The Kiss of The Mystery...

There is an intimacy in deep Silence
that is indefinable, inexplicable, inexpressible
and hauntingly sublime...

A fluidity of

~ s p a c i o u s n e s s ~

A movement of Awareness,

a w a r e ~ i n g...

Everything is open

Pure 

BE ~ ing ~ ness

There is depth and breadth,
yet no boundary.

There is substance and fullness
yet - Emptiness...

It is a subtle, rhythmic

intimacy
of
the Unheard

embracing,
surrounding, and filling
every crack and crevice of existence...
Unwinding the contractions
of
body and mind.

There is a "sanity" in this Silence
that bestows a soundness of heart through Grace
that is beyond mere mental comprehension ~
beyond cognition...

Finding the deeper Rhythm within
one loses a sense of "self"
and becomes
The Silence ~

Breathing ItSelf...

"knowing" it is

The Breath of the Infinite

The Whisper of Love

The Kiss of The Mystery

*

Mystic Meandering
June 2016

~

Photo - Aurora Borealis
from the South Pole

The Aurora seems to take the shape of a round face
looking down, kissing the earth ~
The Kiss of The Mystery :) 

The Temple of the Prairie...

Wanted to share this beautiful scenery from the prairie we visited yesterday, just after a storm passed through.  There was nothing but Pure Quiet, as if one had entered a sacred temple...  The air was pungent with sage and sweet grass - Nature's Incense! :) - delighting the senses, igniting the spirit of Life within.  The words under the photos are the words of Kabir.  Many of us know the "secret sound" that he refers to as the Primordial Silence within...  At the end I have added a quote from a person named Christina Harris that I found years ago...

If you want the truth...

Listen to the secret sound,

the real sound,

which is inside you...

The music from the strings
no one touches...

~ ~ ~

What remains is the child I was...
All other images once living here
have stepped away.
With each leave taking
the view is simplified.

Christina Harris

The Infinite is Everywhere - Danna Faulds

I am everywhere present
said the [Infinite.]

Seek me in the stately trees,
or the melodies of sparrows
and you will surely find me.

Look for me in the Buddha's smile,
the countenance of Christ,
the words of the Koran and Sanskrit prayers.
I am always there.

Turn your attention to the sky
where the movements of the moon and stars
trace my beauty...

Experience true emptiness
and my presence permeates the void.
Now bring your focus closer
to your heart.

Grow still and find me within you.

Separation dissolves like salt water
when you experience your true identity as me.

Practice devotion and let go into the ocean
of my love,
or be the open space from which all things arise.

One and two,
duality and union,
are both true.

So I say be jubilant
and be at peace,
for inside you is the seed and the fruit,
the tree and the root.

Choose to be in communion with me
and see the whole of this
creation infused with one energy...

Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner and Poet

Excerpt From:One and Two are Both True
From: Prayers to the Infinite

Simply - Silence...

In the midst of chaos there is always Silence...
In the midst of complexity there is the simplicity of Awareness...
Being in the Rhythm of Silence unwinds the mind - unwinds the fears.
It unwinds the contracted body, thoughts, emotions, and feelings
that have become an habituated response to life.

Silence is the medicine that brings us back into the current of Life
again; into the Infinite Presence that lives us...

It is not "mother earth" pulsing through us,
but That which also pulses through "mother earth" -
the cosmic pulse of Life that infuses all things...

Reach deeply into the Stillness of Silence
within you - the Primordial Space of Silence
and thrive there...

In this Stillness is the congruency of Life...

Feel the Stillness,
the Sacred Silence...
Awaken to its Rhythm...

Go behind the mind,
to the Essence of Existence -
Silence...

Sweet, Sweet, Silence...


Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2006

*

Photo - Fall leaves remaining on a branch
color inverted digitally giving this wonderful
oriental, zen-like affect of simplicity...

Fear Not the Pain - Rilke

You who let yourselves feel;
enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins behind you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins;
Fear not the pain, the suffering.
Let its weight fall back
into the earth...

The trees you planted in childhood
have grown too heavy.
You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air,
to what you cannot hold.

Rainer Maria Rilke

~*~

...recognize that life is not in our control.
We are a small part of a great dance.

Jack Kornfield
Buddhist Teacher

~*~

Both light and shadow
are the dance of Love.

Rumi

~*~

Photo - reflection of Light on the floor

Simply - Love...

Come into Peace...

Even in the midst of chaos there is Love...
Even in the midst of complexity there is Love...
Even in the midst of confusion there is Love...

In everything there is Love...

In life and in death
we are held deep within the Great Heart.
All that matters is that we know
we are loved...


Mystic Meandering
2006

~*~

It is not the work of love to change people,
or force their growth in our direction.
The work of love depends on giving
others a sense safety, nurturing their
confidence to lean into life
and into the unknown...

Mark Nepo
From: A Thousand Ways to Listen

What Remains - Danna Faulds and Rashani

Despite illness of body or mind,
in spite of blinding despair or
habitual belief, who you are
is whole...

Let nothing keep you separate from that truth.

The soul, illuminated from within
longs to be known for what it is.
Undying, untouched by fire or storms of life,
there is a place inside where stillness
and abiding peace reside.

You can ride the breath to go there.

Despite doubt or hopeless turns of mind,
you are not broken.
Spirit surrounds you, embraces, fills you
from the inside out.

Release everything that isn't your true nature.

What's left...

the fullness -
light, and shadow,
claim all that as your
birthright.

Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner and Poet
the Poem: "Birthright"
From: Go In and In

~*~

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.

Rashani Rea

The Other Window - Mark Nepo

[.....]

At the edge of winter, open the window
of your heart, see your breath,
how what you bring up becomes
the air.

When you're ready or pushed,
close your eyes and the other window
will appear,
the one that faces all of time.
What flies there never lands,
but hovers, dropping the seeds of
infinity in the breaks we can't heal.
So open the window of your pain,
though the whispers tell you
to nail it shut, and let in everything
that's ever lived.

What flies and never lands
has been waiting.
Be brave.
Don't run.
Let the fire
around your window
burn until you become
the opening.

Mark Nepo
Excerpt from the poem: "Love Your Window"
From the book: Inside the Miracle

The Forest Knows - Wagoner and Berry

Stand still.  The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.  Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.  You must let it find you.

David Wagoner
From "Lost"

~*~

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirrings become quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it.  As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

Wendell Berry
"I Go Among Trees"

Adrift - Chuck Surface

All the words I have written...
May have given you the illusion that I
have my bearings, and an understanding
of all that is unfolding...
When I am simply adrift
Without a compass...

Rudderless

Here...

In this Great Mystery

Excerpted from "Adrift"
by Chuck Surface
In the Garden of the Beloved

~*~

I woke up recently with this realization:
It is only this sense of me that feels adrift, lost, floundering -
not the Eternal Being that I am...
And, it is all happening within
the vast Ocean of the Great Mystery...
Everything happens within the Great Mystery...

And so it is all really okay, this floundering...
I accept it... Embrace it... Trust it...
It is simply where "I" am in time...

When I meet and embrace the feeling with acceptance
the grip of fear and lostness inside me lets go...
I then am able to float in the soft embrace of The Great Mystery,
and wait for the Inner Movement of
The Ineffable again...

Photo - taken by my brother...

~*~

Roam aimlessly
and find
What-Is

Wu Hsin

Let the Mind Be the Mind - Danna Faulds

Let the mind be the mind...

Behind its restless activity,
just one layer deeper is stillness,
and beneath even that,
is an ocean of mystery and truth.

Swim in this eternal sea
until you know yourself
to be infinity,
and bring that knowing
back into your day.
Why struggle to be what
you already are?

Let the mind be the mind,
but don't bind yourself
to its limited reality.

Trust your experience of vastness.
Trust the truth that never
loses potency
or disappears
in fear.

Let the mind be the mind
and identify not with thought
but with Silence...


Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner and Poet
From: Limitless

~*~

Still your mind in me,
still yourself in me,
and without a doubt
you shall be united in me,
Lord of Love,
dwelling in the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

Come... Sit...

My heart, sit only with those who know and understand you.
Sit only under a tree that is full of blossoms...

Rumi

~*~

Come...  Sit...
The UnUtterable said,
inviting me deeper
into Its Infinite Silence -
into the enduring Mystery that
Illuminates and Enlivens...
Breathing Life into existence...

Come...  Sit...

Among the clutter of the mind,
between the chaos and confusion,
amidst life's disturbances and obstacles
that are hard to navigate...

Just listen

...in Stillness...


Come...  Sit...

In the respite of The Great Silence
revealing all that is true
in this life experience,
and the Great Reality
beyond...

Come...  Sit...

emptied out...
humbled...
opened...

Remembering the Eternal Being that you are...

Receding again into the UnBirthed
that birthed you...

Come...  Sit...

Befriend the Luminous Silence...

Come...  Sit...

Mystic Meandering
May 2016

The Silent Thread - Stafford

There's a thread you follow.
It goes among things that change.
But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt and die;
and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford
Poem: "The Way It Is."

1998

Interpretive Note:  There is a deep thread that runs through all of us.
It is not our beliefs, political views, or our "spirituality."  It is the
thread of Silence of our Eternal Being; that Ineffable, Unmanifest
Being, that never changes.  I experience this in times of meditative
Silence.  Some may call it the Tao.  I don't know that this is what the
author was alluding to in his poem, but it is how the words spoke to me,
based on my own experience..  It is the thread of the Ineffable that we
can never be separate from, because it *is*, in essence, what we really
are - the Ultimate Reality...

~*~

We go on pilgrimages to the
edge of our lives
to see what life is like
on the other side....

...I paddle the sacred river
to touch what is sacred inside...

Rod MacIver
Rod MacIver Art
excerpted from:
"Wild Waters and The Tao"

Rendezvous With Silence...

Rendezvous with The Great Silence
through the Inner Window
of your Heart -
the portal to "The Mystery."

Sit quietly and listen deeply,
with no agenda or expectation,
leaving the window of your Heart open -
waiting for the song of Silence...

Feel the caress of Silence begin,
inviting you in
with Her gentle breath,
breathing in your Heart...

The Silence that is always there
opens HerSelf to you - always.
Turn inward to the Inner Window,
bow to the Sacred Silence within and
enter Her Cosmic Mystery,
Her endless Vastness...

Settle into the Rhythm of Primordial Silence.
Feel the soft dance of intimacy absorb you,
in this silent rendezvous...

Nothing disturbs The Great Silence.
Nothing disturbs the depth of It.
Nothing prevents Its Song
from being sung...

Everything occurs within this Great Silence.
All life, all breath, all death, all movement
occurs within this Vastness of
Sacred Silence...

In the intimate awareness of Silence
know that everything is living according to Its
natural order, is following Its
natural Rhythm,
the Rhythm of The Tao of Life,
including this life you think you have created...

All life is being lived
by the Great Mystery...

All is the pulse of Silence...

The pulse of the Cosmos.

Mystic Meandering
May 2016

~*~


Photo - Northern Light Swirls of an
Aurora Borealis

The Sacred Self - Bhagavad Gita

Creatures rise, creatures vanish;
I alone am real, Arjuna,
looking out, amused, from deep
within the eyes of every creature.

I am the object of all knowledge,
father of the world, its mother.
Source of all things, of impure and
Pure, of holiness and horror.

I am the goal, the root, the witness,
home and refuge, dearest friend,
creation and annihilation,
everlasting seed and treasure.

I am immortality and
death, am being and non-being.

I am the Self, Arjuna, seated
in the heart of every creature.
I am the origin, the middle,
and the end of that all must come to.

All your thoughts, all your actions,
all your fears and disappointments,
offer them to me, clear-hearted;
know them all as passing visions.

I am always with all beings;
I abandon no one.  And
however great your inner darkness,
you are never separate from me.

Let your thoughts flow past you, calmly:

keep near me, at every moment.
Trust me with your life, because I
am you, more than you yourself are.

Bhagavad Gita

~*~

This is Krishna talking to Arjuna according
 to the Hindu tradition.  In Hinduism Krishna
represents the Origin of the Universe,
the Unmanifest, the Eternal Being that is present
throughout all creation, looking out from deep within
the eyes of every being...

The Primal Mystery - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Everything is illumined with Divine Presence.
The Beloved reveals [ItSelf] through life's myriad forms...

We make an image of the Divine to suit us,
to give us comfort and security,
to contain the pain of being human.
All images gradually fall away,
for they too are veils of separation,
denying the truth of union.

How can the Beloved be separate?
And when we call out to God
who calls out to whom?

Our cry is itself the Beloved's,
crying out to ItSelf...

The Mystery is that the Beloved calls to [ItSelf]
within our Heart...

The mystical path is the journey Home -
a return journey in which we "die" to
the false self and rediscover our
essential union with God -
the primal Mystery...

Real "spiritual awakening"
is the awakening of the heart
in which the Divine comes alive
within us through Grace...

Words of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic
From: The Prayer of the Heart
I merely put the words together in prose poetry form

~*~

God is a metaphor for a mystery

that absolutely transcends all human
categories of thought.

Joseph Campbell

~*~

Photo: Mandala Art
"Into Infinity"
Mystic Meandering

The Great Mother - The Tao - Lao Tzu

It was in the beginning.
It will remain forever.
It is impersonal, eternal,
immutable, omnipresent,
bodieless, immaterial.
It is nameless.
It is indestructible.
It is the first cause
from which all
substances
take their origin
and all phenomena flow.

The great Tao
is all pervading.
All things depend on it for life.
It is the Mother of all...

It existed before the personal God.
It is the father of God.
It is the producer of God.
It is the originator of heaven and earth.
It is the mother of all things.

It is the sanctuary where all find refuge...


From the introduction to the translation
by Stephen Mitchel

~*~

The Tao is the Mother.
It is the mother of the Universe,
the Infinite,
born before the existence of
Heaven and Earth.

~*~

The Tao is called the Great Mother,
empty, yet inexhaustible.
It gives birth to infinite worlds.

It's always present in you.

Tao Te Ching

Email Subscribers Technical Difficulties - Again!

To my Email Subscribers.

There are technical difficulties with Feed Burner once again - the service that feeds you my posts via email.  This morning it erroneously sent out an old post from Jan 2016.  I am once again trying to work with Feed Burner to get it fixed.  I suggest that if you want the most current, up-to-date posts that you sign up as a "follower" on the blog itself.  You can always sign up anonymously if you do not wish to follow publicly.

Thank you for being here and reading my blog!

Hermitage of Silence...

As I sit...meditating...breathing...
I feel the familiar subtle pull inward,
carrying me
to the deep Silence within;
the Inner Hermitage...

I recognize the spacious Emptiness
of Pure Beingness -
Pure Awareness.
I hear the silent call
of an inaudible Voice.
and feel Its magnetic pull,
drawing me
ever more deeply
in
~
~

~

a death spiral
that leads to birth

There is no choice but to succumb. . .

Dying into the Inner Reality. . . 

Dissolving the perception of self. . .

In this space of quintessential Quiet
all mental agitation,
all emotional reactiveness,
all verbalization of thought
...cease

There is only the deepening
space of Silence;
a Holy enclave of Silent repose
prior to expression,
with no need for the habituated outward
movement of the mind.
Only listening...
to the inherent Silence of
an ineffable language... known intimately
to those who hear...

In this all-pervasive Stillness,
"I" am absorbed... by
the Primordial Womb
into the Vastness
of
Silence...

my Hermitage...

Mystic Meandering
May 1, 2016


Photo: snow against window
taken from the inside
leaving this womb-like affect

~*~

"...we die to the person we think we are.
Again and again we die to our limited sense of self
in order to step into the vaster dimension of our being.....
[We] are driven to venture into the depths."

Hafiz

Heart Summons - Rumi

In the silence between your heartbeat
bides a summons.
Do you hear it?

Name it if you must,
or leave it forever nameless,
but why pretend it is not there?

Leave that which is not,
but appears to be.
Seek that which is,
but is not apparent.

Rumi

What in your life is calling you,
when all the noise is silenced,
the meetings adjourned...
the lists laid aside,
and the Wild Iris blooms
by itself
in the dark forest...

What still pulls on your soul?

Rumi

Solace...

What remains...
when all surface identities,
all beliefs and facades of truth have
proven to be untrue,
and the mental constructs begin to fail...
is a more softened, innocent perspective;
a simplified view of reality...

One begins to feel more,
viscerally,
the finer, subtler vibration
of the Ineffable;
which was here long before we were born...

There is no need to remember...
The mind and body may fail in their functions
may still contract
around old thought and feeling impulses
of the brain...
But trust that the Ineffable in you
Remembers Its Origins...

So Rest...
Let the mind float...

Be still, aware...
Keep feeling...
Keep listening inwardly,
for the Music,
The Divine Rhythm,
the pulse of the Universe
playing subtly,
the original Rhythm of your pre-conceived life...

Find solace in the Rhythm
that plays you;
the Breath within the breath
that breathes you;
the Rhythm of
That which is
eternally Present *in* you;
That to which you have
devoted your
Heart...


Mystic Meandering
April 22, 2016

~*~

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

Wait and Remember - Li-Young Lee

Wait for evening.

Then you'll be alone.

Wait for the playground to empty.

Then call out those companions from childhood:

The one who closed his eyes

and pretended to be invisible.

The one to whom you told every secret.

The one who made a world of any hiding place.

And don't forget the one who listened in silence

while you wondered out loud:

Is the universe an empty mirror? A flowering tree?

Is the universe the sleep of a woman?

Wait for the sky's last blue

(the color of your homesickness).

Then you'll know the answer.

Wait for the air's first gold (that color of Amen).

Then you'll spy the wind's barefoot steps.

Then you'll recall that story beginning

with a child who strays in the woods.

The search for him goes on in the growing

shadow of the clock.

And the face behind the clock's face

is not his father's face.

And the hands behind the clock's hands

are not his mother's hands.

All of Time began when you first answered

to the names your mother and father gave you.

Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.

Then, you can trade places with the wind.

Then you'll remember your life

as a book of candles,

each page read by the light of its own burning.

Li-Young Lee
Poem: "Become Becoming"

From Behind My Eyes