"Inner Opening" - Ivan Granger

Most of us spend our entire lives avoiding an inner opening.
It is that quiet itch at the back of awareness that makes us
squirm and turn away.  And when it really presses on us,
it can arouse terror, as if we were facing down death.

...to approach it is to face death.  It is the death of our old
worldview, the death of patterned awareness, the death of
our limited notion of who we are.  All we thought ourselves
 to be stops - and so it is a sort of death.  To feel that grace
approaching , to welcome it, requires a wild sort of courage.

It requires courage and, yes, surrender.  We have this idea
that spiritual opening is a terrible effort.  No.  That unfolding
wants to occur within us.  The only effort is to let go of our
endless strategies to halt the process.  We all feel it, a gentle
prodding to let the heart open, to know ourselves truly, to be
present and radiate ourselves into the world.

That opening is insistent, trying to happen within us.  Call it
grace, if you like.  The question is before us: Do we
courageously accept the invitation?

For those of us who live in modern urban society, think how
hard it is to stop the ticking of the clock.  From an early age
we internalize the sense of time and progress and deadlines.
Yet, in doing so, we forget that these are all just concepts,
just one way to understand the unfolding of being and
experience.  That sense of time is a powerful tool for doing
and accomplishment, but it isn't inherently real.  It doesn't
have much to do with who or what we are.  There is a flow
of days and months, but they are the surface current of a
much deeper timelessness.

It is fascinating how we use the hyperactivity of thought to
define the world.  The other thing about thought: it creates time.
When thought settles down, we discover timelessness. ...the
mind comes to rest, not in the head, but in the heart.

Having come to rest, we remember.  It is not through intellection
but through stillness that we remember.  Remember.  Re-member.
To remember is to finally see how the apparent separation of
reality actually fits together in a single wholeness.  Discursive
thought can only ever examine pieces of the whole.  To re-member
is to have the full vision of Wholeness, as things actually are.
But this vision is found in timelessness and stillness, through the
quiet mind unfiltered.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Stirrings - Author Unknown

The Cosmic skies are stirring, there is change in the air
that may awaken us to some new truths.

How beautiful that we don't yet know the way.
How beautiful that there are elements of life
that still confuse us, make us feel deeper than
we could have imagined, and remind us of
what is real and pure in our hearts.

How beautiful, that even though we don't yet
know "the way", we can spread our wings,
shift our awareness, and trust that there is a
new unfolding that is destined to come.

It is the journey of metamorphosis that we
are being guided to walk...

Whatever comes, know that it is part of how we
move through our own cycles - into the dark
night of the soul, and then finally, into spiritual
wisdom...

Sometimes we need intensity to drive the
vehicle of transformation.

While we want to remain strong and centered,
we also don't want to limit or cut ourselves off
from allowing whatever comes to move us,
change us, and transform us.

We have to remember to keep shifting our
awareness of what life is and what role we are
here to play; to allow ourselves to keep questioning,
to keep allowing things to shock and surprise us, for
they are often the fuel for our continued unfolding.

Author Unknown
found on Facebook

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Death and Rebirth - Matt Licata

In each moment the sacred process of death and rebirth
is playing out within us.  With each breath something
in us is dying - some aspect of who we think we are -
or the spiritual path that once brought us meaning...

In the face of this dissolution, the question isn't so 
much how we can most quickly facilitate rebirth, but
to what degree we will participate [consciously] in the
death when it appears.  Psychological death, or
spiritual death, is not just a preliminary process in
which we engage so that we can put it behind us and
get on to birth.  It is a valid, holy unfolding with its
own intelligence...  [It is] a catalyst, and vessel of
insight, perspective, and revelation...

It is natural to resist this falling apart and do what we
can to put it all back together.  But it is only from the
womb of death - attuned consciously - that rebirth can
emerge.

Allow the death time to unfold, to share its poetry and
fragrance...   Death is not merely a phase to get through.
In those periods in our lives, when things are being
rearranged and reorganized inside and around us, we
can attune to what is truly being asked of us...  Listen
to the wisdom in death and what it has to teach us about
love...  We allow the dissolution so that new forms can
emerge and provide the transformation for which we
most deeply long.

Matt Licata
from - A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Springtime?

 Our "Winter" snow here in Colorado often comes in March,
  The snowiest month of our Winter season that crosses into Spring.
 It did not disappoint this year.   Last week we got over a foot of snow
 with 3-4 foot drifts.  Today about 3 inches - clinging to the trees,
creating a winter wonderland, and tomorrow night another 2 inches maybe :)
  I love the snow, and this magical  season. 
  I grew up in New England and have missed the snowy winters.

Here's a short photo montage with a playful, artsy twist
at the end...

