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🎧 microscopic meditations offered for heart and heart's ease, after listening to morning blessings of Mahant Swami Maharaj in his divine presence in Mumbai on 23 February 2023:

 

to see right there in the palm of your hand, a place where consciousness & the subliminal gather in hands cupped like a bowl; to go into the forest with this bowl, where silence and beauty are the deepest; and that’s when the magic happens...

 

phone isn’t

the same string

from person to

person now

that we carry

them and

have no homes

 

eileen myles

 

when you 'get it,' the language is heart's ease - beautiful, connected, resonant; and when you don’t, it can be frustrating to ramble about an isolating experience.{} honesty is a sine qua non to this reflection process...all I want is to be opened.

 

Meditation 1: painful intimacy - emotional openness ...which stems from startled silence of emotion; emotion never dodged, only the details. an intimacy which is not destructive, on the contrary, it becomes constructive to discover through the fogs of silence, the secret of the wounds. an innocent intimacy as you meditate like writing a letter to a close friend, confiding the innermost and intimate nature of that kind of conversation:

 

between two infinities, when one can never spin fast enough to catch a glimpse of the spinning world; zoom in - a pas de loup. body-edged journey squaring the circle; where openness is not charted - soul-flow is getting missed; and so the next second brings storm-clouds ☁ over the head; unguarded position found. le séjour. it brings in triple waves - of emptiness, of hurried emotions (signs of dizziness you don't know) and of deeply unfathomable feelings (when light and darkness is felt closer than ever); feeling cold to take the next step in the shivering rain that never stops, one further feels the subtle clouds looming over a larger distance as far as you can see, to bring in muted moments of indecision. terra incognita - the map of every place in the mind of 'jonathan livingston storm gull'; wherein to find the path means to lose the peace. a silver lining gains a place of esteem in the head-cloud, “we don't patch up and piece together the time spent with illusions.”

 

"I tie my handkerchief

to a kite

to try and dry

the cries of

the clouds up there.

Pour, pour:

oh, if only

I hadn’t loaned

my umbrella

to that submarine!"

.

playing the royal game in circles, 'put the blame on', each and every day, the paper airplanes fly inside through the window; the newspaper has been crying another day older denying any liability in non-fulfillment to worth of life; the auto-triggered paralyzing thoughts of a messy heart slowly finds the status quo - the chaos reigns as reprehensible acts gain momentum and then it will no longer be possible to stave off utter misery; pollen's hardened outer coating, the honey bees cleave the grains at a vulnerable point. a moth-like attraction to the mental processes full of waves of frivolity, that will cost the moth everything; recklessness always turns out to be expensive, yet the mind clothed in rags remains obdurate as it cannot let go the sub-stratum of such images which spring to the impromptu mind who dreams to robe ornate clothing; images which are result of attraction of cohesion to the highest beauty which a flesh-mental-ego self would love to marry. the dense calendar flows like water bursting out through your hands and yet the empty thirst never quenched; and when you really wake up, the corrosive paper airplane has been compelled to form a slowly moving boat of ineptitude, asking you to drink your own tears. with bonds damaged, tissue paper in water, coming apart from a sailing quality. inundated areas of thinking start to project the weakness on others. same emotion tumbling around in your head, amorphous but forming. evaporating as the years pass by and the brooding clouds keep crying. even when the skies clear, there is a constellation of grief around and there is no clearing of deceit-less path to find a way out of the shame, dread, debt, doubt and sadness. lurching between soaring high waves and agonizing lows waves, how can one sail in the ruling tides of haunted past, wistful present, and the disorienting future? simply unmoored, breasting the surging tide, the turbulent seas...

 

heart does the assignment

underlines the words

after mind erases them

the emotion has its own tide coming in

a blank page is a mirror

has the line that won't go away

 

being aware of the deceptive circles in which you move. ripples... as in the mirror, every little bad dream is preening to be remembered; also a reflection of hangover after past that adumbrates the future and so the mind is churned over again to seek relief-joy; a melting point [IIΙ] for wisdom followed by series of griefs, each compounding the last one. the count never ends; but this creates a immobilizing language of circumstances and sad database, which infiltrates the joy of gratitude and the defense of it.

 

"every problem has a solution. the problem is to find the solution to the problem." — pierre filion

 

irredeemably till how long will you will you continue to define yourself but not refine yourself into aligned understanding? restructuring of the self and reality needs to see the essence - 'the soul can always evolve.' backfired, in measuring the positive parts of life, the numbered days of the passing life does not paint the whole picture; and yet they start becoming a Lazy Sunday - each day. and so finding satisfaction in moments of stark relief, punctured in these wasted days, a recluse does not think beyond the merry-go-round of the numbered whole.

 

"Books were to her not an end in themselves but a substitute for living. She raced through folios because she was forbidden to scamper on the grass." Virginia Woolf on Aurora Leigh

 

so much information to be deposited elsewhere keeps coming at you and very little manages to stick and make you think better. things can move better and be possible, only when you are in a state of grace, when deep channels are open throughout; deeply stirred balance maintained. but ignorance can quickly hold us as whole, at most of the times, like no knowing can; because in this shelled ignorance lies body-edged joy brought in quickly, not even giving a fortnight of chance to the story of patience - that which can ripen as the joy of an enduring kind - a story about river meeting it's sea. instead our story becomes like sea channels that needs regular dredging to stay open and that cannot happen by staying shrouded in mystery.

 

futzing around ever since,

a story about story-lessness,

or to become of worthlessness

or ideas left to stew in

vat of pulpy esoteric stew.

again, a fear to lose the face,

in those staircase encounters,

where unsettled ghosts linger.

formlessness of the darkness

living an austere life, existence

you hardly even acknowledge

eyes of others; felt ambivalence

as time passes distance grows

leaves a couple of points undefined.

 

until you really stop to examine

the progression and coherence,

the dreary analytical lines can spin

into excess; inhibiting the soul-work.

an afterthought to character development

wasn’t really addressing any

of the questions that really drew me,

a muffled voice says within & still mumbling

 

lines follow shifts in the thoughts and feelings

with no break in the texture and flow

homogeneous passages maddeningly ambiguous

dense & abstract aesthetic, return to form

emotionlessly transposing world into word.

to make the thought sound more deep than it is.

 

looking to address such battles

of the negligible music; with a narrative

from the timbre of his voice

every story wants every vile human impulse

to be transformed through care; and,

in case you forget who i am, do not

forget the common ground, just plowed

grief isn’t fresh but it’s ongoing

confounds but deepen us

the glimmers of hope deep inside you

grateful, not hateful.

enter the harvest time

.

 

"most of our problems proceed from our inability

to sit quietly in a small room." — pascal.

 

solving one problem by creating other problems is not the way to do things... don't you see?

 

feeling discouraged as well as judgmental, how much overwhelming information would be flitting around the mind? still the plans for the road ahead were always ditched for the earliest fixations of the mind - a way to grapple with un-grappable feelings as well as tendency to crumble in pressure situations. with nothing at stake, the relief-joy moments are delineated'; merry - no - round, there is an unseen hole in this illusory sense of whole and unable to deal with the painful and prosaic realities of life. the relief-wisdom, if at all gained in the process, may never get beyond just being good - becoming a lengthy as well as single monotonous line without a melody.

 

“I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.” ― Sylvia Plath

 

“Growth in painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”

 

in such a state of inconsequential affairs, when one's heart is fettered with memories and when one's heart does not really get moved, the strident hinged door opens up certain promising techniques of the times. the cross is, basically, that the portrait of the soul loses many wholes with frontal light of such techniques. such techniques like mindfulness to the present moment and other quick-fix ways will never fill the void within nor answer a lot of questions about 'right affection'. continuing our discordant chorus, the fulfillment of heart never really happens as one switches between the light and dark moments without much rhyme or reason. after a peak of body-edged joy trying to fill the bottomless ego, there is a rapidly decreasing taste of enjoyment as the senses are blunted to some extent. momentarily stumped and yet to forget the queasy feelings and as an act of coping mechanism, one is pulled in to that same cycle of relief-joy and then feeling rather stung by the pleasure. if it was treasured time, why that became a trash time? why you grew more and more despondent? why ashamed to see what you leave in your wake? inured to stress, as if the side-lined efforts were for nought - the factor by which nothing will multiply and fickleness of eyes never saturated; now, never eager to receive the grace of the Purest who can enlighten the earnest eyes.

 

"a shrug says sorry" and you stay near but elsewhere; and you delude yourself to exist trouble-free in same plane of thoughts but not able to see how the grace can end the suffering created by struggle between truth consciousness and unconsciousness of peace-making pathways. in over-trying to do things in own mind's dominant reaction to difficult situations, you forget to establish the rhythm formed in the pathway charted through fortitude, and a graceful rhythm as being greatly reflected in the Purest Heart.

 

everything the heart needed appears in that moment of belonging to the Heart breathing the truth of devotion, and then recedes as the delusion in own mind also intensifies when crisscrossing the landscapes of momentary belonging is a journey to pass into days of dust. near to the wild heart, with this mindset of giving all-or-nothing and letting time slip in rolls-royce ecstasy, till when can one wait to have the courage for surrendering to the compassionate Truth? and travel through gates of vulnerability before the scorpion tells the truth? is it that when eyes ache, then only it can be seen that the self which resisted baring is going to fail? shouldn't the methods of living life as learned behavior of unawareness and unwanted urges, expose the hollowness in one or another area, till the collective trauma of the profound personal loss is not addressed by going to the source? to see what blesses and sustains us at the source level. it is definitely some grace received to find that inner alignment and rhythm and then asking the right questions.

 

"Days pass when I forget the mystery." — Denise Levertov

 

steeped in comfort, till when can you continue to secure a favorable or transcendent narrative to camouflage unscrupulous deeds? isn't it too taxing to maintain our pretenses with the ugly tedium of explanatory justifications? of commanding cerebral experiences? of disparaging cliches? when will you stop the inflationary use of the compensatory and positive words that are not a stitch in time to save nine? don't you see that these words of suffocating clarity trickle down and gets stuck in your heart like a thorn? when will that understanding happen to see - why you've been protecting yourself, wearing a hat always in style, instead of wholeheartedly working on protecting the truth? don't you know that only the pencil will support your weight without leaving an indelible scar? how will you navigate your own self-doubts and misgivings? are you really interrogating the nature of your fears or just becoming more weaker with the fear of questions? will not, adding here of one more thing, to the list of interfering questions, create more disconnection and disorientation and cast doubt across decades; or are these questions stepping in stones to meet the hurtful part of self? to see how deterioration started by collusion with this gradual process of enticement. how long will you entertain false-hearted guests to your thought process? don't you see that every little comment from them just chips away at your confidence.

 

ventriloquizing of a voice dreaded throughout from an ingrained identity but not from purity of a soul? forced to question when you are ruing the lost time? are these self-obsessed questions another form of resistance - a daily resistance to death (or reluctance to let go) and an embrace of life? or are these tea-time questions, a sign of sugar full of procrastination to indefinite prolongation and beyond? a sign of inveterate tendency to overlook the course of action? can just asking more of such unconsidered questions fill your ravenous soul? soul that is increasingly being alienated from own purpose and true self. would you like when someone quizzes you about your irrecoverable unemployment? ignoring the many ways of associative knowing, life destroyed by silent-natured embarrassing relationships and obliterated by subsequent incidences of missing the deeper and subtler eye to see through such awkward involvements. can you read your personal, intimate book? incapable of deep-reading, eliminating the mystifying features of the study days; alienated and demystified from natural world and natural order to study, you only exclude learning and wonder pathways and become hardened to integrate them. unsure but hopeful, in the end, are these spiritual questions limbering up or just the magnitude of cerebral questions in which you feel cleaving of mind between intimacy and distance for the same concepts seen in limited observation of the mind shining through flashbacks of fragmentary memories; maybe, like Emily since the ancient times, cannot explain with a delicate-as-lace sentences poem:

 

The Lost Thought

 

I felt a cleaving in my mind

As if my brain had split;

I tried to match it, seam by seam,

But could not make them fit.

 

The thought behind I strove to join

Unto the thought before, ,

But sequence ravelled out of reach

Like balls upon a floor.

 

Emily Dickinson (can you see if Emily in you retreated further into herself or emerged out open to big change?) she saw deeply and so could also see that something was missing. unfortunately, she couldn't put her finger on what that was. She definitely did not had a cursory way of looking at grief.

 

imprisoned within the shrinking confines of a conscribed life, to read the questions straight through will further tangle the mind. and it is difficult to read these questions and "difficult" is a different thing from "incomprehensible". the ego has a false belief that everything will cohere somehow or other, because it all comes from you! to take the next right step, something always gets missed, you say with a sinking voice. a voice which asks, "does not the fragmented structure of the thought process echo your mental state? the general tenor of all but querulous...

 

mind to soul and soul to mind, each preaching to the choir and so the honest question was never attempted from the very beginning. only ego massage by seemingly big questions and then nothing. the honest question to ask the self mirror is - how principles once rigidly followed become fluid when it becomes expedient? the golden principles can only be truly lived, right from the start, if one is truthful in love, but not by who feigns love for selfish reasons. please do not have a convenient follow up to these questions with a band-aid to plug a deluge.

 

“when the sky cries, things start to bloom. so, let those tears flow. it's good for you too. all things which greatly hurt me greatly teach me. often, it’s the deepest pain which empowers you to grow into your highest self.” ~ ― karen salmonsohn

 

grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.

it’s all the love you want to give, but cannot.

all that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest.

grief is just love with no place to go.

