Fragmented Culture - J. Krishnamurti

We have broken up the earth as yours and mine -
your nation, your flag and his flag, this particular religion
and the religion of the distant man.  And for it we fight
and wrangle, and the politicians exult in their power
to maintain division, never looking at the world as a whole.
They haven't gotten the global mind.  They never feel nor
perceive the immense possibility of having no nationality,
no division...  They maintain a tribal attitude towards life.
They do not have a mind that steps beyond the division
of race, culture, and the religions that man has invented.

We carry on like machines with our tiresome daily routine.
How eagerly the mind accepts a patter of existence, and
how tenaciously it clings to it!  As by a driven nail, the
mind is held together by idea, and around that idea it 
lives and has its being.  The mind is never free, for it is
always anchored within the radius of its own center.
It is lost in fear...

Fear is not of the unknown,
but of the loss of the known.

One wonders how long it will take for man to learn to live
on this earth without wrangles, rows, wars and conflict.
Man has created the conflict by his division of the earth,
linguistically, culturally, superficially.  One wonders how
long man, who has evolved through so many centuries of
pain and grief, anxiety and pleasure, fear and conflict, will
take to live a different way of life.

J. Krishnamurti

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"No Separate Thread" - Danna Faulds

The ordinary and the unified field
don't just co-exist, they coincide in
the same place, at the same time.
Divine and human can't be teased
apart - there is no separate thread
to pull heart from mind or soul.

There is only the unbroken chain of
wholeness forged link by link in a
continuum.  What is sacred and awake
is inextricably braided into the everyday,
but we forget that we can't dissect the
mundane from the radiant.

We lose ourselves in the rush to get
things done. Our memory grows dim
and there is such longing.  We desperately
seek something, anything, to plug us back
into what we've always been, forgetting
that the disconnect is only an illusion,
easily erased in the choice to see the truth.


Danna Faulds
"No Separate Thread"
From: Prayers to the Infinite

"Everything Is Deeply Okay..."

I awoke this morning to a 2 inch dusting of snow and joy in my heart. I ran outside to quickly snap these photos (the first two have been color inverted digitally). However, I was not joyful because of the snow and crisp winter morning air, but because I fell asleep and awoke finding myself repeating the phrase – “Everything is deeply okay” – and knew it in my bones.  I *felt* it deep in my Heart of Hearts that no matter how life *appears* on the surface, everything *is* deeply okay.  On a much larger level than just our little existence here, it is Cosmically okay, when seen from the Cosmic view of Reality.  How I *know* this, I don’t really know, except that I read it in Jeff Foster’s book – The Deepest Acceptance last year. J LOL… (which I wrote about here.)  Seriously - that’s not really why either, although it planted a seed.  We can’t just read it in a book.  It has to become a *felt experience* with life…  And it is, gradually becoming my *experience* – a way of *seeing* – little by little, day by day – well some days that is – yesterday the view was not so "cosmic." J

Despite the intensities of life and living, and believe me there are many at the moment, there is a lightness of Heart breaking through the fog here, a letting go of the personal drama orientation to life – hopefully - at least for today J  Mostly there is more awareness that it is the mind, my thoughts *about* what is happening, that creates my mental suffering, the *thinking* that there is something “wrong” with the way life is playing itself out here, that life should be different than it is, and that I need to *do* something to make it fit my idea of what it needs to be. Like digitally enhancing a photo. :)  Instead there appears to be a collapse occurring.  Those mental structures, beliefs, and concepts that life must fit my image of what I *believe* it should be are collapsing, to a degree.   And, a realization yesterday that I am still trying to hold onto those beliefs about life that keep me tied to those mental structures and ego constructs that filter my perceptions of the way things really are, and *its* deep “okayness.”    

Shall we Dance :)

~*~

“*You* don’t have to be okay with anything.  It’s not about the me-person being okay.  It’s that everything is *already* embraced by *Life* ItSelf.  It is a cosmic okayness that goes beyond ‘I’m okay’, and ‘I’m not okay.’  We are totally free to respond to life experience in authentic, honest, human ways.  We are free not to like our experiences, and - on a deeper level to experience a total, all-encompassing okayness with the entire situation.  Underneath everything is a cosmic okayness.  It’s not about telling yourself that you’re okay when you are not.  It’s not about pretending to be okay, trying to be spiritual, trying to be peaceful.  You don’t have to be anything other than you are in the moment.  It’s about radical honesty.  It’s about seeing reality as it is, acknowledging it, and discovering that the situation is fully admitted into Life – already.  There is simply Life, in all its mystery, wonder, and timeless simplicity.  And in this recognition the illusion of separation between us and Life falls away, and we are no longer at odds with life as it is.”

