No False Steps - Agnes Martin

Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous
delays and wanderings off the track I want to say
that they are not what they seem to be.  I want to
say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are
not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error;
and it all has to be done.  That which seems like a
false step is the next step.

Agnes Martin

Writings

Artsy

~

Photo - a rock pathway, color inverted...

Who then is breathing? - Ilchi Lee

Observe your own body.  It breathes.
You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer
conscious of your own ideas of self-identity.
Who then is breathing?

The collection of information that you mistakenly think is you
is not the protagonist in this drama called the breath.  In fact,
you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening.

You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot
purposely keep your own life going.  The expression, 'my life'
is actually an oxymoron, a result of mistaken assumption...

You don't possess life; life expresses itself through you.
Your body is a flower that life let bloom,
a phenomenon created by Life.

Ilchi Lee

Non-Duality - Monk in the World

...non-duality.

It's really not a place we go to but a place we realize.

And we realize it by taking the time to be silent,
to be in solitude, to breathe and wait for the
grace to be given by the Mystery we call
Love.

Alan - Monk in the World

Excerpt from a post written for his grand-daughters

The Play of Emotion - Rafael Stoneman

Here I am Here again
Not again
But only Now
Though it seems that moments are repeating
It is really One continuous moment.

What changes and what remains the same?
Somehow through the prism of the mind
many moods appear in consciousness
although there is only one Ultimate mood.
This is the miracle of color
The play of emotion.
On the negative end of the scale
we condemn the negative.
But we imagine that we are on the positive end
when we seek ways to remove the negative.
How positive would we feel if there was only
the positive end of the scale?
If we are willing to sacrifice the pain
are we willing to sacrifice the pleasure?
Equanimity is a dear friend.
One that holds the same embrace
for praise and for blame.
The same space for fortune and

for misfortune.
The same face for respect
and betrayal.

Rafael Stoneman

via my friend Michel
at No Mind's Land
where I get a lot of
wonderful posts to reblog :)
Thanks Michel!

~

Photo - original pic was a fire in the fireplace,
digitally zoom blurred and color altered - magic :)

The Days are Round - Jean Giono

Days begin and end in the dead of night.
They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which
lead to ends - arrow, road, a person's life...
They are shaped round, in the manner of eternal things...

Civilization tried to persuade us we are going towards something,
a distant goal.  We have forgotten that our only goal is to live,
to live each and every day, and that if we live each and every day,
our true goal is achieved.

All civilized people see the day beginning at dawn or a little after,
or a long time after or whatever time their work begins;
this they lengthen according to their work,
during what they call "all day long;" and end it
when they close their eyes.
It is they who say the days are long.

On the contrary, the days are round.

Jean Giono
Rondeur Des Jours
French Novelist

~

For Summer Solstice and the Natural Cycles of Life

~

Photo taken by my brother somewhere in New Hampshire

The Weaver and the Loom - Danna Faulds

Sit here for a bit.
Place yourself outside the frenzied pace of life.

Slow down long enough to appreciate birds in flight,
water drops like prisms in the grass and countless
shades of green.

Step off the fast track and listen to the sound of breath
and birdsong.

Take a moment to just be,
and in being, know the whole of this creation,
mystery and madness, passion and profanity,
know it all as one, stunning tapestry.

Sit still
and the thin line between sacred and profane simply
fades away.
There is nothing then to reconcile.

All the disparate are woven on the loom of life.

Sit here a bit
and your unique place in the pattern becomes clear.
Take the still point with you when it's time to walk away.

Make the choice to see affinity,
to watch the picture taking shape as thread joins thread.

Dare to be the weaver and the loom,
creator and creation, the sower and the sown.

In a moment of stillness,
all that came before is seen as one.

Danna Faulds
From: Go In and In

Danna is"...a long term practitioner of Kripalu Yoga.

She writes:
"Some days, the first line of a poem interrupts me and insists on
being written down - NOW!  Other days, I write the words 'This
is what I have to say to you' at the top of the page and see what
comes.  Like a faucet dispensing water from a hidden reservoir,
this kind of writing allows the formless mystery to flow into my
conscious life.  What I tap into when I write from the quiet of my
meditation cushion feels limitless.  Each morning finds me at the
edge of my current experience, writing about where I am stuck,
where I am learning to go, and what is calling me forward right
now.  Words on the page, both poetry and prose, are the bread
crumbs left behind as I move beyond my comfort zone and into
the unknown..."

