Embrace the Totality of Experience - Kathleen Knipp

It is possible to sink beneath the play of duality
and feel and know the totality in which all of this
play is happening, in whatever drama happens to be
unfolding in your life.  It doesn't diminish the impact
of difficult experience - but creates a bigger picture...

The experience of True Nature is somatic, [a felt experience]
through the sensations in the body; a fluidity of all elements
[sensations, feelings, etc.] that don't contradict each other,
but happen simultaneously, like lightness and density, etc.

Everything is formed out of the element of space and happens
within the element of space.  The body is simply compressed
space.  The space around it, and within it is the same space -
wide open spaciousness.  The spaciousness that just is
even in the presence of solidity of form - being 
simultaneously wide open spaciousness - and - the 
solidification of form.

To the mind it seems contradictory.  In the realm of sensing,
it can be quite apparent.  For is emptiness, emptiness is form
may seem esoteric - yet what is the experience? 
Simultaneously dense - and - wide open; feeling weighted
and light;  feeling still and moving.  All of the apparent
contradictions drop away in the sensory realm.

The totality contains everything, all expressions of the one -
unrecognized:  This that is before time, before words, 
before division.  It's not either/or, it's both/and.

Remembering our infiniteness in the face of finiteness.
Experiencing totality simultaneously,
The unique being that is me - remembering.

Kathleen Knipp
Excerpt from a Yoga Nidra Meditation

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Exploring Emotions - Kathleen Knipp

The goal is not to replace one's experience with another...
but accepting the entirety of life...  Be fully present for
what is here - instead of distracting ourselves...
Be intimately with yourself [using] somatic inquiry
into what's being felt and how it expresses itself as
sensation [in the body] getting a sense of what is
felt in the body.

You can also use inquiry to get a sense of what is
really Essential, what is really pulling you to what really
matters for you, using whatever we have as inner resource
or inner sanctuary...  What helps us to feel safe and feel what
is here.  Make the feeling sense as vivid as possible.

Our approach to meeting whatever is present is not aggressive,
but of receiving and welcoming.  What is seeking to be felt -
feel what presents itself.  What is the sensation you are drawn
to repeatedly?  Can you feel it without interpretation?

Let the emotion present itself and meet it.
What does it actually feel like?  Is there a part of the body
where this emotion expresses itself, or does it move around?
If there is no particular emotion present, be with what is here...

Slide behind the emotion, even dive inside, feel it from the
inside without conclusions, explanations, or stories.  Focus on
the sensation and be curious with wide open availability and
fully embodied...

Kathleen Knipp
Excerpts from a Yoga Nidra Meditation

 

The Totality of Experience - Shinshu Roberts

 ...As soon as we return to the totality of this moment's complete
expression, responding to the whole of our situation, we are
not caught by anything.  Even though we are still subject to
the repercussions of our past actions, we are free to
respond skillfully in the present moment/situation.

If we have been rude to someone in the past and that person
is wary of us [or if they have been rude to us], our total
participation in this moment of meeting that person will not
necessarily take away the effects of our past meeting.  What
it will do is free us to respond skillfully in this situation.
Since we are not caught by "piled up" or overlapping
experiences, we are freed to enact the new paradigm of 
[seeing the whole of the situation] and being present for
the next opportunity...

Holding on to a past mistake will often hinder your ability
to respond skillfully in the present, although you still file
away your mistake and make adjustments.

Our understanding of self can become a fixed idea of
accumulated ["piled up"] traits and experiences.  The self
 is both independent and the totality of all being-time.  We are
no-self and a particular self at the same time, caught by
neither and more than both.  [This] realization is not
predicated upon a particular set of circumstances.
Realization is present in each moment.
Realization is each moment.

Shinshu Roberts
from an article on Dogen in Insight Journal
from Barre Center for Buddhist Studies

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Spiritual Teachers" - Jeff Foster

'Spiritual teachers' [of certain traditions] often talk of pure
Awareness that doesn't suffer, a formless consciousness
untouched by form...

They speak of a state in which anger, fear, confusion and doubt
do not arise.  Or if they do it's a 'sign' that we are 'not there yet.'

How ironic, a non-dual teaching that is deeply dualistic at its core,
and deeply shaming of our vulnerable humanity,
and deeply, deeply unconscious of this.

What kind of 'Oneness' does not radically include all of her forms?
What kind of ocean does not embrace, and infuse, every single one
of its precious waves?

'Spiritual teachers' tell us that there is no goal, nothing to attain,
and they are not special in any way.

Yet - in the same breath, they speak of the 'falling away' of the
'separate self'', the sudden or gradual 'death of the ego', the
silencing of their mind, and how they achieved states of
permanent bliss, peace and equanimity.

They speak of non-judgmental love, yet judge and guilt-trip
and correct their students for having fears, doubts, annoying
questions and... resistance!  They make their students doubt
their own experience.  They claim to be 'enlightened', yet
judge others as not being 'enlightened.'

They identify themselves as having lost their separate self,

yet speak of having no identity at all....

The mind is an addict.  It is desperate for somewhere to land.
Some certainty. Some dogma. Some 'true teaching'.  The mind
will addict itself to even the most beautiful, refined,
spiritual concepts:
'I am pure Awareness.'
'I am not the body.'
'There is no separate self.'
'It's all an illusion.'

Avoiding the tender, moment-by-moment embrace of our
fragile, fleshy, muddy, messy humanness.

Our confusion is clearly lovable.Our doubts are certainly sacred.
Our longings, aches and wounds are not signs that we haven't
 reached the correct state, or that we are far from the Promised Land.
They are holy sites in us themselves, expressions of the
One Life that cannot be uttered.

There are no experts, no 'enlightened' ones,
no authorities...

Just willingness to not know.
To begin again.  And again.
To soften into the grieving heart...

The broken heart is holy.

I reject any spirituality that cannot see the grace in that.

I reject any spirituality that doesn't allow us to be fully human.

If "spiritual teacher" means someone who sees the 'fierce grace'
in the pits of suffering, and the unspeakable beauty in our
wounded and tender places, and the non-duality shining brightly
in the damn chaos, and the ever-present existence of a Love so
vast, it cannot be understood by mind - a Love that loves our
imperfections and mistakes, and embraces them in loving
awareness in each and every moment of our lives -
then sign me up!

Jeff Foster
Former Non-Dual "Spiritual Teacher"
Excerpt from - "Why I Resigned As A "Spiritual Teacher"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Embracing the Reality of Sorrow - Adyashanti

Sooner or later we will all experience the tragic quality of life.
Perhaps this quality of life is brought to us through illness, or
the death of a loved one, or losing a job, or an unexpected
accident, or having your heart broken.  But we will all
experience this tragic quality of life in both small and
overwhelmingly large ways over the span of our lives.
Whether we want to face it or not, life, with all of its beauty,
joy, and majesty, also has a tragic element to it.  This is
exactly what the Buddha saw, and it inspired his entire
spiritual search.

It seems that most people look for various ways to escape
from this tragic quality of life, but ultimately to no avail.
There is no escaping it.  And it must be faced sooner or
later.  The question is, when we are faced with this aspect
of life, how do we respond?  Surely, to avoid it only leads to
denial, fantasy, life-numbing withdrawal, cynicism, and fear.
It takes great courage to face the totality of life without
withdrawing from it or trying to protect ourselves from it.

Paradoxically, to face the totality of life we must face the

reality of death, sorrow, and loss as well.  We must face them
as unavoidable aspects of life.  The question is, can we face
them directly without getting lost in the stories that our mind
weaves about them?  Because if we can, we will find a
tremendous affirmation of life, an affirmation that is forged
in the fierce embrace of tragedy.

At the very heart and core of our being, there exists an
overwhelming 'yes' to existence.  This yes is discovered by
those who have the courage to open their hearts to the
totality of life. This yes is found only by
embracing the reality of sorrow and going beyond it. 

Adyashanti

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Living "Sabbatically"...

Over the last several years I've lamented about wanting
to carve out a "sabbatical life" - you know, living a monk's
life :) - spending my days in Silence and Solitude, meditating,
continuously aware of the Divine Presence; living life from
the deep Inner Rhythm within; from the Silence of Being;
not *in* silence, necessarily, but living from the deep pool
of Stillness within and not be driven by the requirements
of daily living.

