Shadow Life - Anais Nin

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world,
and you believe you are living.  Then you read a
book... or take a trip... and you discover that you
are not living, that you are hibernating.  The symptoms
of hibernating are easily detectable: first restlessness.
The second symptom (when hibernating becomes
dangerous and might degenerate into death):
absence of pleasure.  That is all.  It appears like an
innocuous illness.  Monotony, boredom, death.
Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing
it.  They work in offices.  They drive a car.  They picnic
with their families.  They raise children.  And then some
shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song,
and it awakens them and saves them from death.
Some never awaken...

Anais Nin

Limitless Awareness - The Tibetan Book of the Dead

You must be ready to accept the possibility that there is a limitless
range of awareness for which we now have no words; that
awareness can expand beyond range of your ego, your self,
your familiar identity, beyond everything you have learned,
beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the differences
which usually separate people from each other and from the
world around them.

Walter Evans-Wentz
The Tibetan Book of the Dead

~

It's not so much that we don't have a self, rather it's that
the self we do have is not a thing.  It is an impermanent,
fluctuating activity, a process not a particle, a verb not a noun.

Shinzen Young

The Science of Enlightenment:
How Meditation Works


via - Love Is A Place

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

Untitled - Danna Faulds

Put up no resistance to the day as it unfolds.
Watch the play of opposites, your likes
and dislikes, thoughts you would draw
close and those from which you would
recoil.  What if, for this moment, you let
it all be as it is?  What if you interfere
with nothing?

Become the subject - vast, bare, always
aware. Of course there are objects.  Do
not try to shut them out or change what
is.  Sense impressions, circumstances,
the day's events move forward on the
wheel of time while you are timeless, the
silent subject of the whole, pure
potential, simply there.

When the entire universe blazes into
being, take it all inside yourself, without
exception.  When the only word is "Yes,"
when your point of view dissolves into
every viewpoint and no viewpoint at all,
when the Big Bang is happening in
every instant, you are fully and finally
alive.

Danna Faulds
from the introduction to Limitless
2009

The Play of the Universe - Swimme, Esmann, Vaughan-Lee, DH Lawrence

...the universe is not simply a place but a story,
a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong,
and out of which we arose.

This story has the power to awaken us more deeply to who
we are.  For just as the Milky Way is the universe in the form
of a galaxy. and an orchid is the universe in the form of a  flower,
we are actually the universe reflecting on itself.

from - Journey of the Universe
Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker

~*~

The Absolute is both unmanifest and a dynamic creative force.
From the creative force everything arises; both the world
as well as personal consciousness.  Everything is a blissful play
of consciousness, not an unreal illusion.

Excerpt from an article by
Jan Esmann
Shaktipat Master

~*~

Everything is ultimately a story.
My "life" is a story,
your "life" is a story,
all occurring simultaneously within the
vast cosmic Ocean of Consciousness/Awareness.
The story of The Eternal is being lived here...

The Ineffable Mystery of the Universe
takes a journey through
the story of life - as us...
The "Divine Drama" *is* our story -
and our "story" is the "Divine Drama"...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2013

~*~

The real mystery is how IT unveils ItSelf within us:
how the Beloved makes ItSelf known to ItSelf
in the fragile container of the human being.

In the midst of the Divine Drama there is a
human story to be told. But it's all "God's" story

being lived in human form...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

~*~

We must get back into relation,
vivid and nourishing relation to
the cosmos and the universe...
For the truth is,
we perish for lack of fulfillment
of our greater needs.
We are cut off from the great sources
of our inward nourishment and renewal,
sources which flow eternally in
the universe...

D H Lawrence

~

Photo - The Om Universe
Craypas oils over acrylic
a work in process... :)

Make a Covenant with the Mystery - Tom Spencer

...make a 'covenant' with mystery - by learning to stand in
relationship to what is known and unknowable at the very
same time.  I believe the essential trait that makes this
covenant possible is the capacity for wonder...

