Perfect Pulsing Silence...

This piece below was written during a practice I call
 “Window Sitting”
 when I sat at an open window late at night in silence,
 experiencing the "Rhythm of Silence"
that permeates all Nature; just being aware, just noticing -
just listening to the sounds of Silence,
experiencing the smells and feel of Nature
 out the open window -
 writing in the dark of night, or sometimes in moonlight,
at the window sill…

May we all find The Rhythm of Silence
in these hectic times ~ ~ ~

Perfect Pulsing Silence

Perfect pulsing Silence
Utter Stillness
Breath-giving Life.

This is what I come to the window for ~
to sit in utter and complete Silence – the pulse of Life;
to smell, feel and sense Silence;
to feel its Aliveness,
to hear Its Song…


Sitting in the silence of
not “knowing” puts one in a place of really listening,
with no agenda or expectation,
leaving the space open for Silence to speak,
to calm the mind and
sing Its song to the heart…

I listen deeply for the song of Silence…

A breeze touches my arm gently,
feels cool,
smells refreshing,
inviting me to be aware…

I gaze inward
to the Silence within,
that is mirrored out the window,
in the silence of the night.
It’s all the same Silence…

The Rhythm of Silence begins ~

I sit back in the chair
listening to the pulsing Silence
within and without,
feeling Its familiar Rhythm
feeling the dance of intimacy begin again…

Nothing disturbs IT
Nothing disturbs the depth of IT
Nothing prevents Its song
from being sung ~

In this intimate Silence I am reminded that
everything occurs within The Silence;
all life, all breath, all death, all movement
occurs within this vast space of Silent Awareness
that we are…

In The Silence of awareness
I know that everything is living according to ITs
natural order ~ is following ITs natural order,
including this life I call mine…

All life is being lived
by the hush of the Mystery…

All is the pulse of Silence ~
The pulse of Life ~

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
May 2011

~♥~

Finding The Rhythm of "Silence..."

Photo and Quote by: Larry Kanfer
Photo called “Gatekeeper” from: “On Second Glance”
Published by the University of Illinois Press

~

Winter is upon us, much like the above photo; intuitively the time for hibernation.  And I’ve been a cranky contemplative because I am not getting enough solitude, quiet, and meditative Silence…  I’m needing to be in "The Stillness", finding the Rhythm of Silence within again – just BEing in that space of Divine Silence until my entire Being feels “nourished” and restored.  It appears that life may soon afford me this deep necessity, allowing me to spend more time in Inner Quiet– the “Gatekeeper” of the Inner Life - listening to "The Silence"; which does not mean I won’t be *doing* anything. HA! There is always "doing" to be done.  But there are some life changes on the horizon that I hope to write about in some future-now…

Finding the Rhythm of Silence is simply sitting in silence, listening for the Inner Flow, the Inner Rhythm and bringing the awareness there...  Finding the Rhythm of Silence within unwinds you - unwinds your thoughts, your feelings, emotions and stresses of the day.  It is the medicine that brings us back into the current of Life - the Inner Life...

From The Silence today:

“You must come into the eternal Rhythm of ‘The Quiet…’
You must learn to live in and from ‘The Silence’
which does not mean
live *in* silence,
but to live *in*
’The Silence...’
from

the eternal vastness
and depth
of
’The Silence’

~

Find your truth
*in*
’The Silence’”

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Nov. 21, 2013

~

Also see: Perfect Pulsing Silence


May we all find The Rhythm of Silence in our lives...

Photo:

I just love this photo,

the simplicity, the zen-like quality;
the tangible silence…
It is an old newspaper clipping from years ago
found in one of our archive boxes recently.

Photo Essay: The Cycle of Change...

 ~~~

 ~~~

Everything

 comes full circle…
Nothing really dies…

The Eternal is always here
in the ordinary,
perpetually present…

It only changes form,
changing expression
of the Light
within

Eternally
 kindling ItSelf
 

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings

2013

Whispers of Light...

“There is a whisper,
but it’s louder than the wind.
It calls to us, ‘Come Home.
The story is over,
the pages are worn thin,
Come Home.’

It’s like a chant
a sacred OM
underlying all else.

It requires not doing anything,
or going anywhere,
or becoming anything.

If only we see that we are this
whispering sound,
all else will dissolve
into peace…”

Raphael Stoneman
Advaita Poet

~

"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...

'You are the beloved of
The Beloved...'

and
in every moment
in every event of your life,
The Beloved
is whispering to you
exactly what you need
to hear and know..." 

Rumi

~

“In reality only the Ultimate is…
What is real is nameless and formless,
just pure energy of life and light,
of Consciousness…”

Nisargadatta
Advaita Vedanta Teacher


~

"The eternal is indeed at home within us;
arises from the depths of Silence...
As soon as we stop struggling
 against life
we discover the stillness that is
perpetually present.
It is the Timeless
 dancing as time..."

Dorothy Hunt
Zen Buddhist Teacher

An Ocean of Gold...

“Surrender the heart
and you see that everything
is suspended in
still radiance
like ghee

poured

into
an
ocean
of
gold

Divine light dwells
in the quality
of
the
heart’s
S

U
R

R
E
N

D

E
R

~
~
~
~

Fred La Motte
Uradiance

~

 We exist in an
 Infinite Ocean
 of
Divine
  Consciousness

S

U

S

P

E

N

D

E

D

in the
 Eternal Formlessness
of
Being

There is no distinction
between

 You-and-the-Ocean…
Just waves in the Cosmic Sea

There is only the Infinite,
the Ultimate Reality,
Being ~ You ~ Being ItSelf.

The Mystery
 of Life
~
~
~

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings

2013

~

Top Photo: Unfortunately not mine…
A friend sent it along with some others
that he got off the internet.
Original source unknown…
It also looks better in its
original size, 700 pixels J

2^nd Photo – mine J

Epiphany...

It seems that my “spiritual path” has been laced with small “epiphanies” and “divine flashes” of awareness, and “mini awakenings” over the years.  I had one of those moments last weekend when standing in the backyard.   I had stepped outside to be in nature for a while, connecting with the stillness and silence – taking it all in - noticing and feeling the connection.   I was in the process of taking some pictures of the shadows that the late afternoon sun in November was making on the fence, when suddenly the words: “There is nothing but ‘God’” ran unbidden and unexpectedly through the silence of my being.  Say What!  There was an immediate sense of *profound* peace, contentment and joy in my heart.  I even started to giggle to myself.  But I was also completely shocked by the word  - "God"– and my very tangible felt experience of it.

I have not used the "God" language in *years*, after leaving the religion of my childhood some 26 years ago , as it holds imagery of my Christian upbringing of a person in the clouds with white beard, and separateness.   It has so many old paradigm, somewhat fundamentalist “religious” connotations from my past, which made it all the more surprising that this was the word that floated through.  If the “voice” had said: “All there is is Awareness”, or “Consciousness”, or “Pure Being”, I would have gone, of course! – as those are the words that I most often use. You could also use words like Buddha Nature, the Divine, The Self, Brahman, the Ineffable, The Eternal, or the Infinite.   But I was jolted awake by the clear use of the word “God.”  As this phrase ran through me I had the image of a deep golden light, like a sunset that ran across the screen of my mind, as if to show me the depth and vastness of the word.  As it wasn’t the persona “God” image of my childhood.  No, it was an incomprehensible sense of vast, expansive, all-inclusive, infinite, ubiquitous Presence, with which I felt an immediate sense of *inherent* communion – not one which needed to be sought after, but that was already actively happening…  And with that realization came a profound sense of Grace…

It was also realized that it doesn’t matter if there is a sense of a “me” or “no-me.”  It is inconsequential.  It is just realized that all there is, is Infinite Existence that just IS – no matter what name or qualities we give It…

“…one awakens to the simple truth
that there is nothing other than God.
We are always with God.
Even the idea of a “path”
is an illusion,
because
 everything
 is
 God.”

Lllewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic

Go
 IN &
 IN & IN

until you come to
 the pure Self-luminous,
the place of pure Being.

…see that behind all ‘this’
there is all ‘this’ in its OM,
its unmanifested form.

See the OMness of everything…”

Ram Dass
Hindu Spiritual Teacher

The liberating Truth is not static;
it is alive.

It cannot be put into concepts
and be understood by the mind.

The Truth lies beyond all forms
of conceptual fundamentalism.

What you are is the beyond…
It is awake and present,
here and now
 already.”

Adyashanti
Zen/Advaita Spiritual Teacher

~

Top Photo:
 Cray Pas Pastel oils

2010

Mystic Heart...

"Mystical experience is the awakening
to the Mystery within and without
and beyond us;
happening in the pesent moment
of the eternal now.

Mystical experience is always here,
inviting us on a journey of
ultimate discovery.
How we make the journey
is what spirituality
is all about.

Existence is a
summons
to the
eternal
journey
of the sage...
the sage we all are,
if only we could see.
It is our spiritual nature…”

Wayne Teasdale

Christian Mystic
From: The Mystic Heart

“If you could [look beyond] yourself just once,
the secret of secrets would open to you.

The face of the unknown,
hidden beyond the universe
would appear
 on the mirror
of your
  perception.”

Rumi

”The Mystic’s path takes one into
the
 depths
 of
 the
 Heart…

It leads from the known to
the unknown,
and
 then
 further
into
 the
 unknowable…

Nothing can prepare you for
the Heart’s journey…
It is a mystery
 of the
Heart’s
 awakening…”

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic
From:
 Fragments of a Love Story

~



Photos:
#1 - Raindrops on Screen
#2 - Shadow on Wall
zoom blurred
#3 - Shadow on Wall

"Contemplative Spirituality..."

Once again I am feeling the pull to “sabbatical life” as I did this past summer, which never materialized.  Life kept me preoccupied, my continual lament.  Maybe “contemplative life” is only my idealization of “spirituality.”  And yet – this inner need for Silence and Solitude continues to beckon me.  I have carved out moments of solitude for myself here and there within the reality of my life as it is – yet, something within still calls; calls for the shedding of old paradigms again, emptying myself of all that is irrelevant and extraneous - to just BE. 

It is not a “contemplative” life in the religious sense that calls to me. One does not need to be a Christian in order to be a “contemplative”, nor cloister one’s self in a monastery.  I left the religion of my childhood many years ago, wanting something deeper.   Neither is a contemplative necessarily one who “ponders” everything in the mind – but, is more one who seeks the Truth of Existence through Silence, through an intimate relational, experiential spirituality with “the Unknown Self” that resides within; waiting in the space of Silence, without agenda or expectation, for the presence of the Eternal to reveal ItSelf.

Mirabai Starr, author and teacher of Philosophy and World Religions at UNM-Taos, and student of Ram Dass, defines being a “contemplative” as a “practitioner who has carved out a space inside herself through the intentional cultivation of stillness.”  She says that through “surrender one sits in prolonged silence and waits for the presence of ‘God’ (however one defines that) – being aware of the presence of that which transcends our individual self – deepening into our experience of Source.” 

Ivan Granger of Poetry Chaikhana  says:  “A mystic is content with nothing less than to touch the Truth in its most universal purity.”  Ahhhhh – music to my mystic heart. J  While some may make a disctinction between a “mystic” and a “contemplative”, I do not see the dividing line.   In our Hearts, we “both” want to *know* the Truth.  We both want to “experience” the presence of the Eternal in our lives – no matter what our “spiritual practice” may be.

I am essentially unattached to either, not identified with any religion, or label really, even though I use the term “mystic”, or “contemplative.”  I am just someone who has a passion for Truth and communion with what some call “The Divine” – which I know as "Silence", the Infinite Essence of our Beingness.  This passion is what compels me in life, and what compels me to write… 

When sitting in meditative Silence there is a sense of *meeting* the quintessential Silence that embodies and animates all life; a sense of the Ineffable in you recognizing ItSelf, and an inherent *knowing* that you are that Essence of Being as well.  The key is staying open and becoming *aware* of that Essence, feeling the intimacy that is already there – waiting for our recognition – our awareness of its Presence…

“Contemplative spirituality”, undefined by any religious affiliation, is still just another label for my mind to wrap itself around.  In reality, at least this reality J,  it is about taking deep refuge in the inner Sanctuary of Silence, allowing oneself to lose one’s self in communion with the Infinite Silence that is alive, aware and awake; that doesn’t make distinctions, but only knows ItSelf as Life ItSelf – as us… 

Photo:

Out the window

at 3am with flash J

True Refuge...

This magnificent refuge is inside you.
Enter…
Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway…
Be bold.  Be humble.
Put away the incense and forget
the incantations they taught you.
Ask no permission from the authorities.
Close your eyes and follow your breath
to the still place that leads to
the invisible path
that leads you home.

St. Teresa of Avila

She was an Anchorite
living in a *sealed* room
inside a medieval cathedral.
In a sense locked away...
Thus the strength of her words.
Usually there was only a small
window in the opening of the
sealed wall with which to
converse with visitors and
monks...

~

True
refuge
is
embedded
in
our
own
Being

When we sense the
silent,
inner wakefulness
that is here,
we
come
home

to

a

boundless
sanctuary

Tara Brach
From: True Refuge

The Unknown Self - John O'Donohue...

“So much of what delights and troubles you
happens on the surface
you take for ground.

Your mind thinks your life alone,
your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor.
Yet it seems that a little below
 the heart
there houses
 in you an unknown self
who prefers the patterns of the dark,
and is not persuaded by the eye’s affection,
or caught by the flash of thought.

[This “unknown self”]

enjoys contemplative patience
with
all
 your
 unfolding
 expression…

is never drawn to break into light
though you tangle yourself in unworthiness
and misjudge
what you do
  and who you are.

It presides within like an evening freedom
that will often see you enchanted by twilight
without ever recognizing the falling night.

It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:
All you do and say and think is fostered
deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.

It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
that is not ruffled by disappointment:
it presides in
 a

 deeper

 current
 of time

Free from the force of cause and sequence
that otherwise shapes your life.

Were it to break forth into day,
its dark light might quench your mind,
for

 it

 knows
 how
your
prrimeval
 heart
sisters
 every
 cell
 of
 your
 life
to all your known mind would avoid.

Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
offering you only discrete glimpses
of how you contruct your life.

At times, it will lead you strangely,
magnetized by some resonance
that ambushes your vigilance.

It works most resolutely at night
as the poet who draws your dreams,
creating for you many secret doors,
decorated with pictures of your hunger.

It has the dignity of the angelic
that
 knows
 you
 to
 your
 roots,
always awaiting your deeper befriending
to
 take
 you
 beyond
 the
 threshold
 of want,
where all your diverse strainings
can come to wholesome ease…”

© John O’Donohue

“For The Unknown Self”

From: Bless the Space Between Us

Via: The Sacred Alter:The Art of Transformation

Check out her unique artistic expression!

~

~

Note:
I took the liberty of reconstructing the format for emphasis…
The brackets on the line [This “unknown self’] indicate my
paraphrase of the original line… “It is a self that”….

 What O’Donohue speaks of as “an unknown self”
 I understand as our True Self, or Divine Nature,
not a separate self residing within;
but of course that is my interpretation. J

I also find it interesting that he gives “it” a location in the body
”a little below the heart.” ?
Would love to have been able to ask him about this…
 

In any case, the poem spoke to me
and wanted to post it. J
Hope you enjoy it too…

~

~

~

Photo:

A ribbed glass container
catching the mid morning light…

Solitude...

“Solitude is the furnace of transformation.
Without solitude
we remain victims of our society
and continue to be
entangled in the illusions
of the false self…”

Henri Nouwen

“The great omission in American life is solitude;
not loneliness,
for there is an alienation
that thrives most in the midst of crowds,
but [it is] that zone of time and space,
free from outside pressures,
which is the incubator
of the spirit.”

Marya Mannes

“Awareness of the Divine Essence as our
innermost true Self requires silence…
It is turning toward what lies hidden within -
to the internal - the all-embracing totality
of Divine Being.
It is the way of meditation,
the way if inner silence before Spirit.

Remaining quiet before Spirit is a prayer of silence,
through which we listen to that which secretly speaks
to us in the inner room of the heart.

What is hidden deep in our innermost being
lies in silence and stillness,
and in the silence of the deep
springs the eternal, inexhaustible, orginal
source of all being.

Where words fall silent,
the everlasting begins…

Wolfgang Kopp
From: Free Yourself of Everything

“Spiritual joys come only from solitude.

A little while in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given…”

“To be one with the truth for just a moment
is worth more than the world and life itself…”

Rumi

~
~
~

PLEASE NOTE:

  I am not suggesting that we all live a cloistered life of solitude and silence!J 

I don’t think I could even do that! 

 But it is about being with our deeper inner Self/Being,

 listening and hearing the deeper Voice of Silence

 and responding to the inner movement of That.

  We can be in solitude while cleaning or creating.

  And sometimes that Voice speaks to us through the voice of
others, as these quotes here did for me,

 and as so many of you do through your blog posts. J 

 I merely wish to point out that

 part of the angst and entropy we are experiencing in the world

 is due to a lack of spending time in solitude and silence,

 becoming aware of and getting to know our deeper,

 mostly unknown, Divine Self/Spirit/Beingness…