Welcome...

Come meander with me on the pathless path of the Heart
in these anecdotal,
sometimes inspiring, sometimes personal meanderings of the Heart's opening in the every-day-ness of life...

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Housed in the Quiet...


I am grateful for the Quiet in this House
that I dwell in...
Immersing me in the Quiet within;
the deep Stillness, with only the whir of the ceiling fan
and occasional distant sounds that somehow soothe...

It's as if the "House" is not my house -
but houses me anyway -
like the body "housing" my Being,
allowing IT to dwell here,
living in these spaces...

The "House" is still - yet alive,
breathing in and out with the breeze.
I can tell by the way the curtains softly sway...
Its space holds my "things" - that
aren't my "things" - only accumulated
symbols of a life lived: spiritually, creatively,
intuitively, meaningfully -
mementos for someone else's attic someday.

There is exquisite peace in the mind
in these Quiet spaces...
No stories, no ruminating on the past,
No mental fires to put out,
No trying to fix anyone's problems,
No inner conflict,
just the deep Quiet of Being -
communing with the Stillness within me...

Life goes on as it has been
and I remain in the Quiet of my Soul...


Mystic Meandering
April 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering



 

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Silence Calls To Us - Nathalie Delay




It's interesting to observe how hard it is to stay alone,
in silence, without distractions.
We are afraid to be face-to-face with ourselves.
Face-to-face with our impatience, our agitation, our worry.
Face-to-face with the depth of our being.
We are afraid to dive into the infinite space of our true nature,
when no attribute nor any - story covers it up.
And yet it calls to us in silence,
but we don't listen.
And yet we have an acute and painful longing for it,
like exiles too long cut off from their homeland.
So, instead of trying to fill the space which has appeared,
let us give ourselves over to silence, to the absence of certainty.
Let us not miss the incredible opportunity to be,
in all simplicity and humility
and taste the nectar of pure presence
when there are no more expectations, only the gift of self.
Let us not miss this unique chance to taste the substance of the 
moment when no superfluous activity waters it down.


with thanks to No Mind's Land

~


 

Sunday, April 14, 2024

The Inner Voice - Janet Conner


There is a Voice inside you.
There is a Voice inside everyone.
Whether you hear it or not, the Voice is there.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, 
the Voice is there.
Whether you ask for help or ignore its guidance,
the Voice is still there.  
Waiting.
It is waiting for you to stop,
if just for a moment, and listen.
The Voice is always there, guiding you,
encouraging you, loving you...
Pick up your pen and penetrate the thin wall
of consciousness that keeps you apart...
Once you start asking for more you will start 
receiving more:
more ideas, more intuition, more inspiration,
more wisdom, more opportunities,
more challenges, and more questions.
Always, there are more questions.
The answers live deep inside the questions.

Janet Conner
from: Writing Down Your Soul

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
My mother's and grandmother's
writing desk, at sunset...  Now topped with
assorted baubles :)


 

Friday, April 12, 2024

A New Madness - CG Jung


The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are
not elemental happenings of a physical and biological
order, but psychic events.  To a quite terrifying degree
we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are
nothing other than psychic epidemics.
[relating to the soul or mind.]

At any moment several millions of human beings may
be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have
another world war or devastating revolution.  Instead of
being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides,
and inundation, modern man is battered by the elemental
forces of his own psyche.

C.G. Jung

with thanks to Love Is A Place

Vortex Art Mystic Meandering
"The Matrix"

~

Did you take the Red pill today?
Or will you take the Blue pill and
 continue to hide in "The Matrix"? 

Now is an opportunity to change our
perspective, and change our way of 
being in the world - to meet the madness
and stand up to it.

 

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

The Haunted Room - John O'Donohue



The way you think about your life can turn your soul into a 
haunted room.
  You are afraid to risk going in there anymore.
Your fantasy peoples this room of the heart with sad presences,
which ultimately become disturbing and sinister.

The haunted room in the mind installs lonesomeness at the heart
of your life.  It would be devastating in the autumn of your life
to look back and recognize that you had created a series of
haunted rooms in your heart.

Fear and negativity are immense forces, which constantly tussle
with us.  They long to turn the mansions of the soul into a totally
haunted house.  These are the living conditions for which fear 
and negativity long, and in which they thrive.

We were sent here to live life to the full.  When you manage to be
generous in your passion and vulnerability, life always comes to
bless you.  Had you but the courage to acknowledge the haunted
inner room, turn the key, and enter,
you would encounter nothing
strange or sinister there.

You would meet some vital self of yours that you had banished
during a time of pain and difficulty. 
Sometimes, when life
squeezes you into lonely crevices, you may have to decide between
survival and breaking apart.  At such times, you can be harsh with
yourself and settle to be someone other than who you really long
to be.  At such a time, you can do nothing else; you have to survive.

But your soul always remains faithful to your longing to become
who you really are.  The banished self from an earlier time of life
remains within you waiting to be released and integrated.  The
soul has its own logic of loyalty and concealment.

Ironically, it is usually in its most awkward rooms that the special
blessings and healing are locked away.

Your thinking can also freeze and falsify the flow of your life's
continuity to make you a prisoner of routine and judgement.

John O'Donohue
from Eternal Echoes

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
image from light on the ceiling
through the top of a lamp shade...





 

Monday, April 8, 2024

Facing Down the Dragons - a meandering...


I knew this is why I keep entering "The Cave."  I keep getting
chased down by fear and anger - again and again.  I have carried
them all my life, in different forms, and I am exhausted
from carrying them - the weight of darkness.  I have tried many
 times over the years to lay fear down, to trick it, to manage it,
to numb it, to be aware of it...  But awareness of it is not enough.
  It must be faced full on - in all its disguises: anxiety, anger,
frustration, and stress.  But first, I had to experience the
Silence of Being in "The Cave", to prepare the way to open to
meet Fear, and allow myself to experience it all the way through. 
 I am not yet "through" the fear, in its myriad forms.
  It is an ongoing process.

"The Cave", or "sanctuary" serves several purposes.  It provides
the physical space, a room, like a holding space, and, is also the
inner space of deep Silence that is the foundation of seeing with
clarity, for entering into the exploration and investigation of the
hidden shadows of the self in the safety of the deeper space of
Awareness.

The first night that I sat with fear in "The Cave", many years ago,
I was amazed that Awareness curiously moved towards it, and 
experienced it.  Awareness was not afraid of the fear, but was
compassionate towards it.  A small opening of light came through.
I began to relax and allow the fear to be, instead of trying to
push it away.

The second night I sat with fear, I became aware that I am
somehow invested in it, an unconscious and habituated response
to life, although I don't understand why or the dynamics of how
that happened.  But I realized that there is an unconscious
pattern and a familiarity with fear that makes it hard to
"just let go", as some suggest, despite the pain that creates it.
It is such an ingrained, habituated pattern that in a sense it
has become the default position in my psyche.

In sitting with fear, I became aware that fear is the mind's view
of things.  It's the view through the lens of fear that I am 
somehow attached to...  Something needs to be seen more deeply
here, but at this point, these many years later, I am still blind
to it.

The third night I realized that anxiety traumatizes the body.
Fear is very visceral, releasing all kinds of fear hormones and
bodily symptoms that wear out the body...  There was the
understanding, over and again, that fear is triggered by thoughts
believed to be true, to be real, creating this physical trigger -
the body-mind's response to a mental state of mind - a biological
response to the mind's view.  The body-mind mechanism
automatically defaults to anxiety with its resulting physical
felt experience of trauma.  Even the *thought* of facing the fear
creates fear.  It is so uncomfortable physically that it is hard to
face this construct of fear without spiraling into panic.

And I realized - once again - that despite many "awakenings",
much of the time my life is still fear driven by this underground
electrical current - short circuiting everything in its path.  
Anxiety has become an entrapment, a prison - a private self-torture
of and by the mind...

I have seen all these insights before and yet there is still "fearing",
even now as each new life experience arises.


What is the remedy I asked:

These words emerged from within, from the Deep Silence:

Follow the Fear.  Let it take you deeper.  Deeply attend to it.
Explore the tendrils of it.  Allow yourself to *fully* experience it.
Watch how it plays itself out: where it goes, what it tells you,
where it leads the mind and body.  Trust where it takes you.


Mystic Meandering
originally written 2010
updated 2024

~*~

"In order to transform our fears
we must be willing to enter the cave
of the Blue Dragon.
There we come face to face
with our despair
and all aspects of the mind...

Standing at the mouth of the cave
of the Blue Dragon
and yelling 'I'm not afraid'
is not the same as entering it
with compassion for who (what)
we will find."

Genju -  108zenbooks

~*~

"It takes exhaustion to stop running...
to surrender and be led within
deeper and deeper into the journey,
the dazzling, dark journey into ourselves..."


~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
a sheet of scrapbooking paper
color digitally inverted


Saturday, April 6, 2024

Have You Hugged Your Ego Today? - Fred LaMotte


I love my ego.   A person who tries to flat-line
and abolish the ego can be very humorless and dull. 
Have
you hugged your ego today?  The ego is no bondage at all,
because it only lasts for an instant, responding playfully
to this momentary alignment of particles and forms, then
vanishing back in to the Ocean of Consciousness.  The ego
is very responsible, the soul's response-ability to each 
situation that arises.... [it]is born from the play of Consciousness
in myriad selves
I need my ego to dance, my little bubble of "I".... 
Let your ego sparkle, dance, sing and meditate.  Let your ego
effervesce and dissolve again and again in laughter, in tears.
You really do need an ego if you want to laugh and cry.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Personal Note: The ego is part of the whole package.
There is no need to get rid of it, or deny it - just be
who you are, be ALIVE, embrace the whole package
 of who you are.

I haven't met a "spiritual teacher" yet who did not
have an "ego."  If you're with them long enough 
you see it seep out from behind the "spiritual teacher"
facade.  :)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
a gift for my "ego"  2 years ago
on my 72nd birthday :)
that made me giggle with delight.
Some egos don't like birthdays,
they don't believe there is a self
to celebrate...  It's still their ego :)))



 

Thursday, April 4, 2024

Drop Into Freedom...



In my decline I have lost track
of how things are "supposed" to be...
of how things are "supposed" to "work" -
like life...
of finding my way to wherever it is that
I'm "supposed" to be going.

Somehow I've lost my "keys"...

I have grown weary 
of how things are...
of what I'm "supposed" to be doing...
of taking responsibility for things
I'm not responsible for...
of attachments to things that used to be important...
of the body and its ailments and loss of functioning...
of the *ideas* of "awakening" and "enlightenment"...
who "awakens"?
what "enlightens"?
Does it really matter?

Is this how impermanence works?
You lose your keys to things that don't really matter
so that at some point it all falls away
in its importance,
and you are liberated *from*
false ideas and premises,
from hopes and dreams
that keep you bound,
and you "drop"
into
Freedom


Mystic Meandering
April 2, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Sri Yantra

 

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

An Inner Journey - Rod MacIver


A journal chronicles a journey
And the journey itself is home.
The journey in search of deeper awareness
The Source within
An inner journey that is not abandoned
Is its own triumph, its own work of art.
The journey itself is home.

~

There is an inner myth guiding each of our lives,
generally unknown to us.

Use your journal to explore that,
to explore the journey [the myth].

The value of journaling is the process of self-exploration
and self- nurturing [or self inquiry]

What is seeking to unfold in your life?

Ultimately the "goal" is to live in harmony
with your inner life [your Inner Being].

Rod MacIver
From: The Song Within


~

Personal note:  I have been journaling as part of my
"journey" for over 40 years, as part of my "spiritual path",
a sort of "spiritual inquiry" and reflection...
For me “journaling” is not only about bringing mindfulness
 and awareness to my life, relationships, and spirituality,
but is a meditative practice to turn that awareness
 to the deeper space of inner Silence… 

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering




 

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Prayer is Listening - Soren Kierkegaard




As my prayer became more attentive and inward
I had less and less to say.
I finally became completely silent.
I started to listen
- which is even further removed from speaking.
I first thought that praying entailed speaking.
I then learnt that praying is hearing,
not merely being silent.
This is how it is.
To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking,
Prayer involves becoming silent,
And being silent,
And waiting until "God" [The Deep Silence] is heard.


 Soren Kierkegaard


with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
2011



 

Friday, March 29, 2024

"Inner Opening" - Ivan Granger


Most of us spend our entire lives avoiding an inner opening.
It is that quiet itch at the back of awareness that makes us
squirm and turn away.  And when it really presses on us,
it can arouse terror, as if we were facing down death.

