Welcome...

Come meander with me on the pathless path of the Heart
in these anecdotal,
sometimes inspiring, sometimes personal meanderings of the Heart's opening in the every-day-ness of life...
Showing posts with label the door. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the door. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Which Door? - Aurelius Symmachus


 We all look up to the same stars;
The same heaven is above us all;
The same universe surrounds us all.
What does it matter by what
system of knowledge
we seek to know
the truth?

Not by one path alone
may we attain to
so great a secret.


Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
A Roman Statesman

~

Photo from the Internet

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Doors through which we pass - Thich Nhat Hanh


 This body is not me.
"I" am not limited by this body.
"I" am life without boundaries.
"I" have never been born,
and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,
sacred thresholds on our journey.
Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,
hold my hand,
let us say good-bye,
say good-bye,
to meet again soon.

We meet today.
We will meet again tomorrow.
We will meet at the source...
We meet each other in all forms of life.

Thich Nhat Hanh

via - Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering




Saturday, August 8, 2020

The Unknown Self - John O'Donohue


[.....]

It presides within like an evening freedom
That will often see you enchanted by twilight
Without ever recognizing the falling night,...

...It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
That is not ruffled by disappointment,
It presides in a deeper current of time
Free from the force of cause and sequence
That otherwise shapes your life.

Were it to break forth into day,
Its dark light might quench your mind
For it knows how your primeval heart
Sisters every cell of your life
To all your known mind would avoid.

Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
Offering you only discreet glimpses
Of how you construct your life.

At times it will lead you strangely,
Magnetized by some resonance
That ambushes your vigilance.


It works most resolutely at night
As the poet who draws your dreams,
Creating for you many secret doors
Decorated with pictures of your hunger.


It has the dignity of the angelic
That knows you to your roots,
Always awaiting your deeper befriending
To take you beyond the threshold of want,
Where all your diverse strainings
Can come to wholesome ease.

John O'Donohue
Excerpt from "The Unknown Self"
from - Benedictus - A Book of Blessings

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering


Friday, September 27, 2019

Churning - Mark Nepo

Art by Peter Koster


Having loved and lost enough,
I'm no longer searching
just opening,

no longer trying to make sense of pain
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.

These are the irritations
that rub into a pearl.

So we can talk for a while
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea.

And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions
down and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone.  But seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it's a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather,
into the surf that human
shells call "God."

Mark Nepo


Personal note:  I've been "churning" a lot lately over the externals of life and living (like the churning waves of the sea), distracted, unable to settle into the "Listening."  The poem reminded me to step back from the things that make me "churn" inside, that keep me from hearing the quiet lapping of Grace upon the shore of my heart and just listen to its Rhythm...

~

Art - Peter Koster
Autumn Surf


Saturday, February 16, 2019

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."


~

Art - craypas oils
?date

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Honoring The Mystery - Mark Nepo


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

Though we pray to the many faces of God, each is a changing
wave in a 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
Quotes from: The Exquisite Risk

~

Photo - Windshield going through car wash :)



Thursday, December 1, 2016

There Is Always a Song - The Radiance Sutras


Strong or soft, wild or serene -
Wherever breath flows there is song.
Hear its whisper touching behind the face,
singing in the throat,
Dancing spirals in the sanctuary of your heart.

In this practice of listening,
A moment may come when you just want to lie down.
This is a doorway - surrender.
Fall into the wide-open embrace of life.
You are the instrument breath is playing.

All the meditations you have ever loved
Are vibrating in this luxurious hum,
Continuing even in sleep and dreams.
This is your school.  Just you and infinity.
The texture of the Self is untamed freedom.


~

Photo - Mandala Art digitally altered



Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Thresholds - John O'Donohue and Rumi...

“Like Spring secretly at work within the heart of Winter,
below the surface of our lives
huge changes are in fermentation.
We never suspect a thing.
Then when the grip of some
long-enduring winter mentality
begins to loosen,
we find ourselves
vulnerable
to
a
flourish
of
possibility

and we are suddenly negotiating
the challenges
of
a threshold…


At any time you can ask yourself:
At which threshold am I now standing?
At this time in my life, what am I leaving?
Where am I about to enter?


A threshold is not a simple boundary;
it is a frontier
that divides two different territories,
rhythms, and atmospheres.

Indeed, it is a lovely testimony
to the fullness and integrity
of an experience or a stage of life
that it intensifies toward the end
into a real frontier
that cannot be crossed
without
the heart being passionately
engaged
and
woken up.


At this threshold
a great complexity of emotion
comes alive:
confusion,
fear,
excitement,
sadness,
hope.

This is one of the reasons
such vital crossings
were always clothed in ritual.


It is wise in your own life
to be able to recognize and acknowledge
the key thresholds;
to take your time;
to feel all the varieties of presence
that accrue there;
to listen inward
with complete attention
until you hear
the inner voice
calling you
forward:

The time has come
to cross.”


John O’Donohue
Excerpts taken From: To Bless the Space Between Us
and put into prose poem format...




“Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary
is inside you.”

Rumi

~

Whatever “threshold” you find yourself at
in the coming year,
I hope you make a peaceful passage.
May your life journey
be illuminated
from within
bringing
you “home”
to
the
Heart

~♥~

Photos taken by Hubby
Sunrise, Dec. 23, 2013


Notice the “angel wings”
at the top of the top photo
J



Thursday, March 15, 2012

Where is the Door?

“Where is The Door?
Where is the door to God?

In the sound of a barking dog…

In the ring of a hammer...

In the drop of rain...

In the face of everyone,
everyone I see…

Where is the door
to the divine tavern?

…in all that we can behold.”


Hafiz





“We all look up to the same stars;
The same heaven is above us all;
The same universe surrounds us all!
What does it matter by what
system of knowledge
we seek to know
the truth?

Not by one path alone
may we attain to
so great a secret.”


Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
A Roman Statesman






Every object,
every being,
is a jar full of
delight…

Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king,
and choose the purest,

the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about ‘what’s needed.’

Drink the wine that moves you…”


Rumi
from Essential Rumi
Coleman Barks






“Everything just gets swallowed up
into the open heart…”

The Door…


Author unknown…



~*~



Photos

#1 – Thought this picture was ruined
but even mistakes have a purpose.

#3 – a glass blown ball