Jeff Foster
From: The Deepest Acceptance

~*~

“The treasure of deep Being is buried under the rubble of personality…”

Coleman Barks
The Soul of Rumi

~*~

The first two photos are color inverted.
It makes them look more magical :)

The Fence...

Life, as it always does, afforded an opportunity for me to see things differently last weekend.  Who knew that a Fence would become fodder for awareness, and a blog post. :)

Our neighbor came to the door Friday evening wanting to know if he could take out the split rail fence on the property line between us, saying that the fence was not functional.  The real issue was that it kept him from easily accessing our side of his raised garden beds that abutted the fence, which meant he had to stand in our yard and lean over the fence to get to them. 

The fence belonged to neither of us, but had been put there by the developer many, many years ago.   My husband answered the door. I was preoccupied somewhere else in the house and missed the whole thing.  Anyway, B said – sure!    And then came to tell me what had transpired.

Enter drama…

My ego-mind immediately took over.  What does he mean that a fence is not “functional”, of course it’s functional, it sets boundaries! – I retorted.   It’s symbolic I argued.  It’s the principle of the thing, I snorted, feeling dismissed and disturbed that I had been left out of the decision. (No control issues there! :))  I felt myself go into resist mode.  My husband thought I was crazy and couldn’t believe I was making such a big deal about it.  He said to say no would have created uneccessary tension between the neighbor and us.  Maybe so – but still, I felt it necessary to defend my point. :)  Isn’t that the way the unawakened mind works… :)

It was obvious, even to me, that something in me had been triggered.  I suddenly felt vulnerable.  I watched as it took our neighbor about an hour to lift the fence posts out of the ground with a hydrolic car jack, and dismantle the fence.

For some crazy reason I felt sad, felt a sense of loss of what it symbolized – the letting down of boundaries, and a deeper fear of being more open; something that, from a spiritual perspective, I thought I really wanted anyway.  But now that it was really happening, in a symbolic way, it made me uncomfortable, feeling somehow unprotected and vulnerable.  Interesting how we are wired for safety and protection, and our egos become fearful of emancipation.

As Yoda said in a movie once – “You must unlearn what you have learned.”    

I am aware enough to know that a fence is only a symbol of a boundary.  That in reality there is no separation, no dividing line.  And yet, my mind *likes* the *idea* of separation, of yours and mine, of “other” who needs a reminder to keep from violating “my space.”  How un-enlightened of me. :)  Robert Frost, a New England poet, had a famous line in one of his poems, Mending Wall: “good fences make good neighbors.”  That has always seemed to work for me! :)  But an awakened view of the world requires a letting go of boundaries, of the sense of “other.”  I was being faced with that in real life, not in some idealistic spiritual concept.

Each day it became less and less of an issue as acceptance set in; cautionary acceptance, “what if” acceptance – like: what if his teenage son sees this as an invitation to come into our yard; not like the fence has kept him out before!  Once again, it’s only symbolic.  It doesn’t really keep anybody out.  It just makes *me* feel better that there is an *illusion* of a boundary that one must respect, providing a false sense of security and protection, an *illusion* of safe separateness.

Isn’t this how the world works too.  We create these false boundaries thinking it will keep us safe, like fences between countries.  We create tribes, communities, circles and in-groups.  Even beliefs and belief systems become fences that we create to keep us separate and safe.  But something always manages to get through – whether literally or symbolically.  Something crosses the boundary that we have created, disturbs our comfort zone, and forces us to awaken from our illusions of our separateness; our illusions of control; our illusions of safety.

Yet, there *is* something about a fence that I like. :) 

Mirabai Starr recently wrote about this sense of “other”, of separation, in her blog post “Otherizing.”   Here is an excerpt that struck me.  I highly recommend you read the whole post to get the context.

