Why We "Quest"? - Misc.

A quest ignites you to walk the path you have been chosen for...

It's the undertaking of, or commitment to something deeper
or larger than what we ever thought was possible - the meaning
you give your life to.

[like a quest for the Truth of Existence, or the Mystery of the
Cosmos, etc.]

Google Search :)

~

A quest is not, as most have believed, a rare mystical experience,
but an expression of our most basic human impulses that are
rooted in our nature; man's innate quest for the transcendent:
the "questing impulse."

Robert M Torrance
from- "The Spiritual Quest"

~

A Quest is following a vision, your own vision, that
transcends current reality...

from a conversation with my husband... :)

~

It's following the longing of your Heart...

My favorite song when I was a kid was "The Impossible Dream."
I was a bit of an idealist back then, but still...

:)

Photo by my husband...

 

Aging's Different Light - Lisel Mueller

 

Doctor, you say there are no halos
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 the 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 and 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"

~

This poem was written about the painter Claude Monet
who had cataracts.  When his doctor wanted to perform
cataract surgery, Monet refused.  He wanted to paint light.
He saw the blurred edges of everything as interconnection.

from Awakin.org

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

Don't let your fire go out - Ayn Rand

For All who are oppressed...

In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice [your]
world to those who are at its worst.  In the name of the values
that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted
by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless...  Do not let your
fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark...  Do not let the
hero in your soul perish...

Ayn Rand

From: Atlas Shrugged
(Russian born controversial American Writer)

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

My heart feels Great Sorrow for the people
of Ukraine in this moment in time,
 and the suffering they are enduring... 
But also for those others who
experience the same oppression by
autocratic ideologies.

Blessings

 

Grace Comes...

 Grace comes unbidden...
Her soft Presence comforts in the
coldest dawn and darkest night,
and sits with us when we are broken,
beaten down by the "life game"...

She is the antidote for an aching heart
and struggling body...

She hears your silent tears...
and walks with you...

Grace brings you love and kindness
to endure the crosswinds that bite...

It's all Grace -
come to bind the wounds from those
who tried to suffocate your voice,
who tried to kill your spirit...

She softens the heart
and clears the pain from your vision...

She is always with us,
even in the death of the body.
She is "the beautiful woman sitting on
the fence," come to take you "home,"
or to your next "journey" -
wherever that may be...

Grace has come, Grace has come!

She is singing her love song!

There is nothing to do but surrender
and let Grace sing her song of Love
to the weary heart...

Listen...

Mystic Meandering
April 8, 2021

The reference to "the beautiful woman on the fence"
is something my mother experienced during her
dying process 2 years ago...

Hospice said she was hallucinating, but we knew she was *seeing.*
She saw a beautiful woman sitting on the fence out her window,
at the top of a small incline, on many occasions.
She said: "the beautiful woman on the fence
has come to take me on my next journey."

Grace Comes...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Step Into What You Are - Matt Licata

 At times, the most wise and soulful action is to establish a
boundary with another.  To stand up and assert what it is
that we need.  To move in an empowered and swift way to
maintain our integrity.  To privilege our autonomy.  To
meet narcissism, abuse, misattunement, and neglect with a
fierce embodied response.

This is not only the case with "external" others, but also
with the multitude of "internal" others as they emerge as
voices, figures, and images in the interior landscape.

As we wake in the morning, wander through the day, in
liminal states and at the entryway to sleep and dream...
we may notice their presence, arriving quietly in one
moment and as firestorm in the next - telling us:

"There is something wrong with you.  You have failed
again. You have done life wrong. You are unworthy of
mercy, of grace.  You are beyond redemption.  You are
unlovable and unwanted.  You do not belong here."

The images and voices of the past, shadow emanations
of authorities, cultures, and lineages of intergenerational
trauma and trance.  The voices of a realm that has forgotten
the holy, the sensitive, the eccentric, and raging uniqueness
of the heart.

But in a moment when perception is clear and a glimpse
is given from behind the veil, it is seen that the visitors
come not to harm, but to reveal.  But they, too, must be
met with boundaries of clear seeing.  To not accept what
they say at face value, but to enter into dialogue and to
find the way into what is most true.  To not merely accept
their conclusions, proposed tunnels of reality, and the
psychic lenses through which they have come to see...

But step into what you are.  To live in and from that as
your poetic offering to a weary world.  To take the risk
of telling a new story, dreaming a new dream, and
weaving new cloth.  And to allow yourself to be toned
and tuned by the great Weaver herself...
breathing and sensing and listening as a new vision is
unearthed.

Matt Licata, Ph.D.

~

Photo: Art - Mystic Meandering

Trust Your Vision - Ivan Granger

So often we pour ourselves intensely into life's purpose without
actually pausing to consider why we are doing what we are doing.
How is it a reflection of who we truly are?  How does it express
our specific qualities and role within the larger panorama?  What
does it imply about the fundamental nature of reality?

Rarely in the modern world are we encouraged to discover our
vision and dedicate ourselves to it.  To the prevailing mindset,
one's vision is thought to be intangible, suggesting something
that is a fantasy whose pursuit is narcissistic or even delusional.
The focus of life must be practical with goals that are approved
and easily measured.

That approach, while seemingly reasonable and safe, is
devastating to both the individual and to society as a whole.
While we certainly must live effectively within the physical
and social worlds that require a certain level of practical purpose,
we are not such stunted creatures that exist only on that level.
We are magical beings, here to embody immensity and love and
the will of the universe as it expresses itself uniquely through
each of us.

Vision is the way we discover our personal path through the world.
Vision is the way we come to know ourselves, allowing us to be as
we are, showing us how to act with strength and creativity in
service to our true [vision].

A vision is not the same as some fantasy or daydream.  A true
 vision is the voice of nature, the intention of the universe,
uniquely tuned to our soul.

The word "vision" can trip us up because we think of seeing
things that are external to our physical bodies, so we often
consider a vision to be external to us.  But vision in the
spiritual sense is the conscious mind's way to assign meaning
to the deep recognition of self as a harmonious expression of the
self-aware universe. In other words, vision is not so much about
seeing as it is about being.  A vision is a challenge to ourselves
to be more fully ourselves.  Vision is a vocation, the calling of
the soul to its true role.

The first question is, how strongly do we want to see?  And then
we must answer the second question, do we dare live the truth
seen?  Then again, what's the point to any other path but our own?

Ivan Granger
commentary on the poem
"Trust Your Vision" by Stephen Levine
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Sunset digitally enhanced...