A Deeper River - Dada Gavand & Angeles Arrien

You cannot meet God through the mind,

nor experience the timeless through time.

Thought cannot touch the transient.
Only the freedom from thought
and from mental cravings and ambitions
does the energy become
whole, tranquil and pure.

Such inner purity and humility
will invite the hidden divinity.

The pure consolidate energy
with its silence and fullness within
awaits in readiness to meet the divine,
to experience that which is beyond the mind.

There across the region of time
beyond the frontiers of the mind,
within the sanctuary of silence,
resides the supreme intelligence,
the timeless divine.

Dada Gavand

~

I trust the Mystery.  I trust what comes in silence
and what comes in nature where there's no diversion.
I think the lack of stimulation allows us to hear and
experience a deeper river that's constant, still, vibrant,
and real..

Angeles Arrien

~

The Silence of Source is the deepest River.
I must find the deeper River within again,
and listen to Its Voice.

MM  4-20-23

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The Voices of the River - Hermann Hesse

Christopher Robin came down from the Forest to the Bridge,
feeling all sunny and careless, and just as if twice nineteen
didn't matter a bit, as it didn't on such a happy afternoon, and
he thought that if he stood on the bottom rail of the bridge, and
leant over, and watched the river slipping slowly away beneath
him, then he would suddenly know everything that there was
to be known.

- From Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

Siddartha came to the same realization - that the river offers
access to all knowledge, at least all that is important.  You have
to tune into the river first though. You can't think of it as an
impediment.

It slips slowly by underneath you.  If you tune into it, believe it
might be able to tell you something, it offers unity with all voices,
all goals, all yearnings, sorrows, pleasures, good and evil, the 
laughter of the wise as well as the groan of the dying.

If you listen to the river long enough, if you stand on the bottom
rung and tune in, the river offers unity in all things.

~~~

Siddartha listened.  He was so listening intently, completely
absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything.  He felt that he
had now completely learned the art of listening.  He had often
heard all this before, all these numerous voices in the river, but
today they sounded different.  He could no longer distinguish
the different voices - the merry voice from the weeping voice,
the childish voice from the manly voice.  They all belonged to
each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the
wise, the cry of indignation and the groan of the dying.  They
were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand
ways.  And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all
the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them
together was the world.  All of them together was the stream of
events, the music of life.  When Siddartha listened attentively
to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not
listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his soul
to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard
them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand
voices consisted of one word: OM - perfection.

"Do you hear?" asked Vasudeva's glance once again.

Vasudeva's smile was radiant; it hovered brightly in all the
wrinkles of his old face, as the OM hovered over all the voices
of the river.  His smile was radiant as he looked at this friend,
and now the same smile appeared on Siddartha's face.  His
wound was healing, his pain was dispersing; his Self had
merged into unity.

From that hour Siddartha ceased to fight against his destiny.
There shone on his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who
is no longer confronted with conflict of desires,
who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream
 of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself
 to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things.

Hermann Hesse  
From Siddartha

With thanks to Rod MacIver
at Heron Dance Art Studio

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The River - Khalil Gibran

 It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing the forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there  seems nothing more than to disappear, forever.

But there is no way back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that's where the river will know
it's not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

Khalil Gibran

with thanks to No Mind's Land
for post and photo

The Formless Happening - Darryl Bailey

All things are changing, flowing.  They're passing appearances
of a great unformed, and inexplicable happening - an event,
a presence - call it whatever you have to.

If we sit quietly, making no effort, life expresses itself clearly;
it simply happens on its own.  There'e nothing else to get.
The great truth is obvious.  The heart beats, the breath comes
and goes.  Vibrations, pulsations, twinges, feelings, thoughts,
and emotions rise and fall.  Urges rise and pass; some become
 actions, others do not; and so life flows.

Sitting quietly, making no effort, all is revealed; a vibrant,
pulsing, formless happening, simply happening.  There is no
goal in this, no final point; there is only what expresses itself
in this moment, and whatever it appears to be now is unavoidably
on its way to some other appearance.

There are many ways of pointing to this vibrant, formless happening.
Some have called it the Great Spirit.  Some call it the river of life,
or the ocean of existence.  Some call it the flow of nature.  It's been
compared to clouds and water, having no particular shape.  Some
say it's movement.  Some call it God, Tao, or Atman.  Some call it
Mind.  Some call it "original nature."  And some just call it the
universe, which literally means "undivided turning."

Daryl Bailey

The Timeless Moment - Bodhipaksa & Hesse

Time was no longer a path with the past behind me
and the future before me, as we commonly conceive of it.
Instead there was a sense of an eternally unfolding present moment.

Rather than time being a journey along a linear path, change
 appeared to be mandala-like.  It seemed to be like a flower
 seen from above, endlessly unfolding from within,
 or like a kaleidoscope's image forever rearranging itself.

It struck me as highly misleading to think in terms of there being a
 past behind us and a future ahead of us.  Instead there was only
 this one present moment, eternally unfolding, according to its
 nature. I found myself in an eternal, timeless present...

Bodhipaksa - Living As A River

via: Markings

"I would like to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise
of its own unfolding"
John O'Donohue

~

Have you learned that secret from the river;
that there is no such thing as time?
That the river is everywhere at the same time,
at the source, at the current, in the ocean, and
in the mountains,

 everywhere...

And that the present only exists for it,
not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

Herman Hesse
Siddartha

via: Love Is A Place

~

Top Photo: Mandala art digitally altered
2nd Photo: An Aurora Borealis in Yellow Knife, Canada
 - a "river" in the sky :)
Sent to us by a friend

The Silent Thread - Stafford

There's a thread you follow.
It goes among things that change.
But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt and die;
and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford
Poem: "The Way It Is."

1998

Interpretive Note:  There is a deep thread that runs through all of us.
It is not our beliefs, political views, or our "spirituality."  It is the
thread of Silence of our Eternal Being; that Ineffable, Unmanifest
Being, that never changes.  I experience this in times of meditative
Silence.  Some may call it the Tao.  I don't know that this is what the
author was alluding to in his poem, but it is how the words spoke to me,
based on my own experience..  It is the thread of the Ineffable that we
can never be separate from, because it *is*, in essence, what we really
are - the Ultimate Reality...

~*~

We go on pilgrimages to the
edge of our lives
to see what life is like
on the other side....

...I paddle the sacred river
to touch what is sacred inside...

Rod MacIver
Rod MacIver Art
excerpted from:
"Wild Waters and The Tao"

Tending The River Within...

Sometimes you read something and it just really resonates, either in whole or in part.  Recently I read the poem below from a link on – findingmybliss – and it touched me deeply.  It reminded me once again how necessary it is to tend the Quiet place within – the River of  Sacred Silence that flows within us all…   The poem speaks to what I aspire to, but certainly have not achieved…  Maybe that’s why it touched me.  I have highlighted the lines that spoke to me the most…

The Quiet Power

By Tara Sophia Mohr

“I walked backwards, against time
and that’s where I caught the moon,
singing at me.

I steeped downwards, into my seat
and that’s where I caught freedom,
waiting for me, like a lilac.

I ended thought, and I ended story.
I stopped designing, and arguing, and
sculpting a happy life.

I didn’t die.  I didn’t turn to dust.
Instead I chopped vegetables,
and made a calm lake in me
where the water was clear and sourced and still.

And when the ones I loved came to it,
I had something to give them,
and it offered a soft road out of pain.

I became beloved.

And I came to know that this was it.
The quiet power.

I could give something mighty, lasting,
that stopped the wheel of chaos,
by tending to the river inside,
keeping the water rich and deep,
keeping a bench for you to visit.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Photo: Light in the kitchen sink
digitally enhanced

"take the rabbits"

After a very hectic week fraught with interruptions and distractions, I awoke this morning in the doldrums – absolutely dead in the water – all momentum for doing gone – no excitement for life, just worn down by a lot of unexpected turns in the River. I asked, where does Life want to go today? Nothing, nada. I asked, what is needed here? Again blank, zilch. What am I supposed to see here? Hello-o-o-o-o, anybody home? Evidently not. So I trudged my way to the kitchen to feed the cat and make breakfast, inwardly listening, trying to be aware of something, anything that would give me some hint of what I was experiencing and why; why there seemed to be a lot of obstacles and no real flow these last few days – just a lot of busyness, and in most cases accompanying resistance to the way things were going.

Over breakfast I started sharing with my husband about what I was feeling and experiencing. We got on the topic of the flow of experience, the river metaphor, like the opening phrase on the home page on my web site, “Our lives are like rivers, eventually they go where they must, not where we want them to.” And so I was lamenting that life was not going where I wanted it to, but that I didn’t know where it was going, because at the moment, it didn’t seem to be going at all, even with all the effort and busyness, and how unsettled that was making me feel.

And so I took off with the metaphor and started talking about how sometimes life is just like that – trying to convince myself I guess - that sometimes there are still places on the River where nothing seems to be happening and sometimes life is like the rapids – it just takes you, even when you don’t feel ready for where it’s going. And how I often find myself saying to life – wait, I’m not ready, hold on, I don’t know how to do this, I’ve never been in a kayak before and no one gave me lessons! This happened when I published my website and blog last month. And then out of my mouth came – “and sometimes you just have to take the rapids, whether you’re ready or not.” How interesting I was now excitedly talking about taking the rapids when an instant before I felt like I was dead in the water.

My husband had been attentively listening, adding his wisdom here and there. But after my last statement I could see this rather quizzical look in his eye. I thought he was maybe pondering the deep profundity that had spewed forth. :) He started laughing. I became quizzical as well, and asked – What? - with a grin on my face – like he was now going to tell me some profound point that he had just gotten. With a gleam and a grin he looked at me and said: I thought you said you just have to “take the rabbits.” We both broke into a hearty belly laughter beyond our control. We have resident rabbits around our home that graze on the grass and live under the front stoop, or the back spruce tree, or the shed. We love to watch the rabbits while eating in our “breakfast nook" window that overlooks the back yard. So of course it made sense that he would hear me say “rabbits.”

And there it was – the moment that took me out of the doldrums. It just took a little humor and a lot of laughter in a mis-heard phrase and I began to feel a stirring of life within again. And here I thought I’d have to spend some serious time in morning meditation, meeting this unsettledness, this disgruntledness with life, working with it, seeing what lesson was there for me. But life itself had unexpectedly presented the remedy in the moment. Ah, the medicine of humor.

So I pondered the metaphor of the rabbit. Rabbits, it seems from my observations, are content to graze on grass all day – to be in a state of inner stillness for most of their existence. They are not thinking: This is not how my life should be. They seemingly know when to run to take cover and when to freeze in place, blending in like a rock in the grass. And they multiply unendingly – like the rapids on a river that intensify as they go over the rocks. They, rabbits and rapids, innately go with the flow of their life, whatever it is, without resistance - content in their true nature – their Beingness, not wanting life to be any different than what it is.

So the next time I’m feeling unsettled about where life is going, or not going, all I’ll have to do is look out my back window and remember this funny little story, and allow the River to take me – freely without resistance - let what arises arise, and just be with it. And, oh yes, I’ll remember to “take the rabbits.”

Living life as it is…

Heart Smiles – MeANderi
www.ASerenitySanctuary.com