The Fairy Fog

In Eternal Echoes Catholic scholar John O'Donohue says about the Celtic world: It was not a world of clear boundaries; persons and things were never placed in bleak isolation from each other. Everything was connected and there was a lovely sense of the fluent flow of presences in and out of each other. The physical world was experienced as the shoreline of an invisible world which flowed underneath it and whose music reverberated upwards.... [The Celts] saw themselves as guests in a living, breathing universe. They had great respect for the tenuous regions between the worlds and between the times. The in-between world was also the world of in-between times: between sowing and reaping, pregnancy and birth, intention and action, the end of one season and the beginning of another. The presences who watched over this world were known as the fairies.

In our world, we have grown used to our circumscribed vision, which sees only walls and corners and clear-cut edges. It seems to me, though, that within Christianity there has from ancient times been an honoring of those in-between moments and places, and they are marked by holy seasons or days. Think of Advent, the time of Mary's pregnancy; or Lent, Jesus' desert time between ministry and the road to crucifixion; or the time of Holy Saturday (fast approaching) in between death and resurrection. These periods all fall around the Earth's own in-between times of solstice and equinox. They are known by Christians as "thin" times, when boundaries begin to dissolve and we can be, by grace, peculiarly open to seeing differently and experiencing the Holy.

We are in such a thin time now. Two days ago I was in the living room of my small house here at Rolling Ridge. It was early morning. Billy had just left for work and I was alone, finishing up my silent movement-prayer-meditation. The room has two wide glass doors opening to the deck and a small meadow and glen beyond. Glancing up I saw a mist floating in wisps and tendrils, kissing the grasses and daffodils and swirling lightly around the trees. The outlines of the deck railing and bird feeder softened; the dogwood took on a soft gray iridescence. The air hushed; the birds seemed to hold their breath. The mist danced, gossamer and graceful, through the clearing and twining branches of the trees and continued on up the soft easterly slope of the forested hill, where it vanished into the sun's warming rays.

John O'Donohue describes a similar scene in Ireland at dusk: "Often at evening one sees a fog low in the fields. Usually fog is first on the mountains and then it comes down. In the gathering dusk, this other fog collects in white streamers and clouds over the fields. It is almost as if a vaporous white wood suddenly stands suspended over the grass. All outlines are blurred; the interim kingdom becomes visible in a presence that is neither object nor light nor darkness. The ancient name for this presence still lingers. It is called 'an ceo draiochta', the fairy fog."

As we move on in time through this in-between season, my hope is that I and all of us can live in this sacred, magic, thin place, even if only for a while. I use "place" metaphorically, though my belief is that the actual place of wilderness is the natural home of these experiences.

~Lindsay McLaughlin

The Man Who Swallowed a Snake

A wise sage often uses stories to draw us into a new thought or send us in a different direction, and Rumi was no exception. Rather than just hand us the lesson, a sage allows us to accept their stories on several levels. We can always learn something, even from the most obvious level of the story. However, contemplating the symbolic language that was used, can take us on a journey with far-reaching effects. In the Mathnawi, Rumi told the story of a man who had fallen into a deep sleep under an apple tree. Snoring loudly, with his head tipped back and mouth wide open, he was so far gone he didn’t notice that a small, yet deadly, snake was exploring the cavern of his mouth. As it happened, a wise man was riding by and happened to notice the snake. The wise man thought he could grab the snake before it did any damage, but he was not quick enough and the frightened snake slipped down the sleeping man’s throat. The wise man began beating the sleeping man until he was awake and then tried to force him to eat the rotten apples lying on the ground around the tree. When the sleeper protested, the wise man drew his sword and threatened to kill him if he didn't start eating. Feeling sure he was dealing with a madman, the sleeper complied and ate until he could swallow no more. He thought the madman would surely leave him alone then, but instead he began chasing him around the tree, waving his sword and screaming. As they ran faster and faster, the sleeper felt certain this was the worst experience of his life. He screamed for help and shouted curses at the madman, but to no avail. Finally, exhausted and sick, the sleeper fell to the ground and vomited everything he had eaten, including the snake. When the wise/madman threw himself to the ground shaking with relief, the sleeper finally understood the reason for the seeming madness. When he had recovered enough to speak, the sleeper asked the man why he had not simply shook him awake and explained what had happened. “And risk giving you a heart attack, or have you faint?” asked the wise man. “If you knew what you had swallowed, you would not have been able to eat the apples, keep running or rid yourself of the snake. So instead of letting you die, I did what I had to do while continually praying it would work.” We could easily think the moral of Rumi’s story was nonjudgment or gratitude for everything that happens, but Rumi had something far deeper in mind. If we’re in this world, we are the sleeper who has swallowed a poisonous snake. In our case, the poison is slow acting; it keeps us in a sleeping state, unaware of our true nature, while gradually but surely killing the body. The snake symbolizes the misperceptions that we swallow day in and day out from the moment of birth. It begins with social conditioning and grows as we collect our own attachments and aversions. Instead, we’ve swallowed the snake whole and as long as it remains within, we continue a dreamlike cycle of birth and death as a body. The moment we vomit out these lies, we wake up and are once more aware of that we are not the body or the personality, but the eternal child of Divine Love. Until we let go of our poisonous misperceptions, the sage often appears to be stark, raving mad. Their words sound like threats and their actions feel like an attack. But like the sleeper, we can’t see the deadly poison we're carrying until some of it becomes evident to us. Of course, Rumi understood that a sage can never beat the truth into anyone, although at times most sages wish they could. But that is only because they see so clearly that the misery of this world is completely unnecessary and could quickly come to an end if the poison of this world was vomited up. Yes, the sleeper believed he was suffering as the wise man forced him to eat rotten apples and run, just as the little self feels that it is being wrongfully abused when it’s confronted with truth. But the sleeper felt that his ‘suffering’ was as nothing once he realized that his life had been saved. When we first hear the words of a sage, it can be painful to us. And the pain can increase as we vomit out the misperceptions that have kept us in a drugged sleep. Ah, but when we look back, now understanding what life really is, we will be just like the man who nearly slept away yet another lifetime, nothing but grateful. ~ by Lee & Steven Hager in: Spiritual Awakening

Ordeal

While meditating with Rumi this morning, a variation on one of his poetic themes emerged out of the time of contemplative reflection:


Ordeal: the time of testing has come.
Words like fortitude and valor mean something
among us again.
But old agreements weaken and break,
old patterns fail.
When the knife reaches the bone,
your life must change.
Be glad the refining fire is all around you.
Laugh as you stand on this threshold into the new.
Out of your dry thorns a rose garden is opening.
I orient my "north" to You, because it is from You
that a joy comes which cannot be spoken.
And when heavy blows beat about my head, I need your compassion.
Yeshua has come from his cross to comfort me.
Muhammad's warriors have come from the Ka'aba
to help me in this fight.
My reason says: Keep still--you do not know 
what you are talking about.
I try to be silent, but my weeping comes anyway.
The Prophets say: When you think it is you who are acting--
it is not you alone, but something far greater.
I feel this deeply in my being,
and like an arrow I am released into this present moment.

A True Teacher

One of the biggest challenges of spiritual evolution is the cultivation of humility and courage. We need to have enough humility to enable us to recognize those who have genuinely reached a higher stage of development than our own, and then we need to have enough courage to aspire to meet them where they are. If a spiritual teacher is authentic, he or she will never finally be satisfied until the student either equals or surpasses the teacher's attainment. A true teacher is someone who doesn't want followers but rather wants authentic partners in this great task of evolutionary transformation.

—Andrew Cohen

The Mystery of Duality

We live in space-time, the land of stark contrasts and dualities. There are opposites everywhere to challenge us (and certainly to frustrate us). We wish it were not so, but it is. In reflecting on this and our experience of the human condition, I came across this most pointed of paragraphs from the teachings of J.G. Bennett called Intimations. I thought it was important to hear this clear voice: 


Perhaps the most important creation was the Devil. How would the universe have had a chance of returning to the Source if there hadn't been a tempter in it? Ask yourself that. Why should one ever sturrgle and try to achieve anything, if there's nothing to struggle against? Therefore our enemies are necessary for us.We have to value them very much. And that includes our own inner enemies. If we had no egoism, then we should be like Angels, who are not capable of transformation. They can't be transformed because there is no denying principle. It is the same way with suffering. Without suffering there is no possibility of transformation. But the way in which suffering serves us is not just by giving us something to overcome, to be patient with, to be good about. The real thing about suffering is that it enables an action to proceed in the depths in us, it enables us to get below the surface, to get below even the ordinary depths, to find the place where there is no suffering. In everyone there is the place that is free from suffering. This place we have to find (43).

Holiness Exploded

“holiness exploded
in a great star burst
and crept into a humble woman,
a tiny baby,
a gentle man.
holiness exploded and landed all around us
- and flows thru our open hearts.”

~terri st cloud

Anti-God state of mind. (Pride)

The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, greed,
drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea-bites in comparison: it
was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads
to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

- C. S. Lewis, Into The Wardrobe

Something Peaceful has Stood Up!

I awoke this morning to a strangling embrace
It seems my ego had protected me again from flatland
I soothed it the best I could, but it kept saying
"I will protect you from this evil world"

Blessed protector, you are the bulwark
against which the world does crash
I am the seat of love the world does desire
When complete, the bridge from the High,
to me, to you, will bring ease and peace.

Step back, Oh protector my vulnerable wings must
spread, how else can the fluids flow through these
beating fans of love.
How else will the pulse of love move from the High
to the mundane.
These wings need exercise, they are about to raise
this place to heights.

These wings are rustled by the spirit tunnel of love.
Prepare yourself, my protector, for the onslaught of
a gentle breeze that will not stop.

Listen, Oh my protector, for the many whispers.

They stir, they tingle, they rustle the grass

Something peaceful has stood UP!

(inspired by the Hymn of the Pearl)

When the Door Opens

The kinds of spiritual experiences that have the power to liberate or enlighten us are not so difficult to come upon if we earnestly seek them out. But if we want to evolve in the most important way, there is a much bigger issue that needs to be understood. And that is the all-important matter of whether we're ready to respond wholeheartedly, fearlessly, and courageously when that door that we may have been knocking on so insistently unexpectedly opens. Our willingness to respond without reservation is what gives the evolutionary impulse—or the God-force in the universe—its power to affect real and lasting change, to catalyze the kind of transformation that will ultimately have an impact on our culture.

—Andrew Cohen

What Quantum Physicists, Poets and Mystics Have in Common

The science that I was taught at school used to think that the universe was infinite. Now they know better. It is in fact a four dimensional sphere. Let me explain. A man living in a two dimensional world lives on a circle, like that drawn on a page. Any direction he moves he'll eventually return to his starting point. A man living in a three dimensional world lives on a sphere, like the earth. Any direction he moves he'll eventually return to his starting point. Similarly we live in a four dimensional universe and any direction we move within the universe we will eventually return to our starting point. It's effectively a very large four dimensional closed loop. This is hard to image, as our brains are setup to think in only three dimensions, however, we live in a universe that is of at least four dimensions, and they all follow the same principle. T. S. Eliot, in his mystical poem, Little Gidding, must have intuited something of this when he wrote: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.It gets more interesting. Albert Einstein has shown us that space and time aren't separate; in fact they're the same thing, which Einstein simply called 'space-time'. Space-time was created with the elements at the time of the 'Big Bang'. This means as you travel through space you also travel through time and vice a versa. If you're thinking that 'you can show that you can move through time without moving through space', you're forgetting that you live on a spinning globe, circling a star, swirling around a galaxy that's flowing through the cosmos. Space and time, not being separate means that not only space is in a closed loop but also time. That is, if you travel in the same direction in the universe you'll not only eventually return to the same point, you'll also return to the same time. The best way to image this is the universe is expanding from a single point. This is the classic and well accepted 'Big Bang Theory'. However as space-time exists in a closed loop, the universe is also at the same time contracting towards the same starting point within space-time. This ability for the universe to be expanding and contracting at the same time has fascinating implications for the dimension of 'scale'. If we take any particular point in the universe and go smaller and smaller, as if looking through a very powerful microscope, we'll eventually see the whole cosmos. In summary, every point in the universe is at the same time both an infinitely small part of the universe and also contains the entire universe. This is new to science but not new to the wise. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj said, "When I see myself as nothing, I call that wisdom. When I see myself as everything, I call that love." William Shakespeare put in more religious terms, "Every man is God playing the fool."When every point in the universe is both at the same time an infinitely small part of the universe and also contains the entire universe, where's the possibility of union?" (According to legend) Buddha was laughing and a disciple asked him why. He reportedly said, "I've just realised that I'm holding the whole cosmos between my fingers!"

~ Leif Cocks

No Expectations

In the way that I teach meditation, the idea is to simply to assume a position of freedom from the very beginning. You're not trying to create any particular experience. Experiences may come and go, but you are not seeking for experiences. You are just assuming the position of unconditional freedom, without any expectations. You are not trying to make anything happen because you have realized that you are already free. Think about it: If there are no expectations, what else could you be but free? But if there are expectations, gross or subtle, you will be unable to let go. Consciously or unconsciously, you will be convinced that something is missing and that something more needs to happen. If you truly have no expectations, you can let go completely, and then you will always find that you are free right now.

~Andrew Cohen

Deep Acceptance: The Loving Heart of Spirituality

As all the authentic spiritual teachers throughout the ages have been reminding us, in reality you're not a separate individual, not an individual ‘self’, not the story of ‘a person in a world’, but a vast ocean of consciousness in which every little manifest wave of experience -- every thought, sensation, image, sound, feeling -- arises and dissolves in this moment. You're not limited in space and time -- you're the loving capacity for life itself. You're the wide open expanse of awareness in which the manifest world appears and disappears, leaving no trace. The non-separation of self and world -- this is where all religious and spiritual teachings point in the end, and it's now being confirmed by modern science too. Everyone knows this Oneness, deep down. Yes, there's something here, and call it what you will -- for not being an 'it', it's truly unnameable -- right in the depths of present experience; something that doesn't come and go, something that cannot break or rot or shatter, even in the midst of extreme sadness or pain or fear. It's a place that's always deeply okay, even when things on the surface don't seem okay. Being beyond the opposites, being beyond the dualistic world of thought and language, it's beyond the cycle of birth and death. It was never born and cannot die. It's life itself. It's what you are. Don't just believe me -- look for yourself. When you bring your attention right back to the present moment, to what's actually happening right now, what do you find? Do you find a fixed, unchanging, solid entity called a ‘self’? Or do you find that everything here is constantly changing, moving, from moment to moment? Do you find solidity, or do you find a cosmic dance? Thoughts appear and disappear, all by themselves. Images, memories, ideas all 'pop' into awareness, linger for a while, and then disappear. Thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future. Stories about what you should be doing, about what you should have done, about things you need to do tomorrow. Thoughts about what should and shouldn’t happen in the world. All sorts of feelings come and go -- sadness, boredom, frustration, anger, fear. Sensations happen all over the body. Sounds appear out of nowhere -- traffic outside, a television buzzing, a door opening, the sound of breathing, a bird chirping, tweet tweet! Everything that appears in what you are, we could call a wave of experience. And so, this thought is a wave. This sensation is a wave. This sound is a wave. This feeling is a wave. Present experience is the ocean of consciousness waving, dancing, playing. Can you recognise that present experience is always simply this present-moment dance of waves, all happening in the vast ocean that you are? And for 'ocean', you can read the word 'Consciousness' or 'Awareness' or 'Being' or 'Spirit' or 'Source' or 'Eenergy' -- or whatever word feels right to you. It's all beyond words, anyway… From the perspective of who you really are, as the vast ocean of consciousness, although all the waves (thoughts, sensations, sounds, feelings) are different in appearance, they're the same in essence. They're all water. The strong, violent, painful waves as much as the soft, gentle waves -- they're all made of the same 'stuff' as you. Thoughts, sounds, pain, sadness, fear -- everything is made of consciousness. In this sense, everything that appears in present experience is deeply intimate with what you are. Therefore, on the deepest level, who you really are doesn't have a problem with any of the waves that appear. None of the waves can threaten who you really are. How can water threaten water? And so you could say that on the deepest level, who you really are accepts every wave -- every thought, every sensation, every feeling. The ocean doesn't accept some waves and reject others -- the unconditional inseparability of the ocean and the waves is the acceptance that I'm talking about. The ocean has no choice but to accept the waves -- it is the waves! Acceptance is ‘built-in’ to your present experience! A question asked by every spiritual seeker: "How can I, a separate person, accept the present moment as it is?" Well, now we see that it's not a question of you trying to do this deepest acceptance -- this acceptance isn't a doing. In a sense, if you're trying to accept, you're already too late, because this acceptance has already been done. Every wave, if it's appearing, has already been accepted into what you are. In a sense, you have already accepted the present moment, exactly as it is. What you are has already said YES to these thoughts, these sensations, these sounds, these feelings -- otherwise they wouldn't be appearing like this. The floodgates are open -- this moment has already been allowed in, in its totality. And so, in my teaching, when I talk about acceptance, I'm not using the word in the way we've been conditioned to use it. I'm using the word in this new way, that points to this deepest acceptance of life itself, an acceptance, an allowing, that has already been done. And so, when I suggest that you 'accept' or 'allow' what is – it's a shorthand way of asking you to simply, gently, effortlessly notice what is present. To notice that in this moment, these thoughts and feelings have already been allowed in. ~ Jeff Foster

Center

Center of all centers, core of cores, almond self-enclosed and growing sweet---all this universe, to the furthest stars and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you; your vast shell reaches into endless space, and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow. Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that will be, when all the stars are dead.

~Rainer Maria Rilke (via Cindy von Miller)

What Is Love?

When we use the word "love," what exactly are we talking about? Are we referring merely to our unique tastes and preferences? Are we referring to our experience of deep personal bonds and emotional attachments? Or are we referring to our connection to a higher spiritual Truth? When we have an experience of revelation or what is traditionally called enlightenment, we directly taste for ourselves a kind of love that is of a different order altogether. It is a love that is truly eternal and unchanging, a love beside which all other forms of love pale in comparison. Once we have tasted its liberating and all-encompassing depth, our understanding of what love is and what it means changes forever.

—Andrew Cohen

Divine Beauty

When a person begins to see all goodness as being the goodness of God, all the beauty that surrounds him as the divine beauty, he begins by worshipping a visible God, and as his heart constantly loves and admires the divine beauty in all that he sees, he begins to see in all that is visible one single vision; all becomes for him the vision of the beauty of God. His love of beauty increases his capacity to such a degree that great virtues such as tolerance and forgiveness spring naturally from his heart. Even things that people mostly look upon with contempt, he views with tolerance. The brotherhood of humanity he does not need to learn, for he does not see humanity, he sees only God. And as this vision develops, it becomes a divine vision, which occupies every moment of his life. In nature he sees God, in man he sees His image, and in art and poetry he sees the dance of God. The waves of the sea bring him the message from above, and the swaying of the branches in the breeze seems to him a prayer. For him there is a constant contact with his God.

~Hazrat Inayat Khan via Gail Ostensen

Pray Thyself in me

Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of Thee ; Thou
only knowest what we need; Thou lovest me better than
I know how to love myself. O Father! give to Thy child
that which he himself knows not how to ask... Teach me
to pray; pray Thyself in me.
- François Fénelon (1651-1715),
Selections from Fénelon

It's There

“it's there.

inside you.

yeah, it's easy to forget,

to get discouraged and distracted.

but go back again.

because it's there.

waiting for you.

inside you.

your strength, your wisdom and your peace are there.

inside you.”

~terri st cloud