In The Autumn Of Life (excerpt) - Chuck Surface

In the Autumn of life...

I no longer care for "knowledge of",
In words, concepts and theories,
For the highest knowledge possible
Remains but yet another veiling.

And yet...

The mind continues as it has,
Reveling in its noble quest,
Behaving according to its nature,
Only now, knowing full well the futility.

In the Autumn of life...
I no longer care for "understanding",
Arriving at logical "conclusion",
For the deepest understanding possible,
Remains but yet another veiling.

And yet...
The mind continues as it has,
Devouring whatever crumbs might fall,
From the Table of The Great Mystery,
Only now, knowing full well the futility.

[.....]

And yet, in the Autumn of life...

I see the Blessing is born of our entirety:
The mind's desperate need to Know,
The Heart's desperate desire to Feel,
The Soul's desperate longing for Union...

[.....]

Here... in the Autumn of life...

Chuck Surface
Excerpt: In The Autumn Of Life

Garden of the Beloved

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"I sense there is this Mystery" - Rilke

No one lives life...

Disguised since childhood
haphazardly assembled
from voice and fears,
and little pleasures,
we come of age
as masks...

~

And though we strain against
the deadening grip of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery.

All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the water?
Is it the branches that signal
to each other?

Is it the flowers
interweaving their fragrances
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it animals, warmly moving,
or the birds that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then?

God, are you the one
who is living life?

Rainer Maria Rilke

~~~~

Life is the movement of "The Mystery"
Life is the manifestation of "The Mystery."
Life ItSelf is "The Mystery" in movement
with ItSelf in form.

The Formless *is* Form...

We are held in the embrace of "The Mystery."
*It* wants to be known and seen.

*It* wants to play in the seeing of ItSelf.

In looking into "The Mystery" there is a
sense of intimacy.
And there is only deep, deep Love looking back.

We are held in the intimate gaze of
"The Mystery",
like the intimate gaze of lovers seeing
 *into* each other,
seeing *beyond* each other,
seeing beyond the persona, the mask,
into the depths of Pure Being.

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
January 2009

~

Photo - Shadow of Bamboo leaves
creating a face against a reflection
of a rainbow crystal on the wall...

Life is a Dynamic Expression - Darryl Bailey

Life is a moving, shifting, dancing event...
and we are part of that movement.
Life will play out the way it plays out,
it's all just happening.
Life is a dynamic function, doing what it does.
Just acknowledge the movement, the event;
the Flow of Life ItSelf...

Everything in existence is a legitimate expression of Existence.

We are the legitimate expression of Life, of Existence,
of this great mysterious happening.
just as we are...
Each different and unique in our expression.

When we see that, we can rest...

Acknowledge the wild, exotic expression that you are,
in your uniqueness.

Darryl Bailey

Excerpt from video talk:
Challenging the Fantasies

photo image via Stillness Speaks

~~

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when
one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life,
when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within
oneself?  If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes
truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding
and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such
paradox.  One must live in the middle of contradiction, because
if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing
questions.  You continue to live them out, making your life a
worthy expression of leaning into the light...

Barry Lopez
From: Arctic Dreams

via: Beyond the Fields We Know

Simply Living...

I've been basking in a "new", and not so new, "revelation" that
life is a story being lived by Life ItSelf'; that *I* am being lived:
that we *are* the living story of Life.

Life lives the story of "me" that I've identified with all these years,
and believed, for a while at least, that "I" needed to be
"enlightened" - and have once again returned to the sense that
"I" am "simply living."

In this "revelation" there is an internal "letting go" - or
"giving up" - or some would say "surrender"...
And as a wise friend recently explained:
"In that, an ancient tension and stress is released.  And in the
deepest instance of 'giving up', even the somatic aspect of
our being feels a tremendous relief, and a Serene Emptiness
where that contraction had formerly been felt; as much in
our physical body as in our subtle energetic nature.
Struggle ceases, no longer driven by the engine of
dissatisfaction with 'what is', with 'how we are.'  No longer
driven by the engine of self-judgment and self-qualification,
by the desire to be better or worthy, or finally 'understanding'
or 'apperceiving' by the desire for 'enlightenment.'"

This articulates my current experience perfectly...

~

And I wrote this back in 2011

There is only the immediacy of the current moment -
just living that experience, whatever that experience is,
however it unfolds, without the sense of a separate "self"
striving for something "better", or to *do* anything to
improve it, or become "enlightened."

"We", the "Beingness" that we are, just experiences
whatever is occurring without a framework or reference
point, or concept...
It's just Life being life!

It is Existence experiencing ItSelf as "me", or "you" -
as an occurrence within ItSelf...
Simply Living...

We, as waves on the Ocean of Existence, are continually
occurring - unfolding fluidly, seamlessly,  Yet, a
"construct" of "self" can emerge *if/when* there is a belief
in a "self" that can hold onto the present moment - trying
to grasp what cannot be grasped.  But the current experience
cannot be grasped, for as soon as we try to capture it we
re-enter the struggle of "self"...

The present moment is unending, constantly reverberating
through the *concept* of time, and is what the wrinkle of
time happens *in* -
the Timeless Ocean of Existence.

And so the realization seems to be that we simply recognize
Life living ItSelf  as us - seeing the Luminous in everything -
recognizing that we ARE that
Luminosity of Life...

...simply living.

Namaste

_/\_

photo - from a greeting card

"Spirituality" is a Concept - Eric Baret

Spirituality is a concept.  What people project on so-called
spirituality, they used to project on their Boy Scout team when
they were six, on their football team when they were ten, on
politics at twenty and on marriage at thirty...  The void that we try
to fill with a doll, an electric train, a good grade at school, a
career, a child, we then try to project onto spirituality...

True spirituality is gratitude.

True spirituality is a stillness that makes one available for
 every moment.

Wanting to set ourselves free from all our problems to become
"spiritual", to become "awakened", all comes from fear.

There comes a time when you don't feel the need to look for
yourself in the different currents of life.  Then there isn't any
 word, any direction, any knowledge, any school, any lineage,
 any teaching, and, above all, any spiritual person.

What remains is non-separateness.

[You] understand that there is nothing to understand, nothing to
 acquire. [You] don't need to invent tools to face life, to create ways
