Beyond "Spirituality" - MM & A.H. Almaas

 

Beyond the "cloak of spirituality" that we wear,
in its many disguises, is the unconditioned Essence
of our own Being - the "Genuine Self",
the "Authentic Self". the "Precious Pearl"

at the depths of Beingness;
not the super-imposed conditioning of belief systems,
but the pure state of Being from deep within the
Quietness of Consciousness
that has no "belief", no conditioned "idea" of
"spirituality" - just pure Beingness,

living as we are...

Mystic Meandering
May 27, 2019

~

The non-dual realization is only a step toward
greater mysteries and forms of freedom
leading to the deepening realization
of the fullness of being human,
expressing the totality of the 
cosmos in all its physical and
spiritual dimensions -
living the simplicity
of
ordinary life.

A.H. Almaas

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
 Pikes Peak
taken from Greenland, Colorado

The Troll in the Mind - Mark Nepo

We spend so much time
anticipating what will happen next that we miss
the whisper of Heaven that unfolds wherever we are.

Though I have known and survived
many forms of pain
fear is the troll in the mind
that anticipates more.

And just as a loud noise prevents us
from finding the peace in the center of silence,
fear prevents us from finding
the inch of Heaven [Silence] in the center
of whatever moment we are in.

Yet, no matter how much I've been through
and how much I've learned,
I can't stop the wave of anticipation.
No one can.

It is part of being human.

Mark Nepo
(a cancer survivor)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
A dried rose petal with one
eye at the top of a big schnoz.
Looks like a troll to me :)

 

A Candle in the Wind - Monica Dayakar

There are a lot of weird ideas about this...

Awakening...  Enlightenment... the shift in perception...

A natural fall out...  thinking that everything will change after
the shift...

That enlightenment means that they will no longer be human...

Even sages are sublimely human...

I heard someone say...

"We do not become selfless doormats..."  !!

And yet... yet...

Including this one...

It is...
Till it isn't...

That's simply another idea
Of better... bigger...

Sounds real nice...

Selfless doormats is it, too...!!
Those that are...  simply are...

I know I was...

Till I wasn't...

LOL

Tried really hard not to be...

A scurried attempt at now being this shiny, brave new thing..

It didn't work...

Oh...

Tears...

And thereby hangs another tale...

Any attempt at replacing one idea about yourself with another...
Well...
Is the belief in the mentally fabricated self...

And apart from it...

There isn't one...

Circling within the dream
She learnt to pirouette perfectly...

What is not included in the gambit  of "being human"...

Yes...

It's all a dream...
[or so they say]

Ideas upon ideas...
All made up...

Seeking ideas of perfection... of what this should look like...

Tears...

Or not look like...

Across the board...
Humanity
The best and worst life has to offer...

A few days ago
Anger rose in me..

Of an intensity, that would put rage to shame...

I was shocked to the core of my being...!!

That I was even capable of it...

And whence had I abhorred it so... in another...

Lay in me too...

I just kept mumbling to my self....

"It's just unacceptable... just unacceptable..."
And kept shaking my head from side to side...

The core of my being ripped to shreds...

And I wept tears of blood...  that would inundate an ocean...

I guess... no one's exempt...

Shift or no shift...

And when all was lost...

And no ground beneath the feet...
Heck and no feet...
And no brownie points for Being...

A pretender under many guises...
I AM the biggest con-act in town...

Dressed as a cop...
Trying to catch a thief...

A lot is lost in translation when we can't see
each other's hearts...

And love guided her footsteps
To places she'd never been...

To the dark corners of her heart...
Where she's hid...

Face to face with herself...
In all shades of blue and pink...

A rainbow exploded...
And she disappeared in a wink...

And she flung her clothes to the wind...
Running naked like a mad woman,,,

No description fit...

And she laughed and cried...
A new born babe...

It ends where it began...
It was ever so...

And all notions of emptiness and fullness...
Cried in the dark,,,

As she wept and laughed...
A candle in the wind...

Monica Dayakar
13/01/2016

Facebook

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~~~

Your thinking that you have to make an effort to get rid of 
this dream of the waking state, and your making efforts to
attain Jnana (realization of Self) or real awakening, are
all parts of the dream.

Ramana Maharshi

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~~~

Photo Mystic Meandering

 

Everyone Is Wounded - Rachel Naomi Remen

All people are wounded, but people who come here can't cover
it up the way the rest do.  Everybody has pain, everybody is
wounded.  And because [Commonweal] participants can't cover up
 their woundedness now that they have cancer, they can trust each
other. I can trust another person only if I can sense that they, too
have woundedness, have pain, have fear.

[When you have cancer, or other chronic or serious illness]
you feel separated from the whole  human race.  You feel
 as though you're looking at the world through plate glass. 
You can see other people, but you feel as if you can't touch them
 or be with them, because you are different.  They say that the
sense of isolation, of being separated from people who are
well, is as painful as chemotherapy, as cancer itself...

Years ago, when I was Associate Director of the pediatric
clinics at the Stanford Medical School, one of my
colleagues, Marshall Klaus, did a study which at the time
was extremely innovative.  He was chief of the intensive
care nursery, where all the babies were these tiny little
people you could hold in your hand.  Each incubator was
surrounded by shifts of people and millions of dollars worth
of equipment.  Everything was high-tech. Of course, we
didn't touch these infants because we'd get germs on them.
But Klaus decided to do an experiment in which half the
babies in the nursery would be treated as usual, and the 
other half would be touched for fifteen minutes every few
hours.  You'd take your pinky finger and rub it up and down
the little baby's back.  And we discovered that the babies
that were touched survived better.  No one knows why.
Maybe there's something about touching that strengthens
the will to live.  Maybe isolation weakens us.

Rachel Naomi Remen
Cofounder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program,
as interviewed by Bill Moyers in
Healing and the Mind

with thanks to Rod MacIver 
at Heron Dance
Rod is a survivor of 4th stage Lymphoma.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

"People don't care how much you know,
until they know how much you care."

whatever happened to compassion...

 

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 :)

 

Fully Human, Fully Divine - Kathleen Knipp

Without ignoring or denying the story of our lives, we
can relax and experience that which is beyond story
through the simple practice of attuning to body and breath.
We can open the lens wider than our dramas and traumas
and reconnect with Source.

We find ourselves in our humanness, our extraordinary
fragility and our extraordinary resiliency - both.  And can,
without denying the story of "my life", the events, the
response I may be having to these events, without ignoring
that, without denying that, we can also open to that which
is beyond this story.  And it is so easy to forget, it's so easy
to have the events of our lives move into the foreground and
just fill the whole field with the dramas and traumas.  And
without ignoring or denying them, we can open the lens
wider and we can, through practice, reconnect with our Source.
It might not be easy.  We do that by beginning to feel our bodies,
feeling each part of the body and experience the sensations,
using all of our senses, while also accessing our inner sanctuary
to feel supported.

Noticing the breath and falling into the rhythmic cycling of
the breath, in a moment of suspension where we can rest.
When life presents its challenges, which it does, we can rest
in the rhythm of the breath - feel its caress.

...[there] may be the sense of slipping below the surface of
turbulence.  Sinking deeper and deeper to an absolute stillness.
Stillness so profound that it is impossible to disturb that which
is beyond time, sinking deeper to the very Source.  The Source
that reveals itself and conceals itself and emerges in infinite
forms... and begin to sense the infinite and the finite expression
as you - this unique set of patterns that form into a sense of me...

Kathleen Knipp
Excerpt from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
Fully Human, Fully Divine

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Shared Brokeness - Desmond Tutu

We are able to forgive because we are able to
recognize our shared humanity.  We are able to
recognize that we are all fragile, vulnerable,
flawed human beings capable of thoughtlessness
and cruelty.  We also recognize that no one is born
evil and that we are all more than the worst thing
we have done in our lives.

A human life is a great mixture of goodness, beauty
cruelty, heartbreak, indifference, love, and so much more.
We want to divide the good from the bad, the saints from
the sinners, but we cannot.  All of us share the core qualities
of our human nature, and so sometimes we are generous
and sometimes selfish.  Sometimes we are thoughtful and
other times thoughtless, sometimes we are kind and sometimes
cruel.  This is not a belief.  This is a fact.

If we look at any hurt, we can see a larger context in which
the hurt happened.  If we look at any perpetrator, we can
discover a story that tells us something about what led up
to that person causing harm.  It doesn't justify the person's
actions; it does provide some context...

No one is born a liar or a rapist or a terrorist.  No one is born
full of hatred.  No one is born full of violence.  No one is
born in any less glory or goodness than you or I.

But on any given day, in any given situation, in any painful
life experience, this glory and goodness can be forgotten,
obscured, or lost.  We can easily be hurt and broken, and
it is good to remember that we can just as easily be the 
ones who have done the hurting and the breaking.  We are
all members of the same human family...

In seeing the many ways we are similar and how our lives
are inextricably linked, we can find empathy and compassion.
In finding empathy and compassion, we are able to move
in the direction of forgiving.

Ultimately it is humble awareness of our own humanity
that allows us to forgive:

We are, every one of us flawed and so very fragile.  I know
that, were I born a member of the white ruling class at that
time in South Africa's past, I might easily have treated someone
with the same dismissive disdain with which I was treated.  I
know given the same pressures and circumstances, I am capable
of the same monstrous acts as any other human on this 
achingly beautiful planet.  It is this knowledge of my own frailty
that helps me find compassion, empathy and similarity,
and forgiveness for the frailty and cruelty of others.

Desmond Tutu
and Mpho A. Tutu

from: The Book of Forgiving:
The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves
and the World

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

Photo - thanks to Uradiance

 

Because We Are Human - Dr. Jacqui Lewis

I think grief puts us in touch with our vulnerabilities.
I think the feeling of grief lets us know the power of wounds
to shape our stories.  I think it lets us know how capable we
are of having our hearts broken and our feelings hurt.

I think it lets us know the link that we each have because we're
human.  Because we're human, we hurt.  Because we're human,
we have tears to cry.  Because we're human, our hearts are
broken.  Because we're human, we understand that loss is a
universal language.  Everybody grieves.

All humanity grieves,  All of us have setbacks, broken dreams.
All of us have broken relationships or unrealized possibilities.
All of us have bodies that just don't do what they used to do.
Though grief is personal, every person grieves.

Dr. Jacqui Lewis

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Sacred Calls - Dorothy Hunt

 How does the Sacred call to you?  Through deep longing?
Through loving? Through the birth of an infant or the death of
a beloved friend?  Through the silence of a forest or the 
magnificence of waves crashing at sea? Through a teacher or
teaching? A guru or a God?  A scripture or a spiritual tradition?
Through art, poetry, music? Playing with your dog, sitting with your
cat? Through a meditation practice or practice of service?  Or
does the Sacred calling come when you are most desperate, most
vulnerable, unable to know what to do, where to go, how to address
the pain you are suffering or the suffering you see all around you?

Does it call you to your knees when you don't know where else
to turn?

What if the Sacred is actually calling us every moment: Come; see!
See what you are, what this moment is.  Come back Home.
Return - again and again and again!

Many of us think that a sacred calling is a calling to "do," but my
sense is that the Sacred calls us to "be," calls us to surrender to
Being, and in the "being" the doing happens spontaneously.  It is
Being, rather than self, that is always becoming.  Whether we
resonate with the idea of a Supreme Being, or simply Being Itself,
surrender is a humbling act of acknowledging that the human mind
cannot fathom the Mystery of the universe, cannot "know" its Source
as an object, and in innumerable ways each day, does not even
know how to accept the moment it finds itself experiencing.  The
mind does not know how to surrender.  Yet over time, and with
Grace, it may discover its own limitations in the face of the Unknown
and let go of its illusion of control, its illusion of separation, its 
illusion of a self.  It may become so emptied of its false identity,
that Truth simply moves itself without anyone to know how or why
or when.

It seems to me that the Unnamable is here having a human
experience, and yet in the deepest place in our hearts, we may
sense that this  expression called "human" Being is called by the
 Sacred to experience the Sacred as what we are, what life is. 
It appears the Sacred enjoys this dance with Itself.  In this dance,
we are invited to find out what is here when all we have believed
 about ourselves - the ways we have identified with thought,
feeling, body, memory, image - falls away, or is stripped away, or
 simply melts in its encounter with the Sacred. When all the forms
 of thought, memory, feeling, etc. have disappeared, what is left?

Being a human expression of life does not mean we have no
perception of choice, or of moving toward or away from our
experience of the Sacred, toward or away from what is most true
within.  Rather than a calling to be something, perhaps the Sacred
is calling to us to be, to see, to respond from what is most
sacred within us.  Perhaps the Sacred calling calls us to come out
of hiding - hiding our true self, hiding our true radiance, hiding
the Light that is here shining....

How does the Sacred call to you?  What does it beckon you to
discover, to sense, to be?  Perhaps the Sacred calling is not your
life's work, but discovering who/what is actually living life - your
life, to be precise!  You may discover there is no moment where we
can actually divide life into sacred and secular, holy and unholy.
Dream, dreamer and dreamed may disappear into What has no
name, no attributes and yet continually calls from itself to itself
within our own experience to be, to see, to love.

Dorothy Hunt
Buddhist Teacher

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

An Inner Whisper - John O'Donohue

Human identity is complex.  Nothing is ever given simply
or immediately.  Even the simplest act of perception has
many layers... Time and memory often reveal things later
that were staring us in the eye, but we never noticed them.
The quest for the truth of things is never ending.  Every
experience is open to countless readings and interpretations.
We never see a thing completely.  In sure anticipation, our
eyes have always already altered what awaits our gaze.
The search for truth is difficult and uncomfortable.  Because
the mystery is too much for us, we may opt to settle for
the surface of things.  Comfort becomes more important than
true presence.  This is precisely why we need to hear the
discerning voice.

Somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice.  This
voice distrusts the status quo.  It sounds out the falsity in
things and encourages the dissent from the images things
tend to assume.  It underlines the secret crevices where the
surface has become strained.  It advises distance and opens
up a new perspective through which the concealed meaning
 of a situation might emerge... Its intention is to keep the heart
clean and clear.  This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or
known to others outside...  Yet much depends on that small
voice.  The truth of its whisper marks the line between honor
and egoism, kindness and chaos.  In extreme situations,
which have been emptied of all shelter and tenderness,
that small voice whispers from somewhere beyond and
encourages the heart to hold out for dignity, respect, beauty
and love.  That whisper brings forgotten nobility into an arena
where violence has traduced everything.  This faithful voice
can illuminate the dark lands of despair.  It becomes both the
sign and presence of a transcendence that no force or horror
can extinguish.  Each day in the world, in the prisons, hospitals
and killing fields, against all the odds, this still, small voice
continues to echo the beauty of the human being.  In haunted
places this voice carries the light of beauty like a magical
lantern to transform the desolation, to remind us that
regardless of what may be wrenched from us, there is a
dignity and hope that we do not have to lose.  This voice
brings us directly into contact with the inalienable presence
of beauty in the soul.

John O'Donohue

~

Photo from the Internet

The Troll in the Mind - Mark Nepo

We spend so much time
anticipating what will happen next that we miss
the whisper of Heaven that unfolds wherever we are.

Though I have known and survived
many forms of pain,
fear is the troll in the mind
that anticipates more.

And just as a loud noise prevents us
from finding the peace in the center of silence,
fear prevents us from finding
the inch of Heaven in the center
of whatever moment we are in.

Yet, no matter how much I've been through
and how much I've learned,
I can't stop the wave of anticipation.
No one can.

It is part of being human.

Mark Nepo
(a cancer survivor)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
 A dried rose petal with one eye
at the top and a big schnozz.
Looks like a troll to me :)

On Being Authentic - Elizabeth Lesser

The irony of hiding the dark side of our humanness is that our
secret is not really a secret at all.  How can it be when we're all
safeguarding the very same story?  That's why Rumi calls it an
Open Secret.  It's almost a joke - a laughable admission that each
one of us has a shadow self - a bumbling, bad-tempered twin.
 Big surprise!  Just like you, I can be a jerk sometimes.  I do
 unkind, cowardly things, harbor unmerciful thoughts, and
mope around when I should be doing something constructive. 
Just like you, I wonder if life has meaning; I worry and fret
 over things that I can't control; and I often feel overcome
 with a longing for something I cannot even name.  For all of
 my strengths and gifts, I am also a vulnerable and insecure
 person, in need of connection and reassurance.  This is
the secret I try to keep from you, and you from me, and in
doing so, we do each other a grave disservice.

Rumi tells us that the moment we accept what troubles we've
 been given, the door will open.  Sounds easy, sounds attractive,
but it is difficult, and most of us pound on the door to freedom
 and happiness with every manipulative ploy save the one that
actually works.  If you're interested in the door to the heavens
opening, start with the  door to your own secret self.  See what
 happens when you offer to another a glimpse of yourself.  Start
slowly. Without getting dramatic, share the simple dignity of 

yourself  in each moment - your triumphs and your failures, your
 satisfaction and your sorrow. Face your embarrassment at being
human, and you'll uncover a deep well of passion and compassion.
  It's a great power, your Open Secret.  When you heart is undefended
you make it safe for whomever you meet to put down his/her
burden  of hiding, and then you both can walk through the
 open door.

Elizabeth Lesser

from: Broken Open

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Paradox of Freedom - Amoda Maa

The closer we come to truth (and the closer we come to
living the truth), everything becomes paradoxical.  Yes, everything.
It's this and that.  It's human and divine.  It's messy and it's perfect.
it's time-bound and it's timeless.   It's relative and it's absolute.
It's form and formless.  Everything becomes paradoxical.

We start to live as this paradox, because truth is not an end point.
Truth is not an answer.  Truth is not a belief system.  Truth is an
open ended-ness within us.  And this is where freedom begins.

It's not a freedom that negates our human experience, with all its
changes, with all its ups and downs, with all its losses and heart-
breaks.  It's a freedom that allows us to live at peace with all of
it, even when it's not peaceful.  It's a deep acceptance of what is.

It's a freedom that wipes away all the cover-ups, everything we tell
ourselves in order to protect ourselves,  to pretend that we're safe,
to imagine a perfect destination.  It's a freedom that wipes away the
layers of defended-ness, all the strategies that we create - mental
strategies, emotional strategies, energetic strategies - to get what we
think we want from life in order to feel comfortable, in order to
feel special, in order to feel loved.  But these cover-ups end up being
our prison.  And there is no fulfillment in this self-created prison.

Fulfillment only comes when there are no cover-ups. It's the fulfillment
of internal freedom, and has nothing to do with the external.  You
could be in a jail cell, and still this freedom is available.

Amoda Maa

~

What really matters is your
capacity to turn towards the
tenderness of your heart in
the midst of that which
offends you.

Amoda Maa

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Authentically You - V. Erickson, Nepo & MM

Often times, a person will think they know you by piecing
together tiny facts and arranging those pieces into a puzzle
that makes sense to them.  If we don't know ourselves
very well, we'll mistakenly believe them, and drift toward
where they tell us to swim, only to drown in our own
confusion.

Here's the truth: It's important to take the necessary steps
to find out who You are [our True Beingness] because
you hold endless depths below the surface of a few facts
and pieces and past decisions.  You aren't only the ripples
that others can see.  You are made of the Ocean...

Victoria Erickson
Author of - Edge of Wonder

~

What it really comes down to is the clearness of heart
to stop defining who you are by those who have hurt you
and to take up the risk to love:
to live at the vibrant edge
of being spirit in the world
exploring the intoxicating quandaries
of being alive,
accepting the grace of our
humanness...

Mark Nepo
From - The Exquisite Risk:
Daring to Live an Authentic Life

~

It's about being enlivened from within;
being fiercely true to the core of our Being:
Compassion, Love and Pure Aliveness...

Open to how That wants to express ItSelf -
allowing the Dynamic Mystery that we are
to express ItSelf from deep within...
Not needing to take a stand on anything,
but finely attuned to the Heart of Love -
discovering a deeper Wisdom...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Sept 2016

~

Art - Craypas Oils
done with fingers

2012

Only Breath - Rumi

Not Christian or Jew, or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, Sufi or Zen...

Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East
or the West,
not out of the ocean
or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal,
not composed of elements at all.

"I" do not exist,
am not an entity in this world
or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve
or an origin story.

My place is the placeless,
a trace of the traceless.

Neither body or soul.

I belong to The Beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only That Breath breathing
human being.

Rumi

recited by Coleman Barks

Beyond "Spirituality" - MM & A.H. Almaas

Beyond the "cloak of spirituality" that we wear,
in its many guises, is the unconditioned Nature
of our own Being - the "Genuine Self",
the "Authentic Self", the "Precious Pearl"
at the depths of Beingness;
not the super-imposed conditioning of belief systems,
but the pure state of Being from deep within the
Quietness of Consciousness
that has no "belief", no conditioned *idea* of
"spirituality" - just pure Being,
living as we are...

