Between Two Houses - a meandering...

Sitting watching the evening news,
I looked out the living room window - to the space
between my neighbors' houses.

Looking through
the bare branches of the trees between their homes,
I saw the pinkish, orange, gold-yellow of the sunset
fading in the West.

It occurred to me, in that moment,
that no matter what is happening on the earth,
and my personal life - the Cosmos still "works"!
The sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the galaxies
all dance the Dance of the Cosmos -
for eons -

giving us beauty, wonder, and awe - and peace.
It's us humans that don't seem to be "working" well -
on this little planet - divided...

It also reminded me that there is a greater context
in which we live - a vaster Reality - hidden -
that I want to be aware of...

Sometimes this world seems so gray
- run by lunatics -
that I miss the beauty in
The Cosmos,
and in between spaces...

I really need to
look out my window more often! :)

And expand my view of the Universe...

Mystic Meandering
January 30, 2025

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
The photo was actually taken in April 2023

 

Becoming the Ocean - Kahlil 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 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 other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go 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.

Kahlil Gibran

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Comfort...

I woke relaxed! -
as if a burden had been lifted
and my whole body had opened up
to a vastness within,
a deep openness...

I breathed in the Universe
and the Universe breathed me...

A word came...
The word was "Comfort" -
I *felt* it... viscerally, tangibly,
and let myself sink into it...

- Comfort -

Immersing myself in the feeling of the word,
letting it fill me,
expand me...

I felt exhilarated once again -
wide open,
*feeling* an internal
Comfort
from an unknown
Source within,
an unknown spring,
flooding the system...

~ Comfort ~

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 10. 2024

Day 3 of "The Pause"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

My "meditation" cushions :)

 

The Golden Eternity - Jack Kerouac

...in our true essence is known that everything 
is alright forever and ever...

It is all one awakened thing.  I call it the
Golden Eternity.

It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a
personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere:
self is only an idea, a mortal idea.  That which passes
into everything is one thing.  It's a dream already ended.
There's  nothing to be afraid of.  I know this from staring
at mountains months on end.  They never show any expression,
they are like empty space.   Do you think the emptiness of space
will ever crumble away?  Mountains will crumble away, but
the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind,
the vastness, empty and awake, will never crumble away...

There is only the Golden Eternity...
You are the Golden Eternity...

Jack Kerouac

from: The Portable Jack Kerouac

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Song of the Stars - Radiance Sutra

Bathe deeply in that ocean of sound
which is even now vibrating within you,
resonating softly,

permeating the space of the heart.
The ear that is tuned by rapt listening
learns to hear the song of creation.
First like a hand bell,
then subtler still as a stringed instrument,
eventually the buzz of a bee.
Entering this current of sound, the Listening One
forgets the external world, and becomes
absorbed into internal sound,
and then absorbed into vastness
like the song of the stars as they shine.

The Radiance Sutra part XV

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

That's how you came here,
like a star without a name...

Rumi

~

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

Pondering Impermanence...

With my mother's death last year and now with the COVID
Pandemic - feeling surrounded by death - I have become more
aware of my own mortality, especially at my age, with a body
malfunctioning, broken since birth.

So I have been pondering "death" - not morbidly, but with a
sense of the reality of the impermanence of this life of
physicality.  What can you do...  It's going to happen...
It's just the nature of time for things to fall away in the
cycle of life...

~

A few months ago, in my ponderings, I wrote this -

The "I" (the Eternal Being) that inhabits this body is not aging -
but "i" am surprised by the body's increasing decline - knowing
where it is headed - the inevitable...

death...

Saddened by the prospect -
although grateful that the end
to the body's struggles is closer -
how close "she" doesn't know -
but wonders what that will be like;
to witness the death of her body
and the possibility of a
"cosmic birthing" into a new "form"
of the Formless; or maybe dissolve
back into cosmic dust, or be absorbed
by the Vastness of the Eternal.
Sentience dissolving into the Eternal...

Who really knows...

All is transient here.
We're just passing through.

I shouldn't be surprised by this,
feeling the body's decline as I do -
but still -

gives me pause...

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 23, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Briefly Here - Jim Wilson

Briefly
We walk this earth.
We have
But a short time.
We resemble grasses;
Green in the spring,
Brown in the summer heart,
Withering in the winter wind.
Those who understand this
Put aside their useless quarrels.
The cosmos is unfathomably vast.
The human mind is very small.
An act of kindness is never wasted;
it is the gateway to the deathless and unborn,
it is the exultation of the heart.

Jim Wilson

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

Photo via No Mind's Land

The Golden Thread...

I have conversed with the Universe,
commiserated and cogitated;
ascended, descended;
polarized, conceptualized and spiritualized;
dis-membered and re-membered ~
and still I find no "plan" ~

Only Vastness and immensity
beyond theory, framework and perception.
The Greatest, Grandest Mystery
in an ever unfolding nebula;
procreating itself in billowy clouds
and golden streams of stardust in a
beginningless infinity.

A golden thread weaving through space,
through the Silence beyond creation,
through Sound beyond sound,
and Light beyond light.

Matchlessly weaving its Eternal Vibration
through timelessness,
into time, and space beyond time,
with one theme braided into its
unending spiral
through
dimensions, distortions, dysfunctions -

~ Love ~

From this divine, mysterious weave of Love
we live our reality,
and dance the dance of duality:
our light and our dark.
One thread within the
Cosmic Fabric...

Held by Love...

Mystic Meandering
1999

~

Article about the above photo, The Golden Bridge
built in Vietnam

The Open Door - Danna Faulds

A door opens.  Maybe I've been standing here shuffling my weight
from foot to foot for decades, or maybe I only knocked once.
In truth, it doesn't matter.

A door opens and I walk through without a backward glance.
This is it,then, one moment of truth in a lifetime of truth; a
choice made, a path taken, the gravitational pull of Spirit
too compelling to ignore any longer.

I am received by something far too vast to see.  It has roots in
antiquity but speaks clearly in the present tense. "Be," the
vastness says.  "Be without adverbs, descriptors, or qualities.

Be so alive that Awareness bares itself uncloaked and unadorned.
Then go forth to give what you alone can give, awaken to love
and suffering, unburdened by the weight of expectations.

Go forth to see and be seen, blossoming, always blossoming
into your magnificence."

Danna Faulds

~

Art - craypas oils
?date

An Infinite Number of New Beginnings - Jeff Foster

In your attempt to be an 'adult',
you lose touch with your inner child.
In your rush to b the 'expert',
you disconnect from the amateur you,
the inner lover, innocent and wild.

In your quest for security,
your run from insecurity,
bury your anxiety, crush your doubts,
until one day they explode all over the place,
and make a mess of your nice, 'ordered' life.

Don't confuse the role you play
with who you truly are.
Don't confuse the adaptation with the actor,
the changing weather with the vastness of sky.

Your true identity lies in Presence...
And wonder.
And creativity.
And an infinite number of new beginnings.

Each moment.
Each canvas.
Each Now.

Jeff Foster

~

Jupiter, Venus, Moon - June 2015

Beyond the World's Horizons - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Beyond the horizons of the world is a place that few know,
a place without borders, without loss or gain...  Something
within you mysteriously recognizes this primal emptiness,
the vast unknowing, the wonder of what is not.

There is no substance to form even images.  And yet, there is
a belonging that is stamped in the core of one's being, a belonging
that nothing can break.

Far away [from this place] is a place called existence.  It's full of
dreams. of opportunities, of life and death.  But here, in the world
beyond, there are no such dramas...  When all is dissolved, lost,
undone, we are what we [truly] are.

But the tears call us back into what people call life, into the strange
substance that weaves itself into form.  Yet even when we seem
stranded on this shore of existence, we can never forget that place
beyond the worlds that is always with you [within you].  It is at
the end and the beginning of every breath, more primal than even
silence...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

Excerpt from: Fragments of a Love Story

~

Let me sit here on the threshold of two worlds,
lost in the eloquence of silence...

Rumi

~

Photo - Sunset reflected on the top of the car

taken by my husband

I AM - Jeff Foster

[.....]

I take all forms, yet I cling to no particular form.

I do not say "I am form", I do not say, "I am not form."
I do not say "I exist." I do not say "I do not exist."
I do not call myself God, consciousness, awareness,
presence, spirit... or even Life.

I have no name for myself. I am anonymous.
Yet all names are my own.

Humans fight and kill and die over the names they gave me.

They form religions, dogmas, systems of thought.
They claim I am on their "side"
(I take no sides).
They say I belong to them
(I belong to nobody and everybody).

They try to figure me out.  They even claim to be me,
know me, channel me.
Some of them claim to have found The One Path that leads
to me.  They always have, they always will.

They do not know.  Their minds are too limited.

Yes 'mind' is one of my many ingenious appearances.

I appear as everything, yet when you stop and look for me,
you cannot find me.  I play in the cosmic hide and seek.  I
sometimes appear when you stop looking.

I am these words, and all the spaces in between them.  I am the
silence at the end of the sentences... and the expectation at their
beginning.  I am the black and white of it, and every shade of
grey, and every colour.  I am the understanding and the lack of
understanding. I am the similarity and the contrast.  I am the
separation and the unspeakable unity.

[.....]

I am male and I am female.  I am East and West.  I am inside and
outside.  I speak every language fluently.  I am all that is, all that
has been, and all that will ever be.  I am now, and never now.  I
cannot be reduced to anything.  Eternities pass in the space of a
breath.  Aeons are my lifeblood.

I am breathing you now.
I am the in-breath and the out-breath of you.  I am every sacred,
intimate breath.  I am every one of your thoughts arising and
dissolving in the vastness.  I am every feeling surging like a comet
through the universal body. 
I am sorrow, I am anger, I am fire, I am water.
I am always here, whether I am recognized or not.

I am nothing and everything, nobody and everybody.

[.....]

The story of "I" is always different, yes.  That's my creativity.
But "AM" is always the same.  AM. OM. 
That is my unchanging nature.

Do not seek me.  Do not look for me in time.  Do not be proud
that you have found me.  I am not your trophy.  I am not food
for your hungry ego.  Simply admit that I am already here.
Admit that I have always been here.
And live your life as a constant remembrance of me.  Devote
yourself to the joy of being...  Let your life be your love song.
Let your actions and words express me, bring me into form.

I am your deepest wisdom.  I was there at your birth.
Do you remember?

With love,

The Beloved

Jeff Foster
Excerpt from "I AM"

website

Facebook

Surrender - Jon Bernie

So we sit down, we're quiet for a while.
And gradually the unwinding happens -
of the mind, and the body, and the heart.
And then maybe we get a glimpse, or a taste,
of freedom; and if we do, then we give our
attention to that.  We surrender to that presence.
Dropping out of our heads and surrendering to stillness,

one-pointed presence, effortless vastness.
We let it take us, completely.
That's what surrender is.

Jon Bernie

Photo  - a seashell,
or a delicate wing floating
effortlessly through the Vastness...

Ineffable Experience - Bob Berman

An experience began that no words could convey.
It was ineffable and life-altering.  The best I can say is that "I" was
suddenly gone, replaced by the certainty of being the entire cosmos.
There was absolute peace.  I knew with total confidence, not
logically - because, "I" was no longer present - that birth and death
do not exist.  That all is perfect eternally, that time is unreal, and that
all is one.  The joy was beyond anything I could have imagined.
The to-the-marrow certainty could perhaps be better described as
a recognition, and an ancient familiarity of being Home.

There was no sense of a separate "me", an observer looking out
upon the world.  I was whatever my eyes gazed upon.  It was as if
my consciousness had previously been long confined, like a canary
in a little cage, and that a false sense of being a separate, isolated,
thinking individual had now vanished.  Objects were no longer
separate items existing in space; instead, everything was the
 same continuum.  When a person came into view, I was this person.
The universe was one entity for all time.  There were not billions of
humans and animals.  There was one living, deathless entity.

Bob Berman
from: Beyond Biocentrism: Rethinking Time, Space,
Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death

by Bob Berman and Robert Lanza

Via - Markings

~

Underlying the complex diversity of creation is a single Unity.
And within that Unity, the individual is not separate or
different from the vast Divine.  There is no separation between
individual self and the center of all selves... just Pure Being...

Ivan Granger - Poetry Chaikhana

Let the Mind Be the Mind - Danna Faulds

Let the mind be the mind...

Behind its restless activity,
just one layer deeper is stillness,
and beneath even that,
is an ocean of mystery and truth.

Swim in this eternal sea
until you know yourself
to be infinity,
and bring that knowing
back into your day.
Why struggle to be what
you already are?

Let the mind be the mind,
but don't bind yourself
to its limited reality.

Trust your experience of vastness.
Trust the truth that never
loses potency
or disappears
in fear.

Let the mind be the mind
and identify not with thought
but with Silence...


Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner and Poet
From: Limitless

~*~

Still your mind in me,
still yourself in me,
and without a doubt
you shall be united in me,
Lord of Love,
dwelling in the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

Timelessness...

I have conversed with the Universe,

commiserated and cogitated,

ascended, descended,

polarized, conceptualized and spiritualized,

dis-membered and re-membered ~

and still I find no “plan” ~

Only vastness and immensity

beyond theory, framework, and concept.

The Greatest, Grandest Mystery

procreating itself

in endless infinity;

without beginning or end,

Sound beyond sound,

Light beyond light ~
Mystery of mysteries…

Expressing ItSelf in timelessness,

through time, and space beyond time,

with one vibration:

~ Love ~

From this mysterious pulse of Love

we are coalesced into Form,

and dance the dance of duality ~

our light and our dark
seamlessly woven

as one thread within the
 cosmic fabric of Timelessness
 dancing in Time…

~*~

Mystic Meandering

Originally written on Winter Solstice

1999
revised December 2015

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

Remembering...

Sitting in the Sanctuary
 of Silence,

the deep space of
Formlessness
keeps pulling me in,

enticing me to
remember,

to
 listen
D
E
E
p
L
Y

.

.

.

In this space of Pure Awareness,
beyond thought,
I can *feel* the intimacy of Silence
once again;

The organic Rhythm,
immersed in its Quiet flow…
Out of which all movement arises
and takes form…

Formlessness-Form
Form-Formlessness,
Not two – yet not one;
not either/or
but
both/and

The Ineffable Mystery

I sometimes call it “The Beloved.”
It has many names –
 this Aware Silence,
this Hush of the Mystery
that we are,
that we emerged from,
Life ItSelf;
and is no-name as well…

The Unknown…

In this Sea of Silence
I remember the feel of
 ITs Rhythm;
the transparency and
 boundarylessness

 of its endless S p a c i o u s n e s s
that Just IS…

The Mystery of Life living ItSelf

in/as
the vast
and
rhythmic
pulse of Living Silence…

 recognizing ItSelf as “me”,
and “me” recognizing It
as my

Self

I had forgotten
this Sacred Silence
that knows us intimately
as ItSelf…

Our pain, sorrow, grief;
our laughter and joy,
are inexplicably
ITs own

Inseparable

It knows our shadow
and embraces
all darkness
as ITs own -
because
 IT is -
ITs own

Light…

that knows
no darkness

The grief, the loss,
the sadness, the suffering,
the woundings…

All ITs own;
feeling what we feel,
experiencing what we experience
as ItSelf…

Ever-present
Ever-aware
Ever-open
to all experience

Not a cold, conceptual
hollow vacuum of Nothingness…

But the V a s t n e s s of Life ItSelf,
 intimately living ItSelf…
OMing pre-Existence into Existence…
Breathing ItSelf into Life -
into every wound of pain
and suffering
with ITs soft caress…

Aware Living Silence

knows our Hearts
as Its own,
and dances with
Joy
in
the
delight
of
knowing
it

.

.

.

I had forgotten THIS…
The feel of this deep intimacy
in ITs complete and utter Embrace;
ITs total enfoldment;
ITs  inclusiveness
of all that we are;
forgotten the once known
innocence of
being touched
by the

Vastness
and
Depth
of

S i l e n c e

Mystic Meandering
April 11, 2015



Photo: Clouds and Contrails

Plumb The Depths...

Do not be afraid to
 plumb
 the
 depths
of your Being,
of Truth;
to question
everything
you
have
learned

Take the journey deeply inward
to your beginnings – and endings;
to the Silent hum
 in the Heart
of all Life
that sings,
and
see
for
your
self.

There are many caravans to follow,
those aspiring to "enlighten" you
with their words,
left like firewood to light your way,
along the road…

But only in Sacred Silence can the journey be made
to the Heart of Being;
to discover the depths of Being ~
of That which you are;
That which wants to
 *live*,
express,
and love

Here

Do not let fear stop your descent
into the inner Vastness:
the
 deep Ocean
 of the awakened
 Heart…

Be still,
 and open…

Follow the plumb line
of your breath,
past the Furies and the Sirens
into the soft ebullience 
of Love…
and quiet Joy
waiting for you,
like ethereal
 liquid pools
 of Light
drawing
 you
 in

Rest Here

In
the
depths
of

this
Alive
Silent
 Spacious
  Awareness

Listen to the endless
 Rhythm already
holding
you
in the cradle

 of the Heart…

Feel
 the
pervasive
contentment
of Life

Here
in
the
depths of
 Sacred
 Silence,

that animates
every cell,
every atom,
every sound,
every thought,
every feeling ~
until you *know* 
THIS
*as*
 your 
Self

Simply Living…

Mystic Meandering
April 17, 2012

Art: Craypas Oil sticks

2010