Mysticism demystified . . .

Sunday, February 16, 2025. It's Sol's day . . . TulseyTown got 2” of snow overnight. Sunshine and cold Northerlies are forecasted to be with us until Tuesday when more snow and bitter cold are indicated.

At this moment, you are seamlessly flowing with the cosmos. There is no difference between your breathing and the breathing of the rainforest, between your bloodstream and the world’s rivers, between your bones and the chalk cliffs of Dover. – Deepak Chopra

Today is World Whale Day.

Whale Day

So is it too much to ask that one day a year

be set aside for keeping in mind

while we step onto a bus, consume a ham sandwich,

or stoop to pick up a coin from a sidewalk

the multitude of these mammoth creatures

coasting between the continents,

some for the fun of it, others purposeful in their journeys,

all concealed under the sea, unless somewhere

one breaks the surface

with an astonishing upheaval of water

and all the people in yellow slickers

rush to one side of the boat to pint and shout

and wonder how to tell their friends about the day they saw a whale?

— Billy Collins, “Whale Day,” from Whale Day. Random House, 2020.

SUNDAY SERMON

Demystifying mysticism

It’s easy to buy into the dualistic illusion that spiritual orientations are composed of fundamentally and mutually exclusive parts. But you can, of course, be both a prophet and a mystic. You can be, and probably are, a prophet-mystic. – Mirabai Starr in an essay posted in Meditations at The Center for Action and Contemplation.

Mysticism is not about concepts; it is about communion with ultimate reality. And ultimate reality is not some faraway prize we claim when we have proved ourselves worthy to perceive it. Ultimate reality blooms at the heart of regular life. – Mirabai Starr

Expanding on an earlier observation: You don't have to be a Buddhist to learn from the inherited teachings of the tradition and have your life improved, to make a gift of your life to the world. Similarly, you don't have to be a Christian to learn from the inherited teachings attributed to Jesus. Or Mohammed. Or Rumi. Or Rilke. Or Teresa. Or Mirabai...The inherited teachings from the multitude of prophet mystics drawing, speaking, writing across dualistic time distill into a nondual singularity: Now Is Love.

“Now” is a word. As a word it is a metaphor for the moment that just left your reading this sentence. As a reality, “now” like “love” has no name, no meaning, no status as a “thing.” The “present moment” is sometimes referred to as “now,” differentially bringing with it focal opportunities: holding or grasping onto something ephemeral as “the past,” or even more ephemeral an imaginative future, or even more abstractly attempting to unify past and future while closing our mind to the only nondual reality. Words are our brain playing tricks to keep itself entertained. And, like all such pleasures, can be addictive. – jab

Might as well have courage . . .

Saturday, February 15, 2025. It's the Satyr's day . . . TulseyTown's day holds morning rain chances possibly mixing with snow showers during the afternoon. Strong Northerlies are to push this mornings' 50's down to the mid 30's. The week ahead has some bitter cold. Stay tuned.

Miranda July turns 51 today. The artist, writer, and filmmaker was born Miranda Grossinger in 1974 Barre, Vermont.

We humans are here because nothing can be perfect. There always have to be some living things that are unsatisfied, itchy, trying too hard. If it was all just animals and rocks and lettuce, the gods wouldn't feel like they had enough to do. – Miranda July

Galileo was born on this date in 1564 Pisa, Italy.

And, Susan B. Anthony was born today in 1820 Adams, Massachusetts.

Speaking of the courageous . . .

The face of courage. – Joyce Vance, in Civil Discourse.

White-caps on the waves increasing inside the DOJ: Echoing Dr. Vance. – Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American.

Pay attention to what's happening to the National Archives. It's bigger than a little Trumpian spat with a small agency.

“It is said that his [Shakespeare's] time was easier than ours, but I doubt it — no time can be easy if one is living through it.” – James Baldwin. We forget that our particular moment, with all its tribulations and triumphs, is not neatly islanded in the river of time but swept afloat by massive cultural currents that have raged long before it and will rage long after. – Maria Popova, The Marginalian,

Dance, regardless . . .

Friday, February 14, 2025, It's Freya's day … The Snow Moon is full on this Valentine's Day.

It's the birth date of dancer, actor, and choreographer Gregory Hines in 1946 New York City.

And, comedian Jack Benny was born on this day in 1894 Waukegan, Illinois.

Let your mind be open like the sky, and then let all the thoughts float freely like clouds. Let yourself remain in that state, and then you will actually experience being aware of awareness in your day-to-day life. – Za Choeje Rinpoche

We usually have no way to make use of these brief flashes of insight. But if we have even a glimpse of the big sky, we can learn to value these experiences and start to cultivate them. You could say this is one of the main purposes of meditation: to slow down enough to notice there are always gaps in our dense, thought-filled experience—and to become familiar with these gaps as glimpses of the unfabricated, nonconceptual nature of mind. – Pema Chödrön

Dot Fisher-Smith on being a child at 96 and still playing on The Way.