(excerpt from Amazon.com)

Realization - Darryl Bailey

You simply need to acknowledge the life experience you already have.
Most people do not acknowledge, in any clear way, what their life
experience is or has been.  This acknowledgement is not about coming
to another idea or description.  It's not about a focus on new and
complicated thoughts.  It's a simple acknowledgement of something
we already know.  It's about realizing the vital, moving, shifting
liveliness that this moment is.

The basic happening of this moment is a moving, shifting, dancing
event presenting itself.  Even if we don't call it anything - if we
make no attempt to do it - it still happens.

[.....]

Everything is changing.  Whether it's a body, a thought, a mood,
a situation, a relationship, a career, and so on, everything is changing.
Atoms, chairs, planets, galaxies - it doesn't matter what it is - it has
an apparent beginning, ageing, and ending.  Even the sense of
existing disappears every night.  All forms that appear to exist are
moving on to some other appearance.

What is has no form.

...There is no storyline.  No one is doing the happening.  It's a formless,
buzzing, pulsing, tingling - a streaming, flowing event.
That's all there is.

No matter how much you think you've created this basic happening,
you haven't.  It doesn't matter how many meaningless sounds get
attached to illusions of form, all of this is formless and beyond any
possible explanation.  You can call it no-self, or God, or whatever you
feel you have to; words aren't that important.

Without forms and labels what is there to question?  What is there
to describe?  There is only an inexplicable, formless dance
presenting itself...


Darryl Bailey

Excerpt from his writing - "Realization"

~

Photo - pattern created by a visualizer
to the sound of music playing... :)

The Silence Calls...

Silence called me to the window again last night.
She beckoned me to come and be still,
to listen...

She waited for me to settle,
to be quiet...
Waited as I deepened
into Her Stillness...

No agenda, She whispered...

I listened...

Put everything aside and just breathe, She said.
Be aware of My Breath, breathing you...
Experience My Presence,
Feel My Fullness,
Sense the Intimacy
in every cell...

From the depths of Stillness
I heard her call again,
calling me back to HerSelf.
Like a Great Ocean pulling back
the waves on shore
back to ItSelf...
The wave giving in to the pull...

The Great Silence called
again and again;
the silent rhythmic intimacy of wave and Ocean,
one and the same...

The Silence embracing ItSelf,
knowing only
ItSelf...

The Eternal Embrace...

Come - She whispered...
Follow the pull...
Give in...
Come Home...

Mystic Meandering
Aug/Sept 2010

~

Photo: The inside of a seashell

What Is Left To Say - Lisel Mueller

The self steps out of the circle;
it stops wanting to be
the farmer, the wife, and the child.

It stops trying to please
by learning everyone's dialect;
it finds it can live, after all,
in a world of strangers.

It sends itself fewer flowers;
it stops preserving its tears in amber.

How splendidly arrogant it was
when it believed the gold-filled tomb
of language awaited its raids!

Now it frequents the junkyards
knowing all words are secondhand.

It has not chosen its poverty,
this new frugality.
It did not want to fall out of love
with itself.  Young,
it celebrated itself
and richly sang itself,
seeing only itself
in the mirror of the world.

It cannot return.  It assumes
its place in the universe of stars
that do not see it.  Even the dead
no longer need it to be at peace.
Its function is to applaud.

Lisel Mueller

via Poetry Chaikhana

see Ivan's commentary on
Lisel's poem here

~

Photo - Face Reflections Mandala

2013

No tongue can tell your secret - Ivan Granger

The direct encounter with the Divine can't be put into words.
Words are a creation of the limited mind, powerful certainly,
but limited.  Words, even when masterfully wielded, can only
describe limited aspects of limited reality.  Words imply a
fracturing of reality into countless objects, an impassible
duality of observer and observed, describer and described.
How can words properly convey the undivided Wholeness?
(There is really no 'encounter' the way I just phrased it, because
that implies two separates meeting, when there is really only
the profound recognition of unity.  Words fail the Wholeness.)

Seeing this limitation, some teachers construct complex frame-
works of descriptions.  Some hint and suggest and riddle.  Some
fall silent.  What is said and what is left unsaid...a fascinating game.
But it is only the encounter (which is not really an encounter) that
conveys the truth of all this.

The "tongue cannot tell" these things properly.  "But the gift of the
ear / is that it hears" anyway.  That is, when we truly and openly
listen, an inner whisper begins to draw the awareness beyond the
descriptions, the suggestions, the silences.  And suddenly there we
stand, outside of all words, and concepts that obscure while they
define.  There we stand, witnessing, participating in the living
Wholeness that is the divine nature of undivided Reality.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

This is an excerpt from a commentary Ivan wrote on a poem
by Hakim Sanai -

No tongue can tell Your secret
for the measure of the word obscures Your nature.
But the gift of the ear
is that it hears
what the tongue cannot tell.