“The illusion of separation is what causes violence and oppression.  The minute we identify an individual or a group as being Other, we banish ourselves to a spiritual wasteland and justify treating someone else with anything less than loving kindness. [We] draw artificial boundaries to bisect a circle of our inter-connectedness with all beings.  [But] when we sit together and begin to peel back the layers…..it turns out that just about everyone everywhere affirms that Ultimate Reality is a unified field, and that no matter what names we ascribe to it…..it’s name is Love.”

Top Photo is not "the fence" at the property line :)
Unfortunately I didn't have a picture of that one.
It is another split rail fence from another place

in the neighborhood.
Sorry for the poor quality...

2nd photo - neighbor's garden beds
right up against the property line
where the fence used to be...

Infinite Cosmic Waves Mandala...

The Silence of the Great Void
that appears as an empty chasm
connects us
to the Infinite Cosmic Waves of Love…

We are the face of
”The Divine”,
the face that lights our face,
inseparable…

The Infinite Cosmic Spirit
echoes our face
before we are born…

We are loved beyond measure

When we know this
we will heal…

Meditative Writings
Mystic Meandering
April 2013

~*~

“Face that lights my face,
you spin intelligence into
these particles [that] I am…”

Rumi

~*~

This Mandala was made with compass and templates.
The profiles in the center circle were made from a bookmark
shaped like the crescent moon.
The waves in the larger circle were from a wave template.

Embracing Wholeness...

“The realization of wholeness, or non-separation,
is simply recognizing that wholeness is
the essential state of reality,
regardless  of whether it is being experienced
that way.

The experience of wholeness is temporary
and fleeting,
as is all experience.

But wholeness remains
even though the experience passes.
One retains awareness of the truth of it
even when it is not being experienced…”

The Natural Contemplative

Everything is embraced/held by Pure Consciousness,
including what we experience as “darkness.”

Nothing is excluded,
even the “darkness”
however that manifests
in our minds.

You have to be willing to dance
with the darkness,
which only means that
you are willing to meet it,
to be with it,
and not try to push it away;
not resist it as something
absent of Light,
but seeing that the
darkness
is not the opposite
of Light.

Just dance with whatever
shows up…

The darkness is also
part of the dance.

Nothing is excluded.

Everything is embraced.

It is Love dancing with ItSelf…

Unknown author

The Somber Tones Of Winter...

Sometimes my Heart sings the somber tones

that have lain dormant

needing expression…

An Adagio emerges

as if someone has died;

maybe that someone is “me,”

the false me… the mask of “me”

that keeps falling off,

leaving something more real exposed…

The grief begins

to sing, to play her strings,

feeling the loss.

I have heard her tune before.

I allow her to play her strings,

until she is played out,

listening to her deeply…

I know that

even the Somber tones are

an expression of the One.

There is no separateness,

no good or bad tones,

just the authentic expression

of what Lives here…

The Somber tones and shades are

Life ItSelf,

inviting me to look deeper,

to find the richness that lives within them…

Their song has to be sung as well.

Even they are the Heart’s language of Love,

calling me to more authentic Living...

©Mystic Meandering

January 27, 2011

Dancing With Shadow and Light...

I’ve been reading The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes.  It has inspired me to be more aware of the world around me, to pay attention to what I am actually seeing, whether through the lens of my own eyes, or through the lens of the camera.  According to the authors, Andy Karr and Michael Wood, contemplative photography is about the immediate direct experience of pure seeing without the overlay of conceptual thinking – without labeling what we are seeing.  They say that “labeling things as beautiful or ugly masks what they really look like.”  According to them, “artistic living” – or living artistically - has more to do with HOW we see than trying to be creative.   It has to do with “resting in an innate intelligence, that some call Awareness, and allowing the basic qualities of form to be recognized by this innate, nonconceptual intelligence…..allowing things to emerge, rather than trying to interpret the nature of the perception…”    Seems this applies to our spiritual practice, and life, as well!  Are we seeing with the HEART of Awareness, or with the conceptual mind that wants to figure things out, to analyze and interpret…  So I am experimenting with “seeing” and how I see what I see – and from where am I really seeing - WHO/WHAT is really seeing…  In most non-dual spiritual practices, this is really what it all comes down to – seeing WHO is really seeing…  Abstract, I know :)

One morning I became aware of the dance of shadow and light that was going on in the den, as the morning sun managed to find its way through the slits in the closed blinds that let the light in anyway.  I snapped the photos below that show this interplay of light and dark – the interplay of life really.  The shadow does not obscure what is really there.  It’s all a matter of how we see it.

I also included some meditative writings under the photos that I wrote several years ago (2004) while meditating that have to do with the dance of shadow and light that we participate in every day in our minds – some know it as the shadow self.

 

It’s all just a dance,
a playful dance of light and dark.
Allow the dance of shadow to play itself out in your life,
and be grateful for the dance.

  

The shadow self is just a consciousness.

It is the consciousness spawned by the *belief* in separation from Infinite Consciousness…

A *belief* in separateness creates a consciousness of darkness and fear…

For the most part humanity functions from this consciousness.

A consciousness of separation dominates the mind – creating suffering.

The fear feeds on fear, creating more darkness.

It manifests a consciousness of darkness
that you *believe* to be real.

But the shadow self is just a mist, an illusion…
It is not “darkness” in the negative sense…
The consciousness of darkness is only a thin layer, a thin veil.
It creates much dysfunction, but really has no power to sustain.
It gives the illusion of power to seemingly rob you of your
True Consciousness…

You have become caught in the net of fear,
*thinking* it is real.

You can emerge through this layer of darkness by becoming aware of the
Consciousness of Infinite Beingness/Awareness.

This creates a new reality,
a new consciousness.
Whatever your consciousness is,

that is your reality.
Shift the *identity* with the consciousness of shadow self
and you create a whole new reality…

The gift of the shadow is the Light of Awareness,
the call to awareness of the Light
that we are...

Light Movement...

I thought it would be interesting to post this sequence of a sunset that I took last week to show the changes in the light and color as the sun slipped behind the mountains…

To be witness to the movement of Light as it crosses an imaginary threshold is amazing. I never noticed before that the light becomes more brilliant *before* it diffuses; changing color and hue as the light bounces off the clouds. I know there is a scientific explanation for why this happens :) But I am a mystic – I see things poetically and metaphorically - so bear with me…

In watching the light wane into its brilliance before twilight, (interesting paradox) I begin to understand that the Light never *really* leaves. The Light is always there – lighting someone else’s day. My evening becomes someone else’s morning; returning again to make a new day… But actually everything is one continuous movement of Light - always… And I’m not talking about the sun here…

This wondrous movement of Light reminds me that “Reality” and “phenomena” are never separate. You cannot separate phenomena, such as a sun setting, *from* the movement of Reality ItSelf. It is an illusion to say that one is an illusion and the other is not. There are no illusory objects appearing separately from Reality. There is no line between light and dark, formless and form, day and night. In fact, it is the separation that is illusory. There is nothing that *isn’t* Light. Everything is one and the same Light, or you could say, one and the same Life. The Absolute and the Relative are the same. It’s all the breath and movement of Light/Life, in and as everything. We are the brilliance of unlit Light… What matters is what opens us to the awareness of that unlit Light in the Heart that is always there…

Raising the Window...

In window sitting, late at night, in the dark, there seem to be many questions that arise out of curiosity, like: Is Consciousness/Awareness aware that it is aware? Can Consciousness/Awareness be aware of ItSelf? Is it true that Awareness/Consciousness is all there is? After all there *are* apparently “things” here… I mean I see trees, and houses, and plants, and animals, and people driving cars while sitting at the window every night… Then there was a “question” posed to me yesterday from a fellow “window sitter” who emailed me and said: “Sometimes in these meditations it seems there can be this seeing of this space identical with divisionless existence… but there is still the experience of something ‘other.’”

I gave a preliminary, rambling answer and then pondered a while.

And later, what arose was this:

The “seeing” is the recognition that there is no “thing” *separate* from the Essence or Essential Nature of Being; that certainly Beingness ItSelf – Spacious, Awake, Aware Presence - can and obviously does manifest ItSelf *as* many different “things”: trees, people, animals, thoughts, flowers, music, art - dark and light, pain and joy. And yes, even our personalities, our egos are not “other” than, not separate from this essential Nature of all that is. It’s like seeing that there’s an alive flow of energy through it all. And so the *idea* of separateness, of “other”, of duality, doesn’t really matter anymore, because you realize that what you see is this all-pervasive Beingness morphing ItSelf into many forms. And – it is realized that there is only a *sense* of ‘other’ that isn’t essentially real…

Later that night, during “window sitting” I couldn’t help but continue to ponder this. And once again the window of Seeing was raised, or is that the blinds: Being-Self sees ItSelf in and as everything. It Sees ItSelf as tree, as cloud, as us – no separation - as everything that exists… Being ItSelf has no sense of “other,” has no concept of separation, or duality. It only sees ItSelf…

~*~

Sensing Being

Monday I found myself at different times of the day being aware of Being – internally – the inner fluid flow of Being (Buddha Nature, Self, Awareness, Spaciousness, Stillness). It was as if I was being pulled inward, as I was *doing* things – like preparing a meal, doing the dishes, working outside. I would feel this inward turning to inner stillness. I have experienced this before – this turning of awareness inward and feeling this still Presence in the middle of “doing” – not just in the stillness of meditating.

As I sat reading that evening, I couldn’t focus on the words, so I put the book down and just allowed Awareness to take me where it wanted to go – seeing life through my eyes. As I looked around the room, and the things in the room, I realized that “things” aren’t just “things” in this field of Awareness. I experienced that *everything* is Being taking form. “Awakening” is the *seeing* of this; seeing the still, alive fluidness of Being in and as everything – even the inanimate car across the street! :) And - “Awakening” is seeing what is seeing; that innate awareness that sees, knows and revels in the seeing of it all. Consciousness revealing ItSelf to ItSelf.

I also sensed that this Being that we are is inherently *aware* – aware of Itself *as* “things”, as “us.” Only it sees no distinction as things, us, etc. It sees only ItSelf. As I saw that, I also experienced that everything has awareness - is Awareness. It’s in the molecules. It’s the stuff of space – of life. Everything sings with innate aliveness. I’ve known this all along, but it seems to be waking up again. “I” seem to keep falling back into the trance of separation – of not seeing – but Self keeps calling me back to ItSelf – if I’m listening. And apparently even when I’m not particularly listening It calls to me…

And so this has been my practice this week: this sensing of Being, this recognition of inner Being, inner Awareness, as well as awareness of Being in the surrounding environment, and in the ordinary “doings” of life. Awareness awaring ItSelf…

I have also found this week, so far, that it is relatively “easy” to experience this sense of inner Being inwardly, relatively “easy” to *see* it in Nature, the environment, but where I seem to get hung up is *seeing* Being *in* people. I have noticed on several occasions that there *seems* to be a veil there between us human beings that *seems* to obscure the view, unless one is *really* looking – really *seeing.* I have tried to *sense* Being in the people I have met this week, but usually all I see is the “trance of separation” in their eyes… I know that people see that veil here too at times – hopefully not all the time. It’s a veil that we hide behind, that keeps “us" from deeply recognizing Being in ourselves and one another. It’s the wound of separation. It’s hard seeing through this veil at times, into what’s *really* there – the inner space of Beingness behind the trance. No wonder “peace” is so illusive… We’re not really *seeing* through the veil into Being – into the Spaciousness that we all are…

Thursday morning at the hair shop, while waiting my turn, I watched the people to see what I could see. There was a lot of chatter but no connection - no sensing of Being. Everyone was going through the motions of pretend connection – without the *awareness* of inner Being. And then one woman brought her white-haired elderly mother in for a hair-do. The woman left to do an errand, while her mother waited, and returned before it was my turn. She was flipping through a hair fashion magazine, showing me the pictures, humorously commenting on these rather unrealistic, extreme hair fashions that only models can wear – not women in their 60’s. In her eyes I sensed a sparkle of light, not the dull veneer of trance…

After my haircut she was still seated in a chair by the door. As I stood up she kindly commented on my new “do.” I paid the hairdresser and turned to walk out the door. As I did, I felt the fleetingness of the moment and wanted to say something to her, so I paused, bent down, and said: “Bye – nice to meet you.” She looked at me with a sparkle of surprise in her eyes, smiled and said: “Nice to meet you too!” Seeing beyond the veil opened another crack in my Heart. Yes, Virginia – there is a radiant Being in there - in everyone. You can sense it, feel it and see it - beyond the veil… Look deeply…

~*~

istock photo