Dancing in the Fire - Oriah

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you
dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.  I want 
to know if you risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring 
your moon.  I want to know if you have touched the
center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened
by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.  I want to know if you can sit
with pain, mine or your own without moving to hide
it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, 
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us
to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true
to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it's not
pretty every day, and if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and
mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout
to the sliver of the full moon, "Yes!"

 I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to
the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children,
[or your elderly parents, your spouse, or a dying loved one.]

It doesn't matter to me who you know or how you came to
be here.  I want to know if you will stand at the center
of the fire with me and not shrink back.
[can you meet me there...]

[This - is Friendship]

Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Original title - "The Invitation"
from - The Invitation

[brackets mine]

~

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
Woman Dancing in the Fire
(as seen from overhead)

~

"No one cares how much you know
until they know how much you care."

attributed to Theodore Roosevelt,
although no one really knows the
true author...

 

Embracing Humanity's Pain - a meandering...

I wrote this piece about 13 years ago in the aftermath of Hurricane
Sandy that devastated parts of the Northeast in the U.S.  It seemed
relevant to resurrect it with what is going on in the world today,
with floods, fire, famine and ongoing, endless wars -
the state of humanity...

~

The images on TV back then of people on the East coast left broken
 and brokenhearted - calling out for assistance, as if they had been
abandoned - touched my heart, touching that same feeling of
abandonment deep within myself somewhere.  And I wonder, how
could I live in a contemplative bubble that I am wont to do - close
myself off to what is happening in the world, under the guise of
"spirituality"?  I can't.  There is no either/or.  It's all one Life living
ItSelf out here - just as it is...  Pain and Peace...  And maybe it's
really that I want to protect myself from feeling my own pain.
That's what global pain does.  It gets us in touch with our own
pain, our own vulnerability, our own helplessness to know what
to do for a hurting world, let alone our own pain.

I saw a woman on TV back then helping in the clean-up effort in
her own coastal town - crying - saying - "I want to go home, but
there is no home.  It's gone."  I turned away and cried silently in
my heart.  I can't imagine the devastation to the psyche that no
amount of religious platitudes of non-attachment, or non-dual
refrains of: there is no "me" who wants to go home - can assuage.
It is a deep wound of the heart to lose one's sense of "Home" -
to *feel* that sense of separation and loss.  I'm sure some have
 felt that in one form or another at some time in our lives,
whether it was a loss of a physical place, a person, or an
emotional/spiritual sense of "Home" - that led to a sense of
 deep "homesickness" of the heart.

And a lot of us know people in our daily lives who need our
empathy and our compassion, who have lost their sense of
"Home", feeling abandoned by "God" (however we know that
to be) - losing that felt sense of connection adrift in their lives. 
 I understand this deep wound.  I know such people. 
 I've been there.  I empathize.
  It is a helpless feeling not knowing how to help them. 
 It's as if some people's pain is so deep , it cannot be mended. 
 It is not a tangible "fix" on a practical level, or seemingly a
"spiritual"one either.  It is a deep pain of the psyche.   
It is a loss of "Home" - a loss of one's internal bearing of the
Spirit;an insatiable pain that no one and nothing can fill.  I'm
sure you've met them too. The ones whose hearts cry the cry
of desperation in a dark wilderness of the mind, like sleep
 deprivation, leaving a deep hollow hunger within. 
 How do we help these wounded wanderers?
  Like the displaced people of Palestine, and
 Ukraine, in their current reality... 
Breaks my Heart again...

It all trickles down, pain upon pain - or maybe I sound too morbid -
too dramatic...  But it's true.  We are all impacted by the pain of
others, by the global, collective pain of a wounded world.  One
person's pain affects us all.  And yet, many times, as I have
discovered, we are helpless to end the pain, and so we distract
ourselves from the pain, theirs and our own, by shutting it out,
and shutting down; by pretending that it is all a grand illusion,
a dream that we can detach from.  I have done it too, not wanting
to experience the pain.  But the pain ripples out anyway - through
humanity.  How can we *not* be affected - how can we not allow
ourselves to *feel* it...

Humanity's pain *is* my/our pain.  It's all a reflection.  And lofty
beliefs and "spiritual" words are dismissive, not helpful, because
they cannot be heard, or received by those caught in their deep pain...
Humanity's pain needs the embrace of an empathetic heart of
compassion...

~

There's nothing I can offer
that buffers the pain
that softens the heartache,
or heals the wounds -

And yes, at times I don't want
to feel others' pain,
because it is too overwhelming...

And because I have my own pain.

And what to do with that as well...

I sit with it and let it speak,
let it cry,
let it take me to the "mothering":
womb of the Silence of all Life,
and rest there - waiting;
petitioning the Cosmic Energies,
neither male nor female,
to intervene,
on behalf of
a suffering world.

Sometimes
that's all I can do...

When the "practical"
fails to touch the soul...

We pray...

And that is our offering
of love...

Mystic Meandering
2012

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Truth" - LaMotte & Goethe

With general truth our minds swell up,
assuming the abstraction to expand us and
make us smarter.  But a mind turgid with beliefs
is neither clear nor useful.  It is a gray intellectual
thicket that prevents real empathy, real presence.
The general truth, in fact, makes us smaller, because
it confines awareness to a conceptual box
which our ego must argue and defend.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

We can never directly see what is true, that is, identical with
 what is divine: we look at it only in reflection, in example,
in the symbol, in the individual and related phenomena.  We
perceive it as a life beyond our grasp, yet we cannot deny
our need to grasp it.

[.....] the highest achievement of the human being as a thinking
being is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere
what is unknowable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goeth

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Perspectives on perspective - a meandering...

My father had a saying on a small plaque over
 his desk that said:

"Don't judge another man till you've walked a mile in
his shoes."

I Googled it to see if I could find the quote, and it came
up with several variations.

I liked this one:

"You can't really understand another person's experience
until you've walked a mile in their shoes."

Cherokee Indian saying

~

Then it gave someone's interpretation on the meaning:

"to experience life as someone else lives it and see the
world from their perspective, instead of trying to
change their perspective; it's known as empathy and
compassion..."

author unknown

~

And then there was this one...

You never really know someone until you understand 
their point of view, until you climb around in their skin
and walk around in it.

Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird

~

How often in the "spiritual culture" do the spiritual elite
try to convince you that their perspective is the "right"
perspective, the non-dual, spiritual perspective,
under the guise of "Truth."

But maybe we all just "see" the "Truth" differently,
through different "windows", through different
 lenses of perception...
It's all a play of perspectives...

Namaste 

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Different Perspectives out the same window

 

A Single Leaf Falls...

Leaning back on the soft, stuffed chair back cushion
I sink into myself, and rest there...

I hold my hands over my chest, as if holding 
a tiny infant against my heart.

I realize I am actually holding my self, my own
heart in my hands - cradling and nurturing
my "little heart". as of it were a child;
reassuring it that it's alright;

loving it...

All these burdens that it's been carrying for so 
long, lurking in the dark shadows, in need
of embrace and release.

A deep cry would be good - but the tears don't come.

I breathe deeply into the painful wounds of the heart -

feeling empathy and compassion for the "burden carrier",
as she has carried the angry, shadowy baggage of a 
painful family dynamic far too long.

I'm looking for IN-spiration that I can't seem to find.
Within I only find sadness and tears wanting to emerge,
to be felt - but are held back, as if dammed by a
learned facade -

waiting to explode - and be set free.
Like a river frozen in deep archaic woods,
embedded there for centuries; locked in time,
encoded in the body and mind - needing to flow
through and be released, not left hidden behind a
silent spirituality,
always "up", always "strong", holding it "together."

The facade starts to crumble, being replaced by authenticity,
and a different strength - a "speaker of truth" - her own truth,
that must be spoken,

not drowned in other people's words and ways...

A single leaf falls from a tree outside the window,
a poignant moment in her reflection.
Soon the tree will be bare, naked - and exposed...

Vulnerable without her covering...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 15, 2023

~

With thanks to Sarah Carlson and her own healing process
for the inspiration for this poem...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Suffering - Francis Weller

No one escapes suffering in this life.
None of us is exempt from loss, pain, illness and death.
How is it that we have so little understanding of [and empathy for]
these essential experiences?  How is it that we have attempted
to keep grief separated from our lives and only begrudgingly 
acknowledge its presence at the most obvious of time, such as
a funeral.

It is the accumulated losses of a lifetime that slowly weigh us
down - the times of rejection, the moments of isolation when we felt
cut off from the sustaining touch of comfort and love.  It is an ache
that resides in the heart, the faint echo calling us back to the times of
loss.  We are called back, not so much to make things right, but to
acknowledge what happened to us.

Grief asks that we honor the loss and, in doing so, deepen our
capacity for compassion.  When grief remains unexpressed, however,
 it  hardens, becomes as solid as stone.  We, in turn, become rigid and
stop moving in rhythm with the soul.... with the flow of life.  Grief is
part of the dance.

As we begin to pay attention, we notice that grief is never far from
our awareness.  We become aware of the many ways it arrives in
our daily lives. It is the blue mood that greets us upon waking.  It
is the melancholy that shades the day in muted tones.  It is the
recognition of time's passing, the slow emptying of our days.  It
is the searing pain that erupts when someone close to us dies -
It is the confounding grief when our life circumstances are
shattered by the unexpected....  the ground beneath us opens,
shaken by violent rumblings.  Grief enfolds our lives....

It is essential for us to welcome grief, whatever form it takes.
When we do, we open ourselves to our shared experiences in life.
Grief is our common bond.  Opening to our sorrow connects us
with everyone, everywhere.  There is no gesture of kindness that
is wasted, no offering of compassion that is useless.  We can be
generous to every sorrow we see.  It is sacred work.

Francis Weller

from The Wild Edge of Sorrow:
Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief;
The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Feel What You Feel - Fred LaMotte

I don't need you to change me.

Just help me Be
who I am.

It is good
and very good for me
to feel precisely what I feel,
this cloud of grief,
this downpour of despair,
without any names or notes
to self.

Only let me dissolve
in a healing rain
that penetrates all my shadows.
A liquid sliver of sun may arise
on the jagged edge of mourning.

Or not...

Now I can feel everything
because I have tasted
the night.

How a bud bursts, spilling
beauty from its wound.

How the chrysalis shatters,
frees the golden
moth from her season
of uncertainty.
How a single tear
becomes the sky.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

These are difficult times for the Earth and a lot of people 
on the Earth now are suffering. There's a density intensity
on the planet now.  I feel it.  It is difficult to be
"lighthearted" and celebratory when so many people are
suffering.  The Earth itself and the people on it are unsettled,
and many are in darkness within, affecting the whole Cosmos -
the whole order of life.

What brings you to your knees?
What causes you to suffer inside?

What happened to empathy for those who are suffering in our midst?

My neighbor hung himself in his garage over a month ago.  No one
knew he was suffering.  Now his wife suffers.

Those who suffer do not need "fixing."
They need our heart...

_/\_
Namaste

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The body knows, the heart knows - Matt Licata

You don't have to fix anyone's problems.  You don't have to save
them, heal them, or get them to take on your favorite metaphysical
beliefs, theories, and techniques.

Just be there with them so that they feel felt and understood.
Bear witness to their own organic wisdom as it re-calibrates,
reorganizes, and emerges.

Listen.  Not only to their verbal narrative but to the somatic
story as well.  To the secret, sensitive language emerging from
their heart.

Bracket your beliefs and systems for a few moments.
Attune.  Enter into the miracle we-space with them, so that
they feel felt.

Extend to them a field of permission where they can go through
their experience without any pressure to heal or to meet some
hidden agenda in order for you to stay close.  Resist the
temptation to "teach" them.  But instead, "reach" them, finally,
by way of the circuitry of empathic immersion.

It's going to be difficult to do this if we are out of touch with 
our own unlived life - with the unmet grief, the unheld sadness,
the unmetabolized rage.  If we have disavowed these visitors -
including through our endless [spiritual] theories and beliefs...

Of course the mind has such a hard time with this.  It just can't
believe it.  What about my theories and techniques and spiritual
beliefs and all of it?  I must convey it all and show them.

But the body knows.  The heart knows. The holy nervous system
knows.

The "other" is not in need of new information, theories, or spiritual
beliefs, but needs and wants and longs for you...  your nakedness,
your tenderness, your raw unfiltered being, your love.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
November Rose

 

Perishable - Niall Williams

It's because people are so perishable.  That's the thing.
Because for everyone you meet there is a last moment, there will
be a last moment when you hand slips from theirs, and everything
ripples outwards from that, the last firmness of a hand in yours
that every moment after becomes a little less firm until you look
down at your own hand and try to imagine just what it felt like
before their hand slipped away.  And you cannot.  You cannot feel
them.  And then you cannot quite see them, there's blurry bits,
like you're looking through this watery haze, and you're fighting
to see, you're fighting to hold on, but they are perishing right 
before your eyes, and right before your eyes they are
becoming a bit more ghost.

Niall Williams
From: History of the Rain

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Nothing is more important than empathy for another human
beings' suffering.  Nothing.  Not career, not wealth, not intelligence,
certainly not status.  We have to feel for another if we are going to
survive with dignity.

Audry Hepburn

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Floating Fork :)

 

Inner Passageways - Matt Licata

 The path of opening the heart is not the same as becoming
 an unboundaried, leaky vessel for the unloading of another's
unlived life.  It is to the degree that we are attuned to our
own grief, sadness, shame, and rage that we will most
skillfully navigate within the we-space...

Most of us were not trained in the art of embodied

attunement as we live in an increasingly disembodied
world, where the capacity to hold unfolding emotional
experience was not encoded into a tender developing
nervous system.

The inner passageways, however, are luminous and ache
 for reorganization by way of the slower circuitries of
empathy, curiosity, wonder and awe. 

Inside something is stirring, a longing being awakened to
return home, for new circuitry to encode, for a new pathway

to light up and come alive.

Slowly, one moment at a time.
Safe. Connected. Open.

Embodied.

There is no urgency on the path of love.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Kindness casts a different light - John O'Donohue

There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things;
it presides everywhere, often in the places we least
expect.  The world can be harsh and negative, but
if we remain generous, and patient, kindness inevitably
reveals itself.  Something deep in the human soul seems
to depend on the presence of kindness; something
instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we
are able to trust and open ourselves...

If we did not feel that some ultimate kindness holds
sway, we would feel like outsiders confronted on every
side by a world toward which we could make no real bridges.

The word kindness has a gentle sound that seems to echo
the presence of compassionate goodness.  When someone
is kind to you, you feel understood and seen.  There is no
judgment or harsh perception directed toward you.

Kindness has gracious eyes; it also suggests that your
vulnerability, though somehow exposed, is not taken
advantage of; rather, it has become an occasion for dignity
and empathy.

Kindness casts a different light, an evening light that has
the depth of color and patience to illuminate what is
complex and rich in difference.

Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the
instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate
kindness holds sway.  This is the heart of blessing.  To believe
in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence
in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing.

Given the nature of our beginning [our birth] - nowhere does
 the Silence of the Infinite lean so intensely as around the form
of  a newly born infant - it is no wonder  that our hearts are
imbued with longing for beauty, meaning, order, creativity,
compassion, and love.  

John O'Donohue
From: To Bless the Sapce Between Us

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

In Difficult Times - Matt Licata

Collect pieces of the broken world and create a container
of empathy and love for what has crumbled to be held
and tended to with pieces of light.  Honor the holy truth
that the forms that love takes will always fall apart -
for this is their nature -
in order that they may come back together in more
integrated and cohesive ways.

Matt Licata, PhD

~

Photo - a square from a quilt that my
great-grandmother made in the early
1900's from pieces of old neckties...

Self-Compassion - Matt Licata

It is important to realize that the path of opening the heart
is not the same as becoming a receptacle for the unloading
of others' unconscious. unresolved beliefs, unprocessed
feelings, and unintegrated behaviors.  While "appearing"
compassionate on the outside, being an emotional doormat
involves the re-enacting of early unconscious dynamics.
We learned that devaluing ourselves, often in very subtle
ways, was the best route to get out needs met, to fit in,
to receive attention and affection, and to maintain a
precarious tie to an unavailable attachment figure
[parent]...to work through overwhelming states of
survival-level anxiety.

But the pathways within are luminous - neither solid
nor fixed - and can be reorganized around empathy,
kindness, and presence...  ...this possibility occurs
only by way of self-compassion and the unconditional
commitment to no longer abandon yourself...which
will require immense courage, care, curiosity and
embodiment.

Look carefully and see the ways you habitually
place others' needs over your own...not out of
true compassion for them, but a re-enactment of
an early environment of shame and unworthiness...
...lay down a new pathway [through self-compassion].
The pathway is grounded in self-care, which wisely
expresses itself in the skillful care of others, and
opens the doorway into the unfolding dance of self
and other and the eternal mysteries...

Matt Licata

No Greater Temple - Matt Licata

At times the visitor of melancholy will appear,
arriving from the night world, from the moon,
[the feeling world], not to harm, but to reveal.
A tenderness, a disappointment, a raw achy
uncertainty.  The guide has appeared but wasn't
quite what we thought.  Such is the way of the
heart.  As we are made into dust, the fire is tended.

While it may be tempting to replace the burning
with bliss, the sadhana of disappointment demands
that we listen, to the stories and feelings and whispers,
and longings, and place the shattered pieces on the
altar in front of us.

Even if we cannot love, accept, or transform what has
come, we can always bow.  What this bowing looks
like for each of us will never conform to other's
fantasies and ways; for the map is weaved deep into
our soul alone.

We can fall to the ground and bear empathic witness to
the broken wholeness, to the wisdom shining out of
the human heart, for there is no greater temple.

Matt Licata

There is a Deep Kindness - John O'Donohue

There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides
everywhere, often in the places we least expect.  The world can
be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient,
kindness inevitably reveals itself.  Something deep in the human
soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something
instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to
trust and open ourselves.

The word kindness has a gentle sound that seems to echo the
presence of compassionate goodness.  When someone is kind
to you, you feel understood and seen.  There is no judgement or
harsh perception directed toward you.  Kindness has gracious
eyes; it is not small-minded or competitive; it wants nothing
back for itself.  Kindness strikes a resonance with the depths
of your own heart; it also suggests that your vulnerability,
though somehow exposed, is not taken advantage of; rather,
it has become an occasion for dignity and empathy. 

Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct
that at the deepest level of reality intimate kindness holds sway.
This is the heart of blessing.  

John O'Donohue
from - To Bless the Space Between Us

Via - The Beauty We Love

~

Photo

Can you see the big open heart shape in the tree on the right ? :)

~

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?
I think it is the  hope of loving,
or being loved.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts.
We wither like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.

Meister Eckhart

A Field of Compassion - Matt Licata

Forcing our preferred methodology, belief, or view upon
someone because we think it is "right", or "more advanced"
[ or"enlightened"] when they do not possess the resonance, interest
or capacity to engage that practice [or ideology] is unkind,
aggressive and even potentially violent.

It is one thing to honor another's innate higher capacities -
and to never forget the brilliance of their true nature -
especially in the face of profound suffering.  But it is
another to push this realization upon them as a result of
our own failure of empathy...

May we meet each other with a wild sort of caring...

In this field where we are compassionate, creative and attuned -
not pushing our own agenda, view, or technique - together we
can access, articulate, and integrate that which longs to return
home, and in this discover
it is love that is truly the ultimate medicine.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - a slab of Rose Quartz

Awakening From Awakening - Jeff Foster

This is a true story from Jeff Foster

Once, at a conference, I watched a spiritual teacher addressing
a grieving woman whose precious young son had just died.  Her
world had just collapsed.  An old reality had shattered.  She said,
"My heart is broken and raw."  He told her, "Your heartbreak is the
activity of the separate self, and therefore illusory, based in ignorance.
When the separate self dissolves, there will be no more suffering.
In Awareness, there is no death.  Awareness has no son."  He told
her she needed to 'wake up.'  She needed to recognize herself as
'Pure Awareness' - that she was pretending to be a victim, that
she didn't know 'who she truly was.'

And in that moment, I saw a deep sickness and inhumanity at
 the heart of much our contemporary spirituality.
The invalidation and shaming of trauma, the false promises,
the power games, and most of all, the suppression
of the divine feminine.  Making our grief, anger, fear and joy a
'mistake' or some 'sign' that we are not awakened enough, not
spiritual enough, not 'divine' enough in our embodied humanity.
The pathologising of our wildness.  The shaming of our fragility,
our sensitivity.

Friends, if this is 'spiritual awakening', I simply have no interest.
Let us [embrace] our fragile, vulnerable humanity!  Not run from it!
Let us bless our precious broken hearts!  Not pathologise them!
Let us infuse our deepest human experience with empathy.
  Send a curious, warm awareness deep into
the wounds.  Not to mend, not to fix, but to feel!  Not to 'awaken',
but to penetrate and be penetrated by Love.
The awakening of the heart. 
The remembering of the magic we knew when we were very
young.  Let us embrace our painful feelings.  Not see them as a 'sign'
of our spiritual failure, or our inability to manifest, or our ignorance,
or lack of strength.

Let us wake up from the old *concept* of  'awakening'.
Return to the sacredness in our humanity!

and

Meet each other in the fire of living.  Be present with each other,

instead of trying to fix [correct/dismiss] each other.

Jeff Foster
[A Non-dualist with a Heart:)]

Facebook

[brackets mine]

A Heart Opener...

These photos are so precious! We recently received them from an online friend, and I was so moved by them that I had to share them with you.

This is the short story that came with these pictures: Lily is a Great Dane that has been blind since a bizarre medical condition required that she have both eyes removed. For the last 5 years, Maddison, another Great Dane, has been her sight. The two are, of course, inseparable.

This was the caption at the bottom of the photos…

"People will forget what you said; People will forget what you did.
But people will never forget how you made them feel."

~~

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives
means the most to us, we often find that it is those who,
instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures,
have chosen rather to share our pain
and touch our wounds
with a gentle hand.

The friend who can be silent with us
in a moment of despair or confusion,
who can stay with us in an hour of grief & bereavement,
who can tolerate not knowing,
not curing,
not healing,
and face with us the reality of our powerlessness,
that is a friend who cares…”

Henri Nouwen

~

You might also like to view
this wonderful
Heart warming video
click here.