Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī ~ Why complain?

 

 

 Why complain about life
If you are looking for good fish
And have followed some idiot
Into the middle of the copper market?

Why go crazy
If you are looking for fine silk
And you keep rubbing your hands
Against burlap and hemp sacks?

If your heart really needs to touch
A face that is filled with abundance
Then why didn’t you come
To this old man sooner?

For my cheek is
The universe’s cloister
And if you can make your prayers
Sweet enough tonight

Then Hafiz will lean over
And offer you all the warmth in my body
In case God is busy
Doing something else somewhere.

Why complain if you are looking
To quench your spirit’s longing
And have followed a rat into a desert.

If your soul really needs to touch a face
That is always filled with compassion
And tenderness then why,

Why my dear
Did you not come
to your friend Hafiz sooner?

 

 

Bruce Lee ~ Oneness of all Life

 

49 years ago today, Bruce Lee dropped his body (at the age of 32). To pay tribute to him on this anniversary, here’s a collection of some of his deepest quotes...

 

“I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of an experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I or can exist.”

"When we suddenly awake to the realization that there is no barrier, and never has been, one realizes that one is all things – mountains, rivers, grasses, trees, sun, moon, stars, universe are all oneself. There is no longer a division or barrier between myself and others, no longer any feeling of alienation or fear. There is nothing apart from oneself and therefore nothing to fear. Realizing this results in true compassion. Other people and things are not seen as apart from oneself but, on the contrary, as one's own body."

“The difference between knowledge and enlightenment is that in the former a contrast exists between the knower and the known, whereas in the latter, there is no such contrast.”

“As long as we separate this oneness into two, we won’t achieve realization.”

“The oneness of all life is a truth that can be fully realized only when false notions of a separate self, whose destiny can be considered apart from the whole, are forever annihilated.”

"The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning, but I did not take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it. Now I see that I will never find the light unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, consuming myself."

“Sorrows are our best educator. A man can see further through a tear than a telescope.”

"Don't think. Feel. It is like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all of the heavenly glory."

"Life is wide, limitless. There is no border, no frontier. The more we understand, the greater and deeper will be our contact with all that is around us."

“Zen is both something we are, our true nature expressing itself moment by moment, and something we do, a disciplined practice through which we can realize the joy of being. So, what is Zen? Stop trying to get an intellectual lock on something that is vast and boundless, far more than the rational mind can grasp. Just breathe in with full awareness.”

“To meditate means to realize the imperturbability of one’s original nature. Meditation means to be free from all phenomena, and calmness means to be internally unperturbed. There will be calmness, tranquility, when one is free from external objects and is not perturbed.”

"Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless - like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put it into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

 

Thanks to Sanjeev Goel

Rebecca Elson ~ Antidotes to Fear of Death

 

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
-

Rebecca Elson (1960-1999) poet & astronomer, from 'A Responsibility to Awe.'

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Elson

 Thanks to Miriam Louisa Simons

Eric Baret ~ A tragic farce

 

There's no ego. This is one image like another. The suffering, the cataclysm, it's the beauty that you're looking for, it's joy that you're seeking. This is what can happen from the deepest part and it is what we constantly refuse to do because it cramps our image of ourselves, that we should be free from this, that we should no longer be like this. So we refuse all this constant aid, which is the only way to deeply liberate ourselves.

It's a bit like a tragic farce: we are constantly saying no to what can show us our limitations, to live in a hypothetical of wisdom, of freedom. So, above all, we don't want to see ourselves in fear, in uncertainty, especially not realizing that we know nothing, that we can't do anything. So we are constantly updating these opportunities to live in a spiritual image, to meditate, to become this and that, to be free from this and that. But one day we realize the mechanism; then change happens. We no longer seek to become anything, to avoid anything.
This is the end of all spiritual teaching, this is the beginning of spiritual life. 

Can't have it both ways

 

 

 

 https://www.bhairava.ws/

 

Monica Dayakar ~ The Story...

 

Bird Song

The Story...

Head in the Tiger's jaw...
And then the rooting out... the ripping apart started... slowly over the next few years... all I can say about that phase, is, "Fierce Grace"...
The "rooting" out, the deconstruction of unconscious beliefs and conditioned patterns...
Of all that I thought that I was, or am... ripped to shreds...
It was my own love that tore me apart...
My head was clenched in the Tiger's jaws...
And it was my own love, that brought me back...
A grueling and gut-wrenching phase...
Certainly not a walk in the park...
I am aware that what seems like unbearable, agonizing and excruciatingly painful, is none the less, benevolent energy, coursing through me.
The deep caverns of my heart, that have protectively and lovingly, held together, an indiscernible quantum soup, has burst wide open.
No place to hide...
All the corners, turned, inside-out...
The knots... { hahaha... the Nots } were beginning to untie themselves...
I, was coming "undone" !!
Fierce Grace...
 I sat yesterday, engulfed in a dark cloud of past patterns.
Helpless in my reaction, powerless in my involvement with feelings and emotions that were being dredged up...
Self and the sense of volition, are two sides of the same coin...
Aware enough though, not to go into blame of the external trigger...
{ understanding that the external, was in essence an unclaimed part of
myself }
I sat quietly, through the knife being turned in my gut, my whole body being wracked from top to toe, inside out.
 And in the midst of it all, it came me that "this was grace, this was grace".
"Fierce grace", as Ram Das put it.
 And in this state, I picked myself up, and went for a walk... literally dragging my butt. My limbs ached, my heart palpitated.
Breathless, I returned... had a few sips of water and sat down.
Within a minute or two... the dark cloud lifted...
Leaving in it's wake an empty space...
As if nothing had happened!!
Cracking Open...
It just kept unfolding... post 'awakening', though I have seen a lot of people seem to feel they are 'done', { and I have to confess, that I did, too! } after the stage of experiencing universal consciousness... "the I am nothing, yet I am everything".
 It is a blissful state, no doubt, and there is resting in it, for as long as it's needed. {and I call it a resting, NOT a hiding out.}
 Each step being complete in itself, tends to give one the feeling, that, that's all... it's over.
 In a way it is, too.
For that step, at that time.
 Post this phase, or actually during this phase, I was fortunate to be internally guided by my guru/inner knowing/ intuition, to go on a diet of uncooked food for 40 days.
I had no clue why, I just followed the inner dictates.
 And it seems, now that I listen to so many experiences, others have gone through, that many people experience depression, at not only this stage {the depletion caused in the body, by the amount of energy that is activated to burn up those old circuitry, in the brain }, but also when... a phase in which the substratum of the subconscious is opening up and all that the psyche tried so hard to hide is boiling up to the surface, the same phase that I referred to in an earlier post " Fierce Grace "
 Much as it seems the trend to discard the mind and body as "illusion," and to discard the physiological changes that accompany every step, yet one needs to extend some TLC to them as the whole is impacted by this process.
The self... even though seen through as a mental fabrication... just doesn't whoosh away...
And self care... doesn't hurt...
As I myself have experienced, this particular phase of "... in which the substratum of the subconscious is opening up and all that the psyche tried so hard to hide is boiling up to the surface," { ~~Cheryl Abram } is also a phase that is bringing up a great amount of energy play, and can seem to be really messy, difficult, even cruel, as alignment of the whole takes place.
 I guess it started, when my psyche felt that I was strong enough already to undergo this difficult experience.
I was utterly surprised by it, I guess because I believed that "there is nothing left in my subconscious"....!!!
 This "cracking open", phase can be very painful , yet, it is how it unfolded...
 Like a rose bud blooming, this is a phase that cannot be forced... it unravels naturally as one ripens... though one might not think so when it does start happening...!!!
 Yet one is able to go through it... without scarring
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Spent so many frustrating years... unable to understand why my outer world didn't reflect my inner !!!
Why it didn't happen earlier, don't know, nor why it happens when it does, just the way the cookie crumbles... but eventually, the " let go "... of any conceptual image of what my inner world was, and what my outer world ought to look like, and... miracle of miracles... the division broke down... and it was just so...
Ahhhhhh... life
"And when all effort ceased... as if by magic... all the lines disappeared... it was and is the most real thing there is... direct intimate seamlessness... realer than real... closer than close..."
What could be more ridiculous to have ANY idea of what reality looks like, other than what IS ??
The let go happens... or not... phew... sigh...
 "I" could not have decided to 'do' it...
All that I am... one seamless whole, indefinable... not fragmented into the myriad images that the shards of the mind holds up as real...
I wasn't even particularly trying to let it go... but I guess a point comes, when you've had just about enough... and I do remember telling myself ...
" You know what... to hell with it... can't do it anymore... time to get real... can't fool myself any longer about it... it ain't working..." and such stuff !!!
Looking back, now I realize, I was for dear life, hanging on to a "blissed out" state, after" my experience" of Oneness, Cosmic Consciousness, No Separation, am Nothing, yet Everything... hahaha...
And yet the horrors of my external life, carried on, relentlessly, in fact got even worse, if that were possible, and I just couldn't understand what was happening.
All I could do was watch, haplessly, for years.
Till one day I found myself, reeeeeaaaallllly sitting down with myself and saying " What the heck is going on ??? "
I so badly wanted my outer world to reflect my inner sense of peace... and it didn't look anything like that... in fact far from it... it didn't look like anything I expected it to look like !!!
OHHHH... the images we create, of how Life {Reality} should look...
{ "It always is as it is.
 Always.
 And looks like anything at all.
 This is truly always it.
 Whatever it looks like.
 Always nothing other."}
Put brilliantly by...
~~Nancy Neithercut }
Why it didn't happen earlier, don't know, nor why it happens when it does... just the way the cookie crumbles.
Inside Out... Upside Down !!!
And the Light streamed across my Conscious Being...
For sometime, now it had bothered me...
That once I was shown my own radiance... my own brilliant Divinity...
Then why was I unable to accept the very same Divinity in another...
Specially in one particular other..??
Their humanity kept somehow coming in the way {and how...!!!}
So overpoweringly... it totally obscured my ability to see the Divine or even a trace of it...
Very, very frustrating... these last few years..!!!
And suddenly
The brilliant streak of lightening, that lit the field of consciousness...
What I wasn't accepting in this significant other...
Their Humanity...
Was me... was me!!
My own Humanity...
What more is there...?
It's utterly divine
This
Our humanity...
And that... right there
Went flying out of the window
And the bottom dropped
Out of the notion of divinity
As something that transcends being human
Or other than
Another one bit the dust...
Life has come full circle...
It is complete.
 Without beginning and without end.
All lit up
 And a Joyousness.
The bubble bobbing on the surface of water, burst...
And a collapsing, a relaxing...
Into the sea.
The war was over...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the absence of denial, the question of acceptance becomes meaningless and just doesn't arise...
Am amazed it took so long in the seeping through into every fibre  of my being.
Considering that the grace of awareness being aware of itself as itself... which was an emptiness, a void... by ITSELF...
Nothing in particular... yet Everything, there IS... was such a spontaneous happening, with certainly no meritocracy on my part, as a human being...
Well over 20 years ago...!!!
And I was very aware of that, in fact at the time, felt that others, with so much spiritual practice under their belt, were more deserving... hahaha.
However was shown that in spite of my, what I felt, was my flawed human-ness, there was no particular way that I needed to be...
That as I was, just as me, worthy.
Took me a while to grasp... because as the mind stilled... fell into silence... and the 'ME' fell away... in that void...that empty space, arose spontaneously recognition of the all, that IS.
Not a  'ME' that is it...
But it is, as it is.....!!
Reconciling that the human aspect of the 'me' is not separate from the WHAT IS, was confusing, to say the least... as the experience was of "the me" , falling away... and a loss of any experience of being this or that...
Yet the being Everything...
The all that IS.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 And over the last 18 years or so...
 Events still continue to happen in my personal life..
 Some joyful, some painful...
 I laugh with joy and cry with pain...
But there is a core... in the middle of the storm... that is untouched by the swirling winds of debris...
It runs silently... holding everything together gently... and letting it go simultaneously...
 While at some level the threads of the fabric I call " my life " , are being gently and slowly pulled away... unravelled...
And a new fabric being knit.
 { The old wiring, I'm guessing, being torn down... and it is excruciatingly painful, to put it mildly... but there is no resistance as the grasping falls... 🙂 }
And all is well with the world as it is.
Looking back, not one thing was out of place, not one person, not one event...
The most horrible years of my life were also the most beautiful and blessed... if it weren't for the separation, I couldn't  have  savoured both.
 At one with myself I now walk in life...
Literally, born again, in love...

