Fragmented Culture - J. Krishnamurti

We have broken up the earth as yours and mine -
your nation, your flag and his flag, this particular religion
and the religion of the distant man.  And for it we fight
and wrangle, and the politicians exult in their power
to maintain division, never looking at the world as a whole.
They haven't gotten the global mind.  They never feel nor
perceive the immense possibility of having no nationality,
no division...  They maintain a tribal attitude towards life.
They do not have a mind that steps beyond the division
of race, culture, and the religions that man has invented.

We carry on like machines with our tiresome daily routine.
How eagerly the mind accepts a patter of existence, and
how tenaciously it clings to it!  As by a driven nail, the
mind is held together by idea, and around that idea it 
lives and has its being.  The mind is never free, for it is
always anchored within the radius of its own center.
It is lost in fear...

Fear is not of the unknown,
but of the loss of the known.

One wonders how long it will take for man to learn to live
on this earth without wrangles, rows, wars and conflict.
Man has created the conflict by his division of the earth,
linguistically, culturally, superficially.  One wonders how
long man, who has evolved through so many centuries of
pain and grief, anxiety and pleasure, fear and conflict, will
take to live a different way of life.

J. Krishnamurti

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Real Virus...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark night,
she awakes...

Inexplicable dread overtakes her...

... a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time...

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions,
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a
boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Racism,
Fear
 and
 Violence.

But those who know the beauty of
true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus"
cannot shatter the pristine Light of
a radiant Cosmos;
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and
movement of a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds
and the ineptness of
fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded lives and help us endure what
is happening in our country and the world...

Namaste

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Blessing in the Chaos - Jan Richardson

To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be
a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,

that go with you
even to the
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you
cease.
Let what divides you
cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes
and demeans,
and let depart
all that keeps you
in its cage.

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.

The human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness,
a place where everything comes together,
where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform
into vision, where damage will be made whole,
where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise,
where the travails of a life's journey will enjoy a homecoming.
To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a
person now.

Jan Richardson

With thanks to  The Beauty We Love

~

Photo taken at Keukenhof Tulip Garden in Holland
by Ellen Ratmeyer

Creating Enmity - J. Krishnamurti

Surely that thing which you fight you become.  If I am angry
and you meet me with anger what is the result?  More anger.
You have become that which I am.  If I am evil and you fight
me with evil means then you also become evil, however
righteous you may feel.  If I am brutal and you use brutal
methods to overcome me, then you become brutal like me.
And this we have done for thousands of years.  Surely there
is a different approach than to meet hate by hate.  If I use
violent methods to quell anger in myself then I am using
wrong means for a right end, and thereby the right end
ceases to be.  In this there is no understanding.  Anger is
to be understood; it is not to be overcome through violent
means.  Anger may be the result of many causes and
without comprehending them there is no escape from anger.

We have created the enemy, and becoming ourselves the enemy
in no way brings about an end to enmity.  We have to understand
the cause of our enmity and cease to feed it by our thought,
feeling, and action.  This is an arduous task demanding constant
self-awareness [and Self awareness] and intelligent pliability,
for what we are society is...  The enemy and the friend are
the outcome of our thought and action.  We are responsible for
creating enmity and so it is more important to be aware of our
own thought and action than to be concerned with the foe and
the friend, for right thinking puts an end to division.
Love transcends the friend and the enemy.

J. Krishnamurti
from: The Book of Life

via - The Beauty We Love

Surrender to Wholeness - Fred LaMotte

Surrender to wholeness.
There is no escape.
Refuse to be divided.
Rebel against any force
that would diminish or
entice you to choose
one view against its opposite.

For it is never that one side
is enlightened and the other ignorant.
Ignorance is the antipathy itself,
the separation of wholeness into
polarized opponents.

There are choices, but they are
momentary and intuitive,

never frozen into ideology.
Therefore, revolt against
every ideologue, every divider,
who would lure you into the
toxic but delicious energy of
blame and judgment.
Blame and judgment are not
actions, but re-actions.
And re-action means
endless entrapment...

Act from  the silence of
the unified field,
dynamically at ease
in the Heart...

Rebel ruthlessly yet gently...

Surrender and rebellion are
one and the same...

Fred LaMotte

excerpt from the blog post:
Surrender to Wholeness
(his words, my format)

~

Photo - through the bottom of a glass

Kindness - Penn Jillette

...All I want of America now is kindness.  That's all.
The past few years have filled too many of our friends and
neighbors with hate, and it breaks my heart.  Some people
started acting hateful, crazy and nasty so that they could win,
and then people who disagreed with them acted the same way.
They disagree in content but agree wholeheartedly in tone.

So many of us now agree with the message of hate, and play
"ideology" as team sports.  The message doesn't matter when
the medium is hate.  My friends who work on TV, people I
love personally, are using a tone and a meanness in their jobs
that they never used before.  Is hate where the money is?
I don't know if fighting fire with fire actually works, but I
do know that fighting hate with hate never works.

It makes me cry.  I've read about family members not invited
for Thanksgiving dinner because of political disagreements.
The Clash sang "anger can be power" and I believed it.  Maybe
I still believe it, but maybe I don't want power any more.
Can't we replace the word "evil" with the word "wrong?"
Everyone is wrong sometimes and nobody is ever evil.
The America I want is kind to people who are wrong.

I'm like a dog.  I don't hear words anymore, I just hear tone.
Anyone whose tone is kind will get my complete support.
Libertarian, Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Green...anything
else you got.  I've always been left out of team sports.  I don't
want to win enough.  I'm not part of a team.  I'm part of
humanity.  I want kindness.  There's no other team for me.
Let's love each other, and then discuss how to run the country
together.

Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller

With thanks to The Beauty We Love
for content and photo

Taking Responsibility - Pema Chodron

All activities should be done with the intention of speaking
so that another person can hear you, rather than using words
that cause the barriers to go up and the ears to close.  Everything
you say can further  polarize the situation and convince you
[and others] of how separate you are.  On the other hand,
everything you say and do and think can support your desire
to communicate from the Heart, to move closer and
step out of this myth of isolation and separateness that
 we're all caught in.

...you don't have to get frozen in [language] of
loser or winner,
good guy or bad guy...

We have two alternatives.  Either we hold onto our fixed versions
of reality, or we begin to challenge them, and start dissolving
the barriers that we erect between ourselves and the world.

Pema Chodron
Buddhist Teacher
From: Comfortable with Uncertainty

photo - two pieces of bread that look like faces
facing each other...

~

How We Get There - Fred LaMotte

We wonder why everyone is so stressed.  But many of us would
not know who we are without conflict...

Democrat against Republican, socialist against capitalist,
woman vs man, black vs white, vegan vs omnivore,
the enlightened vs the ignorant...

Maybe the answer is never one side vs the other.  Maybe we could
rest the [conflicted] mind in the Heart. Maybe we could all go meet
in Rumi's field, under the stars, beyond the ideas of right and wrong.
How can we get there?
Listen to the Silence.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

With great grief for the hatred and violence
in this country...

To feel one's grief is being authentic, allowing
yourself to feel another's grief, the collective grief
of people heartbroken from the trauma of violence. It
softens you, opens the heart and gives you a different lens
with which to see others with a sense of connectedness
and compassion; dissolving the barriers that separate,
allowing a different vision than your own dearly held beliefs
and opinions, whether spiritual or political.  And in that
is a deepening sense of inner peace and equilibrium...

~

2nd photo - the Om (Aum) symbol is a sacred symbol of the
universal name of God (or Ultimate Reality),
Om (Aum) is the ever present "sound"/vibration of
 an already unified Universe, which expresses itself dualistically
in our experience here.
When you are in meditative Silence, listening, you are aware
of it, the Universal Om - the Hum of the Universe.
  It pervades even the chaos,
and every "sound" becomes the sound of OM/Aum singing
the song of the Universe...  Just listen...
One experiences the wholeness of Life,
despite what is happening...
At least that it my experience.

Out Beyond Polarities - Rumi & Babka

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field.  I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in *that* grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense...

Rumi

The great Persian poet and Sufi Mystic, Rumi, speaks in
this poem of a field, a clearing, a place empty of divisiveness,
empty of opposition, empty of what we think is certain.

Violence reverberates throughout the world in strains so familiar
that we often are complacent when there is another headline.

We don't often consider how our collective guilt extends the cruelty
and division in the world.  We are guilty of the failure to be
compassionate, and the polarity between the secular and the sacred,

and the unwillingness to be spiritually curious about our shared
responsibility for the violence we see in the world, [in the form of]
poverty, racism, homophobia; the violence of certainty, which claims
the superiority of being 'right'; the violence of oppression,
of absolutes, of nationalism.

We must meet each other in the space where we are all beyond
right and wrong [beyond polarities]... surpassed in the simplicity
of tenderness, the attentive word, the awareness that we each live,
in every moment, exposed to death.

We must practice deliberate compassion.
Each of us deserves to be valued and held as we are,
where we are...

Susie Paulik Babka, PhD

Associate of Religious Studies

Excerpt from an article she wrote in the Huffington Post,
"Out Beyond Ideas: A Field of Empathy in Response to Violence"
about the violent death of her father and 4 others in a
cycling accident.

Politics and Meditation - Fred LaMotte

The irony is this, that the greatest energy and healing we can
bring to our world today is not through political opposition,
not by feeding the polarization of energy between two sides,
and not by repeating the narrative of hate that each party
constructs about the other; vilifying each other...

This is precisely NOT the time to be swept into the negative
energy of party politics.  Let go of all such anxious thinking
and simply rest the mind in the Heart.
in the Heart is unity, not division.
The practice of meditation is a life-line to free our hearts
[and minds] from this endless strife and division.

When we practice the most ancient form of meditation, to
simply rest the mind in the Heart, we are practicing the most
radical politics.  We are dissolving the dysfunction and healing
the national wound.

The revolution is to breathe.  The radical act is to be present.
Rest the mind in the Heart.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

This of course doesn't mean that we don't have our opinons
about what is happening in our country, but I know that
"sitting meditation" helps me to keep perspective and calm the mind.
It is exquisitely depolarizing...  :)

Free to Be - Fred LaMotte

The first discipline of non-violence is to honor every human being
as a unique soul-body, refusing to identify them by race, gender,
religion, or political party.

Yet just as much as right-wing movements, today's "progressive"
movement often promote conflict and division by labeling individual
Persons by their group identity.  Some of us who talk about "diversity"
actually stifle it, because real diversity is not to promote tribalism
[or nationalism], but to recognize the incomparable [unique]
Personhood of individuals. [As it also says in the Declaration of
Independence].

It is much easier to hate a category than a Person, whether your
animosity is toward Muslims or Christians, "black people", or
"white people", liberals or conservatives.

The beginning of world peace is to free each human soul-body from
racial, political, or religious abstractions.  Our incidental association
with a group is not who we really are.

I do not identify my Self [True Inner Being] as a color, as rich or poor.
capitalist or socialist, Republican or Democrat, Christian or
Pagan, [or American].  I am neither "good"nor "evil."  Those are just
conceptual chains with which your mind attempts to enthrall me.  But
I am not your concept of me:
you are.

If you want to superimpose a group identity on me, that is your act
of violence against the singularity of my Personhood.  You are free to
label me, but I am also free...  I refuse to identify with your label...
I Am who I Am...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

[brackets mine]

~

My note: It's an act of aggression when we impose prejudicial categories and labels on "others"; when we don't see that we are all a unique expression of our shared Core Beingness; when we've been enculturated to hate "other" people's cultures through fear because they are not like "us"...  We are all "free" when we recognize each other's Core Beingness as our own, and the diverseness of our individuality that expresses that Beingness and treat each other with respect and compassion.

And, oh btw, we are all immigrants here, unless you were born 100% Native American.  I am .2% Native American, but the rest of "me" comes from other countries, other cultures.  My English ancestors arrived here in the 1600-1700s and populated much of New England, and evidently somebody intermarried with a Native American.  My Irish and Scottish ancestors arrived probably in the 1800s and intermarried with the English ancestors, and my Norwegian ancestors arrived int he late 1800s, intermarrying with...  well you get the idea.  We are mongrels! :)  Essentially, however, we all share an Essential Beingness far beyond our ancestry, our humanness, far beyond personalities and character traits, beliefs, patriotism, opinions, DNA and intelligence.  And we are inherently Free to Be who and what we are!

And on another note:  My father was greeted by the Statue of Liberty coming back from Europe on a ship with thousands of other soldiers, (given to America by the French, btw), after serving in WWII at age 19-20 in Germany, being hit in the face with shrapnel from "enemy" mortar fire.  That was  his path, his journey, and that of his generation - to fight "the enemy" for an idealized freedom...  I don't think he (or that generation) understood things with the same "spiritual" lens that I do, but he did what he felt was right at the time, believing it was the right thing to do.  And I respect him for that, because his perceptions were different, although his war experience wounded him emotionally for life.  But he not only fought for America, he fought for the freedom of the Europeans in Northern Europe as well, and for the hope of freedom in the world... And yet we are still fighting!  Building walls instead of welcoming statues of liberty - because "we"/humanity (in general) lack the understanding of Who we all essentially are...

Namaste
_/\_

~

Photo -
via Stillness Speaks

Zeitgeist...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark of night,
I awake...

Inexplicable dread overtakes me...

.....a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time?

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Fear and Violence.

But those who know the beauty of true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus" cannot
shatter the pristine Light of a radiant Cosmos,
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and movement of
a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds;
by the ineptness of fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

Zeitgeist - the defining spirit of the time, or culture.

~*~

Yet another mass school shooting Weds here in the US,
moving me to tears - children killing children once again;
and what humanity is doing to itself is heartbreaking...
The more my heart opens, the more I feel the emotional
pain of those who have been traumatized for life by
the shadow side of humanity.

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded hearts and help us to endure our
wounded society...

_/\_

Namaste

~

Photo - I don't remember what this is a picture of
but it seemed fitting...

Walking in Cosmic Shoes...

Give no regard to the voice of Fear that
divides you and conflicts you;
whether from within or without...

Walk as if the "Divine" were in your shoes,
walking you -

undivided by earthly "tribes"
of culture, religion, or hatred;
earthly boundaries...
The divided mentations of
mediocre minds;
yours and others.

Fall into the Inner Rhythm of
the Universal Being that you are;
that ubiquitous Divine Presence
inherently everywhere, at all times,
and walk fluidly through life.

Flow with the Deep Silence of
your Inner Being...

Just Breathe...

Listen...

Wait...

for the Rhythm and the movement of the
Luminous Inner Cosmos to move you...

Then you will know what is true,
which way to go,
and
how to BE
in this world...

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 8, 2018

_/\_

A Unitive Place...

In these sometimes harsh, divisive times
one must dive deep and refocus
on the depths of the Stillness of Being within oneself,
moving inward beyond the polarities of existence
where nothing is disturbed, nothing harmed...

There we will find a deeper unitive place of Restful Presence,
knowing that externally it's just the duality of existence
playing itself out in the construct of time...

In the Primordial Womb of Stillness,
in which matter reality exists,
everything is allowed...

The world will go the way it goes -
life will continue to unfold as it unfolds -
the light and the dark will continue to dance together -
in time bound reality.

If we focus only on the divisive chaos we will
react out of the mind-created contractions of fear and ignorance...

If we are able to experience the depths of this True Silence,
the Silence of the Everlasting Depths of Existence,
we can experience what's beyond the outward mentations
of chaos and fear:
- the Silence that holds the Cosmos together -
- that is the Cosmos -

the enduring Silence of the Universe within all form;
the pure Stillness of Being...

The Unitive Place...

In this deep Silence that sustains Existence
we Rest...in the True Heart of That which animates Life...

The True Timeless Heartbeat of Reality...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Jan. 5, 2018

~

Photo - Vortex Art
2011
Craypas Oils
done with fingers

A Wish for the World - Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear...
Where knowledge is free...
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls...
Where words come out from the depths of Truth...
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit...
Where the mind is led forward...
into ever-widening [inclusive] thought and action...
Let my country [the world] awake...

Excerpt from Verse 35 of the Gitanjali
by Rabindranath Tagore

~

Only the inspired should make decisions
that effect the lives of many,

never a man who has not held God in his arms
and become the servant of unity...

St. Teresa of Avila
(1515-1582)

Limitless Awareness - The Tibetan Book of the Dead

You must be ready to accept the possibility that there is a limitless
range of awareness for which we now have no words; that
awareness can expand beyond range of your ego, your self,
your familiar identity, beyond everything you have learned,
beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the differences
which usually separate people from each other and from the
world around them.

Walter Evans-Wentz
The Tibetan Book of the Dead

~

It's not so much that we don't have a self, rather it's that
the self we do have is not a thing.  It is an impermanent,
fluctuating activity, a process not a particle, a verb not a noun.

Shinzen Young

The Science of Enlightenment:
How Meditation Works


via - Love Is A Place

Scattered Heart - Omid Safi

The Prophet Mohammad was once asked what was the one essential
quality for prayers...  Many in the community thought they knew the
right answer.  Some thought the Prophet would say the proper
recitation of Arabic.  Others thought the answer would be lovely
memorization of Qur'anic chapters.  Yet others expected the answer
would be perfect ritual observations of prayer.

Muhammad's answer was: Presence in the Heart...

What is Presence?

It is not so much presence of God.
God is always present.
It is we humans who are absent from our own Heart.
[the spiritual Heart].  So much of our lives are spent in a
fractured state of Heart.  We are, too often, scattered.  We speak of
being scatterbrained.  The truth of the matter is that the scatteredness
is much more systemic.  We are scattered at every level: body, soul,
 mind, and spirit.  We do this to ourselves.  We throw ourselves
 to the past, often clinging to a past pain or trauma.  Or, we hurl
 ourselves towards the future, attaching ourselves to a hope for the
 future, or fear of losing something.
We are in the past, or in the future, everywhere but Here.
To pray with the Heart, to have presence in the Heart, is a remedy.
It is a healing, an unscattering.
This starts with mindfulness, with an awareness of the breath.
When we monitor our breath, simply observe the breath enter into
the heart, and emerge from the heart, our breathing slows down.
The heart rates slows.  Here is where we become whole:
our body, our breath, our spirit become One.
In that moment, in this breath, we are healed and whole.
And what a prayer there is in this breath.
What Presence...
God has always been present, waiting for us.
We ourselves become present, meeting God.
This is the Prayer of the Heart.

To pray the Prayer of the Heart we cannot be anxious about
 the past, or hopeful/fearful about the future.
  We have to be Present to our own Heart's state.

The Prayer of the Heart starts with us where we are: broken,
 fractured, and dis-united.  It takes us by the breath, and moves us
 along to unity, wholeness, and healing.

This is when we realize that tawhid (Unity) is not just about God,
but about our own Hearts becoming unified.
We have to become united [within].
Our inner division, being disconnected from our own bodies,
our own breath, our own Heart is only one part of our lack of unity.
That inner division is reflected in how we as a human community
are divided.  When we are not one with our own Heart, we cannot
see the full humanity of others.

The inner and outer are reflected in each other.  When we are
 internally divided, we will be externally divided.
  If we wish to be united as a human community, we have to
 strive for unity and healing at the
Heart level...

We need the Prayer of the Heart.
By whatever form we pray,
we need to become whole.
May it begin one breath at a time.
May it begin with me...

Omid Safi
excerpted from an article
entitled: The Prayer of the Heart
at: On Being

via;  No Mind's Land

Culture of Fear - Krishnamurti

We have broken up the earth as yours and mine -
your nation, your flag and his flag,
this particular religion and
the religion of the distant man.
And for it we fight and wrangle,
and the politicians exult in their power
to maintain this division,
never looking at the world as a whole.
They haven't gotten the global mind.
They never feel nor perceive the immense
possibility of having no nationality,
no division...
They maintain the tribal attitude
towards life.
They do not have a mind that
steps beyond the division of race,
culture, and the religions
that man has invented.

We carry on like machines with our
tiresome daily routine.
How eagerly the mind accepts a
pattern of existence,
and how tenaciously it clings to it!
As by a driven nail, the mind is
held together by idea,
and around that idea it lives
and has its being.
The mind is never free,
for it is always anchored
within the radius
of its own center.
It is lost in fear...

Fear is not of the unknown,
but of the loss of the known.

One wonders how long it will take
for man to learn to live on this earth
without wrangles, rows, wars and conflict.
Man has created the conflict by his division
of the earth, linguistically, culturally, superficially.
One wonders how long man,
who has evolved through so many centuries of
pain and grief, anxiety and pleasure,
fear and conflict,
will take to live a different way of life.

J. Krishnamurti

(his words, my format)

This is a newspaper clipping from the Boston Globe from the late 1960's
It reads:

There is no mind more open or
heart more willing to love than
that of a young child.
But teach a child hatred and
prejudice and the mind begins to
close, the heart to harden. Until
finally, a bigot is born.
Sometimes what we don't teach
our children is more important
that what we do.

Learning to Live Together.
The Unfinished Task.