Challenging the Fantasies - Daryl Bailey

Life is a moving, shifting, dancing event.
Forms [or beliefs] aren't the truth of existence.
The non-duality [Advaita] view is not the one truth view
of existence.  It is one of the mysterious expressions of
existence.  Existence is just happening.  The dance of thought
is totally automatic.

The "spiritual journey" is one long journey of disappointment
because you're gonna find you can't have endless pleasure,
can't have "understanding" of existence, can't have a sense of
"self", a sense of life where you're always secure and confident.
Life will present situations that are confusing.

Life is an event that is presenting itself and we are part of that
expression.  It's part of the movement of the universe; a dynamic
function. Life will play out the way it plays out;
it's all just happening.  Just acknowledge the movement - the event.  

Life takes care of itself - a formless happening as form, as story.
It is the Formless expressing itself.  You are being expressed in form.
It's all the dance of formless expressions of existence.  We are
the legitimate expression of existence, just as we are.  

The whole process that you think you are is just happening
and you're not making it happen.  There is just the happening of this
moment.  Awakening is a total fantasy.  Everything is just happening
on its own and we are an expression of that happening.
When we see that we can rest.

Spiritual traditions project ideas of what we're supposed to be...
Don't believe in the explanations, or that any of the explanations
have any real truth to them...

We don't have a perfect life with endless bliss.  We just acknowledge
this amazingly mysterious happening that nobody can
comprehend.

There are moments of joy, as well as sadness, or unhappiness.
You endure it in the way you endure it, in your own unique way.
It's just the way it is expressing itself; just the way it's expressing
"me."  The Flow of Life ItSelf...

Daryl Bailey

Adyashanti on "Enlightenment"

Enlightenment is a destructive process.  It has nothing to do
with becoming better or being happier.  Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth.  It's seeing through the facade
or pretense.  It's the complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true.

~*~

All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant
emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better
or different, and turn your attention inward to the awake silence
that you are.

~*~

We realize - often quite suddenly - that our sense of self, which
has been formed and constructed out of our ideas, beliefs, and
images, is not really who we are.  It doesn't define us...

~*~

When you get out of the driver's seat, you find that life can drive
itself, that actually life has always been driving itself.  When you
get out of the driver's seat, it can flow in ways you never imagined.
Life becomes almost magical.  The illusion of the "me" is no longer
in the way.  Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will
take you.

~*~

One of my favorite definitions of enlightenment comes from a
Jesuit priest named Anthony de Mello...  Someone asked him to
define his experience of enlightenment.  He said, "Enlightenment
is absolute cooperation with the inevitable."   Enlightenment is when
everything within us is in cooperation with the flow of life itself,
 with the inevitable.

Adyashanti

The Deepest Silence - John Roger Barrie

The eloquence of the deepest silence echoes from the eternal.

Originating there and reverberating through the ripples of time
and space.  It bursts forth in shimmering waves, forming light
and color, shadow, and dimension.  But it remains unchanged.
Never affected by the slightest permutation of outer phenomenon,
silence interweaves the temporal but is forever untouched by it.

Ever abiding within and without, overlaid with the mutable
patchwork garment we know as the visible universe, silence forms
the woof and warp of all things seen and unseen.  Yet at any instant
it is immanent and accessible.  To the mystic, silence is the ground,
the core of reality.  All else relates to and emanates from it.

The deeper elements in all religions point to this silence.  It is God,
it is Buddha; it is Allah.  But, to paraphrase Lao Tzu, to name it
is to elude its essence.  It can only be experienced.

How can we not experience that which always envelops and
permeates us?  Merely affirming its existence will not garner for us
its experiential realization.  It is spiritual practice [like meditation]
that provides us with the means to fine tune our faculties so that we
perceive it for ourselves.  Such practice enables us, in due course,
to experience a blistering, conscious realization of silence that
suffuses the core of our being.

By embarking on the spiritual path, an aspirant is attempting to
encounter silence firsthand.  This is the quintessential journey in
life - the inner sojourn.  It is returning to a source long ago forgotten
but often glimpsed unawares.  Recapturing that which flitters on the
periphery of awareness is the goal of the mystic.  The mystic
consciously dives into silence, at first unfelt.  With repeated practice
it becomes a living, palpable Presence filled with immeasurable
vitality and boundless, nondual continuity.  But what causes this
gradual revelation?

