For One Who Is Exhausted - John O'Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness takes over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

John O'Donohue
From - To Bless The Space Between Us

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Divine Wind...

This body, the vehicle I inhabit,
needs deep rest...

Relief - from the constant stimulation of life and living -
and the unbalance that it brings...
Shutting out the "worldwind" that spins
 out of control around me;
Not obliged to enter its chaotic storms,
I turn to the rhythmic pace of the Soul...
The Holy Space...

Even my Soul needs quiet "shelter"...
Respite - from the endless sucking winds of the demands of
others who are lost in an addiction to themselves...
Empty shells wanting to be filled;
grasping at me, drowning in their dark, distorted shadow,
as they try to pull me under to save them from themselves -

like hungry ghosts...

And my Heart needs to feel the Stillness
at the Core of my Being - again;
to hear the comforting sound of the Divine Wind,
restoring me to
sanity and wellness of being;
whispering Life into my Heart,
as I surrender
to its soft, silent Breeze...

Mystic Meandering
January 12, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Nature's Way - Fred LaMotte

The stillness
of the English primrose
in Winter,
furiously blooming
all by itself.
No gardener.
The rain turns to snow,
then back to rain,
without your decision,

or indecision.
No creator.
Morning does this.
Evening does that.
Yet somehow the moon
commingles with the sun
in a kind of diffuse
blue whiteness.
No painter.
And without your
assistance,
countless sentient beings
become themselves.
They choose, they act,
suffer consequences
and rewards,
and they are deeply grateful
to you
for this breath,
for this silence,
for not interfering.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Held - Matt Licata

When we are able to "hold" our experience as well as allow
ourselves to "be held" by something larger than our personal
self, we learn to trust ourselves and the workability of our lives,
even in the midst of uncertainty.  We become better able to
respond to the challenges life will inevitably provide and trust
deepens in the basic wisdom that underlies even our most trying
experiences...  Over time, as we illuminate and befriend our
experience at deeper levels, we invite its meaning and intelligence
to disclose itself...  symbolically and metaphorically and begin
to realize that even during times of intense struggle and suffering,
we are contained within something immense and ultimately
trustable...

We are always, already being held by something infinite and vast -
the contemplative and meditative traditions provide a portal
into this larger, already existing dimension of experience...

Matt Licata

from - A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

~

Photo from the internet

 

You can stop worrying now - Czeslaw Milosz

In advanced age, my health worsening,
I woke up in the middle of the night,
and experienced a feeling of happiness
so intense and perfect that in all my life
I had only felt its premonition.
It didn't obliterate consciousness:
the past which I carried was there,
together with my grief.
And it was suddenly included,
was a necessary part of the whole.

As if a voice were repeating:

"You can stop worrying now;
everything happened just as it had to.

You did what was assigned to you,
and you are not required anymore
to think of what happened long ago."

The peace I felt was a closing of accounts
and was connected with the thought of death.
The happiness on this side was
like an announcement of the other side.
I realized that this was an undeserved gift
and I could not grasp by what grace
it was bestowed on me.

Czeslaw Milosz

original title "Awakened"

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo from the internet

 

Ripples of Reality - Wilson & LaMotte

When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality
is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened
 and disoriented.  We tend to think they are mad..  Yet it is
neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same
 genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints,
the same conditioning, the same learning experiences.  We
are all living separate realities. That is why communication
fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are
so common.

Robert Anton Wilson
From - Prometheus Rising

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Your point of view and my point of view are equally "right"
and equally insignificant facets in the dazzling holographic
diamond of opposites.  Whatever is, the opposite also is, 
simultaneously arising.  Yet neither of these little flickers of
local light is Truth.  Truth is what illuminates the entire jewel.

If we spent less energy constricting ourselves to a point, and
instead, let ourselves expand into the Whole, each One of us
would illuminate the world with a silent glance of beauty, a
gentle touch of joy.

This is the effortless breath of grace: inhaling into wholeness,
exhaling into uniqueness, the All embodied in the particular.

It is a happening, not an intention.  It does not need to be
planned or affirmed.  Plans and affirmations get in the way.

