The Essence - a meandering

The Essence of our own Being is felt - not understood...
An animating life energy inherent in

the body system itself...

originating from within;
an innate aliveness
 that lives this body...

A mystery, The Mystery...

And also my felt experience...

And then of course the mind tries to put words
to it, to explain it, interpret it...  :)

Once I recognized it internally, it "awakened", or 
"came alive" in the body, although already there -
but made itself known , as my very own Being
 - embodied - in and through my
recognition of it.

Again, a mystery that I try with words to explain...

Although its movement is now deeply felt within,
nothing actually changes in my
human experience.

I did not become a different "person."
The "ego" didn't suddenly disappear.
Old habits of conditioning still remain -
and yet - there is this recognition of the Source
energy that mysteriously inhabits and animates this body.
Not conceptually known, but a felt movement of Being in 
the body - embodiment...

It's not even the feeling of "love" - as we know love...

It's a tangible felt sense of openness, of 
total acceptance of what is...
of whatever is unfolding in the life experience...

And what is "love" really but
the total acceptance of everything...

The Essence of Being...

_/\_

Namaste

Mystic Meandering
Jan 20, 2022

 

The "Art" of Recognition - Walker Percy

My theory is that the purpose of art is to transmit universal
truths of a sort, but of a particular sort, that in art, whether
it's poetry, fiction or painting, you are telling the reader or
listener or viewer something he already knows but which
he doesn't quite know that he knows, so that in the action of
communication he experiences a recognition, a feeling that
he has been there before, a shock of recognition.  And so,
what the artist does, or tries to do, is simply validate the
human experience and to tell people the deep human truths
which they already unconsciously know.

Walker Percy

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
"Sacred Shadow"
Shadows on a wall colored purple

 

The World Shines Forth - Joan Ruvinsky

The world shines forth as the embodiement
of the Divine Mother;
the eternal Feminine -

the Ultimate Reality
never separate from
its Source.

~

She births Herself as the many...

even in their individual forms,
embodying the One,
the One who condenses into the mind...

She confines Herself by the limits
of space and time...

Contracting Her powers, She
explores limitations -
becoming ordinary, isolated
individuals...

She knows fully Her own play of
contractions and realizes Herself
as these.  Even by her descent into
contraction She recognizes
the Universe as Her own very Self.
Blossoming forth from her own Heart,
the play of the One and the many...

~

Everything becomes potentially
a doorway to the Infinite
since it is simply a coagulation
[contraction] of this Infinity.

Joan Ruvinsky

Center section is excerpts from the
Pratyabhijnahrdayam - an ancient Hindu
text from the Kashmir Shaivism tradition
meaning - The Recognition of our own Heart
(aka - The Recognition of the Self)

From the Joan Ruvinsky interpretive version,
in her book: The Recognition of Our Own Heart

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Holy Darkness...

 The collective shadow has come to roost
and everything
is
collapsing

~

~
~
~

The tides and ripples of entropy will continue
until all is returned to Source again ~

the Primordial State:
Pure Life Energy...

Entropy is not necessarily a "bad" thing.
It is the way of existence.
It is a "telescoping" of everything that is,
back to its original Source/State;
a reclaiming of all that has manifested in form
into its natural state;
the conceptual structures, the constructs,
so that only
the Eternal Essence
remains...

Do not be alarmed by the seeming destruction
of what you have believed to be real.
All must be released, shed - like dross.
In this there is a sense of chaos, destruction, loss, and death;
the crucible effect;
a state of alchemy,
the refinement of all things in existence
to their Original Nature.

Nothing is "lost" in the process.

Bring your awareness to the place of Stillness within.
Don't try to create order in the chaos.
"Order" is found in the Stillness,
in returning to deep Stillness of Being. 

The healing of mankind
is in the recognition of our Eternal Essence -
our Infinite Beingness,
Our Divine Heart...

Entropy is the crucible of that healing...

It is an invitation
to expand our view of reality,
embrace the fullness of reality as it is,
and return to the awareness of
our Eternal Source...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
written between
2004 and 2006

~

Personal Note: Even with this "knowing"
that was "given" to me so many years ago, how can I not be
emotionally touched by the current mass casualties of ignorance
and violence - the suffering and death and political upheaval
in my own country - that has led us to this Holy Darkness where
our personal and collective illusions and delusions are collapsing -
gratefully. Someone I listened to recently called it the
Global Dark Night of the Soul...

"Knowing" a deeper truth, however, does not mean one doesn't feel the
impact of what is happening, or deny its reality.

_/\_
MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

A Journey of Liberation...

 This meandering is really a journey of liberation...

Recognizing one's "Indigenous" Nature.
Not Native American Spirituality, but the felt sense of
your Fundamental Nature...

liberating...

Recognizing "The Mystery" in disguise - playing you!
Revealing Itself through the "play" of you - the Joy of you!
liberating...

Moving beyond the "mechanics of living" to Indigenous-wisdom,
Natural Wisdom; living more spontaneously and intuitively; 
using direct, felt experience as guide...

liberating...

Recognizing more and more that we are "The Mystery" in form,
which expresses Itself through our self - as our self...
liberating...

Recognizing that "The Mystery" is our Fundamental Nature,
covered over by years of religious/psychological/emotional
conditioning and traumas - giving us an identity - which we
believe to be who we are - but aren't...
liberating...

Realizing it is the beliefs about the "self" that must dissolve,
not the self/ego/personality.  The personality then shines
with the Light of the Fundamental Nature.
This recognition is what liberates...

Not the pursuit of "enlightenment", of becoming
"enlightened", but recognizing the Inherent, liberated Being
that we are...

liberating...

Liberation is not the "me/self" that is liberated.  It's "The Mystery"
within that is liberated - in our recognition of it.
It's the Infinite within us, that which animates us, that is liberated.
It all gets liberated in the recognition of Itself in us, as us.

the mystery is - that we are "The Mystery."

Liberated!

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 31, 2020

_/\_

"The Mystery" in me bows to "The Mystery" in you!

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Light through an old cutting board :)

Thrive - Leo Hartong

What environment do you thrive in?
Plants need different conditions to thrive in
and when you try to grow it in a different environment -
it can't thrive.

It's not about preferences,
or about "accepting life as it is" -
but knowing what you need for your spirit to thrive.

It is about the recognition of what it truly is
that lives, thinks, sees and breathes
through and as you...
The Essence of your Being
that appears as you.

Leo Hartong
Excerpt from: From Self to Self

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Seeing" MySelf...

I recently saw a video of my present self...
These were the "reflections" that came...

~

Seeing myself I immediately felt compassion and empathy for "her";
for the way she walked, the way she held herself, and how she had
aged, since the last time I saw "her", as if it wasn't me, but a dear
friend that I had known for a long, long time, and knew all that she
had been through...  There was a recognition of something in "her"
that I could not name at that moment...

Days later the "recognition" began to unwind itself.
I was awestruck that I could see myself as not myself, as if I were
someone else seeing "her", as if the true Presence at the Core of my
Being was seeing me/her...

I internally gasped...

There was a recognition of myself as that Presence...

It was the recognition that it was the Core Being that was
recognizing ItSelf as "me."

It was a spontaneous moment of truly "seeing" that which inhabits
and animates this "me"...

~

There was an awareness of myself being like an echo of that Inner
Being which was seeing; seeing an image of ItSelf as "me" -
as if 2, but which is really only an echo of ItSelf.

As the days passed beyond these initial "recognitions" there was
yet another recognition:

I am that which Sees from the Core of my Being.
And my Core Being sees "me" as ItSelf,
not "me" as I know myself to be through the mind.
The self that we think we are is only an echo of our
Eternal Beingness, or Essence...

~

I was seeing through the eyes of mySelf (the Eternal Being)
within myself, seeing/recognizing ItSelf within myself - as myself.

Instead of seeing myself through the eyes of my mind,
I was seeing myself through the eyes of the Eternal Being
that abides at the Core of my Being - here.

This changed the perception...

Seeing "her" from Beingness ItSelf,
seeing ItSelf in myself...

~

"She" (Source/Presence/Eternal Being) resides in us,
recognizes HerSelf in us as us.
The Eternal Being is the one Seeing,
without the mind's conditioning...

Namaste 

_/\_

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Meanderings
June 2020

~

Mandala Art - Mystic Meandering
"Eternal Echoes"

2013