The Hush of "The Mystery"...

The Hush of "The Mystery"
silently moves through time and form...

Can you feel it? -
this silent hush
that lives in you,
that moves through you,
that communes with you
even when you don't know it?

It waits for you to stop and listen -
to sense Its Hush
infusing you -
beyond hearing,
beyond seeing,
beyond knowing...

It comes in sudden,
unexpected
breezes of awareness
wafting through your being -
in and out of your noticing,
but never really gone -

It invites you to enter
the cosmic seduction of
Its Presence,
to
follow Its Silence
more deeply,
into the cavern
of Its Heart
that awaits you
in the depths
if Its repose

Succumb
to what awaits you

in
the Heart of "The Mystery"

The Breath of the Eternal...

Love's Illumination...

~*~

Mystic Meandering
May 2015

~

I use the term "The Mystery" here, but one can call it:
The Infinite, the Ineffable, the Nameless, The Ultimate
Reality, The Beloved, and of course - God...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

"The Mystery", like Life ItSelf, is ever unfolding,
ever revealing ItSelf.
We are always in a state of discovering "The Mystery"
and what IT is revealing to us - ongoingly.
What IT offers each of us is unique, yet universal:
Speaking directly to our Hearts...
When I speak of "The Mystery", as in this poem,
it is always from my own direct "experience" of it,
for I am acutely aware that I *know*, intellectually,
nothing *about* "The Mystery",
only how "The Mystery" reveals ItSelf to and in my
Heart...

Namaste

_/\_

 

The Universe is a Story - Swimme & Tucker

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...

The story has the power to awaken us more deeply to
who we are - 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.

And this changes everything...

A new integrating story has emerged.
It is a story of transformation through time.
It is challenging our understanding of who we are
in the universe.

Are we here by chance, by necessity, by serendipity,
or on purpose?

Swimme and Tucker
From: Journey of the Universe

~

Everything is ultimately a story.

My life is a story,
your life is a story,
all occurring within the vast
Cosmic Ocean...

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

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Endless Mystery - Rod MacIver

The deep, important journeys of life involve endless mystery.
The source of the cohesive disequilibrium of the universe  -
the disharmonies that combine to create harmony, the depths
of our inner worlds and the hidden belief systems and
mythologies, unique to each of us, that guide our lives
without us knowing it, the beauty of the natural world and the
search, individual to each of us, for the courage to manifest
the beauty within, to evolve, to change.  And the somewhat
contradictory search for inner peace.  We search for harmony
with our inner world, and sometimes find it, then, once again,
lose it.  And then of course the ultimate mystery of death and
the implications of that mystery on the true nature of life.
On living that life...

Rod MacIver

Heron Dance

 

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 :)

 

Deep Space...

Molten golden light
splays itself out within a fathomless darkness,
like a million jewels tumbled out into the stillness of space;
dancing particles of Divine Illumination...

The shutter of Infinity opens and the light
imprints its glittering image within Divine Darkness.
In a moment of stillness, a moment of no breath,
a moment in the timelessness of deep space,
the Light and the Darkness merge - like twilight...

In this place of Primordial Existence,
the Darkness and Light intermingle
in the purity of cosmic fusion;
forever "blended",
neither the enemy of the other,
neither opposed to the other,
both expressing the same Source...

In the depths of The Deep
there is a dance of Life -
an inexpressible expression of
the Aliveness of the Absolute -

revealed in time as a movement of creation,
a movement of birth,
a movement and a breath of
Light and Darkness
forever merging...

In "Deep Space"
the Light and the Dark
exist together within the wholeness of
the Infinite Mystery...

Mystic Meandering
April 2001

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
A street light through tree branches
digitally altered...

 

The innermost self - Hermann Hesse

I seek to reach the innermost part of myself...

One thing no longer existed for him, the wish to have teachers
and to listen to teachings.

He asked himself - "But what is this, what you have sought to
learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who 
have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?"  And
he found: "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which
I sought to learn.  It was the self I wanted to free myself from,
which I sought to overcome.  But I was not able to overcome
it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from
it.

No thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this
my very own self, this mystery of one being one and being
separated...  And there is nothing I know less about... I know
nothing about myself!  I searched Atman, I searched Brahman,
I was willing to dissect myself and pull off all of its layers, to
find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life
the divine part, the ultimate part.  But I have lost myself in the
process.  I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to
find a secret behind the ruins.

I want to get to know myself, the secret of Sidartha.