One need not peer off into the heavens to stand in
relationship with the mystery of our existence.  That
mystery is unfolding around us continually in a countless
variety of ways.  Our task is to pay attention - to stand
'with' means standing 'ready' by keeping our eyes, hearts
and minds open.  Even the most ordinary of experiences
has the capacity to change our lives...

Tom Spencer
from "Some thoughts about Wonder"

~

Photo from the Internet

The Soul of the Whole - Emerson

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
Meantime, within man is the soul of the whole;
the wise silence; the universal beauty,
to which every part and particle is equally related;
the eternal One...

And this deep power in which we exist, and whose
beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of
seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle,
are one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
from The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The Over-Soul"

via: The Beauty We Love
and Love is a place

~

Photo - White Orchids color digitally inverted

Living the Balance - Sandy Jones

There is a perfect Balance between duality and non-duality.
There is a way of balance between the changing, ongoing
images of this time-space tangible world and the Living Light
of the unseen, changeless, Divine Principle, that stands behind
all things.

Living this Balance, is an inner knowing that keeps us steady,
true, strong and agile.  It is an ease and a dominion within us.
It is the perfect center within ourself.  We know it when we
find it.  It is real...  The Balance is a sweet place within, where
the heart and the soul come together.  Here, between the known
and the unknown, Something real, pure, unconditioned is found.
It is the original self...

How do we come to know this marvelous sense of Balance,
and know we know it?  How else, but by living the imbalance -
for a time.

...this Balance between the tangible world of multiplicity,
matter, time and change - and the intangible knowing, the innate
realization and understanding of the oneness of all things
[doesn't]  leave out any part of this Life.  It includes all
possibilities [all experiences].

This knowing is fearless, now enjoying the shadows,
the flickering light of this world, as part of the unfolding
beauty of it all.  The sweet balance leads us to a new way of
being and seeing, right here in the world - where Life Flows...

Sandy Jones

Excerpt from a post on her blog

~

Photo via No Mind's Land

The Ferocity of Your Own Being - Aisha Salem

Stop running from the ferocity of your own Being...
Burn off all your own games to that in you which is
Pure Intensity...
When you meet the very Core of your Being
become completely loyal to the deepest passion in you
and allow no more waste of time - find that devotion
to Reality [Truth] within yourself...

Aisha Salem

~

Photo - Reflection of sunlight from
fireplace insert on carpet :)

A luminous middle place - Matt Licata

Let us not forget the descendant current, flowing into the unlit
places, the lower worlds, and the dark caverns of the psyche.
The invitation here is one of embodiment - into the vulnerability,
the chaos, and the deflation that the path of the heart will
inevitably present us with for holding.

There is a cultural fantasy that we are supposed to know what to
do with our lives, that things are supposed to be clear at all times.
But love is full-spectrum and will use the energies of not-knowing,
disappointment and uncertainty as part of its revelation here.  The
process of dissolution is non-negotiable...
For it is by way of this sacred washing of the known that new
 forms can find their way here.

Even in the darkness, the numbness, and in the appearance that
nothing is happening, there is birth, but the new can never fully come
into being without an honoring of re-organization and death
 [of the old]. The challenge is that there is no map for this territory
 as it is too alive, too creative, and too wild to be pinned down,
 controlled, and known ahead of time.  While this degree of openness
 may be disorienting to a mind seeking resolution, it is exhilarating
in the heart, in the body, and deep within the soul.

It is natural and easy to disconnect from this [descendant] current, as
we overly identify with the ascending, the upward, the light, and the
transcendent.  In the rush to exit immediate experience - for something
that is higher, purer, less messy, and less contradictory - we turn from
the waters of life and lose touch with essence.

While it is natural to have a bias for one current over another, let us
not do so at the expense of fragmentation.  In ways the mind may
never fully understand, there is a luminous middle place where the
currents intertwine.  It is buried in the secret chamber inside your
own heart.