...to approach it is to face death.  It is the death of our old
worldview, the death of patterned awareness, the death of
our limited notion of who we are.  All we thought ourselves
 to be stops - and so it is a sort of death.  To feel that grace
approaching , to welcome it, requires a wild sort of courage.

It requires courage and, yes, surrender.  We have this idea
that spiritual opening is a terrible effort.  No.  That unfolding
wants to occur within us.  The only effort is to let go of our
endless strategies to halt the process.  We all feel it, a gentle
prodding to let the heart open, to know ourselves truly, to be
present and radiate ourselves into the world.

That opening is insistent, trying to happen within us.  Call it
grace, if you like.  The question is before us: Do we
courageously accept the invitation?

For those of us who live in modern urban society, think how
hard it is to stop the ticking of the clock.  From an early age
we internalize the sense of time and progress and deadlines.
Yet, in doing so, we forget that these are all just concepts,
just one way to understand the unfolding of being and
experience.  That sense of time is a powerful tool for doing
and accomplishment, but it isn't inherently real.  It doesn't
have much to do with who or what we are.  There is a flow
of days and months, but they are the surface current of a
much deeper timelessness.

It is fascinating how we use the hyperactivity of thought to
define the world.  The other thing about thought: it creates time.
When thought settles down, we discover timelessness. ...the
mind comes to rest, not in the head, but in the heart.

Having come to rest, we remember.  It is not through intellection
but through stillness that we remember.  Remember.  Re-member.
To remember is to finally see how the apparent separation of
reality actually fits together in a single wholeness.  Discursive
thought can only ever examine pieces of the whole.  To re-member
is to have the full vision of Wholeness, as things actually are.
But this vision is found in timelessness and stillness, through the
quiet mind unfiltered.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering



 

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Just Walk It - a meandering...


Some people's nature is made for Silence and Solitude,
others - not...
I crave it...
that is - my body and soul crave it...
I am often overwhelmed by the stimulation
of daily living, being pulled by the externals,
needing to turn to the Inner Life...

There are many ways of accessing our "Inner Being"/Essence,
or "The Divine", or "Source" - however one calls it;
through being out in nature, thru Dance, or writing Poetry,
in Art, or Music, and Meditation; however we are naturally
inclined.  It's an individual thing and "The Divine"/Source/Life
meets us where we are, *as* we are...

There are no "shoulds" or "have to's" in intimacy with
"The Inner Silence."
You don't have to regurgitate what you have been taught
was the "truth"; what you are conditioned to *believe*
as an established way of "believing" - a dogma...

Maybe we're just a dramatization/expression of
"Consciousness", or "The Source", or "The Ineffable";
Unique waves on the Ocean of Awareness.
No one person, religion, spirituality, philosophy or
institution *has* the "answer"...
The Real Source of "truth" is within, and transcends all
beliefs, unencumbered by religion, language, history, or culture...

Life unfolds differently for all of us.
And maybe it "happens" according to the way we "believe" -
who knows...

Go the way you feel pulled/called to go,
the path will change as needed.

Whatever your walk of Life,
whatever your nature,
whatever your path,
just walk it...

Mystic Meandering
March 15, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering






 

Monday, March 25, 2024

"Ghost Existence"? - a meandering...



Don't know why, but these words, "ghost existence",
came to me while I was talking with B back in Feb....

The following words just kinda flowed out as well...

We *live* a "ghost existence" *in* a "ghost existence."
Not that it's not *real*, it is "real" as we live it, as we
experience it, but it's not *The* Real - i.e. The Deeper
Reality - which exists behind and within the "ghost
existence", animating it - a mystery...

~

Along with the words came an image of  an old west
town erected with facades on a movie set, where they
would have make believe shoot outs in the dusty streets,
while the patrons of the theme park, dressed in costumes,
 looked on from the sides, entertained by the make believe
 characters in the "ghost town" made specifically for the
*experience*,
whatever that experience is in the 
"ghost existence."

When we die one belief is that that animating force "drops"
the body...  I like to think that the energy of the animating
force returns to its "original source", maybe in another
dimension...   I don't know...  This is all speculation from 
a "being" living in a "ghost existence."
That's why this is called a meandering. :)

But there are traditions that do believe that there is no self,
no me, no you, that we're all an illusion, a dream, a movie.

It seems real in the moment...
"Christine" may have 75 or more episodes 
in her "ghost existence" here,
like an old west show with her own "prop set"
called her life...

Wouldn't that be interesting, if it were true.
We've all been playing a role, in the play of life,
in a virtual reality, 
whatever that experience/drama happens to be;
or so some say...
And then the "willful self" is dropped by the body, and
we are absorbed (energetically) back into our place of
Origin - our Source:

"The Silence of Being"

Once again - speculation...:)
But one that works for me at the moment :)


I recently heard someone say: Our experience of "me"
 is not our essential identity.  The "me" is another
experience
that Awareness/Consciousness/Source is having,
like the waves that arise from the Ocean are still
the Ocean. The "me" is another wave on the greater Ocean of
Awareness, but is still the Ocean, and eventually
 recedes back into the Ocean...

I like this...


Mystic Meandering
Feb. 19, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Snow figure on skylight










 

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Silence Lost?...


Entering "The Silence"
the place of deep inner Silence and Stillness...

Relaxing...
Listening deeply for the Inner Voice.
Following its sound.
Finding its Rhythm in the fluid, instinctive
inner River...

It is the space of The Sacred...

This aware, awake space is curious and unafraid,
wants to engage, to see, to know,
to experience ~

...and be experienced...

This space is deeply compassionate,
deeply open.

...and is waiting to be known...

Pure Awareness
flows through here ~
the life blood of The Sacred.
It flows around the obstacles of my mind,
and moves toward every disturbance,
filling every mind-made crack and crevice,
wanting to meet, soothe, comfort, and embrace.

In "The Silence"
there is only patience, listening
and deep rest...

It is a gentle refuge
that feels like Home...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 2010

~

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
Craypas Oils with fingers
March 2024

~

Personal Note:

In 2010, and for many years, encountering the deep
Silence of Being for me felt like encountering "God",
"The Beloved", "The Sacred", "The Ineffable."
I basked in The Sacred Silence, absorbed, feeling the
sense of Presence, of something vaster than an image of
"God" that I hold in my mind; something which is
ever-present and personal...  The Deep Silence within
is the Heart of Being, "The Mystery" - my refuge.

Over the last 17 months I have "lost" the "sense" of
Intimacy with The Deep Silence within, getting
consumed by the *content* of my current life
experience...

The Great Silence has been my Companion, my Helper,
my Sanctuary, my "Teacher" for many years, and I hope
to regain that inner sense of Communion, to be able to
access the Deeper Dimension of The Silence again,
as this is the only way I will get through this period
in time, with its struggles and challenges...

Intellectually/conceptually I understand that "The Silence"
- however one calls it - "God", "The Beloved", "The Divine",
"Awareness" is always here - never "lost."
What is "lost" is the felt sense of intimacy with "The Silence
of the Sacred", my "Source."
I miss it - like a dear Friend...

But as of this post I do feel it slowly returning...
Or is it me that is returning to the Source :)

MM
March 2024







 

Thursday, March 21, 2024

The Paradox of the Journey - Andrew Harvey



All major mystical traditions have recognized that there is a
paradox at the heart of the journey of return to Origin.

Put simply, this is that we are already what we seek, and that
what we are looking for on the Path with such intensity of
striving and passion and discipline is already within and
around us at all moments.  The journey and all its different
ordeals are all emanations of the One Spirit that is
manifesting everything in all dimensions; every rung of the
ladder we climb toward final awareness is made of the
divine stuff of Awareness itself...

Divine Consciousness is at once creating and manifesting
all things and acting in and as all things in various states of
self-disguise throughout all the different levels and
dimensions of the universe.


Andrew Harvey
teacher of mystical traditions

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

There slumbers in every human being faculties by means
of which he can acquire for himself a knowledge of higher
worlds.  Mystics, Gnostics, Theosophists - all speak of a
world of soul and spirit which for them is just as real as
the world we see with our physical eyes and touch with our
physical hands.

[...] Just as in the body, eye and ear develop as organs of
perception, as senses for bodily processes, so does a man
develop in himself soul and spiritual organs of perception
through which the soul and spiritual worlds are opened to him.

Rudolf Steiner

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
 

 

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

"I" am LIFE...


"I" am LIFE existing here...
not a concept...

"I" am the Essence of Life
living itself out
here...

I cannot say that I am "Christine" -
nor a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu,
Sufi, Buddhist, Non-Dualist, Taoist,
or Mystic...

Mother, daughter, sister, friend,
or wife...

not a dream,
or an illusion...

"I" am simply LIFE ~ existing ~
playing all these roles...

The weight of existence
occurs when I try to
cling to an identity...

~

"I am a

f
e
a
t
h
e
r

on
the
breath of God."
Hildegard of Bingen says ~

and even the
identity of a 
"feather"
is
too
heavy
~
It's only a metaphor
~
~
~

I follow the breath
to its
Source,
the
Silence,
and
realize
I am being
breathed
~
~
~

The "task" then
is to surrender,
to
the
Infinite
Breath of
LIFE
that
"I"
am
~
~
~


Mystic Meandering
2014

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
"Explosion of Life"
Craypas oils
2012



 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Who Are You? - Thomas Merton


Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.

Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
Are You?
Whose Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet).  Do not
think of what you are
still less of

What you may one day be.
Rather
be what you are (but who?)
Be the unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you
speaking to your own being,
speaking by the Unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

I will try, like them, 
to be my own silence:
And this is difficult.
The whole world is secretly on fire.
The stones burn, even the stones.
They burn me.
How can man be still or listen to all
things burning?  How can he dare 
to sit with them when
all their silence
is on fire?

Thomas Merton
In Silence


with thanks to  Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering







 

Friday, March 15, 2024

The Mind of Fear - Mooji


The mind fears...

What is the message in the fear?
Find the message in the fear...

Fear empties itself as soon as there is revelation...

YOU [the Eternal Self] *are* before the movement of fear
that arises.  Realize your Beingness that is before time...

Wake up to the recognition of your Eternal Self.

[That is] the Awareness in which fear occurs.

Just keep quiet...

Don't identify yourself with the reactions,
just *feel* your Existence

and

let the fear burn off...

Identify the Presence that sees,
and stay with this Presence,
and you'll come to a place of
complete [internal] Stillness...

There is Stillness in that space of fear...

When fear is met
what expands is a sense of spaciousness...

There is an intuitive sense that you and the spaciousness
of Stillness are one...

In this place your mind of fear will not have much power
because you're in your
Natural State...

excerpts taken from a talk

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
The Cave
CrayPas Oils
done with fingers
2010

 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The Ancestors' Unlived Life - Matt Licata


Deep in the somatic unconscious, the ancestors continue to live
within us, emerging-into-now by way of their sensitivities and
gifts, as well as through the shards of their unlived lives.

Their lost joy, broken dreams, and unfulfilled creativity have a
way of taking up residency in our cell tissue, subtle bodies, and
in our bellies and hearts.

As we enter into the mandala of descent - downward into body,
mud, roots and Earth - these ones begin to appear: as symbol,
image, feeling and synchronicity.  They have a way of shifting
shapes in order to find us, through color, tree, water, and sound.

What is that we're carrying on their behalf?  What dreams remain
undreamed and unmanifested for them?  What are their deepest
longings?  What secrets have they never been able to share?

What keeps them awake at night?  What brings them alive and
unleashes their creativity and unique essence?  What visions are
not permitted to take form, of the divine within and of the divine
world?

What were they required to disown in order to fit in to a place that
had lost its sensitivity and soul? 
What became buried in the
shadows?  What story were they unable to tell, what feelings were
they unable to feel?

In what way are we being asked to open a portal into re-emergence,
re-enchantment, and revisioning?

As we open to receive this offering, an inner sanctuary forms to
illuminate and transmute this transgenerational soul-material.  Inside
that structure, the seemingly solid lines between past, present and
future begin to fall away.

Being "in the present moment" we share this moment with the
ancestral ones and the spirits of the Earth who are with us.

In this way, past, present, and future co-emerge and interpenetrate,
opening a diamond-like passageway into the mysteries of self 
and other, being and becoming, and a new alchemy of
separation and union.

The individual self is an emanation, a manifestation, of the Totality,
a unified expression of the clear-light nature. 
Unique and 
differentiated, while at the same time non-separate and one.

Matt Licata

~

Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering
Feb. 2024