The Universe is a Story - Swimme & Tucker

The Universe is not simply a place, but a story -
a story in which we are immersed, to which we
belong, and out of which we arose...

The story has the power to awaken us more deeply to
who we are - we are the universe in the form of a human

And every time we are drawn to look up into the
night sky and reflect on the awesome beauty of the
universe, we are actually the universe reflecting on
itself.

And this changes everything...

A new integrating story has emerged.
It is a story of transformation through time.
It is challenging our understanding of who we are
in the universe.

Are we here by chance, by necessity, by serendipity,
or on purpose?

Swimme and Tucker
From: Journey of the Universe

~

Everything is ultimately a story.

My life is a story,
your life is a story,
all occurring within the vast
Cosmic Ocean...

The Story of the Eternal is being lived

here...

The Ineffable Mystery of the Universe
takes a journey through
the story of life - as us...
The "Divine Drama" is our story -
and our "story" is the "Divine Drama" ...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2013

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Your Story's Value - Janet Conner

There are many spiritual traditions which teach that you must
dissolve your personal story; drop the story, in order to attain
"enlightenment", "awakening."  While I understand the need
not to become entangled in the content of our personal stories,
as I have done several times over the past couple of years, :)
there is still value in our stories...

MM

~

Your story is you healer.  In every story is conflict,
and within the conflict is the chance for change.  The story
is what happened; it is what is.  The value is in what the story
is telling you.  It's your guidance from Spirit, who wants to
bring you to a new place.....  Listen beyond the details of the
story you are telling yourself, for the core identity, and deeper
needs.  You can even ask:  What is the deeper need here?  If
you journal you can write your story in all its fullness and as
you do, begin to listen to hear yourself.  And as you hear yourself,
you begin to discern the needs hidden behind the details of your
story.  And behind those needs, you begin to hear the sound of
your Essence, your Core, your Soul.  This kind of listening
reaches far beyond the physical act of hearing to a spiritual act of
perceiving the essence within the words.

Gene Knudsen Hoffman says:  I am not talking about listening
with the human ear.  I am talking about perceiving what's hidden
and obscure.  We must listen with our spiritual ear, the one inside....
We must literally suspend our beliefs and listen to learn whether
what we hear expands or diminishes our sense of Truth.

Brian and Lisa Burman say: The challenge is when people are
so embedded in the character in the story [and the content of
the story] that they don't connect that they are the container for the
whole thing.  Within you is everything.  Your job is to connect with
that innate wisdom so you can have a deep connection with the
heart of what really happened, and move on.

Listen to your sorrows, joys, fears, frustrations....
To listen deeply you must open your innermost spiritual ear.
Listen beyond the story to the story behind the story...

Listen for what motivates you, what inspires you, what
frightens you, what stops you in your tracks.  Listen for what
keeps happening over and over again - the patterns...

You will learn much about yourself...

Janet Conner
Brian and Lisa Burman
Gene Knudsen Hoffman

excerpts from the book: Writing Down Your Soul
by Janet Conner

~

Your story has value.
it can reflect back to you something you need to see,
or know about a situation, or yourself, if you listen,
observe, and find what's beneath the story you
keep telling yourself...

MM

~

Photo - taken by my brother at Plum Island, MA

 

The "Real Journey"? - a meandering...

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

Wendell Berry

I find myself facing major life changes these days, in my 70's,
living with the questions, waiting for the way to become clear.
Watching the mysterious signposts along the way.  It's not a
crossroads exactly, nor a threshold.  It's more like limbo: all
questions, few clues, no answers.  With a timing all its own.

Berry's quote is a reminder for me in this busy-ness, work-identified
realm we live in - living under pressure to "produce", to get things
done, to "fix" yourself, physically, spiritually, psychologically,
that it takes courage to not have answers, to just slow down, to
set out on an inner journey I cannot see...

In my elder years perspectives have changed, the body has less
stamina and endurance to live the way the world lives: the hurried,
cacophony of living.  And so a "new journey" has begun, both
spiritually and physically - a slower paced interior journey -
and not necessarily meditation, but just more silence and solitude
and inner listening, when I can.  Maybe this *is* the "real journey" 
that Berry speaks of.  I'll let you know :)

~

I was journaling about this "shift" I seem to be going through
when the Inner Voice whispered:

"It's all a story" -

"You're a story within the 'Greater Story' of Existence."

