Keep Peace With Your Soul - Max Ehrmann

 Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.

Be yourself.
Especially do not feign affection.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,

no less than the trees and the stars...

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

...whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life
keep peace with your soul...

excerpt from - Desiderata
by Max Ehrmann - 1927

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"She"...

"She" - is not Shiva
             not "The Mystery"

             nor "the Goddess"

"She" - is the Primal Energies of the Universe -
            The Originating "Mother Energies"
             like the mother load of Gold

"She" - is beyond all concepts of "God",
             religion, or enlightenment
             Nameless, beyond form or identity

"She" - is the pre-verbal Primordial Energies
             infusing all Existence

"She" - is the all-consuming Holy Fire that burns
             through all our illusions and delusions

"She" - is the depth of Sacred Silence - the Deep Quiet
             always calling us Home - to the Heart of Being

Mystic Meandering
January 21, 2021

Photo - Mystic Meandering

            

Into the Great Beyond

 Nothing Remains To Think Or Know

Nothing left but Whispers and

eventually they Disappear

leaving only

Pure Original Silence

the Pure Silent Consciousness

of Origin

Dorothea Mills

10/18/2020

I just found out that my blog friend, Dorothea, of only a few months,
passed to the Great Beyond on January 17, 2021.
The above writing was one of her last posts...

Shine On Dear One!

Photo- Dorothea on the beach on Harbor Island, The Bahamas

A Sense of Presence - Howard Thurman

 The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines is to clear away
whatever may block our awareness of that which [some call]
God in us...

It will be in order to suggest certain simple aids to this end.

One of these is the practice of silence , or quiet.
As a child I was accustomed to spend many hours alone in
my rowboat, fishing along the river, when there was no sound
save the lapping of the waves against the boat.

There were times when it seemed as if the earth and the river
and the sky and I were one beat of the same pulse.  It was a
time of watching and waiting for what I did not know -
yet I always knew.

There would come a moment when beyond the single pulse
beat there was a sense of Presence which seemed always
to speak to me.  My response to the sense of Presence 
always had the quality of personal communion.

There was no voice.  There was no image.
There was no vision.

There was God.

Howard Thurman

from Disciplines of the Spirit

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

Personal Note:  I shy away from using the word "God"
in my own experiences now because it holds religious
connotations from the religion of my childhood
 that I no longer relate to.  I use names now that don't hold
  identifications with the word, such as "The Mystery",
"The Beloved", "The Ineffable", "The Sacred" etc. 
I especially like the words The Silence, or The Quiet
as representations of what I experience when I sit in silence
Encountering the deep Silence of Being for me feels like
encountering "God", like "personal communion."

I bask in The Sacred Silence, absorbed, feeling the sense
of Presence, of something vaster than an image of "God"
that I hold in my mind; something which is ever-
present, and personal...  The Deep Silence within is the
Heart of Being, "The Mystery", The Ineffable" - my refuge.

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Music of Silence - LaMotte & Diamond

 [.....]

We clearly hear the thoughts of God as the
music of Silence.  Then we understand without
believing...

Clever people search for lovers here and there, but
all they find are lonely faces in a crowded mirror.
Friend, why not dance to the [Silence] inside, and
meet the crazy lover in your chest?  When you open
your eyes, the world will be a kiss.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

[.....]

And we dance
To a whispered voice
Overheard by the soul
Undertook by the heart
You may know it
If you may know it

While the sand
Would become the stone
Which begat the spark
Turned to living bone
Holy, holy
Sanctus, sanctus

Be...

Neil Diamond
Excerpt from "Be"
from the Jonathan Livingston Seagull album

~

Photo - MM
from the Jonathan Livingston Seagull album

color digitally altered

"Shadow Love"...

 Don't be fooled by the magician's love -
a shadow love that uses love to manipulate and control.

Your responsibility is to be real, authentic -
maintaining integrity -
unshattered by feigned affection...

There is great healing in this.

Don't allow love to be a pawn, manipulated
by deluded hearts of
misdirected energies and perceptions.

Don't aspire to love - but aspire to be real.

When love is just a covering,
a pretense, it dissipates.
Let love's shadow dissipate to reveal
what's beyond...

There is something beyond "love"
as we define love.

It is Presence...

Being genuinely present from
the Core of your Being...

Love is that Presence - loving us...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2004

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

What the Heart Really Wants...

 What the Heart really wants is...

to know "The Sacred" - as Friend...

When we take our seat in the Heart...

we find the Friend...

The Sacred is here...

When we take our seat in the Heart...

we are filled from within...

Embodied with Her Grace...

The Sacred is here...

When we take our seat in the Heart...

our face is Her Face, our body is Her Body...

We are reclaimed...

The Sacred is here...

~

Just take your seat...

You have found the Friend...

The Sacred is here...

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 7, 2021

With thanks to Mitch Rosacker of
Self Discovery Studio
for the line:

"When we take our seat in the Heart,
we find the Friend..."

Note: the line "The Sacred is here..." is
meant to be read as a whisper...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Ride The Rhythm...

 Slow down...
Ride The Rhythm ~
The deeper Rhythm within you
that arises like warm liquid light
from the deepest part of your being.

Let it soothe you like a lullaby...

Put all your burdens of the heart to rest now
in The Rhythm: the heaviness of sorrow, the fear
of loss, the angst, the edginess,
and the grief...

Feel them integrate with The Rhythm.
Feel the fluidity that rises in the body -
loosening the constraints of form...

Breathe with The Rhythm -
as you are breathed by The Rhythm...

No intention, no agenda, no expectation -
just listening to the whispers of The Rhythm
in total immersion in The Rhythm...

Ride the Rhythm ~ ~ ~

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 8, 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Your Body Is The Universe - Fred LaMotte

Photo from Dreamstime.com 

Your body is not a tomb, or a trap, or punishment.
Your body is the universe inviting you to wake up and dance.

Your body has no edges. It is an ocean of energy expanding
in waves of breath, teeming with stars, swirling with galaxies,
overflowing with the very rim of time and space.  And your
dance can be wild as a whirlwind, or as quiet as a heartbeat.
You need not even move; your body is moving anyway, hosts
of cells, countless atoms in the marvelous ballet of
incarnation...

The axis of infinity runs up your hollow spine, a silver thread
of silk to tether your skull to the most distant star, and your
belly to the fire of darkness in the center of the planet.

Your body is a lightening bolt, connecting heaven and earth.
In truth, it is only the limited mind that insists on
distinguishing the spiritual from the physical...

But please, don't mistake the mind for the Self.

You are not the mind.

Bathe in the sea of the Breath...

You are the cosmos, flowing in gratitude through the energy of
your flesh, dissolving your mind into the infinite sky.  Be bold.
Leap into the unfathomable ocean of your body.  Live in the
silent grace beyond thought.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Cosmic Birth - Rumi

Drink the word of Wisdom
for it has become veiled light
so that you may become able
to receive the unveiled Light,
to behold without veils
that which is hidden now...

Taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.

And traverse the sky like a star,
that you may journey unconditioned...

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

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

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

Rumi

taken from two different translations;
Reynold A. Nicholson
The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi
and
Coleman Barks
Mathnawi III

~

Photo from the internet

The Holy Darkness...

 The collective shadow has come to roost
and everything
is
collapsing

~

~
~
~

The tides and ripples of entropy will continue
until all is returned to Source again ~

the Primordial State:
Pure Life Energy...

Entropy is not necessarily a "bad" thing.
It is the way of existence.
It is a "telescoping" of everything that is,
back to its original Source/State;
a reclaiming of all that has manifested in form
into its natural state;
the conceptual structures, the constructs,
so that only
the Eternal Essence
remains...

Do not be alarmed by the seeming destruction
of what you have believed to be real.
All must be released, shed - like dross.
In this there is a sense of chaos, destruction, loss, and death;
the crucible effect;
a state of alchemy,
the refinement of all things in existence
to their Original Nature.

Nothing is "lost" in the process.

Bring your awareness to the place of Stillness within.
Don't try to create order in the chaos.
"Order" is found in the Stillness,
in returning to deep Stillness of Being. 

The healing of mankind
is in the recognition of our Eternal Essence -
our Infinite Beingness,
Our Divine Heart...

Entropy is the crucible of that healing...

It is an invitation
to expand our view of reality,
embrace the fullness of reality as it is,
and return to the awareness of
our Eternal Source...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
written between
2004 and 2006

~

Personal Note: Even with this "knowing"
that was "given" to me so many years ago, how can I not be
emotionally touched by the current mass casualties of ignorance
and violence - the suffering and death and political upheaval
in my own country - that has led us to this Holy Darkness where
our personal and collective illusions and delusions are collapsing -
gratefully. Someone I listened to recently called it the
Global Dark Night of the Soul...

"Knowing" a deeper truth, however, does not mean one doesn't feel the
impact of what is happening, or deny its reality.

_/\_
MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Indwelling - Fred LaMotte

 As you fall asleep tonight,
do not take this Breath
for granted.  Honor Her
as a royal guest, making
a spacious tent of your flesh.

For she who contains the galaxies
has come to dwell in you,
pouring her gift of starlight
down your backbone.

...Your exhalation
will lead you to a crystal door.
The key is silence.
Step through.

Follow her dark rainbow
into the golden void.
Let the wings of astonishment
carry your from death to death
until you gaze into your own
original face, floating
in a vastness with no name.

A scent of blossoms
from the garden of the unborn
will guide you home...
Just make the pilgrimage, friend,
the journey of one breath
from the mind to the Heart.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - a note card I've had for years
credit on back: Francene Hart

The Rhythm of Sadness...

 A deep rhythm of sadness
arises from my heart...
unexpectedly,
spontaneously...

It rises even though
I "know"
that before thought and feeling
"I" am Eternal Beingness.

The rhythm of sadness
is not assuaged
with the knowledge
that "I am That"...

It will not be held back, suffocated
by the sand bags of knowledge of
"the teachings,"
from the caverns of the mind...

It matters not to
"The Eternal"
that sadness and grief
arise in this mechanism called
"me",
like the tides of the ocean,
rising and falling
in a darkened harbor;
felt not seen...

It is held in the embrace of "The Eternal"
breathing me...

It just is - sadness,
rising and falling
through
me

I follow the rhythm of sadness
breathing into the Heart
where it meets
The Rhythm

of
"The Eternal"
and slowly
becomes

rivulets
of energy;
just energy,
decreasing in
intensity.

Only to rise again,
on the next tide...

Mystic Meandering
updated version 2/3/2021

~

Sadness is not something you need to fix,
cure, or transform.  It need not be healed, but held.
You need not shift sadness into some "higher" state, or
apply teachings so that it will yield into something else.
For it is complete and pure on its own.

With the fire of awareness and the ally of your breath,
touch your heart...

Go on a journey into the core of the feeling, the sensation,
the images, and the raw, shaky life that is longing to be held.

And listen.

It is by way of this journey that sadness will be revealed to 
be what it is, a bridge into the universal heart, a messenger
of power, mercy, and fierce compassion...

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Retrieving Joy - Matt Licata

 Many of us have lost the capacity to access and embody
"positive" experiences, such as contentment, pleasure,
creativity, empathy, and connectedness.

Some of us have even disconnected from the simple
experience of joy, a spontaneous sense of elation at
being alive.  I was once working with a man who was
suffering from depression.  What we discovered during
our time together was how unsafe it was for him to
express joy, how the experience of simple delight
became tangled in his nervous system with danger
and the likelihood of incredibly painful rupture with
critical figures in his life.

There were times we would become aware of his very
simple, childlike causeless joy coming to the surface...
We were able to explore it together.  Slowly and safely.
With no judgment or shame.  Repairing those broken
circuitries of love, empathy, presence and warmth.

Being together in this...he came to see how he had
equated feeling full of life and natural states of delight,
interest, play, and spontaneity with being judged and
rejected.  Over some time, he began to unwind this
organization and was able to slowly re-awaken and
touch the natural joy he had disconnected from at
an earlier time in his life.

To retrieve the lost joyous little boy and girl is an
act of love, really,not only for one's self but for all
of life.

Matt Licata, Ph.D.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

Personal Note: It may seem strange to post about joy when
so many are still suffering from the ongoing pandemic and
the craziness still occurring in this country culturally, socially,
and politically...  It sometimes feels as if our "natural joy" has
been suffocated by a systemic entropy.  I'm still feeling a bit
unsettled from getting emotionally caught by the violent chaos
and rhetoric, and the realization that what has been, the
"scaffolding" of social order, is collapsing - right before our eyes...

And yet, internal "joy" comes - occasionally - and goes...
In the midst of it all - an unexpected causeless joy...

and with that
Gratitude for living
arises from within...

_/\_

MM

Quiet Mysteries - Gina Puorro

[.....]

 I want to be a student of the subtle.
Of the soft whispers and sweet hymns
that ride the ocean breeze and the hawk's wing.
A slight pivot towards quietude and the small things.
There are tender spaces
between emptiness and longing
where we just might hear the songs that pass
from ancestral throats to receptive ears.

You contain multitudes - contradictions and stardust
and sacred instruction.

Leave your unanswered questions
on the kitchen counter
let them ripen a bit...
until their quiet mysteries penetrate you...

[.....]

Gina Puorro
Excerpt from: "nothing matters, everything matters"
Dec. 5, 2020

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Full Moon 1-28-21

Fall Into Your Rhythm - Fred LaMotte

 You don't need to be a rosy-soft new age angel
in order to meditate.

You don't need to sip liquified kale, live in an ashram,
or be politically correct, in order to tap the infinite Source.

You don't need to be someone better, someone higher,
someone purer, someone 'else.'
There's no one 'else' for you to be.

It is the very search that divides us from ourselves...

The beginning and end of spiritual practice is to rest
the mind in [your] own broken heart.

Align your jagged edges.  Tune into the rough, unpolished,
yet sparkling joy of your uniqueness.

The symphony of creation would not resonate in the same
harmony without your singular piercing lovely note.
The world doesn't need another Gandhi, Jesus, or "spiritual
teacher" - it needs You.

"Enlightenment" is more like falling than rising, more like
collapsing than getting it all together.

Fall into your own rhythm: this is perfect stillness.
Collapse into the Grace at the heart of your own chaos:
that is perfect peace.

I did not learn this from the gods.
I learned it from my dogs.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Rainbow light reflected on rug...
(looks like a musical note to me :)

Pull Out Your Wonders - Nick Penna

When you listen you reach
into dark corners and
pull out your wonders.
When you listen your
ideas come in and out
like they are waiting in line.
Your ears don't always listen.
It can be your brain, your
fingers, your toes.
You can listen anywhere.
Your mind might not want to go.
If you can listen you can find
answers to questions you didn't know.
If you have listened, truly listened,
you don't find yourself alone.

Nick Penna - fifth grade !!!!

From: Poetic Medicine by John Fox

With Thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

What are your gifts - "wonders" - to the world that you could
pull out despite the weariness of existence that we
are experiencing these days with the COVID
hanging around - like a lurker in our lives?

 

Feel It All - Gina Puorro

 Can you sit with this ocean of grief?
Can you feel the gravity of what is happening
without rushing towards silver linings
or happy endings?

Let the wound bleed a little longer
without running to cauterize it
with certainty and guarantees.
Let the lacerations cut a little deeper
carving lessons of the great mystery
into your flesh
and lean in close
to the pain.

Can you soothe without numbing?

Paint new landscapes with your frayed nerves
as your tongue searches for words
in a language that you have never had to speak before.
Feel the searing truth that nothing is certain
not today
or tomorrow
not the very next breath.
It never was.
But in this moment
we cannot ignore that.
Death sits close right now
we have a front row seat
to the cycles
of living and dying.

Feel the shakiness of your trust
the gnawing fear
the sting of loss
the burning anger
the confusion leaving you gasping
for why
and how
and when will this end?

Dissolve into the stillpoint
beyond thinking and doing
and feel the exquisite ache
of the heartbreaking
heart-opening act
of surrender.

Gina Puorro
April 5, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Stardust - Danna Faulds

 From a crowded firmament of
constellations, a galaxy reaches
out to stroke my cheek with a
single, spiral finger.  One star
speaks: "Life is not a test.
There is no key to find, or
door to open.  Self-improvement
is not the point.  There is only
awakening.  And one day you
will all awaken to the rapture
of the great lovemaking, when
the heart of everything is
revealed as you; when the myth
of separation is burned to ash
in the searing flame of truth."

A lifetime of forgetfulness
erased in an instant of 
remembering.  The Beloved
enters, takes me in a whirl
of tenderness and bliss.
In that moment, two are
one, and one is everything;
stars and souls are whole,
unbroken, flowing motions;
what is wrapped in skin or
cloaked in form has no birth
or death or destination.

The star speaks to me again:

"The seeds of love sown an
eternity ago are blooming now.
There has always been divinity,
and this, at last, is who we are -
love in endless consummation.
Love, not limitation, is the truth."

Then with a rush of wind like
countless wings, I am left to
sit in stillness, with the taste
of stardust sweet upon my lips.

Danna Faulds
From: Go In and In

2002

~

Photo from the Internet

Our Path is Clearing - Ari Honarvar

 We are wondrous, complex, and resilient beings.
At any given moment, our bodies, minds and the
environment interact with and influence one another.
When we're able to balance these interactions, the result
is harmony,  However, living in this hyper-stimulating and
[chaotic] world, harmony can become compromised, and
after a while we become ripe for disease and disorientation.
The uncomfortable symptoms of disharmony are then often
confused with the root cause, and in our rush to escape
the uncomfortable emotions and sensations, we seek
distractions in the world...

But our wisdom and innate vitality await us and beckon us
to return to ourselves.  When we do our inherent wisdom
shines light on the origin of disharmony, clearing the path...
We can bring back harmony and take responsibility of the
magnificence that is us.  Having cleared the distractions,
life becomes simple again and our path is clear...

Ari Honarvar
From - Rumi's Gift

~

Personal Note -  Now that we have hopefully been
relieved of the political drama and DisTraction of the
last 4 years, maybe we can individually and collectively
find a new sense of balance and harmony.  Clear the
toxicity of chaos, and focus on the priorities of our
collective existence in the ongoing Cosmic Play of Life.

Namaste
_/\_

~

Photo - Sunrise at Sunday River Ski Resort
in Bethel, Maine - taken by my brother on
ski patrol

Listening to The Beloved - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

 ...listening is not an effort, not a technique...
Listening springs from the desire to be with the one whom
you wait to hear ["The Beloved"].  Listening is a coming
close, waiting for Presence to materialize into words, to
form ItSelf out of Silence.  Listening is a relationship, even
in the silence when nothing is heard.  Learning to listen is
to allow our self to be present without imposing or demanding,
to hold a space where something can be told, where meeting
can unfold between...lover and The Beloved; where openness
is answered.  The lover is the one who listens, whose being
is born to listen to The Beloved.  Without the lover, how
could the song of The Beloved be heard?

At the beginning we have to learn the art of listening, the art
art of being present, attentive and empty.  We have to catch
the still, small voice of The Beloved, and not interrupt, not
ask too many questions.  We have to learn to be silent,
because listening is born from silence.  The listening of the
heart is always an act of love, a coming together [communion],
even when nothing is heard.  Listening is a wisdom.  It is
feminine, receptive, hidden...  Rumi knew how central a part
it plays in our wordless relationship with The Beloved:

"Make everything in you an ear, each atom of your being,
and you will hear at every moment what the Source is
whispering to you, just to you and for you..."  You are - we
all are - the beloved of The Beloved, and in every moment,
in every event of life, The Beloved is whispering to you
exactly what you need  to hear and know.
Listen [to The Beloved] and you will discover it every
passing moment.  Listen, and your whole life will become a
conversation in thought and action between you and The
Beloved directly, wordlessly, now and always.

We need to rediscover
how the heart listens to its Beloved.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

Excerpts from an article called:
The Circle of Love
on Spirituality and Practice

~

Photo from the Internet

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

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Sacred is Here...

 The Sacred is Here...

  The Sacred is Here...

   The Sacred is Here...

Om Namah Shivaya

 

~*~

She gently and quietly invites me
deeper into Her inner realms...

She infuses me with Her Grace...
from within

She is my guru, my teacher -
ever teaching through Her Quiet Presence,
Her soft energies, and whispers of
Love.

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 5, 2021

_/\_

Om Namah Shivaya is a Sanskrit phrase
meaning
Salutations to the auspicious one

~

Personal Note: This poem emerged as a result
of direct experience of the movement of "The Sacred"
within during meditation, which I have also called
"The Mystery", or "The Silence" - not based on
belief or concept, but just being open to that which
enlivens us from within - The Presence of the Ineffable.
"She" also whispered: "Always come back to the
feeling of The Presence within."

"She" is a reference to how I experience the energy of
"The Sacred", which feels feminine to me.
"She" is always Here.. :)

_/\_

Photo - Mystic Meandering