First we need to discover why we do not experience silence.
The simplest answer is that we are habituated to noise.  We are
addicted to novelty, sensation, to ourselves.  Fuss and commotion,
mental chattering and outer stimulation occupy our minds from
dawn to dusk.  The twentieth-century Japanese Zen master Nan-in
rightly noted that we are overflowing with our own ideas and
opinions.  When one is clattering away on a keyboard sixteen hours
every day, the capacious pockets of silence are kept well at bay.  We
thereby deafen ourselves to the underlying silence we would 

otherwise clearly hear.

By intentionally quieting our restless minds and calling a temporary
halt to the random noise - inner and outer - to which we are subject,
we create an environment conducive to the manifestation of silence.
Welling up from within, this silence subtly engulfs us, drowning out
all the noise of existence.

When constantly engaged at the forefront of our minds, our awareness
restlessly flutters about from thought to thought, sensation to
sensation, thus pushing out silence.  The effort required to break
through the surface waves of the mind forges an inward path
 to the deepest levelsof silence.  When deliberately sustained....this
 inner drilling displaces the obfuscatory debris that clutters the mind
 with a matrix of noise. When all mental ruminations are at last
exhausted, genuine silence emerges.

But, many prefer the comfort of noise, the bustling of crowds, the
constant engagement of new thoughts and interesting repartee.
To embrace silence means splicing off a certain arena of the
familiar and venturing into uncharted territories.  While one
may fruitfully participate in communal spiritual activities, quite
often the deeper stages of this voyage are undertaken by oneself.

To keep the mind occupied with external concerns is to point the
inner compass in an outward direction.  This is the most subtle trap
to which the feeble mind continually succumbs.  For to interact
constantly with the objects of the senses is to eclipse entirely the
realm of silence, which is first experienced within.  When
repeatedly accessed, the decibel level of true silence will deafen
the resolute mystic.

Ever elusive yet all pervading, silence is known by those who take
the leap.  The adventuresome hiker seeks areas untrampled by the
masses.  The successful inner voyager treks to the precipice, and
then, having encountered  the Unknowable, brazenly discards map and
compass and boldly treads onward.  The yearning heart echoes the
cry that seized the Psalmist:
"Be still and know that I am God."

John Roger Barrie
Excerpt from Parabola

via - No Mind's Land

~

Photo -
 Northern Lights over Yellow Knife, Western Territories, Canada

Spacious Listening - Fred LaMotte

Listen...

Listen to the sounds around you,

outside, beyond the walls...

Listen to the faintest most distant
sound you can hear...

Aware of how listening
becomes spacious, unbounded.

Now listen to listening.
As you listen outside,
listen inside.
Without or within,
All space is awake...

Listen for the next thought to arise,
the next word in your mind...

See?

Your very listening
is perfect silence,
the radiant absence
of mental noise...

When there is listening,
there are no words.

Now feel your whole brain
listening, scintillating
with energy yet
free from thought,
each cell vibrantly full
of ever-awakening
emptiness...

[.....]

Feel the space of listening
all around your body.
Does this space have
any edges?

[.....]

Listening is the space
all around your body...
and inside your body...

The space of listening in each cell...

The space of listening between the atoms...
The vast space inside a single atom,
listening...

Your body is luminous, weightless and clear,
your flesh is permeated by the space
that is eternally awake
and listening...

The heavenly empyrean filled
with stars and galaxies
whose light has not yet reached you
pervades every particle
of your flesh...

The miracle that you are...

Listening to silence...

Listen to No Word,
No Thought arising...

You are Peace.
You are radiant clarity.

You are boundless love.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

"Silence is the secret music"

~ Sri Sri

~

"The primary guidance really isn't with the words.
It's just with the silence.  It's a kind of attunement.
Experience the Quietness at the core of Consciousness."

Adyashanti
From: The Unconditioned Nature of Being
 guided meditation on YouTube

~

Photo - via Uradiance

The Open Door - Danna Faulds

A door opens.  Maybe I've been standing here shuffling my weight
from foot to foot for decades, or maybe I only knocked once.
In truth, it doesn't matter.