The picture above transformed into this, below, with the help of lunapic,
a photo editing website - looking like a folk art painting...

and into this - my favorite - a cosmic look...
Of course it all depends on your perspective... :)

Springtime is traditionally a time of renewal. 
but in the current zeitgeist, with yet another mass shooting, 
and the pandemic continuing, millions out of work, ongoing hatred
and racism etc., I don't see that happening until a mass shift in
human consciousness occurs which means a change in
perspective...

Rupture and Evolution - Arundhati Roy & Jeff Kober

What is this thing that has happened to us?
It's a virus, yes.  In and of itself it holds no moral brief.
But it is definitely more than a virus...
It has brought the world to a halt...  Our minds are still
racing..., longing to return to "normality", trying to stitch
our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture.
But the rupture exists.

Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the
past and imagine their world anew.  This one is no different.
It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
[one way of life to the next].  We can choose to walk through
it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our
avarice, our data banks and dead ideas... or we can walk
through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine
another world. [Another way of being in the world].

Arundhati Roy
Author - The God of Small Things

[brackets mine]

~

The Vedas tell us that change is constant, that the nature of
the relative world is continual change, always.  Like the weather...
But the Vedas also tell us that the changing nature of the
universe is always progressive.  Evolution is the only thing
that's ever happening here. Always.  Like rivers always flowing
downstream; regardless of how many curves and meanderings they
may take, they always reach the ocean.  Downstream flow is the
nature of water.  And evolution is the nature of consciousness.
Consciousness cannot help but evolve.  It cannot help but expand,
widen, deepen, grow.  This is its very nature.  Though we may
resist it or ignore it, pretend it isn't so, in fact it is so.  It always
has been, it always will be.

Jeff Kober
Meditator

~

Photo from the Internet

Cosmic Stirrings - Author Unknown

The Cosmic skies are stirring, there is a change in the air
that may awaken us to some new truths.

How beautiful that we don't yet know the way.
How beautiful that there are elements of life
that still confuse us, make us feel deeper than
we could have imagined, and remind us of
what is real and pure in our hearts.

How beautiful, that even though we don't yet
know "the way", we can spread our wings,
shift our awareness, and trust that there is a
new unfolding that is destined to come.

It is the journey of metamorphosis that we
are being guided to walk down.

Whatever comes, know that it is part of how we
move through our own cycle of ego into the
dark night of the soul, and then finally, into
spiritual wisdom.

Sometimes we need intensity to drive the
vehicle of transformation.

While we want to remain strong and centered,
we also don't want to limit or cut ourselves off
from allowing whatever comes to move us,
change us, and transform us.

We have to remember to keep shifting our
awareness of what life is and what role we are
here to play; to allow ourselves to keep dying
and being reborn.  Keep questioning, keep growing,
keep allowing things to shock and surprise us, for
they are often the fuel for our continued growth.

author unknown
found on Facebook

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
water droplets on a white background
color inverted and zoom blurred :)

I Am Undone - Brian Thompson

I am undone.

I no longer remain,
and yet, I Am.

All that remains,
is this beautiful nothingness of all that Is;
a suchness of being beyond any event, memory or experience,
a knowingness transcendent of any concept,
including the illusions of space, continuity and time.

I know only
this presence of knowing
that knows only itself;
an empty space of infinite silence,
that contains no thing, no purpose and no meaning,
but from which all things, purpose and meanings arise.

I am indistinguishable,
yet, in me all things are distinguished.

I am the seemingly aspect-less one.

In this presence that I Am,
where the appearance of me and you,
of this and that and everything in between
seems to unfold, all such ideas dissolve
into the invisible truth of
None.

I know only
this blissful plenitude of all-pervading peace,
into which the dream of the universe unfolds,
where consciousness has awoken
within the void of the Absolute,
and has blissfully announced
awareness of itself as,
I Am.

Brian Thompson
Zen Thinking

Thank you No Mind's Land :)

~

...know oneself as the Knowing with which
all experience is known...
There is just transparent knowing
and you are that Knowing...

Rupert Spira

~

Photo - Fat globules in a pan
digitally zoom blurred 

Perfect Unfolding - David Carse

The ultimate understanding is a seeing
and a knowing rather than a comprehending.
And it does satisfy all questions,
though not answer them.
Answers become as irrelevant
as the questions themselves;
both cease in the seeing.

Do not judge the questioning or the longing,
the seeking or the sadness,
the impatience or the resistance,
the opening or the letting go.
It is all the perfect unfolding as it is;
only watch it and know you are not that.

You are Loving Awareness in which all this arises.
You are Quiet Compassionate Space in which the life
that you think of as 'yourself' unfolds.

The Still Expanse of Acceptance between the thoughts
is All That Is.
That is What You Are.
Let the Love that is this Stillness that You Are
Embrace you,
Overcome you.

David Carse
from - Perfect Brilliant Stillness
no longer in print


Via - No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Folds in a curtain
photo turned on its side

The Timeless Moment - Bodhipaksa & Hesse

Time was no longer a path with the past behind me
and the future before me, as we commonly conceive of it.
Instead there was a sense of an eternally unfolding present moment.

Rather than time being a journey along a linear path, change
 appeared to be mandala-like.  It seemed to be like a flower
 seen from above, endlessly unfolding from within,
 or like a kaleidoscope's image forever rearranging itself.

It struck me as highly misleading to think in terms of there being a
 past behind us and a future ahead of us.  Instead there was only
 this one present moment, eternally unfolding, according to its
 nature. I found myself in an eternal, timeless present...

Bodhipaksa - Living As A River

via: Markings

"I would like to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise
of its own unfolding"
John O'Donohue

~

Have you learned that secret from the river;
that there is no such thing as time?
That the river is everywhere at the same time,
at the source, at the current, in the ocean, and
in the mountains,

 everywhere...

And that the present only exists for it,
not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

Herman Hesse
Siddartha

via: Love Is A Place

~

Top Photo: Mandala art digitally altered
2nd Photo: An Aurora Borealis in Yellow Knife, Canada
 - a "river" in the sky :)
Sent to us by a friend

The Portal of Wholeness - Matt Licata

At times, you may be asked to travel into the very groundless and contradictory landscape of the emotional world, without any understanding of what is being asked of you.  It is so open here, but simultaneously disorienting to the mind that is longing for answers.  It is as if everything you were so sure about only days before has fallen away…

Unmetabolized feelings, orphaned sensations, and vivid images are surging in the somatic field, seeming disconnected and…..chaotic.  But things are not always as they seem as you approach the threshold of wholeness. The invitation has been made: trust in the process of disintegration and the intelligence of immediate experience.

Yes, it may always be disturbing to stay embodied to the burning feelings and sensations that appear alongside the dissolution of old dreams and the way you thought it was all going to turn out.  But in the commitment to meet what is appearing with presence, you may discover that this destruction is sacred, unbearably creative, and soaked with reorganizing wisdom.

Before you turn from the confusion and scramble to transform or heal it with learned process, open into the uncertainty, the hopelessness, and the breaking of your heart.  It is there you will find life, longing to erupt and shatter the dream of partiality [fragmentation].  For each visitor of the inner and outer worlds is unfolding in the radiant [moment] as an unprecedented portal of wholeness…

Matt Licata

~

Photo - reflection of the sky on the hood of a car
Photo upside down :)

From Grit to Pearl

Sitting on Sunday morning the image of a pearl arose and I remembered that a pearl is formed *through* irritation. A piece of sand or grit gets in the oyster and the oyster starts making a pearl around the irritant with layers and layers of pearl-essence, turning and turning the grit until it’s covered with a beautiful, shiny sheen.

And of course, loving metaphor as I do, I saw the association with the grit of life, the irritations of life, the aggravating, challenging circumstances of life that create multiple layers of irritation – and - the creation of a pearl. The oyster seemingly takes this grit, without complaining, and makes something beautiful of it… Or is it that something beautiful emerges *from* the grit of life, if we work with it, sit with it, roll it around, not spewing it out, but allowing it to be what it is, seeing it for what it is – the potential for beauty… The beauty of the pearl is a *result* of these layers of irritations and aggravations of life in a seeming process of metamorphosis…

What is revealed *through* the irritations, is this living essence of the pearl that in some ways created itself *because of* the irritations, through the rubbing and chaffing of the grit of life… As in – the irritations, the challenges of living, are still the Essence, revealing It’s beauty. The irritations and challenges of living *are* the living Presence emerging, or unfolding ItSelf , in and through what our minds and bodies find irritating and uncomfortable - if we give it a chance, if we stay with it, engaging in the experiences rather than running from them. If we learn to see the way the oyster sees :) – Ah – grit, let’s see what I can do with that…

And what is seen is that the beauty and wisdom of the irritations emerge over “time” it seems - or what appears to be time – waiting to be discovered within the shell of what I know to be “my life.” It is realized that the pearl is the culmination of many layers of realized wisdom that are formed along the way, from the nitty-gritty of living life as it is.

Even if we’ve had spontaneous awakenings to the Truth of our Essence, it seems life continues to give us experiences that expand the expression of the unfolding of that Essence, of Consciousness ItSelf, *through* the irritations and challenges of living. It’s an ongoing emergence, realizing that the totality of the experiences of life expands our awareness until it is ultimately realized that we are the wholeness of Being that we’ve been seeking – as we are – gritty as that may be…

It’s a shift in perspective from grit to Pearl…

~*~