Confessions of a Wanderer - Fred LaMotte

The grail knights thought it a disgrace to quest in a group.
So each entered the forest where there was no path, and
where it was darkest.

La Queste del Saint Graal, 13th C.

Up until age seven, I wandered.  Then I began to buy the
propaganda of my school.  The teachers insisted that if
I wanted to grow up I had better get life all figured out, and
learn to be a success.  Of course, they were just passing along
to the next generation their own fear of failure.

Took me the next half century to realize that they were pretending.
Absolutely every adult I met was pretending to know.  Over the
years I too pretended, and played the role of knower.  So that I
could be a successful doer.

Now I know that I don't know.  And the more I don't know, I know
who I am.  And the more I do.  Because it is not the do-er who
does, but Being.

If you've found the true path, congratulations, please don't guide
me. If you've found the movement that will finally save
humanity, congratulations: please don't sign me up.  Because
what I have found is the courage to wander again.

I have abandoned the compass technique.  Now I enter the ancient
forest precisely where the trees are unfelled.  I have no desire to
super-impose my map of consolation over this unfathomably mystery.

.....The blossom of Correct Teaching withers away, we are the
fragrance that remains.  Just by admitting we know nothing, we
sigh together and breathe life.

Letting go of our search, we meet each other where we get lost, 
and arrive at our destination.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Full Moon July 2022

 

Questioning Existence - a meandering...

Arising from a deep slumber
I began to wonder:

...maybe there is no
"mysterious meaning" to life.

Is there meaning to trees, to grass,
to rocks, to sky? - do they even care...

They just are...  They just exist...

Everything seems to struggle to exist:
a struggle for survival - or maybe even
a struggle for death,
but with no "spiritual" overlay -
just life living itself...

Maybe there are no "spiritual" standards to live up to;
like being on the "right path";
no "spiritual cookies" to achieve;
like "enlightenment."
If there is no "right way" -no "right path"
then doing anything "right" doesn't matter...

I think I'm discovering the futility of striving
after some "spiritual" meaning to life;
some "mystical mystery" to explain existence...

Existence is an enigma...

All our beliefs are just trying to explain it really;
how we try to understand the ineffable.
But we exist in a bubble of unknowing,
where the blind lead the blind,
professing to know
the "Truth of Existence."

Mystic Meandering
July 1, 2023

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Unknowableness - Richard Wehrman

He searched for certainty
in an uncertain world;
he looked at the unseen,
and since it was unseen,
sought to bring it near,
to refine its sharpness,
to make it holdable, to
find tangibility.  His
efforts all failed; he sought
to make water solid, to 
give soul a distinct form,
to quantify love so that
he could hold it in a box,
to carry it with him.

His efforts all failed.
With every new attempt
he saw the outcome, his
patterns became transparent,

yet he still walked  familiar
paths; only old age
seemed to offer help, taking
away his capacities; the
way one thing became
another, without his knowing
how.  Only unknowableness
seemed to offer any
way in, to bring him,
unexpectedly, relief from
his mind.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here

~  

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Spiritual Egos - Fred LaMotte

Spiritual egos make a distinction between "beginners techniques"
and "advanced techniques."  Their intellect wants something
difficult to do, a sense of accomplishment.  That is why so
many new age teachers speak of their spiritual "work."  Do
they ever speak of their spiritual "play"?

Ease is the cure for dis-ease.  The deepest, most healing
spiritual practice, we ease into.  In fact, we do not practice.
We let go of practice.

The goal is never an achievement done by "advanced" practice,
but the dissolution of the do-er.  It is known by un-knowing and
done by un-doing.  This can only happen to the effortless.  The
most powerful meditation is the simplest, the most natural.

When you really look at people who carry a bag of "advanced"
techniques, you often see a weariness behind the stiff mask of
their perpetual smile. Of they look tentative, because they are
always taking the next step, and never completely here.  Only
the beginner dwells in eternal freshness...  The beginner is never
 advanced because she is present.

In the deepest and most natural meditation, you never have to
leave your body.  Every atom of your body is already woven out
of swirling stars....  No wind can uproot the beginner.  No
wound can puncture the intergalactic stillness of the Beginner's
core.

Transcending your body is not an advanced practice. It is a practice
of disconnection. That is why, in the Anapanasati Sutra, the Buddha
said, "Awareness of body in the body."  He did not say,
"Transcend the body."  He said to grok the body from within the body,
for consciousness and matter are one energy,
every cell and photon trembling with the sap of awareness.

...be a beginner.  Always feel the freshness of the first day of creation.
Now is the beginning.  Now is the end of time.  How could "now" be
advanced?

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - MM 
the two faces of Pumpkin Head :)

 

UnKnowing - Chuck Surface

"The great religions are ships,
Poets, life boats.
Every sane person I know,
Has jumped overboard."

Hafez

~

My mind has lost its will,
To seek knowledge and understanding.
It no longer dreams of resolution,
To a Mystery beyond comprehension.

For after impassioned consideration,
It has concluded, rationally, empirically,
That Unknowing IS the resolution,
Any sane person will come to.

And from this Pregnant Fact is birthed...

The mind's Surrender,
The Heart having long ago Drowned,
In Love.

Chuck Surface

Facebook

~

I'm not "meditating", but Remembering.
Not in thought or image of something known,
Outside myself, something "other" there.
But a Feeling of my Essence, my Soul, Here.

And in that instant of Remembrance,
Before words, thoughts, or images can arise,
The whole of my Being Sighs in Ecstasy...

Chuck Surface

excerpt from Yes, and Yes
Facebook

"Unknowing knowing" Commentary - Granger

The following is the commentary by Ivan Granger that
accompanied the previously posted poem:
"Unknowing knowing"/"I Entered the Unknown."
I thought it might be helpful...

He says:

...the poem's archaic use of the word "knowing" implies a
general sense of knowledge acquired through reason and the
testimony of the senses.

The Spanish Saint, [St. John of the Cross] is speaking about
the mystical idea of "unknowing", the state in which all
concepts and mental filters have been set aside.  In that state
of unknowing, we rise above the elaborate constructions of the
logical mind and come to rest in pure awareness ("knowing by
unknowing").  He is contrasting true, unfiltered knowing, gnosis,
with the mere accumulations and organization of information.

To be unknowing in this sense is to encounter every instant
entirely as it is, in pure wonder, without projections, without
anticipation or agitation.  [Whereas] the intellectual mind.....
is always processing, analyzing and making everything fit
within its comprehension.  In interprets.
Awareness can step beyond the intellect to fully apprehend
reality...

This state of supreme unknowing is not perception in the sense of
drawing in and interpreting exterior input through the senses.  In
normal perception, the intellect sifts and sorts that sensory data
and formulates it into a working hypothesis of what reality is.

...the mystic's unknowing is the centered awareness of unfiltered
reality.....without an egoic agenda.  The full awareness in this
state of unknowing does not sift reality, it bathes in it.

"The transcendence  of "knowledge".....is found to be an
experience of "the deepest ecstasy/of the Divine Essence."
[as St. John of the Cross calls it].

Ivan M Granger
Commentary from: This Dance of Bliss

Poetry Chaikhana

"Unknowing knowing" - St. John of the Cross

I entered the unknown,
and there I remained unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

Where I entered I knew not,
but seeing myself there,
not knowing where,
great things then made themselves known.
What I sensed I cannot say,
for I remained unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

In this peace and purity
was perfect knowledge.
In profound solitude
I understood with absolute clarity
something so secret
that I was left stammering,
all knowledge transcended.

So deep was I within,
so absorbed, so transported,
that all senses fled,
and outer awareness fell away.
My spirit received the gift
of unknowing knowing,
all knowledge transcended.

He who reaches this realm
loses himself,
for all he once knew
now is beneath his notice,
and his mind so expands
that he remains unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

And the higher he rises
the less he knows;
That is the dark cloud
that shines in the night.
The one who knows this
always remains unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

This knowing by unknowing
is of such exalted power,
that the disputations of the learned
fail to grasp it,
for their knowledge does not reach
to knowing by unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

Of such supreme perfection
is this knowledge
that no faculty or method of mind
can comprehend it;
but he who conquers himself
with this unknowing knowing,
will always transcend.

And if you are ready to receive it,
this sum of all knowledge is discovered
in the deeper ecstasy
of the Divine Essence.
Goodness and grace
grant us this unknowing,
all knowledge transcended.

St. John of the Cross
(1542-1591)
Original title: "I Entered the Unknown"
From: This Dance of Bliss
by Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana