Deep Looking - Thich Nhat Hanh

Art: Barbara Stone

In spite of the lessons of the collective wisdom of
the world, we rarely satisfy our yearning to know
the Truth of our Existence.

The Mystical approach to the essential questions
about the meaning of life is quite different from
the normal way of learning things through written
teachings, rather, the mystical transmission of the
purpose of life comes through living life with
ever expanding awareness...

author unknown

~

When we practice deep looking, we receive help,
we receive understanding, we receive the
wisdom that makes us free.

Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddhist Teacher

 

Insanity...

My face hurts
Maybe from the mask I wear
that belies a deeper truth;
that hides the scream I feel inside,
and a piece of my Soul that has died;
and the clenched fist in my gut - anticipating
the evening's chaos -
by the sound of ice clinking in a glass;
and the heart's deep ache
for my True Life not being lived.

It withered in the daily madness of the drama of
"the visitor" in my house that I am captive in;
dancing too close to the edge
of my sanity...

I must reclaim the authentic Life hidden inside
this dance with the dark.
"It's time to turn the lights on!" and clearly see
what's really going on here.
And free myself from this insanity...

Mystic Meandering
May 23, 2023

The line in the last stanza:
"It's time to turn the lights on!" is
from Sarah Carlson's poem - Apple Blossoms and Snowflakes.
The words were spoken by her 2 year old grandson :)

What a wonderful metaphor to see clearly...

~

When we don't see clearly there is insanity...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Unbind My Eyes - Harlan Hubbard

Now I must break forth from my old self,
cast away old traditions,
unbind my eyes,

so that I may have a broader vision of truth;
so that I may come to this river, as I do today.
and not find it cluttered with emotions and thoughts of 
former days; or its shore lined with drift of cities.
I must see the elements as they are...

Harlan Hubbard

from his journal, quoted from
"Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life"

by Don Walls

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

 

 

"Ways of Seeing" - Interview with David Whyte

...I recognized in my Zen meditation moments of inhabiting
a greater identity.  The real discipline is to remain in that
greater identity and to sustain that sense of presence - so that
you see the essence of [things] that affects you very deeply when
you allow yourself to watch and deepen that attention...

What is asked of human beings on a daily basis, is to get out
of ourselves by paying attention to things other than ourselves.
To see in a way which is other than the way we have used to
name the world, other than the way we have been taught to see
the world, and then as a result have ourselves be seen by the world.

As in all great contemplative traditions, the  most nourishing thing
you can do is pay attention to [you immediate environment], but
it will also break your life apart, because the fixed identity that
had named the world and wanted it to be a certain way, in order
to prevent us from experiencing heartbreak, is found to be too
small.  To name/label is a smaller way of seeing.

Our way of staying safe is to assign names to what in fact cannot
be named.  It is the precise reason why poetry is so difficult to
write.  Because you're actually going to a part of you that doesn't
know what to say.  ...you are going to a part of you that radically
doesn't know and you are going to pay attention and observe 
from that place.  Then at that meeting place between what you
think is you and what you think is not you, that is where the
conversation happens.  And when you speak that conversation
out loud it comes out as poetry.  It is the same undoing of your
surface personality...

Interviewer: So how does one perceive the essence of things?

...listening is a deep form of looking...  I am looking at something
to see what it is saying to me, without imposing a voice upon it.

The implication of truly seeing is that the rest of the world must 
be perceiving the miraculous in you.  Which is quite humbling.
The only place to hold that sense of miraculousness without ego
is in silence...

Perhaps once you have established a relationship with silence,
with deep seeing and listening, then you can live in a way in
which you are not harmed by constant contraction [from noise
and chaos].  There is a reason why monasteries are quiet places.
There is a reason why artists go to quiet places, even when it is
just a quiet room to create.

Excerpts from "Ways of Seeing" - Interview with
David Whyte
by Judith van Leeuwen
From See All This
Sept 2022
with thanks to Kim Manley Ort

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Moratorium on Names - LaMotte

 I've been in love for seven million years.
It was always you.
Don't ruin it now by telling me your name.

Isn't it time for a moratorium on names,
so that we may finally see?

A moratorium on the name of God
and the word Peace,
until we learn to use them as verbs.
A moratorium on Love, so that this body
may be love's exquisite synonym.
A moratorium on Better, Worse,
on Sin and Hell, or Heaven too,
so that our eyes may grow
accustomed to the earth.

A moratorium on the names Christ,
Krishna, Allah, Yahweh,
so the "goddess" may have room to breathe,
and we may hear her inscrutable murmur
from the cavern of the prophet in each
human heart, her infinitesimal thunder
in a violet's bell, rung by a dewdrop.

Isn't it time to reinvent the tongue,
so the Ineffable may babble sweet
new names for the One Who Is?

[.....]

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The World in Different Light - Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.  The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Lisel Mueller
1924-2020

Original title - "Monet Refuses Operation"

"Her poems are 'a testament to the miraculous power
of language to interpret and transform our world'
and 'a testament that invites readers to share her vision
of experiences we all have in common: sorrow,
tenderness, desire, the revelations of art, and
mortality - 'the hard dry smack of death against the glass'"
(Washington Post)

Lisel Mueller was a German born American Poet.
Her family fled the Nazi regime in 1939 when she was 15.
She worked as a translator and academic teacher.  She
began writing poetry in the 1950's, publishing her first
collection in 1965.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
street light through ice on window...

"Seeing" MySelf...

I recently saw a video of my present self...
These were the "reflections" that came...

~

Seeing myself I immediately felt compassion and empathy for "her";
for the way she walked, the way she held herself, and how she had
aged, since the last time I saw "her", as if it wasn't me, but a dear
friend that I had known for a long, long time, and knew all that she
had been through...  There was a recognition of something in "her"
that I could not name at that moment...

Days later the "recognition" began to unwind itself.
I was awestruck that I could see myself as not myself, as if I were
someone else seeing "her", as if the true Presence at the Core of my
Being was seeing me/her...

I internally gasped...

There was a recognition of myself as that Presence...

It was the recognition that it was the Core Being that was
recognizing ItSelf as "me."

It was a spontaneous moment of truly "seeing" that which inhabits
and animates this "me"...

~

There was an awareness of myself being like an echo of that Inner
Being which was seeing; seeing an image of ItSelf as "me" -
as if 2, but which is really only an echo of ItSelf.

As the days passed beyond these initial "recognitions" there was
yet another recognition:

I am that which Sees from the Core of my Being.
And my Core Being sees "me" as ItSelf,
not "me" as I know myself to be through the mind.
The self that we think we are is only an echo of our
Eternal Beingness, or Essence...

~

I was seeing through the eyes of mySelf (the Eternal Being)
within myself, seeing/recognizing ItSelf within myself - as myself.

Instead of seeing myself through the eyes of my mind,
I was seeing myself through the eyes of the Eternal Being
that abides at the Core of my Being - here.

This changed the perception...

Seeing "her" from Beingness ItSelf,
seeing ItSelf in myself...

~

"She" (Source/Presence/Eternal Being) resides in us,
recognizes HerSelf in us as us.
The Eternal Being is the one Seeing,
without the mind's conditioning...

Namaste 

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Meanderings
June 2020

~

Mandala Art - Mystic Meandering
"Eternal Echoes"

2013

Be Where Love Is - Rumi

My heart, sit only with those
who know and understand you.

Sit only under a tree
that is full of blossoms.

Not every eye can see,
not every sea is full of pearls.

My heart, sing the song of longing
like nightingale.

First, lay down your head,
then one by one
let go of all distractions.

Embrace the light and let it guide you
beyond the winds of desire.
There you will find a spring and

be nourished by its sweet waters...

Rumi

Enlightening Perspective :)

My husband found this pic on Facebook and I just had to repost it here :)

Definition of Down Syndrome:

"The innate ability to see the good and beauty in the world,
to radiate joy and happiness, and to offer a unique perspective
on life with the ability to change other's perceptions."

Sweet...

This touched my heart deeply and reminded me that an
enlightened perspective doesn't depend on how intellectually
brilliant we are, or how much we understand with our minds,
it's all about how we see with our Heart;
staying innocent and open to life...

We are lit from within with a beautiful, loving, kind,
compassionate, trusting Spirit.
If only we could truly Experience it, Express it,
Be it...

Just Trust, Just Love, Just Be...

Living the Balance - Sandy Jones

There is a perfect Balance between duality and non-duality.
There is a way of balance between the changing, ongoing
images of this time-space tangible world and the Living Light
of the unseen, changeless, Divine Principle, that stands behind
all things.

Living this Balance, is an inner knowing that keeps us steady,
true, strong and agile.  It is an ease and a dominion within us.
It is the perfect center within ourself.  We know it when we
find it.  It is real...  The Balance is a sweet place within, where
the heart and the soul come together.  Here, between the known
and the unknown, Something real, pure, unconditioned is found.
It is the original self...

How do we come to know this marvelous sense of Balance,
and know we know it?  How else, but by living the imbalance -
for a time.

...this Balance between the tangible world of multiplicity,
matter, time and change - and the intangible knowing, the innate
realization and understanding of the oneness of all things
[doesn't]  leave out any part of this Life.  It includes all
possibilities [all experiences].

This knowing is fearless, now enjoying the shadows,
the flickering light of this world, as part of the unfolding
beauty of it all.  The sweet balance leads us to a new way of
being and seeing, right here in the world - where Life Flows...

Sandy Jones

Excerpt from a post on her blog

~

Photo via No Mind's Land

Effortless Joy - Sandy Jones

Love leaves the confines of ideologies, doctrines, dogma and
the restricting limitations of regulations and rules.  Love is
freedom.  Love makes it easy to see in new ways.  It opens
the heart to expansive vistas, to freedom.  Love and freedom
go hand-in-hand.  Love and Reality reside right here as the
very identity I am.  Each of us can put our self here because
this unbound Self, this tranquility, this joy, this peace and
beauty is your identity as well.

A rush of passion celebrates the joy of this simple, everyday
existence of my being, of life, this marvelous magic that is
being me.  I am this living mystery of ever-flowering beauty.
The moonlight song ten thousand fathoms deep is a fact quite
plenty enough for me.

I'm filled with this awe and wonder that is living here in the
middle of an infinity of myself.  Life is an enigma, a mystery
so extraordinary, veiled in the soft pink light of the ordinary.

I am a million joys, living irresponsibly and aimless, carried
by this river of fearless love that upholds me...

It is not mine to tell others what to do.  Mine is this wind
blown freedom of an irresistible and effortless joy...

Sandy Jones

via: No Mind's Land

Break for Freedom - David Whyte & Rumi

To remove ourselves entirely and absolutely,
abruptly and at times uncompromisingly is often
the real and radically courageous
break for freedom.
Unsticking ourselves from the mythical
Tar Baby, seemingly set up, just for us,
right in the middle of our path,
we start the process of losing our sense of falsity,
of ridding ourselves of illusions,
of letting go of our self-manufactured enemies,
and even our false friends,
and most especially the false sense of self
we have manufactured to live with them.

We make ourselves available for the simple seeing of ourselves
and our world more elementally and therefore more clearly again.
We withdraw, not to disappear, but to find another ground
from which to see; a solid ground from which to step,
 and from which to speak again, in a different way,
 a clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember
as our own...

David Whyte
Excerpt from an essay -"Withdrawal"

Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running from Silence.

Rumi
"Become the Sky"

~

Top Photo - Ceiling Abstract
taken looking up where several ceiling levels
come together, also a ceiling beam, and a rod
with a hanger on it :)  Color inverted.

Bottom photo - Through the glass of a greenhouse ceiling. 

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

Snow Confections...

