Category Archives: spiritual

haiku: thin places and the time between now and forever

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haiku: thin places and the time
between now and forever

wistful hoots echo
in the dark void before light
what yet comes draws near

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
December 14, 2022

author’s note: I recently woke
in deepest, darkest night to a great
horned owl’s hooting and sensed
a moment of spirit connecting
the present and eternity and the
nearness of the divine. Putting this
experience into a poem has led to
much reflection and too many starts
and stops. And now I send it on its
way in hopes it speaks to you.

image unattributed

an Advent poem: making ready (what comes before)

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an Advent poem:
making ready
(what comes before)

sitting in the pre-dawn
darkness of this spiritually
transformative season

silent, reflective, open,
to the Divine Truth within
and the new beginnings before us

witnessing the Universal Cosmic Christ
who came down to us, comes again,
and is always with us in eternal life

mindful of the season’s
sentimentality, nostalgia, and hubris
which comforts and distracts us

here and now in the bliss
of participating and being
in the way of Creator God of All

mutually committed in body/mind/spirit
to preparing the way and living together
in diversity, healing, and peace

we humans transformed and co-creating
the alternative neighborly community
of True Self and Authentic Belonging

a lone voice in the wilderness
crying out, make ready the way
for the in-flowing of the Great I Am

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
December 6, 2022

author’s note: The last stanza is a paraphrase of the prophet Isaiah from the old testament found in Isaiah 40:3. The Great I Am reverences the I Am statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John, and Yahweh, God’s name in the Old Testament. It also connotes the Sanskrit mantra Tat Tvam Asi from the Chandogya Upanishad which refers to the unity of the individual Soul with the Divine Universal Consciousness. My experience is that all Divine Truth is universal, perennial, and cosmic flowing from the one supreme source which underlies all religion, spirituality, and mysticism, and which can be directly experienced by human beings who follow the way of True Self. An excellent book on this idea is “The Perennial Philosophy” by Aldous Huxley.

art image ‘O Root’ by Sister Ansgar Holmberg

poem: child of the universe, hippie, yogi, elder

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poem: child of the universe,
hippie, yogi, elderneither clinging to a nostalgic past,
nor projecting a future of sentimentality,
now resisting social norms of
emotional idealism and neurotypical
stereotyping

I, being a witness of here and now,
maintaining spiritual consciousness,
invitational presence, and attentive
mutuality, connecting deeply at soul level,
opening to the wholeness of other

we, belonging here together in beloved
community, falling upward in grace and love,
cycling through the bardo, eternally together
with the supreme in cosmic union,
that am I (tat tvam asi)

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry

August 28, 2022

photo by author

“Here is, in truth, the whole secret of
Yoga, the science of the soul. The active
turnings, the strident vibrations, of
selfishness, lust and hate are to be stilled
by meditation, by letting heart and mind
dwell in spiritual life, by lifting up the
heart to the strong, silent life above, which
rests in the stillness of eternal love, and
needs no harsh vibration to convince it of
true being.”- Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali

“The Perennial Philosophy is expressed
most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula,
tat tvam asi (‘That art thou’); the Atman,
or immanent eternal Self, is one with
Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all
existence; and the last end of every human
being, is to discover the fact for himself, to
find out who he really is.” – Aldous Huxley

“It is only those who are in constant revolt
that discover what is true, not the man who
conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only
when you are constantly inquiring, constantly
observing, constantly learning, that you find
truth, God, or love.”- Jiddu Krishnamurti

poem: a Lenten blessing for personal and relational transformation for all

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poem: a Lenten blessing for personal
and relational transformation for all

in some shadowy Lenten corner of our
desert hearts, may we face all of our
small self-serving definitions of Creator God,
and the idols we erect and worship
of our hubris, conceit, and sentimentality

liberating our self from this wilderness,
following the Way of the Cross, as did Jesus,
the Universal Cosmic Christ, and resurrecting
into a more authentic becoming
with the Spirit

Creator God’s grace and love universally and
unconditionally given cannot sustain New Life
in an arid heart and wilderness mind,
the vine dies and fails to produce the
communal Fruit of Life

may the Divine Creator be the lotus flower
upon the throne of our heart chakra,
om manni padme hum, manifesting love,
grace, kindness, and compassion
to every corner of the Cosmos

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
March 9, 2022

images
Lotus heart chakra – unattributed
Open your heart, Paschima Namaskarasana,
Reverse Prayer Hands – unattributed

poem: the Zen-like simplicity of spiritual practice

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poem: the Zen-like simplicity
of spiritual practice

prepare
practice
participate

washing laundry
chopping wood
carrying water

imminent and transcendent
feet on earth, head in heaven
as above so below

within the mundane busyness
facing the forge of transformation
from emptiness to eternal presence

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
February 24, 2022

photos by author:
‘my laundry runneth over’

Reflection: On Being a Mystic in the Third Millennium

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Reflection: On Being a Mystic in the Third Millennium

“Why, when God’s world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison of all places?”-Rumi

Dorothy Soelle uses Rumi’s quote above as the introductory quote in her 2001 book ‘The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance.’ She goes on to write that two of those prisons for her were the German protestant church and the academic theology of the post-Enlightenment.

She elucidates this as follows: “….I can simply say that what I want to live, understand, and make known is the love for God.” She says that God’s love for us and our love for God must be mutual, and that mysticism best expresses this mutuality between God and humans and advances the Beloved community of radical grace and radical love.

Beloveds, let us here and now love one another in, with, and through the Universal God of All!

Note: Ms. Soelle lived in Cologne, Germany, born 1929, died 2003.

Art ‘Rosa Mystica’ by Shiloh Sophia McCloud

Jesus, the Universal Cosmic Christ, is a revolutionary

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Jesus, the Universal Cosmic Christ, is a revolutionary
please visit my web page for more of my poetry, reflections, and quotes @herbstonejr.com
Thank you for your support and happy reading
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Christmas Morn Reflections: The Cosmic Christ comes into the world in the way of weakness, vulnerability, and need and a mission of radical grace and love for healing the world of power, oppression, and violence and lifting up the oppressed

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Christmas Morn Reflections: The Cosmic Christ comes into the world in the way of weakness, vulnerability, and need and a mission of radical grace and love for healing the world of power, oppression, and violence and lifting up the oppressed

“God entered into our world not with the crushing impact of unbearable glory, but in the way of weakness, vulnerability and need. On a wintry night in an obscure cave, the infant Jesus was a humble, naked, helpless God who allowed us to get close to him….The Bethlehem mystery will ever be a scandal to aspiring disciples who seek a triumphant Savior and a prosperity Gospel.” – Brennan Manning, Shipwrecked at the Stable

“The whole point of the kingdom of God is Jesus has come to bear witness to the true truth, which is nonviolent. When God wants to take charge of the world, he doesn’t send in the tanks. He sends in the poor and the meek.” – N.T. Wright
art by Gari Melcher ‘The Nativity’