 to defend or affirm yourself to deal with situations. 
[You] look honestly at what is, what triggers fear, anxiety,
pretense, defense in yourself.  [You] clearly accept
your pretense, your limits.  These limits will reflect the Limitless.

Your clarity shines light on all that...
You are shining light into spirituality, not the other way around.

...when [you] project a superior/inferior [projection on life] - spiritual
 things that ought to set [you] free from ordinary life - then [you]
are in [your] imagination.

Let's function in day to day life: eat, sleep, love, see, feel, look.
Let all the emotions live inside us. Nothing to defend, to affirm,
to know. We do not need anything to get a feeling for the
 Primordial.
No need to change anything in ourselves.

Eric Baret

Teacher of the Tantric Tradition

Excerpt from an excerpt from his new book:
De L'abandon.
Full excerpt posted on Stillness Speaks

via: No Mind's Land

[brackets] mine

~

Photo - Shadow of a stained glass angel
on the ceiling...

I'm still here... :)

There have been several people who thought that my last post,
"Good-bye Yellow Brick Road" was about, among other things,
saying goodbye to this blog...

There are no plans to quit the blog...
or take it down...

Just opening another chapter...

It may take on a different flavor,
challenging my own fantasies about "spirituality."

I still have things I want to post which reflect where I am
in my "evolution of awareness", which may be of interest.
I will still post what inspires me and hopefully you as well...
I may re-post some of my earlier writings if it reflects where
I am now.

I humbly thank you for reading here,
and thank the handful of those who have encouraged me
to keep posting, both in private and in public.  I am glad that
you find what is posted here inspiring and thought provoking...

Namaste

_/\_

As a friend recently wrote to me:

"The mind continues to Wonder.
but without struggle or need."

And another wonderful quote from a blogger friend - by Rumi

"I have been a seeker, and I still am.
But I stopped asking the books and the stars,
I started listening to the teachings of my soul."

goosebumps!

Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...

It's ending... and as TS Eliot said: "in my end is my beginning."

It's ending, the meandering - not because I have reached a "goal"
or the "end" of wondering what is True, or achieved "fulfillment"
of Being - quite the contrary...

What has been needs to end -
the disillusionment,
of years on the "spiritual treadmill" -
caught in the futility of trying to understand, to get somewhere,
to be other than "me", a "better" me, or no-me at all...
Going in circles,
rewinding myself through the same conundrums
over and over again,
trying to believe what others say is True...

Acceptance has set in...

Acceptance of myself as "I" am - the whole of "me"
without the need for a "spiritual identity" - another facade;
just "me" - living, breathing, being -

without the comforting certainties of "knowing" the answer
to the questions.

Feels freeing - actually,
letting go of old identities,
old masks, old myths about
how it's all sposed to be;
whether "this" is just a dream of duality,
or - if there's really a non-dual existence of the Divine
and "me"...

But can't do that mind trip anymore...
I can only see what I can see
and let the rest go...

The pursuit has ended...

No more trying to "become"
"enlightened", "illumined", "liberated"

to appease the mind's fantasies
about "spirituality."

No more rose colored glasses,
no more "Lucy in the sky with diamonds",
no more Yellow Brick Road,
with the "Wizards" of an illusionary Oz pulling the strings...

Subtly, I fell into the same mind traps

over and over again -
wanting, longing, searching,
waiting
for that elusive final epiphany -
the dissolving of the "me" in Ecstasy...

But there was nothing;
no rainbow,
or pot of gold;
no "radiance of Being" shining...

Just "me" - still "me"...

So -
Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...
I'm laying down the burden of "spirituality"...
and simply allowing myself to Be...

Now...

at last

I am...

finally free...

Mystic Meandering
April 16, 2018

Namaste
_/\_

~*~

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again,
I won't look any further than  my own back yard,
because if it isn't there, I never really lost it
to begin with." :)

Dorothy
From the Wizard of Oz

The Middle Way - Jack Kornfield

The Buddhist tradition is neither a path of denial or affirmation.
It shows us the paradox of the universe, within and beyond
the opposites.  It teaches us to be in the world, but not of the
world.  This realization is called the middle way.

The middle way describes the middle ground between
attachment and aversion, between being and non-being, between
form and emptiness, between free will and determinism.  The
more we delve into the middle way the more deeply we come to
rest between the play of opposites. 

Learning to rest in the middle way requires trust in life itself.

Trusting in the middle way, there is an ease and grace, a
cellular knowing that we, too, can float in the ever-changing
ocean of life which has always held us.

We come to rest in the reality of the present, where all the
opposites exist. T.S. Eliot calls this the "still point of the 

turning world, neither from nor towards, neither arrest or
movement, neither flesh or fleshless."

The middle path describes the presence of eternity.  In this
reality, life is clear, vivid, awake, empty and filled with
 possibility.  When we  discover the middle path.....we can
 be with all our experience in its complexity, with our own
 thoughts and feeling and drama as it is.  We learn to embrace
 tension, paradox, change. Instead of seeking resolution, waiting
 for the chord at the end of the song, we let ourselves open and
 relax in the middle. In the middle we discover that
 the world is workable...

Jack Kornfield
From: The Wise Heart

The Shape of "self" - MM

The Infinite Beingness that we are
takes the shape of
"self" - "you"...

- like contained water -

The Source of our Essential Beingness,
whether we call it God,
Buddha Nature, Consciousness,
Non-Dual Awareness,
Great Spirit, or
Infinite Being
is like fluid light;
refracting ItSelf
in order to make ItSelf
appear in form -
as "self"...

Our Being
takes the form of matter reality;
a modulation of Its Pure Beingness,
vibrating ItSelf uniquely into
the shape of "self."

Don't be deluded by prescriptive dogmas and
doctrines of hierarchies
selling you the steps to "enlightenment."
Instead, unshape your "self" from
the conceptual overlays
that man's finite mind devised
to try to explain what IS...

And fall into the Grace of Silence...

~

Don't entrap your "self" in intellectual argumentation,
and interpretations of
Self/No-self, Duality/Non-Duality, Just This/only Now;
frameworks of distortion; 

words that tickle the mind...

Instead, let the Shapelessness of your Eternal Being
take shape within you,
let It shape you -
and feel the authentic Being that you are.
Let It form and inform your
"self"...

The "self" cannot be discarded.
It is part of the whole
of who we are.
There can be no "separation"
or denial of who we are
as the wholeness of Being,
including the "self"...

Feel into the fluidity of
your Whole Being;
the essential feeling of Being.
Let your "self" be
the Luminous Infiniteness
with its myriad expressions,
its multiplicity and diversity...

~

If only for a moment...

Love your "self"...

Be yourself - as you are

Embrace all of "you"...

As the Infinite Whole...

Mystic Meandering
Feb/Mar/Apr 2018

This poem percolated over a period of 3 months

Namaste
_/\_

The Secrecy of My Own Being - Thomas Merton

The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me
by my own estimate of what I am.  My idea of what I am is
falsified by my admiration of what I do.  And my illusions
about myself are bred by another's imagined greatness.

If I do not know who I am, it's because I think I am the sort
of person everyone around me wants to be.  Perhaps I have
never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what
everybody else seems to want to become.  Perhaps if I only
realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire,
I would really begin to live after all.  I would be liberated from
the painful duty of saying what I really do not think.  [or feel :)]

Thomas Merton

~

Photo - a recent Spring snowfall
1:30am

For A New Beginning - John O'Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

John O'Donohue

From: To Bless the Space Between Us

A Love With No Name - Jeff Foster

Life produces life out of itself, the same life that was present
at the Big Bang is somehow also here - in form.  There are
moments when we can touch the wholeness of life, the
wordless mystery that permeates all creation - we can fall in
love with existence as it reveals an unconditional love with
no name.

We can become absorbed by life and realize we are not living
life, but life is living us. And we realize everything is deeply
okay - cosmically okay.  Even though our life situation hasn't
changed, our relationship to it has transformed.  We realize we
no longer need to struggle to find wholeness.  There is only
wholeness... 

Existence is rich with mystery and wonder, and sometimes,
without warning, light can shine through the cracks.
Life is somehow infinitely more than what it appears to be.
The extraordinary is hidden in the ordinary, just waiting to be
discovered.  Perhaps all the things we have taken for granted
are actually divine, sacred, infinitely precious expressions of

wholeness that cannot be expressed in thought or language.

We have invented many words over the years to try to point
to this cosmic wholeness, words like spirit, nature, Oneness,
Advaita, nonduality, consciousness, awareness, aliveness,
Being, Source, Existence, Isness, Tao, Buddha Mind,
and presence.

Thoughts and words fragment wholeness; they break up a
unified reality into separate things.  The world of thought is
the world of duality...  But the most important thing to
remember is that:
it's not about the words. 
It's about the wholeness of life itself;

inner stillness, a love letter from stillness to itself.

Life, then, is about finding out who you really are, beyond who
you think you are, beyond who you've been taught you are,
beyond your story about who you are, beyond all your concepts
and images of who you are;
the wholeness that you are...

Jeff Foster
Excerpt From: The Deepest Acceptance

~

Photo - Mandala Art
digitally altered

Uncover the Original Center - Mark Nepo

Each person is born with an unencumbered spot -
an umbilical spot of Grace where we were each first
touched by God.  Psychologists call this spot
Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the
Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu Masters call it Atman,
Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness,
Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the center of Love.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are,
not by surface markers of identity.....but by feeling our
place in relation to the Infinite, and by inhabiting it.  This
is a life-long task, for the nature of becoming is a constant
"filming over" [covering over] of where we begin [began],
while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is
not essential; to be worn back to that incorruptible spot
of Grace at our core.

When the film [covering] is worn through, we have
moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness,
moments of Satori, as the Zen Sages term it, moments