~

Photo - rainbow light on wall digitally altered

The Whisper...

The Rhythm of Sacred Silence calls me
back into ItSelf again and again...
It waits patiently while I move
through my stories ~ through my illusions;
my contractions of fear;
my brokenness...

The Rhythm invites me to dance ~

to sway to its movement ~

to hear its pulse, its silent language,
like a whisper in the background of noise
trying to get my attention.

I have to be quiet to hear The Whisper
speaking silently:
Come, be with Me,
Come, and be still,
Come, listen, hear Me,
Come, dance with Me,
Come, and be still...

 I turn my attention to listen curiously,
as if someone has spoken just over my shoulder ~
barely audible.
I wait and listen ~ aware of a subtle presence,
like butterfly wings.
The Rhythm rises ~ palpable.
It draws me to it.

I bow inwardly to The Whisper...
We embrace and dance in Stillness,
the sweet Rhythm of Love...

Mystic Meandering
March 2009

Simply Seeing - Meister Eckhart

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which
God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye,
one seeing, one knowing and one love...

Meister Eckhart

~

Photo - picture of an Amaryllis bloom radially blurred
forming the eye in the center...

"Deep Space"...

Molten golden light
splays itself out within a fathomless darkness,

like a million jewels tumbled out into the stillness of space;
dancing particles of Divine Illumination...

The shutter of Infinity opens and the light
imprints its glittering image within Divine Darkness.
In a moment of stillness, a moment of no breath,
a moment in the timelessness of deep space,
the Light and the Darkness merge - like twilight...

In this place of Primordial Existence,
the Darkness and Light intermingle
in the purity of cosmic fusion;
forever "blended",
neither the enemy of the other,
neither opposed to the other,
both expressing the same Source...

In the depths of The Deep
there is a dance of Life -
an inexpressible expression of
the Aliveness of the Absolute -
revealed in time as a movement of creation,
a movement of birth,
a movement and a breath of
Light and Darkness
forever merging...

In "Deep Space"
the Light and the Dark
exist together within the wholeness of
The Infinite Mystery...

Mystic Meandering
April 2001

~

Photo - a street light through tree branches
digitally altered to create this affect...

Healing Silence...

Always come back to the great space of Silence...
In stillness, aware, with barely
a perceptible movement - only breathing;
feeling the pulse of Silence
through the core of your body;
feeling the pulse of Aliveness
in the Nadis - the Rivers of the body;
resonating with the movement
of The Silence of Life that prevails everywhere,
in everything...

Fall back into the ever-sustaining Silence
that infuses all existence;
the Internality of Deep Rest...

In this is "healing"...

Mystic Meandering
May 28, 2017

~

Photo - the Savannah River Walkway
Augusta, GA
April 2017
taken by my husband

Surrender - Jon Bernie

So we sit down, we're quiet for a while.
And gradually the unwinding happens -
of the mind, and the body, and the heart.
And then maybe we get a glimpse, or a taste,
of freedom; and if we do, then we give our
attention to that.  We surrender to that presence.
Dropping out of our heads and surrendering to stillness,

one-pointed presence, effortless vastness.
We let it take us, completely.
That's what surrender is.

Jon Bernie

Photo  - a seashell,
or a delicate wing floating
effortlessly through the Vastness...

The Formless Happening - Darryl Bailey

All things are changing, flowing.  They're passing appearances
of a great unformed, and inexplicable happening - an event,
a presence - call it whatever you have to.

If we sit quietly, making no effort, life expresses itself clearly;
it simply happens on its own.  There'e nothing else to get.
The great truth is obvious.  The heart beats, the breath comes
and goes.  Vibrations, pulsations, twinges, feelings, thoughts,
and emotions rise and fall.  Urges rise and pass; some become
 actions, others do not; and so life flows.

Sitting quietly, making no effort, all is revealed; a vibrant,
pulsing, formless happening, simply happening.  There is no
goal in this, no final point; there is only what expresses itself
in this moment, and whatever it appears to be now is unavoidably
on its way to some other appearance.

There are many ways of pointing to this vibrant, formless happening.
Some have called it the Great Spirit.  Some call it the river of life,
or the ocean of existence.  Some call it the flow of nature.  It's been
compared to clouds and water, having no particular shape.  Some
say it's movement.  Some call it God, Tao, or Atman.  Some call it
Mind.  Some call it "original nature."  And some just call it the
universe, which literally means "undivided turning."

