"Ghost Existence"? - a meandering...

Don't know why, but these words, "ghost existence",
came to me while I was talking with B back in Feb....

The following words just kinda flowed out as well...

We *live* a "ghost existence" *in* a "ghost existence."
Not that it's not *real*, it is "real" as we live it, as we
experience it, but it's not *The* Real - i.e. The Deeper
Reality - which exists behind and within the "ghost
existence", animating it - a mystery...

~

Along with the words came an image of  an old west
town erected with facades on a movie set, where they
would have make believe shoot outs in the dusty streets,
while the patrons of the theme park, dressed in costumes,
 looked on from the sides, entertained by the make believe
 characters in the "ghost town" made specifically for the
*experience*, whatever that experience is in the 
"ghost existence."

When we die one belief is that that animating force "drops"
the body...  I like to think that the energy of the animating
force returns to its "original source", maybe in another
dimension...   I don't know...  This is all speculation from 
a "being" living in a "ghost existence."
That's why this is called a meandering. :)

But there are traditions that do believe that there is no self,
no me, no you, that we're all an illusion, a dream, a movie.

It seems real in the moment...
"Christine" may have 75 or more episodes 
in her "ghost existence" here,
like an old west show with her own "prop set"
called her life...

Wouldn't that be interesting, if it were true.
We've all been playing a role, in the play of life,
in a virtual reality, 
whatever that experience/drama happens to be;
or so some say...

And then the "willful self" is dropped by the body, and
we are absorbed (energetically) back into our place of
Origin - our Source:

"The Silence of Being"

Once again - speculation...:)
But one that works for me at the moment :)

I recently heard someone say: Our experience of "me"
 is not our essential identity.  The "me" is another
experience that Awareness/Consciousness/Source is having,
like the waves that arise from the Ocean are still
the Ocean. The "me" is another wave on the greater Ocean of
Awareness, but is still the Ocean, and eventually
 recedes back into the Ocean...

I like this...

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 19, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Snow figure on skylight

 

Infinite Spirit/Divine Flow - Trine

There is an Infinite Spirit of Life behind all [life] -
a divine flow from the Infinite Source through the individual.
If this is true then the life that comes by this inflow to man
is necessarily the same in essence.  It is a difference in degree.

Our life as individual spirits is continually coming from this
Infinite Source by means of this divine inflow.  If our lives are
directly from this Infinite Spirit that is manifested in the life
of each [then it]is identical in quality with that Source, just as a
 drop of water from the ocean is, in nature, in characteristics,
identical with the ocean, its source.  How could it be otherwise?

Doesn't it not then follow that the only limitations are the
limitations he [man] sets to himself, by virtue of no knowing
himself?  Recognizing our true identity brings our life into
harmony with the same force.

The great central fact in human life, is the coming into a
conscious vital realization or our oneness with the Infinite Life,
and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine flow.

Ralph Waldo Trine

From: In Tune with The Infinite

published in 1897

~

Photo Aurora Borealis from a calendar

 

Lessons of Life - Philip Jacobs

There are several lessons that I have learnt from my observations
of life, that I wished I had known from the very start.  The first
is that you can trust the process of life and it's unfolding.
So many times in my life journey, I have experienced deeply
traumatic events that I could not see the purpose of at the time.
These events have ranged from chronic illness and the loss of
those I love, and loss of home. Yet when I look back on the
events from a fuller perspective, I always see how they led to
deeper insight and creativity that I could not foresee at the time
and they also pushed me into where I needed to be in life.  It
was as if I had been seeing the world just through a letter box
and could not see the whole picture.  I have observed this so
often in life, which is why I now trust life's unfolding, even if
I cannot see or understand it at the time.

That leads to my second insight, which is that things never 
turned out the way I anticipate them.  When the future prospects
have looked very grim, at a certain point there has always been
an unforeseen intervention that makes the outcome quite
different from what I would have expected.

The third and most important of my life lessons, is quite
simply that I'm not who I think I am.  It's as if there are two
of me.  One identity I call "Philip." [my identity in time.]
  Philip is a man and an artist and does Philip things, like
designing textiles and looking for dinosaurs and Hiroshige
paintings. But behind Philip there is another identity that
quietly observes the ever changing drama of life, all without
comment. It was there when I was five and it's exactly
the same when I'm sixty five.  Compared to Philip,
this other identity is like the still depths of the ocean.  Like
the ocean it is totally still, even when a life storm rages on the
surface.  This other identity is also always unconditionally
happy.  Almost like happiness just shines out of it, and it takes
great delight in everything it encounters: people, nature, art,
animals, etc.  The art of life I've discovered is knowing that
your true identity is this much deeper unchanging sense of self.
It is necessary in life to play the "Philip" role, but at the same
time to have the background awareness that what you really
are is this great ocean of stillness, which in a strange way also
includes everybody and everything.

Sometimes when life is very difficult it is as if the curtain of
time parts and we become aware of the underlying mystery
that has been there all along.  This can also happen with great
beauty, such as when we look up at the night sky at the
vastness of the night sky.  It is as if the boundary between
"self" and "other" dissolves and we see that we are the whole
universe.

So when you are in the middle of the life dance and it seems
overwhelming, remember your real identity that is always
present as your safe place and true home and that is always
beyond trauma and illness.  It is even beyond birth and death.

Philip Jacobs
Sufi

with thanks to No Mind's Land

and photo too...

 

The Art of "selving" - Fred LaMotte

I offer a new verb: 'to selve.'

It means to finally be You.  To be what you love, and love
what needs doing, and dot it as no one else can.

No guru teaches you to selve, just as no parent taught you to
walk.  To selve, you must abandon the notion that the universe
expects you to act in accordance with somebody else's rules.
Selvers follow no role model or mythic archetype.  They 
abandon the words "as" and "like."

You cannot selve "as" anyone who came before you: neither
Sakyamuni, nor Mohammad, nor the Guru, or Jesus.  In fact,
the great way-showers all selved.  Then they taught, "If you
want to know God, you too must selve.  But you cannot selve
as me.  You must selve as you."

Only in the present moment can you selve, and only in a state
of wonder.  When you do something beautiful and say, "I have
no idea how this happened!  I didn't do it!" you have selved.

Selvers do not seek the "Self."  If the verb of selving ever came
to rest in the noun of Self, you would be dead.  Selving is energy.
Self is an abstraction.  You are not here to attain a state of being:
you are here to be.

Selve a chef, a carpenter, a yoga teacher, a janitor, a warrior,
a nurse, or an investment banker. In the art of selving, there is
no superior or inferior status, no better or worse.  There is but
authenticity.

No one selves cruelty.  No one selves dishonesty.  No one selves
selfishness.  Those are malfunctions...  When you truly selve,
you only love.

As for Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Guru: these are just names we
give to people who have selved with wild abandonment.  Every
moment they lived, they were bewildered by themselves.

Fred LaMotte
Urandiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Real In You - Joan Ruvinsky

 ...Absolute Reality overflows spontaneously into denser and
denser myriads of interacting forms, [including human form]
 playfully forgetting the knowledge of their identity with Source. 
Then there is an inward-turning that reveals the primordial
 hum that surges at the heart of all things.  Pure Being reiterates
 ItSelf in the continuous interplay of creation and reabsorption,
simultaneously.

...[With this recognition] we stop pretending that we don't
know Who we are.  We are no longer fooled by our play
of ignorance.  The incandescence and the ordinary are
simultaneously present [in us].  We experience ourselves
to be in continuous dynamism with the Heart of Being,
surrounded and penetrated by Presence.

[We see that]...separateness is just another experience in the
field of unity.  These, too, are our co-creations with the Source.
It could be said that we are walking in God's shoes, [or Buddha's
shoes, or Shiva's shoes - however one knows that Presence].
We settle back into a seamless, timeless continuity [with Source]...

The game of hide-and-seek has found its own conclusion...

We are home...

Joan Ruvinsky
from her book: The Recognition of Our Own Heart

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

What is your Script? - Adyashanti

 You [have to be willing] to ask "Who am I" or "What am I"

without any script or role, without the story, about who or what
you are, releasing the script of what you think your life is about.
Every sense of identity has its script.

...what am I, and who am I without my story, without my
demands upon the moment, without any hope of this
moment, without my script?

The mind would answer, "I don't know", because the mind
does not know when it is disarmed, it doesn't know who or what
it is without its role or its character to play.

The actor who is acting this all out is named "me."
The actor keeps maintaining itself. It will do whatever it takes
to keep the ball called "me" rolling.

