The Tao of Water - Rod MacIver

The highest motive in life is to be like water.
it fights nothing or no one.
It flows from and back to its source
and in the flowing smooths and wears
away all resistance.

Taoist Proverb

~

In paddling wild rivers, I learned that the power of the river
is immense, and our power insignificant.

The Tao tells us that the energies of the universe, driven by
the forces of yin and yang, are greater than we are.  And
much like the positive and negative energies of electricity,
without both, without the light and the dark, female and male,
neither could exist.  To survive long term as a species, we
must accommodate ourselves to those energy flows rather
than fight them.

In paddling a rapid, we seek to move with its flow, rather than
against it, to execute our strokes at points of maximum impact,
and to not use a hard stroke when a light stroke will do.  And
sometimes, when the water moves faster than we can think, to
execute our strokes with intuition.

Chang-tzu, a fourth century sage, wrote of an old man who
somehow survived a swim in a huge rapid.  Upon asking the
man how he survived, the man responded:

Plunging into the whirl, I come out of the swirl.  I accommodate
myself to the water, not the water to me.  And so I am able to
deal with it after this fashion....

I was born upon the land...and accommodated myself to dry land. 
That was my original condition.  Growing up with water, I
accommodate myself to the water.

Rod MacIver
Artist and Writer

Heron Dance

~

The settling of the mind, letting go of the turmoil,
is akin to the settling of muddy water.

Kuan-Tzo
645 BC

~

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

Tao Te Ching
Stephen Mitchell Translation

~

When confronted with rocks,
water seeks a way around.

Water gives way to obstacles
with deceptive humility,
for no power can prevent it
flowing its destined course
to the sea.

Tao Cheng of Nan Yeo
11th century Taoist Scholar

~

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering
 -Vortex Art

 

Cosmic Light Show :)

It's the Cosmos that moves me,
taking my breath away,
making my heart skip...

It's all a play of Cosmic Light!

MM

These wonderful displays of the Northern Lights
on May 10 were taken by my brother with his
iphone just north of Boston, Mass.

Just lovely!

I love the soft purple haze...

 

The Inner Sanctuary - Mirabai Starr

There is a secret place.
A radiant sanctuary...

This magnificent refuge is inside you.

Enter

Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway.

Be bold.  Be humble.

Put away the incense and forget the incantation
they taught you.  Ask no permission from the
authorities.

Slip away...

Close your eyes and follow your breath
to the still place that leads to the invisible path
that leads you home.

Listen...

Softly, the One you love is calling...

Listen...

At first you will only hear traces of his [her] Voice.
Love letters he [she] drops for you in hiding places -
in the sun dipping down below the horizon,
in the nameless sorrow that fills your heart when you
wake in the night and remember that the world has gone
to war and you are powerless to break up the fight.

Let the idle chatter between friends drop down to
what matters.

Listen...

his [her] Voice will come closer.
A whisper you're almost sure is meant for you
fading in and out of the cacophony of thoughts
clearer in the silent space between them.

Listen...

Be brave and walk through the country of your own
wild heart.
Be gentle and know that you know nothing.

Be still...

Listen...

Keep walking...

Crossing the moat between this world and that...

This is The Beloved reclining in the innermost chamber,
waiting for you...

The Beloved has chosen for his [her] dwelling place
the core of your own being because that is the single

most beautiful place in all creation.

Enter the center of your Soul...

Mirabai Starr

Excerpts from the Introduction to:

The Interior Castle
by St. Teresa of Avila

translation by Mirabai Starr

~

Vortex Art - Mystic Meandering
2012

 

The Journey of Descent - a meandering...

I need to open to a different journey now,
to a Deeper Reality within...

It is a journey of descent into the deepest interiors of Myself,
into the interiority of the Soul, or Essence of Who I am...

It's a spiraling down, not into darkness, but to a Deeper
Reality of Being, at least that's how it feels, although I'm
sure I will encounter darkness along the way - I already have.
But it's not about going into the darkness, unless encountered:

old traumas, old wounds, etc., even what are considered the
dark emotions.  But in some ways it's a descent into the 
interior light - the Illumination of the Soul from within.

It's not an ascendant path, like I've been on, or a transcendent
"higher" path, but a descendant journey to the Interior Core of
Myself, my Essence, my Being - the unknown...

The key is just to let it happen.

All I can say is YES!

Mystic Meandering
May 2, 2024

~

Vortex Art
2011

 

The Interior Voyage - Charles Wright

Photo Art - Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

We've all led raucous [noisy, chaotic] lives,
some of them inside, some of them out.
But only the poem you leave behind is what's important.

Everyone knows this:
The voyage into the interior is all that matters.

Whatever your ride...

Charles Wright

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo Art - Johannes Plenio

Unsplash

 

Befriending Ourselves - Matt Licata

At some point along the way, each of us will be asked
to revision the ideas that have accompanied us to this
moment in our lives.  Although at times the call arrives
quietly and slowly, as a whisper guiding us into new
territory, for many it comes as an unexpected visitor,
erupting in the night as we find ourselves in transition,
confused, angry, heartbroken, uncertain, or depressed.
However it arrives, it is a reminder that even our most
sacred identities and beliefs tend to become encrusted
over time, worn-out symbols of a living reality no longer
so alive.  Somehow what was clear only days or even
moments ago lost its meaning and is no longer able to
accompany us into the next phase.

[.....]

To see our pain, confusion and struggle as an intelligent
communication from the deepest parts of ourselves is a
radical approach... To suffer consciously is an ancient,
sacred art lost in our time, replaced by a well-intentioned
solar self-help industry designed to take us out of the 
darkness and complexity and into consistent joy, flow,
happiness, and bliss...

[.....]

True healing is not a state in which we become liberated from
feeling, but freer and flexible to experience more fully the
deeper, more complex, and more nuanced dimensions of the
psyche... to touch the fullness of what it means to have taken
birth here....in the universal human experience.

[.....]

This exploration [of befriending ourselves] is not oriented in
transcending our vulnerability - fleeing into a state of power,
untouchability, and control - or safely hiding in some protected
spiritual cocoon where we've risen above it all.  It is not taking
refuge in spiritual concepts.  It is in knowing that in any moment
life will reorganize and rearrange all our constructed spiritual
identities and fantasies...

[.....]

We will never feel fully alive through embracing only those
feelings, images, and parts of ourselves that our families,
societies and [religious] authorities claim are worthy and
valid, but only through the courage required to embrace the
entire display, to befriend it all, and to transform the raw
material of our lives into the luminous expression of
wisdom and love in all its forms...

Matt Licata

Excerpts from the Introduction to his book:
A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

~

Photo - from the Internet

 

"Homecoming" - Mirabai Starr

I don't know about you, but I have grown weary of 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....to anyone who comes into proximity
with my purified and perfected (no)self [image]...

[.....]

But the "homecoming" 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", free to claim our birthright of peace,
love, and bliss...

[.....]

What if, instead of rushing to our meditation cushion or
asana practice....ready to vanquish the ego once and for all,
we take our ego into our arms and lean close and hear the
wisdom at the core of its insistent lament?

[.....]

The ancient alchemists did not view the base material [ego]
as merely something to be transcended or gotten rid of, but
as the "substance of the gods."  What if we were to love
reality however it is appearing in this moment, with its
heartbreak, our sadness, our confusion, our depression, or
[rage], our shame?  Rather than muscle our way through
spiritual disciplines and therapeutic interventions, we fall
in love with our brokenness at last and welcome the orphaned
parts of ourselves home.

Mirabai Starr
Contemporary Mystic
Writer, Author

Excerpts from the Forward
in Matt Licata's book:

A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

~

Photo from the Internet

 

A Non-Path Path :) - a meandering...

I am feeling the need to settle deeper into the interior, and 
rediscover a sense of the inner Truth of Myself; not by following
a particular external path - but by intuitively listening to the 
Inner Voice; by spending time in Quietude, and "The Silence"
(which I crave, but so easily avoid by getting distracted on
non-essential things.).

"The Quest" - for me then - is to discover the Deeper Reality of

Myself.  I have forgotten how to be ME!  In a sense, what I was
"designed" for; one could say my Soul's "calling"...   Some call it
the Self (or Higher Self), but I get hung up on those words, because
the big "S" Self is not another self hidden somewhere inside us with
a big S on it that we have to "become"/discover.  But it's the discovery
of, a remembering of, having a felt sense of, the authentic, natural
self, beyond mind, beyond religion, beyond "spirituality."  Who are
 we really?   What is the "Deeper Reality"? I thought maybe I knew, 
but I haven't really met Her - yet...  Hopefully I will find the Deep
Quiet of the Heart, and the Illuminating Light of the Soul.

The path of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening"/"Self-Realization",
particularly what is popularly known as "Non-Duality, wasn't
IT for me, with its attraction to the mind and its abstractions and
mind games. It is just another construct, a belief system.  I found
out that the "Emperor has no clothes!  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, humanity,
and the world.

Even if one follows a "spiritual path" (which can be any path), life
will not suddenly become easy or flowing with bliss, although there
may be little epiphanies and "awakenings" here and there. We won't
necessarily lose our personality with its quirks, and become an
emotionless automaton. We won't lose our conditioning, or our 
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, or suddenly
find our "purpose" - as if there is only one.  But no one tells you
this about "the path."  It has to be a self-discovery, even if we have
a "Teacher", a "Path", or use a "Teaching" to help point the way.

It is different for everyone, of course.  I'm only reflecting on my
own experience here...

Years of seeking, realization, recognition, and then forgetting, and
then seeking again, then remembering, and then forgetting again, etc.,
brought me to the realization that discovering (or rediscovering) the
Essence of who I am is, for me, through awareness of and deep
intimacy with "The Silence" within; through continually coming
back to "The Silence of Source" - the space of Stillness, and
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" - again :)
rediscovering the inner Silent Truth of Myself, directly;
experiencing the underlying Rhythm of Existence Itself, and
within that the Truth of Myself...

Mystic Meandering
April 2024

~

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road,
and nothing more;
Wanderer, there is no road.
The road is made by walking...

By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path that will
never be trod again...

Wanderer, there is no road -
only wakes upon the sea..."

Antonio Machado

~

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

Returning is the motion of the Tao.

Lao Tzu

~~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
taken at the Denver Botanical Gardens

 

The Fire of the Magdalene - Fred LaMotte

What is the mission of Mary Magdalene?  Is she just another
archetype of "the divine feminine."?  Are we called to abstract
her, with all the other Gods and Goddesses, into the faceless
hegemony of the One?

Perhaps she is yet another two-dimensional icon, a window,
into a numb impersonal nonduality.  Or does her feral
astonishing bittersweet gaze call us toward something quite
unheard-of and outrageous in the annals of spiritual teaching?

Her darshan is a droplet of terrible fire that consumes us,
burns us up and down with such accurate alchemy that our 
dross turns to gold, annihilating all that is not ourselves.
Nothing remains but our uniqueness.

The eyes of the Magdalene behold us, and we are held.  We
are held in the most severe and lethal demand: the demand
of bhakti.  Her gaze is not the fire of anger or judgment, but
passionate devotion.

Mary is devotion.  That is what bhakti means, Devotion - to
God? To Jesus? To Sophia? To attaining Gnosis? [To Brahma?
To Allah?]  Dear friend, she burns with deeper bhakti, purer
bhakti: devotion to becoming herself.

When the drop merges with the ocean, it is our spiritual work.
When the ocean merges with the drop, it is our spiritual play,
and our anointing. 

Mary's olive-eyed glance pierces the heart and calls both you
and me to the work, the play, of the great transformation:
be yourself!

Mary Magdalene is She who refuses to be an archetype or a 
symbol, refuses to signify any truth other than her own jagged
broken perfect wholeness, the ineluctable suchness of
Personhood.

Fred LaMotte
Interfaith Minister
Uradiance

~

Vortex Art
Mystic Meandering
2011

 

The Inner Wilderness - Brené Brown

Belonging so fully to yourself that you're willing to stand alone
is a wilderness - an untamed, unpredictable place of
solitude and searching.  It is a place as dangerous as it is
breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared.  The
wilderness can often feel unholy because we can't control
it, or what people think about our choice of whether to
venture into that vastness or not.  But it turns out to be the
place of true belonging, and it's the bravest and most sacred
place you will ever stand

Brené Brown

with thanks to Beyond The Fields We Know

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The path of reality - Nathalie Delay

The path of reality is a non-path, because it is above all
an exploration of life int its wholeness... without falling
back on our models and our repetitive, comfortable
pat-terns.  It's a non-path.....because we recognize in
real time how we negotiate with reality, how we 
cling to a belief or to our need for control, and how this
outlook keeps us from being in tune with the moment 
and creates our suffering...

The path of reality does not require us to conform to any
model, because it is not attached to what we do, think or
feel.  It invites us to see how we behave with our opinions,
our emotions, and with living beings.

The path of reality is more than anything a path of self-
knowledge, not in the psychological sense but in the
most essential and profound sense there is.  It helps
us rediscover our absolute aspect while incorporating
the most human part of us. It brings us back to the
roots of our being, making a complete humanity
possible...

Nathalie Delay

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Ever-Changing "Path" - a meandering

Once again Life is asking me to change my "path."
I am again embarking on what feels like a leap into
uncertainty, jumping off the "spiritual treadmill,"
and allowing myself to just BE,
letting go of the need to look through a particular
"spiritual" filter.
Although I am still drawn to all things "spiritual."
It's in my Soul, and DNA :)

I rediscovered recently how freeing it is to just be "me" - 
not trying to be more "spiritual", or something other than I am.
I don't have to be self-conscious about using the words
 "I", "me", and "my" - in some kind of pseudo "non-dualness",
as some traditions do...
 - because -
 it's all Source - expressing ItSelf. 
There's no need to make a distinction between self and
 Self, creating divisions where there aren't any.

I only need to BE, and let Source reveal Itself,
express Itself, live Itself as "me" - a wave on the Ocean of Being.

It's not about "me" being "enlightened", but rediscovering my
authentic, natural self - and just living it - just walking it.
It's a fluid "path", not static, and not always clear.

I continue to gradually shed the conceptual frameworks that
have defined and informed my "path" so far - the boxes of
belief that have tended to constrain my authentic expression.
And now trying to extricate myself from the life dramas
that have preoccupied my mind and life recently; although that
is proving to be harder than I thought.

This shift in consciousness is happening gradually, over time,
and I doubt that it's over.  There is no finish line to cross, no
destination to arrive at.  It's a never-ending exploration of the
Truth of Myself;  which sometimes feels like an
"existential crisis." :)

I no longer pursue a "path" or "teacher", but only a direct
intimacy/communion with "The Mystery"/The Divine/Source
(however one defines that for themselves) - listening and
waiting for the Inner Voice...

Asking: What is "The Mystery" calling me to now?

Mystic Meandering
April 2024

~

Photo from the internet

 

A Perspective on Impermanence - Ajahn Chah

Now you must learn to be satisfied with the many years
you've already depended on your body.  You should
feel that it's enough.

You can compare it to household utensils that you've had
for a long time - your cups, saucers, plates and so on.
When you first had them they were clean and shining,
but now after using them for so long, they're starting to
wear out.  Some are already broken, some have disappeared,
and those that are left are deteriorating: they have no stable
form, and it's their nature to be like that.  Your body is the
same way.  It has been continually changing right from the
day you were born, though childhood, and youth, until
now it has reached old age.

Allow the mind to let go of its attachments.  The time is ripe.

It's the same with your wealth, your possessions, and your
family - they are all yours only in name; they don't  really
belong to you, they belong to nature.

It's like the water of a river.  It naturally flows down the
gradient; it never flows against it, and that is its nature.

The time is ripe - find your real home.

Ajahn Chah
Thai Buddhist Monk

Excerpt from an article in Lions Roar

First published Jan. 1, 1994
by permission of the Abbot,
Wat Pah Nanachat,
Thailand

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Snow owl on skylight

 

Pondering Impermanence...

The Eternal Being that inhabits the body is not aging -
but I am surprisingly surprised by the reality of the body's 
increasing decline: loss of memory, lack of stamina
and muscle functioning, etc...

I am on the off ramp and the inevitable dropping of the

body transition is surely coming...

Although grateful that the end of the body's struggles
is closer - (how close "she" doesn't know)
but wonders what that will be like;
to witness the death of her body
and the possibility of a 
"cosmic birthing" into a new "form"
of the Formless; or maybe dissolve back
into cosmic dust, or be absorbed by the
Vastness of the Eternal.
Sentience dissolving into the Eternal...

Who really knows...

All is transient here.
We're just passing through.
I shouldn't be surprised by this,
feeling the body's decline as I do -
but still -
every so often,
it gives me pause...

Mystic Meandering
2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

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

 

Silence Calls To Us - Nathalie Delay

Art: Meganne Forbes

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.

Nathalie Delay.com

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Art: Meganne Forbes

 

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 :)

 

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.

 

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...

 

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..."

Ameeta - Self discovering self

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

a sheet of scrapbooking paper
color digitally inverted