A Philosophy of Suffering - Etty Hillesum

Most of us in the West don't understand the art of suffering
and experience a thousand fears instead.  Man suffers most
through the idea of suffering, through his fear of suffering.
We cease to be alive, being full of fear, bitterness, hatred and
despair.  Don't we live an entire life each one of our days,
and does it really matter if we live  few days more or less?
There is room for everything in a single life.

When I say I have come to terms with life, I don't mean I
have lost hope.  It is a question of living life from minute to
minute and taking suffering into the bargain.  But does it
matter if it is the Inquisition that causes people to suffer in
one century, and war and pogroms in another?

Suffering has always been with us, does it really matter in
what form it comes?  All that matters is how we bear it
and how we fit it into our lives.

I can sit for hours and know everything and bear everything
and grow stronger in the bearing of it.  And at the same time
feel sure that life is [still] beautiful and meaningful.  Despite
everything.  But that does not mean that I am always filled with
joy and exaltation [about life and its circumstances].  I am
often dog-tired after standing in queues, but I know that this too
is part of life, and I know something inside me will never
desert me...

We carry everything within us.  God and Heaven and Hell and
Earth and Life and Death and all of history.  The externals are
simply so many props; everything we need is within us.  And
we have to take everything that comes; the bad with the good,
which does not mean we cannot devote our life to curing the
bad. [or helping those who suffer].  But we must know what
motives inspire our struggle [against] and we must begin
with ourselves.

Living and dying, sorrow and joy, the blisters on my feet and
the jasmine behind the house, the persecution, the unspeakable
horrors - it is all as one to me, and I accept it all as one mighty
whole and begin to grasp it better, if only for myself, without
being able to explain to anyone else how it all hangs together.

If you destroy the ideas behind [suffering] which life lies
imprisoned within, you liberate your true life - and then you
will have strength to bear real suffering... [the reality of suffering].

Etty Hillesum
Jewish Mystic of the Holocaust

from: An Interrupted Life
She died in Auschwitz at age 28 or 29

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

 

A Prayer for a Suffering World

May we be free of physical suffering...
May we be free of mental anguish...
May we be free of all suffering
and the roots/causes 
of suffering...

May we be safe...
May we be at peace...

May we be well in body and mind...

May we live with ease...

From 2 Buddhist sayings...

~

Photo from the internet digitally altered

 

Graced With Gratitude...

Gratitude arises
like a warm flame
in the Heart;
a flame that
comes alive
on its own
from within

Overtaking me by surprise...

It's a gratitude of
unknown origin -
not contrived,
or cultivated,
but
deeply felt in the
core of my Being;
only awareness is 
needed...

A gratitude
not for being alive,
but for Aliveness ItSelf.
for the Aliveness that
is Life;
that dances and sings
the Cosmos
into being;
that imbues existence
with LIFE!

For the color and movement
of life being lived
in every minute detail;
for the opening and
unfoldment of life
that has its own
course,
its own
way,
unfolding Itself in
total freedom of Being

I am truly graced with Gratitude -

beyond words...

Mystic Meandering
October 2015

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Inner Myth - MacIver & Campbell

We each have an inner myth guiding our lives.  That
myth guides us without us knowing it.  It grows out of
all the things we've learned, the things we've failed at,
out of our insecurities, out of the triumphs we
experienced.  It is also affected by the spiritual current
that underlies our lives - the mythical journey that is seeking
to manifest in our outer life if we'll only pay attention to it.
It is the seed that is wanting to grow into a tree, the call 
waiting to be answered, but risky.  That path is risky.

What is the inner myth guiding your life, unknown to you?
What mysterious figure, what spirit entity of wisdom and
kindness might you invite to accompany you, guide you,
on your journey?

Rod MacIver
Heron Dance

~

Joseph Campbell says myth opens the heart and the imagination
to the wonders of the universe and the mystery of existence.
He says myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the
human life.  He says that myths can teach us how to live a 
human lifetime, not grounded in ancient religions, that support
our personal quests for wisdom and happiness.

From the 4 Ways that Myth Can Change Your Life,
According to Joseph Campbell.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Mysterious Man with the flat hat
and long robe in the curtain... :)

~

What stories do we tell ourselves,
and what beliefs do we live by
that may be outdated now?

 

Idleness - Csikszentmihalvi

Robertson Davies, the Canadian author, said one of the most
important things in his life was being able to take a nap every
day after lunch for twenty minutes.  That's for two reasons. One
is that by developing a schedule that's under your control, you are
not being flogged around by life, as he puts it; you are not always
jumping to someone else's tune.  You develop your own rhythm...

The other thing is that it's during idle time that ideas have a chance
to recombine in new ways, because of we think consciously about
solving a problem or writing a book, then we are sitting there
forcing our ideas to move in a lockstep, in a straight line, and
probably what comes out is not very new or original.

For original ideas to come about, you have to to let them percolate
under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no
way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction.  So
they find their way, their random combinations that are driven by
forces we don't know about.  It's through this recombination that
something new may come up, not when we try to push them
directly.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalvi interviewed by Michael Toms in the
New Dimensions Newsletter.

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many
 diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve
ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground
that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world
within...  By middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives
from ourselves.

John Gardner

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Personal Note - this is also why what I call "silent time" is
so important to me.  It doesn't have to be "meditation" but just
getting still, getting quiet, without interruption.  It seems then that
 words for a poem will rise to the surface, or an idea for something
that my mind could not "solve"...  Usually that "silent time" isn't
until the Quiet Hour, between 12 midnight and 1am  :)

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Your "Soul's Task" - Gary Zukov

What does it feel like to remember your soul's task?

When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what you
are doing, when your activities and actions become gratifying
and purposeful, when what you do serves both yourself and
others, when you do not tire within but seek the sweet
satisfaction of your life and your work, you are doing what
you were meant to be doing.  The personality that is
engaged in the work of its soul is buoyant.  It is not burdened
with negativity.  It does not fear.  It experiences purposefulness
and meaning.  It delights in its work and in others.
It is fulfilled and fulfilling.

from: The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukov.

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~*~

The past offers itself up
to feed the soul that seeks fullness [fulfillment]
by continuously reclaiming itself.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

 

A Great Light - Jay Ramsay

I saw a great light come down over London,
And buildings and cars and people were still
They were held wherever they were under the sky's
Clear humming radiance as it descended --
Everywhere, in shops, behind desks and on trains
Everything stopped as the stillness came down
And touched the crown of our heads
As our eyes closed, and the sky filled us
And our minds became the sky --

And everyone, regardless of crime, class or creed
Was touched; as slowly we began to stir
Out of this penetrated light-filled sleep
Dizzily as the hand completed its dialing,
And the train lurched forward
And I saw faces looking at one another questioning,
I saw people meeting eye to eye and standing
Half amazed by each other's presence
I saw their mouths silently shaping the word why
Why didn't we know this? and yet knowing
They already knew, and without words
We all stood searching for the gesture
That would say it --

As the lights went green, we drove on...

Jay Ramsay

from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around
the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology) Edited by
Ivan Granger at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Excerpts from Ivan Granger's Commentary:

.....one of the things I really like about this poem - it can be read
as a collective moment of awe, or of spiritual awakening- or a
city-wide encounter with a UFO... 

  It's not really clear what is happening, just that there is a
 shared moment of stillness and wonderment.  Everyone stops and
 is confronted with a dazzling, otherworldly reality.  What's actually
happening seems less important than the shared experience. 
Not only is this a witnessing of something that transcends the
 day-to-day existence, but there is also a recognition of fundamental
 connection with everyone else.

Then, of course, the lights turn green, and the business of living
continues.  But perhaps those people carry with them just a bit 
more sacred wonder into their daily activities...  and who knows
the many subtle, far-reaching ways it will continue to radiate out
through our lives?  This is how private experiences of transformation -
otherworldly or of the inner world - quietly transform the world.

.....we are visitors here, not permanent residents.  Our time on earth is
limited.  We may not know our departure date... best to stop

 and do what we came here to do. 
Offer a helping hand.  Share a smile. 
Do what the soul always wanted to do.
And discover the secret heart of things.

Ivan Granger

~

Many live challenged lives now...
The greatest gift we can give
each other is our compassion...

MM

~

Photo with thanks to The Beauty We Love

 

Perspective - Vaclav Havel

There are no exact guidelines.  There are probably no guidelines
at all.  The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense
of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and
absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense
of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this
world.  In other words, I can only recommend perspective and
distance.  Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity,
both in others and in ourselves.  A good mind.  Gratitude for 
the gift of life and the courage to take responsibility for it.
Vigilance of spirit."

Vaclav Havel

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Light abstract on wall...

 

At the Edge of a Dreamscape - Rod MacIver

In the middle of the night
On the edges of my dreamscape
Caribou race along the rim of distant hills
And disappear.

They offer no words
But somehow they say
In vague, shifting images of blue
Moonlight and pounding hooves
Stand still.  Wait for once.
Don't race over there
And stand in the middle.

Let chaos go its own way
Confused, discordant.
Keep your internal center of balance
A compass on the bridge of a storm-tossed ship.
What is the destination?
Where do we want to go?
I wish I knew.

In the darkness
just past the light of the campfire
In the wild, nocturnal mystery
Sounds coming at you from the night
Footsteps
Breathing,
the sound of some big animal breathing

Go.
You won't create your new tomorrow
Hanging around the fire, waiting
Waiting for tomorrow
Staring at flames that become embers
That become darkness
Embrace the darkness now.

So a road opened up
And I took it.
Down some dark stairways into myself
In search of the sun.
What was supposed to happen didn't,
And wasn't supposed to, did.

I don't know what is going on.
I don't know how things are supposed to be.

Rod MacIver

from the book arts collection,
The Journey Itself is Home
Heron Dance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Cosmic Breathing...

photo - Johannes-Plenio at Unsplash

Sitting in the Silence of the Inner Landscape,
I suddenly realize the Cosmic Breath of Infinity
is slowly breathing this body -
breathing in... breathing out...

Held in the pause between breaths -
I recognize that "I" am being breathed
by an unheard Rhythm...

From the Inner Window,
at the edge of Infinity
I see beyond this world,
into the formless void,
beyond moon and stars,
into the Infinite Cosmic Ocean
that holds it all...

Aware of what is aware within:
Life - breathing ITself...

Every Breath is the Primordial Breath
rippling through space...

Hush
Be Silent 
Listen

and I hear:

Entrain with the Rhythm
that is breathing you...

Slow down and breathe
the Infinite Breath of the Cosmos -
that whispers -
All will be infinitely well...

Mystic Meandering
April 12, 2020

~

Photo - Johannes Plenio at Unsplash

 

Twilight...

There is a seamless "edge" when twilight comes...
And a twinge of melancholy when the
light wanes into twilight,
the edge of the veil;
the 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;
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.

At twilight 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
Dec. 21, 2012

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
January 6, 2012

 

Blessing for the Interim Time - John O'Donohue

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.

You cannot lay claim to anything;

In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in the false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here [is] your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

John O'Donohue

from - To Bless the Space Between Us

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The "Caregiver"...

I have to find a way through this...

I am missing quiet times in the Silence;
- writing; poems, if they arise;
and emails to friends; or chapters 
for future books - never to be published -
ghost stories
about a life unlived...

I am missing the life I had -
or rather - the rhythm with the Life I lived:
quiet, slow, restful - a contemplative's elder years;
that allowed me to spontaneously express from the deeper,
quieter space of Being - now frozen in an emotionally
draining time-bound reality,
that at times feels unreal, unfamiliar.

I got caught in a time warp somewhere
by someone else's dreamscape...

I am paralyzed, unexpressive in many ways,
flatlined by my life experience;
choked on life's challenges big enough to kill one's spirit;
trying to be kind, compassionate and caring,
and somehow magically pulling it off,
with a little humor at times,
while my own life slowly wanes into non-existence.

I need my Life back - although it will never be the same
again...  The Life energy drains from the body - physically
flattened and barely functioning, becoming mechanical,
trying to hold onto my Heart,
through barrages of blame,
and arrows of long held hatred
from a troubled soul...

I have to find myself again -
before it's too late...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 4, 2023
1 am
(the quiet hour)

This just happens to be the anniversary of my
father's death 38 years ago - at age 61...
It seems like a lifetime ago in another reality -
and of course it was...  He has missed so much,
but maybe that's a good thing...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Love Yourself - Fred LaMotte

Who led us to believe we must dissolve our "separateness".
destroy our little "i", and merge with a flatline of "non-duality?"
That's a lot of work!  It's the work of the mind, chewing on
itself, creating concepts.  "Separateness" is a concept.
"Non-duality" is a concept.

The Divine Mother's ocean of love is not like the intellect
of man.  We can drop this mind into the starry night of the
heart.  When the little droplet of "i" falls into the ocean of
Her love, it won't dissolve into impersonal nothingness.
Rather, the ocean will become the drop.

As the drop merges with the ocean, the ocean merges with
the drop....

Surrendered to the love that enwombs the stars, You are no
longer just a little "i." You irradiate the cosmos.  You don't
need to rise above your Being, but sink into it.  Love yourself.

Countless galaxies whirl out of your unbreathed unborn stillness.
And every star in the cosmos is imbued with the sweetness
of your own peculiar light...

With this very breath, love yourself!

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Hallowed Halloween - Billy Collins

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,
or riffling through a magazine in bed,
the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.

They're moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
You go to the place you always thought you would go,

the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

Some are entering into a funnel of flashing colors into
a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
an woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.
With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals - eagles and leopards - and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their back in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

(And some just smile, forever on)

Billy Collins
Questions about Angels

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

May you all have a safe and
Hallowed Halloween

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering.

 

Birth/Death - Krasznahorkai

[...] he would see that birth and death were only two tremendous
moments in an eternal waking, and his face would glow with
amazement as he understood this; he would feel... - gently he
grasped the copper handle of the door - the warmth of the
mountains, woods, rivers and valleys, would discover 
the hidden depths of human existence. would finally understand
that the unbreakable ties that bound him to the world are not
imprisoning chains.....  ; and he would discover the enormous
joys of mutuality which embraced and animated everything;
rain, wind, sun and snow, the flight of a bird, the taste of
fruit, the scent of grass; and he would suspect that his
anxieties and bitterness were merely cumbersome ballast
required by the live roots of his past and the rising airship
of his certain future, and, then -- he started opening the door -
he would finally know that our every moment is passed in
a procession across dawns and day's-ends of the orbiting
earth, across successive waves of winter and summer,
threading the planets and the stars.

Suitcase in hand, he stepped into the room and stood there
blinking in the half-light.

Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Hungarian Novelist and Screenwritet
From:  The Melancholy of Resistance

with thanks to Love is a Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Death - J Krishnamurti

.....can you look at death without the image of death?
As long as the image exists from which springs thought,
thought must always create fear.  Then you either rationalize
your fear of death and build a resistance against the inevitable
or you invent innumerable beliefs to protect you from the fear
of death.  Hence there is a gap between you and the thing of
which you are afraid.  In this time-space interval there must be
conflict which is fear and anxiety...

Thought, which breeds fear of death says, 'Let's postpone it, let's
avoid it, keep it as far away as possible, let's not think about it' -
but you are thinking about it.  When you say, 'I won't think about
it', you have already thought out how to avoid it. You are frightened
of death because you have postponed it.

We have separated living from dying, and the interval between the
living and dying is fear.  The interval, that time, is created by fear.
Living is our daily torture, daily insult, sorrow and confusion, with
occasional opening of a window over enchanted seas.  That is 
what we call living, and we are afraid to die,  which is to end this
misery. We would rather cling to the known than face the unknown
- the known being our house, our furniture, our family, our
character, our work, our knowledge, our fame, our loneliness, our
gods - that little thing that moves around incessantly within itself
with its own limited pattern of embittered existence.

We think that living is always in the present and that dying is
something that awaits us at a distant time.  But we have never
questioned whether this battle of everyday life is living at all.
We want to know the truth about reincarnation, we want proof
of the survival of the soul, we listen to the assertion of clairvoyants
and to the conclusions of physical research, but we never ask, never,
how to live - to live with delight, with enchantment, with beauty
every day.

