The Seat of the Yogi

 What is... must be, inside and out...

Michael A. Singer

Michael Singer, as if talking directly to me (lol), reminds us to get out of the way of the spiritual process occurring within us.  I have been asking..."What do I do?  What do I choose?" in order to make this awakening occur faster and all I have been doing is interfering with a process that has nothing to do with "me".

I am not liking this part of my awakening.  I am afraid and I am resorting to doing what most of us do.  I am trying to control my growth. Well...ego has stepped up and is trying to control the process.  What is happening inside is between God and my Deeper Being...it has nothing to do with "me".  "Me" has to step out of the way.

How?

Michael Singer tells us Karma Yoga, is  how. 

Work, do, keep busy with all the tasks asked of you through Life.  What is showing up in front of you  that needs to be done, right now?  I look about me and see a thousand things I could be doing. Someone need your help?  Some housework need to be done?  Something need to be fixed?  Do you have a job to show up for?  Children to look after? Pets that need to be walked or cared for? When we resist doing these things for the sake of our spiritual development ...we are resisting and getting in the way of the spiritual process! (I have been doing that big time).  

Do.  Ego might chirp and complain about doing these things but don't listen to ego!! Do it anyway! If it says, "Oh my! What about my time...I have no time for "me"...that is a good thing.  That is karma yoga: to be so busy with showing up for what Life gives you now, that you have no time for "me" and its tendency to want to run after things that take you out of "now".  Be here and now with every task you do.  When we are busy doing, as we stay open and aware of presence...the purifying process continues within us.  It doesn't need us to interfere with it. Our focus outward on "meaningful" busy work stops us from interfering. 

We can add certain things to our doing practice directly related to this mission.  We can meditate every morning.  We can do yoga .  We can pray. We can study and read and learn  or whatever in a committed way every day.   The key word is "committed".   (That, I do.)  But make it a point to show up everyday even when ego says, "Oh I would rather not do that."  Don't listen to ego...stay committed to your Karma yoga.

Man, I see how I have been interfering.  I was avoiding working on the mess outside in hope of fixing the mess inside.  But I had it backwards.  Instead of sitting with the mess inside, which is beyond our ability to fix, we can let God and the Higher Self work it out while we go about doing things we have the capability of doing. 

You sweep the floor because it is better than sitting in the mess inside.

It is not about what we do but how much of us is doing it.  Put your whole being into what shows up for you to do in each moment. That, Singer tells us, is spiritual.

Hmmm!  Anyway...that is something to think about.  As much as I resist "To-Do lists" , I think I am going to come up with a doing routine...a "Getting Through This Dark Night Karma Yoga Routine". A doing list with a spiritual purpose in mind will led to committed mindful doing, not mindless doing.  Maybe things will actually get done around here  too lol.   

Yeah...I do not want to get lost in the "doing"...but I also don't want to get lost in the "being"...at least that part of "being"  that has nothing to do with "me", like this purification process.  Hmmm! 

It is all good! 

All is well in my world.

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( June 25, 2023) Exploring Karma Yoga. https://tou.org/talks/

Another Question Answered

 Karma means your life is your making. Karmic accumulation can either be a boost or a burden-that is your choice.

Sadhguru

Please remember I am not answering these questions with any level of expertise. In them, I am a student, not a teacher. I am simply trying to put together what I have learned. If you are looking for expertise...seek it from others who can sincerely call themselves " Teacher"...or more importantly...seek it from the Wise Self within. 

All is well!

Wanting Something Different?

 

I do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them.

Gene Stratton-Porter 

I am glad readership is down again....my confusion during this dark night is challenging enough for this "me" to get through, let alone expect others to suffer through the reading of it. lol 

I am thinking about this idea of "healthy wanting" and if there is such a thing.

There has to be a balance, I think, between going after what we practically need as body and mind and  renouncing what we don't need as soul?  That is what is confusing for me.  I know desire and aversion are the two most basic hindrances to us getting to that deeper level of consciousness, where we really want to be whether we know it or not,  because they keep "me" active. As long as "me" is active , it is in the way of us going deeper.  At the same time...we do have bodies and the experience of "mind"living on this horizontal plane, don't we? There are certain survival needs to consider.  Singer tells us there are, however,  no psychological needs once we go deeper and understand , truly understand, nonduality.  That level of understanding requires a lot of practicing and learning and many of us won't get there before we die. A lot of our learning will come from challenge. I am okay with that . 

So on this journey there, is it not okay to lean a little towards the pleasant experiences of Life if we are given a choice...to maybe even want something different?  Sure we need to accept, allow, appreciate and honor every experience Life unfolds in front of us with as little judgement of "good or bad, right or wrong, should be or shouldn't be," as possible but do we have to sit there and passively accept the low energy of painful situations, without "doing" anything? Can we not do, what is within our power, to improve them so there is less "external" discomfort?   Without being dependent on things to be different, or becoming attached to outcome, can we occasionally attempt to make changes to our present set of circumstances and still stay on the path?  

We are also told that there are certain external experiences that help to open us to the experience of internal joy. Yes, peace, joy, love come from within and it should not matter what situation we are facing in order to experience them but...until we are fully enlightened, Life events can really have an impact on our energy, can't they? I can attest to that! So is there anything wrong with "seeking" outer experiences that can help open us to joy? 

Say for example, in the slump many of us find ourselves in during this dark night of the soul ...is it okay to seek more external light while we wait for the internal light to burn its way through, by , for example, going on a vacation in the tropics? We know that the tropical sun is not the cause of our joy, it just helps to open us to the joy that is within. Is it okay to want and ask for relief from external challenge?   Sure we do not want to be dependent on outcomes, or whatever happens out there, but is it okay to ask for an easier ride along the horizontal plane...or at least a break every now and again? Can we ask for more , and accept and appreciate at the same time, that what unfolds  has little to do with us as these little selves?  Can we say, "Thy Will, not "my" will,  be done but if it isn't too much trouble, do you mind adding a few joy-opening external situations to help keep this energy up until I master keeping it up on my own? It is okay if you can't, but if it is not too much trouble, I would appreciate it! That is, of course, if no other being is going to be negatively impacted by my joy-opening experiences now or in the future. "  Then I would add, "If that is not in the plan...could you help me open faster so it doesn't matter what is happening outside?" 

Both Selfish petitions from an unevolved mind,  are they not? I don't know.

Never mind me as I ramble.

All is well. 

Just Don't Close!

 

Keep your heart open for as long as you can, as wide as you can, for others, and especially for yourself. 

Maurie Schwartz

I just realized something about the previous entry.  As I was sitting outside in the sun, surrounded by big beautiful trees, so much green, a blue sky and robins...so many robins singing and hunting for worms on my lawn....and as I was smiling over a memory of something silly my grandson did the day before...it came to me, "What was I saying? I am not completely closed! Far from it!" 

 I am open to appreciation when I am surrounded by  the beauty of nature .  I am open to  joy and love ...so much so when I am around my grandchildren.  I am open to excitement and enthusiasm at times.  I am open to creative inspiration or else I would not be writing this. I am not completely blocked.  There is light coming through all the time.  

My mind, however, has been focusing on that which is not pleasant and broken...on the blockages, casting a dark shadow over the light that is coming through.  Man I am not completely blocked...a lot of those old samskaras are crumbling and dissolving on their own...so more and more light can come through. I am at the point where I can "just not close!"  For some reason, when I heard that direction today ...I was seeing myself as so blocked...so closed ...no light coming through...so it did not make sense to me. Then as I was sitting "out there", experiencing "out there" because of the openings "in here"...it dawned on me..."I am not completely blocked or closed."  I never was. So yes it makes sense to not close anymore than I am closed so things can continue to come through. 

Oh the mind i a crazy, crazy thing.  Is it not? 

All is well. 

Staying Open or Not Closing?

 If you like energy and you do, then don't ever close. The more you learn to stay open, the more the energy can flow into you. You practice opening by not closing.

Michael A. Singer. 

I still have a hard time understanding the difference between staying open and not closing.  I mean, I understand that we are naturally open to that wonderful Shakti flow of love and joy and bliss ( though I have yet to experience it). And I also understand that we close to it when we resist what life gives us based on our blockages ( stored past interpretations or mental modifications which  lead to desire and aversion and that which block  this pure open field of awareness). I understand "resistance" I do and the need for "acceptance and allowance", of Life as it is... but when Singer instructs us not to worry about staying open...just don't close, I visualize the big question mark popping up in a little speech bubble above my head. It is like, "What is the difference...and how do we control such a thing? "

Open First

I mean ...the way I see it...I am already blocked...I am already closed. I have been most of my life. I am not open! I may have been born open but I am not open now! My job, then,  is to open...not to stop closing. How does one stop closing something that is already completely closed? I understand, I do, that I am not helping matters much when I resist the low hanging fruit when it shows up in my life...that I am putting more blockages on top of the blockages. Don't need anymore of those! But that doesn't seem to be the real problem for me...the problem is the deep samskaras...the real cause of the blockage. I work on the low hanging fruit but I am still closed at a deeper level. There seems to be so little light getting through from the inside.  One has to be open to close, right? I am not open...so how can I stop closing? 

I don't know.  I know I want to and intend to become open and to  be as open as I can be to Life as it unfolds in front of me and through me....whatever it is.  I don't want to resist ( close to ) any more of it...but  I am already closed.  So "Just don't close" is hard for me to follow. Better instructions, for me at least, might be "Get open and be at least partially open first and then once you are open don't close!"

Things Can open You?

And that brings me back to this, "Things can open you." I mean, I have learned the hard way about the folly of looking out there for things to make me happy and complete, I have.  I see that very clearly but when I am told that things out there can open us, I begin to question.  If I need to open first...are there things out there that I  can just use as a corkscrew kind of thing to help me open?  I mean...I know these external situations, events, things or people can't keep me open, once I am open...that will be my job but can I actively seek and use something "out there" to help me open "in here"  so I can get to that point where "Just don't close!" makes more sense to me? 

 Like what about nature and the sunset Singer described , for example.  Should we consciously choose to surround ourselves with nature? What about teachings and teachers who have opened and learned to stay open...should we consciously choose to surround ourselves with them?  What about positive and naturally open beings  like children  and certain animals? Should we consciously choose to spend more time with them?  What about adventure and  activity that speed up adrenaline flow ( and energy)? Should we be consciously partaking more in that?

 I know pleasant and unpleasant are dualistic terms that we are going to try to grow beyond but....if pleasant external situations open us, when we are completely closed, more gently than the  unpleasant do...should we not be consciously choosing those over the "negative" if we are given the opportunity?  

What to Choose?

Say for example, I have a decision to make.  I am invited to go away for a weekend by two different family members.  One family member is easy and pleasant...leading to little samskara reactivity.   I know it will be a pleasant, easy experience.  There is a good chance I will relax and therefore open a bit and let some of that happy, joy, love feeling energy to come to the surface. It may be just a bit of it we will be able to take with us but some. 

The other person is not so easy, not so pleasant ( according to mind)  and being with them leads to a lot of tension, resistance and reactivity. Though I know, in the long run, such challenges open us...there is a good chance that for the weekend I am going to be stuffing more closure over the deep closure. I am going to feel miserable. Of course, the problem is my judgement and what mind is doing but mind is doing this becasue of these deep seated blockages that are still in me. It knows how closed I am.  If I can get through this and after deep reflection on it...I may discover more of an opening. 

One experience, for whatever reason, is deemed as pleasant and softens the blockage so positive energy is released slowly in little streams and the other is deemed as unpleasant and pokes at the blockages. If we continue poking or adding extra force, they will explode open.  That constant poking will eventually release a lot of negative emotion that is sitting on top of the positive energy bringing it to the surface so it can be released...but it is going to be a challenging, difficult and painful  experience. Like stuffing sticks of DNT in the blockages. Yes, it will be effective in the long run...we want those blockages gone...but not fun!  

The pleasant experience, is not difficult but I am still opening a bit with each bit of relaxation and laughter.  The opening  is occurring more naturally. Now once, I have a lot of those pleasant external situations unfolding in front of me...a lot of sunset experiences...a lot of positive communication with others...a lot of laughing children or tail wagging pet experiences etc...some external ease to replace the challenges...I will open slowly but surely,  won't I? Then, once I am at least a quarter open,  I can worry about "not closing".  Is that how it should work? 

Right now, it feels like I am just standing here with a couple of sticks of dynamite in my hand...already lit.  I am passively accepting all life gives me without actively seeking anything more from "out there", as I wait for the big inner explosion that is going to set me free.  I do want to blow these samskaras from here to smithereens and I am ready for the pain and discomfort. I guess, I am willing to "renounce" all joy until that happens???  My realizing that nothing out there is responsible for my happiness or lack of has definitely put the ownership on me. I will and do accept what life offers as it unfolds in front of me . but does that mean I cannot seek and have experiences  out there  that open me up in a gentler way? 

Hmmm! The choice for me, I guess, isn't so much about whether I stay open or don't close, but how do I open...gently with so called "pleasant" experience or harshly with so called "negative" experience and challenge?  

This  reminds me of the horse training choices my sister has to make.  She can approach her young horse with firm, almost aggressive discipline to "break" it. It will involve something like poking at samskaras, to open it to her so it submits and follows her demands.  It will be unpleasant for both of them but eventually there will be submission.  Or she can follow another more slow but gentle  approach. She can encourage the horse to relax and enjoy her by offering pleasant experiences and rewards, so it breaks, not out of fear of consequenc, but out of love. Hmmm! She is choosing the last route. 

I mean, I do understand that once we are open our goal is to not close so the wonderful flow of Shakti can flow through us and into the world. But we do need to open first don't we, before we worry about not closing? It isn't until we are open fully that we will enjoy this external and internal Life fully, right?  So though challenge will help to open us, is it okay to also choose a more gentle way to open now and again, so we can enjoy life a little bit before we enjoy it fully? I don't know...I really don't.  I just know I wouldn't mind a bit more ease in my life.

Wow! Did I ever ramble, lol. 

All is well. 

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( June 23, 2023) Letting Go-Your path to Unconditional Love. https://tou.org/talks/

Thankful Heart

 The thankful heart opens us up to a multitude of blessings that continually surround us.

James E. Faust

Returned from a night away at my sister's farm where I spent time surrounded by the wonderful energy of nature and horses and sisterly connection. It was lovely and I am so grateful. 

I am not sure what to write today.  Grandson is coming in a few minutes and I am mentally and physically preparing myself for that lol. I know my age after a day with him lol.

Anyway, I will be back when this poem in my head decides to unscramble itself. :) 

All is well, exactly as it is! 

Preferring or Experiencing the Moment?

 Each experience stands alone.  It is complete amongst itself....Every single moment of life is an experience that  is complete and whole and worth living.  It is a miracle. It is an opportunity for tremendous excitement and growth. 

Michael A. Singer

Can you approach every moment of your life like that? Seeing no matter what unfolds in front of you as an exciting opportunity for growth? Imagine feeling that awe and enthusiasm  all the time and being able to say to life, "Good! Wonderful! Thank You! " and "Bring it on!" no matter what unfolds in front of you, even if it is painful. Do you at least want to put aside your preferences and your aversions so you can try to do that?

What is the alternative?  To continue living in our crazy heads,like most of us do, instead of experiencing Life as it is. Hmm! Think about it.

All is well!

Michael A. Singer / Temple of the Universe (June 19, 2023) Trading Preference for the Blessing of the Moment. https://tou.org/talks/

When Will Morning Come?

You have to grow from inside out. None can teach you. None can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul. 

Swami Vivekananda

Practicing Kriya yoga and I am really not sure what I am doing.  I want to take that "jet plane" to God...so I am studying and practicing Yogananda's written directions for Kriya. This is probably not the way to do it. One is supposedly supposed to be initiated into kriya by a guru before they practice...but I am telling myself...that in this modern world of virtual connection...the initiation doesn't have to take place in person?  It is not going to happen in person here, anyway. I could put an ad in the local paper, "Seeking, Kriya Teacher from Babaji lineage for Initiation."  I am quite sure that I would not get a response.  lol. 

I just want release already! This dark night of the soul is getting to be more than a little "old".  I hate waking up with that big knot in my gut and the heaviness in my heart...like I have been doing for weeks now.  I accept it, even if I don't like it.  We don't have to like this part, do we?  I am not asking to avoid the dark night...I am still very much committed to going forward in my mission to get to that peace that passes all understanding...but can we get there already? lol. 

At this point, there is so much samskara garbage right there at the top of me...so easily triggered by everything and anything. I am so aware of it all. It is dark and heavy. I am also looking back at my life and saying, "OMG I spent almost six decades living in a mental construct and not in reality...what a waste!" I really don't want to spend another day here, living like this, but it is going to take what it takes for me to let go of all this mental stuff and conditioning. Sigh!   It's crazy. 

Anyway, I am committed and am venturing forward. Morning will come when it comes, I guess. 

All is well. 

Going Deeper

 There is a need to go deeper, to let myself go completely, to enter into the surroundings in a real fellowship of oneness, to lift above the outer shell, out into the depths and wideness where God is the recognized center and everything  is in time with everything, and the key-note is God. 

Emily Carr 

This beautiful collection of words from Canadian artist and member of The Group of Seven, Emily Carr certainly implies that she was well on her way to self-realization, don't they? She was on a quest to go deeper. Her art spoke of this connection. She created this moving Essence through her pictures whether it be wind or light or snow.

Anyway, giving in to the  need for distraction (why can I not just sit with boredom?) I did up another very imperfect  video as I attempted to answer another question from the jar. 

All is well!

My Morning Practice

 If you stop making a mess, the mind will stop being a mess. [Or something like that]

Michael A. Singer

It is already One PM and I am just coming here to write now.  I, out of physical ( and possibly mental) fatigue slept in until 9 this morning.  Then after feeding all my pets who shot these looks of "What the fork crazy lady? You are an hour late with the food!"at me, I sat down. I could even hear my crow ( Well..he isn't mine lol but I have been feeding him and his mate for a while and he comes when I call him)...cawing loudly outside my window this morning, telling me to get my butt out there with some food.  By the time I got out there he was gone, fed up with my insolent tardiness lol.  Anyway...once all my "masters" were fed I sat down with my tea and listened to Michael A. Singer's latest podcast.  After that I practiced some Kriya yoga in hope that it will call up the Shakti energy to push away the remaining samskara junk so I can be purified sooner. ( Now, I can just imagine how that would sound to someone who doesn't truly understand yoga lol...woo-woo...but it it truly isn't. I really cannot explain it or teach it though...you have to check out someone who can, k? ) Then I did my regular meditation.  All and all, you could say I did over two hours of meditation. I also did some salutations and tried to get some steps in to get the heart pumping to help with the low heart rate and BP.  So anyway, it was all a part of my practice and I spent four hours in total on it.  If it wasn't for teh body feeling the way it does, I would not have had the opportunity to practice at this length.  So I am grateful how everything happens for a reason....it is like the universe is guiding me here. ( Too woo-woo for you? ) 

Wow!  This was my morning practice. This is what I did for me today.  Let me rephrase that...this is what I did to get rid of "me" today and reconnect with Self.  Hmmm!  

Anyway, there is so much I want to write about.  Mostly how I am actually "seeing" and "visualizing" the dissolution of "me" these days and how that feels.  (Sucky! lol) But I think all that might have to be expressed in  a poem...if at all.  This experience  may be too visual and tactile for words. I don't know.

But anyway...it is all good.  "I'll be back!" (Watched the "Arnold" Documentary last evening ).

All is well!
 

Within?

 

nor will they say, "Look , here it is!" or "There!" for behold the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.

Luke: 17: 21 ESV

Another answering of a question from the jar. Bear with me as I indulge myself in another  Self- seeking exercise.:)

All is well

The Burden of the Unhappy Self

 The burden of an unhappy self ...can be transmuted. ..Presence is arising  and is gradually dissolving the pain body in you....The pain body is fuel for presence.

Eckhart Tolle 

Hmm! Many of us carry the burden of an unhappy self, don't we? We shine the light of consciousness down on those dark parts of us...the suffering parts of us...what  Eckhart Tolle refers to as the "pain body"; we narrow the focus of the lens into that six square feet of "me" and that becomes all we see. It becomes who we think we are. 

 Sigh, got a call in the middle of the night regarding a very tormented pain body that needs transmutation, if this loved one is going to stay alive. I dropped right into the depth of Self...or tried to when I got the call. (Like I said...in this in between stage, I am not sure who Self is). I was calm, non- reactive, demanding quietly that the person relaying the news drop all the unnecessary drama and "add-ons" ( which often come in the form of the messenger's personal interpretations, past history, and their reactivity) for the "just is" of the situation.  Stripping that relayed story of the emergency down into the bare naked reality really helps.   Then I made some decisions, gave the person on the other line  directions and I waited calmly, (even getting a few winks of shut eye), for the next call, the next step.  I then got up slowly, ready to take action, breathing deeply, recognizing any tension in my body and encouraging it to relax.  I noticed and accepted that only parts of me would relax completely. I accepted that I would not know the full extent of what I would be confronting until I got there. Told myself that is okay...I am not this body and I cannot dive into some future in my mind.  I then started to get dressed. I was ready to respond.

 Just then another call came in, saying the individual was now home and safe. I calmly thanked the person.  Went back to my bed and laid down.  There was no real sense of relief or happiness in me based on the change in the external event.  There was just a calm and cool detachment.  I didn't fall to sleep right away but there was no ruminating or endless recollection  of how many of these phone calls I received over the years, a couple with fatal endings.  There was no wishing and hoping that this person would get better. There was this complete acceptance of the situation being the way it was and totally out of my hands. Sure there was pain, and sadness, some fear and grief but there was an acceptance of that too. I did eventually fall back to sleep. 

Hmm! Is that progress?  Have I gone, Michael A. Singer, from mastering  the dealing of the low hanging fruit to dealing with the more challenging stuff in an "untethered" way?  I wonder.  Heck I may stub my toe in a few minutes and find myself screaming and cursing my way through the house like a banshee on crack, anything but calm and abiding in higher Self lol. Who knows? 

This loved one has a pain body.  I still have one too...though it is transmuting, dissipating with every breath of presence I can bring into a situation.  I have to keep being present no matter what unfolds in front of me, for both our sakes. I don't always succeed but sometimes I do.  Regardless, I am committed to the practice. Someday, I will be able to shine this amazing light of consciousness ( which is who we are) away from the darker parts of self  with ease and place it on the lighter parts of Self.  Someday it might even  remain there in the  light where it belongs. This will require a wide angle lens, of course. I have a wide angle lens inside me; we all do.  We can put our attention on anything we choose! Maybe it is true that  these pain bodies, once stripped to their essence, will make great fuel for all presence to shine.  Sigh!

All is well, exactly as it is.

Eckhart Tolle (January, 2023) How to Heal Emotional Pain in 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUjdUDFi1I

Still Weathering...

The dark night of the soul is when you have lost the flavor of life but have not yet gained the fullness of divinity. So it is that we must weather that dark time, that period of transformation when what is familiar has been taken away and the new richness is not yet ours.

Ram Dass

Crazy

Hmm! This dark night I am experiencing is  a crazy thing to observe.  Some , I am sure, are observing "me" and saying that it is "me" that is crazy....and I would have to agree with that too.  This "me", this "psyche", this part of my mind so busy focusing on "little me's" desires and aversions is absolutely nuts! Non stop chatter...with pressure of speech like I have never heard before...flight of ideas...obsessive and compulsive...disorganized thinking...dissociative fugue...delusions...paranoia...anxiety...over use of the defense mechanisms of suppression, repression, denial and avoidance...and  having illusions and hallucinations non stop.  These are things one would find in the DSM V under the most severe forms of mental illness. 

Of course if these mind tendencies were what was being judged,  it is no wonder why others would say I was crazy. But  this is not what is being judged. is it?  This is the part of me  considered "normal" because it is what most of our minds are doing, isn't it?  It is my wanting to step away from all that "normal" suffering- inducing madness. that others are observing in me, and thinking is "crazy." Sigh!

Knowing What I am Not...Not Knowing What I Am 

I have realized that I am not my mind stuff.  I am not this body and this role this body plays in this world.  I am not what I own or don't own.  I am not what I do or don't do. I left what I thought I was behind and stepped out into the dark night to make my way to something more.  I am not the opinion others have of me. People around me see a big change in me and they see that as crazy.  It is true, I am feeling so disconnected from what I once knew, unstable and off balance, confused, scared, excited, unsure, vulnerable, insecure, terrified etc as I go forward blindly, having no idea what is up ahead but feeling like I have no choice but to keep going.  This is a very unsettling experience for me...to be between what I once thought I was but wasn't... and what I am, not yet knowing who that is. I don't feel like I belong anywhere...hovering between two poles...so "out of place". I don't fit in that other world I left anymore. None of it has much meaning and I find it hard to interact with others...I mean I love and feel compassion for all  but I have this sense that I no longer belong becasue they see me as "crazy".

 That feeling is far from pleasant but I would never go back to the way it was before.  That life never felt right to me either.  It never made sense to me.  I do not want to return to a state of suffering with a few bouts of conditional okayness to help me get by...where I  felt I had to struggle to grasp, cling, push away, fix, and manipulate everything out there so I could feel okay in here.  How are any of us expected to be okay with a mind like that ( as described above), with a "me" that is never satisfied or settled? Hmm! So I left what I thought I was, the familiar, and am now on the journey to something more.  It is dark and scary. People around me are asking, in not so many words, "What are you doing crazy lady?"

The Destination is Here 

I am portraying it like a journey...as if there is something up ahead in the distance I am trying to get to. Michael Singer, in the below linked podcast, reminds us, however, that You are there already...You are sat chit ananda (eternal conscious ecstasy) .

There already? Ecstasy? First of all,  I would settle for a feeling of "relief" from fear and this heavy weight of suffering that seems to be weighing me down. Ecstasy and bliss seem so far out of my wheel house right now lol. Peace of mind is another rung  I want to reach on this ladder that takes us up to this proverbial Sat Chit Ananda in the sky. (Still have this image in my head of having to get somewhere...and it it is an arduous hike or an arduous climb in the dark. ) I am being told by so many others that I don't have to go anywhere, that I am already there. So if I am there already, why can I not at least feel a bit more relief, a bit more peace?  I have been working so hard, practicing, going inward to the mess inside everyday...and this dark night seemed to have landed on me creating even more suffering...because I cannot see where I am going or tell  if I am even progressing by looking backwards.  And I am supposed to be feeling ecstasy?  Wow!  There must be really something wrong with me if I cannot even tap into a feeling of "relief"? 

So why don't you go back to where you were, crazy lady?

(As you can tell, I am having a really hard time avoiding the idea of  linear distance travel lol).  

I don't think I could go back, even if I wanted to.  I have a feeling, once we truly leave the house...like with both feet outside the door ( before then we likely played with a one foot out and one foot in type of experience)...I think the door locks behind us or maybe the house turns into a pile of sawdust because it was never real or sturdy in the beginning. I don't know...I can't see, remember? The night is too dark for me to look back to see what happened to the house. lol

 Anyway, I think that when we get to where I am now in my understanding of things, we cannot go back to our old ways of seeing and perceiving. That is another reason why this Dark Night is so challenging. We are suddenly like timid guinea pigs  getting the guts to explore the  open, only to find when we hear a strange noise, that  our shelter has been removed.  There is no place to retreat back to. Did you know that guinea pigs can have sudden cardiac deaths because of that? Might be why my ticker is acting up lately, as well. 

Back to the Question: If I am already there, why am I not feeling the ecstasy that is supposedly a part of my innate Shakti flow? 

I get from the below podcast, that there is two reason why: 1. We are too busy staring at the lower and darker parts of us and 2.  We have blocked the flow of  Shakti with our samskaras. 

1. We are too busy staring at "me"? Most of us spend our whole life in "me-me" focus...focusing on our wants and aversions...trying to figure out what we can do to feel better inside. We have a very narrow focus. It is such a narrow beam of this wonderful light of consciousness we shine on "me" that we cannot see anything around it.  Our focus on me is so intent. The world appears to be there for "me" at the exclusion of anything else.  This narrow focus does not bring realization of sat chit ananda because it is shining the light away from the light, into the darkest parts of ourselves where me grows. This brings suffering, right?  That is why we leave the house we were in...a house that was lined with mirrors. 

So we did remove most of our focus on "me" when we left the house for the dark night. We left the mirrors behind and even if we brought one along ...it is dark right, how are you going to stare at yourself in the dark?Anyway...some of our "me" focus is gone as we journey out...but not all of it.  It now becomes about this "me" travelling on this hero's journey...suffering the dark night.  Our beam of consciousness is now on this me going through the dark night.  We focus on how dark and challenging it is and not on the reasons why we are here. We still focus on the darkness and the more we focus on the darkness, the darker it seems to get.  If we are focusing on the darkness, we are not focusing on the light. You are a light shining on something that is dark and you say, "I am dark". 

2. The other reason why we are not able to feel the ecstasy of Shakti is because we have blocked the flow with our samskaras.  So much of Life we have resisted over the years. When we resist we  stuff these things deep down inside us so we don't have to deal with them on the conscious level. We have created psychic blockages and damns over our Shakti...cutting us off from experiencing the flow.  The Shakti is still there trying to flow but we do not feel it. Our samskara ridden psyches are in the way. Sigh. Now as we walk out into the dark night, leaving what we thought we knew behind, the Samskaras become unsettled from their knotted tangles and start to emerge on their own.  What was stuffed in pain, is released in pain.  So here we are travelling along in the dark, disconnected from all we once thought we knew...not knowing where we are going and what we will find there...and on top of that we have all this painful energy from emerging samskaras to deal with. Yuck! That is going to make it hard to connect to these wonderful feelings of Shakti, right?

So is there any good news in this sad and twisted tale , crazy lady?

Yes...as painful as it is we need to remember that "this too shall pass".  This dark night will not last forever.  We will eventually get to where we are going, to where we always were. We just need to have faith and trust that intuitive feeling that gets even stronger in the dark.  As confused and challenged by this experience  as I am right now...I know in my gut that I am going to where I need to go.  I have no desire to turn back, and wouldn't,  even if I could.  

It helps, I find, to remind yourself that going forward is not crazy, what you left behind was the craziness. You were not truly happy and fulfilled back there.  You were just compensating...trying to make the prison you were stuck in more comfortable....and even when you succeeded at doing so, it never lasted, right? It was always just a prison.

Accept the dark night forever long it lasts for you.  Acceptance is key. If we resist the dark night...it becomes another samskara that blocks our energy flow. Know that it is there for your evolution and it will last as long as it needs to to get you there!

You can also take that light of consciousness you were shining on the dark parts of you and this night and shine it elsewhere.  What would you need to possess inside you to endure this night if you discovered it was going to last forever? Peace, calm abiding, other focus, service, strength, courage....build those qualities and focus the light on them.  

Don't push the samskaras back down as they emerge.  Let it all come up. Sit with the pain and then let it go! 

Trust that the light and the shakti is right there ready to flow. Trust that though the remaining surface you does not feel okay, the "I am' within is always okay and it is back to that you are heading. 

And remember we don't go to God....we are just reaching a state of being, where we stop leaving.

All is well!

Michael A. Singer / Temple of the Universe. ( June 12, 2023) Let the deep Truths Set You Free. https://tou.org/talks/

Examining the Mind

 If you keep examining your mind you will come to see that thoughts of who you are and how it all is are creating the reality you are experiencing.

Ram Dass

The Mind In the Way

Well the sun has been revealed after days and days of rain.  The first real sunny day was yesterday and I rejoiced in it as much as this tired body and still heavy mind would let me.  I pushed the body to walk and exercise ( in hope of stimulating the shakti flow) and I went to what has been termed a  healing place by the first nations people here. I walked along the ocean listening to the waves crash against the shore like breaths from Mother Nature herself, hiked through a cedar forest, ad travelled in an open field that seemed to stretch for miles under the blue sky. It was healing for soul even if mind and body objected lol. That is what I tell myself anyway. :) The only thing in the way of me fully enjoying it? Mind, of course. 

This dark night makes me so aware of this mind and teh impact it has on my life!  And it is a nasty critter sometimes...chomping and gnawing away at my insides, standing in the way of peace and joy ...for no good reason at all! I had an encounter with it this morning...or at least I "observed" it in action.

Examining the Barrier

I awoke this morning...feeling the physical effects of overexertion yesterday...so I was a little off. Being off physically doesn't bother me. I wouldn't mind waking up to chest pain and sore muscles but what was even more in  my face was  Mind.  It was so in my face, reminding me of a cousin of mine that passed a few years ago.  He had undiagnosed Asperger's or something on the spectrum, and had no sense of social distance. He would often  come right into your face as he spoke.  He was also bitterly depressed and there was often so much negativity spitting out from his mouth.One would try to shed a little light and he would turn that light into something dark. His expressions got dark fast, so full of  conspiracy stories. It was so draining to be around him, I often found myself avoiding him. 

Well when I woke up this morning, Mind reminded me so much of my cousin.  It was as if Mind was standing way to close to my face, relaying a conspiracy story that "me" was the center of.  It all began when I wondered why I never got the same calls D. did to certain schools and my mind took that and ran with it...creating this big elaborate conspiracy story about false assumption about me. I lay there and I watched mind build on that story until it reached the most negative of conclusions. Mind was telling me that people were assuming the absolute worse thing possible about me.  I could hear  a voice in the distance behind the drama unfolding , saying, "Well you wanted to get rid of your attachment to "me" in a hurry, didn't you? In order to do that you  need to be free of the good opinion of others. This is the ultimate test. Are you free?"  

I realized I wasn't free...yet.

All Just Thought

Now...I was aware as I was observing that this was all just thought.  I was also aware of the negative charge to this thought stream...bringing me down pretty fast ( well lowering the focus of consciousness into the mud and keeping the shakti flow in the very depths of that mud....that is what "down" is, isn't it?).  I was aware of the negative feelings I was experiencing...yick! I was also aware of the habitual tendency emerging to  "fix" this so I didn't have to feel that way.  Thoughts for redemption came into my head.  I needed  to figure out how I could make people out there think better of me. Then I thought well maybe, for now,  I could just come up with another reason why I didn't get the calls...a less challenging to deal with possible negative assumption or opinion of me. Then I went to...maybe it had nothing to do with "me" but just a preference for others or a glitch in the system.  I started to come up a bit, to feel better.

Then I realized that I just spent ten minutes in this horrible drama I made up in my head.  Wow! Mind is still so much in the way. There is still so much "me" there to shed. Am I ever going to get past this?  Am I ever going to be free from the suffering it causes? Am I even progressing at all?

As I sit here reflecting on it, much to your bored horror, I see that yes there is a way to go but I am getting somewhere.  A few years ago I would not have been "observing" myself thinking these thoughts...There would have been no awareness of  "observer".  I would have been totally identified with the thought stream , lost in it.  It all would have been real .  I would have believed my thoughts and lived according to them!

Observing and Asking "Why?" 

Now,  I am observing objectively. Sure, there was a subjective pull there this morning and I felt a lot of negative emotions in response to those negatively charged thoughts...but there was some distance...I was observing myself experience the thinking and its consequences.  I knew I was observing Mind, not reality,  and I was not believing the thoughts to be 100%  true. I also caught myself at one point going from "How do I fix this so I feel better?" to "Why am I thinking like this?"   

Why Am I Thinking Like This?

I realized upon asking that question that the past samskaras were being triggered.  My samskaras are rising to the surface and are even more easily triggered than they were before. The fear of wrong assumption is based on other negative assumption that were wrongly  made about me in the past, the energy of which I did not process through fully and is now stored inside.  Some of these assumptions were minor, with little consequence, but some had drastic consequences on my life like the assumptions that arose when I was  health seeking and seeking support. That was traumatizing. The trauma of that was based on something even deeper I was holding onto that is also resurfacing. My inability to be available as much as intended in this little job venture is triggering past work experiences where I was less than available and not validated for my reasons. People have made incorrect assumptions about me in the past.  I guess I have just learned to expect negative assumption from others. So all this was being triggered coming up to the surface...when I asked, "Why did I not get those calls..." 

The Healthy Question

Anyway...the point is .... "Why am I thinking this way or i.e. why am I not okay inside?" is a much more progressive question to ask than,"How can I fix this so I feel better inside?" is .  The focus is taken away from external cause and solution , which we have so little power to control, to internal.  So the fact that I ask "why" and examine the reasons for my lack of okayness inside is a sign that I am progressing. 

Are You Free Yet?

I was granted a gift with this dramatic reverie. as well. Behind the thought stream was a voice reminding me of my commitment to be free of me and the need of good opinion of others. My mind, as troublesome and annoying as it is, was doing me a solid. It was putting me in a situation where the worse opinion from others could arise to test me in my head instead of  me having to be tested in real life. Then behind the virtual drama was the voice that  asked...Are you free yet? 

 I was made to realize that I wasn't.  There is still work to be done. Sigh.

Now,  I know that was long boring detail about a thought process I was experiencing.  I share because I know such things likely go on in your head, as well. Do you want freedom?  Do you want peace of mind?  If so you need to catch yourself dropping down into the negative thinking,  Then when you do, first of all, step back and observe it all from a distance, knowing it is just Mind stuff and not real.  Secondly, I want you to ask:  Why am I thinking this way?  And look inside for the answer. 

Are you free yet?  If not, that is perfectly okay, Trust that you are getting there...one thought at a time, one question at a time, one answer at a time.

It is all good! 

All is well. 

What is Love?

Love is the most satisfying way to control the mind. 

Radhanath Swami 

 Another imperfect attempt to answer a challenging question.

All is well.

The Last Stanza

 I continued into oblivion lost,

My head was resting on my love;

Lost to all things and myself,

And, amid the lilies forgotten,

Threw all my cares away.

Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, Stanza 8

This last stanza depicts the accumulation of what we are all longing for, whether we know it or not...the mergence with the Source.  In this stanza the speaker states that she continues on ( not die) into oblivion ( I think of ...infinity...spacious emptiness when I hear the word oblivion). I continue  into oblivion lost,  She at this point not yet sure what is happening?  But it was okay because My head was resting on my love; In the stanza previous it was the opposite...the Beloved was resting on them.  This signifies, to me, the union...the mergence into One.  Goes on to say, Lost to all things and myself...What is this "lost" but a sense of disconnection from what one once thought was true, what was known, from the conceptual mind? The speaker is no longer attached to this world of form...to the needs of the little me, the personal self.  The speaker has transcended physicality for the invisible realm. Amid the lilies forgotten.  I am a bit confused here.  Amid the forgotten lilies...or is the speaker saying that they or all their cares are forgotten among the lilies?  Regardless  the lilly is a significant flower in the catholic church signifying Easter...resurrection...rebirth! The speaker has died to be reborn and in so doing was able to cast away all fears and concerns. threw all my cares away. They ( he/she)  are free.

Wow! That is what I long for...that freedom from fear, worry and concern.  I desperately want to be able to throw my cares away into the lilies. It is for that reason that I am on this path and now making my way through the dark night. It is actually a pretty selfish mission. I say I am seeking God and know intuitively that I am...but I have no "idea" what God is.  I really don't. All I know is  that the way I have been living before...at the proverbial "house"...the focus on physicality and materiality, the horizontal plane of existence.... wasn't enough, wasn't why I am here, wasn't working for "me" or for the "I am"I intuitively know is within me but have yet to fully experience. So I left the house in the dead of night, seeking more,  to go deeper, not knowing exactly what I will find when I get there  but trusting that I will find what "I"...not "me" needs there. Freedom! None of it makes a lick of sense conceptually....but the farther I get into this dark night the more I am pulled onward by Something within. 

So I read poems like this .  I listen to talks from enlightened or semi-enlightened beings.  I read the scriptures that come from those that have made the transition back to God...and I am inspired to keep going...even though everything "out there" says, "This is crazy, lady.  You don't even know where you are going or who or what it is that you are seeking. What are you doing?" 

I just shrug my shoulders and keep going.

Man, this is indeed a crazy ride.

All is well.

Saint John of the Cross/ Translated by David Lewis ( 1908) Dark Night of the Soul. Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157984/the-dark-night-of-the-soul

Dance?

 Eventually you can be in life, 

and not only does it not bother you 

but you dance.

There is nothing to get; there is nothing to lose, 

there is no better or no worse, 

there is no good; there is no bad, 

there is no right; there is no wrong...

there is just the experience of life 

that blows through you like the breeze, 

And eventually you learn to dance with her.

And when you can dance with Life, 

without bringing anything to the party 

that is personal, you move 

into what is called the Tao.  

You move into a place 

where there is movement 

but you are not moving, 

where there is action without motive.  

I told you, 

you are like the leaf that blew off the tree 

and the wind is blowing it.  

It is following a path 

but the path is not its 

yet it is in perfect harmony with the path...

it is not ahead or behind.  

The wind determines the movement of the leaf...

so Life determines your Life.

and you dance with it...

it is the only dance there is. 

Michael A. Singer

I listened to those words today as part of my Sunday practice...I tend to start with words of wisdom from a wise being and it is usually Michael A. Singer I check out first. So grateful for those words.

I want to dance so badly with Life!

A question was raised and I will ask it of you:

Can you stand in the presence  of whatever Life puts before you? 

I hope so!  I want you to enjoy this dance!

I have a ways to go yet .  Still need a lot of dancing lessons and practice before I stop stepping all over Life's toes.  :)  But I am getting there. Part of my practice, because I have already been through some nasty dealt hands, involves standing before them as they come back up from the dark depths I stuffed them in, and letting them go.  

I do see that the only thing in life that needs fixing is me...I do.  And I am progressing very well in my practice of accepting what unfolds in front of me without getting disturbed by it.  I am observing my judgements...my likes and dislikes that are so much in the way of me truly experiencing Life and I am getting beyond them.  I find myself less and less judgemental or opinionated, with less and less expectations about how things "should be" , and therefore I am less and less frustrated as I encounter what Life offers. I can, for the most part, accept Life, as it is. I stopped fighting it! I am well on my way to graduating from Stage One: Learning not to be bothered by Life.   Ready to go on to Stage Two:  The experiencing of Life.  Stage Three: Is settling into Life as the lead and enjoying it.  Stage Four: Is the dancing with Life. ( Well this the way I see it.) 

I still feel fear, so I have a ways to go yet in my Life practice.  

The day you are fine with the worse cards that can be dealt out is the day you will never feel fear again. 

What about you? Are you almost ready to dance with Life as it leads you around the dance floor? 

All is well!

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe. ( May 11, 2023) Dance With Life. https://tou.org/talks/

Getting Comfortable in the Unfamiliar

 Use your life to become  comfortable with being in an unfamiliar place.  Use your life to become comfortable with uncertainty, with insecurity, with groundlessness and all the other synonyms we can come up with.

Pema Chodron

In the below video, curtesy of Sounds True, Pema Chodron talks about the Bardo...a Buddhist term basically describing the dark night of the soul, the gap between the ending of one thing and the beginning of another.  This video just showed up in my inbox. Serendipity again lol.

All is well!

Pema Chodron/ Sounds True (2022) Embracing the Unknown with Pema Chodron. https://join.soundstrue.com/watch-now-in-the-flow-episode-1-with-pema-chodron/

Lost That Lovin' Feelin'?

 You lost that lovin' feelin', Whoa, that lovin' feelin', You lost that lovin' feelin', Now it's gone, gone, gone, Whoa-oh.

Righteous Brothers

Hmmm! Did the loving feeling actually  get lost? Is it even possible for that loving feeling to stop? If you find yourself nursing a heart ache that will take more than a couple of pints of Hagan -Daz and a box of kleenex to get through, it may feel like love has been stripped from you...but is the loving feeling really gone?

No, Michael Singer reminds us in the below podcast, it isn't gone.  What is gone is yours or your wanna be lovers attention on it. That's all.  If you feel a loss of love, it means you stopped focusing on love and put your attention elsewhere. 

You got distracted by distractions.

Huh? What the Fork , crazy lady?

Love isn't something out there.  It is something in here! Love is easy but because we get distracted by the mind and its never ending chattering, its busy-body way of telling us what to do and how to do in order to feel good inside, its noisy  directions as to what we need to pull in  from the outside world in order to be okay and its preferences...we tend to pay more attention to that, than we do to this natural and easy flow of love within us. We get distracted from seeing and experiencing this love  within by the mind. We open and close our awareness of this flow of love based on what unfolds "out there" at mind's direction. We close! We don't lose the lovin' feelin', we just lost our focus on it.  

The other person whom we assumed was either filling our heart or breaking our heart becomes a distraction from Mind's chatter...our focus on them  distracts us from our mental distractions.  If they please mind...meet its preferences we feel "good" and are open to the flow of love within us. We are no longer absorbed by the craziness of mind.  If they do not please mind by checking off all the things on the "unwanted" list , we feel bad.  We close to the love that is within us. It has little to do with the other person, regardless if they are flaming the loving feeling or losing it, and everything to do with whether we are opening or closing to the awareness of the love within.

Hmm! All is well.

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe. ( June 8, 2023) Releasing the Boundaries to Unlimited Love. https://tou.org/talks/

And All Sensations Left...

 

On my flowering bosom,

Kept whole for Him alone,

There He reposed and slept;

And I cherished Him, and the waving 

Of the cedars fanned Him.

As his hair floated in the breeze

That from the turret blew,

He struck me on the neck

with His gentle Hand,

And all sensation left me. 

Saint John of the Cross , Dark Night of the Soul, Stanza 6 & 7

So as we proceed through this dark night, we see the  speaker  has reached her destination and has been reunited with her lover.  This stanza depicts a scene of rest after the connection was made with the Beloved resting on a "flowery Bosom"...one that has opened to receive ( is how I see it). Of course, this is not just the chest but the heart. This heart was kept whole for God alone...the only true love. There He reposed and slept...This kind of depicts the idea that God finds a certain rest, a certain peace in our love. This image of the sacred heart in Christ emerges in my mind as I read that too as would have been expressed in Christian artwork at the time.   But the point is: God/ Christ...is resting directly on the heart...that close. Cherished...speaking to the deep love this speaker had within.  and the waving of the  cedars fanned Him. Not sure of the significance of that other than to show how even nature was worshipping and honoring Him. There is a very "maternal" type of love being expressed in this stanza. I am starting to wonder if the speaker is intended as a Carmelite nun? Saint John had a lot to do with that order. Is this depicting the marriage union a sister would have with Christ? 

We see the Christian Anglo-Saxon image of Christ now in the seventh stanza...hair floated in the breeze. This breeze blew from the castle tower ...so we have this picture of the lovers under a tree close to a castle..( as would be seen in many 15 th century art pieces).  He struck me on the neck with His gentle hand....( good to note that the translation in the book creates a more sensual image).  So though struck seems quite violent, it was done with a gentle Hand. Regardless we have this idea of what happens when we get strangled or hit in the carotid...we lose all consciousness...all awareness of the senses. And all sensations left me.  Most important to note here, is that this stanza shows how the speaker has been taken beyond the senses...beyond the body and the connection with the material world... which is the quest of many spiritual seekers. So, so far the speaker has left what they knew, gone through the dark night of the soul, found God, connected with God in the most intimate of ways, opened their heart fully and is now losing all sense of self....going into darkness again?

Hmm! And the plot thickens lol.

All is well! 

Saint John of the Cross/ David Lewis Translator ( 1908) Dark Night of the Soul. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157984/the-dark-night-of-the-soul

Guiding Light to Love

 That light guided me

More surely than the noonday sun

To the place where He was waiting for me,

Whom I knew well,

And where none appeared.

O, guiding night;

O, night more lovely than the dawn;

O, night that has united

The lover with his Beloved

and changed her into her love.

Saint John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul, Stanza 4 & 5

So as we read on, again before getting any explanation from the poet, we are reminded of the light of passion, love, and devotion that is in the speaker's heart as they continue into the night towards their destination. Now this love is so bright, brighter than the noonday sun, it offers the guiding light needed to get there. So even when the dark night with its confusion and uncertainty there is a light, and that light is the light within. It is our desire for God that can lead us forward.  

How do we know it is God the speaker is seeking?  By the capitalization of the pronoun He.  The poet goes on "where He was waiting for me, whom I knew well...(The male God image is used as is understandable considering the time and context in which the poem was written). God is not a stranger to the speaker...he/she/they know Him more than they know themselves ...and He was always waiting for the lover to come to Him. 

This next part is cool: the  speaker goes on to say, and where none appeared.  I wonder if this line signifies there were no other beings to witness or if the speaker is saying ...none, as in there was no visible physical form to this He that was waiting?  Again, showing the internal, esoteric nature of this arrival, of this He that the speaker is meeting?

In the next stanza the speaker praises the night...as a lovely, guiding source,  as to which without the speaker would never have reached the Beloved. We see the necessity of the night for this union. The night  is responsible for getting the speaker there. The dark night of the soul is a means of helping us to arrive. 

Now, the next line I find confusing, just because of the use of pronouns...united the lover with His beloved and changed her into her love. Hmmm! So God is the lover and the speaker is the beloved.  Why was Saint John using "her"?  That was my question, so I went back to the other translation in the book I am reading and see that there was no gender pronoun used.  This, I assume. must have been this particular  translator's bias on translation?  It was translated in 1900 and due to the almost erotic imagery of the union maybe, the translator assumed , it had to be between a male and a female.  I don't imagine, sadly, that homosexual imagery would have been acceptable.  Hmm!Anyway...regardless the two are "united"...not "reunited" as one would expect if the speaker knew Him well?  

And changed her into her love is pretty profound...I see the message here to mean, we are not people who love...not the lover but we are love. And when we reach this level of Self-realization, emergence with God ...we are transformed into God's love. 

Anyway...lovely.  Of course, my interpretation might be totally different than what was intended lol. The more I read the poem, however, the more I am feeling at peace and even grateful for this dark night I am experiencing.

All is well

Saint John of the Cross/ Translated by David Lewis. ( 1908) Dark Night of the Soul. Poetry Foundation.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157984/the-dark-night-of-the-soul

Shine!

 The light guided me more surely than the noonday sun to the place where He was waiting for me...

St John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, David Lewis Translation

Do you want to be seen, noticed, recognized?  

I just watched season 23 of The Voice on a binge. I delightedly cheered on a shy and  timid vocalist as she won.  I love watching  talent competitions on TV,  shows where people come on to the stage and share a hidden  talent with the world. Many, before that televised audition,  only performed in their bedrooms and are now performing to millions. They suddenly get noticed and their special gift, that they may have even given up on,  is suddenly appreciated and valued. I find it so inspiring, addictively so, to watch these people shine in their God given talent...to break through their own mental barriers of limitation and self doubt , of fear;  to witness as they bust through the darkness of obscurity and "shine," so brightly like the "noonday sun" .  They give the world a gift they have been secretively holding onto  all of their lives. They touch us with the gift of their voices (or other talent) but also they touch a part of us that says, "You can do this too!  You can shine! " I think that is the lure of these shows...they pull us in with this deep rooted desire we all have to "shine". 

This little light of mine...I'm gonna let it shine...

Shine?

 We all have some talent, some gift inside us.  Yes, we do! It may not be a voice or an ability to dance. It may be something so tiny and ordinary...but it, whatever it is,  is a special ember waiting to burst into a flame that lights up our lives and the lives of others around us. It will just smolder unseen, until we let it out.  It sometimes takes just one person noticing it to feed that tiny little light, to encourage it to grow beyond our fear.

A Spiritual Thing

I think the expression of this gift ...the offering it to the world...is a spiritual thing.  It is part of the reason, if there is a reason beyond simply being, why we are here.  We are lights meant to shine , helping each other  to experience and see clearly the beauty in this world. We are not meant to be lamps hidden under the bed.

A "Desire" Warning

Now., at the same time, I believe we have to be careful with our desire to be seen. Having our lights shine enough to make the beauty of this world clearer for others, to inspire and motivate... is one thing. Getting it to shine to feed the ego's never ending quest for external fulfillment is another. We have to be respectful of these little flames we carry inside us  and protect them  from ego. 

 When we desire to shine, I believe, we need to ask: What am I hoping to gain from this?  Is this a "me' motivated thing or just a desire to express what I have been given? Am I trying to set myself up and apart from others or am I bringing us all together? Am I rejoicing in the moments I am expressing, or am I too busy worrying about the outcome? Do I feel God in what I do? ( And God, of course, has different meanings for everyone.)

Obscurity...Not Such a Bad Thing

Hmm! I am realizing that obscurity, concealment, being unseen and unrecognized may be "my lot" in life, I am finding some peace in that, finally! Being "invisible" to others was always the most triggering  thing for my deep rooted pain...that and being noticed in the "wrong" way. So, All my life I tried to be seen and noticed in the "right way" just so this inner pain would not get triggered.  If I couldn't hide, I felt I had to create something out here to redeem myself with.  Someone, somewhere, once told me I could write...so I tried to have my writing read, so others would hear "me".   Someone, somewhere, once told me I could speak, so I stood up on stages and spoke, so others would see "me".  Someone, somewhere, once told me I could teach, so I stood  in front of crowds of people and taught, so others would be in awe of what "me" knew.  Sure a light went outward to others when I did those things...and sure Spirit was rejoicing in the expression...but too often it was ego that was fanning the flame...feeding this "me". "Me"  was was always more in the way of the light shining than anything else.  In fact, it kind of drowned out the light.

So, as I go through this dark night, looking for a light to guide me, I am learning that I can find that light in my heart, just as Saint John of the Cross, did. My writing, speaking and teaching...may be received by no more than a handful of others, and that is perfectly okay. Something in my heart is saying "write...no matter what..." and I listen.  Something says "speak and teach, no matter what!" and I listen. These things take me through the darkness. If I stay true to why I am doing what I am doing, this light will grow, guiding this form and mind , and possibly a few other forms and minds, to what is really important. 

Every little bit of glowing light that helps the world to see is a gift! I am going to protect my light from ego  but at the same time I am going to let it shine.

What about you? What are you going to do with your light?

All is well!

Secrets and Concealment

 In darkness and in safety ,

by the secret ladder, disguised,

O, happy lot!

In darkness and concealment ,

my house being now at rest

In that happy night,

In secret, seen of none,

Seeing not myself.

Without other light or guide

Save that which in my heart was burning.

Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul.  Stanza Two and Three

Just from reading these next two stanzas I am envious of the narrators relationship with the dark night.  It is not addressed as  something to be feared or resisted, but something to be excited about, appreciated and celebrated. Why? Because of the  way it hides the speaker on their quest.

In darkness and in safety, by the secret ladder disguised .  Why does he/she want to be so concealed? He/she feels safe in this concealment. So no one would recognize them and stop them from pursuing their quest? I can see that in the imagery of the lover sneaking off to meet their beloved. There is something about this obscurity that is so important to the poet.  I can't help but think how these ideas of direct union would be viewed by the hierarchy- dependent church at that time...blasphemy?  The poet has to be sneaky and secretive about his desire for direct union? Or is this "humility" vow of the brotherhood leading him to diminish his expression of faith...to "be pious" instead of "appearing " pious? This secret ladder?  Is he speaking to this alternative route, the non ordained route,  he discovered to finding God...that maybe was not aligned with church dogma at the time? ...When I think of ladder...I think of the speaker sneaking down a ladder from upstairs in order to get out.  That is like descending down into the depths of our beings from our intellectual faculties ( where most of the church dogma would have been pointing to).  It is about going deeper. His quest is an inner one, not a church directed one.

O happy lot! Again the speaker is expressing how fortunate he/she is at having this night ...this dark time to process through.  Because it is a place to hide the mission and the quest?  I had this thought:  Was the poet depressed or ill  and seeing this depression or illness as a means for the church to get off his back so he could pursue his inner quest?  I don't know why that came to my mind.  But obviously this night somehow surprises him...though we all know night comes every 12 hours? It was a fortunate thing that emerged almost unexpectedly....it seems... by the way he appears to feel so lucky he came across it. 

In darkness and concealment, my house being now at rest. His/her house seems to be at rest because of the darkness and concealment? Or the house being at rest caused the darkness and concealment? In the former...we can view the house as something visibly unstable until the night came and hid it from view? The "me". the reliance on bodily senses to perceive the world, the reliance on intellectual and conceptual mind's need for knowledge etc is consumed by this period of darkness, so it is no longer agitating the soul??  In the latter possibility...I see death as being that which puts everything but the soul at rest.

In that happy night, in secret seen of none.  Again there is this joy that the night was there allowing for this secret ...this obscurity...this hiding to take place. Why does it have to be a secret?  Why does this quest have to be hidden from the view of others?  Just like the lover sneaking off knows they are breaking social and moral contracts...does the poet feel he is breaking his religious contract? There does not seem to be any shame though for doing so...just joy and excitement? Still ...there is that need to keep it all a secret. Or is the secretive, concealed, hidden nature of this simply referring to the fact that it  is internal not external quest, therefore cannot be seen by others. The poet may be speaking to the "mystery" of awakening.

Seeing not myself.  Now this is a big one.  We see a dissolution of ego maybe.  In the first stanza ego was still hanging around but we see  as the speaker gets further into the dark night...he/she can no longer see the little self.  Of course, that is what the dark night on this awakening quest is all about, isn't it?  A dissolution of me. We stop seeing who we thought we were. At this point the speaker does not yet see what is ahead either.

Without other light or guide Save what my heart was burning. So this line marks the confusion part of the dark night...this being unable to see where we were or where we are going.  There is no light...there is noone out there guiding us.  It is such a personal and blind journey.  So what keeps the speaker going forward? His/her burning heart...this light in the heart that is telling them to keep going.  It is that desire for God that is leading the speaker forward. Blind faith leads the speaker on. 

Well that is the way I see it.  Yet to read Saint John's explanation. All good! 

Saint John of the Cross/ translated by David Lewis ( 1908) Dark Night of the Soul .Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157984/the-dark-night-of-the-soul

Good Days? Bad Days?

 

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

Victor Hugo

Was looking for some healing and helpful activity to help "pass the night away." ...and decided to answer more questions from the jar, in the very imperfect way that I do.

Back to the Dark Night

We are getting a lot of rain here and are told to expect this heavy cloud cover and heavy precipitation for another four days.  This stormy period represents, in  sense, what is going on inside me as I deal with this proverbial dark night of the soul. It is actually kind of cool.  I am learning to "calmly abide"  in it without my preferences,  and my resistance. I am doing pretty good focusing on that quality of calmness.  I mean, I do slip away from it...like when I opened the fridge last evening to discover that the soya sauce bottle had tipped over and what a mess!  There was a moment of reactivity there.  I felt the rush of anger and frustration...the urge to lash out at someone for not being more careful about putting things in the fridge...but I took a breath and stood back mentally.  I still felt those feelings, experience it all,  but I used that energy to clean the fridge and then I let it all go. Poof! Gone! Then I got back to my calm abiding in this rainy, extended dark night.I don't know when it will pass but I will find some peace in it. I will.

I hope that you will weather this rainy period  and this night, ( if you too are experiencing one) with a certain peace as well. 

All is well!

All is well

Leaving the House for the Dark Night

 In a dark night,

With anxious love inflamed,

O, happy lot!

Forth unobserved I went,

my house being now at rest.

Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, Translated by David Lewis https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157984/the-dark-night-of-the-soul

I still wake up every morning after a somewhat restless night with my jaws clenched tight and this dark night still lingering around me.  My curiosity and desire to understand what I, as this me, am experiencing was drawn to to the famous poem on the subject, The Dark Night of the Soul.

In the above epic poem from Christian mystic, Saint John of the Cross, the soul's journey, spurred on by  a desire for God, is depicted in seven short stanzas, beginning with the soul leaving its bodily home and ending with the soul's union with God.  There are many translations from the latin it was first written in. I am presently reading a translation of the poet's own explanation of the process ( see below) but I wanted to be exposed to another version/translation to see how those words would be absorbed in  me before I read the author's explanations in more depth

In a dark night: So in this first stanza we are made aware of the "dark night"...that period of not knowing what is around the corner, the period of decreased clarity, that time between dusk ( our previous understanding of things) and dawn ( the emergence of light and truth...the new day). To get out into the night...is to to do so blindly as in "blind faith". Night, of course, also implies death. A certain dying is taking place here.  There is this unimplied warning, as well...that because of the  darkness the journey will be challenging.

with anxious love inflamed: ( in the book's translation, it reads: Kindled in love with yearnings. I bring that up because I think "yearning" is a key word needed to understand the pull of the senses, the soul is still experiencing at this point?) So we have the imagery, in either translation, of a fire burning in the heart...which is a "passion" that represents the human desire. "Anxious"?  Maybe the narrator can't wait or maybe the use of the word is possibly indicating a fear of the unknown?  

oh happy lot! So the poet is describing how lucky he/she is for having the night to give some cover in which to secretively leave behind the house and travel to the Beloved in. The night is not a cursed and unfortunate thing but a blessing, something the narrator might have been waiting for because they are so excited to see it. 

Forth unobserved I went: I went forth without being observed. No one could see me leaving. There still may be some social expectations holding the poet back from admitting to others his desire to merge with the divine.  The poem  was written in the 16th century by a brother of the very powerful Catholic Church where how to believe and how to practice that belief  was strictly enforced, so much was censored.  Knowing God directly was also taboo. So the desire for direct union with God could have been considered a sin even, and would have to be approached secretively under the cloak night provides? The poet could also be describing how one dies to be reborn...no one can see one dying in the spiritual sense...not  leaving the body but leaving all former conditioning and beliefs, leaving the ego and attachment to "me, my and mine" could be done without anyone observing.  One could die in that way without being noticed?   The lover here could be walking around doing whatever during the day  without anyone noticing that they have "died" inside in order to be reborn in God's arms. Of course , as a holy man, Saint John  could be referring to how being unobserved..."obscure" is humility and a necessary trait for a true person of faith to possess.  Instead of outwardly creating a show of piety, one should keep their love for God inside them...not exploiting it , not making it an object of other people;s observations.?? This is the way many cloistered monks and nuns choose to practice their faith.

my house being now at rest: Hmm! I see this again as a dying of old egoic ways and of finding a certain peace as we leave or let go of bodily concerns.  The senses are no longer controlling us...thus the "dark night" as well.  It is that spiritual step of being pulled beyond the senses. We are stepping away from how we once lived...based on the perception of pleasure or pain...what we once knew and are walking out into the unknown in search of something Greater, deeper. In order to step out we must have reached a certain level of understanding...that would lead to a certain degree of peace and thus " a house at rest". 

Of course, through this verse we have the picture of someone in love sneaking out of the house at night to meet a lover in secret. Which is quite a thing for a catholic monk to be writing about. The soul is the lover and God is the beloved. 

I know not what the poet intended...what the poem was meant to say.  I can only gather and make my own conclusions...assumptions I should say ...by the way it makes me feel when I read it. Poetry, I believe,  just points to something in us and projects it outward.  I want to tear this poem a part stanza by stanza just to get a better understanding of this dark night thing this mind of mine is experiencing. I am just going to do the first stanza  today.

I am fascinated by this idea of leaving a house, that was once unstable, for the dark night. This house the poet speaks about, I believe,  is something mind  built around who we really are...this little meness with all its ideations and beliefs, its attachments. This identification with the superficial is something we need to leave eventually.  I had an image as I read the poem of this flimsy house built on sand blowing this way and that way in the wind...and the soul swept up going from side to side. The only time it settled or became "at rest" was when the soul stepped out of it. Though the soul senses there is something more out there and yearns for it, it has not yet made clear contact with it.  It is not yet sure what that Something is. It just feels compelled to go forward, into the dark night regardless if that means not being able to see or understand where it is going.  In the poem it was the soul stepping out of the "me".  

 In line with that, I heard these words today and they kind of stuck:

Use life to free yourself, instead of using life to fight, to bind yourself. Michael A. Singer.  

We so often lock ourselves into these houses that we build...these false identifications, this superficial life style but at the same time , part of us knows there is more...so much more out there...( well actually in here lol).  We need to leave these false protections that we built and venture out into the darkness in order to find that Greater Something. 

Eckhart Tolle speaks to this as well in the below video.  He mentions how we tend to build our self identification (our  houses) on the superficial plane, the material plane, the plane of form ( which includes thoughts, emotions, roles etc)...which in other videos he refers to as the horizontal plane.  The vertical plane can cut right through that taking us deeper...to a deeper sense of "I" if we allow it to. Most of us are still too attached to what is on the surface to go deeper, as the poet above so wanted to do. Tolle assures us we can transcend but we must be willing to step out of these ideas of who we are...again...venture out into the dark night...to discover who we really are, at a deeper level.  He also  assures us that we do not have to go very far...the spaciousness of  deeper "I" is right there... so very close...God is right there, so very  close. We just need to be willing to leave our houses and venture through a bit of darkness to get there.

Anyway, dark night or not, it is all so wonderful, just as it is.

All is well in my world

Saint John of the Cross (2021) Dark Night of the Soul. General Press: New Delhi. Kindle Edition

Michael A. Singer/Temple of the Universe ( June 5, 2023) Using Life to Free Yourself. https://tou.org/talks/

Eckhart Tolle (June 4, 2023) Deepening Your Sense of I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nycEaSdxhg