of clear living, moments of full integrity of being,
moments of complete Oneness.

And whether the film is a veil of culture, or religious
training, the removal of that film and the restoration
of that timeless spot is the goal.  This is the only thing
worth teaching:  how to uncover that original center and
how to live there once it is restored.  The process of
return, whether brought about by suffering or love, is
how we unlearn our way back go God [to the core of Grace].

Mark Nepo
Excerpt from: The Book of Awakening

~

Photo of Tomato

I sliced a tomato a few weeks back and
found the white Christian cross in the center, and
in the middle of that cross, a little red heart.

Can you see it?!

Although I am no longer a Christian, or any other
religion for that matter, I still seek the Truth of
Existence and direct experience of "The Divine",
however one defines that for themselves.
I couldn't help but see the message in the tomato;
not a "Christian" message, but a universal message,
that no matter what one's religious identification,
regardless of "tradition",
The Heart, Love, is really the "original center" of
everything!

Namaste!

_/\_

Dissolving - Dorothy Hunt

Coming/Going...

Creation/Destruction...

Emptiness/Fullness...

Freedom/Bondage...

Come to where these words dissolve.


Her you will find neither

Duality/nor Nonduality...

Ignorance/nor Enlightenment...

Purity/nor Impurity...

Time/nor the Absence of Time...

Here nothing is

Attached/or Detached...

Known/or Unknown...

Asleep/or Awake...

Divided/or Undivided...

Here, the mind cannot speak.

No you/No me...

No union/No separation...

No form/No formlessness...

No death/No deathlessness...


Silence alone reveals what thought cannot think,
what knowing cannot know,
what listening cannot hear,
what seeing cannot see.

Dorothy Hunt

~

Photo - Mandala Art
digitally altered

You have not danced so badly - Hafiz

art by Rassouli

You have not danced so badly my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.

You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet...

[.....]

So what if the music has stopped for a while.

So what if the price of admission to the Divine

Is out of reach tonight.

So what, my dear
If you do not have the ante to gamble for Real Love.

The mind and body are famous
For holding the heart ransom,
But Hafiz knows the Beloved's eternal habits.

Have patience,
For He will not be able to resist your longing
For long.

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One.

You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet...

Hafiz
Persian Poet
1320-1389

~

Art: "The Dance"

Rassouli

a wonderful artist!

Dark Night of the Soul - Mirabai Starr & Jeannie Zandi

The Dark Night of the Soul, as St. John of the Cross conceived it,
is actually an inner state of "spiritual crisis."  It is an experience
of being stripped of all spiritual feelings, all our false constructs,
and a dismantling of edifices of religious concepts with which we
are accustomed to propping up our inner lives.  In the Dark Night
we cannot feel the presence of the Sacred anymore, and the word
"God" becomes devoid of meaning.  It is a plunge into the abyss
of radical unknowingness.  It is only when we get out of our own
way that the Divine can take over and fill us with love.  But it's a
grueling process to come to this level of surrender.

But the Dark Night of the Soul is not only about being brought to our
knees.  It is about unconditional love, the kind of love that wakes
us up and affirms our deepest humanity.  The act of consciously
yielding to the shattering of the heart [in grief] is not high on the
 list of cultural values, but it is part of being awake [to life]...

The Dark Night of global crisis will reveal itself as a state of pure
luminescence, where nothing is as we thought it was...

Mirabai Starr
Excerpt from Dark Night of the Soul

~

Even the most sophisticated.....seekers are flummoxed by a dark
night experience, and this ability to flummox is at the heart of its
effectiveness and purpose.  The coping strategies of conditioning
must be entirely frustrated, the arrogance of the "me" must be
thoroughly met with a humbling, so that the being is left with
absolutely nowhere to turn to "solve the problem."  Thus the
brilliant survival strategy that has the illusion of separation at its
base is brought to its knees, so that a new reliance on the organic
flow of the Divine may rise.

The dream of "getting there" that the being invested all her life
energy, hours and efforts into is suddenly seen as a mirage.  And
trying to get to Nirvana with strategies [is seen as] hopeless,
because it IS hopeless.  The coping strategies generally have to
fail utterly for a new reliance on living radically open and
unprepared in the moment to be fully embraced.

What the soul is after is not a temporary influx of light, but a
thorough deconstruction of the false that results in the embodiment
of a light that shines through the darkness.

The Dark Night of the Soul is an initiation, a sacred passage, a
dying of the old and birthing of light enfleshed.  This process of
initiation or passage is not a problem to be solved.  Huge amounts
of shadow material will rise, identities will fall, coping mechanisms
will fail, and tremendous amounts of energy, mostly as emotion, will
emerge to be released.  The "me" coping structure undergoes a
massive deconstruction, and the fresh innocent, wide-eyed and present
Essential Being emerges from the rubble.

Jeannie Zandi

Excerpt from: Dark Night: The Breakdown of the Mythology of Me

Full Spectrum Experience - Jeff Foster

Don't judge your sorrow too quickly or too harshly, friend.  Honouring
the darkness within is not the same as 'wallowing'.  And cultivating
deep trust in all of life's movements does not equate to self-indulgence
or a 'pity-party'.  Please don't misunderstand this.  Find a space in your
heart for the unwanted, the unloved, the rejected aspects of experience.

If we refuse to plumb the depths we are left only half alive, however
'enlightened' we claim to be.  Artists, musicians, poets of all cultures
throughout the ages have understood this.  See your life as an art
gallery.  Embrace the full spectrum of experience, from the light to
the dark. Hold it all in your prayers, illuminate it all with the light
of loving awareness.  Be that awareness!

Perhaps your frustration just wants to frustrate itself fully and be
felt, fully.  Perhaps this moment contains no mistake!  Perhaps the
relief you will feel in time will be infinitely sweeter for having
suffered so deeply.  Perhaps your suffering is teaching you humility,
gratitude, quietude, and compassion - and trust - unbreakable trust
in life's strange processes.

Don't judge your sadness, your depression, your feelings [your illness].
And don't judge the process of another, for you really don't know
what's best for anyone, and you really don't know more than life itself.
  That which you reject (in another or yourself) may actually be
much-needed medicine, a misunderstood teacher, inviting you to an
 awakening deeper than you ever thought possible.  It may be a
threshold guardian, a gatekeeper of a forgotten kingdom. 
The glory of a life fully felt!

And to your demons say -

Namaste!

Jeff Foster

Seasons of the Soul - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

For our ancestors the rhythms of the seasons were their calendar,
the rising and setting of the sun their only clock.  Today our clocks
 seem to spin much faster and it is easy to ignore, or even forget
these more primal seasons and their meaning.  And yet as our world
appears to spin more and more out of balance.....there is a pressing
need to return to a deeper rhythm, to the cycles that belong to
healing and transformation, and the seasons of the soul. 
Returning we may find a balance resurfacing from deep within,
a balance that reconnects and restores us...

If we are to participate creatively in these toxic times, to bring
rain to a land where the inner and outer wells have run dry,
first we need to be present "in another country where things are
in order."  And this "other country"can be found in the space
between the in-breath and the out-breath, where the soul is present. 
But first we need to reconnect, to return to this place of balance. 
And the simplest way is through stillness and silence.

Silence draws us inward, away from the clutter and the distractions
of our outer life, to the deeper roots of our being.  Here our soul
nourishes us, here we can be replenished, and here we can help
replenish our world.....  In the silence we can drink deeply of the
waters of life that are still pure, we can commune with the primal
forces of nature, we can return to what is sacred and essential to our
life and to the life of the Earth.

Here in this "other country" the air is not toxic, and the miasma of
today's world in this post-truth era is not blurring our vision.  The
laughter of children still rings true.  Stillness is here, and the seasons
are in balance.  Every in-breath and out-breath is sacred.  The breath,
the soul, the Earth and its seasons, are linked together, nourished by
each other.  It is time to heal.....

LLewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Mystic
2017

Excerpt from an article published by Garrison Institute

Happy Spring Everyone!
Or Fall, as the case may be :)

~

...your breath is a bridge between you.....and the universe.

The breath is also a bridge between you, and space and time.
Breath touches the body and the universe,
 it touches you and that which transcends the universe.

Osho
The Book of Secrets

The Descendant Current - Matt Licata

Let us not forget the descendant current, flowing into the unlit
places, the underworld, and the dark caverns of the psyche.  The
realm of dream, fantasy, imagination and creativity.  The
invitation here is one of embodiment - into the contradictions,
the chaos, and the deflation we must confront on any journey of
depth.

There is a cultural fantasy that we are supposed to know what to do
with our lives, that things, are supposed to be clear, that we are
supposed to feel solar and heroic and in control of the feelings that
wash through us.  But Love is full-spectrum and will equally
employ the energies of not-knowing, disappointment, and
reorganization as part of its revelation here.  The process of
dissolution is non-negotiable.  It is by way of this sacred washing
of the known that new forms can find their way here.

Inside the vessel of life, encrusted, worn out ideas and opposites
are washed away, such as silence over noise, oneness over multiplicity,
quiet over inner revolution, crystal clarity over shaky uncertainty, and
power over vulnerability.  While we may have our conditioned
preferences, Love does not share these biases and will use the entirety
of the emotional and phenomenal world to reach us.  Even in the
darkness, the numbness, the chaotic, and the mud, the wild,
untamed activity of the soul erupts.

It is natural and ordinary to disconnect from the downward movement
as we overly identify with the ascending, the upward, the light, and
the transcendent.  In the rush to exit immediate experience - for
something that is higher, purer, less messy, and less contradictory -
we turn from the waters of life and lose touch with Essence.

While it is natural to have a bias for one current over another, let us
not do so as the expense of fragmentation.  In ways the mind may
never fully understand, there is a luminous middle place where the
currents intertwine.  It is buried in a secret chamber inside your
own heart.  

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Vortex Art

Digitally altered
2011

Vulnerability - David Whyte

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or
something we can arrange to do without.  Vulnerability is not a
choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding
undercurrent of our natural state.  To run from vulnerability is to
run from the essence of our nature.  The attempt to be invulnerable
is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most
especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others.
More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help
needed at every turn of our existence.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events
and circumstances is a lovely illussionary privilege and perhaps
the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human
and especially of being youthful human, but it is a privilege that
must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with
loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers;
powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we
approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our
vulnerability, how we become more courageous and more
compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance.
Our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of
 loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers,
reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never
walking fully through the door...


David Whyte

Excerpt from
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying
Meaning of Everyday Words

The Beautiful Wound - Rumi & Mirabai Starr

The wound is the place where the light enters you...
Rumi

Your most secret wound is the doorway...
Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

The Christian Mystic, Teresa of Avila, speaks of "the
beautiful wound" of longing for God, describing
the depth of suffering as a doorway to union with
The Beloved.  John of the Cross coined the term
"dark night of the soul" and developed a teaching
that shows how to surrender to radical unknowing
and allow ourselves to be stripped of all that stands
between our souls and The Divine.
These and other mystics see deep sorrow as a
great spiritual blessing, rather than a problem
requiring a solution...

Mirabai Starr

~

There is a cure,
an individual medicine
not a social remedy,
sit quietly
and listen
for a voice
within
that will say:

Be more silent.

As that happens
your soul
starts to revive.

Rumi
Be More Silent

~

Photo - taken by my brother
after the Nor'easter
in the Northeast yesterday...

The Whole of the Soul - Ralph Waldo Emerson

...We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles.
Meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is
equally related; the eternal one.  And this deep power in which
we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts,
is the soul...

...All goes to show, that the soul of man is not an organ, but animates
and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of
memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and
feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the
master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and 
the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object
are one.  We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the
which they lie - an immensity not possessed and that cannot be
possessed.  From within or from behind, a light shines through us
upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing,
but the light is all...

A man is a facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and good abide.
What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting
man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents
himself.  Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is,
would he let it appear through his action, would make your knees bend.
When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes
through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection,
it is love...

...The soul circumscribes all things.  As I have said, it contradicts all
experience.  In like manner it abolishes time and space.  The influence
of the senses has, in most men, overpowered the mind to that degree,
that the walls of time and space have come to look real and
insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world,
a sign of insanity.  Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the
force of the soul...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
From: Essay IX The Over-Soul
1841

~

Photo - South Pole Aurora

The Space of "The Quiet"...

I awoke to "The Quiet" filling this space...

A palpable Nameless Presence...
As if "It" had taken up residence here,
in this space of my dwelling...

I breathed in "The Quiet"
as It breathed me,
and with curiosity
turned my inner awareness more keenly to
"The Quiet" that filled the space of me -
and was comforted
by this unbidden
Presence...

Through fluid inner eyes I understood that
only "The Quiet" truly occupies this space,
not the things in the rooms, or the rooms themselves.
but only the ubiquitous space of "The Quiet"

that matter reality dwells in
beyond sight, beyond form...

Every manifest being dwells within
"The Quiet"
and "The Quiet" dwells within them...

The pure unadulterated, untainted Silence of Being...

I surrendered in Love and Gratitude to "The Quiet"
subtly filling the space here - tangibly -
forever present in each breath
of this space that "I"
occupy as well...

Hush...

"The Quiet"
dwells among us
and in us...

Holy-Holy

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 5, 2016

~

Photo - have no idea what this is,
probably a "mistake", but can you see
the faint outline of a heart in the center
of that "cloud"?  :D