For me Snow is a sweet medicine for the soul.  I know some of you in Canada, the Northeast, and the MidWest are tired of seeing so much snow this year, but we have been in severe drought conditions here in Colorado, so to get 8-10 inches in one storm is sweet medicine.  And even sweeter was this beautiful imprint of a bird in the snow (above photo) which I just happened to see as I looked nearly straight down from our eating nook window this morning.  The dark shadow is where its body left a hole, with the imprint of its wing feathers surrounding it.  With the play of light it looks like an actual white bird sitting there with wings outspread.  This is the magic of snow, of life really, if we only look for it, if we are open to seeing; something that I need to be more aware of.  Three hours later the image was nearly gone from the heat of the sun – melted back into the snow, evaporated into thin air.  Another metaphor of the impermanence of everything, the illusion of everything we take to be real; that things aren't always what they seem.   That which is on the surface of life dissipates and we must look deeper into the True Nature of things, to find the Essence of Life and Being…

In the meantime, while we ponder those existential questions of life J here are few more delectable snow confections for you to enjoy with your cup-o-life :)

 Muffin anyone?

 Or a Cupcake?

With dragonfly swizzel.
You can see I’ve been nibbling already J

 Some snow-capped yarrow gumdrops maybe?

(although they don’t look too delectable do they :)

 Or how about some Powdered Sugar Icing! J

Alegria!

Enjoy the sweetness of Life…

Seeing Red... It's not what you think!

Seeing color was an exercise from The Practice of Contemplative Photography by Andy Karr and Michael Wood.  See their website here.  The idea was to only see color, not to identify the object of the color – as in red *car*, yellow *sign*, blue *house* - but to just see the color – any color – all colors.

~~~

This photo was taken last Fall
outside a restaurant.

 ~~~

~~~

I was out in the car doing errands one day this last week and thought I’d try the exercise.  No camera to tempt me to snap every shot of color I saw…  I just had to be aware…   I began to see red – naturally drawn to it… Interesting…  I just became naturally *aware* of the color red as it passed by me or in front of me, and wondered if this is what the authors meant: The object itself  is not important – don’t need to identify it – only see color…

~~~

~~~

And then – a couple of days later I began to see red all around the house. (We have red trim, red car, red fence, red doors, red curtains – all shades and hues of red. J)  Only this time the camera was readily available and I began snapping like a snappin’ fool.  After all, it was an *assignment* and my mind evidently took it seriously. Intuitive seeing left the room and thinking took over.  I became obsessed with red, on an expedition to find red, planning, and arranging – oh-oh…  I broke one of the rules of contemplative photography – no contrivance – if I understand them right.  According to the authors – contrivance is “how we want things to appear and not how things actually are - directly *seeing* your immediate experience unfabricated and uncontrived.”  I started to specifically *look* for anything red, looking for “good” shots – not just spontaneous “flashes of perception/seeing” as they call it in the book – but purposely *looking.*  And I could tell the difference.  There wasn’t a *natural* relaxed, spontaneous *feeling* of perception that flowed from within.  I wasn’t just being *aware* - but conceptual thought took over the process.  I didn’t get absorbed in the moment of awareness, just noticing, instead, my mind became the controller of the moment. I felt stressed and anxious about “getting the shot.”  I think you can see the difference in the two photos at the end of this post with the previous photos.  

The authors say that “true seeing comes through seeing from your basic nature/Beingness which gets ‘reflected’– producing ‘equivalents’ of what you saw from your basic Being, drawing on a deeper level of intelligence than the usual way of seeing..... through being present to something in an open space (of awareness) that is created by letting go of the currents of mental activity that obscure our natural insight and awareness.”  One could call it the awakened eye, just *seeing* life as you find it, rather than manipulating it…   Am not saying I’m there yet… Just sayin’ what they said…

~~~

contrived

So – obviously - I am learning to *see* without the conceptual overlay, without manipulation, without interpretation, judgment, or contrivance – just seeing what is - from that sense of Aware Beingness – that which is seeing through the mask of me.  Not as easy as I *thought.* J

“In reality only the Ultimate is…
The rest is a matter of name and form.
When you understand that names and shapes
are hollow shells without content,
and what is real is nameless and formless,
just pure energy of the life and light
of Consciousness,
you will be at peace -
immersed in the deep Silence of reality…”

Nisargadatta