Everywhere.
Diffused in radiance from here to the far beyond.
In the so-short-lived blooms and no less in the scattered petals.
In the middle of the night before last, calling off sleep, flooding with invisible light and in too many soundless songs playing.
And that's all right.
Some questions have been asked many times and prayers sent up. To the Almighty: why the suffering? the injustice? And how can the promised Beloved be known more intimately?
Might the answer come in dreams and then spinning free-association fragments of lines read, keeping me awake? It seems best to give gratitude, not grumpiness. Sleep can be deferred, somewhat like the way mystics sacrificed, a hint like ascetics went without. These visitations just might be what the searcher of spirit, of heart and soul longs for.
From my personal library of a few hundred books related to mysticism, I've been reading recently in a few: especially Rkia Cornell’s provocative Rabi’a: From Narrative to Myth, Coleman Barks’ Hummingbird Sleep, and Helminski/Blaylock’s Rumi and His Friends.
Looking back over a dozen or so previous blog entries: A mystic, simply put, is someone tenuously claiming personal experience of the Divine.
As noted in another previous blog, one of my favorite texts engaging the great mystery surrounding this is Michael Sells’ Mystical Languages of Unsaying.
As Sells' title indicates, the numinous presence eludes definition yet gives off just enough scent and/or taste to guide the next half-step, the leaning into.
The most poignant touch of this right now, for me, rises from continued remembrance of my soul brother so recently passing over, now whispering from the other shore in secret code that he promised in our long night before his going. Just a few years ago, like yesterday, he was playing this song:
Putting my photos with John Amin’s playing and reflecting in the midnight hours led to these reflections:
Around three a.m. semi-waking from a dream
about a subtle way of teaching, intent on
the other. Trust. All about the mystic.
Through Van Morrison’s hymn, my brother
John Amin evokes the calling, like the foghorn warns
or summons to the shore. Both of them.
The mystical living/dying. Midnight hours
in meditations say "Stay in the fire. Don't run
from transformation. Trust the One. Burn
through fear, set free desire to know too much.
Find Coleman’s fireflies and under stones, the guard
rails to innocence, to God, inside and out.
Going home Mystic firefly highway love song
Because while trying to hold impossibles we're
slipping away too. After all detaching is
the gypsy soul, butterfly wings lift fireflies.
So don't hold too tight. Love and let go–
But trust the faint spirits flickering at midnight
Guardian angels if faith tells true Visitors
Cross and carry bridge Unite. Believe in
Midnight sight
The mystic highway…
The subtle teaching. It's Sufi walking. Gift
Of the inner Divine
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