I somehow felt relieved to hear this - and the recognition
that I am (my life is) only a story - as if I hadn't heard this before,
in different, more "spiritualized" words :)

Life is like a novel, the main story is your entire life,
with different chapters in it - different stories,
within a larger Story - a larger Reality.

The Inner Voice went on to say: Most people think they are in
control of their lives.  They don't realize they're just living a
story.  And the story doesn't dissolve until we die.  We are all
living the stories of our lives within a bigger context.  We are
all unique stories/expressions of the "Greater Story of Existence."
Which doesn't mean that we aren't "real", but like the wave of
the Ocean, we are each a unique expression of a greater Reality.
(And I like to think of it as a Cosmic Ocean - we are waves,
vibrations of a Cosmic Ocean that we can't see.  We are infinite
beings living a story.)

It kinda took the air out of the "self-importance" balloon; nothing
special, just a story, like everyone else, a blip in the ocean of
eternity...  It was like a burden had been lifted...  I could just
relax, internally, with no more striving after "enlightenment", or
perfection, or identifying with the "I Am"...  The story of "me" dies 
with us at death, unless "the story" is written down somewhere,
in a time bound obituary: a story of my life story...

Sigh - such relief to know I'm only a story...

BTW - if this perspective changes I'll be sure to 
write about it :) LOLOL

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Inner Myth - MacIver & Campbell

We each have an inner myth guiding our lives.  That
myth guides us without us knowing it.  It grows out of
all the things we've learned, the things we've failed at,
out of our insecurities, out of the triumphs we
experienced.  It is also affected by the spiritual current
that underlies our lives - the mythical journey that is seeking
to manifest in our outer life if we'll only pay attention to it.
It is the seed that is wanting to grow into a tree, the call 
waiting to be answered, but risky.  That path is risky.

What is the inner myth guiding your life, unknown to you?
What mysterious figure, what spirit entity of wisdom and
kindness might you invite to accompany you, guide you,
on your journey?

Rod MacIver
Heron Dance

~

Joseph Campbell says myth opens the heart and the imagination
to the wonders of the universe and the mystery of existence.
He says myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the
human life.  He says that myths can teach us how to live a 
human lifetime, not grounded in ancient religions, that support
our personal quests for wisdom and happiness.

From the 4 Ways that Myth Can Change Your Life,
According to Joseph Campbell.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Mysterious Man with the flat hat
and long robe in the curtain... :)

~

What stories do we tell ourselves,
and what beliefs do we live by
that may be outdated now?

 

The Universe's Story - Misc.

...the universe is not simply a place but a story,
a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong,
and out of which we arose.

This story has the power to awaken us more deeply to who we are.
For just as the Milky Way is the universe in the form of a galaxy,
and an orchid is the universe in the form of a flower,
we are the universe in the form of a human.

And every time we are drawn to look up into the night sky
and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe,
we are actually the universe reflecting on itself.

Journey of the Universe
Brian Swimme and Mary Evenlyn Tucker

~*~

The Absolute is both unmanifest and dynamic creative force.
From the creative force everything arises;
both the world as well as personal consciousness.
Everything is a play [story] of consciousness,
not an unreal illusion.

Excerpt from an article by
Jan Easman

~*~

Everything is ultimately a story.
My life is a story,
your life is a story,
all occurring within the vast cosmic
Ocean of Consciousness.
The story of The Eternal is being lived
here...

The Ineffable Mystery of the Universe
takes a journey through
the story of life - as us...
The "Divine Drama" is our story -
and our "story" is the "Divine Drama"...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2013

~*~

The real mystery is how It
unveils Itself within us;
how the Beloved makes Itself known
to ItSelf in the fragile container of the 
human being.

In the midst of the Divine Drama
there is a human story to be told.
But it's all "God's" story
being lived in human form...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

A mystery :)

 

Fully Human, Fully Divine - Kathleen Knipp

Without ignoring or denying the story of our lives, we
can relax and experience that which is beyond story
through the simple practice of attuning to body and breath.
We can open the lens wider than our dramas and traumas
and reconnect with Source.

We find ourselves in our humanness, our extraordinary
fragility and our extraordinary resiliency - both.  And can,
without denying the story of "my life", the events, the
response I may be having to these events, without ignoring
that, without denying that, we can also open to that which
is beyond this story.  And it is so easy to forget, it's so easy
to have the events of our lives move into the foreground and
just fill the whole field with the dramas and traumas.  And
without ignoring or denying them, we can open the lens
wider and we can, through practice, reconnect with our Source.
It might not be easy.  We do that by beginning to feel our bodies,
feeling each part of the body and experience the sensations,
using all of our senses, while also accessing our inner sanctuary
to feel supported.

Noticing the breath and falling into the rhythmic cycling of
the breath, in a moment of suspension where we can rest.
When life presents its challenges, which it does, we can rest
in the rhythm of the breath - feel its caress.

...[there] may be the sense of slipping below the surface of
turbulence.  Sinking deeper and deeper to an absolute stillness.
Stillness so profound that it is impossible to disturb that which
is beyond time, sinking deeper to the very Source.  The Source
that reveals itself and conceals itself and emerges in infinite
forms... and begin to sense the infinite and the finite expression
as you - this unique set of patterns that form into a sense of me...

Kathleen Knipp
Excerpt from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
Fully Human, Fully Divine

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Shared Brokeness - Desmond Tutu

We are able to forgive because we are able to
recognize our shared humanity.  We are able to
recognize that we are all fragile, vulnerable,
flawed human beings capable of thoughtlessness
and cruelty.  We also recognize that no one is born
evil and that we are all more than the worst thing
we have done in our lives.

A human life is a great mixture of goodness, beauty
cruelty, heartbreak, indifference, love, and so much more.
We want to divide the good from the bad, the saints from
the sinners, but we cannot.  All of us share the core qualities
of our human nature, and so sometimes we are generous
and sometimes selfish.  Sometimes we are thoughtful and
other times thoughtless, sometimes we are kind and sometimes
cruel.  This is not a belief.  This is a fact.

If we look at any hurt, we can see a larger context in which
the hurt happened.  If we look at any perpetrator, we can
discover a story that tells us something about what led up
to that person causing harm.  It doesn't justify the person's
actions; it does provide some context...

No one is born a liar or a rapist or a terrorist.  No one is born
full of hatred.  No one is born full of violence.  No one is
born in any less glory or goodness than you or I.

But on any given day, in any given situation, in any painful
life experience, this glory and goodness can be forgotten,
obscured, or lost.  We can easily be hurt and broken, and
it is good to remember that we can just as easily be the 
ones who have done the hurting and the breaking.  We are
all members of the same human family...

In seeing the many ways we are similar and how our lives
are inextricably linked, we can find empathy and compassion.
In finding empathy and compassion, we are able to move
in the direction of forgiving.

Ultimately it is humble awareness of our own humanity
that allows us to forgive:

We are, every one of us flawed and so very fragile.  I know
that, were I born a member of the white ruling class at that
time in South Africa's past, I might easily have treated someone
with the same dismissive disdain with which I was treated.  I
know given the same pressures and circumstances, I am capable
of the same monstrous acts as any other human on this 
achingly beautiful planet.  It is this knowledge of my own frailty
that helps me find compassion, empathy and similarity,
and forgiveness for the frailty and cruelty of others.

Desmond Tutu
and Mpho A. Tutu

from: The Book of Forgiving:
The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves
and the World

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

Photo - thanks to Uradiance

 

Because We Are Human - Dr. Jacqui Lewis

I think grief puts us in touch with our vulnerabilities.
I think the feeling of grief lets us know the power of wounds
to shape our stories.  I think it lets us know how capable we
are of having our hearts broken and our feelings hurt.

I think it lets us know the link that we each have because we're
human.  Because we're human, we hurt.  Because we're human,
we have tears to cry.  Because we're human, our hearts are
broken.  Because we're human, we understand that loss is a
universal language.  Everybody grieves.