Mystic Meandering
May 27, 2019

~

The non-dual realization is only a step toward
greater mysteries and forms of freedom
leading to the deepening realization
of the fullness of being human,
expressing the totality of the
cosmos in all its physical and
spiritual dimensions -
living the simplicity
of
ordinary life.

A.H. Almaas

~

Photo - Pikes Peak
taken from Greenland, CO

Who Are You Without Your Spiritual Story? - Jeff Foster

Please don't talk to me of "Pure Awareness" or
"Dwelling in the Absolute."  I want to see how you treat
your partner, your kids, your parents, your body.
Please don't lecture me about "the illusion of the separate
self" or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen, take information that
doesn't fit your personal philosophy [belief].  I want to see
how you deal with people who disagree with you.  Don't tell
me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.  I want
to know you beneath the words.  I want to know what you're like
when troubles befall you. If you can fully allow your pain and
not pretend to be invulnerable.  If you can feel your anger yet not
step into violence.  If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow
yet not be its slave.  If you can feel your shame and not shame others.
If you can f**k up, and admit it. If you can say "sorry", and really
mean it.  If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.  I only want to meet
you.  Know your precious heart.  Know your beautiful human
struggling for the light.  Before all clever words...

Jeff Foster

Lay It Down - Richard Wehrman

Could he really lay
it down, he wondered,
all the accumulated
projected desires, partly
his own, but most of it laid
out by others, in books,
in talks, in teachings
that said, this is your goal:
the unattainable, the
spiritually pure - you, the
ignorant, the unwashed and
uneducated - this is your
way to become better
than you inherently are.
No sense that you were [already]
what you were meant to be,
only what you might 

be molded to, chiseled into,
added onto your skeletal
frame of lack and loss.
For laid down, what would
he have but himself,
the very thing they convinced
him was worthless the
way it was.
What if this was all
he had, all he was... ?

Richard Wehrman
From: Being Here

Original title: "All He Had"

Being Authentic - Elizabeth Lesser

The irony of hiding the dark side of our humanness is that our
secret is not really a secret at all.  How can it be when we're all
safeguarding the very same story?  That's why Rumi calls it an
Open Secret.  It's almost a joke - a laughable admission that each
one of us has a shadow self - a bumbling, bad-tempered twin.
Big surprise!  Just like you, I can be a jerk sometimes.  I do unkind,
cowardly things, harbor unmerciful thoughts, and mope around
when I should be doing something constructive.  Just like you,
I wonder if life has meaning;  I worry and fret over things that I
can't control; and I often feel overcome with a longing for
something that I cannot even name.  For all of my strengths and
gifts, I am also a vulnerable and insecure person, in need of
connection and reassurance.  This is the secret I try to keep from
you, and you from me, and in doing so, we do each other a grave
disservice.

Rumi tells us that the moment we accept what troubles we've been
given, the door will open.  Sounds easy, sounds attractive, but it is
difficult, and most of us pound on the door to freedom and happiness
with every manipulative ploy save the one that actually works.  If
you're interested in the door to the heavens opening, start with the
door to your own secret self.  See what happens when you offer to
another a glimpse of who you really are.  Start slowly.  Without
getting dramatic, share the simple dignity of yourself in each moment -
your triumphs and your failures, your satisfaction and your sorrow.
Face your embarrassment at being human, and you'll uncover a deep
well of passion and compassion.  It's a great power, your Open Secret.
When you heart is undefended you make it safe for whomever you
meet to put down his/her burden of hiding, and then you both can
walk through the open door.

Elizabeth Lesser
from: Broken Open

~

...the person you think of as "yourself" exists only in you, and
even you don't really know who that is.  Every person you meet,
have a relationship with, or make eye contact on the street with,
creates a version of "you" in their heads.  You're not the same
person to your mom, your dad, your siblings, [that] you are to
your coworkers, your neighbors, or your friends.  There are a
thousand different versions of yourself out there, in people's minds.
A "you" exists in each version, and your "you", "yourself", isn't really
"someone" at all.

Commentary on a chapter in a book called
One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
by Luigi Pirandello