We have accepted life as it is with all its agony and despair and
have got used to it, and think of death as something to be carefully
avoided.  But death is extraordinarily like the life we know how to
live.  You cannot live without dying.  You cannot live if you
don't die psychologically every minute.  This is not an intellectual
paradox.  To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new
loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise
you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what
love is or what freedom is.

Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it
means to live.  We don't know how to live, therefore we don't 
know how to die.  As long as we are frightened of life we shall be
frightened of death.  The man who is not frightened of life is not
frightened of being completely insecure for he understands that
inwardly, psychologically, there is no security.  When there is no
security there is an endless movement and then life and death are
the same.  The man who lives without conflict, who lives with
beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to
die.

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Freedom from the Known

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

"Choice"/No-Choice - a meandering...

"... it is not necessary to accept the choices handed
down to you by life as you know it.  There is more
to it than that - no one HAS to do something he
doesn't want to do for the rest of his life."

Hunter S. Thompson

The Proud Highway

from Whiskey River

~

A Meandering...

While I would like to agree with the above quote,
from my own personal experience, there are times
when you are placed in a position of "no choice" in an
"untenable" (impossible) situation; some call it the
"choiceless choice."

That happened to us a year ago - because we couldn't just
turn our backs on a family member and send her out to
be homeless on the streets (as some suggested we do),
where she obviously wouldn't survive;  nor drop her off
at Rehab, where she refused to go.  We were told we
couldn't put her in a Nursing Home/Care Facility against
her will, as she was still capable of making her own
decisions - and made it clear she wouldn't go!
You can't force someone to go where they don't want to
go, as much as we would have liked to.  We felt we had
no other choice but to take her in, while looking for
alternative places for her to stay, that never worked out.

We were always told we were in an "untenable situation" -
because there was no other choice, no other workable option...

It is what it is - I know...  What's so is what's so - yes...

Accept and Navigate... okay

So we navigate the rough waters daily, struggling to keep
from drowning in an ongoing impossible situation..

~ 

Beware of simplistic answers to sometimes complex
situations that Life hands you...

MM

Blessings to all who are dealing with "untenable"
life situations and challenges...

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Foliage Mosaic

 

The Universe's Story - Misc.

...the universe is not simply a place but a story,
a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong,
and out of which we arose.

This story has the power to awaken us more deeply to who we are.
For just as the Milky Way is the universe in the form of a galaxy,
and an orchid is the universe in the form of a flower,
we are the universe in the form of a human.

And every time we are drawn to look up into the night sky
and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe,
we are actually the universe reflecting on itself.

Journey of the Universe
Brian Swimme and Mary Evenlyn Tucker

~*~

The Absolute is both unmanifest and dynamic creative force.
From the creative force everything arises;
both the world as well as personal consciousness.
Everything is a play [story] of consciousness,
not an unreal illusion.

Excerpt from an article by
Jan Easman

~*~

Everything is ultimately a story.
My life is a story,
your life is a story,
all occurring within the vast cosmic
Ocean of Consciousness.
The story of The Eternal is being lived
here...

The Ineffable Mystery of the Universe
takes a journey through
the story of life - as us...
The "Divine Drama" is our story -
and our "story" is the "Divine Drama"...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2013

~*~

The real mystery is how It
unveils Itself within us;
how the Beloved makes Itself known
to ItSelf in the fragile container of the 
human being.

In the midst of the Divine Drama
there is a human story to be told.
But it's all "God's" story
being lived in human form...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

A mystery :)

 

Remember Your Essence...

Our Essence is the same Silence that suspends the Cosmos,
and the same Energy of the Stars...
We are the Hush of "The Mystery"
and the breath of Life itself...

Our Essence is embodied in every cell of the body...

Our Being is the Dance of the Aurora Borealis 

and the unlit Light of the Sun...

generated through the inner radiance
of Shakti - the primal energy -
coursing through our bodies...
Our Essence is "Godness" seeking expression
in human form;
it is the Essence of all matter reality...
Life living us...

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 16, 2023

~

Blessings to all in these uncertain times
May we all remember our Inner Light,
our Essence...

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Photo - Mystic Meandering