A door opens and I walk through without a backward glance.
This is it,then, one moment of truth in a lifetime of truth; a
choice made, a path taken, the gravitational pull of Spirit
too compelling to ignore any longer.

I am received by something far too vast to see.  It has roots in
antiquity but speaks clearly in the present tense. "Be," the
vastness says.  "Be without adverbs, descriptors, or qualities.

Be so alive that Awareness bares itself uncloaked and unadorned.
Then go forth to give what you alone can give, awaken to love
and suffering, unburdened by the weight of expectations.

Go forth to see and be seen, blossoming, always blossoming
into your magnificence."

Danna Faulds

~

Art - craypas oils
?date

The "Inner Other" - Matt Licata

Relationship has an uncanny ability to illuminate those parts
of ourselves that we have lost touch with - the orphans of the
emotional world, and the emissaries of our unlived lives.  They
remind us of the two great relational fears -
of being abandoned or overwhelmed by the other.

As we deepen ["spiritually"]... we may discover that the "other"
is not only those fellow travelers that we meet [or our mates/lovers/
partners], but that there is also an "inner other" who also longs to
be known, to be held, and to be a part of the love story of our lives.
The "other" yearns more than anything for intimacy, to no longer
be shut out, and to enter union with us
exactly as we are.

The lost sadness, the disallowed joy, the unmet rage, the repressed
grief.  The barely remembered peace, the dissociated despair, the
forgotten beauty.  These ones are alive and will continue their
journey to find you.  They will never give up and will continue to
take form as your lovers, family members, and friends, including
those who irritate you the most.

The invitation of The Beloved, in each of its forms, is to step fully
into the crucible of relationship where we no longer limit the
mystery of love's expression, resisting the temptation to have the
fires of love conform to our requirements.  And to open to the
reality that perhaps the purpose of relationship is not to provide
consistent feelings of safety, certainty, connection, and validation.

The Beloved has not come to confirm what we think love is - or
the ways we have come to believe we must be seen - but rather
to introduce us to the creative terrain of the unknown, and to the
poetic depth of our own hearts...

Matt Licata

~

Art - Heart within Heart
Craypas oils - done with fingers

?2009

The Wind - Arthur Osborne

I am a pipe the wind blows through.
Be still, it is the wind that sings.
The course of my life and the things that I do
and the seeming false and the seeming true
are the tune of the wind that neither knows
good or ill, nor joys and woes.
But the ultimate awe is deeper yet
than song or pipe or storm;
for pipe and tune are the formless wind
that seemed for a while to take form.
And words are good to escape from words
and strife to escape from strife.
But silence drinks in all the waves
of song and death and life.

Arthur Osborne
From: Be Still, It is the Wind That Sings

via - No Mind's Land

~

...Death itself is a music...
Nobody has ever come close to
writing it down, awake or in a
dream.  It cannot be told...

Mary Oliver
excerpt from Straight Talk From Fox

The Blessing of The Deer - Jane Hirshfield

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.

And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible...

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished...

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken away from us.

I have disappointed.
I am sorry.  I knew no better.

[.....]

This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

Jane Hirshfield
Original title: "Standing Deer"
from The Lives of the Heart

Thanks to - The Beauty We Love

Everything Breathes Together - Mark Helprin

The universe is still and complete.  Everything that ever was, is;
everything that ever will be , is - and so on, in all possible
combinations.  Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is
in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite
astonishingly beautiful.

In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter
how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others.
All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought
together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life;
the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden
dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is
perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes
apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.

Mark Helprin
From: Winter's Tale

via - Beyond The Fields We Know

~

The stars are like letters which inscribe themselves at every
moment in the sky.  Everything in the world is full of signs.
All events are coordinated.  All things depend on each other...
Everything breathes together.

Plotinus
CE 204/5-270

~

Photo from Facebook

Open to the Dark - Fred LaMotte

We don't need to construct a higher self or a happy face that
denies our pain, our world-weary anger, the devastating loss
we may feel this very moment.  We just need to open.

Open to the dark without resistance, breathing every chaffing
grain of sand into the softness of your heart.  Embrace each
jagged edge and splinter of the world.  Open down deep
to the core...

Unconditional vulnerability is invincible strength.  When we
touch our core, the dark broken flower that seemed so
heavy with the toxins of human fragmentation suddenly
blossoms into fragrant wholeness.  Why?
Because we no longer identify with the content of our
awareness, but Awareness itself.

Beneath the fleeting sensations of the world - some pleasant,
some painful - is the continuum of awakening, the clear mirror
underlying its reflections.  Whether the image is terrible or
sublime (or both?), the nature of the mirror never changes:
bottomless clarity, immaculate stillness.

Awakening is not a miracle.  Wide-open awareness requires
no belief, no transformation, no journey.  Yet this mirror
drowns every fleeting shape in the ocean of transparency
and compassion.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

The Prison of Certainty - John O'Donohue

When we domesticate our minds and hearts, we reduce our lives.
We disinherit ourselves as children of the universe.  Almost
without knowing it, we slip inside ready-made roles and
routines which then set the frames of our possibilities.  We
acquire sets of convictions in relation to politics, religion and
work. We parrot these back and forth to each other, as if they
 were absolute insights.  Yet for the most part these frames of
belief function as self-constructed barriers, fragile cliches pulled
around our lives to keep out the mystery.  The game of society
helps us to forget the unknown...  The control and ordering of
society is amazing: we comply so totally with its unwritten
rules.  In a city at morning, you see the lines of traffic and the
rows of faces all on their way to work.  We show up.  We
behave ourselves.  We obey fashion and taste.

We have a deadening desire to reduce the mystery...
We bind our lives up in solid chains of forced connections
that block and fixate us.  This silences the voices within us
that are always urging us to change and become free.  Our
sense of uncertainty and our need for security nail our world
down.  We confine mystery within the prison of routine and
repetition.  Your response to the invitation at the edge of your
life becomes reduced to a series of automatic reflexes.  We
live so much of our one life with the same automatic blindness
of adaptation.  After a while, unknown to you, a wall has
grown between you and the native forces of your experiences.
You go through life only half aware...  This subtle conditioning
becomes so effortless that you are only half present in your life.

[But] Everywhere around us mystery never sleeps.  The same
deep nature is within us.  Each person is an incredibly
sophisticated, subtle, and open-ended work of art.  We live at
the heart of our own intimacy, yet we are strangers to its endless
nature.  Each of us needs to travel inwards from the surface
constraints and visit the wild places within us and answer the
question:  Who are you?  Who are you behind your role?  Who
are you behind your words?  Who are you when you are alone
with yourself?  Who are you before you slip back safely behind
the mask and the name by which you are known during the day?

If you can awaken the eternal beauty and light of your soul
you will break through the prison of certainty
and bring light wherever you go.

John O'Donohue
From: Eternal Echoes 

Death and Rebirth - Matt Licata

In each moment the sacred process of death and rebirth is playing
out within us.  With each breath, something in us is dying: some
aspect of who we think we are, or what we're doing here, the death
of an old dream, or an idea about how it was all going to turn out.

In the face of this dissolution, the question isn't so much how can
we be reborn, but will we participate in death fully, and with an
open heart, paving the way for new forms to emerge, trusting that
rebirth will take place according to a timeline originating far away
in the stars.

In times of transition, our tendency is to rush to rebirth, back into
the known, in an urgent attempt to cure, maintain, or heal that
which is dying, that which longs for transformation [within us.]
It is so natural to resist falling apart in our need to put it all back
together.  But it is only from the core of the womb of death - a
death tended to consciously - that rebirth can come into being.

The invitation, which we can at times hear clearly, during the dark
of night, in the slowness and the depths, as we move in and out of
states of sleep and dream, is to not abandon death...  To not short
circuit the intelligence that death is, and to remember that rebirth
is not possible without dissolution.

Allow death some time to unfold, to share its poetry and its
fragrances, which are not partial, but of a light that is whole.
In those times in our lives, when things are being rearranged
and reorganized inside and around us, we can attune to what
is truly being asked, to allow the forms of love safe passage to
continue their journey.  And equally allow them to dissolve...
Give them permission to dance and play and participate fully
in the sacred return...

Matt Licata

A Passing Show - Etty Hillesum

Understand that all outer appearances are a passing show...

People sometimes say: "you must try to make the best of things."
I find this such a feeble thing to say.
Everywhere things are both good and very bad at the same time.
The two are in balance, everywhere and always.  I never have
the feeling that I have got to make the best of things.
Everything is fine just as it is.
Every situation, however miserable, is complete in itself
and contains the good as well as the bad...
Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must
learn to listen...

Etty Hillesum
Jewish Mystic of the Holocaust
From: Letters from Westerbork
Aug 1943

Etty died in Auschwitz Nov. 30, 1943
at the age of 29

~

"All shall be well, and all shall be well,
and every kind of thing shall be well."

Julian of Norwich
Christian Mystic
1342-1416

Trajectory of Life - Richard Wehrman

He was surprised
to see the gray clouds,
for the sunrise was clear
with blue sky, and he
assumed, as he always had,
that the sky moved
as the sun moved, east
to west, yet here the clouds
came, traveling west to
east, and he thought of
the trajectory he imagined
his life took, of birth
to death, infancy to old age,
and he wondered if he
had missed something,
if the winds moved
differently than he supposed,
if death also traveled
toward life, if there were
more currents than he
could imagine; and if
imagining itself, setting
a distinct course, one he
planned in advance, kept
him from seeing, if he
were at this moment
actually growing younger,
at the same time he grew
older; if he was in fact
moving in ways he could
barely sense, into another
life, into other worlds.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here
original title: Traveling

Vulnerability - Rumi and Wilber

I was going to tell you my story...
but waves of pain drowned my voice.
I tried to utter a word but my thoughts
became fragile and shattered like glass.
Even the largest ship can capsize
in the stormy sea...

let alone my feeble boat,
which shattered to pieces leaving me nothing
but a strip of wood to hold on to.

Small and helpless, rising to heaven
on one wave of love and falling with the next.
I don't even know if I am or I am not.
When I think I am, I find myself worthless,
when I think I am not, I find my value.
Like my thoughts, I die and rise again each day...
at last I surrender...

Rumi

~

Authentic spirituality is revolutionary.
It does not legitimate the world,
it breaks the world;
it does not console the world,
it shatters it.  And it does not render
the self content, it renders it undone.

Ken Wilber

You Think You Have Time - Gunaratana

We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us.
We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we
mistake those mental objects for reality.  We get so caught up in
this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We
spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal flight
from pain and unpleasantness.  We spend our energies trying to make
ourselves better, trying to bury our fears.  We are endlessly seeking
 security.   Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by
untouched and unnoticed...

Henepola Gunaratana

Buddhist Monk

An Infinite Number of New Beginnings - Jeff Foster

In your attempt to be an 'adult',
you lose touch with your inner child.
In your rush to b the 'expert',
you disconnect from the amateur you,
the inner lover, innocent and wild.

In your quest for security,
your run from insecurity,
bury your anxiety, crush your doubts,
until one day they explode all over the place,
and make a mess of your nice, 'ordered' life.

Don't confuse the role you play
with who you truly are.
Don't confuse the adaptation with the actor,
the changing weather with the vastness of sky.

Your true identity lies in Presence...
And wonder.
And creativity.
And an infinite number of new beginnings.

Each moment.
Each canvas.
Each Now.

Jeff Foster

~

Jupiter, Venus, Moon - June 2015

Profound Not-Knowing - Jeff Foster

One of my favorite things to do is to sit with my elderly father 

who has Alzheimers.  It's a beautiful thing to just sit in a place
of profound not-knowing with him, a place where I do not
know what to say or do.  I sit, without expectation, without
trying to 'fix' him, or manipulate his experience in any way.
I just listen, without trying to make things better in the moment,
without playing the role of  'the one who knows'.
I am simply available to him.
I don't need to 'know' anything in this place...

And here, I notice a deep and profound acceptance of any wave
of frustration or sadness that appears in the ocean of experience.

And this seems to be what true relationship is at its very core -
meeting, really meeting in the moment, without hope, without
a future, without expectation, without a story.  Coming face
to face with - yourself. 

Nisargadatta Maharaj says:

"What remains is the great sadness of compassion"

It is not cold detachment and neo-Advaita
world-rejection, but the intimacy of the most unspeakable kind.

