Twilight...

There is a seamless "edge" when twilight comes...
And a twinge of melancholy when the
light wanes into twilight,
the edge of the veil;
the threshold between
light and dark...

A knowing that this life
is waning into twilight too,
from one state into another,
forever re-forming Itself...

Tree branches wave in the wind
in homage to the light
dimming in the West...

Owls hoo - calling the night
into existence;
prophets of twilight
standing at the edge
where ending meets beginning
and beginning, ending...

Twilight
the in-between
as Life cycles through time,
through light and dark,
through living
and dying.

At twilight we stand at the edge of time,
and timelessness beyond time...
peering through
for a glimpse
of the Infinite Light
that knows no dimming
and no night;
only Its own Eternal Radiance
of 
Being...

This Light we are...

Mystic Meandering
Dec. 21, 2012

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
January 6, 2012

 

Death - J Krishnamurti

.....can you look at death without the image of death?
As long as the image exists from which springs thought,
thought must always create fear.  Then you either rationalize
your fear of death and build a resistance against the inevitable
or you invent innumerable beliefs to protect you from the fear
of death.  Hence there is a gap between you and the thing of
which you are afraid.  In this time-space interval there must be
conflict which is fear and anxiety...

Thought, which breeds fear of death says, 'Let's postpone it, let's
avoid it, keep it as far away as possible, let's not think about it' -
but you are thinking about it.  When you say, 'I won't think about
it', you have already thought out how to avoid it. You are frightened
of death because you have postponed it.

We have separated living from dying, and the interval between the
living and dying is fear.  The interval, that time, is created by fear.
Living is our daily torture, daily insult, sorrow and confusion, with
occasional opening of a window over enchanted seas.  That is 
what we call living, and we are afraid to die,  which is to end this
misery. We would rather cling to the known than face the unknown
- the known being our house, our furniture, our family, our
character, our work, our knowledge, our fame, our loneliness, our
gods - that little thing that moves around incessantly within itself
with its own limited pattern of embittered existence.

We think that living is always in the present and that dying is
something that awaits us at a distant time.  But we have never
questioned whether this battle of everyday life is living at all.
We want to know the truth about reincarnation, we want proof
of the survival of the soul, we listen to the assertion of clairvoyants
and to the conclusions of physical research, but we never ask, never,
how to live - to live with delight, with enchantment, with beauty
every day.

We have accepted life as it is with all its agony and despair and
have got used to it, and think of death as something to be carefully
avoided.  But death is extraordinarily like the life we know how to
live.  You cannot live without dying.  You cannot live if you
don't die psychologically every minute.  This is not an intellectual
paradox.  To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new
loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise
you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what
love is or what freedom is.

Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it
means to live.  We don't know how to live, therefore we don't 
know how to die.  As long as we are frightened of life we shall be
frightened of death.  The man who is not frightened of life is not
frightened of being completely insecure for he understands that
inwardly, psychologically, there is no security.  When there is no
security there is an endless movement and then life and death are
the same.  The man who lives without conflict, who lives with
beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to
die.

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Freedom from the Known

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

I learn by going where I have to go - Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling.  What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady.  I should know.
What falls away is always.  And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

Original title - "The Waking"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Keep Turning the Page...

Life is always as it is:
the tragedy, the heartbreak,
illness and death...
Joy and sorrow,
the politics, and the 
games that they play - oye...

I am like an old house now,
not yet abandoned
by its inhabitant,
but creaking and
falling apart...

Yet, I'm not ready to
pack up my life and
move out...
But I grieve the loss
of health and energy,
motivation and strength,
dexterity and nimbleness,
mental acuity, and emotional
bandwidth - and -
a sense of "Aliveness."
Fatigued by constant
distractions on the superficial surface
of life, creating chaos and agitation
that weigh heavy on my heart...

And so I pause
at the Inner Gate,
entrusting myself to,
and communing with the
deep Inner Silence of Being,
breathing me,
until my time here is up,
while life keeps turning its
pages, going from one chapter
to the next...

I bow to Grace...

Mystic Meandering

Aug 18, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Horizon of Life - Halifax & Willis

Our priorities shift as we see the horizon of life that is the
threshold of death...

Joan Halifax
Zen Buddhist
Director of Upaya Center
Author of Being with Dying

~

At the end of life or if we become sick, [or in the aging process]
we begin to let go of the roles that previously offered significance,
status and definition; the losses of position, responsibilities,
self-image, etc.  We become informed by internal rather than external
 concerns.  How we work with these losses and still find meaning
 will shape and inform how we close our lives...

Claire B. Willis LICSW

From - Lasting Words

~

I interviewed a woman who was terminally ill.

'So', I tried delicately to ask, 'What is it like to wake up every
morning and know that you are dying?

'Well', she responded, 'What is it like to wake up every morning
and pretend that you are not?'"

-unknown

 

Innately...

 Everything lives according to
its Innate Rhythm:
The flowers know when to bloom -
innately...

The leaves leaf out of the trees -
innately...

die and go dormant
innately...

So too our own body lives and dies
in sacred cycles of opening, unfolding, and
falling apart - innately; a lifespan...
Reorganizing its energy in different ways -
innately...

And "we", we continue our innate pull to Wholeness.

Dying is in the life of everything...

The Grand Mystery of Life living ItSelf...

...innately.

Mystic Meandering

Summer Solstice 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering