Postcards From the Heart...

Remember the Essence of Love
from which you came,
and which you are.
This is your truth
and your substance…

~*~

Do not be afraid of where Love might take you
or how it will change you.
Allow the stream of Love to carry you,
to flow you through life with its
winding turns, over rapids, through eddies, and around obstacles.
Be at peace in the flow and fluidity of Love’s Presence.
Each day step into the channel of Love’s music.
The music of Life is Love…

~*~

The deep change you desire comes through/from
the confluence of Love within yourself.
Pay attention to its flow, its music, its message.
Look beyond the surface irritations,
the surface constrictions
that seem to
suffocate you.
That is only the surface.
Your True Life is hidden
deep within
the Heart

~*~

Be at peace…
Even in the midst of chaos there is Love.
Even in the midst of collapse there is Love.
Even in the midst of confusion there is Love.

The energy of Creation is Love...

Absorb the truth of this,
the wisdom of this.

In this is healing.

Love is your sanctuary.
You reside in the Great Heart of Love.

~*~

See life through the Innocence of Love -
through the eyes of the Heart,
despite the pains and frustrations,
wounds and traumas that are emerging
through the physical and emotional body -
and the collective body.
Embrace it all in Innocence.
Let your Innocence carry you to
the still Heart of Love.

This is the lesson:
To see Love in everything.
It is the Divine Truth of all things.

~*~

It is your destiny to be Love – to be a presence of Love.
The only “purpose” is to BE Love.

Let the ripples of luminescent Love
form and expand in your Heart
It is already there…

~*~

May your journey to be a journey of Love,
for all is Grace and Love…

~*~

Namaste
_/\_

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2004-2006

Be Silently Drawn...

I am being silently drawn by the stronger pull
of what I love -
Ineffable Silence,
the Essence of Life,
the Cosmic Breath,
the Infinite Rhythm
of ceaseless Love,
 Loving.

Deep Silence is “Home,”
the Primordial Womb,
which is not the absence
of thought or thinking,
or “doing”,
or creativity,
but a deep space
of Inner Quiet -
that thrives
with Aliveness

My greatest delight
is Immersion in
This - Pure Silence
Pure Awareness
Pure Aliveness
Pure Isness
of Being.

My greatest
JOY
is living
 in the Rhythm
 of this Sacred Silence of Life…

Life is calling me to This -
to experience the Essence of Life;
the Silent Presence of the Ineffable;

to know intimately
this all-pervasive Infinite Aliveness
that breathes everything…

The Living Breath…

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Feb. 8, 2016

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull
of what you really love…
It will not lead you astray…”

Rumi

~

Photo - Vortex Art
2011

Deeply Listen - Mark Nepo

Deep listening is meeting experience openly
so we can discover the coherent whole of life that connects us.
The task is to slow down enough and be present enough
to listen to each moment that calls…

Each enlivened moment is a thread in the fabric of the Universe -
each embued with spirit and wisdom.
We must learn to see through to the essential realm
that underlies everything, to listen below the surface of things
for what’s hidden…

The task is to be humble enough and attentive enough to
 pull the threads until the threads unravel the cocoon
 of our own making that shrouds us from the mystery
 that is always present.

At the deepest level, the most essential level,
listening entails a constant effort to *feel* that moment where
 everything touches, so that we might be touched by
 the Life Force in all things,
tuning to the mystery that surrounds us…

Life is a river… all we are left with is to find that current
 and join it…
listen for the water as it opens your gills,
feel the wind of truth,
receive the ancient rain of insight as it softens the mind…

When our individual sense of being merges with
 the ongoing stream of being
 that is the heartbeat of the Universe -
breathing the Breath of the Universe…

If stilled enough our breath can join the Breath of the Universe -
our deepest Home.

Mark Nepo

Excerpts From: Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Hold The Silence - Danna Faulds

Hold the silence like
a mother holds her child.

Focus on the still point
…until you are filled with light,

 until

Spirit speaks to you in
words you understand,

until

 the love in your
heart grows…

Excerpt From the poem: “Instructions”

From the book: Prayers to the Infinite
Danna Faulds
Copyright 2004
No website found

~*~

Technically I know “we” do not literally “hold” the Silence,
as it cannot be grasped…
It would be like trying to hold air...
We are, in essence, held in the Vastness of “Silence.”
But I liked Danna’s imagery and where she was taking the poem:
that, in essence, we are in tender relationship with The Silence
at the “still point” of our Being, and that to “hold” the Silence means, for me,
to bring my awareness to that Ineffable Silence.
And, by “holding” (being aware) of the Sacred Silence,
we are in essence deeply listening to that Silence,
until we hear what we need to hear, and
 experience an opening of the Heart.

My interpretation of course…

Stop Running on the Surface...

Stop…
You must come to a complete stop…
To the still point and stop…

Stop everything – everything - until you feel the still point within…
Until you find the well of deep Quiet at the core of your Being…

Stop running on the surface of life
trying to keep up with life – gasping for air -
grinding away in the world’s chaos…

Divest yourself of life’s complexities,
and the emotional investments
that unsettle your heart…

Just stop…

Come to the place of deep Stillness,
from which all life unfolds…
Quiet the voice of the mind that conflicts you,
that stifles your own inner knowing,
and listen...

Stop…
Listen…

Wait for the movement that comes from deeply resting
in the Ineffable Silence within…

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Jan. 31, 2016

Out Beyond - Rumi

Out beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrongdoing
there is a field…
I will meet you there…

Rumi

~

Beyond all polarities, mental concepts,
and the shadowy forms of beliefs about

 “God” or “no-God”,
duality or non-duality,
or the language we use for what we call “God”,
or “Oneness”,
there is an Ineffable, untouched
Mystery of Being
  within us…
A stillness...
where we can lay our “self” down in the Sacred Silence
and rest -

Meet me there,
no matter what your beliefs…

MM

Utterly Absorbed - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

“We have become conditioned to think that God
is something other than ourself -
but there is no separate identity.
We are utterly dissolved in God -
in a state of deepening absorption.

There is nothing but God...
Everything is illumined with Divine Presence...

The Beloved is present,
not as a personal God or Creator,
but as something both
inexpressible and intimate,
and is recognized as something
inseparable from the self.

In moments of absorption
only The Beloved exists.
This primal awareness
of the Heart is the foundation.

Immerse the self in the heart
allowing the energy of love
to slow down the mind
and its thoughts, until
eventually we arrive
at a state of receptivity,
in which we patiently wait
within the heart
for the words
of our
Beloved;
experience
Divine Presence;
and merge deeper into
the Silence that belongs
to Love…”

Words of LLewllyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic
From: The Prayer of the Heart

I have taken his words from the book
and put them in prose poetry form.

~

Photo of sky and clouds color inverted

The Ineffable Breath...

Beyond the concepts of duality and n0n-duality
there is only The Breath of Sacred Silence...
Here is neither oneness or two-ness,
only The Rhythm of the
Ineffable Breath
of Silence
IN
which
Existence exists

In this space
everything falls away -
even our own breath –

 all  breathing falls into the
the Rhythm of the
Ineffable – breathing
the essential Life that

underlies everything.

The Ineffable Breath is always
 here - and "we" -
 are always being breathed
by the Ineffable Breath...

A mystery...

The inhale and exhale
of the Cosmos,
one Rhythm.
No longer aware of
a separate "me,"
only the Ineffable Silence
breathing…

The mind tries to keep the personal
sense of "me" alive through
thought patterns,
thought processes,
an automated mechanism
that just runs,
creating scenarios of I/me
BUT
There is only The Breath
of The Ineffable,

Breathing -
breathing Existence.

There is no sense of
union,
or dissolution,
or surrender
of a thing
called
"me"

One is simply - absorbed -
 subtly by/into The Ineffable.

A natural, organic absorption of the whole being

 taking place IN the Ineffable Breath -
 the ongoing stream of
 Pure Beingness –

Ecstasy…

The mystery of Existence
 all takes place
IN

The Ineffable Breath of Silence

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
January 18, 2016

~*~

This poem triggered a mass exodus from my blog.
Maybe it is too "esoteric", too confusing, as a "Friend" suggested.
And yet, this was/is my experience of the Ineffable, the Mystery of
Existence, during times of meditative Silence -
 lost in the Ineffable Breath.
But how does one express the inexpressible in
 "understandable" ways?

One doesn't  - that is why it is "ineffable" - i.e. beyond expression,
unspeakable.  And yet I felt compelled to write,
 to share the experience
through the only vehicle I know - words -
in hopes that it would inspire...

Namaste

Embrace the Darkness - Rod MacIver

In the middle of the night
on the edges of my dreamscape
Caribou race along the rim of distant hills
and disappear.
They offer no words
but somehow they say,
in vague, shifting images of gray and brown
moonlight and pounding hooves:

Stand still. Wait for once.
Don’t race over there
and stand in the middle.
Let chaos go its own way.
Confused, discordant.

Keep your internal center of balance,
a compass on the bridge of a storm-tossed ship.
What is the destination?
Where do we want to go?
I wish I knew.

In the darkness
just past the light of the campfire
in the wild, nocturnal mystery
Sounds
coming at you from the night,
Footsteps
Breathing
the sound of some big animal breathing.
Something is waiting for you there.