 

jamie anderson

 

les nuages dans ma tête. going à travers a baffling phase in own life and impossible to act in the moment when thinking diverges into abstractness, it takes extraordinary acts of metamorphosis by fostering qualities of courage and engagement in shaking the self, to get the self looking through after the initial breakthrough - a look for cathartic value in the continuum of life in everyday and of pathways that create better connection to your intermediate stages in journey; bridging through metaphors and similes and the grateful connection to grand continuum. in this act of listening in care, what does being fully present to the moment mean? it is when one brings parts of self together (who had been put up with each other and so had not communicated with each other for long), so that they listen to each other. worth the pain, "i feel so gutted" for the gain of affection; it is then, when one begins to heal and find how the pain hurts so less than subdued grief of regret; and then you listen to your true source in pursuit of the sublime.

 

did you see this as a fallow period which is now copiously bestowed with the ripening is because of trust of 'Eterna-Oski' who is so steadfast and believing? Tears...

 

looking into the sea of your eyes, tears broke through me, through my fears, the way frozen river break open after the arrival of spring. once you find your breakthrough moment, rivers of yearning, rivers of reaching... comes through

 

it is this continuum wholeness where clouds become witness to a graceful sight – leaf joyfully breathes the wind —

 

looking into the eyes of love in the clouds, what is seen, is a beautiful journey of training as an apprentice with alertness and dedication, to achieve the continuum of consciousness, that is observing – with equanimity and not living from behind the positioned ego, that creates barriers to being fully present.

.

 

Meditation 2: returning with wonder. the pitch and purpose of this peaceful reflection is 'spiritual openness' as a source of clarity and compassion, about how we love.

 

"But to say, I know—is there any touch in it?

To be there; to listen; not invade. Another solitude ..."

 

— Jean Valentine

 

being fully present in the moment is never about being in middle of nowhere. meaning of a word is its use in the language coming from the Heart. shapes of preciousness. ton histoire commence par un voyage. must press on for one last battle, gentle warrior of mine, revisiting the arc - not just a point we’ve arrived at but a direction of travel:

 

of truly "seeing" where you belong, the vantage point offered, beyond being an oddball; this seeing in essence, becomes a simple yet generative story of mine, of finding a closure - closure to body-edged drifting of self, along the great tendencies of 'nakara' self who always craved to get the crumbs of fairy-tale joy; such an urge, felt by the untested self; felt without stronger feelings due to heartstrings stretched in every direction in the fleeting moments. interplay of disorder and order as day and night follows in a worn world. steering the strong waves with own mind as rudder, between all the competing voices pulling us here, pushing us there, this vantage point of life offering a steady beacon of light by which you can navigate to your authentic self and devote truly in love.

 

a small bowl

in my hands like the nest

 

/- joseph fasano

 

lumière divine sur toi, this vantage point of life - an attachment formed via wonder of the soul to love the dweller inside the inner garden, two doors away and the shrine eight outer barriers away; bringing the purest and golden transformation of self. la caresse, a guide and a gift, an invitation at the same time into yourself and beyond yourself; whispering woods - this secret, no longer held between shadow and light present in every vanishing page of life. everything unfolds from the center with no boundaries of affection.

 

once a true love is recognized, it takes tremendous courage to make a connection with right affection and completely trust your journey to it, with it. beauty of love that is challenging and comforting at the same time - expanding thoughts to meaning, healing, order, respect, rhythm and timeless calm. compassion you have for those of us who "try" earnestly, humbly and transparently. very taken by this innocence of friendship at its most glorious and by nourishing care, to be lost in contemplation in the grateful wonder of this garden .. following the great footsteps, this homecoming filling the void of the soul at the feelings level, relevant and true - of experiencing 'Eterna Tenderness' of Purest Hearts.

 

a thought under my pillow, glowing in the morning's dark

 

now all the efforts surf on 'finesse et légèreté'/fineness & lightness. performing the poetry of such tenderness together, of nurturing one another, a great joy comes when we re-imagine our world together united as one. nourished wisdom that plants seeds of Tenderness... of beauty and light. the more generously we love, the more blessed we lead our lives and get to flourish. compelling honesty cast like dandelions upon the air of thoughts; with such ease, and such care that only true friendship can do. companionship thought buds toward devotion, blossoming with tender honesty and deeper truths.

 

Dear Heart, do not be stymied by what you consider as mistakes. keep growing in our joy of togetherness.

 

when i'm not thinking about anything else, that’s joy forever. heart is no longer vacant of dreams; yet, never a wish for something more, now, every dream i have, transcends me to same garden of the Heart where I see the Form behind the light. one stays amazed in this magical dream so truthful, and from that moment, the time was enfolded in the act of being fully present to unfold the bundles of conversational joy with a steadfast companion; and now the earthly glow responds with saintliness to blossom the flowers of peace for one and all - a wish, highest of all.

Done