Silence Beyond Mind - Maitreya Upanishad

When a wise man has withdrawn his mind from all things
without, and when his spirit has peacefully left all inner
sensations, let him rest in peace, free from the movement
of will and desire...

For it has been said:

There is something beyond our mind,
which abides in silence...
It is the supreme mystery beyond thought.
Let one's mind and subtle spirit rest upon that mystery
and nothing else.

...When the mind is silent,
beyond distraction,
then it can enter into a world
which is far beyond the mind...

Then one knows the joy of Eternity...
Words cannot describe the joy of the soul
who is one with the Atman, his true Self.

As water becomes one with water,
fire with fire,
and air with air,
so the mind becomes one with the Infinite Mind
and thus attains freedom.

Maitreya Upanishad

~

It is the chaotic mind of humans that creates the chaos that we
see happening in this world...  When we can entrain with a
deeper Silence, the mind is not in chaos and we can
 experience the Sacred in the chaos...  I have only known
a few of such fleeting moments... :) 

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Slumber...

 We slumber, but the
anniversary clock keeps turning,
in perpetual movement.
The earth spins on its axis and 
travels around the sun -
a perpetual momentum...

We slumber, but the mind
presents dreams and our
breath becomes automatic,
a perpetual rhythm...

We slumber, but life keeps living
as if no one is watching.

We slumber while our "things"
wait on a shelf for us to wake them
by our noticing;

inanimate objects which somehow
hold meaning for us and comfort us
without whose presence we would feel
as if something were missing...

But what's missing is in ourselves,
the emptiness we try to fill
with those "things" - those inanimate
objects of the mind: thoughts and memories
of previous times and people or "things"
that make us feel solace and comfort in
hard times.

We slumber - and yet everything is alive around us,
in the continuous, unending movement of life,
waiting for us to
awaken and notice.

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 9, 2020
1 am

The "Noisemakers"...

 I have entered a desert place...
The desert of "noisemakers",
both internal and external;
creating stress and tension
in the mind and body;
from the dramas others have created
denying that they are the Elephant in the room;
going from crisis to crisis - drowning out
the Great Silence within.

The "noise" robs you of the felt sense of "The Mystery."
The veils of stress cloud the clarity of energy and perspective.
They rob you of what feeds the soul and nurtures the very
Essence of your Being.

Impossible you say?
But have you experienced it...  this drowning in "noise"...

One can get lost in the stress of too much "noise" if one is
not aware - not vigilant of the "noisemakers";
the thoughts and people that create distress in your life...

We cannot let the "noise" of others' dysfunction and disease
disrupt and distract, nor invade the deep Silence and Stillness
of our Being, and Indigenous Wisdom;
distorting our life energy with their "noise'!

We must tend to the Essential Nature of our very Being -
finding tender nurturance there from the
weariness of the world and its "noise"...

We need to feel the lightness of "The Mystery" again,
and reclaim the Sanity and Clarity
of the Stillness of the Quiet place...

And leave the "noisemakers" drowning in their own "noise."

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 4, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Egocentricity & Suffering - Cheri Huber

Egocentricity is the process of wanting something other than
what is.  Egocentricity means there is an "I" who [feels]
separate from everything else and doesn't like it; one thing is
happening, but I want a different thing to be happening
[which causes suffering].  Egocentricity is that constant
concern with how I feel, what I think, what I'm doing, what
I want - looking at what is and seeing it as inadequate.
My identity is maintained by the struggle of wanting
something other than what is [causing suffering].

Instead of spending our time trying to avoid suffering,
we must find the willingness to go directly into it.
Whenever anything causes us to suffer, we can know
two things: suffering is the same as egocentricity, and
when it arises, that is our best opportunity to end suffering.
As we open to suffering, as we embrace it, as we accept it,
our relationship to it changes. It is no longer horrible,
something to escape from.  Suffering becomes just
another opportunity [for awareness], another chance for
freedom [from egocentricity].

Cheri Huber

Zen Teacher

~

"The Heart has no ego"

Gregg Braden

~

The real state of things is suffering, aging illness, death -
life as it is...

We are in a body inside of time...
Suffering is on a primitive level...

author unknown

~

Personal note:  I know from my own experience that there
are many causes of "suffering" and different kinds of "suffering",
like poverty, abuse, terrorism, physical and emotional pain,
but I found this explanation from Cheri Huber interesting with
regard to the personal cause of "suffering."  And as I recently
discovered, the egoic mind (my incessant thoughts) is one of the
 major causes of my emotional suffering...

Ending Suffering - Joan Tollifson

If we truly want to end suffering, we must move from our self-centered drama and story line, to the open surrender of "Thy will be done."  It involves a shift in attention - a shift out of the entanglement in and identification with the thought-stream - and open into awareness of Presence - a shift from thinking to sensing and awaring.  It involves a surrender, or opening, into the whole body-mind, a dissolving of the felt sense of separation, and duality, a melting into the spacious undivided, luminous and inseparable; noticing what is ever-present regardless of the experience that is arising.  

Surrendering is an opening of the whole body-mind, a dissolving of the solidity of the body-mind, a letting go into boundlessness, [realizing] that it is all appearing in a larger context - the open space of awareness.  The true "I" to which we all refer is ultimately this unbound awareness that is being and beholding everything.  We are not limited to the body-mind, and the body-mind is not really a separate, solid, autonomous "thing."  In fact there is no real boundary between "awareness" and "the body."  The words seem to divide what is actually seamless and whole.  So we don't need to deny the body or the person or relative reality, because all of that is appearing in a much larger context, and all of that is really very ephemeral and fluid and ungraspable...

There are many words for surrender: dissolving, opening, relaxing, softening, melting, letting go, resting, allowing, welcoming.  What matters is not the word or some idea of this, but discovering this for oneself experientially.  Surrender is a discovery that we each have to make for ourself.

In surrendering there is a letting go, an opening - allowing everything to be as it is, not resisting anything, and not trying to get anything.  Simply stay with the living reality itself, just as it is.  Awareness always allows everything to be as it is.  It never rejects or hates anything.  It is never really harmed or destroyed by anything that appears to happen in waking life.  All the apparent darkness and getting lost is always happening in this bigger, vaster context.  To realize this is to be free from suffering...

Joan Tollifson

Finding Peace in the Practical

I started de-cluttering, cleaning and organizing the house this week. This is going to take a while, with so much clutter accumulated – I’m ashamed to say. It’s a bit daunting when I *think* about what needs to be done here, because of what *hasn’t* been done here. But I am re-reading Byron Katie’s A Thousand Names for Joy before I go to bed each night, which is reminding me again of how my mind is creating my stress about it, because I am once again *believing* my thoughts. I have known this and forgotten this a thousand times. So now I’m aware when those dangerous thoughts arise that tend to send me into overwhelm, when I look at the basement, the garage, the garden, and my work space. I started in my work space Monday, then today for some reason I spontaneously moved to the garden, even though the work space is not finished – just allowing myself to spontaneously move to the next task at hand. And this afternoon went back to the work space again for a couple of hours.

I am finding a strange sense of peace in the mundane. Monday I was working at the mess at the desk when I suddenly awared that even as a myriad of thoughts passed through this mental mechanism, I was at peace and internally still. What a delight it was to realize the sound of internal quiet and peace. I was simultaneously aware of an internal flow and rhythm that I knew had been there all along, but had been crowded out by the mind. The mundane gives my mind something to focus on. Being busy keeps me from clinging to the thoughts and getting totally lost in the “what ifs.” I just keep going with what life requires at the moment, and in doing so I find a sense of peace. I’m being in the moment, wherever the moment takes me. And no matter where that is, it’s always this moment; living moment-to-moment, seamlessly. Sweet peace.

I had this selfish idea that I would get my chance to live a “contemplative life” while hubby was away – a self-centered craving to live monastically, meditating a lot, reading, maybe get back to something creative, doing contemplative photography, spending time in nature – you know, life as a continual retreat – trying to find internal peace. But life isn’t unfolding that way. There are a lot of very practical, mundane things that are required at the moment. And I am surprised to find peace in the practical. I’m enjoying the solitude and beginning to find my stride actually.

I’ve always been the kind of person that wants to get the practical out of the way so I can enjoy life. Eeeeuuu – even that didn’t sound good to me – but that seems to be the pattern. Just get-r-done so that you can do what you want to do – like having to eat your peas and carrots before you can have dessert. (Although I love peas and carrots :) But now I’m discovering that life is not a la carte. There’s no separating life into different courses, no dividing life into time for mundane, time for meditation, but living life as a continuous fluid movement – Liquid Life. Somehow being genuinely busy (not creating busyness just to be busy, or avoid anything) has allowed me to see the fluidity and seamlessness of the day, of the moment, of one moment sliding into another – not just getting through the main course so I can get to the sweet dessert at the end…

I’ve also tried living life the other way – more contemplatively – avoiding the practical as much as possible, retreating into my familiar forms of “spirituality”, which is why there is so much clutter and cleaning to tend to now. So now I’m learning to live life on Life’s terms - the ebb and flow of living - doing what’s required – contemplatively – in silence and solitude – allowing my mind to go where it wants to go, while awareing the delight of the deep Silence within, whether meditating or not. Finding that I don’t need to meditate to “find” IT – as IT is ever-present, I just need to turn within and experience it – feel it, sense it, aware it.

This morning I awoke “knowing” that it’s all OM (why that particular word I have no idea). OM is everything and everywhere. Life is OM – the Divine Energy. Everything is IT and IT is everything. IT just is.

This is going to be an interesting experience…

“I am the experience of the eternal…
When you don’t believe your thoughts…
there’s no separation.
You’re everything.
Only the unquestioned mind
would believe that you’re an I
living inside a body.
…there’s no I to identify as…
take it all in as Being…
…the universe is wherever you are,
and it’s everywhere…”

Byron Katie
A Thousand Names For Joy


~*~

The Stream of Suffering

A week ago Friday I took a rather deep dive into the stream of suffering. It was not really intentional, but there I was flailing in a stream of emotional sludge – feeling sorry for myself, feeling victimized by life circumstances, angry, lashing out at the boulders and logs that blocked the flow, blaming, resenting, resisting – feeling crushed by the weight of all this mental and emotional anguishing – and therefore suffering…

I didn’t come up for air until two days after my plunge, when I decided it might be a good idea to tinker under the hood and see what was causing all this suffering. And so last Sunday I sat, I saw and – well not exactly conquered – but had a serious heart to heart with this suffering orphan inside.

I started by asking: How am I creating this suffering? I breathed into the lower dan tien, feeling energy moving down my legs and out my feet. Then I felt the energy move up the back of my spine. That’s when I became aware of how contracted I was. As I breathed I became *aware* of all the places where contraction was being held in the body. By staying with the rhythm of breathing *and* awareness I could feel these places opening up and letting go.

I also suddenly became aware that it was *thought* that had created these contracted areas – this “suffering.” That it is the *belief* in the thoughts that arise, as I have heard many “spiritual teachers” say over the years, but I had to experience it for myself.

For a short while I was able to come back to just awareness and breathing. The thought stream was still strong, stronger than the Oceanic Rhythm of the breath and awareness, but I just kept coming back to the breath and awareness. This seems to be the “remedy” – awareness of the contraction of thought *and* of Awareness Itself: the open space that holds the contraction beyond the thought stream.

It seems so simple – breath and awareness: The Rhythm – bringing the breath and awareness *to* the contractions, allowing them to open up and let go. AND bringing awareness to the Awareness that is there in the middle of it all – the Stillness that is always there bringing release, relaxation, perspective, rest. Yet there is still a contraction felt with each thought that arises, like a stick being stuck into a beautiful sea anemone that floats on a rock at the shore. It contracts, closes up, and then after a period of time it relaxes and opens up again, floating with the movement of the sea. Internally this is what thought feels like to me, like a stick being poked in and a subsequent contraction. And it often feels like I am in a constant thought stream and therefore in a constant *state* of contraction, being bombarded by thoughts. It’s like I can’t *not* think, and at this point I cannot *not* contract – but I can bring awareness to it.

The awareness arose that the contractions harden me off, keep me from experiencing life fully. The spiritual heart is like the anemone. Each contraction of thought around an experience or feeling is like a stick that causes it to close. The realization also arose that bringing awareness to the breath and Awareness – The Rhythm - is not an escape from the thought. It brings more consciousness *to* the contractions of thought. It is a way to meet the contractions, to *see* the suffering in it, as well as the cause of the suffering – the identification with thought. Through awareness and breath the contractions begin to soften, become fluid, and the heart begins to open again – to float in the Oceanic Rhythm of the breath.

Another awareness arose: What arises is thought, just thought, and the contraction around it. Thoughts build on thoughts, creating a stream of suffering – the thought stream. But it’s all just thought. Everything we believe to be true is just thought… Continuous thought *about* events, about people, about life, about experiences (including my dread about “The Season”) is held in the mind like photographs, like a memory album of experiences. And we *believe* these thought pictures and build a whole way of life around them, around contracting around them – entering the stream of suffering.

I became aware that I’ve actually been in this stream of “suffering” for a very long time without ever realizing it, *believing* my thoughts, solidifying a sense of self around the thoughts. I also became aware that through breath and awareness I can actually *look* at these areas of contraction. I can allow myself to actually *see* them and *feel* their pain, their suffering with *affection*, with presence – without contracting around the memory of them.

The wisdom in this experience of “suffering” seems to be not to bypass or resist it – as that only creates more suffering - but to feel the contraction of thought and meet it with the breath of Awareness.

“Suffering” and I had a good visit. “I” understand her a lot better now, although I’m sure I’ll be talking to her again soon…