Go
You won’t create your new tomorrow
hanging around the fire, waiting,
waiting for tomorrow,

staring at the flames
that become embers
that become darkness.

Embrace your darkness now…

So a road opened up
and I took it.
Down some dark stairways into myself
in search of the sun.

What was supposed to happen, didn’t.
And wasn’t supposed to, did.
I don’t know what is going on,
I don’t know how things are
supposed to be…

Roderick MacIver
Nature Artist

Courage - Oriah & O'Donohue...

I must find the ways, the people, the places, the practices
 that support me in being all
I truly am.

I must cultivate ways of being that let me feel the warmth
 of encouragement against
my heart when it is weary.
I must be fiercely and compassionately honest
with myself  about those choices and actions
that are inconsistent with my essential nature...
I must find the song lines that run through
my life, the melodies that remind me of what
I really am and call me gently back to
acting on this knowing.
I must learn to dance.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

From: The Dance

I took her words and put then into prose poetry form.

No day or minute offers itself twice.
There is an amazing serenity
when life has been lived to the full.
When the true dream of life has been neglected
or postponed, there is helpless regret.
Life is a huge, urgent invitation.
As Rainer Rilke says:
It is so easy to lose your way -
to end up respectable, trusted and
admirably fulfilling your role.
Yet the whole time you could be suffocating
 inside and no one sees it.
So much depends on how you embrace
the world within you.
There is some limbo in which each
life is caught.
The air is poor in limbo;
grey is the one color there.
Stagnation is the status quo.
All things seem blurred in this half-sleep.
Boredom and indifference conspire to keep
the anxiety buried.
There is endless chatter, but nothing said.
Perhaps it is time to leave limbo.
To awaken: to really come alive…

John O’Donohue

These are his words that I put into
prose poetry form.

Life Sings...

Life Sings:

I am the rustling of leaves,
the feel of the cooling breeze,
the call of the Magpie – displeased…

I am joy, sorrow, grief;
comedy and tragedy…
 

Even the sound of traffic,
honking horns, and
sirens screaming…

It’s all Life singing.

Just sit with Life,
listening…

Life Sings:

I am THIS
and this,
and this…

Life Sings:

I am everything…
being everything…
living everything…

Life is Awake,
Aware, Alive
and
Singing…

Life Sings:

Hear ME

Aware ME
Experience ME
Remember ME

the song of Life…
the singing of Aliveness…
the singing of the Heart for ItSelf…

Life is everything
and everything is singing Life…

Nothing is separate from this Life
that sings…

Nothing is discounted…

Nothing is dismissed
as illusion or dream…
Every thing is always
Life – singing…

Life does not see ItSelf as “duality”
or “non-duality”
as light or dark;
not opposing forces…

Life just sees ItSelf ~
Vibrant and Alive and Singing!

Playing, Loving, Living…
Whole in its expressions…

Everything is always Life living ItSelf,
expressing ItSelf…

Delighting in living ItSelf,
Life Sings!

Mystic Meandering
originally written June 2011
updated January 2016

The Earth Is Not A Dream - Czeslaw Milosz

Hope is with you when you believe
that earth is not a dream but living flesh,
that sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
that all things you have ever seen here
are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter.  But you’re sure it’s there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
we might discover somewhere in the garden
a strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
that there is nothing, just a seeming [an appearance].
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
the world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
as if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

”Hope” - by Czeslaw Milosz

~*~

The only “dream” we “awaken” from/to
is the dream of separation from
our True Divine Nature…
The Light of our True Being…

Mystic Meandering

~*~

“Nothing short of direct experience
of ‘The Divine’
will ever satisfy our needs
for wholeness, fulfillment,
and completion…”

Author unknown

~

Photo: from the internet
photographer unknown

Timelessness...

I have conversed with the Universe,

commiserated and cogitated,

ascended, descended,

polarized, conceptualized and spiritualized,

dis-membered and re-membered ~

and still I find no “plan” ~

Only vastness and immensity

beyond theory, framework, and concept.

The Greatest, Grandest Mystery

procreating itself

in endless infinity;

without beginning or end,

Sound beyond sound,

Light beyond light ~
Mystery of mysteries…

Expressing ItSelf in timelessness,

through time, and space beyond time,

with one vibration:

~ Love ~

From this mysterious pulse of Love

we are coalesced into Form,

and dance the dance of duality ~

our light and our dark
seamlessly woven

as one thread within the
 cosmic fabric of Timelessness
 dancing in Time…

~*~

Mystic Meandering

Originally written on Winter Solstice

1999
revised December 2015

Reflections on a Mother...

After a rather poignant moment at Christmas, when my mother squeezed my hand after we hugged good-bye, an unheard language was transmitted through the hands: Love – something not easily expressed between us - and I had these reflections…

I wish I could have had a different relationship with my mother – more open, authentic, and loving…  I feel sad that it couldn't have been different.  Because of our personalities and the dynamic in the relationship from the beginning – an unseen dynamic unfolded between the two of us; which has now softened as she becomes more fragile.  She is losing more and more of her vision, her abilities and faculties.  There is less cognizant ability to understand what is being asked of her.  Her brain cannot handle too much information or stimulation.  But maybe love is emerging…  Maybe that is what is left when the body-mind mechanism begins to fail…

She covers it well, talking mostly in clichés – turning the personality on – speaking from the face – the mask.  But don’t ask her what she had for breakfast, or what she did yesterday, or what the doctor told her – it will scatter and scramble her brain.  And she will hide from you…  and turn the conversation back to you and ask:  And how are YOU doing? – just to avoid the difficulty of holding a conversation…

Sometimes she gets frustrated and angry because she is losing her abilities.  I feel the frustration too, as well as sadness and compassion for her fragility, vulnerability and woundedness – and the relationship we never had, but which now seems to be emerging in an unexpected way.  There is a softness between us now – sometimes - a caring, a loosening of defense mechanisms that served to protect each other from each other - sometimes.

And now in her “failing” years I wish it could have been different – that I could have been more present and more open to her, to not have closed off my own heart, but to have really seen the illumined heart of love that was really there, in both of us, behind the dynamic without the mask that veiled that Love.  I know that when she dies I will grieve that, and the relationship we never had – and maybe even the one we lost – and the one we might have had. 

In some ways my heart has already started to grieve the love we missed: a  genuinely loving mother-daughter connection; and yet it is not over…   Maybe, just maybe, our hearts will open to each other.  It seems they are beginning to...

Photo:
 a picture of my sister-in-law’s and mother-in-law’s hands…
My mother-in-law is in a Nursing Home with Alzheimer’s,
and yet there is still a “connection” through touch…

I made comment to my sister-in-law that it was interesting that
in some cases we can’t really connect with our mothers
until they are fragile and vulnerable,
and become like children again…

Blessings to Mothers and Daughters

Christmas Cheer!

My 87 year old mother seeing her son
for the first time in 6 years

Via FaceTime on cell phone

It was a poignant moment...

 Joy, Laughter and Tears…

with Dad looking on from "on high"... 

My sister playing with her cat "Shadow"
in the bag

A special visit from “Biscuit” the deer
at the door, waiting for a hand-out – literally J
She is hand fed through the door…

   

A Merry time was had by all...

Just a little peek into my world... 

"Holi"-day Wishes...

Whatever your Holiday tradition is -

May the Mystery and Wonder

 of
Existence ItSelf…

fill
 you with
 Light
 Love,
and
new

Joys
of the Heart

~

Peace and Blessings to All…

Mystic Meandering

Solstice - Shimmer of Light...

We are the Grace of Love fulfilled,
the shimmer of Sacred Light,
lustrous uniqueness in a field of
multitudinal Divine Shimmers
in glittering oneness…

We are the twinkle of liberated luminosity
radiating from the Heart pulse of the
Divine Mystery…
We are created and create from
the glowing embers
of the furnace
of
Love’s
Fire

Touch the Holiness of the Solstice,
its symbolism,
upon which all the other
”holi-days” are based;
the real reason for the Season:
the symbolic return of The Light…

Let it awaken you to your Inner Brilliance,

Your Divine Nature,
Your Shimmer of Light…

Mystic Meandering

for Winter Solstice 2015

To Touch "The Divine"...

To touch “The Divine” imbues
a quiet stillness of being;
feeling the pulse of energy

coursing through your body,

feeling yourself in the
 formless field of Silent Aware Beingness,
feeling the Living Presence hum through every cell,

being absorbed in Its Rhythm of Silence;
and feeling the body respond
to ITs Touch…

To touch “The Divine” ~
not an entity - as such,
not a “god” or “deity” – as such
but a formless field of energy
that we float through
and that floats through us,
brings a harmonious wholeness
in reciprocal
 oneness

To touch “The Divine” in the
 Great Silence
is complete rest,
complete release,
complete equanimity,
surrendered wholly to
”the Divine”

Not a surrendering – as such,
only allowing oneself to be
Touched;
to feel the
The intimate Touch of

 “The Divine”

 within ~

It can’t even be called “Love” – as such
It is way beyond “Love” - as we know it...
It is a sublime energy,
a deep stillness
that cannot be
described,

 or named
by words

Only felt,
experienced,
in the body,
in the energy field
and substance of the body,
through direct awareness…

And all one can do is breathe
and say thank you~
Thank you for the Mystery of
this wondrous, ineffable
  Divine Touch

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Dec. 15, 2015