[The beauty of this world] was no longer the veil of Maya, was
no longer a pointless coincidental diversity of mere appearance,
despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity
who seeks unity, but the beauty was also in Sidartha, the singular
and the divine lived hidden - the purpose and the essential
properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in 
them, in everything...

From: Sidartha
Herman Hesse

~

I do not believe in "spiritual paths."
The purpose of spiritual paths is to
enmesh you in the world of knowledge,
while Reality resides prior to it.

All spiritual paths lead to unreality,
Discard all paths...

Nisargadatta Maharaj

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Deeper River - Dada Gavand & Angeles Arrien

You cannot meet God through the mind,

nor experience the timeless through time.

Thought cannot touch the transient.
Only the freedom from thought
and from mental cravings and ambitions
does the energy become
whole, tranquil and pure.

Such inner purity and humility
will invite the hidden divinity.

The pure consolidate energy
with its silence and fullness within
awaits in readiness to meet the divine,
to experience that which is beyond the mind.

There across the region of time
beyond the frontiers of the mind,
within the sanctuary of silence,
resides the supreme intelligence,
the timeless divine.

Dada Gavand

~

I trust the Mystery.  I trust what comes in silence
and what comes in nature where there's no diversion.
I think the lack of stimulation allows us to hear and
experience a deeper river that's constant, still, vibrant,
and real..

Angeles Arrien

~

The Silence of Source is the deepest River.
I must find the deeper River within again,
and listen to Its Voice.

MM  4-20-23

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Yielding and Allowing - Kathleen Knipp

[What if we]...let go of the need to hold ourselves up.
Become familiar with the sense of yielding and allowing.
Realign and connect with that which feels most important,
that which our heart most deeply desires and yield to the
pull...

[What if we]...sense what if feels like to feel safe.  Access
somatically the feeling of letting go, surrendering, giving up
the struggle, even if only momentarily; releasing into the
Eternal Embrace.  Feel the sense of relief - simply being.

[What if we]...just feel what's here, without any sort of
commentary.  Sense the entirety of this moment: body, breath
thoughts, emotions - all the stuff of human experience, just as
it is; the changing landscape of emotions and thoughts.

It's okay to fully let go and to feel very deeply the human experience.

The Infinite and the finite are just different facets of the same gem.
There's no contradiction.  Infinite and finite simultaneously.
Vast and condensed at the very same time.
What a mystery.

Fully living this mystery; the experience of being human
and being Divine...

Kathleen Knipp

Excerpts from a Yoga Nidra meditation
called "Receiving"

 

The Voice of Silence Within - Fred LaMotte

Upon emerging from meditation.  I was moved to share this:

The world is not in chaos.  Minds are in chaos.
There is a place we need to return to: the wellspring of our own
intuition, the starry depth in our core.  This is the real Guru, the
true Friend, the true Master.  Throw the penny in this little mind
into that well, which has been silently bubbling up for countless
lifetimes, in a hidden glade, the wildest glen of your ancient brain.
Fall into this yearning hollow, all the way down your spine,
through your rib cage into the solar plexus.  You are just a ripple
of silence trembling into the galaxy.  Who will guide you to this
well?  The true Friend.  She leads you not to herself, but points 
beyond words to your own heart.  Listen to the voice of the Silence
inside silence.  A real Guru reveals this murmuring spring in the
valley of your chest,through a whisper, a touch, or their mere
presence.  They then walk away, freeing you to name the Mystery
for yourself, as you gaze into the unfathomable waters of Shakti,
the healing current of your own awakened grace.  Whenever you
want to come to this forest pool and sit with your Guru, or the
Christ, with Buddha, or with any of the Rishis, you find them
waiting here, nearer than your pulse.  Not in any temple or
ashram, but in the golden dark inside the inward spring of
Divine Love, overflowing with the nectar of emptiness,
gushing stars, pouring out the fierce wild atoms of your body,
for no reason but to dance.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo from the Internet 

 

The Great Silence - Robert Sardello

We have a strong tendency to imagine Silence as the
absence of sound.  This imagination deprives Silence of
being anything in itself and makes it an emptiness, a void...

But Silence was here before anything else.  It is the most
primary phenomenon of existence, both palpably something
and seemingly nothing.

Silence is prior to sound, not the cessation of sound.  It is
already present.  If we drop into quietness for just a moment,
we feel the presence of Silence as in invitation.  We are being
invited into a new way of being.

