The Wheel of Time - Einstein & Ostaseski

We trust that time is linear.
That it proceeds eternally, uniformly,
Into Infinity.

But the distinction between
past, present and future is
nothing but an illusion.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow
are not consecutive, they are connected
in a never-ending circle.

Albert Einstein

~

Like a confluence of great rivers,
our lives are a series of different moments, joining
together to give the impression of one continuous flow.
We move from cause and effect, event to event, one point
to another - which gives an outward impression that our
lives are one continuous, unified movement.
In reality, they are not.

Each moment is born and dies.  And in a very real way we
are born and die with it.  Creation and destruction are two
sides of the same coin.

Frank Ostaseski
The Five Invitations

~

Photo - Mom's Mandala
a mandala that she colored in
several months before she died in March 2019.

 

The Mind's Dreamscape...

Dream images pass through the mind -

stories, events, experiences,
of past, present and yet to come,
weaving their memories through
the vast vault of the brain;
chemicals playing with the neurons
and synapses.

Dramas of the dreamscape
come and go daily.
Thoughts from the mental kingdom
come and go second by second,
like coded messages keyed out over the
wires by a clerk in an abandoned
ghost town - long gone - long dead.

They are merely images of the mind -
only thoughts - surface activities
moving through the mechanism of time
with the speed and feel of electricity,
disturbing a tranquil stillness within
with static thought waves
that we take to be real,
lost in the dreamscape of the world,
spinning on the wheel of life,
believing the abstract mind.

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 24, 2005

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Weight Shift - Ram Dass

If we can imagine a wheel whose rim is the cycle of births and deaths,
all of the 'stuff' of life, conditioned reality, and whose center is
perfect flow, formless no-mind, the Source, we've got one foot with
most of our weight on the circumference of the wheel, and one foot
tentatively at the center.

That's the beginning of awakening.  And we come in, and we sit and
meditate, and suddenly there's a moment when we feel the perfection
of our Being and our connection.  Then our weight goes back on the
outside of the wheel. Over and over and over, this happens.

Slowly, slowly the weight shifts.  Then the weight shifts just enough
so that there is a slight predominance on the center of the wheel, and
we find that we naturally just want to sit down and be quiet, that we
don't have to say , "I've got to meditate now," or "I've got to read a
holy book." or "I've got to turn off the television set," or "I've got to
do... anything."  It doesn't become that kind of discipline anymore.
The balance has shifted.

And we keep allowing our lives to become more and more simple,
more and more harmonious.  And less and less are we grasping at
this or pushing that away...

[We are no longer trying to make anything happen.]

Ram Dass

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - digitalized Mandala Art

2013

The Return Journey - In Memoriam...

My Dad
birthed into form - April 23, 1924
returned to formlessness - Nov. 4, 1985

My Beloved Maternal Grandmother
birthed into form - April 30, 1905
returned to formlessness - Nov. 2, 1998

The Journey of Return

By Dorothy Hunt

When The Beloved wants to take you Home,
extend  your hand to the 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 by the Creator of this life.
Do you really think a finite mind can change
the mind of God?  Jesus tried and failed.
”Please take this cup from me!” He begged,
as we all do in the midst of anguish.

But 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 Itself in all that goes.

Dorothy Hunt

Zen Buddhist

My Grandmother's Mandala...

I have many memories of my grandmother crocheting
doilies and table cloths with fine cotton threads.
  She taught me, but mine never came out like hers.
 I have many of the ones she made.
  This one I have on my little meditation table.

As I was lighting the candle and striking the bowl the other day, I noticed it underneath, although it has been there all along, and saw how it was really like a mandala – made of interwoven threads.  I remembered the movement of my grandmother’s small, gentle hands and how the crochet hook would dip and pull each loop of thread through so quickly and easily.  I remembered the soft, contented look on her face as she crocheted, following an unending rhythm.  It was easy to be in her presence – connecting in the silence of our hearts.  The crocheted “mandala” also reminded me of how intricately woven her wheel of life was, of which I was only a thread.  Her wrinkle in time lasted 93 years. 

We wrote letters back and forth to each other when I was a teenager and young adult, when she moved to Maine and then Southern California; sharing a special bond.  Her ripple in time was absorbed back into the Ocean of Being nearly 15 years ago. 

~*~

“The Silence which is not the silence of the ending…
is only a beginning.
It is like going through a small hole
to an enormous,
wide expansive ocean,
to an immeasurable, timeless state…”

J. Krishnamurti

“Death is only for the imagined separate self.
…..for who you truly are there is no death.”

Jeff Foster

Read the whole article:
 “Why there is no death”

~*~

Top Photo - Color Invert
Gives the affect of the Ocean
behind the doilie,
which is actually the
grain of the wood…