Dance Between the Worlds - Joseph Campbell

As we love ourselves, we move toward our own bliss, by which
Joseph Campbell meant our highest enthusiasm.  The word entheos
means "god-filled." Moving towards that which fills us with the
godhood [or Buddha Nature, The Mystery, Pure Consciousness,
etc.], that place where time is not, is all we need to do to change
our world.  Then we, naturally and without effort, love others
and allow them to move beyond their self-imposed limitations,
and in their own ways.  The goal is to evolve to that place where
the energy that had been projected outward to correct the [them]
 world is turned around to correct oneself - to find your own "track"
[rhythm] and to dance, in balance between the worlds.

Following your bliss, as Joseph meant it, is not self-indulgent
but vital; your whole physical system knows that this is the
way to be alive in this world and the way to give to the world
the very best that you have to offer.

From: A Joseph Campbell Companion
Selected and edited by Diane K. Osbon

with thanks to HeronDance.org/e-journal

Photo from the Internet

 

Living in The Dream - Herman Hesse

Art by Alaire Bird
 

The things we see, Pistorius softly said, are the same things
that are within us.  There is no reality except the one contained
within us.  That is why so many people live in such an unreal
life.  They take the images outside them for reality and never
allow the world within to assert itself.  You can be happy that
way.  But once you know the other interpretation you no longer
have the choice of following the crowd.  Sinclair, the majority's
path is an easy one, ours is difficult.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of
yourself.  What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.  Each
of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is
forbidden... Forbidden for him. It's possible for one never to
transgress a single law and still be a bastard.  And vice versa.

I live in  my dreams - that's what you sense.
Other people live in dreams, but not in their own.
That's the difference.

Hermann Hesse
excerpts from Damian

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

 

Unchangingness - Kathleen Knipp

Sustain your own refuge...
Rest in your inner sanctuary when the storm hits...
Be pulled toward your own North star...

Access whatever it is that helps you to feel at ease,
to feel safe, to let down your guard, to experience
equanimity...

Use imagery finding your way home...

The path becomes very intuitive, and profoundly resting...
Contracting thoughts, emotions and somatic sensations
happen against a backdrop of unchangingness...

Kathleen Knipp
Excerpts from a Yoga Nidra meditation

~

If you're looking for a little sanity in this insane world,
in these challenging times, you might find these Yoga Nidra
meditations by Kathleen Knipp, of Pathless Yoga, helpful in
sustaining your equanimity and sense of peace...

https://pathlessyoga.com/listen/

scroll down to see Kathleen's audio meditations

~

The last time I checked, the rest of the Universe is in 
good shape.  It's just Earth that's got the problem...

Neil deGrass Tyson

 

The Journey - Henri Bergson

Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that
sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted
upon them from birth through social conditioning.  They begin
sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers.
Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them
a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their 
journey of awakening.  Each step of the journey is made by
following the heart instead of following the crowd and by
choosing [inner] knowledge over the veils of ignorance.

Henri Bergson
Daily Zen

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo Mystic Meandering

 

"Sacred Silence"...

I come to sit - called by "The Silence" within -
to rest in the deep Core of my Being,
my refuge...

to listen to the "Sacred Silence" of an Alive Cosmos;
to be held in that Rhythm ~ the in-breath and out-breath
of Life...

Lately,
I come to sit - to mourn the losses of life
and losses of ways of life in a a troubled world;
to mourn the living and the dead,
for the suffering they have endured;
for the collective grief - 
unending grief...

But mostly,
I come to sit - to feel the depths of Sacred Silence;
to be immersed in the vast Stillness of the Inner Cosmos;
to lay the burdens of the heart down -
and just rest...

Held and supported by the Universe in
some mysterious way...

Mystic Meandering
March 20, 2022

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Turning of the Heart - Matt Licata

[You may be asking] Why, after years or even decades of working
on myself, meditating, praying, surrendering, and going to therapy
can it seem like nothing is changing! Why am I always feeling
disappointed?  When do I reach the end, become fully awakened,
enlightened, totally healed!  When will it change?  Will the
longing ever be fulfilled?

...true 'transformation'...does not always conform to the ways we
thought it would all turn out.  Many discover the 'great liberation'
in the realization that they are not who they thought they were..

...true 'transformation' isn't possible without tending to our
essential vulnerability and the entirety of unfelt feelings and
aspects of ourselves we have kept out of conscious awareness.

It is not possible for us to 'awaken' our live without befriending
all parts of ourselves, calling them all back home into the larger
field of what we are.  It is an attunement to the entirety of what
we are...

Many of us have quite a lot of insight into our embedded patterns
[samskaras and conditioning] and "know" what we need to do
to 'awaken'.  But - despite all the "knowing", fundamental change
can remain elusive.

At some point it might only be a turning of the heart that has the
power and beauty and poetic impact to soothe the cosmic exhaustion,
wounds and pain of an unlived life, where love is revealed to be
the ultimate medicine, which can penetrate the deepest layers of 
our conditioning and felt sense of separation.

We must tend to our turning of the heart through the fire of our 
own direct experience - opening to our pain, our grief, our longing,
honoring the psyche and the soul.  Mere [intellectual] insight
alone will not reveal the deepest layers... instead [they are revealed]
through awareness illumined from within by the heart, by warmth,
and by love.

Matt Licata
from: A Healing Space

~

Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all
the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Rumi

~

Photo - Mysitc Meandering

 

Say I Am You - Rumi

I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel.
I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branched.
Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.

Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose and nightingale lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift and the falling away.

What is and what is not.
You who know Jelaluddin,

You are the one in all...

Say I am you.

Jelaluddin Rumi
Coleman Barks Translation

~

What hurts the soul?
To live without tasting
the water of its own essence.

Rumi
Coleman Barks Version
from the Mathnawi I

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Your Spirit is Mingled with Mine - Hallaj

Art by Rassouli

"Your spirit is mingled with mine
as wine is mixed with water;
whatever touches you touches me.
In all the stations of the soul you are I."

Hallaj

The great Sufi mystic poet, Hallaj, was persecuted and 
eventually put to death by orthodox religious authorities
for poems like this, in which he seems to be equating himself
with God.

This is the danger faced by most mystics.  The sacred experience
is one of ecstatic union with the Divine.  Where do "you" cease
to be. and where does the Divine begin?  In mystical union,
these questions are artificial since the Divine is everywhere...

"Wine" here is not wine; it is the drink of Divine union.  It is the
"water" of the soul, awakened and flavored with the fermenting of
life.  This is the celestial drink of initiates: the amrita of the yogis,
the ambrosia of the Greeks, even the tea of our own poetry tea house...

When wine is poured into water, water takes on the nature of wine,
until no difference can be perceived. This is how he comes to the
final realization:

In all stations of the soul you are I.

When the divine wine pours into the clear water of the soul,
everything is turned to wine.  God and self become indistinguishable.
Rather, self is lost and only God remains.

Ivan Granger

Poetry Chaikhana

~

Art by Rassouli 

 

Gift from The Mystery - Danna Faulds

When I listen, words are everywhere,
riding the air currents like broad-winged hawks.
Poems are born in the molten centers
of stars.  Exploding into supernovas,
they travel light years to reach this spinning
ball of water and dirt, then wait eons more
to tell their tale.

When I'm lucky, a whole poem
arrives at once, sliding out of my psyche
as if it was mine, unexpectedly illuminating
this corner of the universe.

Words are everywhere when I grow still.
Whispered by lovers in mid-kiss
or sung as a lullaby; shouted in rage or prayed
by a saint whose face is lit with inner flames,
it's all fuel for my fire, grist for the turning
wheel of transformation, a gift from the
mystery to this finite world of form.

Danna Faulds
From: Limitless

~

Photo from the James Webb Space Telescope
from the Internet

 

Awe - Abraham Joshua Heschel

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization
that things not only are what they are but also stand, however
remotely, for something supreme.  Awe is a sense for the
transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery
beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world
intimations of the divine...to sense the ultimate in the
common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing
the stillness of the eternal.  What we cannot comprehend
by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Homecoming - Mirabai Starr

I don't know about you, but I have grown weary of the 
self-improvement project.  The endless quest to uncover
and slay the host of inner demons who have been messing up
my plans for enlightenment, which I have imagined as some
pure land of perfect equanimity in which I hover over my
worldly concerns like a cartoon yogi, forever free from
narcissism and other embarrassing inclinations, reliably
dispensing compassion to the vulnerable, wisdom to the
ignorant, and a kind of sexy psychic luminescence to
anyone who comes into proximity with my purified and
 perfect (no)self.

Matt Licata's compassionate book, A Healing Space...affirms
that each of us has access to 'the outrageous intelligence and
bravery of the broken human heart' and the heart's ability to
return home.

This homecoming, as Matt shows us, is probably not what we
thought it would be when we signed up for the enlightenment
track.  We have been conditioned by our spiritual communities -
whether traditional religious institutions or alternative practice
spaces - to conquer certain feeling states in favor of some 
idealized realm where we are unmoved by these "lower
vibrations"...  Instead, he encourages us to share the truth of
our shattering so that we can become our own alchemists -
and learn to love reality however it is appearing in this
moment.

The ancient alchemists did not view the "base material" - as 
Matt calls our difficulties, our thoughts, our darker feelings
and emotions - to be transcended, but as 'the substance of the
gods' - Sacred, Beautiful and Loveable...  Matt's invitation is
to enter and inhabit those abandoned parts of ourselves and
our unlived lives as holy ground.

It's a revolutionary approach.  Rather than muscle our way
through spiritual disciplines, and therapeutic interventions,
we fall in love with our brokenness and welcome all the
orphaned parts of ourselves home.

Mirabai Starr
from the Forward to
A Healing Space:Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

Matt Licata, PhD

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The Song From Within - Robert Henri

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day,
when we see beyond the usual - become clairvoyant.  We reach
then into reality.  Such are the moments of our greatest happiness.
Such are the moments of our greatest vision.  At such times, there
is a song to which we listen.  It fills us with surprise.  We marvel
at it.  We would continue to hear it. But few are capable of holding
themselves in the state of listening to their song.  Intellectuality
steps in, and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness,
it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect.  It is
aristocratic and will not associate itself with the commonplace -
and we fall back into our ordinary selves.  Yet we live in the
memory of these songs, which in moments of intellectual 
inadvertence have been possible to us.  They are the pinnacles
of our experience and it is the desire to express these intimate
sensations, this song from within, which motivates the 
masters of all art.

Robert Henri
artist and writer in the 1800s
from his book The Art Spirit

from: HeronDance.org

Here's to the song from within.  That shy song that retreats
from the commonplace.  The song needs downtime, space,
in order to emerge.  It walks the slower, gentle path.

What does yours have to say, to sing?  Like a little flame,
easy to extinguish, needing nurturing, needing recognition.
In harmony with that song, I am alive, powerful, happy, at
peace.  I live in wonder if I make room for that song.

But it is shy, disappears at the slightest discontinuity.  Few
are capable of holding themselves in that state of listening.
I'm often not.  But it is, nevertheless, worthy.

Rod MacIver
artist and writer

from Rod's new Heron Dance website and e-journal.

During these times we all need inspiration and to
find our creative expression.  All you creatives, 
artists and writers might enjoy his inspirational
e-journal and reading about his "journey."

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The Decisive Element - Goethe

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am
the decisive element.  It is my personal approach that
creates the climate.  It is my daily mood that makes the
weather.  I possess tremendous power to make life
miserable or joyous.  I can be a tool of torture or an
instrument of inspiration.  I can humiliate or humor,
hurt or heal.  In all situations it is my response that
decides whether a crisis is escalated or deescalated, 
and a person is humanized or dehumanized.  If we
treat people as they ought to be, we help them
become what they are capable of becoming.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Competition and Compassion - Sharon Salzburg

Competition today is tantamount to a blood sport -
and not just on the playing field or in the ring.

The psychoanalytic theorist Karen Horney introduced
the concept of hyper-competitiveness as a neurotic
personality trait almost 70 years ago.  She characterized
the hyper competitive coping strategy as "moving against
people" (in contrast to moving toward or away from people).
Her observations are now all too evident in our culture.
Extreme us-versus-them behavior has created a lonely world.
There is always some new adversary to move against, so we
get locked into a vicious circle of measuring our strengthe
by disparaging others.

Competition is natural, a part of the human arsenal for survival,
but when it creates enmity, we need to question its power in our
lives.

This is where sympathetic joy - joy in the happiness of others -
comes in.  If we're in a competitive frame of mind, when
 something good happens to someone else, we think it 
somehow diminishes us.  It doesn't really, of course, but
being consumed with jealousy and envy clouds our judgement.
Even when we're not in the running, extreme competitiveness
makes us feel as if we were.

If we approach life from a place of scarcity, a mind-set
that emphasizes what we lack instead of what we have, then
anyone who has something we want becomes the enemy.

As a Buddhist monk Nyanaponika Thera says:

"It is compassion that removes the heavy bar,
opens the door to freedom,
makes the narrow heart as wide as the world..."

Looking closely at the life of someone we consider to be the
competition, we are bound to see hardships that the person
endured or understand how tenuous status and good fortune
can be. When we can connect with a perceived enemy on the
level of human suffering, winning or losing seems less important.

A few years ago I led a meditation group at an elementary school

in Washington, D.C.  The walls of the school corridors were
plastered with homilies:  Treat people the way you would like
to be treated.  Play fair.  Don't hurt others on the inside or the
outside. The message that stopped my short, however, was
Everyone can play.

Sharon Salzburg
Buddhist Teacher

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

(and photo too)

 

You Are A Marvel - Pablo Casals

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the
universe, a moment that will never be again.  And what do we
teach our children?  We teach them two and two make four,
and that Paris is the capital of France.  When will we also
teach them what they are?  We should say to each of them:
Do you know what you are?  You are a marvel.  You are
unique.  In all the years that have passed, there has never
been another child like you.  Your legs, your arms, your 
clever fingers, the way you move.  You may become a 
Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven.  You have the
capacity for anything.  Yes, you are a marvel.  And when you
grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you,
a marvel?  You must work, we must all work, to make the
world worthy of its children.

Pablo Casals

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo from the James Webb Space Telescope
University Today

 

The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of the wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.  For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry
from: Collected Poems

with thanks to Beyond the Fields We Know

~

Photo - Cate Kerr
from Beyond the Fields We Know

 

Don't let your fire go out - Ayn Rand

For All who are oppressed...

In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice [your]
world to those who are at its worst.  In the name of the values
that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted
by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless...  Do not let your
fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark...  Do not let the
hero in your soul perish...

Ayn Rand

From: Atlas Shrugged
(Russian born controversial American Writer)

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

My heart feels Great Sorrow for the people
of Ukraine in this moment in time,
 and the suffering they are enduring... 
But also for those others who
experience the same oppression by
autocratic ideologies.

Blessings

 

Beyond Buffoons and Bullies...

Give no regard to the voices of fear that
divide you and conflict you;
whether from within or without...

The "Inner Essence" that you are is
undivided by the earthly "tribes"
of politics and religion;
of false power and ancient aggressions...

Do not listen to the baffling words of others
trying to tell you what is true,
what to do,
and how to be.

Instead, turn to your Primordial Essence
inherently within you at all times...

Listen to the deep internal Silence
beyond the bluster of buffoons and bullies
with mouthfuls of meaningless words...

Be still...

Breathe...

Wait...

Then you will know what is true,
what to do
and
how to BE...

Mystic Meandering

Feb. 24, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Tend to Your Soul - Matt Licata

Art by Joe Maccer at Deviant Art

There are times in each of our lives when a chapter comes to
an end, when we find ourselves on the precipice of rebirth
and renewal.  Something has dissolved - the dream of me and
my life and the way it was all supposed to turn out - but it's
not yet clear what's going to arise from the ashes to take its
place.  As disorienting as these times of transition can be, they
are evidence of a sacred process occurring deep in the personal
and collective soul.

The question now for so many of us is: what is it that the soul
wants? Not what I thought I wanted, what I should want, or what
others want for me, but what is calling to me from the depths of
who and what I am, into a life of new vision, purpose and meaning?

As we engage in this holy reassembling, it can be so easy to lose
track of our home base, whether we imagine this center as the
palace of the soul, or the light of the spirit...  The great poets,
alchemists, wayfarers, and mystics have declared that the path is
everywhere, but it can take a slowing down and a cleansing of 
our perceptions for this to become a living reality.

The very foundation of transformation and healing is our capacity
to slow down and bring new levels of awareness to our experience,
as a way to cut through the billions of moments of habitual
consciousness and collective networks of trance. In the Daoist
alchemical text, The Secret of the Golden Flower, we are invited
to "turn the light around," which is an evocative metaphor for
inner work as alchemists of our own lives.

The reality is that most of us were not trained to practice embodied,
compassionate self-attunement and our increasingly electronic,
speedy, and fragmented world does not always provide a sensitive
holding environment in which to be a true friend to ourselves.

The spiritual path is a matter of direct revelation,
of primary first-person experience, and must be lived... 
Contrary to the beliefs of a world steeped in networks of
transgenerational trauma and trance, our unique sensitivities,
vulnerabilities, and eccentricities are not obstacles to our path,
but are the very path itself.

The soul is always calling to us, but often in ways that are hidden
to ordinary perception.

What is it calling you to?

Matt Licata

From: Tending the Soul

 

In Rhythm With Your Soul - John O'Donohue

Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity.

You should belong first in your own interiority.  If you belong,
and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that
deep, unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable
when your outside belonging is qualified, relativised, or taken
away.  You will still be able to stand.....on the ground of your
soul where you are not a tenant, where you are at home.

John O'Donohue
From: Anam Cara

I think that we are infinitely greater than our minds and we are

infinitely more than our images of ourselves.  One of the sad
things today is that so many people are frightened by the
wonder of their own presence.  They are dying to tie themselves
into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined
identity that other people have actually settled on for them.
This identity may be totally at variance with the wild energies
that are rising inside their souls.  Many of us get very afraid
and we eventually compromise.  We settle for something that
is safe, rather than engaging the danger and wildness that is
in our own hearts

John O'Donohue
From: Walking in Wonder

With thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Multiplicity and Unicity - Licata and Ruvinsky

The experience of multiplicity is just as holy, as valid, and
as "spiritual" [as unity]...  God itself has no bias toward
unity or multiplicity, oneness or differentiation, but rather
expresses itself through each of these perspectives to
disclose one of its qualities or fragrances.  We need not
take sides but only enter into communion with each of
these energies...

Matt Licata
From: A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

~

"The question doesn't even arise in Silence..."

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

She ["God"] births herself as the many who interchangeably
play the roles of objects and subjects, reciprocally adapting,
each of the many, even in their individual forms,
embodying the One...

Joan Ruvinsky
From: The Recognition of Our Own Heart

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Not to Worry - Emmet Fox

It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble,
how hopeless the outlook,
how muddled the tangle,
how great the mistake.

A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all...

Emmet Fox

with thanks to  Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Times of Shaking - Fred LaMotte

Now we enter the times of shaking.
What can be shaken will be removed
so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
We begin to see that our personality can be shaken,
our emotions, our minds, our bodies can be shaken.
Thrown back into that which is never shaken,
we taste the eternal radiance of the Self [or Essence].

Find that in you which cannot be shaken.
This is the crisis, and the opportunity, of our time.
The crisis is not race, or gender, or disease, or economic woe.
The crisis is an invitation.
An invitation to distinguish the changing from the unchanging.
In the silent core of your heart, discover the unshakable.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering