Deep Looking - Thich Nhat Hanh

Art: Barbara Stone

In spite of the lessons of the collective wisdom of
the world, we rarely satisfy our yearning to know
the Truth of our Existence.

The Mystical approach to the essential questions
about the meaning of life is quite different from
the normal way of learning things through written
teachings, rather, the mystical transmission of the
purpose of life comes through living life with
ever expanding awareness...

author unknown

~

When we practice deep looking, we receive help,
we receive understanding, we receive the
wisdom that makes us free.

Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddhist Teacher

 

At the Edge - Czeslaw Milosz

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here.
Or perhaps memory.  Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,

Joy of the eyes.  Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight.
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

Czeslaw Milosz

translated by Robert Hass

with thanks to Whisky River

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Insanity...

My face hurts
Maybe from the mask I wear
that belies a deeper truth;
that hides the scream I feel inside,
and a piece of my Soul that has died;
and the clenched fist in my gut - anticipating
the evening's chaos -
by the sound of ice clinking in a glass;
and the heart's deep ache
for my True Life not being lived.

It withered in the daily madness of the drama of
"the visitor" in my house that I am captive in;
dancing too close to the edge
of my sanity...

I must reclaim the authentic Life hidden inside
this dance with the dark.
"It's time to turn the lights on!" and clearly see
what's really going on here.
And free myself from this insanity...

Mystic Meandering
May 23, 2023

The line in the last stanza:
"It's time to turn the lights on!" is
from Sarah Carlson's poem - Apple Blossoms and Snowflakes.
The words were spoken by her 2 year old grandson :)

What a wonderful metaphor to see clearly...

~

When we don't see clearly there is insanity...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Break For Freedom - David Whyte

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"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Unbind My Eyes - Harlan Hubbard

Now I must break forth from my old self,
cast away old traditions,
unbind my eyes,

so that I may have a broader vision of truth;
so that I may come to this river, as I do today.
and not find it cluttered with emotions and thoughts of 
former days; or its shore lined with drift of cities.
I must see the elements as they are...

Harlan Hubbard

from his journal, quoted from
"Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life"

by Don Walls

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

 

 

"Ways of Seeing" - Interview with David Whyte

...I recognized in my Zen meditation moments of inhabiting
a greater identity.  The real discipline is to remain in that
greater identity and to sustain that sense of presence - so that
you see the essence of [things] that affects you very deeply when
you allow yourself to watch and deepen that attention...

What is asked of human beings on a daily basis, is to get out
of ourselves by paying attention to things other than ourselves.
To see in a way which is other than the way we have used to
name the world, other than the way we have been taught to see
the world, and then as a result have ourselves be seen by the world.

As in all great contemplative traditions, the  most nourishing thing
you can do is pay attention to [you immediate environment], but
it will also break your life apart, because the fixed identity that
had named the world and wanted it to be a certain way, in order
to prevent us from experiencing heartbreak, is found to be too
small.  To name/label is a smaller way of seeing.

Our way of staying safe is to assign names to what in fact cannot
be named.  It is the precise reason why poetry is so difficult to
write.  Because you're actually going to a part of you that doesn't
know what to say.  ...you are going to a part of you that radically
doesn't know and you are going to pay attention and observe 
from that place.  Then at that meeting place between what you
think is you and what you think is not you, that is where the
conversation happens.  And when you speak that conversation
out loud it comes out as poetry.  It is the same undoing of your
surface personality...

Interviewer: So how does one perceive the essence of things?

...listening is a deep form of looking...  I am looking at something
to see what it is saying to me, without imposing a voice upon it.

The implication of truly seeing is that the rest of the world must 
be perceiving the miraculous in you.  Which is quite humbling.
The only place to hold that sense of miraculousness without ego
is in silence...

Perhaps once you have established a relationship with silence,
with deep seeing and listening, then you can live in a way in
which you are not harmed by constant contraction [from noise
and chaos].  There is a reason why monasteries are quiet places.
There is a reason why artists go to quiet places, even when it is
just a quiet room to create.

Excerpts from "Ways of Seeing" - Interview with
David Whyte
by Judith van Leeuwen
From See All This
Sept 2022
with thanks to Kim Manley Ort

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Break Into Freedom - David Whyte

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"

~

Inside this new love, die...
Your way begins on the other side.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone born into color.
Do it now...

Rumi

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Broken Can Blossom - Sarah Carlson

My gaze drifts out
the kitchen window
as I ponder an issue
I have been grappling with
for quite some time.
My body is a bit tense,
but my eyes are soft
as my focus is actually within.
Slowly, ever so slowly,
my attention is captured
by a plant on the windowsill.
Not just any plant, though.
An orchid that had been cherished
by my mother
and hasn't bloomed since
her death almost two years ago.
There's a stem with several buds
and a branch, almost fully separated,
that bends around the back of the pot.
I turn it slowly,
breathe in deeply
as my eyes focus
on a blossom that had been
quietly seeking the sun
without my knowing.
A slow smile extends
throughout my being.
Ah yes,
the broken can blossom.
And when they do,
there is beauty that is
intricate and profound
and deeply genuine.
What a gift for all
who choose to see.

Sarah Carlson
Meanderings of the Heart

Posted with permission from the author

Photo by Sarah Carlson

 

At the Edge - Czeslaw Milosz

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map leads him there.

Or perhaps memory.  Once long ago in the sun,
When snow first fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong without reason,
Joy of the eyes.  Everything was the rhythm

Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast in motion.

He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

Czeslaw Milosz

with thanks to Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

What's Your Bias? - Brian McLaren

People can't see what they can't see.
Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall,
trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.
No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,
unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias...

Confirmation Bias:  We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities.  As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn't fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer s simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It's almost impossible to see what our community doesn't, can't or won't see.

Complementary Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I'll be hostile to yours.  If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I'll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don't know how much (or little) we know because we don't know how much (or little) others know.  In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are.  As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can't be seen from where I am right now.  But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias:  I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false.  I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don't notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don't have intense and sustained personal contact with "the other", my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It's hard to see something when my way of making a living require me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

Brian McLaren
from - Why Don't They Get It?  Overcoming Bias in Others.

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The World in Different Light - Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.  The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Lisel Mueller
1924-2020

Original title - "Monet Refuses Operation"

"Her poems are 'a testament to the miraculous power
of language to interpret and transform our world'
and 'a testament that invites readers to share her vision
of experiences we all have in common: sorrow,
tenderness, desire, the revelations of art, and
mortality - 'the hard dry smack of death against the glass'"
(Washington Post)

Lisel Mueller was a German born American Poet.
Her family fled the Nazi regime in 1939 when she was 15.
She worked as a translator and academic teacher.  She
began writing poetry in the 1950's, publishing her first
collection in 1965.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
street light through ice on window...

Eccentricity - Nick Bantock

Eccentricity is underrated.  I'm not talking about the, Look
at me, I'w wearing strange clothes and waving my arms
around trying to get attention, sort of behavior, but a kind
of eccentricity that frees-up people to be individuals,
rather than nodding clones.

Being a genuine eccentric means.....your mind passes
into new territory.  And once you've entered that unique
space, staying with it, and not worrying how others may
interpret your preoccupation...

It takes courage to open your eyes wide and express
what you see and feel in a way that gives you and others
the permission to articulate, create and challenge the tired
norms that neuter and suffocate...

After all, what do you have to lose?  And think what there
is to gain, if not a world of possibility.

Nick Bantock
Facebook

via - Donna Iona Drozda

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Awakening From Our Illusions - Ivan Granger

I am so aware of how much frustration people feel over the dark
turn in politics in recent years.  As an American, how do I
understand the racist, proto-facist, violent forces emerging within
my own country?  At the same time, similar tendencies are
appearing in the UK, India, the Philippines,
and several other nations.

While harmful forces must be answered with courage in the public
arena, I want to suggest that there is something important happening
on another level, as well: an enforced awakening.

We are going through a collective process of disillusionment,

whether we like it or not.  We are being required to drop our illusions
and witness unpleasant truths, about ourselves [individually and
as a nation], and about the world around us.  We may ask: What
have we ignored that has allowed such fear and hatred to fester?  How
have our political and social systems become so damaged that the
are unresponsive to the needs of society?  What cruelties are encoded
in society that I have ignored or made excuses for?  How did we
imagine things were solid, when they are so fragile?  How can my
neighbor [or family members] believe such things, and what is
their hurt that I was blind to?  These are the questions we are
forced to ask now.

Painful though it may be, we can only be strengthened by the
process of disillusionment.  We want to drop our illusions.
We want to see things as they are...

As a meditative exercise we can look at the reality we see,
the terrible and the beautiful together, and just sit with it;
[just be with it internally, meditatively].  It may break our hearts,
but we can just sit with it.  It may overwhelm us with its
immensity, but we don't run, we don't seek to merely feel good.
Instead, we just sit with it. 
We allow ourselves to see and feel fully.
We watch our reactions to it, but are not hooked by them.
In this way, we begin to inhabit a bigger reality, a fuller reality.
Our personal sense of reality becomes more integrated and a
truer reflection of what actually is.  As we do this, we become more
capable of fashioning healthier lives and healthier societies.

When I stop trying to assert some idea of how reality should work,
and just really notice what is.....everything just opens up.  The heart
opens in unexpected ways, making healing possible where only
walls seemed to stand.  It's easy to think that reality is somehow
broken, but when we really look, we discover that we inhabit an
improbable wholeness instead.  It's not entirely logical amidst the
world's fear and suffering, but look for yourself and see.  Really see.
Seeing the full picture, our actions become more effective and lasting.
Looking honestly, we become capable of compassion and
connection, where there was only anger and hatred...

Ivan Granger
Excerpt from a commentary on a poem by Mary Sarton
at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - taken from inside, reflecting objects in the room
in the window - giving the illusion of another reality...

Be Where Love Is - Rumi

My heart, sit only with those
who know and understand you.

Sit only under a tree
that is full of blossoms.

Not every eye can see,
not every sea is full of pearls.

My heart, sing the song of longing
like nightingale.

First, lay down your head,
then one by one
let go of all distractions.

Embrace the light and let it guide you
beyond the winds of desire.
There you will find a spring and

be nourished by its sweet waters...

Rumi

Nothing is Just One Way - Joan Tollifson

...No words or concepts can capture reality.  Maps are useful,
but they can only describe and point to the territory itself.
Eating the meal is what nourishes you, not reading the menu.
Take what resonates and leave the rest...  Don't believe
anything you read, but instead, question, look, listen, feel
deep into, and see for yourself.  The book that wakes you
up one day may lull you to sleep the next.  Always be ready
to see something new and unexpected.

...stay open to the possibilities, to seeing things in a new way,
to questioning assumptions and conclusions.  ...this living
reality is no way in particular.  It is ever-changing, evolving,
dancing, vibrating, unfolding...  It never resolves into some
final package, some ultimate formulation.  There is no
finish-line on this pathless path, no definitive model or map
that captures reality.  What all true pointers are pointing to
is the living reality, and the living reality is ALIVE - fluid,
spacious, open, ungraspable.  It is not frozen or solid or
only one way.  It can't be pinned down.

Sometimes everything opens up when we hear a teacher say
that there is nothing to do.  Sometimes we need to hear
there is no choice, and sometimes we need to hear that
there is a choice.

Nothing is just one way...

Joan Tollifson

Effortless Joy - Sandy Jones

Love leaves the confines of ideologies, doctrines, dogma and
the restricting limitations of regulations and rules.  Love is
freedom.  Love makes it easy to see in new ways.  It opens
the heart to expansive vistas, to freedom.  Love and freedom
go hand-in-hand.  Love and Reality reside right here as the
very identity I am.  Each of us can put our self here because
this unbound Self, this tranquility, this joy, this peace and
beauty is your identity as well.

A rush of passion celebrates the joy of this simple, everyday
existence of my being, of life, this marvelous magic that is
being me.  I am this living mystery of ever-flowering beauty.
The moonlight song ten thousand fathoms deep is a fact quite
plenty enough for me.

I'm filled with this awe and wonder that is living here in the
middle of an infinity of myself.  Life is an enigma, a mystery
so extraordinary, veiled in the soft pink light of the ordinary.

I am a million joys, living irresponsibly and aimless, carried
by this river of fearless love that upholds me...

It is not mine to tell others what to do.  Mine is this wind
blown freedom of an irresistible and effortless joy...

Sandy Jones

via: No Mind's Land

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.