An Inner Whisper - John O'Donohue

Human identity is complex.  Nothing is ever given simply
or immediately.  Even the simplest act of perception has
many layers... Time and memory often reveal things later
that were staring us in the eye, but we never noticed them.
The quest for the truth of things is never ending.  Every
experience is open to countless readings and interpretations.
We never see a thing completely.  In sure anticipation, our
eyes have always already altered what awaits our gaze.
The search for truth is difficult and uncomfortable.  Because
the mystery is too much for us, we may opt to settle for
the surface of things.  Comfort becomes more important than
true presence.  This is precisely why we need to hear the
discerning voice.

Somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice.  This
voice distrusts the status quo.  It sounds out the falsity in
things and encourages the dissent from the images things
tend to assume.  It underlines the secret crevices where the
surface has become strained.  It advises distance and opens
up a new perspective through which the concealed meaning
 of a situation might emerge... Its intention is to keep the heart
clean and clear.  This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or
known to others outside...  Yet much depends on that small
voice.  The truth of its whisper marks the line between honor
and egoism, kindness and chaos.  In extreme situations,
which have been emptied of all shelter and tenderness,
that small voice whispers from somewhere beyond and
encourages the heart to hold out for dignity, respect, beauty
and love.  That whisper brings forgotten nobility into an arena
where violence has traduced everything.  This faithful voice
can illuminate the dark lands of despair.  It becomes both the
sign and presence of a transcendence that no force or horror
can extinguish.  Each day in the world, in the prisons, hospitals
and killing fields, against all the odds, this still, small voice
continues to echo the beauty of the human being.  In haunted
places this voice carries the light of beauty like a magical
lantern to transform the desolation, to remind us that
regardless of what may be wrenched from us, there is a
dignity and hope that we do not have to lose.  This voice
brings us directly into contact with the inalienable presence
of beauty in the soul.

John O'Donohue

~

Photo from the Internet

Inner Life - John O'Donohue

The visible world is only the shoreline of the magnificent
ocean of the invisible.  The invisible is not empty, but is
textured and tense with presences [energies].  These
presences cannot be named; they can only be sensed,
not seen.

When you name a dimension of your experience, one of
your qualities or difficulties... you give it an identity.  It
then responds to you according to the tone of its name...

The wildness of the invisible world is nameless.  It has no
name.  A first step towards reawakening respect for your
inner life may be to become aware of the private collage
of dead names you have for your inner life.  Often the
experiences of wilderness can return us to the nameless
wildness within.  Sometimes, go away to a wild place
on your own.  Leave your name and the grid of intentions
and projects and images which mark you out as citizen Z.
Leave it all and let yourself just slip back into the rhythms
of your intimate wildness.  You will be surprised at the
lost terrains, wells, and mountains that you will rediscover,
territories which have been buried under will-meant
but dead names.  To go beyond confinement is to
rediscover yourself.

John O'Donohue
from: Eternal Echoes

~

Photo - taken in Gloucester MA
 by my brother

A Call to Awareness - Mystic Meandering

Humanity is living out the drama of the "original wound" of
 mankind, where we "fell asleep", numbed, fractured, fragmented
 from our original innate Beingness - our Original Self.
(Some call it our "Divine" or True Nature).
That Original Being became seen as something separate that
mankind continually tries to reconnect with - instead of
knowing it is already within us.

The shadow drama that we live in is a play of the split off
parts of consciousness - the splits in consciousness due to the
"original wound"; a perceived separation from the Essence of
who we are: our Original Being...

We fractured into illusions of self, disguises, rather than
retaining the truth of who we are - our true untouched
Beingness.  We fractured into a life of suffering, pain and
struggle.

The "original wound" is a deep hole in the psyche of man -
the dark heart of mankind, a split in the Innocence of the Heart,
creating a shadow of the Real.

The "original wound" holds the phantoms and ghosts of pain
and suffering that separated into a shadow self, a shadow belief
in separateness, disempowerment, and victimization.  Fear and
anger wield power from the shadows.

However, there is no real power in the shadow.  It is a false power
based on false beliefs about ourselves and others that are only a
shadow of who we really are...

"The Shadow" aspect is just a mist, an illusion, an "imprint" in the
psyche of man; a consciousness like everything else.  It is the
consciousness spawned from the belief in separateness...
A belief in separateness creates a consciousness of darkness and
fear.  The mind of man functions from this consciousness.  A
consciousness of separateness dominates our existence - creating
suffering.  The fear feeds on fear creating more darkness.
But it is only a consciousness.  It is not real.  It manifests a
particular reality of darkness that you believe in.

But the consciousness of darkness is only a thin layer, a thin veil.
It creates much dysfunction, but it really has no power to sustain.
It gives the illusion of power to seemingly rob you of your Essence,
which frightens you.

You have become caught in the net of fear, thinking it is real.  You
can emerge through this layer of darkness by becoming aware of
the Consciousness of your own Original Beingness -  "The Divine"
within you.  This consciousness of awareness creates a new reality,
a new consciousness.  Whatever your consciousness is, that is your
reality.  So shift the consciousness that you now hold onto and
 create a whole new reality.

Love creates love. Fear creates fear. Hate creates hate.

Be mindful of what you create and how you create.
Don't create from the wounds of fear and separation.
Create from the Essence of your Being -
from the deeper Rhythms of your True Being...

The gift of "the shadow" is a call to Awareness,
a call to a change in consciousness...

~

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
c. 2004-2006

These writings came when I was practicing sitting meditation
nearly 2 hours a day.  I don't remember what was going on
during this time period that would have allowed these words
to come.  But I wanted to share these now as they seemed
relevant and appropriate to what we are all experiencing at
the moment, a "darkness" of mankind, "the shadow" aspect
of mankind, the real virus, that has emerged in so many ways...
Hopefully from this double pandemic, that has the ability to
suffocate, will be birthed a new consciousness...

It is our wake up call...

Namaste
_/\_

MM

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
June 4, 2020

a moment of anger and frustration,
experiencing my "shadow self" :)

(sorry for the glare)

Race and Walls - Kendi and O'Donohue

What a powerful construct race is - powerful enough to consume us.
But for all that life-shaping power, race is a mirage, which doesn't
lessen its force.  We are what people see ourselves as,
whether what we [they] see exists or not.
What people see in themselves and others has meaning and
manifests itself in ideas and actions and policies....

Race is a mirage but one that we do well to *see*,
while never forgetting it is a mirage, never forgetting that
it's the painful light of racist power that makes the mirage.

Ibram X. Kendi

from: How To Be An Antiracist

A provocative and fascinating look
at how to end racism in the Western mind,
and to see that beyond race we are all fully
human.

~

Your complicity with other people's images and expectations
of you allows them to box you in completely.  It takes a long
time to recognize how some key people on your life's
journey exercise so much control over your mind, behavior,
and actions.  Through the image they project onto you
through the expectations they have of you, they claim you.

Most of this is subtle and works in the domain of the implicit
and unstated subtext; it is, of course, all the more powerful
for not being direct and obvious.  When you become conscious
of these powerful builders and their work of housing you in,
something within you refuses to comply; you begin to send
back the building materials.

Such projection and expectation is based on their fear and the
need to control.

John O'Donohue
from: Eternal Echoes

~

Photo from the internet

Blessing in the Chaos - Jan Richardson

To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be
a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,

that go with you
even to the
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you
cease.
Let what divides you
cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes
and demeans,
and let depart
all that keeps you
in its cage.

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.

The human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness,
a place where everything comes together,
where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform
into vision, where damage will be made whole,
where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise,
where the travails of a life's journey will enjoy a homecoming.
To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a
person now.

Jan Richardson

With thanks to  The Beauty We Love

~

Photo taken at Keukenhof Tulip Garden in Holland
by Ellen Ratmeyer

Hate - Baldwin, Kornfield & Seng T'san

I imagine one of the reasons that people cling
to their hate (prejudice and racism) so stubbornly
is because they sense that once hate is gone,
they will be forced to deal with
their own pain...

James Baldwin

~

We project our fears and hate onto others
because we can't look honestly
at ourselves...

Jack Kornfield
Buddhist Teacher

~

When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction, however
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinion for or against anything.

To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.

When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the minds essential peace is disturbed....

Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
that we do not see the true nature of things.

Seng-T'san

Chinese Poet

~

Photo from the internet

For Grief - John O'Donohue

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid and undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And, when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From the gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
in your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return...

John O'Donohue

from: To Bless the Space Between Us

~

Photo - from Keukenhof Tulip Garden in Holland
by Ellen Ratmeyer

~

The world still grieves its losses...
And the hatred and tragedies that keep occurring...

Briefly Here - Jim Wilson

Briefly
We walk this earth.
We have
But a short time.
We resemble grasses;
Green in the spring,
Brown in the summer heart,
Withering in the winter wind.
Those who understand this
Put aside their useless quarrels.
The cosmos is unfathomably vast.
The human mind is very small.
An act of kindness is never wasted;
it is the gateway to the deathless and unborn,
it is the exultation of the heart.

Jim Wilson

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

Photo via No Mind's Land

The Inner Cosmos...

Give no regard to the voice of Fear that
 divides you and conflicts you;
whether from within or without...

Walk as if the "Divine" were in your shoes,
walking you -
The Inner Cosmic Being that you are;
undivided by earthly "tribes"
of politics and religion,
earthly boundaries,
or the divided mentations of
mediocre minds...

Fall into the Inner Rhythm of
the Inner Universe,
the ubiquitous Primordial Essence
inherently everywhere at all times,
fluidly in and through all life.

Do not listen to the 10,000 teachings
in your head that you have
accumulated over the years,
all trying to tell you what is true,
which way to go,
and how to be.

Just sit, be still, breathe, and listen...

for the Inner Cosmic Rhythm,
until you feel the
Inner Cosmos
move
you

Fall into the Internal Silence
beyond artificial boundaries,
beyond the bluster of buffoons and bullies
with mouthfuls of meaningless words...

Just Breathe...

Wait...

for the movement of the
the Inner Cosmos to lead you...

Then you will know what is true,
which way to go,
and
how to be...

Mystic Meandering
2017

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Perceptions of The Universe - Selected Quotes

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.
Some part of our being knows this is where we came from.
We long to return, and we can because the cosmos is
also within us.

We are made of star stuff.

Carl Sagan
Cosmos

~

photo - Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

What are we?

A fleeting, intricate presence riding a tiny speck of water
and rock, out here in the dark, sailing the ship of wonder
ever more deeply into the void from which we came...

Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal
from: The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained

~

When dew falls as tears from the morning sky,
When riverside trees sparkle in sunlight,
So close in my heart their shadows fall,
Then I know
That the Universe is a floating lotus
In the holy lake of my mind.
Then I know:

I am the voice within the Voice,
The song within the Song,
The life within the Life,
The light breaking through the heart of darkness.

Rabindranath Tagore
from - "A Flight of Swans"
translated by Aurobindo Bose

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

... thus you came into being
from non-existence...

...like a star without a name...

Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights...

Rumi

~

How we perceive affects what we believe,
what we believe affects what our perception is...

MM

Namaste

_/\_

Found Notes - MM

"There are no shortcuts to what lies beyond."

"There is poetry in emotion that needs to be expressed -
allowing yourself to be raw and open to what arises..."

"letting life take care of itself,
being open to where life goes..."

~

I found this piece of paper that these notes were hand-
written on, on top of some papers that were in a stand-
alone plastic file holder - as shown in the photo - on a
table next to my desk - very noticeable from where I
sat, noticing something was out of place, as messy as
it is :) - as if they were left for me to see...

I have no idea who said them!, or where I got them
from...  But wanted to share them as they seem
relevant for life as we are experiencing it at the
moment...

Namaste

_/\_

Cosmic Dust...

We are Cosmic Dust...

Star stuff...

Elements of the firmament...
Infinitesimal atoms
coalesced in time and non-time;

non-existence into existence.

Star born,
in luminous womb-like nebulae.
Light, born from darkness.
Carried by Solar winds
among trillions of galaxies...

The Cosmos runs through us -
IS us...

Undying brilliance that death cannot erase;
forever gliding through the Universe...
unconfined by the limits of time and place,
our "spirit" is always free,
unfettered by the bonds of earth.

Shine on...

Mystic Meandering
May 18, 2020

For all those who have lost loved ones
- they are not "lost" -

Their "spirit" is shining forever brilliant
lighting the darkness,
forever free...

Shine on, dear ones, Shine on...

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Soul Windows - John O'Donohue, Ram Dass & D.H. Lawrence

When your soul awakens,
you begin to truly inherit your life.
You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces,
repetitive talk and many weary roles,
and slip deeper into the true adventure of
who you are,
and who you are called to become.

The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown...

Yet we are afraid of the unknown because
it lies outside our vision and our control.
We avoid it or quell it by filtering it
through protective barriers of
domestication and control.

The normal way never leads home...

John O'Donohue

~

The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal.
It can't be organized and regulated.

It isn't true that everyone should follow one path.
Listen to your own truth...

Ram Dass

~

However smart we may be,
however rich and clever or loving and charitable
or spiritual or impeccable,
it doesn't help us at all.

The real power comes to us from the beyond,
the unseen, the unknown.

D. H. Lawrence

~

Photo from the Internet

Holy Helpers - Donna Iona Drozda

There is a deeper realm, there is an unseen world.
There is for each one of us.....unseen Holy Helpers
and Inner Guides - Mighty Companions...

...be still

See what arises to meet you when you listen with your
inner ears and see with your inner eyes.  See what
happens when you lift above the fray...

There is an aliveness, an alive world rich in beauty
flowering below the surface and beyond the horizon...
There is a softer, subtle music playing...

Donna Iona Drozda
Artist and Life Coach

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Kindness and Sorrow - Naomi Shihab Nye

[.....]

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

[this is only an excerpt from one of the poems
in that collection].

Photo from the Internet

The Troll in the Mind - Mark Nepo

We spend so much time
anticipating what will happen next that we miss
the whisper of Heaven that unfolds wherever we are.

Though I have known and survived
many forms of pain,
fear is the troll in the mind
that anticipates more.

And just as a loud noise prevents us
from finding the peace in the center of silence,
fear prevents us from finding
the inch of Heaven in the center
of whatever moment we are in.

Yet, no matter how much I've been through
and how much I've learned,
I can't stop the wave of anticipation.
No one can.

It is part of being human.

Mark Nepo
(a cancer survivor)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
 A dried rose petal with one eye
at the top and a big schnozz.
Looks like a troll to me :)

Wordless Whispers...

Who is here for you,
in your vulnerability,

your fragility?

Maybe you talk to "God"...
The Buddha, maybe Allah,
or the Divine Mother...?

It doesn't matter what "God" you believe in..
"The Mystery" holds them all...

What comforts you?
What calms your agitated mind?
Can you feel the invisible arms
around your shoulders?

Who is your Friend?

The one who stands with you
in times like these;
that consoles and comforts,
that reminds you of who you really are -
on the inside - beyond personality,
beyond hardship...

beyond the chaos and confusion
of the troubled world?

Be still...  Breathe...

Listen for the Wordless Whispers...
that others cannot hear...

Listen deeply...
For it's your own compassionate Heart
whispering:

You can overcome anything...

You are loved...

Mystic Meandering
May 1, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Orchids that look like a face in the way they hung;
comforting eyes that heal and soothe
the restless mind and troubled spirit...

Weight Shift - Ram Dass

If we can imagine a wheel whose rim is the cycle of births and deaths,
all of the 'stuff' of life, conditioned reality, and whose center is
perfect flow, formless no-mind, the Source, we've got one foot with
most of our weight on the circumference of the wheel, and one foot
tentatively at the center.

That's the beginning of awakening.  And we come in, and we sit and
meditate, and suddenly there's a moment when we feel the perfection
of our Being and our connection.  Then our weight goes back on the
outside of the wheel. Over and over and over, this happens.

Slowly, slowly the weight shifts.  Then the weight shifts just enough
so that there is a slight predominance on the center of the wheel, and
we find that we naturally just want to sit down and be quiet, that we
don't have to say , "I've got to meditate now," or "I've got to read a
holy book." or "I've got to turn off the television set," or "I've got to
do... anything."  It doesn't become that kind of discipline anymore.
The balance has shifted.

And we keep allowing our lives to become more and more simple,
more and more harmonious.  And less and less are we grasping at
this or pushing that away...

[We are no longer trying to make anything happen.]

Ram Dass

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - digitalized Mandala Art

2013

Why I Sit in "Silence"...

I come to sit - to rest in the deep Quietness...

To sit with uncertainty,
with the fear and anger,
if they arise again, as they
most certainly will.

I come to sit - to mourn the losses of life
and losses of the ways of life;
to mourn the living and the dead,
for the suffering they have endured;

and for the grief - unending grief.

I come to sit - to feel the depths of healing Silence,
the deep Stillness;
to lay the burdens of the heart down
and just rest...

Mystic Meandering
April 30, 2020

~

Photo - Meditating Monks Mandala

?date

Wake Up!- Rumi & Hendrick

The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you...

Don't go back to sleep!

Rumi

~

All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.

Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.

Today - breathe.

Listen, behind the noises of your panic...
The birds are singing again,
the sky is clearing.

Spring is here...

And we are always encompassed by Love.

Open the windows of your soul...

Richard Hendrick
Irish Franciscan Monk

via - Rays

~

Photos - I brought this potted Mum in for the winter
not knowing if it would survive.
As you can see it became "leggy", part of it died off.
But low and behold, somewhere in the 2nd week of April
I noticed a lonely bud - which bloomed by April 19th!
Take heart - Life is resilient and keeps living Itself!
Maybe we can actually create a livable environment...

Rupture and Evolution - Arundhati Roy & Jeff Kober

What is this thing that has happened to us?
It's a virus, yes.  In and of itself it holds no moral brief.
But it is definitely more than a virus...
It has brought the world to a halt...  Our minds are still
racing..., longing to return to "normality", trying to stitch
our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture.
But the rupture exists.

Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the
past and imagine their world anew.  This one is no different.
It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
[one way of life to the next].  We can choose to walk through
it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our
avarice, our data banks and dead ideas... or we can walk
through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine
another world. [Another way of being in the world].

Arundhati Roy
Author - The God of Small Things

[brackets mine]

~

The Vedas tell us that change is constant, that the nature of
the relative world is continual change, always.  Like the weather...
But the Vedas also tell us that the changing nature of the
universe is always progressive.  Evolution is the only thing
that's ever happening here. Always.  Like rivers always flowing
downstream; regardless of how many curves and meanderings they
may take, they always reach the ocean.  Downstream flow is the
nature of water.  And evolution is the nature of consciousness.
Consciousness cannot help but evolve.  It cannot help but expand,
widen, deepen, grow.  This is its very nature.  Though we may
resist it or ignore it, pretend it isn't so, in fact it is so.  It always
has been, it always will be.

Jeff Kober
Meditator

~

Photo from the Internet

Solitude - Zat Rana

"All of man's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly
in a room alone..."

Blaise Pascal

According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, we dread
the boredom and instead choose aimless distractions, and we can't
help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false
comforts of the mind.

We never learned the art of solitude.  And now we live in a world
where we're connected to everything except ourselves.  Everything
 that has done so much to connect us has simultaneously isolated us.
We are so busy being distracted that we are forgetting to tend to
ourselves, which is consequently making us feel more and more
alone...

Never being alone is not the same as never feeling alone.  The less
comfortable you are with solitude, the more likely it is that you
won't know yourself.  And then, you'll spend even more time
avoiding it to focus elsewhere.  In the process, you'll become
addicted to the same technologies that were meant to set you free.
Just because we can use the noise of the world to block out the
discomfort of dealing with ourselves doesn't mean that this
discomfort goes away.

Almost everybody thinks of themselves as self-aware.  They
think they know how they feel and what they want and what
their problems are.  But the truth is that very few people really
do.  And those that do will be the first to tell you how fickle
self-awareness is and how much alone time it takes to get
there.  In today's world, people can go their whole lives
without truly digging beyond the surface level masks they
wear...[How interesting that we are required to wear masks
these days.] We are increasingly out of touch with who we are...
[Maybe this is why so many are having a hard time with
the "stay-at-home" orders - feeling confined, like their freedom
 has been taken away - acting out].

Almost anything that controls our life in an unhealthy way
finds its roots in our realization that we dread the nothingness
of nothing.  We can't imagine just being rather than doing.  We have an instinctive aversion to simply being.   And there-
fore, we look for entertainment, we seek company, and if
 those fail, we chase every higher highs.

We ignore the fact that never facing the nothingness is the same
as never facing ourselves.  And never facing ourselves is why
we feel lonely and anxious in spite of being intimately connected
to everything around us.

Fortunately, there is a solution.....  When you surround yourself
with moments of solitude and stillness, you become intimately
familiar with your environment in a way that forced stimulation
doesn't allow. [Forced socialization]  The world becomes richer,
the layers start to peel back, and you see things for what they
 really are, in all their wholeness, in all their contradictions,
 and in all their unfamiliarity.

You realize there are other things you are capable of paying
attention to than just what makes the most noise on the
surface.  [Solitude] allows you to discover the novelty in things
you didn't know were novel; it's like being an unconditioned
child seeing the world for the first time.  It also resolves the
majority of internal conflicts.

Without realizing the value of solitude, we are overlooking the
fact that, once the fear of boredom is faced, it can actually
provide its own stimulation.  And the only way to face it is to
make time to just sit... with our thoughts, with our feelings, with
a moment of stillness...

Zat Rana

Excerpt from: "The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You"
an article in Medium.com

[brackets mine]

~

Your solitude will be a support and a home for you,
even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances,
and from it you will find all your paths...

Rainer Maria Rilke

Excerpt from: Letters to a Young Poet #1

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Turn Inward...

Turn...

inward,

toward "The Silence;"
The Light in your Heart;
the space of Pure Awareness...

Turn from the voices of an unconscious world;
the voices of confusion, hatred, and ignorance;
the ones who distract you from *knowing*
the Truth of who you are...

~ Turn ~

Turn and Listen

in the deep Silence,
in the chalice of the Heart,
until you hear what needs to be heard...

Turn inward from the stimulation of empty words
being "sold" to the masses with the false delusions
of the Real, selling you their "frameworks" of reality,
leaving you empty...

Come - Sit in The Silence...

Sit in solitude...

Silently listening within...

Thrive in The Silence
of your own Being,
that waits for you to
Turn...

Mystic Meandering
April 2020

~

"There is a huge silence inside each of us 

that beckons us into itself, and the recovery 

of our own silence can begin to teach us 

the language of heaven." 

 Meister Eckhart

~~

Photo - the 2011 Full Moon through a skylight...
What captured my attention was the reflection of
what appears to be an "inner window" or door.
You can see the square-like image to the right of
the ball of light (moon).  In a sense it is what this
poem is about - turning inward through the inner
window/door, and meeting the Spaciousness that
 is always there...