Inner World - John O'Donohue

It is strange to be here.  The Mystery never leaves you alone.
Behind your image, below you words, above your thoughts, the
silence of another world waits.  A world lives within you.  No
one else can bring you news of this inner world.  Through our
voices, we bring out sound from the mountain beneath our
soul.  These sounds are words.  There are so many talking all
the time, loudly, quietly, in rooms, on streets, on TV, on radio,
in the paper, in books.  The noise of words keeps what we call
the world there for us.  We take each other's sounds and make
patterns and predictions, benedictions, and blasphemies.  Each
day, our tribe of language holds what we call the 'world' together.
Yet the uttering of the world reveals how each of us relentlessly
creates.  Everyone is an artist.  Each person brings out sound
out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.

Humans are new here.  Above us, the galaxies dance out toward
infinity. Under our feet is the ancient earth.  We are beautifully
molded from this clay.  Yet the smallest stone is millions of years
older than us. .....the silent universe seeks echo.

An unknown world aspires towards reflection.  Words are oblique
mirrors which hold your thought.  You gaze into these word mirrors
and catch glimpses of meaning, belonging shelter.  Behind their
bright surfaces is the dark and the silence.  Words are like the god
Janus, they face inwards and outwards at once.

If we become addicted to the external our interiority will haunt
us.  We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or
deed can still.  To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our
vulnerable complexity.  In order to keep our balance, we need
to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known 
and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together.
No one else can undertake this task for you.  You are the one
and only threshold of your inner world.  This wholesomeness
is holiness.  To be holy is natural; to befriend the worlds that
come to balance in you.

Behind the facade of image and distraction, each person is an
artist in this primal and inescapable sense.  Each one of us is
doomed and privileged to be an inner artist who carries and
shapes a unique world.

Human presence is a creative and turbulent sacrament, a 
visible sign of invisible grace.

John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering

2011

 

Rising In Perilous Hope - Marge Piercy

What can I hold in my hands this morning
that will not flow through my fingers?

What words can I say that will catch...

If my touch could heal, I would lay my hands
on your bent head and bellow prayers.

If my words could change the weather
or the government or the way the world
twists us....

what could I do but what I know?

I fit words together and say them;
it is a given like the color of my eyes.

I hope it makes a small difference, as
I hope the drought will break and the morning

come rising out of the ocean wearing
a cloak of clean sweet mist and swirling terns.

Marge Piercy
from: Colors Passing Through Us
2003

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

 

Gift from The Mystery - Danna Faulds

When I listen, words are everywhere,
riding the air currents like broad-winged hawks.
Poems are born in the molten centers
of stars.  Exploding into supernovas,
they travel light years to reach this spinning
ball of water and dirt, then wait eons more
to tell their tale.

When I'm lucky, a whole poem
arrives at once, sliding out of my psyche
as if it was mine, unexpectedly illuminating
this corner of the universe.

Words are everywhere when I grow still.
Whispered by lovers in mid-kiss
or sung as a lullaby; shouted in rage or prayed
by a saint whose face is lit with inner flames,
it's all fuel for my fire, grist for the turning
wheel of transformation, a gift from the
mystery to this finite world of form.

Danna Faulds
From: Limitless

~

Photo from the James Webb Space Telescope
from the Internet

 

Unintentionality - Richard Wehrman

The words, he felt, obscured, as
at the same time some revealed,
and it became a task of separation,
as of stones on the beach, the white
from the black, the large from the
small; yet this too exposed
artificiality, a point of view, an
ordering of the universe that denied
the given order, where all things
arrived together, and only an
analytical eye, a mind of obsession,
sought to make order, by grouping
what seems the same, from what
seemed not to belong.  And he saw
his unease with the way things were,
the need to shift reality to align
with his preference, his desire, so
that he wondered, why can I not
leave things alone?  But the words
(for this was where he started) when
left to themselves did their own
sorting, the way the wind mixed
maple leaves with ash, willow with
walnut, and the patterns of November
dazzled the eye, in its own ordered
disorder, and its truth was apparent,
its unintentionality soothed the
heart and settled the soul.  And he
said: words, whoever let you loose,
do what you will.

Richard Wehrman

From: Being Here

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"The Mystery" never leaves you - John O'Donohue

"The Mystery" never leaves you alone.  Behind your image,
below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another
world waits.  A world lives within you.  No one else can bring
you news of this inner world.  Through our voices, we bring

out sound from the mountain beneath our soul.  These sounds
 are words.  There are so many talking all the time, loudly,
quietly, in rooms, on streets, on TV, on radio in the paper,
 in books [on Facebook :)]. The noise of words keeps what we
call 'the world' there for us. We take each others' sounds and
make patterns and predictions, benedictions, and blasphemies.
Each day, our tribe of language holds what we call 'the world'
together.  Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes
the invisible to become visible.

Above us, galaxies dance out toward infinity.  Under our feet
is the ancient earth.  We are beautifully molded from this clay. 
Yet the smallest stone is millions of years older than us.  In our
thoughts,  the silent universe seeks echo.

An unknown world aspires towards reflection. Words are the
oblique mirrors which hold your thought.  You gaze into these
word mirrors and catch glimpses of meaning...
Behind their bright surface is the dark and the silence.  Words
are like the god Janus, they face inwards and outwards at once.

If we become addicted to the external our interiority will haunt
us.  We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or
deed can still.  To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our
vulnerable complexity.  In order to keep our balance, we need to
hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and
unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together.  No
one else can undertake this task for you.  You are the one and
only threshold of your inner world.  This wholesomeness is
holiness.  To be holy is natural; to befriend the worlds that
come to balance in you.

Behind the facade of image and distraction, each person is
an artist in this primal and inescapable sense.  Each one of
us is doomed and privileged to be an inner artist who carries
and shapes a unique world.

Human presence is a creative and turbulent sacrament, a
visible sign of invisible grace.

John O'Donohue
from Anam Cara

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from Unsplash

Just Below Our Fear - Stephen Levine

There are words in us
that don't know how
to get to the surface.
Words hidden in our marrow
afraid to show themselves
concerned the world will end
if they are uttered.
Words that cross
the river of pain
that wish to tell the world
how much love is hidden
just below our fear.
And some of these words
sometimes find their way
to live among us
in the trust to hear them,
words that spin our compass,
anger and loneliness redirected
by insight and forgiveness,
words like mercy and compassion,
words we never trusted to exist.

Words hide in the strangest places,
under stones, in clouds,
in a moment of a friend's kindness,
in a moment of generosity;
in poems beginning their first line
climbing happily into the heart singing,
how close the moon comes
when we trust the night.
Words even hide in other words.
Mercy hides in the hesitant pause,
questioning how much can be trusted
to the tongue, to the pen,
invoking their true voice
rise to the surface
to sing their original song.

Stephen Levine


via - The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Can you see the two "eyes" in
the cloud looking down ? :)

Words

I’ve been thinking about words lately, as in do I use too many words to express myself, or maybe I don’t use the “right” words, and maybe I’ve gotten too caught up in words – moving away from the Simplicity of Being… I love words – as you may have noticed. :) I love the rhythm, the cadence, the pulse of words, the creation of language, and the picture that words create.

There are some in the internet spiritual blogosphere who wrangle and rant over words used to describe the Indescribable, especially in Non-Duality circles. You could call them the “word police.” (And, by the way, I’m not talking about anyone who’s reading this blog;). The “word police” take issue with the word “me” because they’ve become very fixated on the *idea* that there is no me/self, and no one having an experience, and no one reading this blog. And you can’t say the word “I” because there is no “I.” That is all fine in the abstract, what my husband calls “ooga-booga” language, but can we *relate* to it? “Technically” they are “right”, in the sense that there is no *individual* “me”, *separate* from That which IS, having an *individual* experience because we are all just Awareness/Beigness living Itself – here in the dream of Consciousness – that *appears* to be a lot of different individuals living a “life.” (And now maybe *I’m* getting a little too ooga-booga :) And even if one knows this intimately, has realized this at their very core, the question still remains, for me, can we *relate* to that languaging of no-me, no one here, etc.? Is it helpful? Is it a good finger pointing to the moon? To which the word police would respond – there’s no one to relate to it, and there’s no one to help… And on it goes – caught in their own conundrums – which only creates a *self*-consciousness about the words we’re using. So my question is: Isn’t their censorship of words coming from the “me” function that they deny exists? Hel-lo…

Although words can never be a true reflection of, or expression of Awareness Itself, or the *experience* of it, there is *something* that wants to express these words that we write… or speak… or sing… It seems all we have is words (well except for dance, music, art and all forms of creative expression – but you get what I’m saying – maybe?:) If we don’t use words to express what we know to be true in our Hearts, how would we express that which *lives* us – which, it appears, seems to want to express Itself – as us – as words. It’s all a *living* experience of Knowing Awareness – which speaks in and through us – as us. That’s part of The Mystery I guess – that we’re all expressions of The Mystery, and we all express differently. And yet some expressions speak to us more clearly than others, more deeply.

Recently I received Dorothy Hunt’s online newsletter. She’s the Spiritual Director of the Moon Mountain Sangha in the San Francisco Bay area. She speaks to this issue of words. She says: “At the heart of all movement is an ever-present Stillness and Silence to which nothing can be added, and from which nothing can be subtracted. It is from this silent Source that the mind arises as an expression of Truth (my italics). Every day thousands of words form in our minds – streams of thoughts…, commentary…,interpretations…, identities…, judgments…, theories…, perhaps a few profound insights now and then, and a great deal of useless drivel. Some words simply swim in the sea of mind-waves unspoken; others are spoken as part of functioning. And there are words that invite us to a deeper reality. The most potent part of our communication is the place that words come from.” (italics mine).

And it seems maybe that’s the key in giving voice, through words: Where do the words come from? Are they expressions of that simple Aware space of Being, from the Heart, or are they just mind clutter, ramblings and rantings of the mind that *attempt* to speak *about* “IT”…? Dorothy says that “it is possible to speak from the deep silence of Being within” – the voice of Stillness.

I think we know this when we hear it – when we *hear* Presence *behind* the words. We know when someone is speaking from the Heart of Being. It is personal, and authentic, and real – not “just words” – but expressions that are able to touch the Heart and create a resonance within… We’re all little tuning forks, vibrating with those expressions of Life, sometimes called words, emerging in us – to *speak.*

I know when I’m speaking from the space of Stillness – and when it’s coming from the mind: rambling – trying to connect one thought to another. You can probably hear it too – when I wander off into the thought stream. I’m a word-crafter, so it’s easy for me to get lost in the words without paying attention to where they’re coming from. If you notice me doing it, you don’t need to get a billy club out, just tap me on the shoulder and give me one of those looks.:) I'll understand.

Heart Smiles - MeANderi

http://www.aserenitysanctuary.com/