And yet, in reality, I am continually pulled outward into
the requirements of daily living with its ups and downs;
preoccupations with family and relationship, including
helping to care for my mother for 8 1/2 years, until her death
this March;  and then the practical aftermath of settling her
affairs, which still isn't over; many times not meditating at all
due to exhaustion, as well as dealing with my own health.
I am often weary of existence...

But - that's just how life is...  It's like that for a lot of us;
dealing with what we have to deal with...

Sometimes I think I must be delusional to think that it is
possible to live according to the Inner Rhythm, focusing on
the Inner Life.  I am just an ordinary person wanting to know
the Truth of Existence in the waning years of my existence here...

It's not so much that I want to "take" a "sabbatical" *from*

life - well maybe sometimes - :) as I want to find a way to *live*

"sabbatically" - living a quiet life, unencumbered, according to
my own natural rhythms, and the deeper Rhythm within.  I don't
see it as an escape from life, but a call to a way of being in the
world, and yet it eludes me most of the time...

When I ride the waves of this Inner Rhythm in meditative Silence,
I can feel the chaotic surface waves dissipate as I fall into
Sacred Silence - and rest.  At times it is easy to make the distinction
between life as it is and the *idea* of "sabbatical life" - creating a
separation between the two where there is none.  In fact, it is more
one's orientation to life and living that matters - one's relationship
with life as it is - and with "The Ineffable Mystery"...
I'm still working on that balance...

I know that ultimately it's not either/or, but both/and:
living in acceptance of life as it is - surrendering to where Life
wants to flow - reflecting the wholeness of Being that we are,
and living fully from a deep, abiding *awareness* of the Sacred
Silence that perpetually flows through us - and - the awareness
that it's really all "The Mystery" living ItSelf out here anyway...

So I may have romanticized the "sabbatical life", but it still
calls to me.  Silence and Solitude feel like a very deep and
vital need - like breathing.
The Silence is Home.

The "key" seems to be - to be willing to face into the realities
of living life as it is, the requirements of daily living - while
at the same time being deeply *aware* of the deeper Rhythm
within; not having any preconceived ideas of what "sabbatical
life" should look like, but being open to The Flow of the Inner
Life - while learning to ride the waves of daily life as they come.
They are not in opposition to each other, but flow together.

~

Mystics are people who quest for wisdom or for God,
[or for the Truth of Existence, etc.], not in the world of
externals but in the microcosm of their own soul.  There
they allow themselves to be fully present to the experiences
of a deep-felt joy or sorrow, or beauty or suffering, of gain
or loss, so that these opposing poles might in time reconcile
and grow and ripen into a harmonious whole - which wells
up as peace that defies all rational explanation...

Anne Mari Kidder, Editor of
Etty Hillesum: Essential Writings

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Light in the Darkness - Matt Licata

In speaking recently with a friend, I was reminded of the great
bias in our culture toward the light and away from the darkness.
When we meet with someone who is down, feeling hopeless,
empty or otherwise not beaming and joyful, we can become
quickly convinced that something is wrong, that they are
"broken," and that we must act urgently to "fix" them.  We
scramble to put them back together, to remind them of all the
gifts in their life, impart spiritual techniques and philosophies
to them, suggesting that they just "focus on the positive", letting
know that everything will be better soon, and that it will turn out
okay.

...we might see the subtle aggression in this, this insistence that
they come out of their immediate experience and into the one
we believe they should be having instead.  We can start to see
how much of this "fixing" activity arises out of the disconnection
with that which remains unmetabolized within us.

It is possible the kindest thing we can offer our suffering friend
is to sit in the darkness with them... removing the burden that
they change, transform, feel better, or heal in order for us to stay
near.  As we turn to embrace our own unmet sadness, grief, and
despair, we remove the projection of our unlived lives from them.
We lift the weight that they take care of our unresolved anxiety
for us.

As we learn to trust and to rest in the wisdom-field of our present,
embodied experience, we see that love is a movement of totality.It is whole, and is raging and alive even in the darkness.

