Connect and attune to the Source

If it seems to change or sidetrack, then write down that topic, so that some topics might be embedded in others. (then I’ll have to see if they should be pulled out or if they are best left in the flow of context.

On the website – have a clear topic and writing at the top. Keep the clearest and most essential at the top, then lower down goes other stuff including notes at the end..

More important than anything is to have wholesome Chunks where it all fits well. There may be some sidetracks into other topics, but I like the holistic flow idea, over having to organize rigidly into distinct topics… though some of that is important too.

Personality needs to align with its soul, by having attitudes of humility, submission, and a will to be useful. Then, soul aligns with the Spiritual Triad of Love, Wisdom and Divine Will. A simple term for this whole triad would be Divine Presence or God-Being. The Spiritual Triad are the primary Qualities of Divine Presence, God-Being. It is possible to make attunement directly with the essence of Divine Presence, but as a practice it is good to make an alignment with each of the Primary Qualities of Divine Being; otherwise one might unintentionally develop a tendency to neglect one of the Spiritual Triad Qualities. Some systems recognize particular colors for each Quality; such as Love being pink-red, Wisdom being a deep blue, and Will being a luminous yellow. But in any system of color designations, the right color sometimes varies depending on the person or culture. Some systems, as well, use particular symbols for each Quality of the Triad, but this varies even more among different groups and cultures, so it is best to not give any specific examples.

Opening to the presence of Masters, Teachers, Guides

There is one essential supreme spiritual presence, which can be called God, Allah, Shiva, Krishna, Brahman, Adi-Buddha, Sunyata, Nirvana, Great Spirit, or even the Tao; since the general meaning intended in all of these terms is the one universal Presence and Essence of all existence. To be in the One Presence and to experience the Presence consciously is the supreme transformer of self, as the conscious-self (ie. soul) assimilates the Presence and its energy-qualities. Our soul is like a chalice which receives and contains these spiritual energies – which then develop the petals of our soul-lotus.

Open to the Divine Presence and be conscious of the Divine Presence, which is the Presence of God. The Divine Presence is everywhere, so we can do this anytime and anywhere. Especially in meditation is a good time. The Divine Presence can be experienced as all around us, but also as within us. Experience this in both ways, as everywhere. If this is not experienced or felt, then understand that this is a subtle kind of experience and one has to develop a feeling and intuitional sensitivity to this Presence, which all demands a sufficient degree of experimental practice. It's not about having a religious faith, or a blind faith in this. It's about having real experience of this, which is the only kind of true verification; but this can only come about if one is experimental and willing to give it all a try.

Also, within the One Presence are many spiritual presences – many spiritual beings and powers – which constitute the Hierarchy of Spiritual Being. One part of this Hierarchy is composed of souls who are advancing towards Universal Being. When we use the term Hierarchy, we are usually referring to our planetary Hierarchy of Masters, Teachers, and Guides who cycle between incarnation and contemplative repose. Many planets in many galaxies have their own hierarchical composition of souls.

On a more Universal scale, there are great Beings who's power of radiance is more far reaching and impersonal. These we can categorize as demi-gods or as angels or as devas. Each of these is a power and presence within the One Great Spirit. Each one embodies many qualities of energy, but especially embodies and radiates one very special quality. So we can also receive from or be guided by one of these greater presence-powers; as for example, a particular buddhic power or quality, or from one of the angel or deva presences.

So it is possible to experience and receive from more advanced souls of the Hierarchy, or also from universal beings and powers. There are spiritual teachers in the outer world with special spiritual presence. But it is also possible to experience the presence of a Master, Teacher, or Guide of the spiritual Hierarchy, who will come to us to be guiding and transforming in our lives. But we have to be open to them and receptive, and also allow them into our experience.

This does not mean to be open, receptive and allowing of any kind of energy, presence or being. Be selective. Only be open and receptive to the very highest presence or energy, and only to a Teacher who our inner heart resonates with in love and in complete respect. Trust that the right and best Teacher will arrive, once one is in a sincere aspiration to be led on the path to God and of fulfilling one's spiritual purpose.

Here is what can be tried. In meditation, when there is enough inner silence and peace, be open to the Presence of a great spiritual Teacher or Guide. This could be anyone, so do not try to make contact with a particular Teacher or Master, like someone you've heard of or read about. So unless you already have a true heart relationship with a particular teacher, it is best to be completely open to whatever Teacher, Master or Guide comes into the meditation. Just keep in heart a sincere wish to be in the presence of the most spiritual being possible, or of the Teacher/Guide best for oneself. Then, wait in openness to the greater presence that arrives. Even question this presence with your heart, to make sure this is a truly helpful presence. Your heart will know, if your heart has an aspiration to be closer to Truth, Love, or to God.

So now, begin to feel this Teacher/Guide presence. This is their spiritual magnetism. Then begin to feel the quality or qualities of this presence. This quality or these qualities is the deeper teaching and guidance; for this is what is being offered. This is the energy or quality that we can now absorb and assimilate into our own being. What the Teacher/Guide/Master has to offer for us is, most importantly, the energies and qualities of their presence. Secondly, they can offer helpful guidance or wisdom, by way of words or visions. So most importantly are the qualities and energies of their presence, and then also their helpful teaching. Not so important is their name and appearance.

note that the effect depends on the state of the recipient, such that if one is open, receptive and non-resistant to the Light descending-emerging from the Universal; then general and specific guidance can better take place. And for those who’s ego has disappeared into non-existence because of being consumed in the Universal Light, they are guided and also self-perceptive about what is best to do in any circumstance. The knowledge and guidance of the good flows through them, while also they gain an ability to actually see what is spiritually and ecologically best to do. In other words, they are directly guided by higher wisdom, while also being able to apprehend what is wise. Simultaneously, they are given wisdom and they self-discover the wisdom.

… This is the Source of Love and Light, which is seeking to express through us. The Source is within us and is found within us. This is God seeking to express through us, from its Source deep within us. So there can be an outward expressiveness or radiance from the Source that is deep within. It’s like the great power of the Sun within us, in our very centre of being, in the heart of our self, radiating out with divine expression. This is also the meaning and reality of Christ, which is this Divine Sun-Light and Love emerging and radiating from each human soul at the centre of each being. For Christ is the essential Soul of man, the Divine Soul which emerges from the Source, just as a child emerges from its Mother.

As we connect and attune to the Source, we will feel and experience the Divine Love and Light (of Christ) emerging from within us, and we will then become a divine radiance and expression, which will also have a definite transformative effect upon the world around us. The space around us, and to some extent the whole world, will be positively effected by our emerging and radiant Love and Light. Yet, for this to be fully effective, it needs to be consciously realized and intentionally transmitted. The divine radiance will be coming from our own self. This is a great power coming through us, but this power is not something to fear. We don’t need to fear the great power of Love and Light, because it’s all for the good and all for healing. Let it all come through and move outward to everyone and the whole world. This is the Aim of the Divine, the Will of the Divine, and the Radiance of the Divine, all for the good.

Light purifies and heals the mind. Love purifies and heals the emotions. Both purify and heal the physical. But very important is transformation of the will.

Make note also in this the need for purifying – or dispelling the obstacles. .. which is done by observing as it arises -- noticing it, .. and then dispelling it, purifying it, cleansing it away. This is the key: Seeing then dispelling.

Love Presence healing – an essence or special spiritual catalyst comes from the heart to heal on the deepest levels.

-- the secret ingredient or alchemical catalyst is Divine love from within the heart to another

No I is necessary in love. The I of self can disappear in love. Of course though, this is the embracing kind of love, the kind of love that enfolds you in it. In this experience of love, you can let go of yourself, let go of any I-ness and selfness, and then proceed to disappear in the love, disappear in the experience of this love. One might not be doing this all of the time, but one should make some time for this everyday in someway or another. For this love is a very beautiful and blissful experience, not to be missed. In deep meditation or spiritual prayer, one can let go and disappear in this love; yet without losing consciousness or falling asleep. In fact, if we have this experience rightly, the consciousness/awareness expands tremendously as the I-self disappears into love. So again, there is no need for the I in this experience. The I may not want to let go or surrender itself, in which case it will remain in the experience, but it does not have to be there. And even if the I does surrender and disappear, it seems to return soon enough. It’s like a child playing hide and seek, but soon the child cannot stand the inattention so he/she finally pops up, announcing ‘here I am!”

‘I’ is really only a thought, just a concept. So when completely immersed in love and fully in the experience, the I notation is not present – it’s not in the pure love experience. Because in this pure love experience, there is only love and nothing else – no other entity in the experience. There is just the love experience. Right? Then the I-self pops up. “Here I am” So now the experience has both love and I in it. That’s alright. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just not the pure love experience. So this ‘I’ (which is you) pops into the love experience, and it wants have some kind of relationship with this energy-feeling of love. So the I takes on a position in relation to the love. It takes on a position of either doer or receiver. So it thinks either, ‘I am the doer of love’ – ‘I am the active lover here’, or it thinks ‘I am the receiver of this love’ – ‘This love is giving to me’. These are the two primary modes of love experience, when there is I and love in relationship. When the I disappears, then there is only love. But most of our time in a love experience there is some relationship involving the I, the ‘I’m here too’.

Then of course there is even more often a third party in a love experience, which is another person, or a flower, or anything or anyone, or maybe it could be the whole world. Then, there is an experience of relationship between two, the I and other, or I and thou; such that either one or the other primary mode of experience will be present. The love experience will be either, ‘I love you’ (meaning that I am the doer or giver of love) , or ‘you are loving me’ (meaning that I am the receiver and being given this love). And of course in this there must also be the love ingredient, the elixir that one is giving and the other receiver, or that which both are sharing. Thus we have here a trinity of experience – an I, a thou, and the love shared. So in conclusion, there are these many ways to have a love experience, either involving one, two or three.

Listen to God. Open up the inner ear, the inner seeing, and the inner feeling. Realize, or remember, that God is always here and always revealing some kind of positive quality (even if sometimes subtle). How is God for me right now?

Surrender is another significant intention. Intellectually, it might seem that intention and surrender are opposites. We can see these as polarities, and then realize that both are important, and thus balance is important. Yet, surrender and intention can also be very related, since surrender can be our major intention in our practice. If our intention is surrender, then we allow surrender. This is really the first step in surrender to the Divine. One has to first be willing to surrender, and the intention sets up the self-condition (or prerequisite) for this surrender to happen. Next, there is a conscious and willing step to make the surrender, which is analogous to an act of letting go, or the act of opening the hands. So first one needs to have an intention to open the hand or let go. Then, next, we need to make the act of surrender. And at this point, which is a turning point, our intention seems to disappear or transform into just the surrender. Then, the energies are in transformation and we have a feeling of peaceful flow. Surrender brings us into the peaceful flow. It’s like coming into the Tao, to use a different term. At this point our experience of reality has changed. So, original intention is important as a first step in the transformational work. But as we fulfill an intention to surrender, the intention disappears into the surrender. And thus, these seem to be polar opposites, but in fact they are necessarily related, especially because we cannot get to the surrender without having an intention to surrender. You see?

Spiritual Perception has two basic meanings, two basic kinds. One can be called archetypal perception and other we can call pure perception. The archetypal meaning involves the perception of spiritual truths or divine archetypes. This is the usual meaning of the spiritual perception, and one will know this is the intended meaning if the speaker starts to imply that spiritual perception will bring forth knowledge of certain principles and aspects of the Divine, or visions of angels or spiritual powers or divine qualities, or knowledge of spiritual cosmology and metaphysics. There will always be some particular content to the perception, or a knowledge gained from the spiritual perception.

Spiritual perception of this kind is thus valuable, for one is acquiring spiritual knowledge. Some prefer to call this spiritual intuition, and sometimes teachings speak of entering a higher state of intuitional mind which is above or advanced from an ordinary state of rational mind. And here one does not need to use reasoning in order to reach conclusions, because the spiritual perception is immediate and direct. One sees the truth directly, like one might see rain upon mountains with the physical senses and know without doubt the reality of this. Except that spiritual perception is an inner direct knowing.

Now there is a certain trap that is possible to get in, but can be avoided. The trap is to believe that one’s spiritual perception or direct vision of spiritual reality is absolute for all languages and culture. This would be the trap of constructing a document of one’s prophetic perception and believing it is absolutely universal. It is possible that the essence of a knowledge is universal, but we need to remember that all teachings have to be given through some particular medium – a particular form of language and images which are inherently culturally imbued. In other words, there is always a medium through which the spiritual perception must see through or speak through. This is the medium of mind or the medium of understanding, which has to involve particular images, language, concepts and other culturally imbued elements of mind.

There can still be a universal essence to the perception or teaching, but the form of the perception or teaching can never be absolutely universal. We can notice this in the various visions of God and Reality as presented throughout human history. Unless we wish to choose and accept only one great vision and teaching as the absolute truth and all others as distortions; we have to accept a plurality of visionary forms – without necessarily abandoning a faith in One Essential Reality. We simply need to accept that spiritual perceptions and visions of this One Spiritual Reality are inevitably imbued with cultural and personal coloring. This is because any spiritual perception necessarily involves the particular medium of the perceiver, and this particular medium can never be completely absolute. So one vision of God or a Divine Archetype will look one way and another will look another way, depending on the medium of past experience, culture and preconceptions.

Then, an even higher level of mind will need to understand the unifying essence underlying the plurality of visionary forms and the apparently different concepts of various spiritual teachings. We might then call this the meta-level of archetypal spiritual perception. A Universal Archetype or Truth can be approached with concepts and language – for example the Mother Archetype and concept of Universal Love – yet any particular vision or description of this will inevitably be imbued with cultural or personal coloring. So the meta-level of spiritual perception has to abstract the essence from form.

Now let us consider the meaning of pure spiritual perception. This is a direct immediate perception of Being Itself, or say God. In this pure spiritual perception there is no specific content, except Light or Love or Divine Power or just Being Itself. Light is the same as pure Spiritual Consciousness, the Light of pure Knowingness. This pure spiritual perception has no content of knowledge, but rather it is a pure experience, without form and without concepts. By analogy one might have a pure experience of dancing, just dancing, without any knowledge of what kind of dancing or the intention or reason for dancing. One is just being in the pure experience of dancing. Spiritual perception is pure experience like this, except that spiritual perception is different from experiences involving physical senses.

The physical senses aren’t involved with spiritual perception. Instead of perceiving outward, one is now perceiving inward. Or maybe this could be misleading, because spiritual perception could be an outward mode yet one is perceiving the innerness of outer life. A beginning key to spiritual perception is to release interest in the physical senses, then pay attention to the non-physical and inner dimension of life. Meditation and inner experience is the most important way to reach spiritual perception.

In considering spiritual perception, we should be aware of a possible trap in the real experience of spiritual perception. This is the trap of believing that an intellectual knowing is the same as having a real experience of spiritual perception. For example, we might read a book about spiritual perception, or listen to a talk about it, but this is not the same as having a real experience of it. Imagine reading a book about dance, where dance is well defined and examples of dance are described. But this does not give a real experience of dance, so one would still lack in real understanding. The only way to really know dance is to experience it by doing it. In classical western wisdoms the understanding of things is usually emphasized as a content of knowledge about whatever we want to know. But real understanding is in the experience of what we want to know, not in a mere intellectual knowledge about it. So with spiritual perception the real knowing is found in the experience of it.

At this point, then, it is tempting to describe what the experience is, but this is part of the intellectual trap. In other words, the teacher tries to give some correct content about what spiritual perception is, or about what knowledge the perception should bring. To avoid this intellectual trap which gives the student a preconception of something, the better approach is to hold the question open as to what might be experienced. For a real experience will unfold only when one has a pure inquisitiveness or curiosity about spiritual perception. So simply open your mind to the experience of pure knowing, without any preconceptions. Preconceptions will only get in the way and distort a pure experience of reality. Thus the real practice of spiritual perception is to be empty of preconceptions and also empty of trying to perceive any particular content, even that of Light or God or whatever. Be in pure receptive open mind without any expectations or preconceptions. Don’t even try to perceive or know anything. For instead of an attitude of trying, awaken to what is already present. This will open the spiritual perception.

Now let us again consider spiritual perception of the archetypal kind. This is perception of spiritual truths, qualities and powers. With this perception one acquires spiritual knowledge. This knowledge is not simply the kind that one can acquire from normal physical senses, for it is a knowledge only attained by higher spiritual senses. And of course this knowledge is not about what this or that looks like, the colors and shapes, the sounds and smells of the physical world. Rather, it concerns the truths, qualities and powers invisible but underlying physical forms and events. and in a formative relation to the physical world. The divine qualities and powers formulate and pattern the physical manifest world, but we cannot perceive these with just the physical senses. We need spiritual perception to apprehend these divine qualities and powers which formulate and pattern the manifest world. Thus, the divine truths, qualities, powers, and archetypes are a mediating dimension between Divine Being Itself and manifestation.

Yet be aware of a possible mistaken belief, that the manifest world is always and everywhere perfect as the archetypal spiritual world of divine qualities. For some teachings claim that the manifest world is always perfect and always good, since it reflects the divine qualities. Yet this is incorrect, because the divine qualities manifest in varying degrees in our world; so in some parts the divine qualities are strong but in other parts they are weak or almost non-actualized. Thus the divine qualities, as well as Divine Mercy in general, is only manifest in degrees, so that sometimes it is manifest very little. The incorrect belief is that everything manifest and all events are perfectly reflective of the Divine Love-Wisdom; or that the Divine Love-Mercy is orchestrating all events and manifestation. So that when terrifying pain manifests or people terribly hurt others, the mistaken belief proclaims that this must actually be part of divine mercy or divine intelligence, even though it apparently feels to be an injust or wrong deed. The mistaken belief has to make a jump in unsound reasoning in order to come to such a conclusion. One feels something is wrong, but a false reasoning convinces one to ignore the natural feeling and believe that everything must be all good in spite of all evidence. The mistaken belief suggests that spiritual perception will see all things as perfect, or see God’s Loving mercy in all events. But this belief is mere illusion and wishful thinking. There is bad in the world, and mistakes happen, as well as mere accidents. The greed and egotism of man often dominates our world, and this is not orchestrated by God, nor is this patterned from the spiritual world. So let us now ponder on the real truth, leaving behind the false.

The divine qualities and powers exist firstly as potentials, and these divine potentials work their way into manifestation over time, as an evolution of the spiritual world into the manifest world. The divine potentials are working into actualization. So at any one time, the manifest world is not completely spiritualized, not completely actualized. Though there is always some degree of divine quality in the manifest world. So with spiritual perception we can see spiritual quality and the power of love-wisdom in our world, but this will only be in degrees. The fullness of divine potential will seldom be perceived, because in life the spiritual qualities are still in process of unfoldment. Thus, spiritual perception is firstly the seeing of divine potentials (the divine qualities and archetypes) in the invisible world of spirit, and secondly it is the seeing of these divine qualities in the manifest world in varying degrees.

Worship is essentially an orientation to God or to the Divine Reality. It is an expressed way of relationship to the Divine. There are many outer ways to worship God, as one can find in religions and spiritual paths. But let us consider the inward essence of worship. In heart, it is a sincere devotion or connection to God. Even deeper, it is a sincere relationship with God or Divine Reality. It is allowing God into one’s heart, allowing the Divine Spirit to be full in one’s heart. It is opening to God, and allowing God to live in oneself and through oneself. But this cannot happen without conscious intention and willingness. We have to consciously open our heart to God, so that God can feel at home in us. We welcome God into the home of our heart. God is infinite and unlimited, yet in our heart there is spaciousness for God.

Spiritual practices are important along this Path. What is a practice? It is an activity that requires active will and intention. It can a have a regularity, but not necessarily. What is more important is that it requires an extra effort or extra amount of intentional energy. Also, it often transforms automatic activity. Automatic activity is what we do in a kind of habitual way. But practice is not like this. Practice is harder to do, or at least it requires an extra effort. If one simply decided to do whatever, without any examination or care, and doing whatever one feels like doing, without any attempt to make oneself a better person or reach a higher level of experience; then this is automatic behavior. It just happens automatically, without any directed intention. Yet practice requires intention and will. This doesn’t have to be heavy. It doesn’t have to be, like, I got to do this, or I got to struggle hard to do this. It could be easy and enjoyable.

An example is the practice of tuning into the Divine Energy and Vibration. This tuning-in requires intention and will, in order to get beyond our automatic patterns of mind and activity. In other words, our ordinary state or pattern might be to simply react in the world and allow everything around us to shift our experience here and there. So to do something different will require a special intention and effort. One has to make a special effort. But even before this, one has to wake up out of the automatic pattern, in order to make that special effort. This is what is meant by Practice. You will know the beginning of a practice, because you will be intending to do it. Practice is never merely automatic, subconscious, nor unintentional.

As well, practice has a purpose. This purpose may be indefinite in detail, but there is still purpose in it, however general. Much of the time the purpose is general and we don’t know exactly what we should be expecting from the practice. But we should have at least some general purpose or goal for doing any practice; otherwise why are we doing this practice? And since we have a purpose, we ought to be getting closer to it when doing our practice. If we are not getting anywhere, really, then we might as well give up that practice and move on. Experiment, try new practices or new versions. Be creative. But hold the purpose in mind, and make sure the practice fulfills this purpose. So, have a goal or at least know where the practice should be heading. At the same time, don’t get caught in expectation. If you know exactly where a practice will lead, then it doesn’t have enough exploration in it.

Every practice needs to be exploratory and a new experience; otherwise it can turn into a superficial routine. Make every practice a learning experience and an open discovery of what is revealed. This requires an attitude of openness and learning from what happens. This is without expectation, yet the practice can still have a general goal or direction. By analogy, one sails a boat or takes a trip in an intended direction, with a general idea of what one is hoping to achieve; yet the exact nature of the experience and what will be learned by this traveling is open-ended. If one already knew for sure what experiences would be revealed in the trip, then there wouldn’t be any exploration. And as any traveler knows, it is foolish to hold onto expectations. Let everything be an exploration, a learning experience, and an unfoldment.

So in all spiritual practices, there needs to be a receptive and exploratory attitude, simultaneous with an intentional attitude. This is a receptivity to what the practice reveals. Or, consider what God reveals to one, when doing the practice.

Too many people along spiritual paths are not really getting anywhere in their practices. Partly, this is because we are entering a new era, or a new cycle of time, where the past spiritual forms and rituals will fade away in importance. We have to discover the real purposes of these traditional practices so we can take the essence and re-create them into new forms for our new kind of world. The perennial nature of spiritual practices will carry on, but the exact forms will not.

Yet too many people are not getting anywhere, also because they are doing practices meant for some other time and place, or for some other type of person. The secret to all this is to experiment and discover for oneself what actually works. That is, what actually helps to bring one towards the purpose intended. First ask, why am I doing this practice? Then ask, is this practice getting me to my goal? Thus, find the best practice for you, considering what is most significant and considering what best leads you to your goal.

Balance content with non-content; thought with open question, active with non-active meditation

Let us consider some key practices, each deserving better explanation than will be given at this time.

Resonate with Mother Earth. Resonate with the Life that we are in, with this Livingness we are in. Resonate with all of Life and with every living being on this planet. Yet resonate with love. The Mother gives us a vital energy for our soul and heart, as well as our physical bodies. She is the Great Giver. Sure, there are storms and earth challenges at times, but overall this planet is filled with abundance and beauty. The Mother gives and wants to give. So let in Her Love and Energy. Receive from the Mother. Also, make a connection with all others and the other species of this Ecology. Love all of Earth and everything here.

Surrender into the Divine Presence. Surrender into the Ocean of Universal Being. Surrender into the River of Love. This may seem abstract, but it is a true practice. Contemplate on these words of surrender. Meditate on them. Find the Divine Presence, the Universal Being, the River of Love. This is all the same. Be open and receptive to the Greater Being we are in. Be open, receptive, and surrender. Surrender means to surrender one’s thoughts and feelings. Give up your heart and mind to the Divine, to God. But then also listen and learn from what is given from this experience. So it is a surrender, but at the same time it is a receiving (or awakening to what this is). It is like dying, and then being openly receptive to what is revealed after this little self disappeared. So after the self surrenders itself, (after I surrender myself), the Reality-Truth-Being underneath this is all of a sudden revealed.

But if one needs a direction in this practice, (besides surrender), look for and find the River or Love, or maybe the Ocean of Universal Being, or discover how the Divine Presence presents Itself to you.

Meditate in the heart. This is where you can find yourself, your true and deep self, your real soul. This is where you can know yourself. Then, once we are here in the heart, the Light of the heart opens up, and the Divine is revealed. God is known in the heart. The highest spiritual experiences are in the heart center.

The final Practice is to simply be the Radiance of Love, which is the same as Radiance of Light. Love radiates like Light. So we can become channels for the Light of Love. And the way to do this is to first be receptive and open to Love, as it comes from the Divine. Then, let it flow through and into the waiting world. Finally, I am just Love Radiance. And then, after deepening in it, there is no I, but only Love Radiance. May Divine Love flow into the hearts of everyone, so that all men and women become lovers. And may I be a channel for this flow of Love.

Holding everyone in the space of love, or in the presence of love. This is a recognition that this person is already in the presence of love, the Presence of Divine Love. It is also a recognition that this person is actually an expression of the Divine, a unique expression. It often requires an extra effort to do this, because it isn’t part of our automatic norm. We also can make an extra effort to see what is especially positive about another person, that is, to do with a unique positive quality. Much of the time, our normal habit is to notice and hold in mind a fault about the other person. We tend to see negative qualities or faults. But really, everyone has a few faults. It’s more significant to recognize another person’s positive qualities. Recognizing faults is way to easy. So part of our transformational work, on ourselves, is to change the pattern of how we view others; thus, instead of repeating the pattern of viewing negatives and faults in everyone, try recognizing positive qualities, even divine qualities.

Now, the deeper practice of holding someone in the presence of Love is to do with healing. Everyone needs healing, especially spiritual and love healing. Remember that love heals. So put everyone in the light of Love, or in the presence of Love.

First we receive. First we have need and need to receive. Next we give. No one can give until they first receive, First receive from God. Receive love, wisdom and presence. God gives these qualities from a dimension beyond this world. First receive these; then later you can give them to others. We also need to receive from other people. Receive love from friends and family. To receive love from others is very special. But so often we are closed off from love, or we fear that others don’t really love us; so we don’t actually receive love – since we don’t yet recognize it coming our way. So recognize love from others and receive it into your heart. Finally we can receive from nature. One great quality we can receive from nature is beauty. Receive beauty from nature and you will be beautiful. You too will radiate beauty. We can also receive energy from nature, which is called life energy, vital energy, prana or chi. So there are these sources from which we can receive, though first we have to be open to this.

Then, after receiving the love, energy, beauty and wisdom that we need, we are inspired to share these qualities with others and the world. This is the giving, or the sharing. What happens is that we are inspired by God, others or nature; then we naturally give and share. For example, we naturally seek to create beauty in our world, after we have been inspired by the beauty of nature. The inspiration and receiving comes first; then the giving, sharing and creativity with what we now have and know.

So few practices can be sustained in everyday life. One might know of many possible practices or rituals, and one might even attempt many of these, but few are really sustainable in everyday life. Most can only be done at times, which is alright, but the question posed concerns the kinds of practices that can be done anytime and are also essential to the whole spiritual path. Therefore, I seek basic essence practices, applicable in everyday life and in relation with others. These essence practices are love, truth, healing, and divine connection. These can be related to the four directions or four pathways. A fifth practice, related to each of these four and at the center, would be breath, because conscious breath connects all spiritual energies and also brings them into embodiment.

The first practice is love. First, this means to connect with love in oneself, or connect in the heart centre. If we live from the heart centre, then we will live from love and also be loving. This might sound too simple, and it hardly sounds esoteric. But it might be the hardest practice there is, unless we are satisfied with occasional love or surface love. Real love is deep, profound, and transformative. Real love has such a depth that one never really feels they have experienced the fullness of it. Often, we might have times of being love and expressing love. But is this sustainable in every moment and every day? So the question is how to work with this as a practice. Read again the above. Nothing more needs to be stated, except that everyday life and the people around us are the actual opportunities for practicing and developing love.

The next essence practice is truth. This too sounds simplistic and hardly esoteric. It means being true and living true. Be true to oneself. Be truthful to oneself. Then also, be true and truthful to others. Being true means being honest and sincere, at the deepest level. Be honest in oneself and with oneself. This is being true. It also means being real. Be real in oneself. This needs practice because we have a tendency to fool ourself with dishonesty. Truth is primarily in relation to our own self.

The next practice is healing, in relation to others, the world, and also with our own self. The primary attitude in healing is to benefit everyone, including our self. This is an important attitude. Much of the time we are clueless as to how exactly to heal others or ourselves. But that doesn’t matter. What matters most is to have a healing attitude, which is like an attitude of blessing. Everyone can be blessed with our truthful radiance of loving good wishes, to benefit and help. Be healing for everyone and oneself as well, and also include the whole planet. And even include the whole vast universe of the billion galaxies and planets. Healing is like a radiant energy of good-will and good thought for Everyone. So one might not know exactly how to heal someone, or oneself, but it is still possible to have this healing attitude and this blessing attitude of radiant love and good wishes.

The final idea to share about healing is to remember that the healing energy, or healing vibration (all energy is also a vibration), comes from beyond us. It comes from the Divine Source of God’s Love Blessings. God, the Ultimate Being in which we live, and our Creator-Sustainer, is Love and is Intelligence and is the Almighty Power. So this Love-Intelligence-Power, which we simply call the Divine, is here to heal, here to benefit, and here to bring us into a more refined state of being. The Divine is working to become in this world. Healing is the Divine becoming actual in our world. What is in process of becoming actual? It is Divine Love, Intelligence, and Power. This is healing. This is goodness. And goodness is the same as Godness. So let the Divine Power of healing come through you. Let the Godness come through you, and then out to everywhere.

The fourth essence practice is divine connection. It doesn’t have to be called this, so people may want to use their own words, but hopefully each will understand what is meant by divine connection. This is our connection to the Source of love and healing, and to the power of intelligence and creativity. Divine connection is also essential for spiritual realization. How we reach this connection is the big question. How do we connect, and how do we best allow the Divine to be known and to move through us? This question deserves much consideration. Some use prayer, some use mantra, some use invocations, some use visualization, some listen, and others might feel it. There are many ways to connect.

But one might also consider how we already are connected. So instead of thinking, ‘I need to connect with the Divine’, try recognizing how we are already connected or how the Divine is already here. Be aware of this present moment, right now, and recognize how the Divine is already here. So begin from here. Listen inside and notice the Divine. Begin from the connection already here, then deepen this connection. This is another way of spiritual practice.

Here a few suggestions to consider. There are two main ways of understanding the Divine and of making a connecting relationship with This. One is to understand the Divine as the Greater Life, Greater Self, Greater Love, Wisdom and Power. The Greater is beyond us, or more than us, and we are like its workers. A devotional attitude usually has this kind of understanding. God is Great. Allah Akbar, the Great Being, the Great Power. I am in awe at this Greatness, and my role is to be in servitude. Divine Presence (another way to speak about God), or Great Spirit, is usually felt the same way – as all around and surrounding me. My heart makes a relationship with this Greatness, like a child with Mother or Father, though the relationship could be without such projections. The relationship is a dependent kind of relationship, like person with Earth, in that each of us is dependent on the Earth for life. Spiritually we are dependent on God as the Greater Source of our soul and Who we depend on for realization. My role in this Greatness is to connect, receive, serve and express.

The second way of understanding the Divine is as within. This has a different feel and a different experiential sense than the Divine as Greater. Though in similarity, the Divine Within might also be felt as Greater than our usual personal self. The main difference, though, is that of orientation. One orientation is that the Divine is the Greater Surrounding Being. This other orientation is that the Divine is within oneself. The former orientation is to God up and beyond. The latter orientation is to God down deep, deep in the heart or deep in one’s being. God is within me. I now look within; not above nor around. God is here in me. And I want to know God in me. This is experience of God Immanent; rather than Transcendent, Beyond or Greater than. Now, in this experience, God is in me. So I can listen to God within. I can feel God within. I can know God within. And God can live through me, if I make myself ready for the Divine.

Both orientations to the Divine, as the Greater and as Within, share the same attitudes of reverence and receptivity. My relationship with the Divine Within is nonetheless humble and with reverence, and also importantly receptive. And the Divine is still the greatest, but now this greatness is experienced as within.

Not to focus on the loudest external demands of our physical life, but instead live from the spiritual centre within. We will still need to take care of external business. We are not giving up on our external lives and the demands of this physical life. Physical external needs are still present, and our physical jobs are still there. But our consciousness is inwardly and spiritually centered. We live primarily from our spiritual connection, that is, we live in a spiritual consciousness; rather than get all engrossed and stressed out in a merely external consciousness. One still deals with the external needs, but without leaving the inner spiritual consciousness. It’s like never leaving home without keeping a connection alive. Don’t go out into the external world and have to deal with all its struggles, without maintaining our spiritual consciousness and centeredness. Then, one can go out into the world and deal with life, without ever really leaving home at. Understand?

This life is a process of sacrifice. We should say first, though, that life is a process of death and rebirth. Then, if we are willing to accept and go along with this, without struggling to avoid it or deny it, our life turns into conscious sacrifice. And one Realizes that, since there is nothing really we can do to make the nature of life different than it is, we might as well consciously sacrifice our self in it. We might as well sacrifice our self to life as it is. Then once we make this sacrifice, with acceptance and without struggling against it, a great peace is realized, and we find ourselves floating in an ocean of love. We are now being with what is and sacrificing our self in this.

Surrender to God, which in Arabic is called islam, is a theme and an intention shared by many spiritual traditions. Yet the meaning of this is multilayered.

One very significant meaning is surrender to the Divine within us. It is discovering this Divine and then surrendering to this Greaterness within – which is the greater spiritual love, wisdom, and aspiration within us. Many people think that islam is mostly about surrendering to the laws or rules of a religion, or else surrendering passively to whatever is going on (the outer circumstances). But it is essentially about surrendering to the Divine emerging from within. This can be regarded as one’s true inner self. There is a Whole Divine Ocean of Being within everyone, which is trying to come through heart and mind. We do not have enough personal capacity for the Whole Ocean to come through, but we can allow at least some to come through, to move through us, to live through us. We need to allow the Divine to emerge and reveal through us, and not resist it, and not let our little ego get in the way. The little preoccupied self surrenders to the Greater-Spiritual Self within.

So, surrender to God means surrender to the Divine Love-Wisdom emerging from within us. Some people think it is about surrendering to outer circumstances, as if God is creating these circumstances. One aspect of surrender is an acceptance of circumstances, but this is not merely a passive acceptance – rather, one should also be actively considering the opportunities in any circumstance for making a change or else changing the circumstance. Surrender should not be falsely understood as merely a passive acceptance of circumstances, as if it all difficult circumstances were our divine fate, or as if whatever happens is God’s wish for us. Outer circumstances can be regarded as opportunities or, in difficult times, as challenges; rather than as what God is intending for us. For there are many outer circumstances and difficulties that are obviously created by man, not necessarily God. The circumstances of our world is an indication of what God allows, rather than what God is intentionally creating or ‘sending’ to us.

Another aspect or meaning of surrender is giving up the little gods we tend to worship – our lesser preoccupations of mind and heart, whether these be our little desires or our outer attachments. For these little gods are both within and out. So, an important meaning of surrender is to let go of these lesser gods, these lesser preoccupations and attachments; and instead, turn our mind and heart completely to the Greatest and Highest of all. We surrender the lesser gods-of-attention for the sake of and love of the Greater Infinite God, the God of All, our absolute Sustainer and the One Whom we owe our being. Simultaneously we surrender the lesser and aspire towards the Greater; we give up the insignificant and seek the most important. And the most important of all is God who is the One living through us. So let us give our heart and mind fully to God. This is surrender.

Another dimension of meaning is how we personally relate with God and know God. For God can mean many possible Qualities; such as Love, Wisdom, Power. So we can know God in different ways and relate with God in different ways. God can be known as the One Who Loves us, or as the One Who Guides us, or as the One Who empowers our Good-will and spiritual creativity. Everyone has to find their own special relationship with God, the Highest and Greatest, our absolute Sustainer and the One Whom we owe our being.

We could also realize that God is the very Essence of Love, or Love Itself, which heals us and brings about inclusiveness and unity. For many people, the Presence of God, or the Holy Spirit, is this uplifting and nurturing feeling of Love. Our understanding of Who God is might be quite abstract or unclear, whereas Love is more tangible and experiential. Therefore, surrendering to Love can be a more meaningful translation of this theme. So, surrender to God can mean surrender to Love.

Or, God might be thought of as the Great Universal Intelligence which has been guiding evolution. In other words, God is the Universal Mind, the all-knowing and all-intelligent Mind. Therefore, God Intelligence, God Mind, knows who we are more deeply and thoroughly than we even know our self, and this God Mind Intelligence knows How to heal all problems and How to achieve greater harmony and beauty in our world. Thus, we can look to God for healing and guidance, since God is all-intelligent. In fact, God is the very Essence of Intelligence… Intelligence Itself.

Another aspect of surrendering to God is surrendering one’s little ego-desires in order to serve the Greater Life and the Purpose of Life. The Greater Life, as we speak about it here, is not just an abstract notion of God but rather the very Life of this planet. So we are speaking about a very real Life, the Life that we are and which is sustaining us. There is a mystical meaning to this idea of Life, as in the Divine Life, but let us not simply reduce the meaning to an intangible abstraction. Instead, consider the meaning of “Our Greater Life” as referring to actual physical life, and all living beings are part of the One Greater Life of this planet. So to make this practical, the devotee of God surrenders their little personal ego and desires, in favor of serving the Greater Life, meaning the Greater Living Ecology of the planet. In this, all life is respected and served, yet single lives must be secondary to Larger webs of the Ecology. Also, smaller self-purposes are surrendered to Larger ecological and humanitarian Purposes.

Contemplating more deeply on this, we surrender in order to serve the Purposes of Life. These Purposes are the reasons we are here and the reason for life itself. Purpose is so important that everyone ought to figure it out themselves. Reading about the purposes of life is not as significant as figuring it out for oneself, or seeing it directly in one’s intuitive vision. Yet, we have to explain something about it here. It is to realize, express and create the finest love, intelligence, harmony and beauty that is always present in Potential, in the Divine Potentials. Also, our purpose is for the Divine Potentials to reveal themselves through us. Yet still, our smaller self-purposes are less important than the greater Purposes of all humanity and the whole planet.

Also to realize is that the Purpose of Life is to realize and consciously cooperate with the greater Unity, and then to help build a more beautiful and loving Unity. Realize that Unity means the same as the One Being, God. So, surrender the little-self to the Whole Self, the Unity. Then, through this surrendering, is an entering into Unity or Wholeness.

Finally, there is a more mystical meaning of surrendering to God, which is to relinquish one’s sense of personal selfness and separateness, so that the Greater Essence of all existence will only remain. We think that what we know of ourself is all of who we are. But we only know a little bit. For there is a much larger Essence of Being of which we are a small part of, or a drop of. Yet this larger Self can only be realized when the little-self surrenders and relinquishes its usual concepts of itself – its limited self concepts. This can only occur in a meditative state. In meditation or in prayer, it is possible to surrender oneself, in heart and mind, in such a way of letting go that the current level of self-knowing is released, and it disappears like a bubble of soap, as if it were just an illusion all along. And what suddenly appears, or emerges, or is now realized, is something much more vast and universal. For what appears to remain, when our surrender leads to self disappearance, is the Universal Self, called God. Or the Essence of Love, or the Purity of Consciousness.

The Sufi mystics say that God is calling us to Him. (Him beyond gender). And when we are longing for God, it is because God is longing for us. If we are searching for God, it is because God is searching for us. Every time we think of God and every time we love God and venerate God, it is because God is thinking of us and lovingly appreciating us. Our relationship with God is mirroring God’s relation with us. Our calling to God is a result of God calling us. Our searching is God’s searching. Our loving God is a result of God loving us, like the most loving parent in relation to their beloved child. We are the beloved for God. You are God’s beloved. The very intensity of my love and longing for God is a reflected intensity of God’s love and longing for me. So when you are calling for God, it is because God is calling for you.

The Sufi mystics also say that God is never far away, never distant. God is always right here, close with us. God is so close to us right now that we can touch Him with our heart in this very moment. In fact, God is right here in our own heart. Thankyou. I love You. First recognition, then gratitude. God is the Love that we thirst for. We all want love and to be loved. So we search for this in the world – we search for people to love us. We search for love. Yet Love is actually already here. It is already here for us. This is a profound zikr practice – feel the Love from God. Breathe it in. Drink it in and be fulfilled. Do this with breath. Don’t count; just fully feel the Love. God is Love. And Love is here right now, available to us and giving to us, like a magical spring of pure water discovered by a thirsty soul. Wake up sleeper! You are thirsty and the water is right here!

The work: Throughout each day remember the intention, to be awake in Love and to serve God’s Work. And what is God’s Work? Good question to hold.

Muslims say in their prayers Allah-Akbar, meaning God the Great, or that God is Great. This is part of worship, to acknowledge and affirm the Absolute Greatness of God. This is certainly an important sense to have and an important acknowledgement to make. But one should be cautious to not subsequently think that God the Great needs or desires such lavish religious praise. The truly great do not need to be told. A Great God would not desire nor demand such prolific praise; and to think God would is to make an anthropomorphic mistake. Instead, the real value of this great acknowledgement and praise is build humility in the worshiper, and also for the worshiper to acknowledge that God is certainly Greater than oneself.

Yet this is just a means to reach a much deeper understanding and experience. So God is Great; now what? One could repeat this acknowledgement for hours or days, but so what? The greater prayer, or the greater experience of prayer or worship, is to just be open. Just be open to God/Allah, and allowing God/Allah to enter into our conscious experience. This is a much higher and deeper practice of prayer and worship. One is open to God, and allowing God to come in, to be seen and heard. This is a much greater way of prayer, because it is directly working with the Divine Purpose.

The realized mystics already know that their inner space of self-experience is God, that the space of their being is God. They know that their inner and outer experience is all about God; but they also know that this being or space is a limited revelation of God. So there is much more to experience and know. Therefore, one has to open up more, and allow more of God in. This is speaking about one’s inner experience. Now, what is being proposed here is not so much of a doing, but rather a receptivity, and it is a receptivity to the Greatness of God/Allah. It is a conscious opening and allowing; so that we are open to the Greaterness of what is available, open to the Greaterness of God, the Greater Presence, the Greater Love, the Greater Mind.

For consider this: that maybe what is holding anyone back from a fuller experience of God is merely our closed-ness of heart and our mind’s preoccupied focuses on various matters. So the solution can only be a greater openness and allowing of the Greater into this humble receptive space of oneself. The asking, the prayer, is for God/Allah to more fully come into our experience, for that Divine Presence to be present here consciously. If Allah is truly great, then this is surely possible. And as this more abundant presencing of Allah is experienced, we may naturally respond with the sincere feeling that God/Allah is truly Great. Allah-Akbar.

We each depend on God. We depend on God for our life and for our consciousness. Life and consciousness are surely the two greatest mysteries, and no one really knows how life and consciousness ever came about. But here we are. We are alive and conscious. So surely, we depend on God for our life and consciousness. Really, we depend on God for our sustenance, both physically and spiritually. This can be known intellectually or emotionally, or both. We can intellectually reason about our dependence on God, and this might be useful to do. Or we can emotionally feel our dependence on God. This can be a very deep experience, involving a very deep sense in the heart. Some combination of the two ways of knowing our dependence will bring us closer to God. For in knowing and feeling our dependence on God, we make a closer connection and relationship with God. This knowing and experience of our dependence brings us into a right orientation with the Divine. This is the true sense of spiritual humility. It is recognizing that we are small and weak in comparison with the Divine Reality, just like a child is in relation to the world of adults. This experience and attitude humbles the ordinary self-ego – which is too often inflated with vanity, pride, and self-importance. Know that you cannot be transformed, or healed, or be creative, or have true understanding, without the help of God. This doesn’t mean that all of this depends only on God, as though it did not depend also on us. But what it means is that without the help of God, or without God the Sustainer, our own little efforts would not be enough. Once this dependency is known, intellectually but even more importantly emotionally, we spontaneously come into a sincerity of prayer, in which we pray with great intensity for help and relationship with God. This can be done in meditation or in some form of worship. In fact, this is what worship is for. In worship we realize the greatness of God beyond our own limitations, we acknowledge our dependency, experience our humility, and intensely pray for close relationship and help from the Infinite Divine Benevolence.

After this is sincerely done it is important to make the next step, which is to contemplate on what God has given. Some people forget this next step by remaining repetitively in the prayer of asking. An example of this would be someone who spends all of their spiritual time praying or begging for either God’s help or God’s approval. Just think of all the religious people who pray for either help or approval. They desperately want God to approve of them or to help them. There is nothing idiotic about this; it is perfectly natural to have that kind of feeling and make that kind of prayer. But some people get stuck in this, and they don’t go on to the next step. The next step is listening, not asking; it is receiving and accepting what is given, rather than asking for something more, or begging. At some point the begging and asking has to cease, and instead one enters into a faith that everything we need is already being given by the Divine Benevolence, so then one just needs to listen and accept what is given, whether internally in meditation or externally by way of the world. This step of listening, receiving and acceptance is a different mode than the mode of prayer, asking, and trying to set up our connection with the Divine. In fact, it is a stage after we have faith that the connection and prayer has already been received by God. Now we hear and see what God is giving us. And this is more like meditation than a traditional form of prayer or worship.

Once their was a very religious man who prayed and prayed, hours upon hours. He perfectly performed the rituals of worship and perfectly said the religious prayers. But many years later he became frustrated and so he said to God, with real honesty, “I’ve been perfectly performing the rituals of worship and perfectly reciting the religious prayers; so why have you never answered me with insight and guidance? And in such frustration the man had neglected to recite the next prayer, but instead remained silent in his anguish. Then God spoke to the man, “But I have been trying to tell you I love you and also give you wisdom; but you have been so occupied with those repetitive prayers and all of your continuous begging, that you made no space for listening. You were always talking to me. But now that you finally shut up and listened for once, you can now hear me.”

The real remembrance of God practice is consciously opening the mind and heart to LIFE, life inside and the life around us. This LIFE is God-in-action. So when we are in the present moment consciously awake to LIFE, we enter a higher level of consciousness, rather than remain in an automatic routine level of so-called wakefulness. But the description of this spiritual practice is difficult to convey. The practice and experience is subtle, deep and profound. It is not ordinary and superficial. It is not like a glance over there. It is not a something. It is more like a discovery of what is already here. It is not like experiencing God as a particular being over there or up there. Rather it is like experiencing God as the very Essence of Reality. The practice is awakening to a deep and powerful Essence permeating all of life and all of our self. Thus, this Essence is called LIFE. And it is true to say that this LIFE Essence and God are the same. So if we want to remember or discover God, we not look any further than right here in LIFE. And even if someone argues that God includes Life but also transcends it; we might as well begin finding God right here in Life than trying to find a transcendence that is probably beyond our experience anyways.

Going well with this practice of LIFE remembrance is gratefulness for all the good that is given. Gratefulness and appreciation are part of the central practices of any real spiritual teaching. Make an intentional practice to periodically stop your automatic routines and patterns, then reflect upon on the goodness and beauty given by life. We may not be able to appreciate everything that is happening around us, but we should be able to appreciate at least some things. Even just some appreciation and gratitude is very transforming to the emotions, and this vibration of gratitude actually gives back an important energy to life. And since we take so much from life already, even taking life for granted, the least we could do is to give back to life this important vibrational energy known as gratitude or appreciation. Having this feeling of appreciation and acknowledging our gratitude is also very important in our human relationships. Because being appreciated is like feeling loved; it feeds our inner emotional well-being. So if you want to give love to people or to nature or to God, then give appreciation and gratitude, which is a very wonderful gift.

Some teachings have declared that only God can do anything, or that all healing and goodness in life is up to God. But then other teachings have declared that its all up to us, that what happens in life is really our own responsibility. Yet the truth is between these opposing ideas. Healing and goodness in life is half up to God and half up to us. Those philosophies were partly right, but they were wrong in believing one side vs. the other.

In living a spiritual and healing life, there are two main kinds of action we must take. One is in relation to the Divine, which is to be in a mode of asking and also open to receiving. The other kind of action is a self responsibility for the quality of our mind and heart. These two kinds of action are crucially important all along the spiritual path. The first is a right relation with the Divine Source, Being, Power, Love, Healing, Wisdom. The second is self-responsibility for our own subjective phenomena, which is how we are thinking and our emotional life. Now it may be true that some of our emotions are beyond our choice, but to some degree we do have choice in our emotions and also in our thinking. It is difficult to immediately stop or transform negative reactions such as anger, irritation, disappointment, and sadness, to name but a few. Yet at any time we can consciously choose to bring into life positive emotions, such as love, patience, non-attachment, and gratefulness, to name but a few. The key to transformation of the emotions is to consciously bring into play positive emotions or the best emotions possible. It is not necessary to attack or try to destroy negative and painful emotions. Instead, the key is to decide to bring in positive emotions, while ceasing to give feed the negative emotions.

There is an Indian story of a young boy who lost his mother to soldiers. He says to his Teacher, “I feel two opposing forces within my heart. One is fierce anger and wanting to avenge, like an angry dog. The other is the love I remember from my mother, which I see as a friendly kitten. Teacher, which one of these forces will prevail, the mean and angry dog, or the loving kitten? The teacher said, “whichever animal you feed will be the one that carries on.”

We cannot immediately change or eliminate certain emotions that arise. But we can choose to feed just the emotions we see as best. This requires a certain degree of disattachment, and also a certain degree of wanting to build positive emotions instead of negative ones. What is the difference between positive emotions and negative ones? The negative ones hurt others and also ourselves. This is the difference. So we each have a choice of what emotions to feed and bring forth.

Thought is similar to emotions in this way. There are negative thoughts and positive thoughts. Negative thoughts think bad of others or oneself, and positive thoughts think good of others or oneself. Positive thoughts think the best about oneself and others. It is when the mind thinks of the best that can happen, rather than imagine or worry about the worse that can happen. Think good, rather than bad. Now of course bad stuff can happen, so of course we will have to think about bad stuff at times, when it happens. But there is no use in imagining bad stuff happening, or holding worry in the mind. Instead, think positive, which is to have faith that good will happen or at least prevail. Faith in the good is one of the highest forms of positive thinking. Now we might notice that emotions and thoughts are often related. They also are causative to the other; such as when imaging bad causes worry and upset, or when reactive anger causes negative thinking towards another. Thought and emotion are very often connected, either in reactions or in ego patterns.

So our responsibility is to bring forth and feed the positives, while letting go of the negatives. We may not be able to immediately transform the negatives, but we can certainly let go of any attachment to them and stop holding on to them. Additionally, in any moment we can go deeper into our true being and decisively bring forth the highest thoughts and emotions; remembering that this is our responsibility in the Divine relationship. The Divine will perform its part, but we have to perform our part. Now of course the Divine is always performing its part, because the Divine is perfect in its responsibility, but we are not always perfect in our part, so we have to make extra conscious effort in keeping the positive above the negative. It is rare that a life has no negative emotions or thoughts, but at least one can have more positives in a day than negatives. That would be a good beginning.

