Spiritual Fragments: Play & Minding One’s Own Business

To be serene isn’t about managing and manipulating your environment into peace, for most often you yourself are the element of chaos, and your attempts at bringing peace is the very cause of disturbance.
Alternatively, one can find serenity by a simple act of reframing the will, the wish, and the goal:
If I want perfection to be the goal and wish that it’s the case, then by reframing what is as the perfect state of things, then the goal is already achieved and my wish instantly fulfilled. And if I will what already is, then I’m doing as I wish, for my wish, too, is what already is.
The cause of suffering is to wish things to be otherwise than they are, and that’s insanity to wish something that has already appeared in a certain form to have appeared differently. … More Spiritual Fragments: Play & Minding One’s Own Business

The Mirror, the Man, and the Divine

If only you could zoom out enough to see the camera rolling, the setup and the stage and the props that you call your life and your possessions—that’s the true freedom: to see that all is already done and unified, that nothing needs to be done, that no one and nothing is out there, even the “out there” isn’t out there. Nothing was ever created, as there was never a need for it. Only then it’s recognized that the new man was the only man. … More The Mirror, the Man, and the Divine

The Forgotten Wealth: A Tale of Hunger, Memory, and Misplaced Identity

There’s an old beggar in our town; he goes around with a bowl knocking at doors begging for food to ease his hunger. Not everyone treats him well; some yell at him and kick him, and a few feed him for a day or two but no more; but he keeps knocking at those same … More The Forgotten Wealth: A Tale of Hunger, Memory, and Misplaced Identity

There is nothing but Presence: Don’t try to be present; notice that you already are

In relegating the reality and presence of a thing to a substratum, to what’s behind it, I enter into a hopeless pursuit of reality, thinking presence comes from things instead of seeing that it really comes from me. It’s in my presence that the world is present.  … More There is nothing but Presence: Don’t try to be present; notice that you already are

The Children of Cain

The elder, breaking his vow of silence after 146 years, said to Alexei, “you’ve come to my room and prayed at my feet more than the other monks in this monastery. Now, I shall speak to you, the son of Cain! It’s not your prayers that compelled me to speak; what compelled me to break silence is that which compelled you to ceaselessly pray; it’s rising wave in all of us, felt in the core of our Being, that compels the collective impulse. I, too, speak because this wave is reaching a threshold in our time.” … More The Children of Cain

Boston Cream Doughnuts

All is He, and He’s none other than the Self, the very seeing, the very hearing, etc.. So, detecting fault is faulty detecting.” The Shaykh slipped into the golden silence before he continued, “In agreement with our doctrine, what one sees is none other than He (wherever you turn, there’s the Face of God), and He’s none other than the seeing Self, and hence what one sees is none other than the Self. A man who sees defect is seeing himself, and lacking wisdom, he thinks the defect is outside of himself and attached to this or that object or person. Only if he knew the doctrine by heart, and knew that the Self is free of all defects, he’d instantly recognize that in seeing defect he’s not seeing at all. If you can’t grasp the significance of all this, contemplate the two ways the eyes can see and comprehend a doughnut, and that’s the way of the knowers of the truth. And if you abandon even that and rise to the level of the lovers of truth, you’ll see that the lovers care not about the nature of a doughnut but rather drop away their reason to taste and take pleasure in the sweetness of the doughnut. And here’s a little secret for you: the Elect have favored the Boston Cream.” … More Boston Cream Doughnuts