In the core of the fire, the sadness, the grief, and the despair
is something very real, breaking through the dream of
 partiality.  But what this is may never support our cultural
 and spiritual fantasies of a life of invulnerability.  Here, you
are being shown that the wild, untamed, creative movement
 of love will never conform to your hopes and fears, and that
things are unlikely to ever turn out the way you thought they
would.  This is not evidence that something has gone wrong,
but of how alive you are.

From the perspective of this radical sort of wholeness, every
experience is beheld as utterly valid, totally workable, and
an expression of the path itself.  Here there is no obstacle.
From the center of your being, it is seen that life is not only
the joy and the sweetness, but at times will arrive raging as
the darkness, in order to reorder your world and to remind
you of something you have lost contact with.  In this surging
of your inner family, the true nature of your experience will be
revealed, and the portals to Presence will be shown as they are...
as infinite.

May you stay close to your suffering and the suffering of others,
careful not to cut it too quickly, curious and available to the
wisdom as it unfolds in unexpected ways.  Open your heart to
the golden, full-spectrum nature of love and the jewels hidden
in the dark before you discard them, and finally see what it is
that they have to say.

Matt Licata

Photo from Matt's blog

Be What You Are - Hermann Hesse

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer,
then a tree has something to say to us:
Be still!  Be still!  Look at me!  Life is not easy,
life is not difficult.  Home is neither here nor there.
Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees
rustling in the wind at evening.  If one listens to them
silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel,
its meaning.  It is not so much a matter of escaping
from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so.
It is a longing for home, for new metaphors for life.
It leads home.  Every path leads homeward, every step
is birth, every step is death...

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy
before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts,
long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives
than ours.  They are wiser than we are, as long as we do
not listen to them.  But when we have learned how to
listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the
childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve incomparable
joy.  Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer
wants to be a tree.  He wants to be nothing except what
he is.  That is home.  That is happiness...

Hermann Hesse

from: Trees: Reflections and Poems

via - The Beauty We Love

~

To put it simply, let that mysterious grace move in your
spirit as it will and follow wherever it leads you.  Let it
be the active doer and you the passive receiver.  Do not
meddle with it, but let it be...  Your part is to be as wood
to a carpenter or a home to a dweller.  Remain blind
during this time cutting away all desire to know, for
knowledge is a hindrance here.  Be content to feel this
mysterious grace sweetly awaken in the depths of your
spirit.  Forget everything...

The Cloud of Unknowing

Beyond "Spirituality" - MM & A.H. Almaas

Beyond the "cloak of spirituality" that we wear,
in its many guises, is the unconditioned Nature
of our own Being - the "Genuine Self",
the "Authentic Self", the "Precious Pearl"
at the depths of Beingness;
not the super-imposed conditioning of belief systems,
but the pure state of Being from deep within the
Quietness of Consciousness
that has no "belief", no conditioned *idea* of
"spirituality" - just pure Being,
living as we are...

Mystic Meandering
May 27, 2019

~

The non-dual realization is only a step toward
greater mysteries and forms of freedom
leading to the deepening realization
of the fullness of being human,
expressing the totality of the
cosmos in all its physical and
spiritual dimensions -
living the simplicity
of
ordinary life.

A.H. Almaas

~

Photo - Pikes Peak
taken from Greenland, CO

All We Are, We Are

I realized a few years back, and again while experiencing a
recent relapse of a chronic illness, that I was resisting;
resisting the condition, and its related symptoms, as well as
life itself.  The mind was fixating on the bodily symptoms and
resisting what was happening, forgetting its True Essence
and the simplicity of just Being - just living as life presents itself.
When I finally woke up to this, I felt bad that I had fallen into
resistance again...  After all, Life moves the way it moves - right?
But, even so, I resisted the resistance  :) - in subtle ways
resisting what is...

So - I asked to be shown what I needed to see here.

The "answer" came, not through meditation, or sitting in the Silence,
or practicing a "practice", but while at the grocery store...

Several years ago, while waiting in line at the check-out, I heard
the words of a song being played on the PA system.  The words
were: "All we are we are..." lyrically repeated over and over
again.  I couldn't make out the other words in the other verses,
only the chorus: "All we are we are..."  The rhythm of the words
drew me in:  "All we are we are..."

Of course!
How could we be anything else?  As I stood waiting in line,
 listening to the words, I looked around, in a relaxed state of
awareness, my eyes unexpectedly landing on a word over in
the far corner from where I was standing that was printed on the
side of the display shelf.  It said:

"Inclusive"

My mind just stopped - eyes glued to the word - in awe.
I realized - there it was: my "answer."
And it all came together...

All we are, we are...

Inclusive...

Nothing is excluded - no thought, no feeling, no emotion,
not even resistance.  We can't be anything other than we are.
We are who we are...  All of it - not just the parts we like,
but even our hidden parts, the "darker" parts; the depression,
the discouragement, the anger, the anxiety, the restlessness,
the doubts, the uncertainties,the insecurities, the resistance...

I could feel the tears welling up with this recognition - with
the acceptance that everything is included - life as it is -
me exactly as I am.  There is nothing "wrong" with any of it!
It's all embraced as an experience of Being.  It is all expressions
of the Essential Self, in all it's many forms - the waves of the
Ocean rising and falling back into ItSelf - over and over again.
It's inclusive of the hard times and the easy times, not separating
out the good and bad experiences, as I tend to do - still believing
 the distinction in my mind, "complexifying" (I love this word!)
my life.  Pure Beingness embraces everything inclusively as
ItSelf - expressing this "me" as ItSelf - all of me; not the
perfection of me.  Our Beingness embraces it all -
enfolds every part back to ItSelf - our pain, our circumstances,
our life - as we are, as it is - without hesitation - without resistance.
Everything is ALLOWED.

I know this and forget this.
Everything unfolds the way it does, including the "resistance."
And so I once again whisper softly in its ear, as if to a
frightened child:
"You're included, all is well..."

All we are, we are...

Inclusive...

~

Originally written 2010

The song "All We Are" is by Matt Nathanson

~

Photo - light through a blue glass

Honoring The Mystery - Mark Nepo

Somehow we have been dropped into the Mystery,
below our roles, and identities, fallen through our maps into
one stream of love.  Some moment or circumstance becomes
an unexpected doorway into the Mystery.  We never know how
it will appear, or how we will be drawn to it...

Honoring the Mystery is what opens us to the powers of wholeness -
this unknowable totality that we live in.  To honor the Mystery is
not just to glimpse the whole, or even acknowledge the whole, but
to live our days with [as] that wholeness...  Commit to leaning into
life until it drops you beneath your surface maps of reality...

Though we pray to the many faces of God, each is a changing
wave in the sea of Divine Being...  Any circumstance that
awakens us to that divine sea is a holy gift...

If courageous enough we might just slow down to the pace
of creation, where the pulse by which the mind thinks touches
the pulse by which the heart feels, and together they equal the
rhythm where Being plays in exact motion with all beings...

Nothing matters but emptying...

until the softness we call Spirit bubbles through the tongue
and words fail in utter adoration.
Nothing now but the need to be...

Mark Nepo
From: The Exquisite Risk

~

Photo - Water on Windshield through a car wash :)

Multiplicity and Oneness - Kripal and Licata

Each human being is two, that is, each person is simultaneously
a conscious constructed self or socialized ego and a much larger
complexly conscious field that normally manifests only in
non-ordinary states of consciousness and energy, which the
religious traditions have historically objectified, mythologized,
and projected outward into the sky as divine, as "God", or
introjected inward into the human being as nirvana, brahman, or
located in some sort of experienced paradoxical state that is
neither inside or outside, as in the Chinese Dao...

Jeffrey J. Kripal
Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought

via - Markings

~

We are neither "separate" nor "one", but the erupting holding
field in which the energies of "separate" and "one" interpenetrate
and dance the relative into being.  The allies of multiplicity are not
at war with oneness, but fellow travelers with them on a journey of
wholeness. While we may have a bias for oneness over multiplicity,
it would appear that Love does not share this bias and is ready at all
times to employ either equally as its envoy here.  The freedom we
 are longing for will never be found in the eradication of the
unwanted, but only in attunement to the Love
and the information it carries.

The goal is not to eliminate multiplicity and scramble to replace it
with oneness, but something a bit messier, more creative, more fertile,
more earthy.  A bit more risky, not as clean, white, solar, or safe.

When we become too literalized in our fantasies of unity and oneness
 - and also in those of multiplicity and separation - we lose touch with
the mystery that these concepts can only point to...

We can play in the mountain peaks of unity and oneness, and also
in the rich, lush generative meadows of separation and multiplicity,
without taking sides.  Willing to fully participate in each,
as equal expressions of the Beloved.

Matt Licata

~
photo - Face Reflection Mandala
2013

A Collective "Spirituality" - Matt Licata

At some point we will be invited to revision the concepts
which have guided us along the way.....dissolving what has
come before, and starting over, as if it were the first day.  To
illuminate the lenses through which we are seeing self, others,
and world...

[Spirituality] is not a state where we become liberated from
feeling, but freer to experience it more fully..... Not transcending
 our vulnerability, fleeing into a state of power and untouchability,
safely hidden away in some protected spiritual cocoon.

We will never be fully alive by embracing only those feelings and
those dreams that our families, societies, and teacher claim are
worthy and valid.  But only through the courage and mercy
required to touch it all.

To partake of the entirety of the spectrum of this human experience,
with as much curiosity, soul, and kindness that we can discover.
To give ourselves permission to care, to take a risk in allowing
another to matter, and tend to the heart it inevitably breaks in
response to suffering, disappointment and despair.

To see for ourselves to what degree the unconscious quest for
power, mastery, certainty,and invulnerability may be an
expression of fear, not love.

To realize how little we know in the face of the mystery [of life].

~

A collective spirituality is not going to be subtle, nuanced, or
creative enough to meet the longing within.  The way to direct
revelation and embodied experiential discovery is not the easy way.
It's not the path of five-steps to empowerment, manifestation, or
thinking our way into permanent happiness, abundance and bliss.
It is a humble journey, heart wrenching at times, as we compassionately
[embrace] the disowned parts of ourselves that surge for re-union.

It is unlikely we'll fully understand or resolve the mystery of self and
other, of separation and union...  But we can break open into the
questions as beginners, as amateurs, and as servants of the mystery.

Matt Licata

In The Autumn Of Life (excerpt) - Chuck Surface

In the Autumn of life...

I no longer care for "knowledge of",
In words, concepts and theories,
For the highest knowledge possible
Remains but yet another veiling.

And yet...

The mind continues as it has,
Reveling in its noble quest,
Behaving according to its nature,
Only now, knowing full well the futility.

In the Autumn of life...
I no longer care for "understanding",
Arriving at logical "conclusion",
For the deepest understanding possible,
Remains but yet another veiling.

And yet...
The mind continues as it has,
Devouring whatever crumbs might fall,
From the Table of The Great Mystery,
Only now, knowing full well the futility.

[.....]

And yet, in the Autumn of life...

I see the Blessing is born of our entirety:
The mind's desperate need to Know,
The Heart's desperate desire to Feel,
The Soul's desperate longing for Union...

[.....]

Here... in the Autumn of life...

Chuck Surface
Excerpt: In The Autumn Of Life

Garden of the Beloved

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The Descendant Current - Matt Licata

Let us not forget the descendant current, flowing into the unlit
places, the underworld, and the dark caverns of the psyche.  The
realm of dream, fantasy, imagination and creativity.  The
invitation here is one of embodiment - into the contradictions,
the chaos, and the deflation we must confront on any journey of
depth.

There is a cultural fantasy that we are supposed to know what to do
with our lives, that things, are supposed to be clear, that we are
supposed to feel solar and heroic and in control of the feelings that
wash through us.  But Love is full-spectrum and will equally
employ the energies of not-knowing, disappointment, and
reorganization as part of its revelation here.  The process of
dissolution is non-negotiable.  It is by way of this sacred washing
of the known that new forms can find their way here.

Inside the vessel of life, encrusted, worn out ideas and opposites
are washed away, such as silence over noise, oneness over multiplicity,
quiet over inner revolution, crystal clarity over shaky uncertainty, and
power over vulnerability.  While we may have our conditioned
preferences, Love does not share these biases and will use the entirety
of the emotional and phenomenal world to reach us.  Even in the
darkness, the numbness, the chaotic, and the mud, the wild,
untamed activity of the soul erupts.

It is natural and ordinary to disconnect from the downward movement
as we overly identify with the ascending, the upward, the light, and
the transcendent.  In the rush to exit immediate experience - for
something that is higher, purer, less messy, and less contradictory -
we turn from the waters of life and lose touch with Essence.

While it is natural to have a bias for one current over another, let us
not do so as the expense of fragmentation.  In ways the mind may
never fully understand, there is a luminous middle place where the
currents intertwine.  It is buried in a secret chamber inside your
own heart.  

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Vortex Art

Digitally altered
2011

Living the Balance - Sandy Jones

There is a perfect Balance between duality and non-duality.
There is a way of balance between the changing, ongoing
images of this time-space tangible world and the Living Light
of the unseen, changeless, Divine Principle, that stands behind
all things.

Living this Balance, is an inner knowing that keeps us steady,
true, strong and agile.  It is an ease and a dominion within us.
It is the perfect center within ourself.  We know it when we
find it.  It is real...  The Balance is a sweet place within, where
the heart and the soul come together.  Here, between the known
and the unknown, Something real, pure, unconditioned is found.
It is the original self...

How do we come to know this marvelous sense of Balance,
and know we know it?  How else, but by living the imbalance -
for a time.

...this Balance between the tangible world of multiplicity,
matter, time and change - and the intangible knowing, the innate
realization and understanding of the oneness of all things
[doesn't]  leave out any part of this Life.  It includes all
possibilities [all experiences].

This knowing is fearless, now enjoying the shadows,
the flickering light of this world, as part of the unfolding
beauty of it all.  The sweet balance leads us to a new way of
being and seeing, right here in the world - where Life Flows...

Sandy Jones

Excerpt from a post on her blog

~

Photo via No Mind's Land

A luminous middle place - Matt Licata

Let us not forget the descendant current, flowing into the unlit
places, the lower worlds, and the dark caverns of the psyche.
The invitation here is one of embodiment - into the vulnerability,
the chaos, and the deflation that the path of the heart will
inevitably present us with for holding.

There is a cultural fantasy that we are supposed to know what to
do with our lives, that things are supposed to be clear at all times.
But love is full-spectrum and will use the energies of not-knowing,
disappointment and uncertainty as part of its revelation here.  The
process of dissolution is non-negotiable...
For it is by way of this sacred washing of the known that new
 forms can find their way here.

Even in the darkness, the numbness, and in the appearance that
nothing is happening, there is birth, but the new can never fully come
into being without an honoring of re-organization and death
 [of the old]. The challenge is that there is no map for this territory
 as it is too alive, too creative, and too wild to be pinned down,
 controlled, and known ahead of time.  While this degree of openness
 may be disorienting to a mind seeking resolution, it is exhilarating
in the heart, in the body, and deep within the soul.

It is natural and easy to disconnect from this [descendant] current, as
we overly identify with the ascending, the upward, the light, and the
transcendent.  In the rush to exit immediate experience - for something
that is higher, purer, less messy, and less contradictory - we turn from
the waters of life and lose touch with essence.

While it is natural to have a bias for one current over another, let us
not do so at the expense of fragmentation.  In ways the mind may
never fully understand, there is a luminous middle place where the
currents intertwine.  It is buried in the secret chamber inside your
own heart.

Enter there...
Rest there...
Play there...
Dance there...

Matt Licata

~

Art - Shadowy Caverns
Craypas oils done with fingers
2011

Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters
and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crown of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

via: The Beauty We Love

The Deepest Acceptance - Jeff Foster & Rilke

True freedom is found not through escaping the present experience,
but by diving fearlessly into its hidden depths.  You must be willing
to see *through* the idea of separation from life, in all its forms, in
the midst of your current experience.  You must be open to exploring
suffering - how and why it manifests in you, where it originates.  

You must be willing to look at your pain, fears, sadness, longings.
They are part of the wholeness of life.  You must be willing to face
them head on and find deep acceptance for the seemingly
unacceptable aspects of yourself...  Beyond the personal story of my
own suffering, I discover that pain is not really my pain.  It's the
world's pain.  It's humanity's pain...