All humanity grieves,  All of us have setbacks, broken dreams.
All of us have broken relationships or unrealized possibilities.
All of us have bodies that just don't do what they used to do.
Though grief is personal, every person grieves.

Dr. Jacqui Lewis

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Emergence - Paul Levy, Betty Kovacs, & Andrew Harvey

 Humanity has become affiliated with a mysterious
psycho-spiritual disease of the Soul - the virus of the mind.
The very source of madness is to be found within the
unconscious psyche of humanity.  There is a fissure, a
primordial dissociation, a split deep within - a state of
fragmentation deep within the collective unconscious.

We are truly living in dark times where the darkness is
emerging from hiding in the shadows and is becoming
visible...  Confronting the darkness and viewing the
collective nightmare [requires looking] through the 
mystical lens of our intimate connection with the Divine.

We are currently living contrary to our innate creative
impulses, out of integrity with our Soul, [which has]
created a collective insanity/madness that we are
playing out.

What the world needs is for each of us to have the
courage to follow our calling, step into our true vocation
and share our creative gifts with the world such that we
co-inspire each other.

When intense darkness manifests within an individual's
process it can potentially lead to an emergence of an
unknown light within that person of which they are
previously unaware...

Paul Levy
from the Forward in Radical Regeneration by
Andrew Harvey

~

The first darkness we have to face, is the story we've
been telling ourselves about ourselves.  We have become
addicted to a story that now has the power to negate the
entire world.

Betty Kovacs
Merchants of Light

~

Because we may well be standing on the threshold of a new
story that is destined to emerge, we must open to the crisis
that makes its emergence possible.  Staying open and vulnerable
to exploding suffering and danger on every level demands
everything from us.  The industrial civilization has become
intoxicated with itself.

Andrew Harvey
from - Radical Regeneration

~

"Thinking" is the story we tell ourselves
about our world, about our experience,
about our existence, running scenarios in
the mind of the way it "should" be or
shouldn't be - how it will play out -
in our heads...

"If you touch one syllable of that story
you will suffer."

I touched the syllable
It's torture
I suffered

Mystic Meandering
April 18, 2021

With thanks to Mitch Rosacker
of Self Discovery Studio
for the quote: "If you touch one syllable
of that story you will suffer."

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
from a larger piece
2012

Realer than real - Nancy Neithercut

There is a common misconception that enlightenment happens
*to* the person.  And somehow this imaginary character becomes
a no-self.  And obviously anyone who thinks that they are
enlightened also believes that there was a path or method that
they used to get there or to attain that, where there's nothing
to attain and no "person" to get it.

People long to escape their humanness.  As you grow up you
learn morals, you learn what to be like, how to act in society.
These morals generally come from some religion originating
from some God or giant authority keeping society together.
And one of the first ones they try to teach you is how to try to
be selfless.  So they tell you to give some of your candy to
Marianne.  And Marianne is happy to get it and your parents
or caregivers are happy that you've done it and so you feel
good about yourself.  So this seemingly selfless act was very
selfish wasn't it.  Lol

So the goal of many of these religions and societies is to become
a selfless person.  That sounds good to so many because they
can't stand the pain that they feel, the loneliness they feel
inside.  They have been taught that anger and jealousy are bad,
so they are trying to have only nice happy thoughts and nice
happy emotions and act selflessly, but this simply cannot be done.
And it is quite understandable that some people would be 
trying to erase or change themselves, their thought and emotion
in order to feel better.  However, I do think that unless they had
heard of it [as some teach it] they would not be trying to get
rid of the self.

So there are people who claim they have reached this rarefied
atmosphere.  And often they are revered and people imitate their
actions and language they use.  And they give instructions on how
to reach this unreachable place.  And seekers love this stuff because
 it gives them a path and it solidifies the Belief in [a separate] self.

And these "teachers" are revered and given a lot of flattery.  And
the authority hierarchy power driven cult is born.  I knew one
woman who said that there's nothing that you can do or not do 
[to attain enlightenment].  A few years later she was giving
instructions.  Other prominent "teachers" and "teachings" tell
 people to "drop the story" [of me], obviously not realizing that
there is no one who can drop,or not drop anything as we only
exist as a story...

It's all simultaneously dream-like and realer than real...

Nancy Neithercut
Facebook

 With thanks to No Mind's Land

~  

There is no "better" version of the self;
no "enlightened" version of the self.
You don't become your big "S" Self...
We are all "The Mystery" in funky clothes :)

MM

_/\_

~

Photo - Nancy Neithercut
via No Mind's Land

Love those funky clothes!  :)

An Inner Whisper - John O'Donohue

Human identity is complex.  Nothing is ever given simply
or immediately.  Even the simplest act of perception has
many layers... Time and memory often reveal things later
that were staring us in the eye, but we never noticed them.
The quest for the truth of things is never ending.  Every
experience is open to countless readings and interpretations.
We never see a thing completely.  In sure anticipation, our
eyes have always already altered what awaits our gaze.
The search for truth is difficult and uncomfortable.  Because
the mystery is too much for us, we may opt to settle for
the surface of things.  Comfort becomes more important than
true presence.  This is precisely why we need to hear the
discerning voice.

Somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice.  This
voice distrusts the status quo.  It sounds out the falsity in
things and encourages the dissent from the images things
tend to assume.  It underlines the secret crevices where the
surface has become strained.  It advises distance and opens
up a new perspective through which the concealed meaning
 of a situation might emerge... Its intention is to keep the heart
clean and clear.  This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or
known to others outside...  Yet much depends on that small
voice.  The truth of its whisper marks the line between honor
and egoism, kindness and chaos.  In extreme situations,
which have been emptied of all shelter and tenderness,
that small voice whispers from somewhere beyond and
encourages the heart to hold out for dignity, respect, beauty
and love.  That whisper brings forgotten nobility into an arena
where violence has traduced everything.  This faithful voice
can illuminate the dark lands of despair.  It becomes both the
sign and presence of a transcendence that no force or horror
can extinguish.  Each day in the world, in the prisons, hospitals
and killing fields, against all the odds, this still, small voice
continues to echo the beauty of the human being.  In haunted
places this voice carries the light of beauty like a magical
lantern to transform the desolation, to remind us that
regardless of what may be wrenched from us, there is a
dignity and hope that we do not have to lose.  This voice
brings us directly into contact with the inalienable presence
of beauty in the soul.

John O'Donohue

~

Photo from the Internet

The Paradox of Freedom - Amoda Maa

The closer we come to truth (and the closer we come to
living the truth), everything becomes paradoxical.  Yes, everything.
It's this and that.  It's human and divine.  It's messy and it's perfect.
it's time-bound and it's timeless.   It's relative and it's absolute.
It's form and formless.  Everything becomes paradoxical.

We start to live as this paradox, because truth is not an end point.
Truth is not an answer.  Truth is not a belief system.  Truth is an
open ended-ness within us.  And this is where freedom begins.

It's not a freedom that negates our human experience, with all its
changes, with all its ups and downs, with all its losses and heart-
breaks.  It's a freedom that allows us to live at peace with all of
it, even when it's not peaceful.  It's a deep acceptance of what is.

It's a freedom that wipes away all the cover-ups, everything we tell
ourselves in order to protect ourselves,  to pretend that we're safe,
to imagine a perfect destination.  It's a freedom that wipes away the
layers of defended-ness, all the strategies that we create - mental
strategies, emotional strategies, energetic strategies - to get what we
think we want from life in order to feel comfortable, in order to
feel special, in order to feel loved.  But these cover-ups end up being
our prison.  And there is no fulfillment in this self-created prison.

Fulfillment only comes when there are no cover-ups. It's the fulfillment
of internal freedom, and has nothing to do with the external.  You
could be in a jail cell, and still this freedom is available.

Amoda Maa

~

What really matters is your
capacity to turn towards the
tenderness of your heart in
the midst of that which
offends you.

Amoda Maa

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Only Breath - Rumi

Not Christian or Jew, or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, Sufi or Zen...

Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East
or the West,
not out of the ocean
or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal,
not composed of elements at all.

