Homecoming - Mirabai Starr

I don't know about you, but I have grown weary of the 
self-improvement project.  The endless quest to uncover
and slay the host of inner demons who have been messing up
my plans for enlightenment, which I have imagined as some
pure land of perfect equanimity in which I hover over my
worldly concerns like a cartoon yogi, forever free from
narcissism and other embarrassing inclinations, reliably
dispensing compassion to the vulnerable, wisdom to the
ignorant, and a kind of sexy psychic luminescence to
anyone who comes into proximity with my purified and
 perfect (no)self.

Matt Licata's compassionate book, A Healing Space...affirms
that each of us has access to 'the outrageous intelligence and
bravery of the broken human heart' and the heart's ability to
return home.

This homecoming, as Matt shows us, is probably not what we
thought it would be when we signed up for the enlightenment
track.  We have been conditioned by our spiritual communities -
whether traditional religious institutions or alternative practice
spaces - to conquer certain feeling states in favor of some 
idealized realm where we are unmoved by these "lower
vibrations"...  Instead, he encourages us to share the truth of
our shattering so that we can become our own alchemists -
and learn to love reality however it is appearing in this
moment.

The ancient alchemists did not view the "base material" - as 
Matt calls our difficulties, our thoughts, our darker feelings
and emotions - to be transcended, but as 'the substance of the
gods' - Sacred, Beautiful and Loveable...  Matt's invitation is
to enter and inhabit those abandoned parts of ourselves and
our unlived lives as holy ground.

It's a revolutionary approach.  Rather than muscle our way
through spiritual disciplines, and therapeutic interventions,
we fall in love with our brokenness and welcome all the
orphaned parts of ourselves home.

Mirabai Starr
from the Forward to
A Healing Space:Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

Matt Licata, PhD

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Spiritual Junkie - Echo of the Absolute & Rumi

 How many retreats do we need to attend, and
How many healing ceremonies does it take, and
How many awakenings do we have to go through,
To understand their message?

So long as trust in the Universe is lacking,
we keep dialing God's number like fools.
And as the medicine becomes our diet,
We won't dare to hang up the phone.

But has our head ever disappeared,
As we lost sight of it?
Do we need to keep repeating our names,
To know what we are called?

A spiritual junkie lives from rush to rush,
And neglects many everyday concerns,
Not knowing that that way,
He hurries right past most gems of life.

He wants the highs without the lows,
But nothing exists independent of its opposite.
By continuously seeking spiritual bliss,
He walks the path of the eternal sucker.

The Truth is never hidden from anybody.
The sacred time and space is right here now.
Seek no further, get on with life.
In the love, in the light, in the glory and in the darkness.

Spiritual Junkie
at - Truthless Truth

with thanks to No Mind's Land
for post and photo

~

Fool's gold exists because there is real Gold.  If it were
not for fool's gold, you would not know the real gold
when you encounter it...

Rumi

~

The Real Gold is within...

MM

...Lalla - Ivan Granger - Rupert Spira

I have traveled a long way seeking God
but when I finally gave up and turned back
there He [She] was within me!

Lalla
14th Century Mystic
of the Kashmir Shaivism tradition

For so many mystics it is this way.  After intense searching
without "success",  what can be done but give up or collapse?
Yet a special thing happens at that very moment.  We drop
our expectations, our hopes, our projections about this
external thing called "God" [Self/Enlightenment].  For the
first time we have truly let go of the story we've been telling
ourselves about what "God" is...  It is only then that the
scales fall way from our eyes.

We stop straining to look, and finally see.
And we see the Eternal already here, within.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

After the current of seeking gives up and sinks back down
into the depths of the Ocean of which it is itself a
modulation, it finds the peace for which it was in search...

Rupert Spira

~

Photo - Colored in Mandala
digitally blurred
Mystic Meandering

~

Nothing is more important in these polarizing, unsettled
 times than directly experiencing the Presence of our
Eternal Being within, and knowing that we *are*
that...  That's what will get us through... 
I endeavor to *feel* this Presence daily...
Try to find a quiet space to be in each day
and enter the Quietness within
and just breathe

Namaste

_/\_

To Meditate or not to Meditate - Amoda Maa

To meditate... or not to meditate?

Is a dedicated mediation practice the only road to
"enlightenment"... or is the direct rout of recognizing
"what is already free" a better way?  Should all effort be
put into achieving a "higher state of consciousness?... or is
it best to simply let go of any effort to do anything at all?

If I discipline myself to meditate, should I sit (preferably
cross-legged) once a day... or is it twice or maybe three times?
And should I watch my breath... or is it my thoughts, or my
sensations?  Maybe I should chant in Sanskrit... or Hindi or
Japanese?  Maybe I should repeat the sacred OM from my heart...
or is my belly a better place?  Maybe I should send loving
thoughts in every out-breath... or visualize golden light from
my third eye?  Maybe I should try to focus on the gaps between
thoughts... or maybe I should just try to stop thinking all together?

And if I make no effort, how do I "awaken"?  Isn't there something
I need to do?  How do I transcend thinking?  How do I shift into an
"awakened state?"  Maybe if I read enough books or listen to enough
spiritual teachers, I will "get it"?

To meditate... or not to meditate?  The question is a conundrum
to the mind that seeks satisfaction.  The mind seeks a definitive
answer, as if this would bring an end to mind's unease.  The
personhood seeks certainty, as if the certainty of "spiritual
progress" would bestow a badge of worthiness or specialness.

But the question of meditation cannot be answered by the mind.
It can only be realized when Silence has become the bedrock of
your life.  This Silence is not about closing the doors, turning off
the phone and lighting candles.  Nor is it to do with trying to get
rid of your thoughts [or your ego, or the notion of I/me]...
or imagining the perfect sanctuary of peace.

This Silence happens when you stop giving attention to the
narratives that wrap themselves around your experience of reality.

This Silence happens when you turn towards tenderness every time
an unwanted feeling enters your inner landscape.  This Silence
happens when you have surrendered all resistance to what is.
This Silence happens when you are no longer the center of your
universe, when you have become without a center and [you realize
that] the whole universe is in you.  Without resistance, there is
no inner conflict, no inner division, no outside and no inside, no
barrier and no boundary.

When you know your true nature as Silence, there is no need to
do meditation... [because] you ARE meditation.  True meditation
is a state of Being.  It is your natural open state, there is nothing to
move away from and nothing to move towards.  You are simply
and irrevocably here.  There is no longer a question... because
in Silence all questions fall away.

So, it is not about whether you meditate or not.  It's about whether
you can fall into the Silence that is always here prior to your
ideas of what meditation is, or what it can give you, or where
it can take you.  Whether you sit in deep stillness or whether you
are doing something in this world, [the requirements of daily living]
 this Silence is always here... it is in you as Being-ness [your inner
Beingness]. Beingness does not need to do meditation... 
It IS meditation...

I am often asked whether I meditate or not... and I sort of shake my
head, unable to give a definitive answer.  Did I used to do meditation?
Yes.  Until meditation swallowed me up and all that was left was
Silence.  Now the whole of life is meditation, without doing a practice,
without trying to get anywhere, without trying to change anything.
Now... I AM meditation.

So perhaps it is wise to ask a different question...  how can I meet
the world [live my daily life] as Silence?  Perhaps the question
will turn the mind around from its horizontal searching into the
verticality of Being that is always here.  And then you discover
what true meditation is...

Amoda Maa

with gratitude to Michel at No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The sack of insignificant things...

I was carrying items of no significance in a sack,
roaming through a house with many different rooms,
looking for something I couldn't identify...

I was having trouble seeing, kept squinting, kept
trying to open my eyes more and more to the "Truth",
but everything remained a blur...

Unable to see clearly, unable to focus,
I just looked down into my sack of insignificant things,
 and saw there ideas and beliefs I didn't need,
but had held onto - on many levels.

Bewildered, I wondered why I continued to carry
the sack of insignificant things... and kept wandering
through the house.

Room to room, belief to belief,
looking for the "answers"
that I thought I lacked...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 15, 2019

~

This came from a dream I had recently...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Pathless Path - reloaded...

This post was originally written in 2011
but is still timely for me...

I find the older I get the more I want to experience Truth directly,

and leave the many trodden "spiritual paths" that I've been on all my
life behind.  Even as a child I wanted to know "God" - a child's
understanding of God.  Then my search evolved and expanded to
include finding "myself" - whoever that was :), the Truth, Wisdom,
peace of mind, and last, but not least, the search for "Enlightenment."
They are all the same"path" under different disguises.  And now,
through all these many paths, I am feeling the need to settle, deepen,
and re-discover a sense of inner Truth; not by following a particular
external path - but by intuitively listening to the voice of my Heart;
experiencing Inner Beingness directly, through spending time in
Silence (which I avoid so easily).  Now if Life would only cooperate
and provide a less chaotic, disruptive, distracted life!  Just kidding -
maybe...  :)

 Being on a "spiritual path" implies that one is going somewhere,
seeking "Some - *thing*" at the end of the journey - like
retirement after a life of working; or a magical pot of gold at the end
of the mythical rainbow; or even the mystical "Holy Grail."  Or maybe
one is even seeking an end to something, like suffering, pain,
ignorance, their humanness, or the end of seeking.  But what if there
was no need for "a path",, no need for seeking the illusive big
"Some-thing" that spiritual seekers seek?  I find myself in this place
of questioning - again...  I have been down the "seeking road" -
many times.

The path of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening"/"Self-Realization",
particularly the path of what is known as Advaita or "Non-Duality",
has lost its luster, its pull, its certainty for me - much like the other
paths I have taken throughout my life.  It's just another construct.
  And I'd rather not describe Truth by a negative - with no-me, no-self,
 no other, no world - as Truth is all inclusive - including duality,
 me, self, other, world.

Even if one follows "a path" (which can be any path) there is no
guarantee that we will discover what we are looking for, and life will
not suddenly become easy or flowing with bliss.   We won't necessarily
lose our personality, with its quirks, our conditioning, or neuroses. 
Our thoughts will not stop, neither will our surface struggles, or
 our pain,  or our stories.  Walking "a path" doesn't even guarantee
 that we will  actually see life differently from either the mountain top,
 or nose to the ground;  or suddenly find our "purpose" -
as if there's only one. But no one tells us  this about "the path."
 It has to be a Self-discovery - for ourselves -  even if we have a
"Teacher" or follow a "Teaching"  to point the way.

Years of seeking, realization, recognition, and then forgetting, and then
remembering, and then forgetting again - brought me to the realization
that discovering (or rediscovering) this Being Self/Truth that we are,
 is through awareness of and deep intimacy with The Silence within;
through continually coming back to the Heart of Being - the space of
Silent, Still, innate Wisdom - which of course is wherever we are at the
moment, not off in the distance somewhere.  It's not a place. 
"The path" doesn't go anywhere.  There is no reward at the end. 
It's an inner pathless path...  And that's my "path" - rediscovering
 this inner Silent,  Aware Wisdom.  It's an inner pathless path
 of remembering; remembering the underlying Rhythm of
 Life ItSelf -

Ommmmmm...

"A mystic is content with nothing less than
to touch the Truth in its most universal purity"

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest in peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then
return to source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature....

Returning is the motion of the Tao.

Lao Tzu

~~

Photo - taken by my father
1952/53

Wholeness - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

You search to find what the heart has always known, that there
are no boundaries to love.  Finding this leaves us on the edge
of our own expectations unaware of the simplicity of the
unknown.  For so long we have searched hoping, expecting
to find something - a realization that was longed for.  Always
you thought there was something to seek, a journey to make.
Now you stand on the precipice looking over the horizon of
your self.

Here there is no seeking, no looking, nothing to reach for, no
path to follow.  But within there is an answer, not in form, but
in substance.  There is a bigger wholeness hidden, waiting,
watching from behind our thoughts.

The wholeness has an unexpected purpose.....from across time
and beyond space.  There is another presence, another pattern,
not hidden, but unrevealed.  There is a tender sense of Silence.
In the moment of our own silence we are welcomed.  We need
to allow the Presence to become present, not in defined
moments, but in a flow.  The river is here.  The Silence,
unbidden, is always present; nothing is defined or captured.
This world is infused with this "other" - steeped in timelessness.

In that Isness, everything is included.  You, The Beloved,
the object of your prayer, and the will to unfold the Eternal
into the present, to cross the borders of time and space, and
saturate the now with Eternity.

Yet there is no "other."
You waited for someone to come, always you waited;
always waiting at the bus stop for the bus that never comes,
because there is nowhere to go.  You are fortunate to
disbelieve everything.

The world spins around a place of Silence.
You need to enter that Silence, and wait in the
Eternal Presence, for The Eternal that is already here,

amused with our seeking, with our thinking God is "other."

We only struggle with our self...

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic

Take from: Fragments of a Love Story

~

Photo - glass ball with bubbles

What is Seeking? - Eric Baret

Seeking is an expression of truth, it's not a Way.
All the yoga practices are an expression of truth.
Yoga does not bring [us] to truth but truth expresses itself
through yoga.  Sadhana [spiritual practice] is an expression.
It is because you fore-feel Silence that your life becomes sadhana.
But to do sadhana, to reach Silence is the wrong way of thinking.
The very fact that you look for something is a proof you already feel it.
The very fact that you asked the question proves you know the answer
The answer is before the question.  You only ask a question because
you fore-feel the answer, or else you cannot ask the question.
So when you look for God, this looking comes from God directly.
It's [seeking] just an expression.  But the looking does not bring you to
 what you look for.  What you look for is behind you...
...you are not the finder of anything - the truth is in back of us,
not in front of us.  That's why it can never be reached, it can never
be understood...

Only listen towards Life itself...  Open yourself to what is really here...
Life is experienced in the body, viscerally, palpably, as vibration,
as energy...  The mind only functions with words...  But the thoughts
that come from the deep Silence, with words that come out from the
Depths, are also expressions of Life...
They come from the Silence to bring you back to Silence...

Open to experiencing without words...

Listen with your whole being...


Excerpted from a published interview with Eric Baret 2014
Eric Baret is a teacher of the Tantric Tradition

via: No Mind's Land

~

And so I dove Within,
Back... behind... before, ever deeper,
seeking the experience of Pure Being,
Before I knew anything of "myself."

Chuck Surface

Excerpt from: "Impossibly"

In The Garden of The Beloved

Facebook

When Seeking Ends - Dorothy Hunt & Papaji

I can no longer read the Teachings
or visit those awakened on the path
who sit amidst flowers and incense
and eager seekers waiting for morsels
of Enlightenment food.

I can no longer sit on my black cushion
waiting for the moment to appear
when the big bang will occur
and blow this world of work and life
into the heavens of bliss.

I can no longer search for what is missing
nor can I say that I have found it.
I listen to the furnace blowing at dawn
and watch a feather dance before its music.
I work and eat and sleep and simply live my life.

I no longer wonder if I should dye my hair
or give up eating meat
or lose ten pounds before summer.
If I do, I do, and if I don't, I don't,
and who is there to care?

The sound of the garbage truck
chewing up the remains of my week
offers just as much stimulation to my soul
as a church bell or the song bird's melody
lilting from the distant hill.

My candles of devotion sit unlit
upon the altar to the gods,
and the bell of mindfulness unrung
upon its hand-sewn cushion,
the incense resting in a drawer.

What has become of the one
who searched and chanted and read and prayed
and hoped for enlightenment?
She still laughs with her family,
sips champagne with friends, and sings in the shower.

What is life when the seeking ends?
Just what it is,
nothing more or less...

- ordinary -

not wishing to be more or less,
content to simply be...

Dorothy Hunt

Buddhist teacher, therapist and poet

~

There is simply the seeing of This as it is; just what is.
What is, is eternal movement that is eternally still.
What is, is never born and never dies.
This has no form and is every form.
I am This.  And you are This.
There is nothing special in This,
because everything is This.
When the sense of being a "me" fades
or is seen through,
then the
extraordinary ordinariness of This
can be seen...

Papaji
East Indian Sage

The Pathless Path Unfolds Endlessly...

I know I posted a version of this earlier this year, but it was timely for me to post it again - with a few changes - to remind myself - as I find myself at another turning of the page to new awareness..  The original post was written in 2011... "The path" continues to unfold...  Somehow I just couldn't get this into a poem :)

As I move though my elder years the more I just want to rest in the Ineffable Space of Being, leaving the many trodden "spiritual paths" that I've been on all my life behind - actually - I already have.  I've been on a pathless path for many years now.

As a child I had an innocent longing to "know God" - directly; a child's understanding of a religious "God" figure - and pursued that longing through many religions and "spiritual paths" over many years.  The path evolved into the search for "Awakening" and "Enlightenment."  They are all the same "path" really, Longing for what is Ineffable in different disguises.  After all these many paths, I recently stopped pursuing; not because I had finally "found" anything - but because I realized The Ineffable is not a "thing" to be "found."  It only and always just IS - Everywhere - simultaneously.  One only needs to turn within and intuitively listen to and experience the movement of The Ineffable within - the inherent Inner Being - that pure space of Love that knows no limit or condition...

Being on a "spiritual path" implies that one is going somewhere, seeking some *thing* at the end of the journey - like retirement after a life of working, or the magical pot of gold at the end of the mythical rainbow, or even the mystical "Holy Grail."  Or maybe one is even seeking an end to something, like suffering, pain, spiritual ignorance, their humanness, or the end of seeking itself.  But what if there was no need for seeking the illusive big "Some-thing" that spiritual seekers seek?  I know, I have been down the "seeking road" - many times.

"Spirituality" and the pursuit of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening" has lost its luster, its pull, its certainty and security - much like the other paths I have taken throughout life.  They are just constructs.  And I found they did not take me where my Heart longed to go...  And - I finally noticed that the energy of "pursuit" has a quality of *trying* - trying to get some *thing*, or somewhere - to arrive; striving and struggling to find; grasping after an illusive thing that I called "Enlightenment", "Awakening", (or God).  Pursuing became a burden of *trying* to find - like a game of hide and seek.

Dropping the *pursuit* of all *ideas* of "spirituality" allows me to just rest. It relieved the burden of feeling *responsible* for finding some *thing* - forever seeking; as if it were up to me.  Instead, remaining open to the Ineffable in the every-day-ness of life allows *The Mystery* to reveal ItSelf - like a treasure that has always been there, but suddenly reveals its brilliance when we aren't *trying* to *see* it.  But, I often get caught in the pursuit again, in very subtle ways.  Wanting to really Know with certainty what cannot be known with certainty - because it is a mystery.

Years of seeking and pursuing brought me to the realization that as we "evolve" the "path" dissolves.  What we *think* we "know about The Ineffable, God, Life, "spirituality", changes, and we find ourselves in a place of not needing to seek, not needing to "know" anything about The Ineffable, but only wanting to Rest in the Ineffable; to experience that which can't truly be "known" with the mind - but through a more intimate, intuitive "knowing" with the whole of our being.  Discovering (or rediscovering) the Ineffable within ourselves, through an awareness of and deep intimacy with The Mystery, through continually coming back to the timeless space of Silent Awareness of what is always within - the space of The Ineffable Mystery of Being - and resting there...

In Solitude - listening within, in times of Meditative Silence - listening within the space of Pure Awareness, and even listening to our deepest wounds, surrenders us and opens the door to experiencing The Mystery, of which there is no end...  It is not a "place."  The "spiritual path" doesn't go anywhere.  It doesn't end, but endlessly unfolds, and deepens, and therefore continues as an inner pathless path of openness, rest and direct experience; experiencing the *feeling* of the Ineffable, the felt sense of the underlying Mystery of Existence - the Breath within the breath - the underlying Rhythm of Life - however that manifests for each of us - until we are "reabsorbed"/dissolved into the timeless, formless Mystery again, from which we came, at the death of our form...

"...all the activity (seeking) eventually leads us to a giving up.
And in this surrender what is revealed is seen to be what has always been here
- before the searching began...
The task turns out to be ceding to stillness...
Falling back and resting.
Amidst life itself we find our self sinking back into what is underneath the surface,
recognizing our true fundamental nature..."

Joan Ruvinsky
Pathless Yoga

Joan was reabsorbed into the
Ineffable Mystery
March 21, 2016

~*~

Instead of building a road to somewhere...
the life of spirit requires us to open doors
that wait before us and within us;
opening doors into the life we already have -
inhabiting the life we are given -
facing the very pulse of life that waits like a
kind mother at the edge of our exhaustion.

Mark Nepo

True Center - Ivan Granger

Sages of all lands keep reminding us that the spiritual journey
is a journey of awareness, and specifically Self-awareness.
It is not a journey of acquisition.
Or intellect.
Or adherence to rules.

It is not a matter of how many books we're read.
Or how many times we've read them.
The only question of any value is whether we've yet
recognized their truths... within ourselves.

It is not a matter of how often we pray.
Or how perfectly we enunciate each prescribed word.
The question is, have we discovered how true prayer
wells up within us of its own accord.

We may not approach the spiritual path as a matter of
superficial actions or brittle creeds,
but we also can become swept up in endless new ideas,
new flashes of insight, new pathways, new teachers.
This can lead to a culture of lifelong seeking that becomes
our comfort zone;
a culture that takes on the form of religion (or spirituality)
without actually discovering the true center...
What we seek is found only and always
in the Heart of the heart...

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

(Ivan's words, my format)

~

Photo - Mandala Art digitally altered