Daryl Bailey

Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu) - Heysinger

The way that can be over trod is not the Eternal Way.
The name that can be named is not the Everlasting Name,
which Nameless brought forth Heaven and Earth,
which named, if any may,
the Mother of all myriad things of time and space became.
Thereby we sound eternally the mystery divine,
but only without desire to sound,
for if desire abide,
the portals of the issuing host our baffled sight confine.
And deep within the eternal veil
the mystery shall hide.
These two, the Nameless and the Named,
they differ but in name.
For in their vast progression from
the deep they are the same.
The deep of deeps, from whose eternal
gate all spirit came.

Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu
Translation by I.W. Heysinger - 1903

Lao Tzu was a famous Chinese Philosopher
who founded Taoism.
Taoism is about living in harmony with
the flow of Life ItSelf, in tune with your True Nature...
 intuitively.

Intuition as Mystical Illumination - Henri Bergson

The real world, the world revealed during mystical illumination,
is not like our everyday world and within it our everyday ways
of knowing and understanding simply don't work.

...the philosopher Henri Bergson realized this earlier in the century.
Bergson argued that while excellent for enabling us to maneuver
through the world, the intellect is not very good at grasping reality,
When we try to do this, it slips through our fingers.

What is time?  Where does space end?
Our minds are numb when faced with these questions...

What is needed for this, Bergson said, was intuition, which is a way
of getting inside the world, knowing it from within.  The
 intellect looks at things from the outside and analyzes experience
 into parts. That is good for obvious uses, but it is useless if we
want to grasp the reality [nature] of things.  The intellect falsifies
 reality to a great extent in order to make it manageable...

What seems to happen in mystical moments is that we see the world
through intuition, not intellect...

From: Gary Lackman - Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of
Colin Wilson

Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941) was a French Philosopher
He is known for his influential arguments that processes of
immediate experience and intuition are more significant than
abstract rationalism for understanding reality.

Intuition - the act or faculty of knowing without the use of
rational processes; immediate cognition.  Sharp insight...

And I would also add a personal note here:
There are different comprehensions of reality
because of the limitations of the mind/intellect;
different ways of seeing the same reality;
different ways of perceiving the same reality.

It is a fallacy to believe that there is no "other" world,
when Quantum Physics has proved there is a subtle,
energetic world that infuses and informs this reality.
There is a "mystery" behind all this - and not just the "this"
that we see - but something behind what we see with our
superficial seeing...
Who/What is seeing...
All is not what it seems...

~

Photo - rainbow lights on a wall... :)

Be a Child of Fantasy - Pema Chodron

Regard everything as a dream/illusion/fantasy

Regard everything as transparent.
See *through* everything

See that everything is in transition,
always changing

Liberate concepts and beliefs

Let go of the need for an"answer"/solution

Rest in the nature of Essence ~
The Primordial State of everything

Be a child of fantasy
Be curious instead of afraid...

You are the sky.
Everything else ~

"it's just the weather."


Quotes from
Pema Chodron
Buddhist Teacher/author

~

Photo - have no idea what this is.
Think it was a "mistake" digitally altered. :)

In The Beginning Was The Dream - O'Donohue

In the beginning was the dream...
In the eternal night where no dawn broke, the dream deepened.
Before anything ever was, it had to be dreamed...

If we take Nature as the great artist, then all presences in the
world have emerged from her mind and imagination.  We are
children of the earth's dreaming.  It's almost as if Nature is in
dream and we are her children who have broken through the
dawn into time and place.  Fashioned in the dreaming of the
clay, we are always somehow haunted by that; we are unable
ever finally to decide what is dream and what is reality.  Each
day we live in what we call reality, yet life seems to resemble
a dream. We rush through our days in such stress and intensity,
as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world
depended on us.  We worry and grow anxious - we magnify
trivia until they become important enough to control our lives.
Yet all the time, we have forgotten that we are but temporary
sojourners on the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly
in the infinite night of the cosmos...
[.....]
There is no definitive dividing line between reality and dream.
What we consider real is often precariously dream-like.
Our grip on reality is tenuous...

Excerpt from Eternal Echoes 

by John O'Donohue

~

We see who we think we are, who we believe ourselves to be.
We see a self that is fabricated by thought and thus we see a
fabricated world, similar to the state of a dream...

Dzogchen Donlop Rinpoche

From - Mind Beyond Death

~

Photo from the web
source unknown

"First" (excerpt) - Chuck Surface

[.....]

First...

Turn your wandering Attention within,
and find the Self within your self...

Find it not by "thinking about" it,
But by Feeling with the Whole of your Being.
What you are, Where you are,
Before the feeling of you, the person, ever arose...

[.....]

You are the formless, unmanifest Mystery,
And... you are all that appears.
From, within, and as that Mystery,
As it moves into Creation.

Once you have poked a hole in Heaven,
It will shine into your manifest Experience,
Of space, time, and objects.
Here... in this Dream of duality.

And in time, that Wellspring in your Heart
Will Dissolve the residues
of the salt doll "self",
In those living Waters.

Knowledge... is... insufficient.
Many "know" intellectually,
That they are formless Pure Being,
But continue to "feel" themselves bound...

For such "knowledge" is nothing more than "belief."

To cut the Knot...
"Find the 'I' Feeling and rest there",

As Ramana [Maharshi] said.
Not by looking at a conceptual "picture"...

But by diving deep, in Feeling, in Experience.

Throughout the day, as you can Remember,
Turn Attention within, turn Feeling within,
And forgetting all concept, theory, and conjecture,
Investigate the nature of Where and What you are...

And Resting there...
Moved by that Ancient Longing...
Dissolve in and as The Unknowable Mystery...
That you are.

[.....]

Chuck Surface

Facebook

To read the entire poem click
here then scroll down in the left margin
to Aged Poems - which are listed alphabetically.

~

Photo - pic of clouds turned on end. 

Knowing Silence - Robert Rabbin

One day, as if I had lived alone for many years in the deep desert,
I was taken by a stunning stillness, and without resistance I
disappeared into Silence.  It was more than an epiphany,
more than grace, more than mystical union: It was my soul's
homecoming, my heart's overflowing love, and my mind's
eternal peace.

In Silence, I felt my core identity, my essential nature, as a
unity-in-love with all creation.  I experienced freedom, clarity,
and joy as my true Self.  I realized I was of time and eternity
in equal measure.  I was composed of physical matter and
spiritual energy in equal measure...

This Self, this Silence, belongs to all of us - it is who we are;
it is what we are.  If we are to experience and embody authentic
peace and love, if we are going to bring true healing to our wildly
violent and endangered world, we are going to have to learn to
 live within this essence...

Please remember the Silence beyond words, the Silence of mystery,
the Silence of the soul, of the heart, the Silence in which lovers
give themselves to a greater loving, a selfless loving, the Silence
 which knows only this moment..., this incredible instant of pure
 life when time suddenly stops, when we breathe the high-altitude
air we call love.  I want to remind you of these ways of Silence
 knowing and being, which you know, which you are.

Silence is within our very genes.  It winds around and binds
together the strands of our DNA.  It is the essence of who we are.
  It is within our breath.  It is there like music between our thoughts.
  It is the light within our eyes.  It is the high arc of birds we long
 to follow home to  their secret nests.  It is in the rhythm of waves,
 the innocence of children, the deep feelings within the heart that
 have no cause, when the heart is pierced without warning and
 your eyes fill with tears. It is within the kindness of one person to
 another. It is within the stillness of nights, and peace of early
 mornings.

In Silence, we open to life and life opens to us, life reaches
 towards us and touches us in the center of our heart. Our heart
 breaks open and another heart is revealed.  This is the true heart,
 the one that knows how to meet life with open arms. Silence
 knows that thoughts *about* life are not life itself.  If we touch
 life through Silence, life touches us back, intimately...  And
 then the mystery of life, the wonder of life, the beauty of life,
 the sanctity of life, become our life.  Everything but wonderment
 falls away...

Knowing Silence is knowing your Self.  Knowing your Self is
freedom.  In Silence, you are the very embodiment of joy, the
very expression of love.  Enter your Self fully and deeply.  You
will find this Silence, and in Silence you will know
the embodiment of Silence [that] you are...

Robert Rabbin

Quiet Grace...

Quiet Grace made Herself known today,
rising up from within,
surrounding from without,
like a familiar fragrance that wafts through,
only - felt by the senses,
recognized in the Heart...

She drew me in with the clearness of Her Quietness;
an invitation I could only accept,,,

I floated in Her clear, deep Stillness - unfettered.
The tangible, soothing quintessence of Quietness
filled all my fractured places,
smoothed all the jagged edges, and
unwound the choking tension of
body and mind...

Without asking,
She knew just where to go...

Her Essence moved in me...
Her gentle, clear, and fluid Presence
drew me ever more deeply
into Her receptive tenderness,
allowing me to experience
Her pristine Stillness,
like that of a sacred hidden pool,
unexpectedly discovered.

I waded in Her waters,
surprised and blessed by
this unbidden revelation of
Quiet Grace...

Mystic Meandering
April 28, 2017

_/\_

A Humble Lover of "The Mystery"

~

Photo - The Savannah River
Augusta, GA
taken by my husband