"I" do not exist,
am not an entity in this world
or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve
or an origin story.

My place is the placeless,
a trace of the traceless.

Neither body or soul.

I belong to The Beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only That Breath breathing
human being.

Rumi

recited by Coleman Barks

Who Are You Without Your Spiritual Story? - Jeff Foster

Please don't talk to me of "Pure Awareness" or
"Dwelling in the Absolute."  I want to see how you treat
your partner, your kids, your parents, your body.
Please don't lecture me about "the illusion of the separate
self" or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen, take information that
doesn't fit your personal philosophy [belief].  I want to see
how you deal with people who disagree with you.  Don't tell
me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.  I want
to know you beneath the words.  I want to know what you're like
when troubles befall you. If you can fully allow your pain and
not pretend to be invulnerable.  If you can feel your anger yet not
step into violence.  If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow
yet not be its slave.  If you can feel your shame and not shame others.
If you can f**k up, and admit it. If you can say "sorry", and really
mean it.  If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.  I only want to meet
you.  Know your precious heart.  Know your beautiful human
struggling for the light.  Before all clever words...

Jeff Foster

A Plague of Intolerance - Thomas Merton

A mass movement readily exploits the discontent and frustration
of large segments of the population which for some reason or
other cannot face the responsibility of standing on their own
feet.  But give them a movement to join, a cause to defend, and
they will go to any extreme, stop at no crime, intoxicated as they
are by the slogans that give them a pseudo-religious sense of
transcending their own limitations.  The member of a mass
movement, afraid of his own isolation, and his own weakness as
an individual, cannot face the task of discovering within himself
the spiritual power and integrity which can be called forth only
by love.  Instead of this, he seeks a movement that will protect
his weakness with a wall of anonymity and justify his acts by
the sanction of collective glory and power.  All the better if this
is done out of hatred, for hatred is always easier and less subtle
than love.  It does not have to respect reality as love does.  It
does not have to take account of individual cases.  Its solutions
are simple and easy.  It makes its decisions by a simple glance
at a face, a colored skin, a uniform.  It identifies an enemy by
an accent, an unfamiliar turn of speech, an appeal to concepts
that are difficult to understand...  This is not "ours", he says.
This must be brought into line - or destroyed.

[Because of] this universal infection of fanaticism, the plague of
intolerance, prejudice and hate, which flows from the crippled
nature of mankind... [we] must labor with inexhaustible
patience and love, in silence, perhaps in repeated failure,
seeking tirelessly, wherever we can, to restore the capacity of
 love...

Thomas Merton
from - Disputed Questions
(written in the 1960's)

Thomas Merton was a Christian Trappist Monk
and social activist in the 1960's.  He was a strong
supporter of non-violence and civil rights.  In his
later years he became interested in Zen Buddhism
and promoted an East-West dialogue.  

He died in Bangkok in 1968.

~

Thanks to The Beauty We Love

Awakening From Awakening - Jeff Foster

This is a true story from Jeff Foster

Once, at a conference, I watched a spiritual teacher addressing
a grieving woman whose precious young son had just died.  Her
world had just collapsed.  An old reality had shattered.  She said,
"My heart is broken and raw."  He told her, "Your heartbreak is the
activity of the separate self, and therefore illusory, based in ignorance.
When the separate self dissolves, there will be no more suffering.
In Awareness, there is no death.  Awareness has no son."  He told
her she needed to 'wake up.'  She needed to recognize herself as
'Pure Awareness' - that she was pretending to be a victim, that
she didn't know 'who she truly was.'

And in that moment, I saw a deep sickness and inhumanity at
 the heart of much our contemporary spirituality.
The invalidation and shaming of trauma, the false promises,
the power games, and most of all, the suppression
of the divine feminine.  Making our grief, anger, fear and joy a
'mistake' or some 'sign' that we are not awakened enough, not
spiritual enough, not 'divine' enough in our embodied humanity.
The pathologising of our wildness.  The shaming of our fragility,
our sensitivity.

Friends, if this is 'spiritual awakening', I simply have no interest.
Let us [embrace] our fragile, vulnerable humanity!  Not run from it!
Let us bless our precious broken hearts!  Not pathologise them!
Let us infuse our deepest human experience with empathy.
  Send a curious, warm awareness deep into
the wounds.  Not to mend, not to fix, but to feel!  Not to 'awaken',
but to penetrate and be penetrated by Love.
The awakening of the heart. 
The remembering of the magic we knew when we were very
young.  Let us embrace our painful feelings.  Not see them as a 'sign'
of our spiritual failure, or our inability to manifest, or our ignorance,
or lack of strength.

Let us wake up from the old *concept* of  'awakening'.
Return to the sacredness in our humanity!

and

Meet each other in the fire of living.  Be present with each other,

instead of trying to fix [correct/dismiss] each other.

Jeff Foster
[A Non-dualist with a Heart:)]

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[brackets mine]

The Universe is a Story - Swimme, Essman, MM, & Vaughan-Lee

...the universe is not simply a place but a story,
a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong,
and out of which we arose.

This story has the power to awaken us more deeply to who we are.
For just as the Milky Way is the universe in the form of a galaxy,
and an orchid is the universe in the form of a flower,
we are the universe in the form of a human.

And every time we are drawn to look up into the night sky
and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe,
we are actually the universe reflecting on itself.

Journey of the Universe

Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker

~*~

The Absolute is both unmanifest and a dynamic creative force.
From the creative force everything arises;
both the world as well as personal consciousness.
Everything is a blissful play [story] of consciousness,
not an unreal illusion.

Excerpt from an article by

Jan Essman

~*~

Everything is ultimately a story.
My life is a story,
your life is a story,
all occurring within the vast cosmic
Ocean of Consciousness.
The story of The Eternal is being lived
here...

The Ineffable Mystery of the Universe
takes a journey through
the story of life - as us...
The "Divine Drama" is our story -
and our "story" is the "Divine Drama"...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2013

~*~

The real mystery is how It
unveils ItSelf within us;
how the Beloved makes ItSelf known
to ItSelf in the fragile container of the
human being.

In the midst of the Divine Drama
there is a human story to be told.
But it's all "God's" story
being lived in human form...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

*

Photo - A mystery :)

Threshold - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee...

In silence we become and then unbecome,
 know and are unknown.

For so long we have searched…..hoping,
 expecting to find something.

Always you thought there was something to seek,
 a journey to make. Now you stand on the precipice,
 looking out over the horizon of your self,

and you know it is otherwise.

Here there is no seeking, no lover lost and found.

There is no looking, nothing to reach for, no path to follow.

But within there is an answer, not in form but in substance.

The source brings something beyond the passions
 of day-to-day life to the surface,
 something we need to nourish rather than define.

There is a bigger wholeness hidden,

waiting at the corner of the moments,

watching from behind the thoughts.

You wait for something to happen,
 and there is nothing to happen,
 yet the happening comes closer,
 like a map that reveals your own garden
 as an undiscovered place,

that comes from across time and beyond space.

There is another presence, another pattern,
 not hidden but unrevealed.

There is a tender sense of silence…..

In the moments of our own silence we are welcomed,

as both stranger and friend.

We need to allow the presence to become present,

not defined in moments, but as a flow.

The river is here.

The silence, unbidden, is always present.

In the tranquility of the moment nothing is defined or captured.

This world is infused with the other,
 steeped in the dew of timelessness.

Just Isness.

In that Isness everything is included –

you, the Beloved, the will to unfold the eternal into the present,

to cross the borders of time and space,
 and saturate the now with eternity.

Yet, there is no other…

You were always alone but you thought it was
 a state of incompleteness.

You waited for someone to come,
always waiting at the bus stop for the bus
that never comes,

because there is nowhere to go…

You wait at the threshold of the other world,

struggling with your self…

when the other world is already present.

The real mystery is how IT unveils itself
within us;
how the Beloved makes ItSelf known
to ItSelf
in the fragile container
of the human being.

In the midst of
The Divine Drama
there is a human story…
But it’s all God’s story
being lived in form.

Excerpts from: Fragments of a Love Story

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

Please note: I have taken excerpts from various pages
of the book, put them together and created this prose poem.