How the Light Gets In - Pat Schneider - For Solstice

To open a door in one's mind, whether in writing,
in prayer, or in writing-as-prayer, is to invite an
experience of "the deep."

It's rather like standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking
the ocean at night, a cliff from which I can hear the 
pounding surf below me, and see in the distance a 
multitude of stars.

I am aware of danger, but I am also aware of my own
freedom and my own good sense.

Although I could do so, I will not back up, close down,
and refuse to see or hear.
Although I could do so, I will not step out and lose myself.
I will not fall to my death.

I will stand where I am and allow the vast expanse to
come to me through my eyes, through my ears, through
wind moving the tiny hairs on my skin, through the
pressure of the solid rock against the soles of my feet.
I feel awe, I feel my own smallness, but I feel that I,
too, belong.  If I am open to the possibility, I sense that
I am seen;
I am known;
I am held in the attention of the mystery.

from: How the Light  Gets In
by Pat Schneider

~

During the winter moon/months,
it's natural to make a creative connection to
the Quiet Depth of your inner gold mine...

In the outer world, everything moves very fast.
There's no doubt things are ramped up.
Follow your Inner Counsel
Trust your still small voice.

May resilience be radiant within all living  beings.
That even the darkest of times,
a light shines forth from the heart.

Donna Iona Drozda
From Opening the North Gate

~

For Winter Solstice
Dec. 21, 2023

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

 

Twilight...

There is a seamless "edge" when twilight comes...
And a twinge of melancholy when the
light wanes into twilight,
the edge of the veil;
the threshold between
light and dark...

A knowing that this life
is waning into twilight too,
from one state into another,
forever re-forming Itself...

Tree branches wave in the wind
in homage to the light
dimming in the West...

Owls hoo - calling the night
into existence;
prophets of twilight
standing at the edge
where ending meets beginning
and beginning, ending...

Twilight
the in-between
as Life cycles through time,
through light and dark,
through living
and dying.

At twilight we stand at the edge of time,
and timelessness beyond time...
peering through
for a glimpse
of the Infinite Light
that knows no dimming
and no night;
only Its own Eternal Radiance
of 
Being...

This Light we are...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 21, 2012

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
January 6, 2012

 

The Invisible One - Nag Hammadi Scrolls

I am thought that lives in the light.
I live in everyone, and I delve into them all...
I move in every creature...

I am the invisible one in all beings...
I am the voice speaking softly...

I am the real voice... the voice from the invisible thought...

It is a mystery...  I cry out for everyone...

I hid myself in everyone, and revealed myself
within them, and every mind seeking me longs
for me...

I am she who gradually brought forth
everything...

I am the image of the invisible spirit...
The mother, the light... the virgin... the
womb, and the voice...

I put breath in all beings.

Nag Hammadi Scrolls
from: Why Religion, Elaine Pagels

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Sri Yantra necklace

 

 

This Shines On - Miriam Louisa

 This shines on
whether I'm in bitch mode or radiating benevolence
whether I'm depressed or enjoying equanimity
whether I'm achingly weary or frolicking tirelessly.

This shines on
whether my bookshelves are stacked with scriptures,
chick-lit, crime or porn
whether my shoes are microfiber or leather, my coat cotton or mink
whether my fridge is piously vegan or robustly carnivore.

This shines on
whether my philosophical tendencies veer towards the
 scientific and secular
or the mystical and metaphysical
whether I'm a closet optimist disguised as a cynic
or a knee-jerk nay-sayer, jus sayin

Don't be fooled.  This shines on
- pristine, incorruptible -
regardless.

This shines on
whether you agree with me as you scan these words
or jump to defend your own view
whether you accept me as a flicker of the vast Light that we are
or turn your back on our inextricable intimacy.

This shines on
and in, and from, and through, every perception,
every experience and every face and fact of World
known by human and non-human Knowingness
|(and I exclude nothing, no thing in creation
from that capacity of Knowingness.)

This shines on
The sages call it Reality, but beware: it's not a thing, an object
or even a state.  To name it is to turn from it, but it could care less.
It shines on regardless.

Miriam Louisa Simons
This Unlit Light
and

Echoes of Emptiness

With thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Hidden Fire - Alain Joly

One has to start anew, to re-create, get rid of the old and let a
new possibility of life emerge.  Real health is revival, it is the
life that creates itself every moment, without the grooves of the
past that limit and condition us.  We can never know when the
time is ripe for a new possibility.  It comes as a surprise,
uncontrolled, uninvited...  A new dawn emerges.  This is why
I chose to name my blog The Dawn Within.  The Dawn Within
refers to the Light, or at least its first and shy expressions when
the mind ceases to be interested in its own productions or in
the objects of the world out there and turns within.  The dawn
is shy - the light is coming but is not yet a full sunny day.  It
is hesitating.  The night is still lingering but the promise is here.

Alain Joly

The Dawn Within

I do not know where the fire comes from
It is hidden, ready to burst
A piece of ember under the ashes

When the flame has died out
The ashes are left,
Like a thick coat
Tenacious
Like a screed

It doesn't let anything pass
But the ember doesn't die
It remains there

Hot
Waiting

We sometimes need so little
A tiny stimulation
To remove one by one the grey leaves
Glued
Welded
Undo the uncanny order
Of all these withering years

It sometimes takes very little
To revive
Timid
Intact
This little piece of fire
That contains the ardour and madness of all flames
Of all rebirths
Of all cures

Alain Joly

Excerpt and poem from an article in
The Culturium entitled:
Alain Joly: The Dawn Within

How the Day Keeps Us - John O'Donohue

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night.
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice now each day is a holy place
Where the Eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.

John O'Donohue
Original Title: The Inner History of a Day
From: To Bless the Space Between Us:
A Book of Blessings

The Whole of the Soul - Ralph Waldo Emerson

...We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles.
Meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is
equally related; the eternal one.  And this deep power in which
we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts,
is the soul...

...All goes to show, that the soul of man is not an organ, but animates
and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of
memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and
feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the
master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and 
the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object
are one.  We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the
which they lie - an immensity not possessed and that cannot be
possessed.  From within or from behind, a light shines through us
upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing,
but the light is all...

A man is a facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and good abide.
What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting
man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents
himself.  Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is,
would he let it appear through his action, would make your knees bend.
When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes
through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection,
it is love...

...The soul circumscribes all things.  As I have said, it contradicts all
experience.  In like manner it abolishes time and space.  The influence
of the senses has, in most men, overpowered the mind to that degree,
that the walls of time and space have come to look real and
insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world,
a sign of insanity.  Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the
force of the soul...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
From: Essay IX The Over-Soul
1841

~

Photo - South Pole Aurora

Light Will Split You Open - Hafiz

Light will someday split you open
even if your life is now a cage.

Little by little, you will turn into stars.
Little by little, you will turn into
the whole sweet, amorous universe.

Love will surely burst you wide open
into an unfettered, blooming new galaxy.
A life-giving radiance will come.

You will become so free
in a wonderful, secret
and pure Love that flows
from a conscious, one-pointed,
Infinite Light.

[.....]

O look again within yourself,

[.....]

and spin in Eternal Ecstasy...

Behold the Beautiful One
from the vantage point of Love.
He is conducting the affairs
of the whole universe
in a tree house - on a limb
in your heart.

Hafiz

From: The Subject Tonight is Love

It is said that the above poem reflects Hafiz's
mystical experience into cosmic consciousness.

For Christmas - Silent Benediction - Eloratea

It came unexpectedly.
Descending from the unseen regions,
above the highest mountain tops,
behind the distant.....realms,
from the hidden abode of the Light of the world...

It came down silently.

And Silence came upon the whole field,
gentle, profound, even substantially perceptible in its
insubstantiality.
Firstly touching, embracing and uplifting everything
in its strong hold;
standing in itself without any support,
extending without limits, in all directions and
dimensions.
And peace and serenity suffused the field,
releasing like fragrance, a feeling of timeless freedom
and great joy.
And everything was coming out of that Silence,
and returning back to it;
as one seamless, dynamic...unfolding,
from one eternal fountain,
as one weightless field of Life,
one unobstructed and ceasless
refraction of Light.

Eloratea

~

Silent Night
Holy Night
Sleep in Peace

~

The Gift of "The Quiet"

God Pours Light - Hafiz

God
pours light
into every cup,
quenching the darkness.

The proudly pious
stuff their cups with parchment
and critique the taste of ink

while God pours light...

And the trees lift their limbs
without worry of redemption,
every blossom a chalice.

Hafiz, seduce those withered souls
with words that wet their parched
lips

as light
pours like rain
into every empty cup
set adrift on the Infinite Ocean.

Hafiz

How We Endure - Meister Eckhart

What keeps us alive,
what allows us to endure?
I think it is the hope of loving,
or being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey
to find its source, and how the moon wept
without her lover's
warm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts.
We wither like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.

Meister Eckhart

The Light is the Same - Rumi

The lamps are different,
but the Light is the same.
So many garish lamps in the dying brain's
lamp-show.

Forget about them.

Concentrate on the essence,
concentrate on the Light.

In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own
holy fire.

The Light streams towards you from all things.
All people, all possible permutations of good, evil
thought, passion.

The lamps are different,
but the Light is the same.

One matter, one energy, one Light,
one Light-mind,
endlessly emanating all things.

One turning and burning diamond.
One, one, one.

Ground yourself, strip yourself down,
to blind loving silence.

Stay there until you see
you are gazing at the Light

with its own ageless eyes.

Rumi

Divine Courage - Hafiz

We have not come here to take prisoners
but to surrender ever more deeply
to freedom and joy.
We have not come into this exquisite world
to hold ourselves hostage from love...

Run my dear, from anything
that may not strengthen
your precious budding wings.

Run like hell, my dear,
from anyone likely to put a sharp knife
into the sacred, tender vision
of your beautiful heart...

[.....]

For we have not come here to take prisoners,
or to confine our wondrous spirits,
but to experience ever and ever more deeply
our divine courage, freedom, and Light!

Hafiz

Excerpt from:
"We Have Not Come To Take Prisoners"

Photo: Mandala Art digitally altered

Resilience - Nepo and Tesla

Some days I wake with a cloud around my heart,
and it dulls everything except the weight I carry deep inside.
Yet, just because I can't make it to the light today doesn't mean
that the light has vanished...

Mark Nepo

In the first hours post dawn,
at the edge of a dark night,
I awake,..

breathing labored,
fever peaked,
sweat running down my spine...

Inexplicable dread overtakes me...

But somehow the Light finds me
and I rise again to a new day,
facing the merry-go-round of life,
as we all do...
Needing a dose of inspiration,
and a bit of wisdom...

Here is my inspiration for the day.
Once again recognizing the larger context
in which we exist...

If you want to find the secrets of the universe,
think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

Nikola Tesla

Transcription of Narrative:

Like a wave in the physical world, in the Infinite Ocean of the medium which pervades all,so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, maybe, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present.

A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes of Nature.

In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider that in accordance with the law of conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.

Nikola Tesla
The Electrical Review, 1893

via: Love is a Place
Thank you Alixe!

In Dark Times - John O'Donohue

[.....]

In the glare of neon times,
Let your eyes not be worn
By the surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.

That our thoughts may be true light.
Finding their way into words

Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.

When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.

That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell.
Glimmering in fugitive light.

When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight find a window.

When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.

When we love, that dawn-light
 Would lighten our feet...

[.....]

Excerpt from: "For Light"

by John O'Donohue
From: To Bless the Space Between Us

Infinite Light...

Infinite Light -
A vast, spontaneous eternal emanation of
endless, beginning-less Light,
outside of time…

A deep, vibrant energy of Light
that subsumes all life…

The orginal potentiality
for all that is…

It is the Light
that is beyond
all existence;
that *generates*
all existence.

Is Self-generative;
not creating in ITs image,
only generating ItSelf…

The Light that is beyond all “light…”

It is
Beingness ItSelf…
being
Light

It is fully Knowing – Self-knowing…

And yet,
does not consider things like
awareness, or being, or knowing,
duality or non-duality…
It is beyond all such concepts.
It only IS.
The Light of Being – being Light…

Centrifugal Light,
ever-expanding,
always radiating
ItSelf;
silently,
endlessly,
like a great pulse,
a hum,
a vibration
throughout infinity…

The Light that
never goes out,
never goes silent,
but continuously hums
with Life…

The Light that knows all “light”,
and all emanations of “light”,
as ITs Self…

Infinite Light…

Infinite Love…

Mystic Meandering
July 2011

Photo: Camera Flash reflected in window at night
zoom blurred

Go Lightly - Aldous Huxley

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

[…..]

…throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you,
sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear
and self-pity
and despair.
That’s why
you must walk
lightly.

Lightly my darling, on tiptoes
and no luggage,
…completely unencumbered.

Aldous Huxley

from: Island

The Way to the Woods - Wendell Berry & Ivan Granger

Sabbaths 1985, V

[…..]

“What is the way to the woods, how do you go there?

By climbing through the six days’ field,
kept in all the body’s years, the body’s
sorrow, weariness, and joy.
By passing through the narrow gate
on the far side of that field
where the pasture grass
of the body’s life
gives way
to
the high, original
standing of the trees.
By coming into the shadow,
the shadow of the grace of the strait
way’s ending, the shadow of the mercy
of light…

Why must the gate be narrow?
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.
To come in among these trees you must leave behind
the six days’ world,
all of it,
all of its plans
and hopes.
You must come without weapon or tool,
alone,
expecting nothing,
remembering nothing…”

Wendell Berry
Excerpt from: A Timbered Choir

Something so healing, so earthly — in the most sanctified sense — in this Sabbath meditation by Wendell Berry.

His phrases of the “six days’ world” and the “six day’s field” are references to how we see the world and interact with the world on all the other days of the week, the non-Sabbath days. In the “six days’ world” we work, we do, we accomplish, we acquire. Often it is a world of control and burdens, “plans and hopes.” It is a world of objects and tools to manipulate those objects. Too often it is a world of domination and separation.

An essential reason for the Sabbath is to remind us that that “six days’ world” is not the real world nor is it the whole world, it is only one way of interacting with the world. When we take a true day of rest, and enter a majestic space not made by men — like the ancient, silent woods — we remember that we participate in a larger life, eternal, eternally recycling itself. We are reminded that there is a wholeness to the world we live in, something we can’t segment and sell without harm to ourselves. The Sabbath, the woods, the wilds, these remind us of the sacred, whole, eternal spaces within the human spirit. In true rest and quiet awe, we return to ourselves.

Ivan Granger at Poetry Chaikhana


http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/

Love's Invitation - Naomi Stone...

Truth has a way of meeting us
in the bracing winds
of freedom

we let loose and cry out
shattering the air
with a pierceing
sound
that arises from
the unspoken
and unknown spaces
within ourselves

the call is felt around the world
and beyond
words may not reach
another
and the tears may not
be shared
by a friend

but the salty flood
from our eyes
helps us find the lightness
of being
as we rise
toward the sun
of silence
where we
can breathe

the wilderness is fresh
and so real
it will not welcome
pretenders
but rips the veil
from our
disguises
and helps us face
the fears
we hide from
ourselves

the games are over
and we face
a beauty
that forces us to
choose
to be real
or die
to who we might
have been
if we had escaped
whatever it is that confines
and holds us
captive

love invites
us to fly without wings
to soar
to dance and find
our joy
daring to
embrace
truth as a friend
a light
that awakens
and touches us with
a beauty that
humbles
and exalts us
that we might behold
the radiance
of our being

the surprise awaits us
unfolding
moment to moment
when we
surrender
to
the truth
hidden in the light
of love

Naomi Stone

Photo: This is either a double exposure
or a picture of a sunset and the flash
went off by mistake :)

Cosmic Birthing...

Drink the word of Wisdom,
for it has become a veiled light

so that you may become able
to receive the unveiled Light,
to behold without veils
that which is now hidden…

Taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.

And traverse the sky like a star,
that you may journey unconditioned…

Thus you came into being from non-existence…

...like a star without a name…

Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights…

Rumi

taken from two different translations:
Reynold A. Nicholson
The Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi
and
Coleman Barks

Mathnawi III

The surface of the earth
is the shore of the cosmic ocean.
Some part of our being knows this is where
we came from.

We long to return, and we can
because the cosmos
is also within us.

We are made of star stuff.

Carl Sagan
Cosmos

Those vast (stars) that you see
far off, far off, far off
with telescopes…

One day you’re going to wake up
and say:
”Why, that is me!”

You are the Eternal

Alan Watts

~

Please see this wonderful post
Sparkling Awareness
by Fred LaMotte

~

Photos: taken out the window
at 3am with flash,
creating these interesting affects