Exploring Authenticity: Perspectives from Jungian Psychology, Heideggerian Philosophy, and Sufism

Rumi, a renowned Sufi poet, emphasized the importance of love and the heart in the quest for authenticity. For Sufis, the heart is the center of spiritual knowledge and wisdom. Authentic living involves purifying the heart, detaching from external identifications, and seeking a deeper connection with the divine. Divinity in its pure, metaphysical form is nothing but the living, eternal present, the indeterminate Being. … More Exploring Authenticity: Perspectives from Jungian Psychology, Heideggerian Philosophy, and Sufism

The Child & The Walking Dead

There used be a child content in love and abundance, for whom one idea was enough, and that was his concrete Reality. But this modern semblance of a man, he needs one too many ideas, identifications, positions with regard to everything, swarming in podcasts and debates, only to satisfy an insatiable sense of belonging that is only truly satisfied by what is buried alive within himself. … More The Child & The Walking Dead

On Hell & The Late Afternoon Sea

They say memory is information grafted somewhere in the brain. But that’s not how I experience memory. My memories are living experiences of parts of me that are still living in the places and situations I have visited. I have left them there because they didn’t want to leave but they are still living. And it strikes me that if I am still living everywhere and at all times at once, then all places and times must be living within me!  … More On Hell & The Late Afternoon Sea

Make the Call

That’s the dilemma: when you’re burning, you always call someone for rescue. You always WILL call one of these two people because you have faith in their powers whether you want it or not. All you have is a choice who to call: would you call on the force that integrates or the force that disintegrates. … More Make the Call

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

Beyond The Shadows: Deciphering The Phenomenological Reduction – Part 2

What makes the phenomenological reduction unique, is that it’s not a suspension of an act or cluster of acts in favor of living in some other acts; it’s rather a total and complete suspension or putting out of play of all acts or all manners of being directed toward meanings through the stream of consciousness. It is unique both in its universality and its peculiar directionality: everything is suspended by an abrupt move toward the center of consciousness, the pure I, which will bring to view the total streaming consciousness. The phenomenological reduction is, as Fink has said, a persistent abstention from any participation in the stream of consciousness by making the streaming itself the theme, a streaming that throughout human history has always remained un-thematic and un-discovered for necessary reasons. To perform the reduction is to see the streaming, the Heraclitean flux, for the first time. … More Beyond The Shadows: Deciphering The Phenomenological Reduction – Part 2

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

The Dance of Names

Everything and everyone is here; the names make them seem far away What’s gone, too, is here; we just call it “gone” and think it “gone.” What’s to come, has always been; we just call it “not yet” and think its name. Near and far, here and there, now and then: these are Its names, … More The Dance of Names

Beyond The Shadows: Deciphering The Phenomenological Reduction – Part 1

The things that we experience, including our own human self, its history and its fundamental situatedness within a context, i.e. the world, are nothing but shadows compared to what’s truly real: they derive their sense of Being and reality from something else outside of the cave, from what Fink calls the Light-World. However, being chained to our mundane self-understanding, we falsely attribute reality and existence to these shadow-appearances. We are fundamentally oblivious to the possibility of the true dimension of Being. That’s why Fink argues that insofar as we see and interpret ourselves as humans in the world, we cannot break free from this beginingless imprisonment. Rather, we must turn away from the shadows and step outside the cave, a movement accomplished by the performance of the reduction, and this reduction which is a persistent abstention from belief needs to be performed from a deeper level of self than our human self which itself is nothing but a shadow. … More Beyond The Shadows: Deciphering The Phenomenological Reduction – Part 1