Enter there...
Rest there...
Play there...
Dance there...

Matt Licata

~

Art - Shadowy Caverns
Craypas oils done with fingers
2011

Deconstruction - Danna Faulds

I am deconstructing.

My identity, built
assumption by assumption,
is crumbling at my feet.
It's clear to me the way
of truth leads into the
unknown...

[.....]

Balanced on the rubble,
I grope for
handholds even as I try
to let go.  I am bared to the
bone by pain and the thwarted
desire to maintain control.  I
long to paint the scene the
way I want, while ignoring
how it is.  My practice now
isn't about rebuilding what
I knew.  It's not about
clearing the littered ground
of old illusions only to
construct new ones.
Emptiness has a stark
beauty, noticed only
when I stop looking
for security.  I sit on the
tumble of mortar and brick
and pray for patience,
pray for strength,
pray for the humility
to just keep breathing.

Danna Faulds
Excerpt from: "Deconstruction"
From: One Soul
2003

~

Art - Dissolving the Masks

2017

Yearning - Rumi

One night a man was crying,
Allah! [God] Allah! [God]

His lips grew sweet with the praying,
until a cynic said,
'So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?'

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.

'Why did you stop praying?' [Khidr asked]

'Because I've never heard anything back.'

[Kidhr said]

 This longing you express
is the return message.

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

Give your life to be one of them.

Rumi
Original title: "Love Dogs"

~

Yearn for more.

...don't linger in any spiritual benefit
you have gained,
but yearn for more,
like one suffering from illness
whose thirst for water is never quenched...

Rumi

I Cry for Sirens - Revisited...

Some time ago, as I was driving to my mother's, I passed an ambulance
speeding down the fast lane, coming from the opposite direction;
lights flashing, sirens blaring, horn frantically honking to get the traffic
ahead of it out of the way.  I immediately started to cry.  I had forgotten
that since childhood the sound of ambulance sirens makes me cry...
It's as if my heart leaps out of my chest, knowing that whoever is in that
ambulance is in trouble and needs help.  I can hear it in the sirens - of
course - that's what they're for.

I recognized this strange phenomenon as the heart of compassion. I felt
the heart of compassion that actually lives here wake up again.  I had
never thought of it that way before.  I've always tried to hide this little
quirk of crying at the sound of sirens; to stuff those feelings, to stop
 myself from crying, to hide the love that wants to express itself...
 I thought there was something emotionally wrong with me.

I recognized the tender heart of compassion within - crying *for*
 someone in trouble, in danger, maybe dying, in pain and possibly
 suffering.  It has always been here, since childhood - this little heart
 of compassion.  It has been covered over with layers and layers of fear;
 not allowing myself to overtly *feel* and express the heartache and
compassion for a suffering world. I also hid it behind a mask of
adulthood, and a mask of "spirituality." That's easy to do in some
 "spiritual circles", you know - to not feel, to hide what you feel behind
 a mask of ideology, belief,  ritual or religiosity.  "Spirituality" becomes
 clinical, intellectual, philosophical - detached...

I learned to wear the "spiritual mask" early in life, and later in life to
talk myself into lofty, wordified "spiritual" places.  Please slap me if
I do it again. :)  I learned on the particular "spiritual path" that I was on
that there is no "me", and therefore, no "other" because there is only
this esoteric Beingness.  The danger of misinterpreting that is that
another's pain then somehow becomes invisible - instead of
 recognizing that our pain is all the same. How ironic.
We separate ourselves from one another's heartache - dismissing it as
 just a story of a "me" that doesn't exist -  because feeling another's pain
 leaves us too vulnerable,  too engaged;  and because we'd have to
face our own - heartache that is.
  I know this experience is not true for all of us - this detached place
 of no feeling. I hid my Heart.  But - the Heart remembers - and Love
*sees*, hears, notices, *feels*, and cares - with deep compassion...

Hearing the sirens again, the rawness of an unprotected, loving Heart
exploded in my chest.  And I remembered how that *feels*...  And I
rather liked it.  I hope I never lose it; never stop *feeling*, whether
it's sadness, grief, or love and joy.  I'm sure there will be more
opportunities as Life opens this Heart more and more...

I not only cried, I smiled, because I knew it meant that the Heart
that lives here is *Alive* - feeling - caring - loving...

~

I posted a version of this back in 2011.
It seemed appropriate to re-post it
in light of the events that are taking
place around the world now...

Namaste

_/\_

.

The Energy of Life - Naomi Stone

There is something wonderful
working in the world
and in the natural flow
of life...
an energy
that moves this existence
moment to moment...

Trying to name it or trying
to control it changes
the inner wisdom
and steals the wonder
of discovery...

Watch a child exploring
his world.
Touching...tasting...squealing
with delight starting
at the beginning

We are seldom taught
to trust it
because someone
wants to pay you to live
their ideas and answers...
or charge you for learning
them by luring you away,
away from the gift
of your own gloriously
divine heritage...

Suddenly...
you are entrapped...
doubting who you are
in a world where
everyone seems
to think they have the answers...

Live the awareness of the flow
and infinite portals
ever opening
around and within you...

Naomi Stone
Original title: "Spiraling Energies of Creation"

~

Art - Craypas oils
done with fingers
2012

Let it go - Danna Faulds

Let go of the ways you thought life
would unfold; the holding of plans
or dreams or expectations - Let it
all go.  Save your strength to swim
with the tide.  The choice to fight
what is here before you now will
only result in struggle, fear, and
desperate attempts to flee from the
very energy you long for.  Let go.
Let it all go and flow with the grace
that washes through your day whether
you receive it gently or with all your
quills raised to defend against invaders.
Take this on faith: the mind may never
find the explanations that it seeks, but
you will move forward nonetheless.
Let go, and the wave's crest will carry
you to unknown shores, beyond your
wildest dreams or destinations.  Let it
all go and find the place of rest and
peace, and certain transformation.

Danna Faulds
From: Go In and In
2002

Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters
and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crown of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

via: The Beauty We Love

In Turbulent Times...

In these turbulent times of upheaval
on the surface of life,
dive deep...
into the Stillness of Being within,
where nothing is disturbed, nothing is harmed...

Externally it's all "The Mystery" playing
itself out in the construct of time - the Unmanifest in form.

In the Greater Context in which life takes place,
everything is allowed...
The world will go the way it goes -
life will continue to unfold the way it unfolds -
the light and the dark will continue to dance together -
in time-bound reality.

Do not focus only on the chaos;
mind-created contractions of fear and ignorance.

Instead...  Turn within...

Experience the depths of True Stillness,
the Stillness of the Everlasting Deep,
experience what's beyond the chaos and fear
- what holds the Cosmos together -
the enduring hum of Aliveness within all form...

Held in The Rhythm of Stillness that sustains Existence,
that IS Existence, Rest...
in the Embrace of That which animates all Life...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Nov. 2016

~

Come into Peace...

Even in the midst of chaos there is Peace...
Even in the midst of complexity there is Simplicity...
Even in the midst of confusion there is Stability...

In everything there is Love...

Mystic Meandering
2006

Have You Met "The Beloved?" - Chuck Surface

If you have not yet met The Beloved,
And wonder where She might be found...

Look within.

Let your Attention journey to The Tavern,
At the Crossroads of Heart and Mind.

And look for Her there,
With the eyes of your Soul.

If you wander off down the road of Mind,
You'll only reach a "conclusion."

If you wander off down the road of Heart,
You'll lose yourself in the imagined.

Journey to the Tavern of The Beloved,
At the Crossroads of Heart and Mind.

And look for Her there,
With the eyes of your Soul.

For She is your Essence,
Dancing in the Heart of your Being.

It is Her Great Joy to pour Grace,
Into a Cup held forth Empty.

But you must hold forth your Cup.

If you lose yourself in chatter there,
You will miss Her Silent arrival.

If you seek stature among those gathered,
You will see only yourself.

If you must have fellowship,
Commune with your empty Cup.

If you must yammer,
Speak to Her as if She is already found.

If you must think, reminisce,
Of that which was known, then forgotten.

If you must daydream, imagine,
The vanishing of duality.

Wait there, at the Tavern of The Beloved,
The Mind starved, the Heart Drowned in Longing;

For if you have not yet met Her,
It is There that you will surely find Her.

Or rather, I should say,
It is there that She will surely find you...

At the crossroads of Heart and Mind.

Chuck Surface

Original title: "At the Crossroads of the Heart and Mind"

In The Garden of the Beloved Facebook

Garden of the Beloved Website

At the Mercy of A Greater Love...

I don't know who or what "The Beloved" is - really...
Some have called Her "God", "The Divine", some "The Mystery";
She has a multitude of names... and faces...

But She is so much more than any name, attribute, or description
we could ever bestow - although we do.

I only know that my whole being responds
when I call to
- "The Beloved" -
from the Heart.

She surges through the body;
tangible, organic movement
felt in the body and experienced in the senses;
"across the whole of being" - as a Friend says.
It's like a presence, without solidity or form;
more like a breeze that moves through,
caressing as it goes...

She/It/He is personal -
deeply touching the inner place of origination;
which some may call the soul,
with a tone that strikes a chord of resonance within,
blown by an unexpected wind...
to which we have seemingly been attuned...

I don't know who or what "The Beloved" is - really...
I "know" nothing at all...
I am only drawn to "The Beloved"
in all Her disguises;
at the mercy of a Greater Love
beyond belief...

Mystic Meandering
July 13, 2017

~

Photo -

This flowering plant just grew one year.
I have no idea what it is,
but notice the many faces :)

One Soul - Danna Faulds

When one soul is set ablaze
by truth, the whole universe
ignites, and for an instant
light reaches every corner,
cave and crevasse.  When

the heart remembers what
it is, joined in vastness by
joy and suffering, both the
future and the past dissolve
like snowflakes on the tongue.

There is nowhere to run, no
reason to do anything but
rest in the cradle of the
cosmos, rocked in the arms
of emptiness, and held in
the near embrace of love.

Danna Faulds
From: One Soul
2003

How We Endure - Meister Eckhart

What keeps us alive,
what allows us to endure?
I think it is the hope of loving,
or being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey
to find its source, and how the moon wept
without her lover's
warm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts.
We wither like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.

Meister Eckhart

The Fire of Separation - Mirabai Starr

There is a longing that burns at the root of spiritual practice.
This is the fire that fuels your journey.  The romantic suffering
you pretend to have grown out of, that remains coiled like a
serpent beneath the veneer of maturity.  You have studied the
sacred texts.  You know that separation from your divine source
is an illusion.  You subscribe to the philosophy that there is
nowhere to go and nothing to attain, because you are already
there and you already possess it.

But what about this yearning?  What about the way a poem by
by Rilke or Rumi breaks open your heart and triggers a sorrow
that could consume you if you gave in to it?  You're pretty sure
this is not a matter of mere psychology.  It has little to do with
unresolved issues of childhood abandonment, or codependent
tendencies to falsely place the source of your wholeness outside
yourself.  The longing is your recognition of the deepest
 truth that God is love and that this is all you want.  Every
 lesser desire melts when it comes near the flame.

You realized that not every one experiences this.  For some
people, the spiritual journey is not so dramatic.  It's less about
the overwhelming desire for union with some invisible Beloved
than it is about quietly waking up.  It's about developing
compassion, rather than suffering passion.  There are people who
never doubt that God is with them, and so there is nothing to long
for.

But there are those, like you, who have felt the Divine move like
an ocean inside them, and, incapable of sustaining an unbroken
relationship with that vastness, feel they have been banished to
the desert when the wave recedes.  There is a tribe of holy lovers,
who have tasted the glorious sweetness that lies on the other side
of yearning, when the boundaries of the separate self momentarily
melt into the One, before the cold wind of ordinary consciousness
blows through again, and restores your individuality.  You would
risk everything to rekindle that annihilating fire.  You would leave
your shoes at the door and run after the cosmic flute player, if only
you could hear that music one more time.

You would give up everything for one glimpse of the Beloved's
face.  You sneak into his chamber in the middle of the night and
say "Here I am. Ravish me."  But when you awake the next morning,
swooning, and alone, you realize you missed the entire encounter.
You throw your clay cup on the cobblestones and it shatters.  You
thought you would marry, bear babies, make a career in broadcasting.
You wander city streets during siesta hour and wonder where He is
sleeping.  Your longing and your satisfaction are reciprocal.
The moan of separation is the cry of union...

Mirabai Starr

Excerpt from: Longing for the Beloved
posted in Parabola
via - No Mind's Land

The Deepest Acceptance - Jeff Foster & Rilke

True freedom is found not through escaping the present experience,
but by diving fearlessly into its hidden depths.  You must be willing
to see *through* the idea of separation from life, in all its forms, in
the midst of your current experience.  You must be open to exploring
suffering - how and why it manifests in you, where it originates.  

You must be willing to look at your pain, fears, sadness, longings.
They are part of the wholeness of life.  You must be willing to face
them head on and find deep acceptance for the seemingly
unacceptable aspects of yourself...  Beyond the personal story of my
own suffering, I discover that pain is not really my pain.  It's the
world's pain.  It's humanity's pain...

It's one thing to know who you really are when life is easy and things
are going well for you.  It's another thing to remember this in the heat
of the moment, when things fall apart, when life gets messy.  We find
another way of  looking at suffering, a radical new way of relating to
it.  We can see the messiness and beauty of day-to-day human
 existence as something to be avoided, or transcended, *or* we can
 see it for what what it really is: a secret and constant invitation to
 wake up - even if we believe we already woke up yesterday.
Life, in its infinite compassion, won't let us rest on our laurels.   It's
about finding out who you *really* are, beyond who you *think*
 you are, beyond who you've been taught you are, beyond your story
 about who you are, beyond all your concepts and images of
who you are.

If we are to be truly free - we must face reality with open eyes.
We must move away from denial, wishful thinking, and hoping,
 and tell the truth about life as it is.  Great freedom lies in admitting
 the truth of this  moment, however much it clashes with our dreams
 and plans - and self-image...  Acceptance is about seeing reality,
seeing things as they actually are, not as we wish them to be.
And from that place of alignment with what is, all creative, loving
 and intelligent actions flow naturally.

True freedom has nothing to do with being a better wave in the Ocean,
or perfecting our story of ourselves,  Freedom is about waking up from
the dream (illusion) that we are separate waves in the first place, and
embracing all that appears in the Ocean of our experience.  Maybe
the true calling in life is to accept present experience deeply - to let go
of how this moment should be - letting go of our false self-image.

Great freedom lies in fearlessly facing the darkness and finally coming
to see that the darkness is inseparable from light...  Life cannot
 be good or bad.  Life is simply life.
 It's about seeing the Mystery of Life
 that is already here.

Jeff Foster

Excerpts from: The Deepest Acceptance:
Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life

~*~

No experience has been too unimportant,
and the smallest event unfolds like fate,

and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric
in which every thread is guided by an infinitely
tender hand

and is laid alongside another thread
and is held and supported by a hundred others.

Rainer Maria Rilke

~

Photo: I noticed the different patterns
in the sheer curtain from the play of light on it.
For me these patterns represent the
"fabric of life", the weave of life,
in all its variations...