fences and flickering neon signs and night
sweats makes you feel like stopping, just stopping,
wait.  Wait...

You don't have to tell me your name.
You don't have to prove yourself to me.
I accept you...

Henry Rollins

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Love and Blessings to all who are struggling
in body, mind and spirit...

_/\_

MM

~

Polar Bears Hugging Photo from the Internet

 

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 :)

 

There is Music in Us - Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us.  Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.

The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets.  It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.

What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,

can hear them breathing.

Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells the flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

Jack Gilbert, 1925-2012
Horses at Midnight Without a Moon

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Me on path into the woods

 

A Prayer for a Suffering World

May we be free of physical suffering...
May we be free of mental anguish...
May we be free of all suffering
and the roots/causes 
of suffering...

May we be safe...
May we be at peace...

May we be well in body and mind...

May we live with ease...

From 2 Buddhist sayings...

~

Photo from the internet digitally altered

 

Time Passage...

So much of this life gone-by now;
remembering previous chapters
of the Fiction called "my life",
as if they never really happened -
or did they...
Some so distant in the mind they
are more like dreams, some nightmares;
and the characters I played - some good,
some bad.

Now nearing the end of the story I am an elder
character, losing her grip on life and time,
wondering what death will be like.
Will there be awareness after death?
Or, like a mist, will I dissipate back into the
Cosmos with no memory of this "journey"
on this planet spinning in a galaxy in space?
Maybe become an Aurora Borealis -
Pure Energy -
Pure De-Light...

How strange this novel turned out to be,
more drama and struggle than I would have liked,
but also more poetic than prose...

Mostly the story didn't go
the way I had in mind...
In this passage through time...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 1, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Life Suspended...

I don't remember winter
being so grey - even when
the sun is shining...

So frozen, so cold, hard crusted;
which may only be a reflection
of my own inner landscape.
I have been frozen lately -
iced in by life circumstances....

And then, out of the blue,
standing in the kitchen
under a moonlit sky light
in the dark of night,
everything softened -
as I thought about "the visitor"
sitting alone in her chair,
suffering and struggling,
mentally and physically,
day in and day out...

Sadness arose for her aloneness,
and hard life - self imposed 
by life choices made long ago -
for which she now pays the consequences -
or so I tell myself...

Then Compassion overtook me -
and my heart melted, released of its
hard line - and dare I say "love" arose
for "the visitor" who sits alone in her chair,
her body and mind breaking down;
memory and mental capacity quickly waning -
struggling day in and day out;
just sitting -
solitaire and TV
 her constant companions...

A life suspended...

Mystic Meandering
January 6, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Grace Comes...

Grace comes unbidden...

Her soft Presence comforts in the
coldest dawn and darkest night,

and sits with us when we are broken,

beaten down by the "life game"...

She is the antidote for an aching heart
and struggling body...

She hears your silent tears...
and walks with you...

Grace brings you love and kindness
to endure the crosswinds that bite...

Grace comes...

to bind the wounds from those
who tried to suffocate your voice,
who tried to kill your spirit...

She softens the heart
and clears the pain from your vision...

She is always with us,
even in the death of the body.
She is "the beautiful woman sitting on
the fence," come to take you "home."
or to your next "journey" - wherever
that may be...

She is singing your homing call...

There is nothing to do but surrender
and let Grace sing her song of Love
to your weary heart...

Listen...

Mystic Meandering
April 8, 2021

~

The reference to"the beautiful woman on the fence"
is something my mother experienced during her
dying process 3 1/2+ years ago...
Hospice said she was hallucinating, but we knew
she was "seeing."
She saw a beautiful woman sitting on the fence out her window,
at the top of a small incline.  On many occasions she said:
"the beautiful woman on the fence
has come to take me on my next journey."

Grace Comes...

~

Photo - blurred section of a painting
by Rod MacIver

 

Trust - Truthless Truth

Underneath the surface,
deep inside the dugout,
a place of low light,
but sheltered from pain,
lies the hell of commonplaceness,
the wasteland of self-deception and struggle.

Above the surface,
out in the open,
a place of wonder and awe,
where the sun equally shines on joy and pain,
lies the promised land of unknowing,
the kingdom of self-acceptance and peace.

Allow vulnerability,
surrender your armor,
drop your mask,
come out into the world,
naked,
as you were born,
and every butterfly,
will awaken your inner child.

Trust...

at Truthless Truth

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

A Liturgy of Light - & Suffering - John O'Donohue

 When suffering comes, we feel panic and fear.
Frightened, we want to hide. You want to climb up some high
ledge to escape dismemberment of this acidic tide.

Yet the strange thing is: the more you resist, the longer it stays.
The more intensely you endeavor to depart the ground of pain,
the more firmly you remain fixed there.

It is difficult to be gentle with yourself when you are suffering.
Gentleness helps you to stop resisting the pain that is visiting you.

When you stop resisting suffering, something else begins to happen.
You begin slowly to allow your suffering to follow its own logic.
The assumption here is that suffering does not visit you gratuitously.
There is in suffering some hidden shadowed light.

Destiny has a perspective on us and our pathway that we can never
fully glimpse; it alone knows why suffering comes.  Suffering has
its own reasoning.

It wants to teach us something.  When you stop resisting its dark
work, you are open to learning what it wants to show you. 

Often, we learn most deeply and receive profoundly from the black,
lonely tide of pain.  We often see in Nature how pruning strengthens.
Fruit trees look so wounded after being pruned, yet the limitation
of this cutting forces the tree to fill and flourish.  Similarly with
drills of potatoes when they are raised, earth is banked up around
them and seems to smother them. Yet as the days go by the stalks
grow stronger.

Suffering can often become a time of pruning. Though it is sore
and cuts into us, later we may become aware that this dark 
suffering was secretly a liturgy of light...

John O'Donohue
from: Eternal Echoes

With thanks to - The Beauty We Love

P.S.  I also substitute the world struggle for suffering -
same thing, only on a different level

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Who Are You Without Your Spiritual Story? - Jeff Foster

Please don't talk to me of "Pure Awareness" or
"Dwelling in the Absolute."  I want to see how you treat
your partner, your kids, your parents, your body.
Please don't lecture me about "the illusion of the separate
self" or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen, take information that
doesn't fit your personal philosophy [belief].  I want to see
how you deal with people who disagree with you.  Don't tell
me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.  I want
to know you beneath the words.  I want to know what you're like
when troubles befall you. If you can fully allow your pain and
not pretend to be invulnerable.  If you can feel your anger yet not
step into violence.  If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow
yet not be its slave.  If you can feel your shame and not shame others.
If you can f**k up, and admit it. If you can say "sorry", and really
mean it.  If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.  I only want to meet
you.  Know your precious heart.  Know your beautiful human
struggling for the light.  Before all clever words...

Jeff Foster

Egocentricity & Suffering - Cheri Huber

Egocentricity is the process of wanting something other than
what is.  Egocentricity means there is an "I" who [feels]
separate from everything else and doesn't like it; one thing is
happening, but I want a different thing to be happening
[which causes suffering].  Egocentricity is that constant
concern with how I feel, what I think, what I'm doing, what
I want - looking at what is and seeing it as inadequate.
My identity is maintained by the struggle of wanting
something other than what is [causing suffering].

Instead of spending our time trying to avoid suffering,
we must find the willingness to go directly into it.
Whenever anything causes us to suffer, we can know
two things: suffering is the same as egocentricity, and
when it arises, that is our best opportunity to end suffering.
As we open to suffering, as we embrace it, as we accept it,
our relationship to it changes. It is no longer horrible,
something to escape from.  Suffering becomes just
another opportunity [for awareness], another chance for
freedom [from egocentricity].

Cheri Huber

Zen Teacher

~

"The Heart has no ego"

Gregg Braden

~

The real state of things is suffering, aging illness, death -
life as it is...

We are in a body inside of time...
Suffering is on a primitive level...

author unknown

~

Personal note:  I know from my own experience that there
are many causes of "suffering" and different kinds of "suffering",
like poverty, abuse, terrorism, physical and emotional pain,
but I found this explanation from Cheri Huber interesting with
regard to the personal cause of "suffering."  And as I recently
discovered, the egoic mind (my incessant thoughts) is one of the
 major causes of my emotional suffering...

Vulnerability - Rumi and Wilber

I was going to tell you my story...
but waves of pain drowned my voice.
I tried to utter a word but my thoughts
became fragile and shattered like glass.
Even the largest ship can capsize
in the stormy sea...

let alone my feeble boat,
which shattered to pieces leaving me nothing
but a strip of wood to hold on to.

Small and helpless, rising to heaven
on one wave of love and falling with the next.
I don't even know if I am or I am not.
When I think I am, I find myself worthless,
when I think I am not, I find my value.
Like my thoughts, I die and rise again each day...
at last I surrender...

Rumi

~

Authentic spirituality is revolutionary.
It does not legitimate the world,
it breaks the world;
it does not console the world,
it shatters it.  And it does not render
the self content, it renders it undone.

Ken Wilber

The Art of Suffering - Etty Hillesum

Most of us in the West don't understand the art of suffering
and experience a thousand fears instead.  Man suffers most
through the idea of suffering, and through his fear of suffering.
We cease to be alive, being full of fear, bitterness, hatred and
despair.  Don't we live an entire life each one of our days,
and does it really matter if we live a few days more or less?
There is room for everything in a single life.

When I say I have come to terms with life, I don't mean I
have lost hope.  It is a question of living life from minute to
minute and taking suffering into the bargain.  But does it
matter if it is the Inquisition that causes people to suffer in
one century, and war and pogroms in another?

Suffering has always been with us, does it really matter in
what form it comes?  All that matters is how we bear it
and how we fit it into our lives.

I can sit for hours and know everything and bear everything
and grow stronger in the bearing of it.  And at the same time
feel sure life is beautiful and meaningful.  Despite everything.
But that does not mean that I am always filled with joy and
exaltation [about life and its circumstances].  I am often dog-
tired after standing in queues, but I know that this too is part
of life, and I know something inside me will never desert me...

We carry everything within us. God and Heaven and Hell and
Earth and Life and Death and all of history.  The externals are
simply so many props; everything we need is within us.  And
we have to take everything that comes; the bad with the good,
which does not mean we cannot devote our life to curing the
bad.  But we must know what motives inspire our struggle
[against] and we must begin with ourselves.

Living and dying, sorrow and joy, the blisters on my feet and
the jasmine behind the house, the persecution, the unspeakable
horrors - it is all as one in me, and I accept it all as one mighty
whole and begin to grasp it better, if only for myself, without
being able to explain to anyone else how it all hangs together.

If you destroy the ideas behind [suffering] which life lies
imprisoned within, you liberate your true life - and then you
will have the strength to bear real suffering...

Etty Hillesum
Jewish Mystic of the Holocaust
from: An Interrupted Life

~

Wishing the Jewish community
a peaceful and light filled Hanukkah
as it comes to an end...

Simply Living...

I've been basking in a "new", and not so new, "revelation" that
life is a story being lived by Life ItSelf'; that *I* am being lived:
that we *are* the living story of Life.

Life lives the story of "me" that I've identified with all these years,
and believed, for a while at least, that "I" needed to be
"enlightened" - and have once again returned to the sense that
"I" am "simply living."

In this "revelation" there is an internal "letting go" - or
"giving up" - or some would say "surrender"...
And as a wise friend recently explained:
"In that, an ancient tension and stress is released.  And in the
deepest instance of 'giving up', even the somatic aspect of
our being feels a tremendous relief, and a Serene Emptiness
where that contraction had formerly been felt; as much in
our physical body as in our subtle energetic nature.
Struggle ceases, no longer driven by the engine of
dissatisfaction with 'what is', with 'how we are.'  No longer
driven by the engine of self-judgment and self-qualification,
by the desire to be better or worthy, or finally 'understanding'
or 'apperceiving' by the desire for 'enlightenment.'"

This articulates my current experience perfectly...

~

And I wrote this back in 2011

There is only the immediacy of the current moment -
just living that experience, whatever that experience is,
however it unfolds, without the sense of a separate "self"
striving for something "better", or to *do* anything to
improve it, or become "enlightened."

"We", the "Beingness" that we are, just experiences
whatever is occurring without a framework or reference
point, or concept...
It's just Life being life!

It is Existence experiencing ItSelf as "me", or "you" -
as an occurrence within ItSelf...
Simply Living...

We, as waves on the Ocean of Existence, are continually
occurring - unfolding fluidly, seamlessly,  Yet, a
"construct" of "self" can emerge *if/when* there is a belief
in a "self" that can hold onto the present moment - trying
to grasp what cannot be grasped.  But the current experience
cannot be grasped, for as soon as we try to capture it we
re-enter the struggle of "self"...

The present moment is unending, constantly reverberating
through the *concept* of time, and is what the wrinkle of
time happens *in* -
the Timeless Ocean of Existence.

And so the realization seems to be that we simply recognize
Life living ItSelf  as us - seeing the Luminous in everything -
recognizing that we ARE that
Luminosity of Life...

...simply living.

Namaste

_/\_

photo - from a greeting card

Tell us of Pain - Khalil Gibran & Nisargadatta

And a woman spoke saying:

"Tell us of Pain"

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your
understanding.  Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun,
so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily
miracles of life, your pain would not seem less wondrous
than your joy.  And you would accept the seasons of
your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons
that pass over the fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of
your grief.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within heals
your sick self.

Therefore, trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence
and tranquility.  For his hand, though heavy and hard, is
guided by the tender hand of the Unseen.

And the cup he brings,
though it burn your lips,
has been fashioned of the clay
which the Potter has moistsened
with His own sacred Tears.

Khalil Gibran

The Prophet


~

The real world is beyond the mind's ken;
we see it through the net of our desires,
divided into pleasure and pain,
right and wrong, inner and outer.
To see the universe as it is,
you must step beyond the net.

Look at the net and its many contradictions.
You do and undo at every step.
You want peace, love, happiness
and work hard to create pain, hatred and war.
You want longevity and overeat,
you want friendship and exploit.
See your net as made of such contradictions
and remove them...
Your very seeing them will make them go.

Nisargadatta

Riding A Pale Horse...

A Pale Horse of an unpredictable destiny
arrived at my door recently;
an intense illness,
causing the body to feel disembodied
and disconnected from Source...

It invited me to ride...

I was anxious, unsure of where it would take me.
But I had no choice,
I had to ride;
to ride the illness out - half willingly, half resisting.

Strangely, all awareness of "Presence" vanished.
as if I had been cowled to the Truth
that I had "known" for so long -
or thought I knew -
that ultimately we are Pure Awareness...
But "I" was caught in the body-mechanism
and its struggle...

Frightened

I rode - as if in a weird dream,
through a strange land of un-awareness,
while still *trying* to be aware
of "The Truths"
that I had known...

But they eluded my senses, my awareness, my mind -
even my Heart...

Confused

I rode for 3 weeks - empty,
until, fatigued,
I faintly felt the exuberance and euphoria of Life
bubble up from within...
The veil of un-awareness had briefly lifted...
and with it, the shattering of all certainties
I once held to be true;
a burning away of the dross
in the alchemy of fever...

The fever broke
and I relaxed...

into Gratitude...

just Gratitude...

- and breathed...

Sometimes that's all you can do...

fall into Gratitude and Breathe...