When this disarming happens you are allowing the wordless
experience to present itself.  This is the wordless experience of
being.  You realize it's not a script or role, it carries no agenda,
and has no demand upon the moment.  It's also not  the actor.
What you are is prior to your idea of you.

What you are without your role [identity] is often assumed to
be hidden somewhere.  And so when you let go of your role
[identity], when you look past the character called "me" for the
truth of your being, you may look for the Self, the Truth, the
"enlightened me."  Looking for the "enlightened self" is just
another role, another script.  It's part of the spiritual seekers
script.  If you drop the script - now what are you?

Of course the reason I ask you to inquire into what you are is
because, at this moment, you are living the answer.  Nothing I
would tell you is a substitute for that Aliveness, for that living 
of the answer.  That is why it has been said many times that
only the people who don't know who they are, are "awake."
Everyone else knows who they are - because they are their
script, whatever their script is, [which includes their  "spiritual"
script], or "I'm not awake" script.  Awakeness is to have no
script, to know that ultimately a script is just a script, and a
story just a story.

There is a state of mind in which the mind says, "I have no
idea who I am," because it can't find the right script. 
Awakening is the realization that happens after the mind says,

"I give up.  I just have no idea who I am."  When you start to
understand this, you realize that if you put down your script of
being someone listening, and if you put down your script of
someone saying something, [or being a "spiritual" someone]
and you just drop these roles for a moment, you realize you are
not who you have taken yourself to be; this idea of a "me" that
thinks it's going to get its happiness through changing the script,
its role, its identity - even if its identity is to have no identity
[no-self]....

Adyashanti
From: Emptiness Dancing

~

Play life intuitively
not pre-scripted

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Dissolve - Fred LaMotte

Rosette Nebula - From: The Invisible Universe
by David Malin

 Stars dissolve into a rose. A rose dissolves into stars. Ask Dante.

The solution is dissolution.  What dissolves?  Separateness.

I am not my skin color.  I am not my tribe.  I am not even my
gender.  I wear these veils and garments, just as I have a red
shirt or a Yankees cap on: but they are not my Self.

Nor am I my political party, my nation, or my religion.  And I
am not my ancestors.  These are marvelous incidents, but not
my Essence.  The core of my existence is prior to labels,
identifications, masks.  Yes, I enjoy wearing them, dancing in
them, playing in their forms.  I need not renounce them,
because they were never really "mine" to begin with.  In deep
meditation, these forms dissolve like the dreams they are.
Then I Am.

In deep meditation, the core of existence reveals itself as the
One who cannot be divided into races, tribes, religions, parties,
yet who plays in them all as light playing in a kaleidoscope.
The revelation transcends thought and imagination.  It is the
Self-image of the Imageless.  Groundless, brilliant, empty, it
is nowhere and everywhere.  It is the Holy of Holies.

Emerging from meditation, I need no longer look for that place.
I look from that place.  Then it is impossible to identify any
color or creed, any political or spiritual movement, as "me."
I am simply who Am.

The verb "Am" is solid as a diamond, boundless as the sky.
Who needs to say, "I Am a man, I Am a liberal, I Am a Buddhist,
I Am a white or a black?  Not I.  Just Am.  Those labels of
identity make the mind small.  No noun, no-thing, ever really
follows the verb To Be.

Fred LaMottte
Uradiance

Resurrected...

 Breaking free of concepts, constructs, beliefs and stories
that have kept me entombed...

I rise...

Waking up to my "True Nature"

a living expression of "The Sacred" within me...

I rise...

Untangling the tattered threads of old roles, old crafted identities
worn to make me feel safe and important...

I rise...

Letting go of frayed "lifelines" that kept
me tethered to the shore of familiarity and conformity...

I rise...

Now not needing to be other than who I Am
my natural, playful, creative, expressive Aliveness...

I rise...

Mystic Meandering

April 3, 2021

~

Photo: Vortex Art 2010 - Mystic Meandering
done with fingers and Craypas oils

Mystical Spirituality...

Being an unapologetic "mystic" at Heart, since childhood, means
for me experiencing the Living Presence of Life that animates all
life.  Some call that God, The Divine, The Beloved, The Ineffable,
"The Mystery", Consciousness, Infinite Being, Spirit, Brahman,
The Tao, etc., etc., etc.  It has many names and forms.  It means
being able to see and experience "The Mystery" in the every-day-ness
of life; something I'm still "working" on - being more aware of the
Sacred in a chaotic world, in the mundane personal affairs of living;
the requirements of daily life: in the must do's and the have-to's
that always find their way to the top of my list, and seem to drive
life...

A "mystical spirituality" pertains to direct experience with Ultimate
Reality/The Divine/"The Mystery"...  Some may assume that a
 "mystic" doesn't experience the darker feelings and frustrations with
living the Cosmic Dance of life.  That has not been my  experience. 
A "mystic" just experiences them within context of the Greater Reality
 - and learns to embrace them as part of the totality of  experience. 
Some feel that a "mystic" has special insights, or powers,  or visions, 
or is only interested in seeking "mystical experiences." 
For me it is not about seeking experiences, but being open to the
movement of "The Mystery", the movement of Consciousness
through its many expressions, and at times experiencing an intimate
 encounter with what I know to be "The Divine", like my Epiphany in
Nov. 2013, or Waking Up To Bliss like I did recently, or "meditative
writings" many years ago, and poetry that sometimes just spills
 out onto the page.

Mystical Spirituality acknowledges the universality of what most have
come to call "God," "The Divine", or Buddha Nature (Dharmakaya),
not associated with any particular faith, religion, or practice, but a
transcendent truth - realizing that humans, at the very core of their
being are both "Divine" and human; formlessness and form, spirit
in matter, Timelessness in time...  This "union" takes place within
ourselves with the realization that we are not a separate entity from
our Divinity, from Consciousness ItSelf, needing to grovel our way
back - but that "comm-union" is always happening.  There is always
only the movement of "Divinity" through life, through us.  There is
 no other "Higher" Self to search for.  It's all Here within us...

Wayne Teasdale, a 20th Century Christian Mystic, and author of
A Mystic Heart, says:  "Mystical Spirituality draws us into the depths
of our Being, where we come face to face with ourselves, our weakness
AND with the Ultimate Mystery.  Spirituality is not external religiosity,
not confined to ritual and liturgy.  It is a way of life that affects and
includes every moment of existence.  It is a disposition to a life of depth."

He goes on - "How we make the journey is what spirituality is really
about - finding our own path.  This means finding a way to/awareness
 of the vast unlimited Consciousness of The Divine, The Mystery
within. We are created for this 'spiritual journey' - the direct and
 immediate experience of Ultimate Reality, which knows everything
 as ItSelf. Being infinitely aware, it knows in a unitive and universal
 fashion through awareness of no distance between ourselves and
 the Ultimate Mystery...  The spiritual journey is essentially one of
discovering the roots of our true identity.  It is a process of the totality
 of Consciousness, from which we arise.

He further says - "Everything is part of an undivided wholeness where
each being reflects this totality.  Non-duality means 'not two, and yet,
not one.'  [I know this is not the traditional Advaita/Non-dual
definition, but it is my experience as well.]  That is, the relationship
 between Divine Reality and human being is a subtle distinction,
but not a separation. And so the relationship is said to be non-dual.
Human beings are essentially Divine." [or Pure Consciousness, etc.]

Wayne Teasdale
20th Century Christian Mystic
from - A Mystic Heart

~

"We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others.
[We must] take back our own listening,
use our own voice,
see our own Light."

Hildegard of Bingen
12th Century Christian Mystic

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

True Identity - Seth Balthazar

True Identity cannot be lost.
No matter how many masks you wear
the unique face underneath cannot be lost.

It cannot be lost, but it can be forgotten.
The "I" cannot be lost, but it can be blinded.
To find it again is only to remember that which
you already knew.
It is the remembrance of your true identity.

The search is for one's true identity.
For who you ultimately are,
and what is your essential source.
To know through and through the Essence
of your being.

And to live that, to express that in the world.

Seth Balthazar
Philosopher and Poet
Excerpt from - "True Identity"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Shadows of Bamboo leaves
against rainbow colors on a wall
forming a face/mask...

Recognize Your Eternal Self - Mooji

The mind fears...
What is the message in fear?
Find the message in fear...

Fear empties itself as soon as there is revelation...

YOU (theTrue Self) are before the movement
of fear that arises...

Realize your Self that is before time,
before phenomenon...

Wake up to the recognition of your Eternal Self.
[That is] the Awareness in which fear occurs.

Just keep quiet...

Don't identify with the reactions and interactions,
just feel your Existence and let the fear burn off...

Identify with the Presence that sees,
and stay with this Presence,
and you'll come to a place of
complete [internal] Stillness...

There is Stillness in that space of fear...

When fear is met
what expands is a sense of spaciousness...

There is an intuitive sense that you and the
spaciousness of Stillness are one.

There is no separation...

In this place your mind of fear will not have
much power because you're in your Natural State
of Awareness.

Mooji

~

"On acquiring strength of vision she recognizes
the Universe as Her very own Self"

verse 15, The Pratyabhijnahrdayam

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Uncharted Woods - Adyashanti

Listen now, or lose your life, for what I have to say is what you
have imagined in quiet moments but have failed to realize in
full.  Perhaps you were too timid or astonished at the critical
moments, or couldn't find the courage to step through the veil
of your frail life when the door was opened for you.

Or perhaps you wanted to keep your life as your own, and
chose to hold onto a few pennies when you could have had
gold.  No matter, for yesterday has passed into the dust of
remembered dreams, and tomorrow's story is yet to be written.

Which is precisely why you and I are now here together...
Stand with me here at the precipice and take my hand in yours,
for I am good company to those ready to depart familiar ground.
If not, then let loose of my hand now and take that of a more
familiar companion.  For where we stand is known, but our
next step will not be - nor the one after or the one after that.

So shoulder all of your longing and intent and leave all else
behind.  I give you fair warning: The world you are about to
leave will not be there when you return.  For nothing truly left
behind is ever the same upon our return.  Let us not waste any
more time on discussions or debates; you have surely been
caught in those tide pools too long already.  Too much talk
is wearying to the soul and evades the spirit of things.
Longing is the true measure of a man or woman and alone
has the power to draw us out of ourselves and into the vast
air of eternity...

This is as fair a day as any to begin the journey back
 to your origin.  So lift your foot together with mine and
 we will step off the well-trodden paths and into the
 uncharted woods where the essence of things lies
 waiting for you to open your eyes.

It is time to begin watching your steps, dear companion.  For
you have already wasted the goodness of too many days
stumbling along with the unconscious drove.  Today I bid
you to place no foot upon the earth without feeling the sinews,
skin, and bone of your feet with each step.  How awake you
are to the least of things will determine how awake you become
to the greatest in due time.  For in the play of time, the great
manifold diversity of things in the end proves their unity....

I can see in your eyes a fear and confusion.  But fear not,
for I do not speak of death.....but of awakening from death,
from sleepwalking in dreams and veiled imagination.  Beyond
 the veil all is well, and more well than I can attest.  Within the
immortality of what you are, there is a contentment and peace
born only of your true identity.

Have you not been told how grand you are, how uncontained,
how limitless?  I for one maintain that you are as unseen and
eternal as the space that spans beyond the myriad universes.
I praise the immortal Self - not one self among many, but the
Self within all selves.  For everywhere I go, and in each and
everyone I meet, I greet my secret and unseen Self.  For I know
 each man and each woman as I know myself, none greater or
lesser in essence or worth.

I have no desire or pull toward the gods, nor sacred relics,
nor holy books.  For I have waded through the various
dogmas and found them lacking in the essential vision, the
unitary glance that reveals God's hand within every gesture.
Why should we go looking for more than we are, when we
are what we are looking for?  Beware of misguided longing,
for it leads in the end to brutality.  How much blood has
already been spilled in God's name and how much more to
come?

I bid you, dear companion:  Throw off the yoke of belief,
for to arrive at the nobility of truth you must be cleansed
of all borrowed knowledge till you are as innocent as the
day before you were born.  You must forge from within your
longing a fiery sword of discrimination, unsheathed from the
past - determined to never again take anything secondhand,
but instead prove true or false each statement yourself.

For truth belongs to neither man or woman, nor holy book,
nor well-reasoned philosophy or belief, but only to itself -
immortal and pure. 

Adyashanti

Original title - "Everlasting Inheritance" (2006)

via - No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

There Are No Frames for the Soul - O'Donohue & Rumi

We are no sooner out of the womb than we must begin the
precarious unfolding and shaping of who we are.  If we
have bad or destructive times in childhood, we begin to fix
on a survival identity to cover over and to compensate for
what happens to us.  If we are never encouraged to be
ourselves we begin to construct an identity that will gain us
either attention or approval.  When we set out to construct
our lives according to a fixed image, we damage ourselves.
The image becomes the desperate focus of all our longing.
There are no frames for the soul.
In truth we are called, in so far as we can, to live without
an image of ourselves, or at least to keep images we have
free and open.  When you sense the immensity of the
Unknown within you, any image you have built of yourself
gradually loses its promise.  Your name, your face, your
address only suggest the threshold of your identity.
Somehow you are always secretly aware of this.
Sometimes you find yourself listening to someone
telling you what you should do or describing what is
going on inside you, and you whisper to yourself that
they have not the foggiest idea who you actually are.

John O'Donohue
From Eternal Echoes

via - The Beauty We Love

~

I am not from the East or West
not up from the ground
or out of the ocean.
My place is placeless
a trace of the Traceless.
I am from the Soul of souls.

Rumi

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

Free to Be - Fred LaMotte

The first discipline of non-violence is to honor every human being
as a unique soul-body, refusing to identify them by race, gender,
religion, or political party.

Yet just as much as right-wing movements, today's "progressive"
movement often promote conflict and division by labeling individual
Persons by their group identity.  Some of us who talk about "diversity"
actually stifle it, because real diversity is not to promote tribalism
[or nationalism], but to recognize the incomparable [unique]
Personhood of individuals. [As it also says in the Declaration of
Independence].

It is much easier to hate a category than a Person, whether your
animosity is toward Muslims or Christians, "black people", or
"white people", liberals or conservatives.

The beginning of world peace is to free each human soul-body from
racial, political, or religious abstractions.  Our incidental association
with a group is not who we really are.

I do not identify my Self [True Inner Being] as a color, as rich or poor.
capitalist or socialist, Republican or Democrat, Christian or
Pagan, [or American].  I am neither "good"nor "evil."  Those are just
conceptual chains with which your mind attempts to enthrall me.  But
I am not your concept of me:
you are.

If you want to superimpose a group identity on me, that is your act
of violence against the singularity of my Personhood.  You are free to
label me, but I am also free...  I refuse to identify with your label...
I Am who I Am...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

[brackets mine]

~

My note: It's an act of aggression when we impose prejudicial categories and labels on "others"; when we don't see that we are all a unique expression of our shared Core Beingness; when we've been enculturated to hate "other" people's cultures through fear because they are not like "us"...  We are all "free" when we recognize each other's Core Beingness as our own, and the diverseness of our individuality that expresses that Beingness and treat each other with respect and compassion.

And, oh btw, we are all immigrants here, unless you were born 100% Native American.  I am .2% Native American, but the rest of "me" comes from other countries, other cultures.  My English ancestors arrived here in the 1600-1700s and populated much of New England, and evidently somebody intermarried with a Native American.  My Irish and Scottish ancestors arrived probably in the 1800s and intermarried with the English ancestors, and my Norwegian ancestors arrived int he late 1800s, intermarrying with...  well you get the idea.  We are mongrels! :)  Essentially, however, we all share an Essential Beingness far beyond our ancestry, our humanness, far beyond personalities and character traits, beliefs, patriotism, opinions, DNA and intelligence.  And we are inherently Free to Be who and what we are!

And on another note:  My father was greeted by the Statue of Liberty coming back from Europe on a ship with thousands of other soldiers, (given to America by the French, btw), after serving in WWII at age 19-20 in Germany, being hit in the face with shrapnel from "enemy" mortar fire.  That was  his path, his journey, and that of his generation - to fight "the enemy" for an idealized freedom...  I don't think he (or that generation) understood things with the same "spiritual" lens that I do, but he did what he felt was right at the time, believing it was the right thing to do.  And I respect him for that, because his perceptions were different, although his war experience wounded him emotionally for life.  But he not only fought for America, he fought for the freedom of the Europeans in Northern Europe as well, and for the hope of freedom in the world... And yet we are still fighting!  Building walls instead of welcoming statues of liberty - because "we"/humanity (in general) lack the understanding of Who we all essentially are...

Namaste
_/\_

~

Photo -
via Stillness Speaks

Bare Awareness - Danna Faulds

Bare awareness
awake to its
true nature -
limitless and
vast, nothing to
grasp, no masks
or name tag.

What am I beyond
the answers of the
mind, outside
anything I can
find by seeking?

What is true
right now, and
what is transitory?

The witness watches
thoughts spin their
convincing stories
out of thin air and
doesn't care how
often I forget
that freedom is
the truth of being,
and no part of truth
is ever separate
from what is.

Danna Faulds
from: Limitless: 2009

~

Golden Sunset

Deconstruction - Danna Faulds

I am deconstructing.

My identity, built
assumption by assumption,
is crumbling at my feet.
It's clear to me the way
of truth leads into the
unknown...

[.....]

Balanced on the rubble,
I grope for
handholds even as I try
to let go.  I am bared to the
bone by pain and the thwarted
desire to maintain control.  I
long to paint the scene the
way I want, while ignoring
how it is.  My practice now
isn't about rebuilding what
I knew.  It's not about
clearing the littered ground
of old illusions only to
construct new ones.
Emptiness has a stark
beauty, noticed only
when I stop looking
for security.  I sit on the
tumble of mortar and brick
and pray for patience,
pray for strength,
pray for the humility
to just keep breathing.

Danna Faulds
Excerpt from: "Deconstruction"
From: One Soul
2003

~

Art - Dissolving the Masks

2017

The Infinite is Everywhere - Danna Faulds

I am everywhere present
said the [Infinite.]

Seek me in the stately trees,
or the melodies of sparrows
and you will surely find me.

Look for me in the Buddha's smile,
the countenance of Christ,
the words of the Koran and Sanskrit prayers.
I am always there.

Turn your attention to the sky
where the movements of the moon and stars
trace my beauty...

Experience true emptiness
and my presence permeates the void.
Now bring your focus closer
to your heart.

Grow still and find me within you.

Separation dissolves like salt water
when you experience your true identity as me.

Practice devotion and let go into the ocean
of my love,
or be the open space from which all things arise.

One and two,
duality and union,
are both true.

So I say be jubilant
and be at peace,
for inside you is the seed and the fruit,
the tree and the root.

Choose to be in communion with me
and see the whole of this
creation infused with one energy...

Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner and Poet

Excerpt From:One and Two are Both True
From: Prayers to the Infinite

Upon Waking - David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.....

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world
in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of
the morning window
toward the presence of everything that can be,
what urgency calls you to your one love?

[.....]

David Whyte
Excerpt from:
"What to Remember When Waking"

~*~

Photo - A sheer window curtain

May Winter & Danna Faulds...

“I am everywhere present.
Seek me in the stately trees
or the melodies of sparrows
and you will surely find me.

Look for me in the Buddha’s smile,
the countenance of Christ,
the words of the Koran and
Sanskrit prayers…

I am always there.

Turn your attention to the sky where the
movements of the moon and stars
trace my beauty.

Experience true emptiness
and my presence permeates the void.
Now bring your focus closer to your Heart.
Grow still and find me within you.

Separation dissolves like salt water
when you experience your true identity
as me…

From knower and perceived,
seer and seen,
from two comes One.

Practice devotion and let go into the ocean
of my love,
or be the open space from which all things arise.

One and two,
duality and union,
ARE BOTH TRUE…

So I say to you
be jubilant,
and be at peace,
for inside you is
the seed and fruit,
the tree and root,

Choose to be in communion with me
and see the whole of this creation
infused with one energy…”

From: Prayer to the Infinite
Danna Faulds

~*~*~*~

Yes, we had snow in MAY! J

It’s Spring in Colorado…

We’ve been having buckets of rain all week,

which has been delightful! – and very unusual.

Then Saturday night rain turned to snow!

Although not the best photos,
taken at night through the windows, but

I thought I’d share them anyway…

Our lovely River Birch was nearly flattened…

And the long tendrils of the Silver Maple bowed in respect….

Winter’s Magic just kept hanging on…

What once looked like this just a day before… 

Turned to this – bending under the burden she bore…

She has since bounced back up J

Mother Nature’s Beauty

 reminding us that we’re not in control here J
except digitally maybe… LOL

May your life be filled with Love and Magical Moments...