P.S. Aunty too passed away , 3 months after Swami left his body.
And all the while, I go about my daily chores...
 Children, 5 grandchildren, husband, mother, brothers and their families, friends, strangers, you , this forum... the world at large...
I guess, dear X, you've just triggered a sharing...

 

 

facebook 

 

 

 

Mystic Meandering ~ LIVE!

 

LIVE!

Let go...

Let it all go:
Hopes for the future.
Regret for the past.
Expectations for the present.

LIVE!

Embraced in the space of
your Aliveness,
at the still point of
your Being.

With no conceptual scaffolding of belief
to hold "you" together...

LIVE!

Disappear in the Excitement
of the Infinite Dancing Heart...

LIVE!

Without requiring yourself to be
different,
without wanting to change
who you ARE...

LIVE!

Authentically...  Genuinely...
Emptied out of the way your
conditioned mind tells you
what your life must be...

LIVE!

Free yourself from your facades
and the attachments to
your patterns of perspective
that keep you safe, but confined...

LIVE!

Let go into the Cosmic Stream
that already carries you...

LIVE!

Trust the unfolding of the Fire in your Soul...



Mystic Meandering
Aug. 13, 2022

 

https://mysticmeandering.blogspot.com/

 

 
 

Jiddu Krishnamurti ~ The flowering of meditation

 

The sun was setting in great clouds of colour behind the Roman hills;
they were brilliant, splashed across the sky and the whole earth was made splendid, even the telegraph poles and the endless rows of building.
It was soon becoming dark and the car was going fast.
The hills faded and the country became flat.

To look with thought and to look without thought are two different things.  
To look at those trees by the roadside and the buildings across the dry fields with thought, keeps the brain tied to its own moorings of time, experience, memory;
the machinery of thought is working endlessly, without rest, without freshness; the brain is made dull, insensitive, without the power of recuperation.
It is everlastingly responding to challenge and its response is inadequate and not fresh.
To look with thought keeps the brain in the groove of habit and recognition; it becomes tired and sluggish; it lives within the narrow limitations of its own making.
 
It is never free.
 
This freedom takes place when thought is not looking; to look without thought does not mean a blank observation, absence in distraction.
When thought does not look, then there is only observation, without the mechanical process of recognition and comparison, justification and condemnation; this seeing does not fatigue the brain for all mechanical processes of time have stopped.
Through complete rest the brain is made fresh, to respond without reaction, to live without deterioration, to die without the torture of problems.
To look without thought is to see without the interference of time, knowledge and conflict.
This freedom to see is not a reaction; all reactions have causes; to look without reaction is not indifference, aloofness, a cold-blooded withdrawal.
To see without the mechanism of thought is total seeing, without particularization and division, which does not mean that there is not separation and dissimilarity.
The tree does not become a house or the house a tree. Seeing without thought does not put the brain to sleep; on the contrary, it is fully awake, attentive, without friction and pain.
 
Attention without the borders of time is the flowering of meditation.