Jeff Foster

Excerpt from The Beauty We Love

Journey of Return - Dorothy Hunt

When the Beloved wants to take you Home,
extend your hand to His welcoming
even though your body may be trembling
and your mind may want to flee;
even though those around you grieve,
and you yourself have mourned, even before they,
the changing form of your body.
Tears are not the final truth
though they will come and go
like stars that need a dark sky to be seen.
Death is not a failure of a mind
that is not strong enough,
or positive enough, or pure enough.
Those who hold such views are simply
masking fear with ideas of being in control.
We are being lived...
...anguish, fear or deepest grief
cannot alter Who you really are.
The beautiful Spirit that extended ItSelf
in space and time, and called ItSelf by your name,
is simply ready to return, unencumbered by a body,
to Its vast and spacious Unborn Self,
that kisses you at birth,
and holds your hand in death,
and never for a moment
forgets you are ItSelf.

The mind imagines you are leaving,
but where could you truly go?
You are Life ItSelf...
Unceasingly flowing,
moment to moment unfolding Yourself.

A body is born; a body dies; but you do not.
Deep within your heart, you know this Truth.
Rest there.  Rest in the knowing that
opens your heart to all that IS,
that loves ItSelf in all that comes,
and returns to ItSelf in all that goes.

Dorothy Hunt
Zen Buddhist Teacher

~

Personal Note - My 90 year old mother has started her
"Journey of Return."  She collapsed at home on Dec. 23rd
and spent the next week in the hospital where they discovered

she has stomach cancer.  She chose not to pursue treatment, and
is now at home on Hospice Care.  She really doesn't understand
what is happening, as she has already forgotten what happened to
her in December.  She is "transitioning", as they call it; seeing
people where there are none, seeing paintings on walls that aren't
there.  She has begun to grieve the loss of the functioning of her
body, but we don't think she knows "she" is dying.  But she is also
still very lucid, just exhausted physically; as are her children who
now care for her 24/7.  Three very different personalities brought
together in time in a family dynamic that is difficult... 
We don't know when "The Beloved" will take her.
It could be weeks or months according to those who "know"
about the process of death.  I will have to say that this experience
has made me question any *ideas* of an underlying "spirituality" -
as it does not appear in my present experience.  Maybe we just
create lofty ideas of "spirituality" to comfort the mind.  The
practical fact is that my mother will die, dissipate, even if her
Consciousness continues or is absorbed into the Greater
Consciousness, etc...   It is the process of death
itself that is exhausting as the body slowly declines... 
It appears to be an "event", an "experience" that is happening,
like birth, whether we are able to
understand the mystery of it or not...

Arguing With Life - Jeff Foster

What is the point of arguing with life as it is?

The ego replies, "Yeah, but if I stop resisting the way things are,
change will never happen, things will stay the same, 

or get worse..."

You see, the ego does not  understand the ancient mysteries of
change and healing. It truly believes - in relationships, in career,
in life decisions, in global matters - that peace can only come
through war, that real change can only happen through hating
where we are and desperately wanting to be somewhere else.

Here is the paradox of change.  When we tire of the internal
violence, when we are no longer at war with the way things are,
when we no longer argue with the present scene in the movie
of our lives, we come to rest.  And then, from a place of rest,
new vistas open up, hitherto unexplored possibilities reveal
themselves.  New connections are made, new solutions emerge.
From a place of equanimity and acceptance, things that
seemed certain are now not so certain, blocks are no longer
blocks, old futures begin to collapse and new futures become
possible.  Energies that seemed intolerable a moment ago are
now allowed in, allowed to move, to express and release their
creativity and healing power.  Because our eyes are open, new
details are apparent in the present scene, details that we had
become blind to, in our rush to "a better future."

From a place of peace, we can more easily take the next step.
And sometimes the nest step means taking no step at all,
but falling deeply in love with where we are.  This is NOT

the same as giving up.  This is not passivity or toleration of the
'negative.'  This is not the same as abandoning all hope of a
better future.  There is no abandonment here.  This is not
stagnation.  This is not weakness.  This is true courage.  The
willingness to slow down, be present, drink in all the richness -
the joy and the sorrow, the doubt and the creativity - of the
present scene.

The movie has not been written yet; it writes itself as we go
along.  And in resisting the present scene, you are actually
resisting the entire movie.  Resistance can only breed
resistance.

Sometimes the point of arguing with life, is to get you to
a point where you are tired of arguing with life.  And then
you sink deeply into the present moment, resting in its
embrace, trusting the way of things, accepting your own
imperfections.  And then everything seems possible, and
everything feels alive as you feel alive, and fearless, and
real change can come.

Perhaps slowly, perhaps in a great tidal wave.  But you no
longer push for it.  You are letting it happen. You are
aligned at last, no longer part of the problem, but already
an expression of the solution.

Sometimes you need to stop trying to change the moment,
for the moment to change...  all by itself.

Everything you think is wrong with you, is actually right.
Spiritual enlightenment is already here, shining through
the simplicity of this moment, exactly as it is.

The divine perfection you've been seeking is actually contained
in the midst of your tender vulnerability and imperfections.
There is precious alchemical medicine hidden inside your pain,
and your deepest longings, aches, doubts, grief and heartache
are portals to joy and healing.

Jeff Foster

In Pursuit of Silence - George Prochnik

Silence has to do with the interruption of the imposition of our
own egos, our will, on the world...

Silence is where we hear something deeper than our chatter.
Silence is where we speak something deeper than our words.

Silence is the resting place of the Essential.

Silence is our natural milieu, and the more we get away from
Silence, the more we lose our humanity.

Silence returns us to what is real. 
Silence is a journey into the Heart of Being.
If you allow silence to circulate,  your mind becomes aware of
what Truth is.  It makes you aware that you're not in control
of anything.

Seek Silence...

In a world of noise,
silence calls to us...

It is not an esoteric practice.
It is as simple as shifting your attention
from the things that cause noise
to the vast interior spaciousness,
which is our natural silence.

From the documentary film:
In Pursuit of Silence
by George Prochnik

The Gift of Silence - Dada Gavand

Silence is the gate...

We are missing the aesthetic beauty of Silence, the fragrance
of quietude and inner peace, because the mind has become
overgrown and overactive. It has captured us and
the whole energy of life, going on and on ceaselessly,
continuing with its mechanical momentum in time.

In the present competitive commercial society there seems
to be no room for Silence.

Quietude and Silence are not the negation of life, but the
regeneration of it.  Silence is the means to elevate life energy
to a timeless dimension.

We have got to find this unknown dimension of life.  The
whole world is in desperate need of a new-dimensional
consciousness, so that human beings can live intelligently,
creatively, spontaneously and lovingly, and not just follow
the ego pursuits mechanically.

When one begins to realize the limitation of all thought
activity and ego drives the attachment [to them] drops.
One is left with a deep, profound Silence.

Silence becomes eloquent and active.  Silence becomes
intelligent and positive.  Action that springs from the depth
of Silence is spontaneous, truthful and universal.  It is
immaculate, timeless and spiritual.

Silence is the means and Silence is the end.
Creative Silence is the ultimate challenge.

Silence is the sap that rejuvenates life.
Silence is the source of eternal life.

Dada Gavand
East Indian Mystic

~

Find the Silence and you'll find "God."

Ramakrishna

~

If you celebrate Christmas
may you experience the
Gift of Silence...

~

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

Holy-Holy

Into The Twilight - Winter Solstice

There is a seamless "edge" when twilight comes...
And a twinge of longing when the
light wanes into twilight,
the edge of the veil;
that threshold between
light and dark...

A knowing that this life
is waning into twilight too,
from one state into another,
forever re-forming Itself...

Tree branches wave in the wind
in homage to the light
dimming in the West...

Owls hoo - calling the night
into existence
from the East;
prophets of twilight
standing at the edge
where ending meets beginning
and beginning, ending...

Twilight
the in-between,
as Life cycles through time,
through light and dark,
through living
and dying.

This night we stand at the edge of time,
and timelessness beyond time...

peering through
for a glimpse
of the
Infinite Light
that knows no dimming
and no night;
only Its own Eternal Radiance
of
Being...

This Light we are...

Mystic Meandering
Winter Solstice
Dec. 21, 2012