Silence is not merely the void from which things spring up;
it is a living presence...  As we enter the mystery of Silence,
its presence resonates throughout the fibers of our flesh,
while extending beyond the flesh...  The inward silence of
solitude meets with the Great Silence of Cosmic Wisdom...

Silence bears the wholeness we keep looking for.  It is around
us and within us.  It goes to the deepest depths of the soul
and to the outermost reaches of the cosmos uniting in our heart.

The experience comes with astonishing intimacy and feels like
the finding of a long lost beloved..

We, along with everything else, are within Silence.  This realm
of Silence is pregnant with the ever-living Mystery.  It is the
deepest feeling of communing, touched by the ineffable, that
keeps us intimately bound with the truth of our core being,
the very essence of our being; an interiority that has been
waiting for us.

~

Silence has a rhythm all its own.  The currents of Silence
weave polarities and opposites and contradictions together.

Within Silence everything resonates in true intimacy and
mystery.

When we perceive through the depths of Silence we discover
the invisible body of the world in which everything is nurtured
into existence at every moment.  We discover ourselves as
participants in the Great Silence.  We are not detached observers
of an independent phenomenon, for we exist within the Silence
we are observing.  The world of subjective experience and outer
presence dissolve into one field.

When we incline toward Silence a resonance is set up within
our heart, prompting an inclination of our heart to enter
deeper into the realm of Silence...  In the interior space of the
etheric heart we feel the currents of Silence as an endless
intimate infinity that we are within.  We are held within a
tender, loving, invisible presence...
A vivid Presence of Silence...

Excerpts from: Silence, The Mystery of Wholeness

by Robert Sardello

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Holy Silence - Robert Sardello

There is a living Silence that hears the cry of the Soul...

...a sacred depth of being that asks us to enter an inner
clearing that makes room for new life, including living,
breathing Silence.  In this dimension where time has become
space, life is enlivened.

\

The Silence sends us on a different pilgrimage.  It guards
the heart's fire and teaches us to speak from within with a
language that is imbued with the Sacred.  Words thus
nurtured in this Holy Silence fly forth to lead us back to
the Silence from which we were born.

As we enter the mystery of Silence, its presence resonates
throughout the fibers of our flesh to the soul inwardly and
to the cosmos outwardly.  The inward silence of solitude
meets up with the Great Silence of Cosmic Wisdom.  When
we do not cultivate this, we lose access to the presence of the
Silence.  Without silence we are lost and cannot get still
enough to find our way back.

Silence [The Great Silence] is around us and within us.  It
goes to the deepest depths of the Soul and to the outermost
reaches of the cosmos and continuously unites the two at
the centering place of our Heart.  Here everything comes 
alive again as if for the first time.  We may be shocked to
notice we had not even realized we had lost ourselves. And
feel a new attunement to Spirit as a directly felt reality.
The Silence is a palpable, living Presence...
The deeper we enter into The Silence the more we become
aware that this living presence is primary.

Robert Sardello
From: Silence - The Mystery of Wholeness

from the introduction and Chapter 1

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Invisible One - Nag Hammadi Scrolls

I am thought that lives in the light.
I live in everyone, and I delve into them all...
I move in every creature...

I am the invisible one in all beings...
I am the voice speaking softly...

I am the real voice... the voice from the invisible thought...

It is a mystery...  I cry out for everyone...

I hid myself in everyone, and revealed myself
within them, and every mind seeking me longs
for me...

I am she who gradually brought forth
everything...

I am the image of the invisible spirit...
The mother, the light... the virgin... the
womb, and the voice...

I put breath in all beings.

Nag Hammadi Scrolls
from: Why Religion, Elaine Pagels

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Sri Yantra necklace

 

 

The Hush of "The Mystery"...

The Hush of "The Mystery"
silently moves through time and form...

Can you feel it? ~
this silent hush
that embraces you
that communes with you
even when you don't know it?

It waits for you to stop and listen ~
to sense Its Hush
surrounding you,
infusing you ~
beyond hearing,
beyond seeing,
beyond knowing.

It comes in sudden,
unexpected 
breezes of awareness
wafting through your being ~
in and out of your noticing,
but never really gone ~

It invites you to enter
the cosmic seduction of
Its Love,
to
follow Its Silence
more deeply,
into the inner cavern
of Its Heart
that awaits you
in the depths
of Its repose

Succumb
to what awaits you

in
the Heart of "The Mystery"

Love's Illumination...

Mystic Meandering
May 2015

~

"The Mystery", like Life Itself, is ever unfolding,
ever revealing ItSelf.
We are always in a state of discovering "The Mystery"
and what It is revealing to us - ongoingly.

What It offers each of us is unique, yet universal;

Speaking directing to our Hearts...

When I speak of "The Mystery"
it is always from my own experience of it,
for I am acutely aware
that I *know* nothing *about* "The Mystery",
only how "The Mystery" reveals Itself
to this Heart...

Namastse

_/\_

~

Photo - South Pole Aurora Borealis

 

The "Good Dark" - Ivan Granger

What is the "Good Dark?

The Light is so often considered one of the attributes of the
Divine, but we forget that dark too is also a metaphor...  The
Eternal is sometimes called dark because IT is beyond the
ability of the limited intellect to see.  It is the realm where
there is no longer separation; nothing is seen as separate
from That [The Eternal].  It can feel like a shining darkness.
So the Sacred Dark, the Good Dark is the Eternal, that
exists in its mysterious, invisible, indefinable form.  Vast
beyond comprehension.  [It is the Eternal] that gathers
everything, even light, into ItSelf.  This is the darkness
where there is great joy.  This is the immense Mystery...

In we understand the Divine to be that living, mysterious 
darkness, then we finally recognize ourselves as the same
as that darkness. [The light and dark being the same - think
Yin-Yang, where the light is contained within the dark and 
the dark within the light.]  In the 'half-light' [partial under-
standing] we are still distracted by our own faces, we are 
confused, more aware of ourselves than the holy mystery
that we touch.  We become like a young lover, too self-
conscious to simply lose oneself in the embrace of the
Belove.

...[when] we have no 'face' [identity] of our own separate
from That, then we can melt silently into the Good Dark,
into the Mystery of the Divine.  This is the place where
concepts fall, where reality is no longer parceled out into
dichotomies of good and bad, right and wrong, (no division
of opposites)...  There is nothing (except the Divine Wholeness
that is within all things).  The ego-mind is no longer able to
segment reality.  Underlying the complex diversity of
creation is a single Unity.  And within that Unity, the
individual is not separate or different from the vast Divine.
There is no separation between individual self and the
center of all selves...  Just Pure Being...

If you can settle deeply into this awareness, then you will
find yourself drinking the ecstasy of true love-wisdom.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

[brackets mine] (parentheses his)

~

We are from the fathomless depths,
the "darkness" of "The Deep"
before Light began...
from which Light emerged...
We are the Deep Ananda of
The Divine...
without knowing how or why...
without the need for certainties,
for answers ; only the
ever-available Presence of
Divine Love...Pure Bliss
Pure Blessing
OMmm...

Mystic Meandering
January 2017

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

 

The Embrace...

Everything is held in the Embrace of the Luminous Unmanifest...

~

This Eternal Embrace is
a dynamic stillness of Being
that holds everything as it is;
a holding space for everything to just Be...

~

We are held in this space of Divine Embrace -
a Vastness that just Is...

~

There is only ever the Embrace -
a deep compassionate Embrace for all life,
for all that is - as it is...

"The Mystery" embracing Itself in every expression of ItSelf...

~

Everything is suspended
in this ubiquitous space...

Rest in this space within...

And when we emerge from our rest,
we realize that we ARE the Embrace -
embracing Itself.

We ARE fluidly and interchangeably the Embrace -

Divine Intimacy...

Sweet Serenity...

Notes from my journal - 2009

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Mystery and Ambiguity - Rod MacIver & MM

The spiritual ground that underlies what is not well articulated
can be just as powerful as the spiritual ground under something
that is carefully thought and executed.

Maybe the spiritual ground under what is not well articulated
has the potential to be even more profound because 
spirituality almost by definition involves mystery and ambiguity.
The closer one gets to the truth, the more ambiguous things get.

Rod MacIver
Heron Dance

~

No one can define what another's "spiritual" experience of
"The Mystery"/The Divine/The Ineffable, etc., should be or is...

It is my experience that each of us experiences "The Mystery"
uniquely, based on our individual beliefs, conditioning, approach,
and spiritual needs at any given moment.  Also in my experience,
"The Divine" (however defined) comes to us in a way we can
hear and receive; or in the way that we call to "The Divine."

"It" shows up in different "forms" or "energies" so that we may
recognize It.  The difficulty comes in trying to articulate that
experience...

My expressions of "The Mystery" (as I now call "The Divine")
reflect my own experience of that conundrum at any given time.
I don't "decide" to write a poem, poems emerge from time to time.
Sometimes the words are often the words that come to me during
silence or meditation.  I do however sometimes "play" with the
words hoping to make a poem less ambiguous, less obscure, less
nebulous, or esoteric.  They merely reflect my inner experience of
"The Mystery", which is by nature obscure, obtuse, and nebulous;
and which cannot be adequately articulated - as one cannot
explain "The Mystery."  They are not meant to be directives to
anyone else, only possible inspirations for any like-hearted souls
who happen to read and resonate with the words expressed...

Namaste

_/\_

A Humble Lover of "The Mystery"

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

a "mystake" :)

 

Dance Between the Worlds - Joseph Campbell

As we love ourselves, we move toward our own bliss, by which
Joseph Campbell meant our highest enthusiasm.  The word entheos
means "god-filled." Moving towards that which fills us with the
godhood [or Buddha Nature, The Mystery, Pure Consciousness,
etc.], that place where time is not, is all we need to do to change
our world.  Then we, naturally and without effort, love others
and allow them to move beyond their self-imposed limitations,
and in their own ways.  The goal is to evolve to that place where
the energy that had been projected outward to correct the [them]
 world is turned around to correct oneself - to find your own "track"
[rhythm] and to dance, in balance between the worlds.

Following your bliss, as Joseph meant it, is not self-indulgent
but vital; your whole physical system knows that this is the
way to be alive in this world and the way to give to the world
the very best that you have to offer.

From: A Joseph Campbell Companion
Selected and edited by Diane K. Osbon

with thanks to HeronDance.org/e-journal

Photo from the Internet

 

Gift from The Mystery - Danna Faulds

When I listen, words are everywhere,
riding the air currents like broad-winged hawks.
Poems are born in the molten centers
of stars.  Exploding into supernovas,
they travel light years to reach this spinning
ball of water and dirt, then wait eons more
to tell their tale.

When I'm lucky, a whole poem
arrives at once, sliding out of my psyche
as if it was mine, unexpectedly illuminating
this corner of the universe.

Words are everywhere when I grow still.
Whispered by lovers in mid-kiss
or sung as a lullaby; shouted in rage or prayed
by a saint whose face is lit with inner flames,
it's all fuel for my fire, grist for the turning
wheel of transformation, a gift from the
mystery to this finite world of form.

Danna Faulds
From: Limitless

~

Photo from the James Webb Space Telescope
from the Internet

 

Awe - Abraham Joshua Heschel

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization
that things not only are what they are but also stand, however
remotely, for something supreme.  Awe is a sense for the
transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery
beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world
intimations of the divine...to sense the ultimate in the
common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing
the stillness of the eternal.  What we cannot comprehend
by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Dimension of the Soul - Matt Licata

Part of the challenge of practices and orientations organized
exclusively around returning to the background field or
context of awareness is that we can lose touch with the
richness of the inner world, the wisdom of creativity...in the
sparkle of the imagination.

We spend so much time [mentally] interpreting and understanding
our experience that we lose touch with the magic of just one
present moment with the aliveness of the senses and more 
intuitive knowing...  Through imagination and creativity a new
poem is received, a new story is able to tumble out of the stars
into, through and as our lives.

The "spiritual journey" is by its very nature radically unique...
It must be explored by way of primary, first-person experience.

Contemporary spirituality is filled with all sorts of ideas and
concepts about what it means to be "spiritual" and we must 
find the courage to question even the most sacred of these ideas,
trusting the path of direct revelation as we come to have more
and more confidence in our own unique experience.  There are
infinite number of  ways to open to, touch, and enter the mystery,
and the right way for us might look quite different from others,
even our "spiritual teachers."

At some point on our journey, we might hear a call to set aside
the beliefs, teachings and practices we've gathered throughout
our lives and rest.  This "rest" is not passive, cold, or resigned
but lit up from within...  we open to a more paradoxical
invitation that comes roaring out of thundering silence.  Just
what this is must be discovered by each of us in the fire of our
own direct experience.  We cannot take anyone's word for it.

In this "rest" we are taken inside a dimension of experience
where we honor the entirety of what we are - [we are] drawn to
 bring more awareness to this dimensions of experience. 
 Something mysterious, magical, alive and sacred is wired into
this moment by its very nature and carries the fragrance of the
holy.

...something is granted permission and space to emerge - exactly
as it is.  We are invited into a deeper, richer exploration of the
dimension of the soul; re-entering the state of pure wonderment.

Matt Licata

From: A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves In Difficult Times

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering