The contemplative next door
Birds, trees, plants, flowers, crawlies, furry animals, reptiles ... there is so much beauty and humour in nature.
outrageous, gentle and stealthy ...
Each day sights prompt me to laugh and fill me with lightheartedness and sometimes quizzical wonder or awe.
... and this is daily life.
Such beneficence all around us.
This blog is written as a 'witness in gratitude' to our joy that is hidden in FELT sight.
There is also the desire to express a little of the nature-mystic and contemplative that is the heart of who I am.
Nurtured by a free-range childhood of the 1970s and corralled by unbidden and gifted mystical experiences, the contemplative focus has finally been allowed to become the tropic factor toward which my whole life leans.
Life seemed to have its own designs for me (as it does for us all) and it took a lot of accepting that much of what should interest me in the world just plainly did not and what did interest me was of little interest to the world.
However, I sense that is changing BIG TIME!
I have gained courage from many other contemplatives and mystics who share their own deep inner adventures and report back in their own voice. They point to a reality that is so much more AWESOME than our current cultural/ scientific paradigm could ever appreciate.
I am also encouraged by the many active, spectacularly credentialed contemplative adventurers who do scientific and philosophic research into consciousness, psychedelics, near-death experiences, spiritually-transformative experiences, non-dual awareness, etc., across well-known institutions around the world. It is often their experience of the ONE TASTE that has directed their attention towards such research and the mental world is richer for their courage and curiosity.
Lastly, this offering is for loosening an expressive timidity that companions testimony of this sort. I hope that offering a sampling of my experiences encourages other contemplative hearts to value their experiences and continue to be led by their connected and guided inner wisdom-LIFE, rather than cut off what doesn't fit into current accepted paradigms in religious or other groups.
The section 'Diary' includes these headings:
Contemplative Being - poetic forms or short texts on experiences.
Haiku-like verse - simple moments of daily life.
Book quotes - samples of lesser-known books.
Thank you for connecting.
May you be encouraged.
Joy and peace to you!
“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Creativity is also imaginative freedom, a stretching of the psychological, philosophical, and cultural boundaries to which our minds usually adhere. People talk of “thinking outside the box” and “leaps of creative genius”. Creativity in its purest sense means going beyond what has come before, shrugging off preconceptions and leaping bravely into the unknown. Dr Clare Johnson
"Appreciating poetry is probably like appreciating anything else. It means having the generosity to let a thing be what it is, the patience to know it, a sense of the mystery in all living things, and a joy in new experience." M C Richards
"Not speaking is forsaking my integrity in order to appear non-controversial or unconfrontational. That self-abandonment is very painful, and it is when I lose my voice. Fear of not being liked, being left, being judged. ... When writing a poem I give myself permission to speak. Poetry's open form almost invities it" Onie Kriegler.
“Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking ... I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you cam feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found it.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple