Don't Drown - Simó Necic

They appear as given direction and order
What you are
Have to become
What this world you barely know -
except what you read,
learned, and were told about -
Is

You are looking for your place to be
Purpose and meaning
Seeking what this is all about
What they told you
These voices in your head
Named father, mother, teacher, master
God and devil
Demons and angels
Spirits and deities
Your soul

You feel that they were all lying to you

You are drowning

Something you cannot name seems to be swallowing you
Slowly, bit by bit

You cling to your beliefs
What they taught you
What you practiced
They get louder
Distracting
I am! I am!

Silence is screaming

Presence awareness
The same voice
Disguised

Trying to keep you above

You aim higher
Gradually, you feel how you drown
You can barely breathe
Aliveness

The stream takes you

I am!  I am this!  Not this!

You drown in what you thought it to be
And it is not
That

While resistant, what you know, chokes you
You seem to die
But you don't

What seems like drowning
Are the voices in your head
Still pretending
They know the truth
Are truth

I am!

Simó Necic

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Don't fill your head with "voices" of others -
the so-called "teachings" of others;
the beliefs of others.

Don't seek what you need in the external world
of techniques, and foolish mind games
of clever worldly wisdoms;
of lofty "spiritual" words.

Instead, seek the company of the Innermost Essence
of your own Being - in the Silence of Being;
The True Wisdom - the Innate Wisdom;
The Inner Voice of Inherent, Intuitive Wisdom...

Trust the "Wisdom Mother" within...

Mystic Meandering
June 11, 2022

~

...all the more persistently
live in harmony with the
"Voice of Being"
within yourself.

Vaclav Havel

with thanks to Love is a Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Say I Am You - Rumi

I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel.
I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branched.
Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.

Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose and nightingale lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift and the falling away.

What is and what is not.
You who know Jelaluddin,

You are the one in all...

Say I am you.

Jelaluddin Rumi
Coleman Barks Translation

~

What hurts the soul?
To live without tasting
the water of its own essence.

Rumi
Coleman Barks Version
from the Mathnawi I

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Dissolve - Fred LaMotte

Rosette Nebula - From: The Invisible Universe
by David Malin

 Stars dissolve into a rose. A rose dissolves into stars. Ask Dante.

The solution is dissolution.  What dissolves?  Separateness.

I am not my skin color.  I am not my tribe.  I am not even my
gender.  I wear these veils and garments, just as I have a red
shirt or a Yankees cap on: but they are not my Self.

Nor am I my political party, my nation, or my religion.  And I
am not my ancestors.  These are marvelous incidents, but not
my Essence.  The core of my existence is prior to labels,
identifications, masks.  Yes, I enjoy wearing them, dancing in
them, playing in their forms.  I need not renounce them,
because they were never really "mine" to begin with.  In deep
meditation, these forms dissolve like the dreams they are.
Then I Am.

In deep meditation, the core of existence reveals itself as the
One who cannot be divided into races, tribes, religions, parties,
yet who plays in them all as light playing in a kaleidoscope.
The revelation transcends thought and imagination.  It is the
Self-image of the Imageless.  Groundless, brilliant, empty, it
is nowhere and everywhere.  It is the Holy of Holies.

Emerging from meditation, I need no longer look for that place.
I look from that place.  Then it is impossible to identify any
color or creed, any political or spiritual movement, as "me."
I am simply who Am.

The verb "Am" is solid as a diamond, boundless as the sky.
Who needs to say, "I Am a man, I Am a liberal, I Am a Buddhist,
I Am a white or a black?  Not I.  Just Am.  Those labels of
identity make the mind small.  No noun, no-thing, ever really
follows the verb To Be.

Fred LaMottte
Uradiance

Free to BE - Fred LaMotte

The first discipline of non-violence is to honor every human
being as a unique soul-body, refusing to identify them by
race, gender, religion, or political party.

Yet just as much as right-wing movements, today's "progressive"
movement often promotes conflict and division by labeling
individual Persons by their group identity.  Some of us who
talk about "diversity" actually stifle it, because real diversity
is not to promote tribalism [or nationalism], but to recognize
the incomparable [unique] Personhood of individuals.
[As it also says in the Declaration of Independence.]

It is much easier to hate a category than a Person, whether
your animosity is toward Muslims or Christians, "black people",
or "white people", liberals or conservatives.

The beginning of world peace is to free each human soul-body
from racial, political, or religious abstractions.  Our incidental
association with a group is not who we really are.

I do not identify my Self [Eternal Being] as a color, as rich
or poor, capitalist or socialist, Republican or Democrat,
Christian or Pagan [or American].  I am neither "good" nor
"evil."  Those are just conceptual chains with which your mind
attempts to enthrall me.  But I am not your concept of me:
you are.

If you want to superimpose a group identity on me, that is your
act of violence against the singularity of my Personhood.  You
are free to label me, but I am also free...  I refuse to identify with
your label...

I Am who I Am...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance
(from a 2018 post)

[brackets mine]

Photo from Stillness Speaks

~

This is a newspaper clipping from 1968 that I still have.
The same year that Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy
were assassinated...

~

We are truly Free when we recognize our Eternal Beingness
in each other, and, the diverseness of our individuality
that expresses that Beingness, and treat each other with
respect and compassion...

I Am Undone - Brian Thompson

I am undone.

I no longer remain,
and yet, I Am.

All that remains,
is this beautiful nothingness of all that Is;
a suchness of being beyond any event, memory or experience,
a knowingness transcendent of any concept,
including the illusions of space, continuity and time.

I know only
this presence of knowing
that knows only itself;
an empty space of infinite silence,
that contains no thing, no purpose and no meaning,
but from which all things, purpose and meanings arise.

I am indistinguishable,
yet, in me all things are distinguished.

I am the seemingly aspect-less one.

In this presence that I Am,
where the appearance of me and you,
of this and that and everything in between
seems to unfold, all such ideas dissolve
into the invisible truth of
None.

I know only
this blissful plenitude of all-pervading peace,
into which the dream of the universe unfolds,
where consciousness has awoken
within the void of the Absolute,
and has blissfully announced
awareness of itself as,
I Am.

Brian Thompson
Zen Thinking

Thank you No Mind's Land :)

~

...know oneself as the Knowing with which
all experience is known...
There is just transparent knowing
and you are that Knowing...

Rupert Spira

~

Photo - Fat globules in a pan
digitally zoom blurred 

Waking up to your Aliveness - Elizabeth Gilbert

Creativity is the relationship between a human being and the
mysteries of inspiration...

We are all capable of brushing up against a sense of mystery and
inspiration.  We may be able to draw nearer to that source than we
think, being gently propelled by some force, something not "me."

"Creative living" is living a life that is driven more strongly by
curiosity than be fear. [But] you won't be able to create anything
interesting out of your life if you don't believe in "creative
entitlement."  This doesn't mean behaving like a princess, or acting
as though the world owes you anything.  "Creative entitlement"
simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that
merely by being here, you are allowed to have a voice, and a vision
of your own.

The poet David Whyte calls this sense of creative entitlement "the
arrogance of belonging", and claims that it is absolutely vital
to cultivate if you wish to interact more vividly with life.
Without this "arrogance of belonging", you will never be able to take
any creative risks, without it, you will never push yourself out of the
suffocating insulation of personal safety and into the frontiers of the
beautiful and the unexpected.

The "arrogance of belonging" is not about egotism or self-absorption.
In a strange way it is a divine force that will actually take you out of
yourself and allow you to engage more fully with life.  Because often
what keeps you from "creative living" is your self-absorption, i.e.
your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgment, your crushing
sense of self-protection.  The "arrogance of belonging" pulls you out
of the the darkest depths of self-hatred, not by saying "I am the
greatest!" but merely saying "I am here" -
the simple entitlement to exist and
express yourself.

Your soul will mobilize accordingly.  It will mobilize ecstatically,
because this is what your Soul [Being] was born for.  Your Soul
has been waiting for you to wake up to your own existence
[your Aliveness] for years. 
[Being wants to express ItSelf through you in creative ways.]

Elizabeth Gilbert
Author of Eat Pray Love

above excerpt from: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear 

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - leaves on grass,
color digitally inverted

Free to Be - Fred LaMotte

The first discipline of non-violence is to honor every human being
as a unique soul-body, refusing to identify them by race, gender,
religion, or political party.

Yet just as much as right-wing movements, today's "progressive"
movement often promote conflict and division by labeling individual
Persons by their group identity.  Some of us who talk about "diversity"
actually stifle it, because real diversity is not to promote tribalism
[or nationalism], but to recognize the incomparable [unique]
Personhood of individuals. [As it also says in the Declaration of
Independence].

It is much easier to hate a category than a Person, whether your
animosity is toward Muslims or Christians, "black people", or
"white people", liberals or conservatives.

The beginning of world peace is to free each human soul-body from
racial, political, or religious abstractions.  Our incidental association
with a group is not who we really are.

I do not identify my Self [True Inner Being] as a color, as rich or poor.
capitalist or socialist, Republican or Democrat, Christian or
Pagan, [or American].  I am neither "good"nor "evil."  Those are just
conceptual chains with which your mind attempts to enthrall me.  But
I am not your concept of me:
you are.

If you want to superimpose a group identity on me, that is your act
of violence against the singularity of my Personhood.  You are free to
label me, but I am also free...  I refuse to identify with your label...
I Am who I Am...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

[brackets mine]

~

My note: It's an act of aggression when we impose prejudicial categories and labels on "others"; when we don't see that we are all a unique expression of our shared Core Beingness; when we've been enculturated to hate "other" people's cultures through fear because they are not like "us"...  We are all "free" when we recognize each other's Core Beingness as our own, and the diverseness of our individuality that expresses that Beingness and treat each other with respect and compassion.

And, oh btw, we are all immigrants here, unless you were born 100% Native American.  I am .2% Native American, but the rest of "me" comes from other countries, other cultures.  My English ancestors arrived here in the 1600-1700s and populated much of New England, and evidently somebody intermarried with a Native American.  My Irish and Scottish ancestors arrived probably in the 1800s and intermarried with the English ancestors, and my Norwegian ancestors arrived int he late 1800s, intermarrying with...  well you get the idea.  We are mongrels! :)  Essentially, however, we all share an Essential Beingness far beyond our ancestry, our humanness, far beyond personalities and character traits, beliefs, patriotism, opinions, DNA and intelligence.  And we are inherently Free to Be who and what we are!

And on another note:  My father was greeted by the Statue of Liberty coming back from Europe on a ship with thousands of other soldiers, (given to America by the French, btw), after serving in WWII at age 19-20 in Germany, being hit in the face with shrapnel from "enemy" mortar fire.  That was  his path, his journey, and that of his generation - to fight "the enemy" for an idealized freedom...  I don't think he (or that generation) understood things with the same "spiritual" lens that I do, but he did what he felt was right at the time, believing it was the right thing to do.  And I respect him for that, because his perceptions were different, although his war experience wounded him emotionally for life.  But he not only fought for America, he fought for the freedom of the Europeans in Northern Europe as well, and for the hope of freedom in the world... And yet we are still fighting!  Building walls instead of welcoming statues of liberty - because "we"/humanity (in general) lack the understanding of Who we all essentially are...

Namaste
_/\_

~

Photo -
via Stillness Speaks

I AM - Jeff Foster

[.....]

I take all forms, yet I cling to no particular form.

I do not say "I am form", I do not say, "I am not form."
I do not say "I exist." I do not say "I do not exist."
I do not call myself God, consciousness, awareness,
presence, spirit... or even Life.

I have no name for myself. I am anonymous.
Yet all names are my own.

Humans fight and kill and die over the names they gave me.

They form religions, dogmas, systems of thought.
They claim I am on their "side"
(I take no sides).
They say I belong to them
(I belong to nobody and everybody).

They try to figure me out.  They even claim to be me,
know me, channel me.
Some of them claim to have found The One Path that leads
to me.  They always have, they always will.

They do not know.  Their minds are too limited.

Yes 'mind' is one of my many ingenious appearances.

I appear as everything, yet when you stop and look for me,
you cannot find me.  I play in the cosmic hide and seek.  I
sometimes appear when you stop looking.

I am these words, and all the spaces in between them.  I am the
silence at the end of the sentences... and the expectation at their
beginning.  I am the black and white of it, and every shade of
grey, and every colour.  I am the understanding and the lack of
understanding. I am the similarity and the contrast.  I am the
separation and the unspeakable unity.

[.....]

I am male and I am female.  I am East and West.  I am inside and
outside.  I speak every language fluently.  I am all that is, all that
has been, and all that will ever be.  I am now, and never now.  I
cannot be reduced to anything.  Eternities pass in the space of a
breath.  Aeons are my lifeblood.

I am breathing you now.
I am the in-breath and the out-breath of you.  I am every sacred,
intimate breath.  I am every one of your thoughts arising and
dissolving in the vastness.  I am every feeling surging like a comet
through the universal body. 
I am sorrow, I am anger, I am fire, I am water.
I am always here, whether I am recognized or not.

I am nothing and everything, nobody and everybody.

[.....]

The story of "I" is always different, yes.  That's my creativity.
But "AM" is always the same.  AM. OM. 
That is my unchanging nature.

Do not seek me.  Do not look for me in time.  Do not be proud
that you have found me.  I am not your trophy.  I am not food
for your hungry ego.  Simply admit that I am already here.
Admit that I have always been here.
And live your life as a constant remembrance of me.  Devote
yourself to the joy of being...  Let your life be your love song.
Let your actions and words express me, bring me into form.

I am your deepest wisdom.  I was there at your birth.
Do you remember?

With love,

The Beloved

Jeff Foster
Excerpt from "I AM"

website

Facebook