To pull oneself out from a beginningless enchantment that’s called the world! This enchantment is the humanness. To be human, to experience oneself as such, is to be entrenched in enchantment; it is God in trance! Distinction, separation, to have a place, to have time, the duality of the reflected and the reflection, all are dances of longing. There is no motion where there is no where to move. … More The Seer Has All The Answers
The now is a whirling Dervish; it whirls and it worlds. The Dervish sees; the Dervish sees, A seeing that hides; a seeing that shows, A seeing that holds; a seeing that lets go, One veils; one unveils, One is the farthest; one is the nearest, One is the eye; one is the I. But, alas, … More The Ecstasy of the Self, and World as Hearsay
The lovers, caressed by the scent of the beloved, burn their books and maps! A longing heart is their guide. The blind mind missteps; the heart sees, then smiles and leaps. The pebbles sink to the bottom and watch the river dance forward, as the mind is baffled by the dance of the heart of the lover. … More The Journey of the Ink
We must forget and unsee all that we know and all that we think. We must surrender who we think we are in order to see who we truly are. We must surrender what we think reality is in order to see it for what it truly is. And repetition itself can help us: to repeatedly put the headsets aside, to return again and again to the plain, unadorned real, even when it feels empty or dull. That emptiness and dullness and boredom is the withdrawal symptom of a lifelong addiction to conceptualization and repetitive thinking. Stay with that emptiness long enough and one day vision clears. But for that, all borrowed images must die. All the stories of philosophers, theologians, and scientists must vanish for the true sun to rise before our eyes. All our ideas of truth and reality must die for the One to appear. … More The Letter That Kills, the Song That Heals: When Reality Is Buried Alive in Much Intellectual Chatter
Continuously expose yourself to the Good, and the rest will take care of itself. Grace and willingness and strength will naturally flow into your life if you desire and gaze at it enough, for that’s the nature of the Good, to overflow and give away freely to whatsoever is facing it. … More Toward the Good: The Soul and the Geometry of Alignment
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
Widen your perspective and see that the soul’s journey is always an upward trajectory, that suffering is both transient and necessary if beauty and transcendence is the goal. From within this new perspective, gratitude is not more a chore but rather an obvious and spontaneous response to the path. Love all that is, for all is serving your fine end. … More The Attitude of Gratitude
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
The idea of possessing spiritual qualities implies a fallacy: the fallacy that you exist, and that you are capable of possessing anything. In fact, the very idea of independent existence is the source of all suffering and the subsequent desire to become spiritual. All this is God’s land, i.e. the land of Pure Presence, so let go of all that spiritual bullshit and try to mind your own business, which simply means: recognize that you are already present and it’s all alright. … More Stop Trying to be Spiritual: Stop Trying, and There it is
The highlight of my day is sitting in the balcony in the morning hours when the sun shines from in between the surrounding buildings, drinking my hot coffee and smoking a cigarette. Here in the winters of Florence, Italy, my balcony is positioned so that it sees the sun only for 45 minutes in the … More Readiness is All: On The Power of Faith
NOEMAYA 