Let the Mind Be the Mind - Danna Faulds

Let the mind be the mind...

Behind its restless activity,
just one layer deeper is stillness,
and beneath even that,
is an ocean of mystery and truth.

Swim in this eternal sea
until you know yourself
to be infinity,
and bring that knowing
back into your day.
Why struggle to be what
you already are?

Let the mind be the mind,
but don't bind yourself
to its limited reality.

Trust your experience of vastness.
Trust the truth that never
loses potency
or disappears
in fear.

Let the mind be the mind
and identify not with thought
but with Silence...


Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner and Poet
From: Limitless

~*~

Still your mind in me,
still yourself in me,
and without a doubt
you shall be united in me,
Lord of Love,
dwelling in the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

Come... Sit...

My heart, sit only with those who know and understand you.
Sit only under a tree that is full of blossoms...

Rumi

~*~

Come...  Sit...
The UnUtterable said,
inviting me deeper
into Its Infinite Silence -
into the enduring Mystery that
Illuminates and Enlivens...
Breathing Life into existence...

Come...  Sit...

Among the clutter of the mind,
between the chaos and confusion,
amidst life's disturbances and obstacles
that are hard to navigate...

Just listen

...in Stillness...


Come...  Sit...

In the respite of The Great Silence
revealing all that is true
in this life experience,
and the Great Reality
beyond...

Come...  Sit...

emptied out...
humbled...
opened...

Remembering the Eternal Being that you are...

Receding again into the UnBirthed
that birthed you...

Come...  Sit...

Befriend the Luminous Silence...

Come...  Sit...

Mystic Meandering
May 2016

The Silent Thread - Stafford

There's a thread you follow.
It goes among things that change.
But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt and die;
and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford
Poem: "The Way It Is."

1998

Interpretive Note:  There is a deep thread that runs through all of us.
It is not our beliefs, political views, or our "spirituality."  It is the
thread of Silence of our Eternal Being; that Ineffable, Unmanifest
Being, that never changes.  I experience this in times of meditative
Silence.  Some may call it the Tao.  I don't know that this is what the
author was alluding to in his poem, but it is how the words spoke to me,
based on my own experience..  It is the thread of the Ineffable that we
can never be separate from, because it *is*, in essence, what we really
are - the Ultimate Reality...

~*~

We go on pilgrimages to the
edge of our lives
to see what life is like
on the other side....

...I paddle the sacred river
to touch what is sacred inside...

Rod MacIver
Rod MacIver Art
excerpted from:
"Wild Waters and The Tao"

Rendezvous With Silence...

Rendezvous with The Great Silence
through the Inner Window
of your Heart -
the portal to "The Mystery."

Sit quietly and listen deeply,
with no agenda or expectation,
leaving the window of your Heart open -
waiting for the song of Silence...

Feel the caress of Silence begin,
inviting you in
with Her gentle breath,
breathing in your Heart...

The Silence that is always there
opens HerSelf to you - always.
Turn inward to the Inner Window,
bow to the Sacred Silence within and
enter Her Cosmic Mystery,
Her endless Vastness...

Settle into the Rhythm of Primordial Silence.
Feel the soft dance of intimacy absorb you,
in this silent rendezvous...

Nothing disturbs The Great Silence.
Nothing disturbs the depth of It.
Nothing prevents Its Song
from being sung...

Everything occurs within this Great Silence.
All life, all breath, all death, all movement
occurs within this Vastness of
Sacred Silence...

In the intimate awareness of Silence
know that everything is living according to Its
natural order, is following Its
natural Rhythm,
the Rhythm of The Tao of Life,
including this life you think you have created...

All life is being lived
by the Great Mystery...

All is the pulse of Silence...

The pulse of the Cosmos.

Mystic Meandering
May 2016

~*~


Photo - Northern Light Swirls of an
Aurora Borealis

The Sacred Self - Bhagavad Gita

Creatures rise, creatures vanish;
I alone am real, Arjuna,
looking out, amused, from deep
within the eyes of every creature.

I am the object of all knowledge,
father of the world, its mother.
Source of all things, of impure and
Pure, of holiness and horror.

I am the goal, the root, the witness,
home and refuge, dearest friend,
creation and annihilation,
everlasting seed and treasure.

I am immortality and
death, am being and non-being.

I am the Self, Arjuna, seated
in the heart of every creature.
I am the origin, the middle,
and the end of that all must come to.

All your thoughts, all your actions,
all your fears and disappointments,
offer them to me, clear-hearted;
know them all as passing visions.

I am always with all beings;
I abandon no one.  And
however great your inner darkness,
you are never separate from me.

Let your thoughts flow past you, calmly:

keep near me, at every moment.
Trust me with your life, because I
am you, more than you yourself are.

Bhagavad Gita

~*~

This is Krishna talking to Arjuna according
 to the Hindu tradition.  In Hinduism Krishna
represents the Origin of the Universe,
the Unmanifest, the Eternal Being that is present
throughout all creation, looking out from deep within
the eyes of every being...

The Primal Mystery - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Everything is illumined with Divine Presence.
The Beloved reveals [ItSelf] through life's myriad forms...

We make an image of the Divine to suit us,
to give us comfort and security,
to contain the pain of being human.
All images gradually fall away,
for they too are veils of separation,
denying the truth of union.

How can the Beloved be separate?
And when we call out to God
who calls out to whom?

Our cry is itself the Beloved's,
crying out to ItSelf...

The Mystery is that the Beloved calls to [ItSelf]
within our Heart...

The mystical path is the journey Home -
a return journey in which we "die" to
the false self and rediscover our
essential union with God -
the primal Mystery...

Real "spiritual awakening"
is the awakening of the heart
in which the Divine comes alive
within us through Grace...

Words of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic
From: The Prayer of the Heart
I merely put the words together in prose poetry form

~*~

God is a metaphor for a mystery

that absolutely transcends all human
categories of thought.

Joseph Campbell

~*~

Photo: Mandala Art
"Into Infinity"
Mystic Meandering

The Great Mother - The Tao - Lao Tzu

It was in the beginning.
It will remain forever.
It is impersonal, eternal,
immutable, omnipresent,
bodieless, immaterial.
It is nameless.
It is indestructible.
It is the first cause
from which all
substances
take their origin
and all phenomena flow.

The great Tao
is all pervading.
All things depend on it for life.
It is the Mother of all...

It existed before the personal God.
It is the father of God.
It is the producer of God.
It is the originator of heaven and earth.
It is the mother of all things.

It is the sanctuary where all find refuge...


From the introduction to the translation
by Stephen Mitchel

~*~

The Tao is the Mother.
It is the mother of the Universe,
the Infinite,
born before the existence of
Heaven and Earth.

~*~

The Tao is called the Great Mother,
empty, yet inexhaustible.
It gives birth to infinite worlds.

It's always present in you.

Tao Te Ching

Email Subscribers Technical Difficulties - Again!

To my Email Subscribers.

There are technical difficulties with Feed Burner once again - the service that feeds you my posts via email.  This morning it erroneously sent out an old post from Jan 2016.  I am once again trying to work with Feed Burner to get it fixed.  I suggest that if you want the most current, up-to-date posts that you sign up as a "follower" on the blog itself.  You can always sign up anonymously if you do not wish to follow publicly.

Thank you for being here and reading my blog!

Hermitage of Silence...

As I sit...meditating...breathing...
I feel the familiar subtle pull inward,
carrying me
to the deep Silence within;
the Inner Hermitage...

I recognize the spacious Emptiness
of Pure Beingness -
Pure Awareness.
I hear the silent call
of an inaudible Voice.
and feel Its magnetic pull,
drawing me
ever more deeply
in
~
~

~

a death spiral
that leads to birth

There is no choice but to succumb. . .

Dying into the Inner Reality. . . 

Dissolving the perception of self. . .

In this space of quintessential Quiet
all mental agitation,
all emotional reactiveness,
all verbalization of thought
...cease

There is only the deepening
space of Silence;
a Holy enclave of Silent repose
prior to expression,
with no need for the habituated outward
movement of the mind.
Only listening...
to the inherent Silence of
an ineffable language... known intimately
to those who hear...

In this all-pervasive Stillness,
"I" am absorbed... by
the Primordial Womb
into the Vastness
of
Silence...

my Hermitage...

Mystic Meandering
May 1, 2016


Photo: snow against window
taken from the inside
leaving this womb-like affect

~*~

"...we die to the person we think we are.
Again and again we die to our limited sense of self
in order to step into the vaster dimension of our being.....
[We] are driven to venture into the depths."

Hafiz

Heart Summons - Rumi

In the silence between your heartbeat
bides a summons.
Do you hear it?

Name it if you must,
or leave it forever nameless,
but why pretend it is not there?

Leave that which is not,
but appears to be.
Seek that which is,
but is not apparent.

Rumi

What in your life is calling you,
when all the noise is silenced,
the meetings adjourned...
the lists laid aside,
and the Wild Iris blooms
by itself
in the dark forest...

What still pulls on your soul?

Rumi

Solace...

What remains...
when all surface identities,
all beliefs and facades of truth have
proven to be untrue,
and the mental constructs begin to fail...
is a more softened, innocent perspective;
a simplified view of reality...

One begins to feel more,
viscerally,
the finer, subtler vibration
of the Ineffable;
which was here long before we were born...

There is no need to remember...
The mind and body may fail in their functions
may still contract
around old thought and feeling impulses
of the brain...
But trust that the Ineffable in you
Remembers Its Origins...

So Rest...
Let the mind float...

Be still, aware...
Keep feeling...
Keep listening inwardly,
for the Music,
The Divine Rhythm,
the pulse of the Universe
playing subtly,
the original Rhythm of your pre-conceived life...

Find solace in the Rhythm
that plays you;
the Breath within the breath
that breathes you;
the Rhythm of
That which is
eternally Present *in* you;
That to which you have
devoted your
Heart...


Mystic Meandering
April 22, 2016

~*~

Upon Waking - David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.....

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world
in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of
the morning window
toward the presence of everything that can be,
what urgency calls you to your one love?

[.....]

David Whyte
Excerpt from:
"What to Remember When Waking"

~*~

Photo - A sheer window curtain

Wait and Remember - Li-Young Lee

Wait for evening.

Then you'll be alone.

Wait for the playground to empty.

Then call out those companions from childhood:

The one who closed his eyes

and pretended to be invisible.

The one to whom you told every secret.

The one who made a world of any hiding place.

And don't forget the one who listened in silence

while you wondered out loud:

Is the universe an empty mirror? A flowering tree?

Is the universe the sleep of a woman?

Wait for the sky's last blue

(the color of your homesickness).

Then you'll know the answer.

Wait for the air's first gold (that color of Amen).

Then you'll spy the wind's barefoot steps.

Then you'll recall that story beginning

with a child who strays in the woods.

The search for him goes on in the growing

shadow of the clock.

And the face behind the clock's face

is not his father's face.

And the hands behind the clock's hands

are not his mother's hands.

All of Time began when you first answered

to the names your mother and father gave you.

Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.

Then, you can trade places with the wind.

Then you'll remember your life

as a book of candles,

each page read by the light of its own burning.

Li-Young Lee
Poem: "Become Becoming"

From Behind My Eyes

Winter Whammy!

Sometimes life is just "magical"!

With Winter's Whimsies arriving in April

Joy Rising...

And calm Rest...

Offering a weekend "Sabbatical"...

:)

Sabbatical...

Deeply hidden within is a longed for “sabbatical life.”

Tired of "the journey", I am in need of respite - Primordial Rest.

– but life, it seems, has its demands...

  Still, I try to carve out some semblance of “sabbatical living” daily –

 despite the roller coaster ride of distractions and preoccupations;
 the daily requirements of life, health, family and relationship -
bowing to the inevitable and the Ineffable -
submitting to both...

  Spending time in Meditative Silence
is an infrequent refuge lately...

  But even in that Stillness I bobble on the surface of life,

 challenged by an aging body, the crises that others create,

 navigating the maze of family dynamics –
whirling havoc in my mind...

But a Deeper Rhythm calls from within...

"Sabbatical"

The Primordial Rhythm of Rest

"Sabbatical" is a very deep and vital need – like breathing -
 and requires Silence and Solitude,

like the Holy Quiet of a Natural Sanctuary;
  a lily pond found in the deep woods...
where only the Ineffable moves,
and converses in an
unspeakable language
that only Silence can hear...

I linger here - drawn into the depths of Silence
until I'm ready to move again
into life's currents,
  facing into the present realities of living,
 – and just live -

Listening...

 for the Deeper Rhythm within...
The Inner Sabbatical;
not its outward form.

 Opening to the hush of The Mystery
 revealing Itself through the every-day-ness of living...

Just Living...

Mystic Meandering
April 14, 2016

The Unseen Current - Ivan Granger

We have this idea…..that the strong individual must aggressively forge his or her path through life; that it is a fight that only the strong will succeed, and unhappiness is a sign of weakness and inaction.  It is the idea that fulfillment comes through force of will. [But] if we are pushing for a life that is not ours, and feeling frustration because it is not happening, that is a sign that we are still serving the [personal will.].

Most of us imagine that we have to somehow *do* life.  [But] life itself is not something we do or make for ourselves.  It flows through us and is not of our making. The soul has a path that naturally unfolds as we move through life.  When we understand life this way, there is an immense sense of relief - and rest.  …..what is required is not…..willpower, not some total life revolution, but simply…..to feel the deep currents flowing through our lives, and then to fully live the life that naturally emerges....  In this way, we stop obstructing divine will with our endless frustrated efforts and, instead, we allow ourselves to become [an] expression of that heavenly flow that has always been eager to pour through us.  All we really need do is ride the great current flowing through us unseen...

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

The Second Music - Annie Lighthart

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,

one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard

yet always present.

When alll other things seem lively and real

this one fades.  Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound

of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.

If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft

that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful.  I stop and stop again

to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.

All this is in it and will be gone.

I set my ear to it as I would

to a heart.

Annie Lighthart

~*~

Also see my post A Deeper Rhythm

~*~

Photo - The inside of a seashell 

Melted - Mary McGovern

Something just melted in the story of me.

Like a warm balm, the softness spread

over muscles and bone and fascia.

Whispering - "It's okay, it's okay..."

The mantle of knowing slipping

off shoulders, the sweet relief

of no judgment, no opinion, no idea.

What is good or wrong?

I cannot say, not even for "me."

And this is the deep solace of emptiness.

Full of tender sigh, deep breath,

grateful tear.

I cannot know.

 I cannot know. 

And gratitude explodes silently again...

Mary Mc Govern

Grace Is Now

The Pathless Path is Endless...

As I move through my “elder years” the more I want to experience the Ineffable – directly - leaving the many trodden “spiritual paths” that I’ve been on all my life behind – actually I already have.  I have been on a pathless path for many years now.  

As a child I had an innocent longing to “know God” – directly – a child’s understanding of a religious “God” figure - and pursued that longing through many “spiritual paths” over many years.  Then the path evolved into the search for “Awakening” and “Enlightenment”  They are all the same “path” really, Longing for what is Ineffable in different disguises.  And now, after all these many paths, I finally stopped pursuing; not because I had finally “found” anything – but because The Ineffable is not a “thing” to be “found” –  It only and always just IS.  Everywhere… simultaneously.  One only needs to turn within, feel The Silence, and intuitively listen to and experience the movement of The Ineffable within – the inherent inner Reality - directly.  And yet, there is still a Longing for what I call the “Supreme Reality” beyond the surface of daily living – that which illumines everyday reality…

Being on a “spiritual path” implies that one is going somewhere, seeking some thing at the end of the journey - like retirement after a life of working, or the magical pot of gold at the end of the mythical rainbow, or even the mystical “Holy Grail.”  Or maybe one is even seeking an end to something, like suffering, pain, ignorance, their humanness, or the end of seeking itself.  But what if there was no need for seeking the illusive big “Some-thing” that spiritual seekers are seeking?   I know, I have been down the “seeking road” – many times. 

The pursuit of “Enlightenment”/”Awakening”/”Self-Realization” has lost its luster, its pull, its certainty of an end for me – much like the other paths I have taken throughout my life.  They are just constructs.  And I found they did not take me where my Heart longed to go…  And – I finally noticed that the energy of “pursuit” has a quality of trying to get something, or somewhere – to arrive; striving, struggling to find; grasping after an illusive thing that I called “Enlightenment”, “Awakening” (or God). Pursuing had become a burden that I must find what I was pursuing – like a game of hide and seek.

Not pursuing has relieved that burden.  It relieved the burden of feeling responsible for finding some thing - forever seeking.  Instead remaining open to The Ineffable allows the Ineffable to reveal ItSelf – like a treasure that has always been there, but suddenly reveals its brilliance in the every-day-ness of life, when we aren’t looking.

Years of seeking and pursuing brought me to the realization that as we “evolve” the “path” dissolves.  What we think we “know” about The Ineffable, God, life, spirituality changes, and we find ourselves in a place of not needing to seek, not needing to know anything about The Ineffable, but only wanting to experience The Ineffable; to experience that which can’t be truly “known” with the mind – but through a more intimate, intuitive “knowing” with the whole of our being.  Discovering (or rediscovering) the Ineffable for ourselves through an awareness of and deep intimacy with the Silence of this Grand Mystery, through continually coming back to the timeless space of Silent Awareness of what is always there – the space of The Ineffable Mystery of Being.

Meditative Silence and Awareness opens the door to what I experience as a “Supreme Reality.”  But it’s not a “place.”  The “spiritual path” doesn’t go anywhere.  It doesn’t end, but endlessly unfolds, and deepens, and therefore continues as an inner pathless path of openness and direct experience; experiencing the feeling of the Ineffable, the felt sense of the underlying Mystery of Existence – the Breath within the breath –the underlying Rhythm of Life – however that manifests for each of us – until we are re-absorbed into the Ineffable, timeless Great Mystery ItSelf…

“…all the activity (seeking) eventually leads us to a giving up.

  And in this surrender what is revealed is seen to be what has always been here

 – before the searching began…

  The task turns out to be ceding to stillness…

Falling back and resting.

   Amidst life itself we find our self sinking back into what is underneath the surface,

 recognizing our true fundamental nature…”

Joan Ruvinsky

Pathless Yoga

In memory of Joan Ruvinsky

who was reabsorbed into the endless

 Ineffable Mystery 

March 21, 2016

~*~

Photo: My father’s footsteps in the snow

taken by my father c. 1952/53

If I Appear Lost - Mark Nepo

[If  it appears that] I am lost,

[It means] that the few maps I’ve found or made up

have brought me to the edge of the unknown…

When I can’t speak at all

I don’t mean anything.

It’s just that I’ve unstitched the words

and have slipped into the

silence they contain…

Mark Nepo

Excerpt from the poem: “Entering Our Tenth Year”

From: Inside The Miracle

Unique Lunatics - Chuck Surface

[.....]

There are only a few lunatics,

who through no choice of their own,

have minds consumed with Wonder,

Hearts Aching with Longing,

who are, in a unique way...

Troubled.

It's a Blessing, not a curse,

to be thus consumed, thus distracted,

so that even amidst life's joys and sorrows

one cannot escape the ever present Question

spoken wordlessly, in the Heart of Being...

What is this...

This... being alive...

This experience of existing...

And... What am I?

A kind of Madness,

there in each breath, and heartbeat,

filling us, in the same instant,

with Unbearable Longing,

and Longing's Fulfillment.

A Longing born of that which is Longed for.

Containing, like a seed nurtured in the Heart,

the Fulfillment of the Heart's Desire.

Longing and Fulfillment, impossibly...

Present, both at once.

I find these fellow lunatics, occasionally.

And over tea we chat of the Great Mystery,

of Her inexpressible Beauty.

Words spoken in Love and Wonder,

of that which cannot be spoken.

[.....]

Chuck Surface

Excerpt from the poem: "Troubled"

Chuck's poems can be found on

In the Garden of the Beloved

and Facebook

~*~

Tea Anyone?

Prosetry on "Reality"...

There is a “Deep Reality”
that pulls us beyond our beliefs,
 religions & philosophies;
the maps of reality
 that we have created for ourselves…
A “Supreme Reality” that does not depend on
one’s beliefs, one’s maps,
but on a deep Heart-longing for
the Truth of Existence
and
Love for
what’s truly Real…

It’s not a “higher” reality,
but more
an energetic purity,
a clarity,
a refined reality…

It’s an Ineffable Reality
that transcends all our
ideas and concepts,
as well as materiality.

One could call it
The Ultimate Reality,
The Infinite Reality,
The Absolute Reality -
if there is such a thing…

These are only names
used to try to describe
what is felt experientially.

Some Mystics and Poets who experience
this “Deep Reality” within
 feel a visceral vibrational resonance with it,
and words just bubble up spontaneously
from “The Deep,” on their own.

Today I use
The “”Supreme Reality”
The “Ineffable Reality”
and “Deep Reality”
because that’s what
”bubbled up.”
But the words will change.
They are merely metaphors
for a Reality that cannot be named -
only experienced…

In “The Deep Reality”

we wait -
for the Ineffable Mystery to reveal ItSelf -
a rendezvous in the Sacred Silence -
without preconception of what “Reality”
will look like -
or how it will feel;
without concern for words…

In the waiting without words
Gratitude
wells up…

A deep Gratitude for
The Ineffable Mystery of Existence;
a sense of awe
at the magnitude, depth, and expanse of “The Mystery”

When we willinging succumb to
this Deep Ineffable Reality;
not just surrender -
but allow ourselves
to be dissolved into the
Cosmic Depths of the
Unknown…

We Rest

~*~

Mystic Meandering
March 13, 2016

~*~

All you need is a sincere longing for Reality -
the love of the Supreme…

Nisargardatta

~*~

Photo:  Light Waves

Reflection of Light on a wall
from a door knob!