Just give up trying to be any-thing else.  Let Be who you
actually Are, the entire quantum crystal of eternity in this
moment.

Your point of view, my point of view: infinitesimal ripples in
one ocean of cosmic Light.  We are not just waves, you are the
sea.  As knowings, we are very very small.  As Beings, we are
vast beyond imagining.  We include each other.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Funky Art - Mystic Meandering

 

The Dakini Speaks - Jennifer Welwood

My friends...
Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It's simple - how could we have missed it for so long?
Let's grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please. let's not be so shocked by them.
Let's not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life's only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.

This is the true ride - let's give ourselves to it!
Let's stop making deals for safe passage:
There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore...

Give everything for what cannot be lost...

Jennifer Welwood

~

Personal Note: I had to look up what a Dakini is :)
A Dakini, in the Tibetan tradition means "sky dancer/walker"
and is a tantric deity that might best be described as a female
embodiment of enlightened energy.  Dakinis are energetic
being in female form, evocative of the movement of
energy in space.

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

Primal Energy

 

The Unchanging Reality - Sattva Lynn

Art by Meganne Forbes

Don't try to control the noise;
just notice what is always Quiet -
which is the Noticing Itself.

That Noticing
is Loving Aliveness,
Pure Awareness or Light.

Only what is
total silence, stillness,
unmoving, and unchanging...
can possibly notice anything.

Or else it would be
another changing thing.
Therefore, what is unchanging
must be Eternal.

It must be Invulnerable -
meaning without influence.
It cannot be affected
or influenced in any way.
or it would change.

Just notice what is
always unmoving -
always Here to
notice anything at all.

That is where true power lies.
BECAUSE it does not change.
It is always what It Is.

Then you don't have to
try to control, alter
or overcome the noise
of thoughts and feelings,
and habits of identification.

You just keep noticing,
or open your heart
to the Unchanging Reality -
and ask inside how
to know it as your Self.

Sattva Lynn

With thanks to No Mind's Land

 

Change - Amoda Maa

The world is breaking, down or open, or both.  We stand at a
major bifurcation point, like never before seen in our human
story.  It is an inner and outer breaking point, a point of 
maximum stress.  A point when we the "system" (whichever
system we're talking about, it could be a physical thing like
a piece of metal or a psychological thing like the ego-mind
or a biological thing like a cellular organism or a collective
thing like a species) is under severe pressure to evolve.

But this evolution is not guaranteed.  The system could 
totally break down and devolve.  It could collapse into
insanity or chaos.  It could fall into unconsciousness, fear
and hysteria.  It could only barely survive.  Or it could start
the process of breakdown and at the critical point break through
to a new level.

Each of us is called to listen from a deeper place to what is
demanded by the reflection of the outer world.  Do we 
continue to operate from a divided state, a state of fear and
panic and noisy narratives that lock us into armored perspectives
and narrow pedestals?  Or do we open so wide that we can hold
the totality of the mess, the loss, the grief, the horror and the
agony in that openness, and then remain as this openness come
what may?  Can we truly take up the invitation for an inner
revolution of consciousness?

Today, a well of sorrow for the insanity that floods humanity
and keeps on coming.  Today, a whisper of light on the horizon
of darkness as the potential for transformation and evolution
beckons...

Amoda Maa

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo from the internet

 

The Weaving of New Cloth - Matt Licata

At times, the wisest, most skillful, and most compassionate
action is to establish a boundary with another person.  To
stand up and assertively say No.  To move in an empowered
and swift way to protect our own integrity.  To privilege our
own autonomy and interiority. To meet narcissism, abuse, and
neglect with a fiery, fierce, and direct response.

This is not only the case with "external" others - other people
in our lives - but also with the multitude of "internal" others -
from the interior landscape.

You might recognize them by their predictable refrain: "There is
something wrong with you.  You have failed. No one will ever
love you unless you change and become someone different.  You
are not okay.  You have fallen short.  You have done life wrong.
You are no good. You do not belong.  Your sensitivities and
eccentricities are not welcome here."

These are the voices of the past, the shadow of a culture of
materialism and greed, of the lineages of transgenerational
trauma and trance.  The voices of disembodiment, insensitivity,
of a societal and global ego that has fallen out of communion
with the natural world, the body, and the imaginal [mystical] realms.

These internal visitors, to an open and sensitive nervous system,
must also be met with the boundaries of discernment.  To 
realize those moments when we fall out of wisdom-presence of
the here and now, into the time machine of the "there and then."

[We need to] reclaim our own basic goodness, and not merely
accept their conclusions, reality tunnels, and the lenses through
which they have come to see things.  But cleanse our perception
with clear-seeing and the wildness of love.

To take the risk of telling a new story, dreaming a new dream,
spinning out a new tale, weaving a new cloth.  And to allow
ourselves to be turned by the great Weaver Herself...as new
vision is revealed, as we become that vessel in which She
can come alive here again.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Destiny - Markham & Maharshi

There's a destiny which makes us brothers;
none goes his way alone.
All that we send into the lives of others
comes back into our own.

Edwin Markham
1852-1940

My mother wrote this on the first page of my little
autograph book when I was 7 or 8 years old... :)

~

Whatever is destined
not to happen
will not happen;
try as you may.

Whatever is destined to happen
will happen; do what you may
to prevent it.

This is certain.

The best course of action, therefore,
is to remain silent.

Ramana Maharshi

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Peace...

Come into Peace...

Even in the midst of chaos there is Peace...
Even in the midst of complexity there is Peace...

Even in the midst of confusion there is Peace...

In everything there is a Peaceful Silent Presence...

In life and death we are held deep within the
Great Heart of Silent Peace...

Mystic Meandering

~

Photo from Pinterest

 

The Beginning of Love - Thomas Merton

The beginning of love
is to let those we love be perfectly themselves,
and not to twist them to fit our own image.

Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves

we find in them.

Thomas Merton

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from pixabay.com

 

Blessed Solstice

Photo- Dancing Sky - Ryan Bliss

 Have an Inspired Solstice!

Darkness is not the absence of light,
darkness is the womb of light...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Dancing In The Fire - Jennifer Welwood

There will always be voices that promise you greatness and glory;
They call out from the worldly marketplace;
They call out from the spiritual marketplace;
They call out from the bigger-better-more marketplace.

Do not buy their false promises, or purchase their ephemeral wares;
What fulfills for a moment is not worth the price of your soul.
There are heights that will lift you,
but not when you try to ascend them;
There are powers that will fill you,
but not when you make them your own.
There are treasures, and there are imitations of treasures.
If you have lost your true gold, at least turn away from the glitter.

Want only what is true.
This will lead you to the well of your deepest sorrows.
Follow the passageway, all the way down;
Become the dark emptiness of your core.
Be still.  Don't measure the waiting.
Be still.  Let the fire show you its secret heart;
A strand of clear light running through you.
Gather yourself there, and the luminous universe opens.

In the vast expanse, fathomless, infinite ocean of light,
lose yourself, and find yourself, and become what you already are.

Jennifer Welwood
Original title "Renunciation"

~

We can descend into the fire of direct experience of our feelings.
It is within the very core of this holy fire, in the alchemical crucible
of the body where the naked, groundless somatic territory of
illumination occurs, where healing emerges, and a new pathway
of love, care and compassion unfolds and illuminates within you.

Matt Licata

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
Woman Whirling in the Fire
(looking from overhead)

Craypas Oils
2012

 

The Thin Door - Lisa Marguerite Mora

Tell me about the passing of life,
its thin door which is as fragile as life itself.
I can hear the music on the other side,

and the shadows of bird flight
move under the door frame
with the tinkle of wind chimes.

Tell me about how life passes into life,
hope into beginnings.
There is no reward for having lived...

There is only continuity and re-emerging
from room to room and the love
that perfumes this place and the next.

Lisa Marguerite Mora

Originally published here

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Now We Are Free - Gladiator

 

The Swan - Rainer Maria Rilke

This laboring of ours with all that remains undone,
as if still bound to it,
is like the lumbering gait of the swan.

And then our dying - releasing ourselves
from the very ground on which we stood -
is like the way he hesitantly lowers himself

into the water.  It gently receives him,
and, gladly yielding, flows back beneath him,
as wave follows wave,
while he, now wholly serene and sure,
with regal composure,
allows himself to glide.

Rainer Maria Rilke

with thanks to Death Deconstructed
and photo too...

 

Remembering What You Love - Chuck Surface

What is there to do,
But Remember what you Love,
And ache with all your Heart,
However distant Heaven may seem,
However much a fairytale and a Dream

What is there to do,
But rest, with each breath and heartbeat,
In that U n b e a r a b l e Longing,
Which will not be consumed,
By the fires of doubt and despair.

For you did not choose to be stricken,
But simply found yourself afflicted,
With a Remembering beyond memory,
A Feeling beyond emotion.
A knowing beyond knowledge...

As yet unKnown.

What else...

For when faith fails, Longing endures,
When belief crumbles, Longing endures.
When other's paths prove not our own,
Longing endures.

Longing... endures.

What...
But to Remember what you Love,
However She presents Herself,
Within the Secret Heart,
Of your own unique Longing.

You are not cursed, weary Friend!
For this Longing, Unbearable,
Is both Path and Guru,
For those of us so Blessed.

And Love...

Chuck Surface

Facebook

Website

 

Spiritual Anarchy - Shiv Sengupta

Anarchy and chaos seem to go together like peanut butter and
jelly,  like macaroni and cheese, or Thelma and Louise.  The
two seem inseparable in our minds because we have no idea
what this word "anarchy" really means.  It conjures images of
rioting in the streets, burning cars, broken shop windows, 
rampant looting, bands of armed militia terrorizing innocent
civilians, bodies on the street, starvation... but that's just the
Hollywood version.

Anarchy is first and foremost about self-governance.  Yet, self-
governance is not something most people are capable of.  Most
need to be led, guided, instructed, advised, rewarded and punished
for them to feel as if they are on the right path in their lives.  They
need this structure put in place for them so that they may feel a
sense of value, contribution, progress and meaning.  Without it
they feel lost - cast adrift upon a vast ocean of experience with
no real markers by which to chart their progress.

If you were to take a person like that and suddenly strip them
of the scaffolding that society has built around them, they would
most likely react by either going berserk or falling apart.  Most
people are simply not ready to have the dual training wheels of
meaning and identity taken off their bicycles.

They are better off doing as they are told.  They are better off
maintaining an illusion of freedom and choice.  They are better
off believing that their opinions and beliefs are proof of a uniquely
forged identity.  They are better off believing that the more they
protect and craft that identity the more secure they are going to be.
They are better off believing that the more people they can get
to agree with them, the more proof they will have of the rightness
of their perspectives.

Without others to provide them with a context for their experiences,
such people are totally lost.  Without someone to agree with and
someone to oppose, it is hard for them to know where they stand.

Those who have spent their lives living in castles in the sky will
have no idea what to do when they see that the sky is just a great
blue void that they are endlessly falling through.  They will simply
flail in desperation.  And flailing people certainly look chaotic.
But flailing is not anarchy.  It is just chaos.

When the Buddha spoke of enlightenment, he was speaking about
spiritual anarchy.  When L Krishnamurti talked about a "total 
revolution", he was talking about spiritual anarchy.

Anarchy is a process that begins with the stripping away of all
the narratives we have invented as a civilization - until there is
nothing left of a person but Spirit encased in flesh.  The experience
 of living is whittled down to the very core until we are brought
to the heart of it - the self in its rawest and most unadulterated form.
The book of life is torn apart - one page at a time, chapter by
chapter - history, race, religion, nationality, gender, spirituality,
ethnicity, politics - all the accumulated knowledge of the world
expunged.

We stand face to face with the universe just as we once did on
the day we were born.  We recognize that the essence we call a
"self" and the essence we call a "universe" are one and the same
even if their forms may differ.  Finally, we choose to take
responsibility for this essence in all its forms - including that of
our self.  This is spiritual anarchy.;

It is governance not just of a separate individual self.  It is
governance of the whole as our self.  Such governance doesn't
happen by force.  It is not an assertion of our own will upon the
universe, nor is it the submission or surrender of our will to the
universe.  It is a governance that happens by listening, adapting
and responding to the flow of life itself.  Then at times when this
flow aligns with that of society, we may appear to "conform."  And
when this flow appears to misalign with that of society, one may
appear to "oppose."  Yet, this aligning and opposing has nothing to
do with being "for or against."  The direction in which we move
has not been primarily set within a social context.

When I gaze up at a starry night sky, my eyes can see stars that
exist hundreds of light years away.  And if I close my eyes, I can
still feel the aftershocks of the Big Bang resonating within my body.
This moment encompasses all of space and time.  This whole
universe has been gifted to me as a canvas.  And I going to listen
to someone telling me what to draw on it?

Spiritual anarchy is the process by which the control of the social
self-construct is relinquished and restored to Spirit.  The only law
that applies henceforth is spiritual law.  Yet, this is not something

cast in stone like commandments on a tablet.

It is a truth that reveals and rewrites itself afresh moment after 
moment...

Shiv Sengupta

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo- Mystic Meandering

 

Fantasies We Live By - Terry Pratchett

"You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

Really?  As if it was some kind of pink pill?  No. Humans
need fantasy to be human.  To be the place where falling
angel meets the rising ape.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little - ?"

Yes. As practice.  You have to start out learning to believe
the little lies.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty.  That sort of thing.

"They're not all the same at all!"

You think so?  Then take the Universe and grind it down to
the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and
then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy.
And yet (Death waved a hand).  And yet you act as if there
is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some...
some rightness in the Universe by which it may be judged.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point -"

My point exactly...

Terry Pratchett
From Hogfather

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Stories We Carry...

I wish to pack my stories away,
to leave them in an attic or basement
and continue on with life - unencumbered.
But the stories haunt me,
and the mind won't let go;
imprisoning me in the stories,
which are also other people's stories,
who have helped to create mine...

Such torture, these stories that we
create together - of pain, and fear and
betrayal - trying to navigate the narrow
road that led us here - and unwind it;
trying to untangle from each other's stories,
that have become such a burden to carry,
and let the other free to travel their
story alone...

Dec. 2, 2021

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Hey God - John Roedel

John: Hey God.

God: Hey John

John: Grief keeps sneaking up on me.

God: That's because grief is like a ninja.

John: When will it leave me alone?

God: Hopefully never.

John: Um. What?!

God: To grieve means that you have loved.
Grieving is one of the truest human experiences
that you will ever participate in.  It often arrives
without warning - like a late day summer storm -
obscuring the sun and drenching you in a downpour.
It is a gift, isn't it?

John: Uh, no.

God: Grab a pen and write the following four things down.

1) Grief can come and go as it pleases.
You gave it a key to your house at the exact moment you
gave your heart to somebody else.

2) Bereavement is the debt you must pay for having loved.
There is no getting over the loss of a beloved who is now
resting in the arms of endless love.  Grief has no expectation
date.  Despite the passing time, the phantom pain of mourning
is always one memory away from returning.

3) Of all the emotions you face, grief is the by-far stickiest.
It gets all over everything.  Like peanut butter, grief sticks
to the roof of your soul.

4) Grief is like an
afternoon thunderstorm
in late July.

It's the storm
that's always waiting
on the edges
of your most sunny
days to roll
across the horizon
and right over you.

The ghosts of your loved
ones who have died
are the clouds.

The webbed lighting

illuminating the
dark canvas sky is
their reminder to you
that life is just a
brilliant temporary flash
of time.

It's a reminder
to live now.
to be bold.
to be electric.

The pounding rain isn't your tears.
It's the hope of eternal life that
falls on you.

It's that downpour of hope that will
help you grow deep roots in love...

The gale winds
of these storms are
the messages from
those you have
lost to death that
are whispering
to you through the pines
the following psalm:

"It's okay, my love.  Eternity is holding  me.
Death isn't an end.  Death is a threshold.
I'm still here.  I never left.  Love doesn't die.
I remain.  There is no afterlife.  There is only life.
I'm here with you.  Love doesn't die."

It's all such an adventure!

John Roedel
from: Hey God, Hey John
a book about John's simple conversations with God...

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering