I am not dead - Robinson Jeffers

I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.

The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That's gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)

But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,

Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.

Robinson Jeffers

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

of Being - Denise Levertov

I know this happiness
is provisional:

the looming presences -
the great suffering, great fear -

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of the sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:

this mystery:

Denise Levertov

via - Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

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

True Emptiness - Dorothy Hunt

True Emptiness - which we could also call formless Spirit -
fills the universe and is filled by the universe.  It contains
everything, yet is not separate from a single moment's arising,
or dissolving.  What I am calling Emptiness is simply empty of
self, and empty of definition.  The word "Emptiness" is not
really it, neither are any of our ideas about it, including the
ones I use to try to point to the Mystery that is Unnamable
and indefinable.  To be emptied of our attachment to
definitions and concepts - especially our self-concepts - is
to be unburdened, whole, fluid and free to truly be.

To be empty means we are open; to be empty means we are
available for whatever or whoever is in front of us; to be
empty means we are not stuck anywhere, but can experience
the fullness and the flow of life unhindered.  Our seeing is
empty until it lands on an object, is it not? Our freedom,
inherent wisdom and selfless love arise right out of
Emptiness...

For a moment, just allow yourself to be the emptiness, open
and without definition, yet intimate with the moment as it is.
You might discover a vast and spacious Presence that feels
more real, more connected, more meaningful and lovingly
your truest Self than anything you could ever imagine.  And
even though the mind cannot say exactly what this is,
something knows; something in you remembers.
And what remembers tenderly holds anything that may arise
to be seen, experienced or liberated...

Dorothy Hunt
Buddhist Teacher

 

The Sky Remained Blue - Richard Wehrman

He saw there was nothing to
do with the blue sky, no act to
perform with the leaves speaking
in the high branches, nowhere
to take the fallen leaves curled
into brown upon the dry grass;
they as well needing nothing from
him, other than his presence,
his being, which was not his
to take away, to withhold, to
give to some other.  They were
each the all of it, arising wherever
arising occurred; they filled the
silence with their being silence,
his silence and theirs was the
same.  The dancing sunlight,
the sounds of men making and
doing in the world - these also
were the silence sounding itself,
calling to him in his semi-separation,
whispering the right way, the way
to slide in to that which was out,
to enfold them all and to be
enfolded, to holds hands all the
way back to the beginning, and
ahead to the infinite yet-to-be,
intimately each the all.  And
the sky remained blue, and the
birds called, as he, and all the
leaves above him, listened.

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here
Original title: He Listened

The Miracle of Pure Existence - Fred LaMotte

Existence itself is a miracle!
Whatever happens in this Existence is insubstantial,
ever changing,
never better or worse,
worth neither to be grasped or rejected...

The space in which this world is happening,
the air of pure Existence,
is complete,
overflowing with joy,
and utterly divine.
The space is without taint or boundary.
It is motionless, silent and self-luminous.

Usually our attention is absorbed by what is happening,
and so we lose the simple innocent awareness of
the Existence in which it happens.
Existence becomes the background to the play of forms
that rise and change and disappear.
But in the awakened view,
which is the clearest simplest view,
Existence becomes the foreground,
and the forms of the world sink into the background
...into the still boundless space of
Existence...

The greatest miracle is
the gift of Existence.

At every moment,
the answer to any problem
is to just observe
the dance of
Existence.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

Rumi

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.

Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.

Escape.

Walk out like somebody suddenly born into color.

Dot it now.
You're covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side.

Die,
and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that
you've died.

Your old life was a frantic running
from silence...

Rumi

~

Let yourself be silently drawn by the
stronger pull of what you really love...

Rumi

~

Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself is the cure...

Rumi

~

Photo - downpour in the sun

Be a Child of Fantasy - Pema Chodron

Regard everything as a dream/illusion/fantasy

Regard everything as transparent.
See *through* everything

See that everything is in transition,
always changing

Liberate concepts and beliefs

Let go of the need for an"answer"/solution

Rest in the nature of Essence ~
The Primordial State of everything

Be a child of fantasy
Be curious instead of afraid...

You are the sky.
Everything else ~

"it's just the weather."


Quotes from
Pema Chodron
Buddhist Teacher/author

~

Photo - have no idea what this is.
Think it was a "mistake" digitally altered. :)

Turn Your World Red - Danna Faulds

Cardinal calls me from the
railing of the deck.  "Turn
your world red," he says,
insistent, beckoning.  "Risk
life outside your hard-earned
walls and windows.  Cast
aside caution, propriety,
and your too small sense
of what you can and cannot do."

Fly!

I tell you that the
sky knows no constraints.
All your are or can be comes
clear in the near approach of clouds.

Fly!

That which you
fear the most holds your
deepest teaching.  Let your
spirit be the bridge between
safety and release.  Soar to
the far end of what is known
from dawn to twilight, then
throw yourself at the whim
of the wild night winds.
Turn your world red, and
live with no regrets.

Fly!

[.....]

Danna Faulds
From: Poems from the Heart of Yoga

~

Photo - Drip painting...
If you look real close you can
almost see a little red bird
sitting on the thick vertical line
in the middle near the top - very unintentional :)

Break for Freedom - David Whyte & Rumi

To remove ourselves entirely and absolutely,
abruptly and at times uncompromisingly is often
the real and radically courageous
break for freedom.
Unsticking ourselves from the mythical
Tar Baby, seemingly set up, just for us,
right in the middle of our path,
we start the process of losing our sense of falsity,
of ridding ourselves of illusions,
of letting go of our self-manufactured enemies,
and even our false friends,
and most especially the false sense of self
we have manufactured to live with them.

We make ourselves available for the simple seeing of ourselves
and our world more elementally and therefore more clearly again.
We withdraw, not to disappear, but to find another ground
from which to see; a solid ground from which to step,
 and from which to speak again, in a different way,
 a clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember
as our own...

David Whyte
Excerpt from an essay -"Withdrawal"

Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running from Silence.

Rumi
"Become the Sky"

~

Top Photo - Ceiling Abstract
taken looking up where several ceiling levels
come together, also a ceiling beam, and a rod
with a hanger on it :)  Color inverted.

Bottom photo - Through the glass of a greenhouse ceiling. 

The Infinite is Everywhere - Danna Faulds

I am everywhere present
said the [Infinite.]

Seek me in the stately trees,
or the melodies of sparrows
and you will surely find me.

Look for me in the Buddha's smile,
the countenance of Christ,
the words of the Koran and Sanskrit prayers.
I am always there.

Turn your attention to the sky
where the movements of the moon and stars
trace my beauty...

Experience true emptiness
and my presence permeates the void.
Now bring your focus closer
to your heart.

Grow still and find me within you.

Separation dissolves like salt water
when you experience your true identity as me.

Practice devotion and let go into the ocean
of my love,
or be the open space from which all things arise.

One and two,
duality and union,
are both true.

So I say be jubilant
and be at peace,
for inside you is the seed and the fruit,
the tree and the root.

Choose to be in communion with me
and see the whole of this
creation infused with one energy...

Danna Faulds
Yoga Practitioner and Poet

Excerpt From:One and Two are Both True
From: Prayers to the Infinite

Wait and Remember - Li-Young Lee

Wait for evening.

Then you'll be alone.

Wait for the playground to empty.

Then call out those companions from childhood:

The one who closed his eyes

and pretended to be invisible.

The one to whom you told every secret.

The one who made a world of any hiding place.

And don't forget the one who listened in silence

while you wondered out loud:

Is the universe an empty mirror? A flowering tree?

Is the universe the sleep of a woman?

Wait for the sky's last blue

(the color of your homesickness).

Then you'll know the answer.

Wait for the air's first gold (that color of Amen).

Then you'll spy the wind's barefoot steps.

Then you'll recall that story beginning

with a child who strays in the woods.

The search for him goes on in the growing

shadow of the clock.

And the face behind the clock's face

is not his father's face.

And the hands behind the clock's hands

are not his mother's hands.

All of Time began when you first answered

to the names your mother and father gave you.

Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.

Then, you can trade places with the wind.

Then you'll remember your life

as a book of candles,

each page read by the light of its own burning.

Li-Young Lee
Poem: "Become Becoming"

From Behind My Eyes

For The Traveler - John O'Donohue...

Thought I’d share some photos of a little trip down the road we took today to open country to get away from the hectic life stream that surrounds us here in the burbs - to be in the unattached quietness of Nature…   Smelling the fragrances of earth blowing on the prairie wind across the prairie grasses, sitting in the utter silence of life under the expansiveness of the open sky opened me to inspiration again… In our travels we even found a little pond with croaking frogs hidden among the marshy grass.  Under each photo is an excerpt of a poem by John O’Donohue, called “For The Traveler”…

"Every time you leave home,
another road takes you
into a world you were never in."

"When you travel, you find yourself
alone in a different way,
more attentive now
to the self you bring along;
and how what meets you
touches that part of the heart
that lies low at home."

"A journey can become a sacred thing.
…free your heart of ballast
so that the compass of your soul
might direct you toward
the territories of spirit
where you will discover
more of your hidden life
and the urgencies
that deserve to claim you."

"When you travel,
a new silence
goes with you,
and if you listen,
you will hear
what your heart would
Love to say."

Excerpts from the poem: “For The Traveler”
by John O’Donohue

From the book: To Bless The Space Between Us

Embrace The Sky...

The longing of your Heart is there to draw you in…
It’s the longing of the Heart for that which is true,
pure, innocent, whole,
and alive within you -
The Beloved…

It is the longing for the embrace
of
The Beloved,
Pure Awareness

It’s the call of The Beloved,
the pull of the Heart…

Follow the call
into
the Vastness
of Being…

Embrace the Sky…


Mystic Meandering
Meditative writings

When the Heart opens
nothing else matters:
”enlightenment”
”duality, non-duality,”
appearances,
distinctions between
Maya and The Real…

When the Heart opens,
there is just the simplicity of
seeing that there is only Love
that lives beyond the veil of “me.”


Mystic Meadnering
Meditative writings

Let peace work on you
and enable you to gather
your scattered mind
into the mindfulness
of Calm Abiding.

You will find
everything
that disturbs
evaporating
like a mist
into the vast
sky
of
your
Absolute
Nature


Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche
Tibetan Lama

To be at complete rest
within the Awareness of One’s True Self
is silent Joy…


Mystic Meandering
Meditative writings

Effortlessly Love flows…

Like a bird
Who rivers the air
without moving
her wings…

Thus we move in the world.
One in body and soul
though outwardly
separate in form…

As Source strikes the notes
Humanity sings…

Spirit is our harpist…

And all strings which are touched
in Love
must sound…


Mechtild of Magdeburg
Medieval Mystic

You are Love, and loved beyond measure.

When you know this you will heal.

Feel Love’s Embrace…
Feel Love’s Joy…
and play
in the
currents
of
Life


Mystic Meandering
Meditative writings