It's one thing to know who you really are when life is easy and things
are going well for you.  It's another thing to remember this in the heat
of the moment, when things fall apart, when life gets messy.  We find
another way of  looking at suffering, a radical new way of relating to
it.  We can see the messiness and beauty of day-to-day human
 existence as something to be avoided, or transcended, *or* we can
 see it for what what it really is: a secret and constant invitation to
 wake up - even if we believe we already woke up yesterday.
Life, in its infinite compassion, won't let us rest on our laurels.   It's
about finding out who you *really* are, beyond who you *think*
 you are, beyond who you've been taught you are, beyond your story
 about who you are, beyond all your concepts and images of
who you are.

If we are to be truly free - we must face reality with open eyes.
We must move away from denial, wishful thinking, and hoping,
 and tell the truth about life as it is.  Great freedom lies in admitting
 the truth of this  moment, however much it clashes with our dreams
 and plans - and self-image...  Acceptance is about seeing reality,
seeing things as they actually are, not as we wish them to be.
And from that place of alignment with what is, all creative, loving
 and intelligent actions flow naturally.

True freedom has nothing to do with being a better wave in the Ocean,
or perfecting our story of ourselves,  Freedom is about waking up from
the dream (illusion) that we are separate waves in the first place, and
embracing all that appears in the Ocean of our experience.  Maybe
the true calling in life is to accept present experience deeply - to let go
of how this moment should be - letting go of our false self-image.

Great freedom lies in fearlessly facing the darkness and finally coming
to see that the darkness is inseparable from light...  Life cannot
 be good or bad.  Life is simply life.
 It's about seeing the Mystery of Life
 that is already here.

Jeff Foster

Excerpts from: The Deepest Acceptance:
Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life

~*~

No experience has been too unimportant,
and the smallest event unfolds like fate,

and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric
in which every thread is guided by an infinitely
tender hand

and is laid alongside another thread
and is held and supported by a hundred others.

Rainer Maria Rilke

~

Photo: I noticed the different patterns
in the sheer curtain from the play of light on it.
For me these patterns represent the
"fabric of life", the weave of life,
in all its variations...

Self-Discovery - Sandy Jones

I discovered there is no reason to try to pull life apart
into 'ego and not ego' or self and not self, or real and
unreal, higher self or lower self.  As if we could
possibly separate Life and all that it is, from itself
and its very own totality of self-knowingness.

No, I found it can't be done.  It's not the way to love
and peace and joy and the unbridled being of who we are.

One day I discovered.....that I am the living awareness of
Something that is infinite and forever.  Life is the Living
Divine Mind being this awareness [that] I am.  It is my
very Self-knowing.  It is me and it is all that Life is.
It is nothing but love and Light and Self-knowing. And
this Awareness does not come from out of me, I do not
possess this Awareness, this living infinity of me, but it
does live as the life and light of all that I am.

We are the Light of the All in all.  Living awareness,
knowing itself as Identity, as you and me.  I am the
Self-Knowing Identity of the Ineffable All That Is.

And yes, I can only speak for me and what I have
found.  But for me, the journey here, in this world of
time and matter, is not about achieving some void of
no-me, to become emptiness or living without a sense of
self.  No, not at all, for me, it has proven itself to be
totally the opposite.

Life led me home, the ups and downs, the painful losses,
the tears of love, the anguish, it all brought me home.
It was the hard teachings led me back to myself, this
childlike innocent beauty and happiness, back to my heart,
to understanding the unbound freedom from fear.

Life is about Self discovery, walking into it all and seeing
the beauty of everything, including our self.  There is no
way to know Life/Presence without you and me, this self
we are, right here in the middle of it all.  I am an aspect of
this All inclusive wholeness, this ineffable Mystery that is
knowing itself to be.

It took me a long time to find this freedom, this fearless
knowing of this eternal light that is being who I am.  It
took a conscious choice to be brave, at first, trusting what
had been revealed to me, leaping in and living it all.
I cannot be otherwise.
I am the wonder of its ever unfolding beauty and grace...

Sandy Jones