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
January 27, 2017

Fear Not the Pain - Rilke

You who let yourselves feel;
enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins behind you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins;
Fear not the pain, the suffering.
Let its weight fall back
into the earth...

The trees you planted in childhood
have grown too heavy.
You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air,
to what you cannot hold.

Rainer Maria Rilke

~*~

...recognize that life is not in our control.
We are a small part of a great dance.

Jack Kornfield
Buddhist Teacher

~*~

Both light and shadow
are the dance of Love.

Rumi

~*~

Photo - reflection of Light on the floor

"I sense this Mystery" - Rilke & MM

“No one lives his life…

Disguised since childhood,

haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears
and little pleasures,
we come of age
as masks…

~

And though we strain against the deadening grip
of daily necessity…
I sense there is this mystery.

All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?

Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?

Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it the flowers
interweaving their fragrances,
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it animals, warmly moving,
or the birds that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then?

God, are you the one
who is living life?”

Rainer Maria Rilke

~*~

Life is the movement of “The Mystery.”

Life is the manifestation of “The Mystery.”

Life itself is “The Mystery” in movement with Itself,
 as Itself in form.

We are held in the embrace of “The Mystery.”

It wants to be known and seen.

It wants to play in the seeing of Itself.

In looking into “The Mystery” there is a sense of intimacy.

There is only deep, deep Love looking back.

We are held in the intimate gaze of “The Mystery”,

like the intimate gaze of lovers seeing into each other,

seeing beyond each other, seeing beyond the persona,
the mask, into the depths of Pure Being...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings

January 2009

Struggle...

Is there a threshold to cross over?

What is the threshold that takes us into
a deeper Reality?

Can we cross it…
or are we forever imprisoned
in the cocoon of time,
when we know there is something more,
because we have seen it, felt it, intuited it;
something timeless beyond human existence
with its pain, sorrow and suffering;
even beyond fleeting happiness;
even beyond what some call
”the awakened life” –
if we are fortunate enough to
experience whatever that is …

How can “i” continue on “here” – “i” wonder daily,
struggling…
immersed in the “i” dramas;
grasping, clinging,

wanting something,
something that would forever awaken this Heart
to the Bliss of Eternal Reality…

The Eternal Vastness beckons…

But “i” continue to struggle;
the body struggles to relax and live,
the mind struggles to be at peace,
the heart struggles to stay open and Love,
the “i” struggles within
to sustain its identity,
still attached to the idea
of itself,
of its importance…

How can it be so…
If all there is, is “God”,
that is – Pure Consciousness, Pure Awareness,
Pure Beingness…
Then why does this “i” struggle
in ignorance,
keeping itself trapped in time,
and in the mind…

Am “i” forever cowled to the Truth,
unable to pierce the veil,
or find the Holy Grail…?

If “i” already have,
”i” keep forgetting,
and struggle to remember…

Maybe it will never happen -
the “awakening.”
And the glimpses i’ve had
will only remain a forgotten memory,
like a dream…

I am so ready to leave the struggles behind
for the privilege of experiencing
the Unknown,
The Mystery that waits
in the Depths of Silence…

Mystic Meandering
April 22, 2015

~~~Post Script~~~

Having said all that, written one morning in a period of struggle,
dealing with intense physical issues,

 and extremely dysfunctional family issues,

I know that the “Threshold” is through the inner

 Sanctuary Door of Silence…

 In the depths of Silence
we become aware of the Intimacy with Infinite Silence -
the Pure Primal Existence,
the Realm of “the Beloved”– if you will –
The Primordial Womb of Stillnes;
not “out there” somewhere, but “in here”

where there is only The Rhythm of Sacred Silence,
as I have so often written about here in this blog…

In the deep fluid flow of Silence
there is no struggle...
because there is no little “i”
with its issues,

only the Ineffable Mystery
that infuses everything,
and lives everything
in Silence…

~~

Photo/Art: Loon Morning
Artist: Rod MacIver
 from: Heron Dance Art Studio

www.herondance.org