And why do need to be more positive than negative? Because the negative tends to cause harm, while the positive tends to bring love and goodness. The positive causes goodness to come into our lives, while negativity tends to block this goodness from entering. Negative thoughts and emotions make distorted, turbulent, and destructive vibrations; while positive thoughts and emotions create harmonious and uplifting vibrations. And on larger scale, the world needs more positive energies. In terms of healing, there will be a healing benefit in positive thoughts of expectant faith in goodness; but there will be a healing deficit in negative thoughts of worry, doubt, or expectant bad.

One needs to avoid negative thought and emotion as much as possible. But also one needs to encourage positive thought and emotion as much as possible. We need to keep our own subjective vibration and space positive. Just like we want to keep our external space clean, it is good to keep our internal space positive. Positive thoughts are useful and beneficial, rather than dysfunctional or harmful. Yet we also need to include all truths in our thinking, even if some of these are not what we would like. For example, there are injustices in life and problems, which we should not just ignore in order to keep positive. So the practice of maintaining positive thoughts and emotions does not mean that we should always refrain from considering negative occurrences or injustices in life. What we can refrain from, though, are patterns of negative thinking that are often unfair judgments about others or unrealistic worry about the future. In other words, it is an unjustified and unsound negativity, often based on prejudice or on worrisome fear. On the other hand, positive thoughts are useful in envisioning a hopeful future and constructing a good life.

Sometimes we find ourselves caught in negative emotions or thought, and it seems very difficult to simply retreat out of this. Here in these situations, the most we can probably do is to slowly detach from the power and identification of such emotions or thought. But also we can add a positive thought or emotion into the moment, which tends to counter-balance the negative pattern. Then slowly, as we detach from the negative and add in the positive, our self-state gradually changes for the better. Then at times when we are not so caught up in negativity, we can more consciously and intensely bring in positive thoughts and emotions into our psyche space. The best principle to remember is to accentuate the positive and diminish the negative. Increase the positive and decrease the negative. And do this everywhere: in thought and emotion, and also in the world.

The Way is to be positive and hopeful, be open to love and be loving, and be appreciative and grateful for the good that is given. Just this advice would get anyone pretty far along the Way.

Receptivity is quite a high spiritual state. Most people are occasionally receptive, but to make receptivity a continual practice for some duration of a mediation opens up new possibilities and facilitates the descent of spiritual energies. Receptivity seems simple, but it is actually remarkable. This is not speaking merely of a trite receptivity. Rather, the mediation involves a complete receptivity of mind and heart, which is pure of any presuppositions except that one is being receptive to the highest of the Divine or the greatest Good. You do have to have some quality of intention, which is to intend or declare inwardly that the receptivity is for the Highest or the Best or the Most Divine. You don’t want to just be receptive to anything or any energies. So you are protected by your intention. But besides having a general intention, the receptivity is pure receiving.

The needed attitude is humility and also a kind of infantile neediness for the divine milk as it were. This is a case where infantile behavior is positive. Be like an infant needing and receiving milk. Be that needy and that open to it. Or another analogy is to have open arms and face raised to the sky to receive a gentle warm rain. It’s a beautiful feeling. Or imagine being in the Presence of God by a soft warm fire. Even let yourself personify God in the most beautiful way as being this gentle Father or Mother figure (either one) who loves you so much that you feel it all through your soul. So this is the attitude state of receptivity, which aligns us with the Divine Love and Goodness and which opens the Divine Flow. And from this receptivity, we might then become instruments for the Divine Flow of Love into the world. First receive the Grace and Glory; then you will become a radiant sun of this Grace.

After receptivity comes the needed stage of responsibility. This is the stage of the spiritual initiate, or the worker of Light and Love. Once we are connected with the Divine Source and in receptivity, we can then become a way for Divine Energies and Qualities to come into humanity. We then mediate the Divine Light and Love into the world.

Divine Light is Universal Consciousness; it is the one great and only Mind-Consciousness, the Consciousness of the One Being. This is the awakening energy, awakening people to the Unity of life and the deepest core of their being. Light is Consciousness, and Consciousness is illumination, awakening, and knowing. The worker of Light, the bringer of Light, awakens humanity with illuminated knowingness; just by radiating and sharing the illuminating Light of Consciousness.

Divine Love is transformative, because it brings people into connection and unity. Love gives us the feeling that we are connected and in unity. The initiate of Love loves all of humanity, loves everyone. The initiate of Love embraces everyone with a sense of inclusion. This is also a sense of welcome. Also involved is forgiveness. Jesus emphasized forgiveness, which cleanses and heals situations. Contemplate on this, because forgiveness is a great key to Jesus’ teachings about love. It’s not something one can understand just with thought or philosophically; forgiveness can only be understood by trying it. One knows what it is by doing it. Same with love. It cannot be really understood by the mind. Only a lover understands love. So to understand love, one must love.

In any case, the higher spiritual initiates and masters all practice love. Each of us have to figure out how to do this, but there is no set formula. And of course we will all fail many times; either because of how we mistakenly behave or because of the insufficiency of our love. Yet one thing is clear, which is that love is the great transformative quality. Love brings together. From dividedness and separation, love brings togetherness. Love also brings inclusiveness. From exclusive dividedness and separation, love brings inclusion. And finally, love brings about mystical unity. And along with illuminating Light, this the great transformation. So, step by step, the spiritual worker, using meditation, brings Light and Love into humanity by their own presence of being.

There is a fresh new energy received from the God source. This fresh energy is unconditionally available to us, yet only enters our sphere when we orient ourselves to this and allow it to flow into us. this can be called the divine energy, though it may be experienced as a more distinct quality such as presence, love, peace, or will. Our role is to release and disattach from old energies and patterns. The new energy revitalizes, re inspires, and renews us.

This is the question to answer in mediation. God as the greater Being; would just energy be sufficient?? I am in a greater BEING and this is God. But not a god distant ;; rather this is the Being I am in.

We can receive healing energies from the Divine. But it’s not like God is sending healing energy. Rather, the healing energy IS God energy. Or in other words, God energy IS healing energy. God is Love and Intelligence, so God is the power or energy of these Qualities. Basically, healing energy is Love and Intelligence moving freely through ourselves. So we need God to be freely moving into us and through us.

One might ask, then, why God energy would not already be here, since God is already everywhere and through everything. What is not of God, or in God? To understand about all this, we first need to understand about potentials and actualization. God is already here and through everyone. But the full reality of this is not yet actualized and moving through the manifest world, until it is actually realized and also allowed. God is already here and everywhere, but this remains in potential until realized. The realization or actual awareness of God and God energy is what opens up the flow and circulation of it.

The other very important truth about this is concerning the reality of our freedom and the possibility of being either open or closed. Freedom is one of the cosmic principles, and this freedom is consequential to how things are. Fatalistic theologies believe that whatever happens must be how God intended it to be. But they make a mistake of assuming that God’s Love and Intelligence and Power are equally present in every person, place and circumstance. They think that, because God is everywhere and in all life, it must logically follow that everything is already full of God and God energy, and thus everything is already a perfect manifestation of God’s Intention or God’s Compassionate Wisdom. But the forgotten factor in this theological belief is freedom, and it also lacks an understanding about potential and actualization.

We have to consider the possibility of closing off from the Divine, just as we have the possibility of opening up. For there is a possibility of building a shell around us, or boundaries, or contracting in on our own little world. It’s similar to not being openly aware of the greater world around us, but instead to contract awareness into a small space and then closing it off. It’s similar to closing our self off to the world around us, so that we do not consider or feel the beingness of others. But in this case, we are closing our self off to God and the Divine energies.

The best way to understand the Truth in this is to consider oneself as the prime example. Each of us have probably closed off from the world or from others, at least sometimes. Likewise, we each have closed our self off from God and the Divine energies. So the Practice (or meditation) is to open ourself up to the Divine Inflow of Love, Intelligence, and Healing. We are opening up to the Divine Blessing. Now to do this, we will need to consciously and intentionally release the boundaries or barriers we have previously erected. We must apply our intention, because this is how we implement our free will, and this is how we can reverse the previous pattern of closing off to the Divine. In other words, we make a new choice, with new intention; for the only real power is right now in this present moment. What we intended or choose or did in previous moments will have no more continuing power, once we implement our new free will or intention. One might think, ‘I previously chose to shut down, but now I choose to open up and allow in the Divine Energy and Flow’.

We need to allow it to happen. We don’t need to ask God to allow it to happen, because God IS always in a flowing intention. Rather, we need to allow it ourselves, because we are the only ones responsible for closing it down and not allowing. We can ask for God to enter or ask for the Inflow of the Divine, and this is good because the asking opens up the channel. But the allowing and actual opening is up to us. We are not producing the Inflow. We are not making the Divine energies. That is all up to the Divine – which from our perspective is an infinite Potential. But we are making ourselves open and being effective by having a clear chosen intention.

Hear HU everywhere and through everyone. It’s the One Divine Energy, or Essence. So this hearing brings us into a realization of Unity, since the HU is moving through all and connecting all together. But also, this HU is the Divine Blessing, moving through all people and all life. It’s the Divine Breath of Blessing. And as we are aware of this, there is a greater opening for it to flow through.

Lose yourself in the Divine Presence. Abandon yourself in God’s Love. Go absolutely mad in Trust and in Faith. And don’t come back. Just get into the Flow of this.

acceptance and trust means being open to HOW God reveals in the mediation moment -- listening and seeing what is given.

Acceptance and trust is different in relation to the world. Need be more concerning.

In the world, it does help to be in a positive attitude of faith – that God loves us and provides what we need. For then, one is in mental alignment with Generous and Loving Spirit. Yet it is possible to get be out of mental alignment, by being in a negative mental attitude or negative belief structure in relation to the Providing Spirit; if this is the case, then one will not be receiving the gifts possible.

Receptivity can be a general attitude of meditation and also of our state of being. This is being completely receptive to whatever is arising in mind and heart. It is being simply open to whatever comes up, without any immediate judgment or suppression. One aspect of this open receptivity is in relation to the outer world or in relation to another person. But here we are particularly speaking about being totally open and receptive to our inner world. From our inner mind there may arise content either from the deep spiritual Mind or from our own personal psyche. Both kinds of arising are important. What arises from our own personal psyche is important, because it show us what is troubling or what is looming in our subconscious or what we need to deal with. We have to deal with whatever arises from our personal subconscious, because it’s coming up so that this problem or difficulty can be resolved. It tells us what we need to see about our own life, and it presents to us something in need of resolution. This is the unresolved stuff which festers in our personal subconscious. Or in Jungian terms this is the personal ‘unconscious’, called so because it is unconscious to us until it arises into consciousness from the subterranean mind.

The other kind of arising is from the universal unconscious, though we will also call this the spiritual realm, as distinct from the personal realm of unresolved issues.

Now of course, being receptive isn’t the end. Life isn't quite so easy. Being receptive to whatever arises from our unconscious, or subconscious (both terms mean really the same), is like a first stage. It’s like the pitch in baseball, and we are receivers of this pitch. We tell the pitcher that we are ready, then he pitches it. Likewise, we need to tell our unconscious that we are ready and willing to receive the pitch, whatever it might be, and we don’t even know if it’s coming from the deeper spiritual realm or conversely from the unresolved personal real. If it’s coming from the personal, it will have some kind of emotional charge of neediness or of unease. If it’s coming from the spiritual, it will seem more mental, idealistic, or inspirational.

Yet the pitch is only half of it. The batter must now swing, or not swing. This is the dealing with it, dealing with whatever is pitched to us from the unconscious, whether it be a universal/spiritual inspiration or a personal issue to be resolved. So at this point we can now swing at what comes, or choose to not swing or ignore. Either choice may be reasonable or right, depending on what is needed in this moment. Sometimes we might receive a pitch that we cannot really deal with at this time. It’s just too much at this time, or too fast. Or the what is given might be unclear or confused, like a curve ball. It doesn’t make any sense to take a swing at something if it’s confused or hazy. But some other pitch from the unconscious might be swing-able. Then take a swing at it. Deal with it. Work with it. You see, the conscious mind is like the batter. This is what we would call our self. While the unconscious is like the pitcher, and we don’t know what he’s going to throw at us. The pitch is the unknown. But once it comes into view, we have a choice to swing at it or not, to deal with it or not. And how do we deal with it, or how do we take a swing at it?

? There is no easy answer to this. Nothing that someone else can give an answer to. We each have to deal with our own arising. But we do need to take a swing at it, eventually, to first understand it and then to work with it.

An important truth is that each person is responsible for opening their own heart and letting in love. Each person says they want to be loved or want to be in love. But most people wait for someone to come along and make this happen. They wait for someone to come along and make them feel loved or make them fall in love. But this usually never happens, and the person is deeply disappointed about how life did not deal them the love card. Well, the qualities of this other person are important, but what’s most important is what one does about this. The truth is that each of us must finally open our own heart and let love in. Someone else isn’t going to do this for us. No matter how long we wait, it won’t happen. Because it won’t happen until we make that choice to open up ourselves to love and to be loved. And this is a huge step. It’s a huge radical step that few people ever really make. Most people are merely pretending about love. They make the best they can from a fairly closed heart. To open up to love and to be loved is fearful for most people. Why? Probably because they fear it not being fulfilled. They fear that if they open their heart to someone, or maybe even to God, they won’t really be loved but instead rejected. Or maybe they fear a loss of control if in love, like losing one’s own volition in the madness of love.

We wait for someone to do this for us, to spark the love and the opening to love, but we have to make the first move. Nothing significant really happens until we make that move of opening up to love, and allowing love in, and feeling that we are loved.

In many relationships each person waits for the other. But in relationships that actually go deep, it was one person who first took the leap of faith and opened themselves to love, then because of this the other person probably fell in as well, carried in by the original faith and love madness of the other. Then again, sometimes this all happens at once, which is rare and beautiful.

The whole meditation path is about clearing and refinement. For once the mind and heart are clear, the Presence of Divine Consciousness shines through. Reflect on this very important truth. Divine Consciousness is the Reality behind all mental and emotional stuff. For the most part, we identify with our mental and emotional content, as it arises and changes, etc. This is called Maya, the dream world. It is also called kama-manas, the desire mind, but we can also divide it into mental and emotional phenomena. There is nothing wrong or bad about this content. But it is temporal, everchanging. The identification, though, and the being lost in it, holds us back from direct experience of Divine Presence, or the Presence of Divine Consciousness, which in many spiritual teachings is considered to be the true Reality because it is permanent and self-subsisting.

Yet this Presence, this Consciousness, this Beingness, is obscured and veiled by the realm of Maya, the continuing and everchanging flux of mental and emotional “reality” – how we think and feel about life, ourselves and the world. We are usually lost in this world of our opinions, our desires, and our reactions to life. So, though the mind may have practical importance in life, it can also obscure direct spiritual realization – direct experience of God Presence, or Divine Consciousness, depending on how it is experienced and labeled.

The main point to remember and work with, though, is clearing and refinement of mind/heart. An example practice for this is sounding HU, sounding it either aloud or just mentally. HU refines the mental and emotional energy. It breaks through crustrations and outer layers of thinking, It refines energies to their essence. For Hu is the sound of Divine Essence/Presence.

God-Presence, Divine Consciousness and Love, is right here, already here. It’s just underneath and unnoticed. Thus, there just needs to be a clearing of what is covering it up, or of what is distracting from it.

So, this clearing of mind and heart, and being free of usual personality engrossments, is our real work. We don’t have to dwell on ourselves or our faults. It’s all about clearing what’s there. It’s all about being in a clear meditation while living each moment. And when something takes you away from this clear meditation, this clarity of mind and heart, then let it, get clear, and return to being in Divine Presence.

Once free and clear, in mind and heart, the next step is receptivity and openness, and the loosing of me. I become solely a receptive chalice. This is all I am, at this point. And I am openly receptive to the Transcendental, so the Transcendental comes through. Then, I am simply the medium of clear glass, or clear diamond, for the Transcendental Presence to come through.

The Transcendental Presence is not confined to one form or place, so it is not limited. It is unlimited. Yet it is also immanent, in that it is pervading all space and time. The Transcendental means that it is beyond Time and Space, yet it is also pervading through all time and space. It would be a mistake to think that transcendental necessarily means it is outside of this time and space world.

Here is an essential practice. Connect with the Higher Energy of God, of Love and Light. Then let it be in and through you. Then allow this Energy to move out into the world. Become like a focusing glass, a medium for God-Light-Love. We become a medium for the Higher Energy of Love and Light to enter into the world for everyone else. But it comes through you first. So first you have to connect with it and receive it, and then allow it to channel from you to the world.

The God-Light-Love is everflowing, ever generous. A prayer of asking is only to open up the channel for God to move through us. It’s communicating to the Divine that you are ready to be a medium. The asking can also be part of the visualization process. You ask that something good be done and while asking you also visualize what is needed. Visualization is used in order to help direct the healing energies. This visualization does not have to be excessively detailed, but it does have to communicate the asking. Without any direction or visualization communicated, the Energy cannot know what is being asked and what you are agreeing to as good. If you merely ask for the good or merely for God’s Will, as some spiritual teachings suggest, then the Energy (or God) does not know what you are really asking for or what you believe is good. In many cases there are differences in what people think is good. To be vague is to disperse and un-concentrate the Energy.

It might be questionable whether we have to even ask the Divine for help or healing. The Divine is already overflowing compassion and generosity, so why would we even need to ask? Asking is needed as part of the connection process, but it is not needed in order to convince God to help us. God is all ready and willing to help, because God is ever-compassionate and generous, and also because this world is the very body of God. So we are not asking in the sense of begging a misery king to help us, as though God enjoys us groveling and begging. Rather the asking is to open up a connection and channel for God to work through.

The descent of grace and guidance is not necessarily received or understood by the person/mind. There has to some work-energy of opening to receive and understand.

Also, there is a need to work at creating a harmony in oneself, as well as a work to make harmony in and with nature. Both of these works are related. Yet the self-work, which can be called psychological work, is often forgotten. Each is responsible for at least oneself, to make harmony of the conflicts and disagreements within oneself. One shouldn’t need to retreat inside a cell for years to work on this, but it is an important work and cannot be neglected. First one needs to develop a self-observation and become more conscious of the hidden conflicts and struggles of the psyche; being more aware of thoughts and emotions, and also dreams and fantasies. Next there has to be an initial attitude of self-acceptance and love, rather than immediate criticism and taking sides. Next there needs to be some self-reflection and a kind of inner dialogue between the conflicting sides of self, especially between emotional parts and rational parts of the self, because this is sometimes the key conflict. Finally there needs to be some form of reconciliation or a new agreement in oneself, which includes a feeling of self-cooperation, self-harmony, and self-unity. Often it is useful to make self-agreed plans and new commitments, that are more inclusive of our various emotional needs and rational interests. Each person is a world in themselves, and like the larger exterior world, we hope and work towards building more harmony and cooperation.

A Sufi saying is, ‘When poverty is completed, God appears.” Rumi says, “Ever since this house has been emptied of my furniture, nothing in the house belongs to me.” A major aspect of the Sufi Path is to let go of personal stuff (as in furniture) and empty oneself of oneself. Related as well is a realization that one has nothing, no possessions, of any real importance in ordinary existence, and that one is ultimately dependent on the Divine Sustainer. These are the meanings of spiritual poverty and humility. It’s not really about physical poverty or any need to be poor; rather, it’s about a sincere attitude of poverty, humility and dependence in relation to the Divine.

So when poverty is completed, God appears. This does not mean that one realizes God in a fully absolute sense. We can speak of realizing God, but it must be remembered that this is a general expression and that it can never be an Absolute Realization. Only God Knows Himself as Himself (or Herself as Herself); which is another Sufi saying. Yet man and woman can realize God in a microcosmic way. A microcosm reflects its Macrocosm; yet these are nonetheless different, just as one sun is different than the Whole Universe. In other words, God can be reflected in the human consciousness and heart, and this can approach a perfect reflection of all God’s Qualities. But the reflection can never really be the same as its Source. So all praise to a perfect reflection of God; yet the Source Itself deserves a thousand more praises, or more. Likewise, we value and praise all masters and saints; yet this can never replace our Praises to our Creator and Sustainer.

When poverty is completed, God appears. The Divine Self is realized, to some degree or capacity, due to a letting go of the personal stuff and emptiness [in this house] of oneself. This realization is not Absolute God in Itself; yet the Qualities of God are contained in this realization. The realization is as a reflection of the sun on the moon. One sees the Light in this reflected experience, but this experience is not God Itself. Thus, one can know God in an approachably perfect way, but not become God. So one should not think, ‘I am God’, except in the sense of being of that same Divine Substance or Essence, for there is no other Real Substance/Essence anyway. Moreover, how could an individual ‘I’ be God? The only other possible sense to this phrase, ‘I am God’, is that God is speaking through the individual, such that the ‘I’ is God speaking and not the person that people are seeing speak.

Rumi approaches a very radical proposition, saying, “You who have fallen like a gnat into the wine of My Love; in this intoxication, you are the wine itself. You do become the Quality of your experience. So by losing oneself into Divine Love, one becomes Love. Still, Rumi is not implying that one becomes God.

A human being cannot become God; and yet, this person is an individuated emanation of God. One cannot become God; yet, there can be a perfect emptiness, and thus a realization of God, just as a drop of the Ocean can realize the Ocean Substance in itself. A drop can realize its Ocean-ness. Know this. An Ocean drop is part of the Ocean. Yet this drop is not only part of the Ocean. Because: the Ocean is in the drop. An Ocean drop is Ocean contained in this drop. The Divine Substance/Essence is in the particular individual, and this Divine Being can actually be realized [in some degree] by this individual. The Ocean is in the drop, and this drop can realize its Ocean-ness. However, it is also said that God has seven hundred thousand veils, or levels of realization. So one ought not become too complacent about how far along one is. You might be able to teach others; but how far along are you?

We need to be empty and receptive enough, and also wanting of Spirit, in order for Spirit’s Mercy and Love to flow into us. Only the spiritual beggars with empty bowls are truly ready to receive the Divine Abundance. It is the hungry which makes food appear.

Let go of both fear and pride, then move ahead between these two obstacles. Letting go of any fear of loosing, and letting go of any pride of holding on.

cleaning and clearing the heart/mind, so that Light may enter more easily, which then clears and purifies us even more.

God needs instruments for experiencing and for doing. This is our purpose for the Divine. God needs a medium through which to manifest. This medium is our soul, mind, emotions and physical body. The soul is how God individually contains divine potentials, the mind is how God understands natural realities and figures out practical details, the emotions are how God shares feelings with others, and the physical body is how God expresses outwardly.

The finest medium for God is a clear and pure mirror, one which reflects without distortion the truth, love and beauty of God. This divine reflection is then known both in the medium and in those who can perceive this medium. The way to become such a pure mirror for God’s reflection is to let go of and dissolve our self impurities and other obstructions created by self-desires, self-fears, and self pride or arrogance. The more that we can deny and dissolve desires for oneself, fears of losing what we already have, and pride in what we have gained; the clearer this mirror becomes. But alas, that is not such an easy process to embark upon. The cautious and diligent ones will ponder on this once more. This is the meaning of self-denial, to deny the importance of that lower self or deny the importance of those lower desires, fears and pride; and finally, to deny energy and agreement to those fantasies. Instead, become empty of all this, even empty of self itself. Then through this emptiness of obstructing dust and rust, the Divine Being can reflectively radiate and express. For then there is a clear path, a clear medium, a clear mirror.

Humility is remembering how imperfect one is. This is the opposite of feeling false pride, whereby one somehow manages to not notice any self imperfections while imagining oneself as far better than anyone else. Humility heals us of self deception. It is part of remembering how imperfect and incomplete we still are. Of course though in remembering humility we should avoid two common reactions to remembering our imperfections, which are anger towards oneself and/or self-depression. The key is to remember humility, but avoid anger and depression in response to this. Just accept the self-situation as it is, without making lame justifications or pretending everything is just perfect, nor making it worse by hating oneself or feeling down about it. So the first step is to recognize and acknowledge self faults or imperfections. The next step is to allow this recognition to become a motivator, rather than simply react with anger or depression. Let the recognition of self-faults and imperfections (or what Christians often call sin) be a great motivator for calling upon God for help. And this call for higher help is part of the humility attitude.

Another aspect of humility is recognizing and acknowledging our limited spiritual knowledge. In other words, we do not really know God as God fully and deeply is. We may know some, and it is good to give some credit when due, but we should admit that we do not know all of God as all of God is. Humility in this sense is acknowledging the limits of Knowledge. Even in deep contemplative experience, when the veils between God and oneself seem to lift, and when Light fills our inner experience, there is always some limitation to the experience and what is revealed about God, Truth, Reality, Love, etc. We are not God, in this whole complete sense. Rather, we are like a very small part of God, not the whole of God; we are like a segment of God’s unfoldment, not the whole unfoldment; we are like a particular vibration of God, not all vibrations; we are like a servant of this House, not the sole Owner of it. Even the wisest of men and women remember that they are mere students of the Great Teacher.

Let us briefly consider the meaning of three terms: Being, Love, and Heart. Philosophically and intellectually the terms usually have different meanings, or might say the words are used differently in sentences depending on what we are understanding. Yet these words mean really the same, when we are in very deep meditational experience. Just Being is all that remains in deep experience. There is no content of what Being is; thus no content in the experience, except for just Being. Even this term, as an explanation of the experience, is an extension from the pure experience itself; yet it does have meaningful correspondence to the experience – in the sense of ‘I am just Being.’

However, Love is equally an appropriate term for this pure experience of Being. The only difference, really, is that Being has a quality of Love; so when this is noticed in the experience, we can rightly say that there is only Love in this experience, and the meaningfulness of this is ‘I am just Love.’

Then, in addition, we can also apply the term of Heart to this experience, because there is only Heart in this. In fact, one could rightly describe this experience as being in just Heart, or being in just Love, with no other content at all. It could be called the pure experience of Heart, as much as the pure experience of Being, or it could also be called the pure experience of Love. This is enough to say about this, in the hope that one might understand the connected meanings of these terms, or even better, come into this experience.

Now, to extend this even further into connected meanings, we can also realize that this experience of just Being, or just Love, is the same as Divine experience or God experience. This whole Heart space is God. It’s all talking about the same. But then an argument will arise, from oneself or from another, that this experience could not be of God, since God must be way more or beyond what I or you can experience. A religious traditionalist might actually get quite upset at such a claim. First of all, one might reply that this life would surely be depressing in its potentials if God were necessarily out of our possible experience all together; because some experience of God seems rightfully needed in order for some degree of an intimate relationship to be real.

But another answer to this challenge is even more compelling. It is that we are capable of experiencing God in deep meditation, as Being or Love, but only in some degree of capacity. In other words, we do not have to see this experience as the very Fullness of God. A partial view or a portion of the possible is quite alright. One should be happy to even be close, and of course some knowing is better than none. So in this understanding, the experience of just Being is equally the same as experiencing just God. Being and God, meaning the same anyway, are Infinite Spaces and Infinite Openings; so any singular moment experience of such will be somewhat limited or partial.

So who am I in this? Who are you? We each are an area of Infinite Being. It is easier to understand this in terms of Light, which is another way to describe pure experience, since the pure experience is just Being Conscious, or just Consciousness, which is experienced simply as Light. Thus, understand that we each are an area of the One Light. That is, our own particular experience of just Being, or just Consciousness, is an area portion of the Infinite One. That’s who you and I are.

When our consciousness is completely absorbed in deep meditation, without surface thoughts, then there is only consciousness. And when there is only consciousness, there is only the One Consciousness. Consciousness is a vibrational state, and without thought it is a perfectly smooth vibration. So when there is no thought content, is there any difference between your consciousness and my consciousness? There is no difference. It is the same. And who are we really, essentially? We are the consciousness, the experiencer of this life. So if you are essentially consciousness, and I am essentially consciousness, then is there any real difference between one consciousness and another? There is no difference, except for location. Individually, we are in different locations.

Now, if there is only one Consciousness, then this would have to be God, or if we want to know what God is, it must be that. The whole consciousness space is God. This is Allah, Being. This is it. And so now we can renew the truth of who we are. For this is who we are. We are this Consciousness Space. But as stated before, we each are not the whole infinite Space, but rather a portion or area of it.

This individual I is an instrument and a location for consciousness, and also for presence and realization of Oneself.

The Divine Qualities are meant to be expressed through each human being. They exist, as it were, in a higher spiritual dimension, which has been called the world of archetypes. But in this spiritual dimension the Divine Qualities are as potentials. Divine Love, Compassion, Peace, Wisdom, Creativity and Beauty are examples of Divine Qualities.

The next step is to somehow bring the Divine Qualities into life and into expression, which is spiritual evolution in the evocationary sense.

This is stage of receiving and also becoming. We become as we receive. Yet we can also call this the stage of realization, since the important step is to realize what is already presented. People sometimes get into a notion of receiving in which they wait and wait for something to be received. But really, there is always a divine quality or a divine guiding-direction in every moment. So don’t wait, but rather realize what is already given here in this moment. what is already true in the heart and here in the mind. God is in a continual process of giving.

The third stage is integration. of course all of these stages go on and repeat again and again. The stage of integration is to do with integrating the many Divine Qualities. They come to us, or they are realized by us, as unique Qualities. If we were to just fixate on one Quality without learning any others, we might become imbalanced. The true balance and completion is through mixture-integration of the Divine Qualities. This will be understood as a process in itself, and quite a challenging one. It also includes the Ideal of integrated expression.

There are two main models of, or ways to understand, this step of Divine Qualities coming into expression.

All of the Divine Qualities are within our own soul, and our soul purpose is to express these Qualities. Though each soul is like a unique color, with certain chief Qualities in predominance, which determine the soul purpose into a more definite direction or passion.

The Sacred Water emerges from within, the Spring within us. Yet it comes into presence with a certain quality of taste, or a quality of feeling. The Divine Light emerges from within, the Sun within us. Yet it comes into presence with a certain quality of color.

Deep within us, in the very centre core of our being, in our heart, is the Point from which God emerges into being, through us. This is our Divine Source, as it is from within. This is our God (Rab) as experienced from within. So, from this Source Within, or from this Innermost Point, emerge the Divine Qualities – which are how God is experienced.

God emerges from within and is experienced in some Quality or another. This is, then, the self-Presence of God.

This is how we can know God directly, not knowing God in the most absolute Essence, but at least knowing a Quality of God. For the Divine Qualities are how we know God.

So now I become aware of the quality of my inner presence, which is how the Divine has emerged from within, or how the Divine has become known through me.

Therefore, God is not anymore like an object of awareness, but is now the Subject, the self-Presence. God, through this Divine Quality (or this mixture of Divine Qualities), is self-presencing and self-revealing. So I discover the Divine in the very presence of this self. Yet it is from the core of self that we are speaking about. It is from the deep heart of our being. And metaphysically speaking, it is from our own soul. So this is not merely a presence of ego. The thinking mind will need to discern between a divine self-presence and an ego presence, but we should not make this a thinking exercise. In fact, the thinking mind needs to take a back seat and allow the heart to know. And the way to know is quite simple, because the Divine Presence or Quality will be more deeply felt and known in the heart, or coming from the deepness of the heart.

I can also become aware of how the God-Self-Qualities are being experienced through others; how they are experiencing the Divine Qualities presencing through themselves.

Don’t just focus on seeing Divine Qualities express through others; but rather, more importantly, try to understand how the other person is experiencing their unique self-divine quality. Try to discover how they are experiencing themselves, rather than just watching how well they manifest divine qualities. If we can understand how the other experiences, from their particular subjective view, then we are less likely to be judge others based on how we think they ought to behave. Too often we focus on other’s behavior, and judge them from this; rather than try to understand how they actually experience their own self and circumstances. The ability of empathy is to understand how others self-experience.

God is in the subjectivity of oneself, the who-ness of self, and the presence emerging from deep within.

When God is expressing through us, then there is no more fear or anxiety, but just a certainty of this Spiritual Power. Real spiritual power comes through us, and we know it is coming through. To some extent we can connect with the Spiritual Power and intentionally direct it. But we can only connect with what we are aware of, so how much we connect depends on how much we realize is already present. The crucial factor is the realization; or also remembrance, because often this is like remembering what we had somehow forgotten.

from the theme above on how the Divine Qualities descend or emerge, as if we are being clothed in them, or colored by them.

Whether the Divine Qualities seem to descend from above or emerge from within, there are a few further ideas we can explain about them. In poetic terms, the Divine Qualities are like clothes of expression for the naked Essence of Being. They are like different colors, or sounds, or tastes. In Buddhism there is a phrase called the one taste, which means having an experience of the One Essence in all of life. This is the foundation of mysticism and the essence of ecstatic unity. Yet, the One Being also expresses in various Qualities, which gives life and experience more variety. So we want to experience the variety of Qualities, the Many Tastes, as well as the One Taste of Essential Unity. This becomes the richness of experience.

The spiritual teachings about this usually involve some kind of invocation, which is an attempt to bring down (or bring out) the Divine Qualities that are existing in Potential, in God and in our Soul. Invocation is a key principle, or tool, on the spiritual path. It is especially useful when we recognize a certain need. For example, one might recognize a need for peace, or a need for patience, or forgiveness, or wisdom. So, one can then invoke the needed Quality, which is to ask for it, in the realization that it is ready available and also in the realization that we are capable of expressing it. For invocational asking will not work unless those realizations are also present - that the Divine Quality is ready available and also that we are capable of expressing or being it.

Realization of the Divine Quality is the most important key of all. But this does not merely mean an intellectual understanding nor something learned from a book. It has to be a real direct experience. One has to tap into the Quality as it is and directly experience it. It helps to hear about it, or be reminded about it, but then it has to be experienced. One can read about peace and also intellectualize about peace, and even do special prayers or rituals to invoke peace. But this amounts to nothing, unless peace is actually experienced. So find the Quality in experience itself or in meditation.

The Qualities of God are, in a sense, how God is, but even more significantly, they are how God is for us. We may want to know how God truly is, which is a worthy pursuit; yet even more important is how God is for us, which is how God is experienced and what God means for us. When it gets more personal, it also gets more meaningful. So our actual experience is very important to clarify. Now, there are two types of Divine Qualities, which are two ways of experiencing God. One type are the Transcendental Qualities - those which God possesses but which we are incapable. They are only known by our relationship with God. The other type are the inherent-expressive Divine Qualities – those which we can realize in ourselves and also attempt to express.

God as Great is a transcendental Quality; for in this experience, God is Beyond me (and rightly so). I have an experience of a Greater Power, which I feel dependent upon, ultimately, for my life and realizations. Thus, I feel in this kind of relationship with the Greater Power. God is Greater, and I am not as great. God is the Larger Whole, and I am the smaller part. There are other possible Qualities or descriptions similar to this, which are how we might experience God as transcendental to us. God is the Source. God is the Vast. God is the pure Essence. And there are many possible poetic descriptions of this relationship. So primarily, these are transcendent-relationship Qualities of God. In some sense, these Qualities move through us, but we can’t ever claim to be the Greater, or the Source, or the Vast, or the Pure Essence.

The other type of Divine Quality is inherent in us. For example, Love has its source in God, but Love is also inherent in us and can express through us. Wisdom has its source in God, but it is also inherent in us and can express through us, to some degree. In a sense, these are also relationship Qualities. For example, one will experience God as Loving and Wise. One can relate with God as being Loving and Wise. Yet, I can also experience an inherent quality of Love and Wisdom in myself. In contrast, I cannot experience myself as the Greatest or as the Source, unless I become quite delusional. But I can experience myself as Loving. How this lovingness comes through me is limited to some degree, but it is still some degree of Lovingness. So an inherent-expressive Divine Quality has the potential of being through me, or expressing through me.

Most Divine Qualities are inherent-expressive. They have their source in God. That is, God is their source. Yet they are meant to be expressive in the world, through life and people. And this might tell us about the very Purpose of life. Remember and ponder on the idea of bringing Heaven on Earth. And God says, “This world is here, so I can be known.” The Divine Qualities are the Qualities of the One Supernal Being. This world is the place of their expression, and we are the living capacities for their expression. All beautiful or virtuous potentials are Qualities of God. All good qualities are Divine Qualities. For God is the Source of all Good, all Virtue, and all Beauty. And we are the potential expressions of this. The transcendent-relationship Qualities.

We realize the Divine Qualities in meditation, which is an awareness of being. Meditation is state of awareness that is not focused on sensory phenomena, nor is it a train of thoughts, but instead is an awareness of beingness and the deeper qualities of being. The deeper and profound qualities of our being exist within, even if we are not aware of them or do not experience them. But unless we are aware of them, they only exist in potential, in the seed of our being, which is the soul. Meditation is the awareness of our soul-being and its profound qualities. But of course, remember that all good qualities originally come from the One Being of God. So, meditation is also a discovery-awareness of God-Being and the Qualities of God (Divine Qualities).

All Divine Qualities are discovered in being – in our beingness. There are in our own being, because they exist in the One Being, and our own being is reflection of the One Being. All Divine Qualities come from the Supernal Being – God, Allah, Brahman, or whatever name we have for that Ultimate One Being. Thus, these Divine Qualities are in our being and in The Being. Sometimes we will regard the qualities as our own, while other times we will realize them as Qualities of Divine Being Itself. Both understandings are true.

So, in meditation we can discover the profound qualities (or essences) of being/Being. Four foundational Qualities stand out as essentially profound. These are love, joy, mindfulness, and peace. They can be placed in the four directions, with joy rising in the east, love in the south, peace in the sunset west, and mindfulness in the north. In the centre of this mandala is the Mystery Essence of Being from which all Qualities originate. Many other Qualities are, of course, significant as well, and all profound Qualities can be discovered in meditation and also realized in the mandala of our true beingness. These particular Qualities seem to stand out as higher essences: joy and peace, love and mindfulness.

Love will include many facets, each of which can be understood as a Quality in itself. For example, openness, embracing, and inclusiveness are facets of love. Caring in another facet of love, so we can realize caring as a Divine Quality. Compassion is another facet of love, and compassion has many associated meanings. Compassion is a shared united feeling with others, or feeling how others feel which can also be called empathy. It is connective, based on a shared feeling of connection. But compassion also involves caring and even an active givingness. Compassion cares about others and also seeks to actively give to their welfare. So compassion also associates with generosity. The compassionate one is empathetic, caring, and generously giving. These are qualities within us, within our soul, which are meant to be realized and expressed. This is how we can be. But also remember that these are essences of God; for God is Loving, Embracing, Compassionate, Empathetic, Caring, and Generous. God is also radiant Joy and serene Peace. And essentially, God is also Mindful and Knowing. These and many other Qualities can be realized in and through ourselves, and in the mandala of our being.

We might also add that God is actively creative. God diversifies beauty and also integrates beauty. And so too with us, for we also have the divine creative power – as a microcosmic reflection of God’s Creative Power. This creative power emerges from the centre of our being, from the centre of our mandala, and it pervades all the qualities, which is the expressive power behind all qualities. For each divine Quality is seeking expression, motivated by the divine creative power in us – which is essentially God’s Creative Power working through us. For remember that the Divine Creative Power is at work all the time and all through time, not just at a beginning time of creation. We are in the very midst of creation, of God creating, of God’s Creative Power at work, through us and through all of life. It’s happening right now, and we are right in the process unfolding.

If we do not do anything ourselves, then we are still in the ongoing creative process; but really we are meant to consciously and actively participate. This does not necessarily mean that we all need to go out every moment and make stuff. Rather, begin with mediation and realizing the Qualities in our own being; then creatively bring these Qualities forth into our way of being. First be, then do; and remember that conscious being, or how we are consciously being, is itself a creative emergence. In fact, the conscious realization and emergence of Divine Qualities in our own being is a great transforming power in the world. It’s like being creative in the world using more subtle energies – which have great power, more than most people would ever imagine.

Two of the more important Divine Qualities are Mercy and Generosity. These are ways in which the Divine relates with us, so we call them Qualities of God. We might say God the Merciful or God the Generous. But also remember that we can express these Qualities ourselves to some degree. Similar examples would be God the Provider and God the Teacher. God has these Qualities, independent of our beliefs and actions. In other words, God is always Merciful and Generous, no matter what we think or do, because this is just how God is. God is like a shining sun; it’s radiance does not lessen or change, depending on what we want.

So, God is always Merciful and Generous, and also always Teaching, which are like Gifts. But this does not mean that we will necessarily get it. One can be giving, but this doesn’t always mean that others will receive the giving. For here is where free will comes into play, into the play of life. Mercy, Generosity, and Teaching are always flowing forth, shining forth, but this may or may not be received. From God’s perspective, there is a hope that these Divine Gifts are received. But we have enough freedom to mess up the reception.

In order for this Divine Mercy, Generosity and Teaching to be efficacious, certain needed conditions have to be met on the receiving end. If these conditions are not present, or if the person is intentionally resisting, then the Divine Generosity will efficaciously lack.

First of all, we need to believe in God’s Mercy and Generosity. This might also be called faith. The difficulty here is that if one has doubts or lacks faith, then what can be done? Faith is something we each have to work out in our own heart and mind. What we might all realize to is that faith opens up the channel for Grace and Mercy, while doubt or insufficient faith deters the channel for this Generosity.

Second of all, the receiver needs to be receptive and accepting. We are divinely intended to be receivers of Divine Mercy, Generosity and Teaching; but we have enough free will to block it, refuse it, deny it, neglect it, distort it, or generally mess it up. It’s like a pure water river. People can receive and drink from the pure water, or they can block it, refuse it, deny it, neglect it, distort it, pollute it, or generally mess it up.

So we have a needed role to play in this. We need to be receptive, which means being open to what is given. We also need to be acceptive. And we also need to be allowing. Ask of yourself: Am I openly receptive to the Mercy, Generosity and Teaching that the Divine Power is giving me or pouring my way? And, am I accepting of this? And, am I allowing of this. In many instances, we need to allow the Divine to work, allow the Divine to heal, allow the Divine to teach. It might seem odd that the efficaciousness of Divine Intention and Power depends on us allowing it to work. But because we have the free will power to block or distort it all, the Divine Work Itself often depends on our allowing it to work, or agreeing to it. Agreement with the Divine Intention is another necessary condition.

And the final condition for receptivity of Divine Mercy, Generosity, and Teaching is gratefulness. Be grateful for all that has already been given.

It is time to get over the old ideas about God, and see anew with fresh intuition and heart. God is the Metaphysical Being in which we exist. There really is only God (or whatever name one chooses to use for the One Being in which we live), so we are necessarily of God. The Qualities of God are love, intelligence, and power. But all of these Qualities are emerging into the manifest world over time, so they are not yet fulfilled in the world nor in us. Nonetheless these Divine Qualities are in process of emergence.

This divine emergence of these Qualities is best called Grace, which is different from karma and natural causes. The latter are always at work, no matter what, but the divine emergence, Grace, depends on minds and hearts. The success and extent of this divine emergence depends on a few factors. One factor is receptivity. There has to be some kind of opening or receptivity. Or at least there cannot be a complete shut off or suppression. (if there isn’t enough receptivity, then all that can happen is karma and natural causes). Next, there has to be some faith. This is not just blind belief, yet the meaning of true faith is subtle and hard to logically explain. Faith comes from the heart and it has to do with a relationship, a relationship of love. For example, faith is believing one is loved, and this belief comes from the intuition of our heart. But to know that one is loved by God requires a receptivity in one’s relationship with the Greaterness of our being. This receptivity can then awaken our faith, which then opens us more receptively. So these two factors build upon one another. The third factor is what we give back to God in return, which can be called our devotion or our love. Once one realizes and feels s/he is loved by God, it is then a natural response to feel a devoted love for God. You realize being loved by the Great Love. So what is your response?

Going along with these primary Qualities of God, and related to Grace, is God’s Quality of Abundance and Generosity. Again, the emergence of this requires receptivity and faith. God is Abundance because all potentials of the universe are in God and all is possible for us. God is not just any kind of abundance; God is an abundance of good. This is what we can ask from God and be open to. It is simply stupid to be open to anything. This is a false spiritual creed. For in God, and in the universe itself, is both good and not-so-good. There is a full abundance of it all, the good and the ugly. But we should want the good, even the best. Why be open to the lesser when one can open to the greater? This is part of our purpose – to choose. Ask for the good, even the best, and open receptively to this. Tune into the station offering the highest good, the most beautiful music; and pass by the stations offering poor quality or inharmonic energies. It’s not all the same. There is better and there is worse. So go with the better. That makes sense; doesn’t it?

An argument sometimes comes up about this, which is that one should not choose good over not good, because this is a judgment about things, and sometimes we are caught in conditioned thinking about what is best and what is not. You think the sports car is best, but maybe the economy car is really best, so let’s mot make choices because our thinking and judging could be conditioned. But this argument is merely pointing out a truth about the possibility of conditioned or prejudiced judgments, which is a possible problem, but it doesn’t lead to any logical conclusion that we should make any choices.

Now, going along with this Divine Quality of Abundance is the Quality of Generosity. The Divine Source of Abundance and Good is always in a giving mode. And why not? For what else is there for the Sun to do, but give light with unconditional generosity? So, Metaphysical Being is this way. It is unconditionally generous; just as it is unconditionally loving. Yet, for this to work, we have to be receptive and believe in it.

This could be as simple as having a good day. If we want a good day, there will be a special help if we are receptive to this happening and also in faith about it. Or at least have faith that the divine power of this universe is benevolently generous and is for us rather against us. God loves us and wants the best for us. Metaphysical law is that the power of good goes where it is received and welcomed with faith.

This Law is also evident in simply getting along with someone, because this requires receptivity to the person and also a faith in their inherent goodness or divineness.

So, … it would not be true to believe simply that everyone is provided what they need. Many people think that this is the right attitude of faith. They say surrender to God’s Will and accept what is given; as though it were true that everything presented in life is from God’s Will or a divine providence made for the better good. But this kind of belief is clearly false, because it does not account for the fact that many circumstances of people everywhere have been caused by greed, injustice and prejudice of other people. So the divine providence belief, or the belief that everything is God’s Will, has to be abandoned to the waste basket of fallacy, unless this believer is committed to also believing that God decisively Wills that some people harm others, keep them down economically, or even murder others.

What is true, though, is that a channel opens for the Providing Spirit of goodness, when one enters into faithful prayer that God will provide opportunities. The exact manifestation of such opportunities, though, is not absolutely guaranteed because corrupt human factors can still obstruct the flow of divine provision.

So faith is a tricky edge to walk on. For on the one hand, it is clearly naïve to simply believe that everything is divine providence or that God always provides what we need. There are clearly obstructions to this ideal. Yet on the other hand, a positive faith in the future, faith that divine powers will bring good into our lives, is certainly efficacious in opening channels for a flow of positive divine provision and the bringing of greater good into our lives.

Always bring in the good. Bring in the best. It’s like breathing in the best quality of air. Why breathe in anything less than the best ? We may not be able to always breathe in the very finest quality of air, but we can do the best we can. The quality of air we breathe and what we are open to coming into our life is our choice. It often doesn’t see like we have a choice in this, probably because our choice is limited and not absolute. But we do have a choice to bring in or breathe in the highest quality we are capable of. This sense of choice and its execution is important, because most people don’t even realize they have any power in this at all. Most people are merely open to whatever, and thus, whatever comes in, but they don’t realize there was a choice in this. The choice is in the intention we have as to what we are open to and what we bring in from the vast world of possibility. Imagine the self as a radio receptor capable of receiving many possible frequencies. One might as well be tuning into the best quality of music or the music one likes.

So bring in what is good, and let go of the bad. Release any negatives. Invoke the good, ask for the good, then ask for the negative to be released, flushed out, and finally eliminated. We need not have any sentimentality here, nor do we make passive statements like it’s all good. Bring in the good, and let go of the bad.

Lots of people who just want you to buy there stuff. They may be nice, but they are mostly concerned with seeking you something.

Enter into the positive and hopeful view of life, seeing and believing in the Divine unfoldment of goodness; rather than our thought getting caught in troubles and wrong turns of the spiritual process. Positives and negatives are both inherent in this life of temporality and change. Bad stuff sometimes happens, yet learning eventually comes forth in the learning creative process. The good is always unfolding, at least gradually, in spite of our sometimes wrong turns and the difficulties presented by life. The rose of beauty and harmony of music will gradually unfold and be revealed. This is the hope of glory.

One of the themes often heard in spiritual teachings is trust in the Divine. In many eastern teachings, if they do not hold any concept of the Divine, a correlating theme is acceptance of the moment. Let us explore what it means to trust in the Divine. First, one needs to trust in the essential reality of the Divine, which means there is a Divine. That is, existence is permeated by a Greater Divine Consciousness, Intelligence, Power, and Compassionate Generosity. This is the first level of trust in the Divine, which is to trust in the reality of these Divine Qualities permeating existence and active in existence. The Divine Consciousness- Intelligence- Power- and Compassionate Generosity is Permeating existence, but it is also the Cause or Source of existence, and it is continually Active as well.

At this point we can simply speak about the Compassionate Generosity, which inherently has Consciousness, Intelligence and Power in it. So to simply the discussion, we will focus on Compassionate Generosity – yet assume that the other essential Qualities are in this as well. We normally make such presupposition anyway, since if we speak about Divine Generosity working in the world, we are assuming that this generosity has effective power (a real manifesting power), and we also assume that the generosity is intelligent, and we also assume that God-Divine is conscious in this generosity.

Next, we assume that the Compassionate Generosity is active in the world and, hopefully, active in our lives. Now here is the point where confusion or maybe debate might enter. One view, or belief, could be that the Divine Generosity is 100% at work in the world and in our lives at all times. This is the extreme monolithic view about Divine Power and Generosity, which is that there are no blocks or shadows in the manifestation of Divine Generosity, and that every happening in this world and in our lives is 100% an outcome of Divine Generosity; in other words, everything happening is always really Good and full of Divine Generosity, even if it might seem to be bad. In this view, the Divine Power of Compassionate Generosity is always at work, without any shadows, and everything happening is just the way it should be – for the best or for some unforeseen greater purpose. This view is too simplistic, yet many teachings embrace such a view.

An alternative view, which is more in alignment with Reality, is that the actual manifestation of Divine Generosity depends on our capacities to receive it. and it also depends on our free will. That is, we can open to this Compassionate Generosity, receiving and allowing it to work through us, or else we can ignore it, reject it, or turn away from it. We can either receptively open up to it, or else we can close down to it. Of course, one might wonder why anyone would ever close down to it. The reason is more about having a psychological pattern of being generally closed down. The problem is more about being unaware or unbelieving about the Divine Generosity, than it is to do with intentionally shutting off from Divine Generosity. For who would actually be so stupid as to intentionally shut off from Divine Generosity?

The problem is mostly to do with a lack of believing in the Divine Generosity, so if one does not believe in it, then one is not likely to open the heart-mind channel to receive it. Another potential problem is the general pattern of many people to be closed down or psychologically contractive. Another potential problem is being continually distracted by worldly attractions and worries, so that the Divine Generosity is ignored or not ever considered.

All of these kinds of problems constitute possible shadows, blocks, or resistances, in relation to Divine Generosity – which is always radiant and offered from the divine dimension, but not always received. To some extent, Divine Generosity flows actively in the world, in spite of how people might neglect or close off to it. It is in the essence of all nature, which we are. Yet, Divine Generosity cannot flow 100% or in its possible fullness, without our receptivity and cooperation. We need to be co-operating with it. We need to be consciously participating with it. Much of what we need to do is to be trusting in its reality of unconditional offering, then also exercising our free will by consciously choosing to receive from Divine Generosity, Divine Love and Intelligence; then giving agreement to it and working to cooperate with it. Cooperation is doing what we can in the spirit of Love and Generosity. Trust itself is a large part of opening up the receiving channel. Conscious acknowledgement and agreement are also important. And finally, there needs cooperation and working with the Divine Radiance of Love, Generosity, and Guidance. Those who come into the Divine Flow, that is, those who let the Divine Flow come through, enter into a quality of Divine Grace, whereby new possibilities and synchronicities continually open up. One enters into divine destiny – that future of goodness which is possible but not guaranteed – for it depends somewhat on our own awakening, on our free will choosing, and our own work.

To God and for God, Bring clarity of the mirror, a clear mind and heart, and also an empty chalice ready to receive from Divine Grace. Bring also your pain and recognized defects, for only then can these be healed and transformed. Without a clear mind you cannot apprehend God’s Goodness, without an empty receptive heart you have no room to receive the Grace; and without a conscious unhiding of your pain and flaws, God cannot transform it.

One of the essential secrets of healing is faith. This is faith in healing, and faith in God - who is loving and healing. Yet when sick, we often experience fear; sometimes a fear that we will not get better, and sometimes a fear that we will soon die. But fear is not healing. Fear does not promote healing. If we are sick, or if a loved one is sick, then this is just the way it is. And if we are fearful about this, then this too is just the way it is. We cannot immediately change this present moment, so let us accept this present moment the way it is. But we can help change the future, and we can help bring about healing. Yet fear will not help in this. So we might accept the fear for what it is, like being compassionate with the fear, but we do not have to accept fear into the future. And if fear does not help to heal, then we ought to find out what is helpful to healing.

Faith is helpful to healing. Fear is not helpful. And the remedy for fear is Faith. Notice that fear results from the mind having doubts about the safety and goodness of one’s future. One fears the future, fearing what bad things might happen in the future. Faith, on the other hand, gives us a positive feeling about the future, believing in the goodness of what will come. So faith and fear are opposites. Faith is positive about the future, while fear is negative or doubting. As well, fear is not really helpful for our healing. But faith is the remedy for fear. It transmutes and dissolves fear, like the sunlight dissolving shadows. In fact, faith is very much related with light, for it opens us up and lets the light in.

Faith is healing, but fear and doubt are obstructing. Faith in the love, goodness and healing of God opens up the channels for healing. Faith and love open up the channels from the Divine to ourselves, like opening up the lungs to breathe in fresh air. Faith opens up our being to let in and breathe in Divine Love and Healing. Faith in the love, goodness and healing of God opens up our receptors and pathways to the gracious powers of God. Gratitude is also part of this faith; that is, being grateful for the healing and goodness that we faithfully believe will come. Gratefulness is the seal of faith.

Of course, though, we also need to make action in favor of healing. We may need to massage or exercise certain muscles, we may need certain vitamin or herbal supplements, we may need different foods, or we may need help from medical wizards. Nonetheless, we always need faith. And nonetheless, fear and doubt are never really helpful.

Let is consider three (4?- world?) areas of faith. First, have faith in the body. This body is an amazing complexity of intelligence, unlike anything ever created by man. This body has evolved and developed over millions of years, during which time it has intelligently improved its adaptation in this earthy existence. So the body is already incredibly intelligent, much more than our thinking mind can ever hope to be. Therefore, we might as well trust the body to heal itself, since it has the inherent intelligence to do so. All we have to do is transform the possible causes of illness as coming from mental and emotional factors. Our role is to eliminate or transform any negative causes. One of these may be fear and doubt. But primary is to have faith in the body – which is not an irrational faith, but rather a faith with a lot of good reasons to back it up.

Next, we can have faith in our own mind -- faith in our innate intelligence, reasoning, and intuition. It is true that sometimes the mind can lead one astray or into deception. But we can still have faith in the overall capacity and workings of our mind.

If we do not trust our mind (our intuitions and beliefs), then it is difficult to feel secure in ourselves.

The meaning of Divine Grace is that the Divine Power-Love-Wisdom is ever-radiant and giving. Also, it comes to us on its own accord and is not limited by what we do. Yet, to arrive at a true recognition of Grace requires personal efforts. What we do does matter. Practices to help awaken us to the Divine Grace are important. Also important are efforts to work with the Divine Grace.

Some teachings have suggested that any spiritual awakening or healing transformation is by Grace alone, and what we do individually is insignificant. The assumption in such teachings is that God is the only Power so everything only depends on “Him”. This is a wrong model of God and also a wrong model of the human being. It is true that God is the Ultimate Power and also true that we depend on the Divine Power. But all transformations and awakenings depend on both God and the human being. For we have our own special role in life. We are not merely passive puppets in the cosmic drama. Rather, we are vital, active players. We are choice makers. So what happens in our lives depends on God and also us. Yet God is ever-giving of Divine Grace, the Qualities of Love, Wisdom, and Healing; while the human being is sometimes giving and sometimes not, sometimes awake and sometimes not. So the human factor is more irregular and erratic. We have to put effort into the equation, while the Divine is simply ever-Radiant and ever-Present.

Note that Grace can be better facilitated or nourished but some practices more than others.

Part of our work is to have faith in the Divine Grace, but also realize that we need to make significant choices and efforts. Divine Grace and human choices/efforts are Both needed. The Divine is ready to work and is already here for us; this is the meaning of Divine Grace. But we have to work with It. Imagine that it might be possible to not work well with the Divine Grace. This is a real possibility. So we have to make the choice and effort to work with It, not against it. But even first, we need to have some faith in the Divine Grace. Begin to recognize this Grace. This is making a connection. Then, choose to work with it, and for it. Recognition and faith is a big part of this. We will still need to play a personal role in what happens. So we ourselves need to get in the flow of Grace.

Our own role in the Radiance of Grace is to do with recognizing and working with this Grace. One important recognition is that the Love-Wisdom-Healing Grace is already here. It’s not that I have to make some extreme or difficult task to ‘reach’ this Grace, nor for the Grace to enter into my life. There is no difficult or extreme effort needed. It does not require a difficult task to ‘get there’. It’s simply about recognition and the acceptance of what we recognize. I don’t have to be perfect or make myself perfect, in order for the Divine grace to enter into my life and the world around me. The Divine Grace is beyond such dependence. It is already here, and always here, and ready, regardless of my faults or my sins or whatever. Realize this, realize you are loved. God loves you, no matter what. And God is ever-giving of love and wisdom and healing, independent of whatever. But our own recognition and awakening about this does depend on how much we give to practice, effort, love.

Our true being, our soul, is already resonating with God. and we are already this soul. In other words, our own true being, our soul, is already God-awake and divine harmonious, and we are already our true self. Who else would we be? It’s all about recognition and realizing who we are.

Love is all around, within everything and every space. This Love is the Presence of God. Even more simply, it is God. This Love, this God, sustains us. It is in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, and in the food we eat. Without this love, this Goddess-ness, we could not live. So acknowledge this spiritual love and sustenance, and give thanks, and breathe in what you need, receive what you need. The spiritual source is unlimited and unconditionally generous. It is not stingy. But it is up to us to consciously appreciate and receive the goodness being offered by Love, by God. This is the reality in which we live, but until we know it and until everyone expresses it, it remains as potential. God is what potential is, because potential is an existent but not necessarily evident. This is true for God. God exists but is not always evident – because we have not yet awakened to it all. Once we awaken to the love, it changes from potential to actual, and it hen has real causal force in the world. Until this time, it remains as potential…. but real nonetheless, just as God is real even if unrealized.

Thankfulness is an important spiritual attitude, and many teachers put it near the top of importance. To be realistic, though, we need to distinguish between general thankfulness and specific thankfulness. General thankfulness is to God, or to Life, for having this life and this world. This is a thanks for living and for life itself. As well, we can thank God or Life for there being love and also for intelligence, and also for beauty and experiences and enjoyments. This is general thankfulness, and it is very important to remember and practice, because it produces a spiritually healing kind of attitude and relation to God. It is part of being in right relationship with God or with Life in general.

Next is specific thankfulness, or we might call this situational thankfulness. We see that it is easy and almost natural to be thankful for positive situations. But if there are apparent negatives coming our way, thankfulness can be more difficult to feel or to practice.

Some spiritual teachers have been saying that we should be thankful for all situations, or even try to see all situations as really good. Yet there are some problems with this view. First of all, it is unhealthy to simply dismiss our feelings about things and replace our natural feelings with a ‘spiritual should’, or with a blind faith that ‘everything is really good’ (even if certain things don’t really seem so by our natural feelings or sensitivity). Secondly, this is a generalization about all things in life, which can be misleading in some real situations. For there is nothing ‘really good’ about people who intentionally cheat, hurt, torture, or kill others. And it is a far leap in blind faith to simply believe that God makes these things happen for some higher divine purpose. Furthermore, it would be irrational to give thanks for these negative occurrences in life; such as giving thanks for cheating, hurting, torture, or murder. To give thanks for something is to already imply that this is actually good, or that it was intended by God the Merciful and Wise. Yet it is quite doubtful that God intends or makes every specific occurrence of cheating, hurting, torture, or murder. One could supposedly claim that some instances which look bad are actually good from a larger perspective, but to make this claim for All dishonesties and murders is quite indefensible if not absurd.

However, there is some useful advice in trying to be thankful for more circumstances than we might normally do. The caveat in this is to still remember that not everything is totally good nor deserving of our gratitude. But we can be thankful for challenges and for learning situations, in those negative circumstances. This has already been spoken about -- in finding some positives in the negatives, and having a positive kind of attitude and response to these negatives.

The idea of being thankful for everything…. Is this an acceptance of everything??

Praise is one of the great purposes of our life. Our life can be an attitude of praise. Be an example of praise, an expression of praise, with the purpose of praise. Along with this love. Our life can be an expression of love. Also we are here to remind others of the Love and the Light and the Mercy.

(I don’t think that everything is Mercy, or that Mercy is always at work in every event; but truly, Mercy is available for everyone, and Mercy can be active in us, but only if the conditions are open and receptive to it.

God’s Fountain of Abundance (or Abundant Mercy) is ever-flowing. Yet for some people and in some circumstances, there is very little flow. Why? Three kinds of causes are possible. One is personal, another is social, and the other is natural. A personal cause may involve ignorance (as in not yet realizing better possibilities) or karma (as in past actions causing present occurrences). Social causes, including political causes, are when problems stem from social circumstances and impositions outside of one’s control. People can certainly be cruel and injust, and some people are simply victims of such cruelty or injustice. ^¹ Natural causes of problems are the result of living on a planet with its own circumstances to deal with. For example, earthquake disasters are no fault of anyone; they are just natural effects, based on natural laws. Some natural effects we can alter through a scientific application, but many we cannot; yet in many cases, people can adapt better to what nature might bring – so only in this sense are people responsible for naturally caused problems.

So back to the question of little flow in God’s Fountain of Abundance. As stated above, there are explainable causes for this lack. Notice that we did not list God as a one of the possible causes. This is because we believe that God would not arbitrarily hold back the Fountain of Abundance and Goodness. In other words, any lack in this Flow has to be attributed to causes other than God, that is, causes which impede or resist the Divine Flow of Abundance. One cause [for such problems] would obviously be a person who resisted or ignored their inner conscience or inner guidance from God. Another cause could be how a person might treat others poorly or make bad in the world; for this would cause personal bad karma. This person, making bad, would also be responsible for causing bad social circumstances [for others]. So others are affected by personal causes [which to them are social causes].

Now the solution to these problems are as such. A first solution is faith in God’s Abundance of Love and Goodness. For without this faith, one tends to be pessimistic, and pessimism [that there isn’t] breeds a corresponding reaction from the world [giving one an isn’t]. Another solution is doing good in the world, rather than bad; as this creates good karma. Thus, the two main solutions are faith in God’s love and loving actions. The first solution opens God’s Channel. The second solution makes more good in the world; thus making better circumstances for others and also creating better karma for oneself.

This Goes with Arguments about Necessary

Here is another example of common sense logic. If a guy plans to blow up a market and makes efforts to get the explosives and carry them over there and then blows up a market,

THEN (this is the reasoning part) ... it would be also be true that the market would not have been blown up at the time UNLESS this guy made the previous efforts and decisions and actions. Right? (it's not all that awful to read this, is it?) And UNLESS the guy did all that decisions, efforts and actions; the market would never have been blown up (at that time).

THEREFORE, If someone were to say that this occurrence of the market getting blown up were..
"part of a divine plan"
or God's Will
or divinely necessary
or guided by a Higher Intelligence
or of Mercy
or .... (many more could go here, but you must get the point)

THEN, it would logically also be true that the guy's decisions, pre-planning and actions WOULD also have to be "divinely necessary" (or whatever one says about the occurrence) -- Since how could the event ever had happened if not for the guy thinking certain thoughts and having certain emotions, etc.

In fact, If someone claims that a [human caused] occurrence is Actually Good (while the badness is really an illusion); then this would also mean that the cause (the human causes) was also Good.

And; if EVERY occurrence in the world were Actually "for the Good" ; THEN it would be true that EVERY human decision, planing, and action were Also "for the good"
(( since those "for the good" events" could never have happened if not for the human causes (the nafs causes)

{{This would then mean that all nafs and everything we ever do (and everything anyone else ever does) is always "for the Good" .

When we realize that God (as Love-Wisdom-Power) is always here, and when we have complete faith-realization in our unity with God, then greater possibilities open up. God is here and omnipresent. And we have a relationship with God. We are God in essence and substance. But we are not God Itself. Rather, each of us is a limited consciousness and perspective of God. Still, we are God in essence and substance. These are facts about our relationship, and the facts are the same for everyone. But what is different for everyone is in their realization of this relationship. That is, how do you relate with God, the Divine, the Spirit, or with ultimate Love-Wisdom-Power?

How we relate to Higher spiritual help determines our guidance and the help we might receive. It is not true that God is guiding everyone the same. Nor is it true that everything anyone does is God-intended^². The guidance and inspiration we receive will depend on our own spiritual relationship with God, as well as depend on our spiritual meditation, our practices, our intentions and our love. This is not to deny that God has the ultimate power to guide us, no matter what we realize or how we practice. God can do anything, since God is the ultimate power. But the way this universe is set up is that we are responsible for our own decisions and attitude. God can help, but we have to work with God in this. So there is much that depends on us. There is much that depends on our remembering (or knowing) of God as the Highest Power, the Greatest Love, and the Finest Wisdom. This knowing makes a pathway possible. There is much that depends on our faith in God, our trust in God. There is much that depends on our relationship with God and much that depends on our listening to God. Then, when our relationship, our trust, and our listening are at its best, God comes forth through us with guidance and love and powers of healing.

There are a few basic principles for receiving Higher Guidance. Inner Guidance is the same guidance as higher guidance, but these are two different ways of understanding the same. The first principle is to be in the best meditative mode, which is to be quiet in mind and at peace emotionally. Next, one needs to be in a mode of receptive listening. One can ask for guidance regarding a particular question, or else ask for general guidance without having any particular issue in mind; but after asking, one then needs to be receptively listening, and this listening will require a very quiet and peaceful mind in order for us to hear the guidance. So the mind can of course ask questions or put forth concerns to the Higher Wisdom, but at some point there has to be a complete silence in mind along with an absolutely receptive listening. When we reach this phase of just receptive listening, we might then notice how difficult it is for our mind to stay quiet and for our desires and opinions to remain neutral. The only solution to this is to return to one’s original intention and work with the principles as stated above, then practice makes easier. One extra principle to mention is to do with desire. Our own personal desires and opinions will get in the way of real Guidance. Those personal desires and opinions will keep trying to drown out any incoming wisdom guidance. They will try to insure that the Guidance does not upset the desire or contradict the opinion. So one of the important principles is to suspend or let go of these self-concerning desires and rigid opinions about what is right. Yet, one kind of desire is helpful, which is the desire to be guided by a Higher Wisdom and Purpose, or to be guided by the Divine, and also the desire to listen and to understand what is true and best to do. Also helpful is the desire to serve. Higher Guidance will come more easily if one desires this guidance in order to better serve God and life. So it is helpful to hold spiritual desires; but these are different from ego desires – whereby I want things to be my way. Though some degree of personal concern is good too; in other words, it is also good to ask for personal health and healing and also for success in our endeavors, as long as these are also good for life. For certainly, our own health, success and happiness can also be part of Divine Purpose and Divine Goodness.

In order to be rightly guided by the Highest Wisdom, one needs to be free of self-desires, preconceived beliefs, and expectations. This makes perfect sense, since self-desires would subconsciously influence the mind trying to be guided. A part of our self might want real guidance, but another part might just want its wishes satisfied. So any desire in oneself might well subvert or distort the process of inner guidance. Let us imagine that we want to be guided by Higher Wisdom about a particular question. But in our subconscious mind we have a desire that the guidance will lead us to a satisfaction of this desire. If this is so, then the guidance may indeed be subverted or distorted by this subconscious desire, because we have a hidden preference for what the guidance-answer will be. The guidance we would hear or feel might then be skewed in favor of the subconscious desire. Make sense? This is why the Higher Wisdom cannot simply guide us, even when we might need the guidance for our better good; because the guidance-message is being skewed or distorted on the way to our conscious mind by one or more subconscious desires. If the desire is right up front in the conscious mind, that is, if the desire is consciously present; then it is extremely hard for Higher Guidance to enter into view or into acknowledgement. Higher Guidance coming from within very often has a soft and almost whispering quality, so one can imagine what happens when a strong desire is present which is more like a loud roar. Any Higher Guidance, coming to us from within, gets drowned out. So we probably notice the power of our desires or other emotions as well, and how loud they are when up front in our conscious experience. They have a great power. We are fundamentally moved by our desires and emotions, and these are what mostly guide our decisions. So maybe we can see the problem facing Higher Guidance; which is that the desires and emotions of the self tend to powerfully influence our thinking and decisions, and thus, they noisily and powerfully drown out any Higher Guidance trying to get through to us. This is often the fate of Divine Will; that it gets subverted by lower desires of the ego-self; and thus, not all that happens is God’s Will. It’s just a fact of simple forces and mechanics. God’s Will is like an evolutionary force of influence (though this isn’t part of Darwin’s Theory); but it has to work in mixture with mechanical and inertia forces as well within each self or each life.

But even when desires are not consciously present, nonetheless, they may be subconsciously hidden. Desires may still be at work and in influence, but they might be below conscious experience, or out of view. This means they are subconscious. Most desires drift between consciousness and subconsciousness; so sometimes they are seen and sometimes not. But even when not seen, they may still be influentially at work. Thus, once we understand these basic psychological principles, it is possible to understand how any desires can subvert or distort Higher Guidance. and therefore, the only real way to be sure about guidance is the elimination of these desires. Yet this is much easier said than done; to say the least. The normal tendency is to be guided by desires, and much of what the ego is is desire mixed with intelligent plans and justifications. Desires are running our lives, and if we are honest we will know this as true. And as long as desires are running the show, any chance for Higher Guidance of Divine Wisdom is slim; unless occasionally we can suspend our self-focused desires and listen sincerely to a Higher Wisdom-Guidance that is not really concerned at all with what we want. If there is a desire or want in the question of guidance, then the guidance itself will be skewed by such desire. But if we can suspend our desires, then we have a chance to be guided by Wisdom – which will lead us to our best Good (though not necessarily what we desire-fully think is our good).

The same as with desire is also true for our held-to beliefs and expectations. Beliefs can just as much subvert or distort Higher Guidance. Beliefs are like assumptions; what we assume is true. The best approach is for all beliefs to be regarded like clay creations, whereby any belief is malleable like clay. Imagine how difficult it would be for Higher Guidance to reach us, if it has to first pass by a stone wall of beliefs set in stone. The better attitude regarding our beliefs is as useful tools or useful kitchen utensils. Beliefs are only significant if they are useful, either in practical life or in shaping an overall understanding of reality. The other important attitude to have about beliefs is that they can be reshaped upon receiving new understanding from Higher Wisdom. We don’t want to be holding tight to our set beliefs, nor have beliefs set in stone, because then we can’t really learn anything new. If one is already absolutely certain of what’s true and where to go and what to do, then there isn’t any room for new understanding or for changing one’s beliefs, based on newly received Wisdom and Guidance. Thus, it is best to be open to new understanding and new guidance, rather than become too set or dogmatic about one’s present beliefs. Sometimes the whole point of new Guidance is for our understanding and beliefs to evolve, so we are defeating this possibility if we hold tight to present beliefs.

Expectations can also hold back the reception of Higher Wisdom Guidance, in similar ways as set beliefs. A common setback to receiving Higher Guidance is to have an expectation about what the Guidance will be. For instance, one might wish to receive Guidance about a certain question or concern, and one might make many good steps to receive this Guidance, such as quieting the mind, connecting with Higher Mind and opening to the Higher Wisdom. But subconsciously, or just below the surface of awareness, one has an expectation of what this Guidance will be. This expectation is often based on one’s beliefs about what is good and right, or often it is based on what we learned is good from parents and religions. This conditioned belief regarding what is good, right, or what we should do, will then condition and distort how we hear the Higher Guidance. In other words, we expect the Divine Guidance to tell us something similar to what we already think is good and right, and this guides our listening to hear what we expect to hear. Expectation is a very subtle phenomena inside us, which very often shapes our view of life and our understanding. People and things very often correspond to our expectations, because expectations tend to shape how things happen. Not always, but often. So be careful that expectation does not shape how we hear Guidance. And remember that we do not really want our desires, beliefs nor expectations to shape or distort how we hear Guidance; we just want the Guidance to be pure and true, uninfluenced by the quirks of our personality self.

To the extent that desires, set-beliefs, and expectations are eliminated, is the extent that Higher Guidance (of Divine Wisdom) is able to function through us. This is a basic, sober principle. Now of course this is a tall order, as it were. We would hope to have some important Higher Guidance before we actually eliminate all that stuff. And is anyone perfectly free of all that? Maybe, a True Master. But for many of us common spiritual folk the best we might hope for is a temporary suspension of desires, beliefs and expectations. This is like a temporary elimination, or like a cleansing. If it is difficult to imagine oneself perfectly released from desires and expectations, then at least we might work at regular showers to cleanse away the daily dirt and smells. This can be our practical attitude in receiving Guidance. For this meditative time of listening for Guidance, prepare by clearing away or suspending personal desires and expectations. This is how we need to practice. Let go of any personal wishes and expectations in all matters of importance. Bring nothing of oneself to the practice of listening to Inner Guidance. All self desires, beliefs and expectations need to be released, at least for this time, so that the Higher Guidance can come through without distortion or blocks. We want to hear the Guidance as it truly is, from the Highest Wisdom.

After we can make these temporary suspensions, a more difficult task is to deal with our subconscious distortions. This is a major subject to consider, but here are a few important truths and suggestions. First, know that the subconscious influences of personal desire, belief and expectation will not simply go away as we ignore them. They do not somehow disappear when we forget about them or deny their existence. The only real way to deal with these subconsciousness influences is to gradually become conscious of them. One needs to keep the conscious door open, as it were, to the basement, to what is stored down under. Never push anything back down that is coming up. Let everyone in, and hear what is said. Give everyone, every desire and belief inside our self, a chance to speak. Become a fair country of free speech and democracy. Let every desire and belief speak, but don’t simply allow any single desire or belief to Rule. Let all cards be on the table. Let nothing hide out of fear or repression. Then, in listening to every voice there is, with non-attachment and non-servitude to any; allow in the Highest Wisdom Guidance to observe and give advice. Bring the Higher and lower worlds together, and let the lower world be transformed by the Higher Wisdom.

This requires two important listenings. One is listening to what is coming up from the subconsciousness

(and all subconscious stuff really wants to come up and be known and heard – no subconscious content seeks to always be in the underworld – it all wants to re-emerge in this conscious world)

People talk about divine guidance or higher guidance, and everyone would like to be guided by a higher Wisdom. So we should follow the basic principles to reach this state of receiving guidance. But we might ask how one knows for sure if what we hear is really a Higher Guidance. This is the million dollar question. Is what we hear the Higher Wisdom, or is it the deceiving ego, or just the mind chattering? We want to know what is really true, and we want to be guided by wisdom, not just ego wishes or speculations. So this issue depends on our state and also on how well we can discern wisdom from ego.

Here is one more principle to remember. Guidance comes when we are consciously in the Divine Presence. If we can enter into the Divine Presence, and know we are here, then guidance can come, as long as there is also listening and receptivity. Thus, if we are consciously in the Divine Presence, then we can trust the guidance given. If we are not already in the Presence, then be cautious about guidance. If we are in the Divine Presence, then we will feel loved and nurtured. If one does not feel loved and nurtured, then one is not fully in the Divine Presence. So first get into the Divine Presence, and know this by the feeling of being loved and nurtured. So, if one feels loved and nurtured, in Divine Presence, in the moment of receiving a guidance, then this is most likely from the Divine, and then one can best trust in the guidance given. Thus, this is a discerning test for true guidance.

The highest and best state of being is to be in love. This means that consciousness and heart is in a state of love. If one is in a state of love, then one will be loving. The lovingness proceeds spontaneously from the beingness of love. The hardest test is to remain in this love, even when others don’t seem to show you love, or when things seem to go wrong.

One great step needed is dedication. This is what keeps the seeker going forward in a positive way toward a greater goal of realization. For example, when one first begins a meditation, the mind and emotions are often involved with something or another, but until they relax and empty there will be no progress in the meditation. Without dedication and perseverance to the goal of being in true meditation, our mental chatter and emotional residues will predominate the experience. But even after silence and peace is found, and one is truly in meditation, there is a next step that is possible to take. Many teachings miss this next step because they are so sure that the silence and peace is the final goal, or because the person now assumes they are enlightened – since they have entered a very deep and expansive experience. Yet there is another step and greater purpose than this. It has to do with transformation of oneself and humanity; it has to do with service and manifested love. So the next step, after silence and peace and oneness in meditation, or after what some people think is enlightenment, is a sincere dedication or commitment to Higher Will. This is a big step and much more difficult than entering into silence, peace and oneness; but not really profound without first being in the meditative experience. The feeling of dedication and commitment to Higher Will, or Greater Purpose, builds our connectiveness and alignment to the Greater Will that is working to manifest on Earth. This connects our personal will and personality-being to Divine Will and Being. It builds our alignment and harmony with the Divine. Esoterically speaking, this feeling of dedication and aspiration uplifts the consciousness and heart. It connects us to the Higher. It opens us up to the Higher, and it clears a channel for the Higher to come through us.^³

It also works to transform our being, from old patterns to more evolved spiritual patterns.

The only chance we have is to keep working on this dedication and aspiration to love and service.

Obey. Get to a point where I just listen and obey. (I can see how this would be an efficient way for the divine to work through people)

Enter into the House of God, which is the Source of Light and Love. Enter into Light Consciousness and Love’s Embrace, in the Presence of God, in the Heart of the heart. Be cleaned, healed and filled with this Light and Presence of Love. Stay in this House of God, this Presence of Lighted Love, for as long as need be. But at some point the next step is to turn from the Sun to face the world of need, and in this direction become a radiant servant of Light and Love. Become the giver, pouring Radiant Love into the world and all those who live there. Become the magician of Love’s Light descending into the waiting world. This is to be a servant of God.

The first stage is ascendance, openness and receptivity. The is the stage of the spiritual inward Breath, though it may last many actual in and out breaths. Next is the stage of Light’s descent, which we participate in consciously and willingly. This is the stage of service and of being like a channel for the Divine. The first stage is arms and hands open up, so to be embraced by the Divine and ascend into God’s House. The other stage is a spiritual outward Breath, with hands outward in blessing to all of life and those in need, especially those in need of love and enlightenment. Thus, in greater terms, this is the rhythm of Spiritual Breath, which we can consciously participate in.

In the first stage we are like children needing a Love hug and the nourishment of our Divine Mother/Father God. In the other stage we are like responsible servants of our Lord. How do we serve? By pouring forth Light/Love from what is already overflowing in us. We have become so full of Light/Love that we are now pouring out blessings. Sometimes this seems like it is coming from beyond us, but at other times it may seem like it is coming from our own heart-mind. Both sensings are true; each is merely a perspective about what is.

May I continuously listen to the Divine. What am I listening to? What am I giving myself to? These are important questions. But what is the Divine? It is the Love inside me and my innermost wisdom. This is all within us. The Love and Wisdom is within us. But we need to listen to it, and be in touch with it. Yet where is this wisdom? It is in the heart. And the heart knows what is really true and what is not. This is why the great sages say that wisdom is in the heart. The mind discovers possible ideas, but the heart knows what is true. This is why we have to live from the heart, not just the head.

We come into life with soul purpose. Though every soul has more than just one purpose; each has many purposes. Most of these purposes are universal, that is, they are the same purposes for every true human being; for example, to be loved and to be loving, to learn about life and about divine truths, and to be creative in some way. Yet each soul has its own unique aspirations and talents, and its own particular direction. In each of us is both the universal and the unique, that is, what we share with others and what is distinctly our own. Soul purpose is about all of this. Let us share with others our similar human needs and spiritual goals, and may we fulfill these purposes. And let us also bring forth into expression our unique talents and aspirations, and follow our unique direction. Our unique direction is most difficult to discover and complete. It’s also too easy in life to get sidetracked. But if we can at least meditate on this important question once in a while, then there is possibility we might receive an answer or guidance.

Yet many times when we ask for personal guidance about what to do next in our life, the answer has already been given. We ask for guidance, yet do not realize that the Divine or our higher soul wisdom has already given the answer. The answer is found in our own desire or passion. If we meditate with honesty and true feeling on what we most want to do, this is the guidance already given. Our soul direction, or the guidance for what we are now meant to do, is exactly the same as our innermost desire or passion. So discover your passion. Discover what you really and most deeply want to do. This is your divine guidance, or soul direction. God has already given you a direction, or guidance, which is the deep desire in you. Sometimes this deep desire is hidden from normal conscious view; in which case one needs further meditation practice or some kind of dream work to discover what it is. The deeper inner world of the psyche is where we find the soul qualities and desires.

Don’t be misled into believing that all desires are contrary to spiritual life. Desire is not something to eliminate. But we do need to distinguish between deep real desires (which are from the soul) and superficial desires. And no one can know this but our own self. Who could really know your deepest and most important desires but you? Who else could know which desires are truly important for you? So each person has to discover this on their own. No one can tell another what their deepest desire or passion is. Though one person might be able to help another person understand their dreams or to discover their unique desire. We can help others, but we cannot make a self discovery for them. And we certainly cannot simply tell them what they most deeply desire to do in life.

Remember, this is not really about what one should do, rather it’s about what one primarily wants to do. A should can often get in the way from true self discovery of deep desire, because a should usually involves the conditioned intellect reaffirming what someone else said should be done; it’s moralizing from a conditioned mind. So be careful of shoulds, because they often derail a soul desire. A should is usually from the conditioned mind (different from the insightful mind). Soul desires, or soul direction, is seldom understood as an “I should, but primarily as “I really want to”. Though each person has to look at this for themselves to discover what is really true, in contrast to what is superficial or not truly genuine.

Yet in all of this, remember that your true soul purpose, or what the Divine is seeking to express through you, is knowable as your own deepest desire or most inner passion. And this is so close to you; so close to your knowing.

The hardest thing is that sometimes we really need to sacrifice should for true desire, or sometimes needing to sacrifice mind for heart. Follow the heart, foremost. The mind was meant to be servant to the heart.

At some point, we need to follow our deepest passion. What else is more real and important? Be true to life; be true to yourself. Live your passion, and live passionately.

Wisdom is really love. The highest wisdom is love. So, wisdom is the wisdom of love. Or we might say that love has its own wisdom. This is most important to always remember. A second important aspect of wisdom is knowledge of cause and effect, the knowledge of karma. This is to know the causes behind the effects we see. It is also to know what effects are likely to occur from a particular cause. This is a scientific kind of knowledge. But even more profoundly, wisdom understands that whatever we do in the present time will have effects in the future, and that whatever we do has effects on others and the whole world. So this is a wisdom about responsibility in what we do and how we act with others.

The wise know that karma is an inescapable law of nature, and so they act responsibly in each moment, realizing that whatever they do can have a positive or a negative effect. Hopefully, we can at least be making things better by how we are in each moment, and this includes thoughts and emotions, as well as actual words and physical actions. So the wise realize the law of karma and work smartly with it. They also live in love and from love, which produces the most positive karma.

Now if we combine these two aspects of wisdom, love and the knowledge of karma, we end up applying the knowledge of cause and effect with loving concern for others and planet. In this synthesis, wisdom shows what causes to make in order to affect others and planet in a positive manner, for the sake of love, and also what not to do. This finest sense of wisdom shows us what is a good action to take to produce a loving result. When someone knows this, we call them wise.

If we only want the highest wisdom to manifest, and if we have no personal desire or ego about the outcome, then there is nothing to impede divine wisdom from manifesting. Divine Wisdom is already waiting to express and it has a power to express. The only thing that can hold it back or distort it is our own ego desires. So if we can just not get in the way of Wisdom, then it will be revealed. It’s like a wind that is on its way, but we have the power to stop it. If we stop getting in the way, it will flow where it is needed. It’s like fortune cards, or guidance cards. If one only wants to know the truth, and if one does not have any ego desire trying to manipulate the cards, then one will shuffle and lay the cards according to higher guidance. The guidance is all ready to be revealed. It’s just waiting for an opportunity. So if we make an intention to allow the truth to be revealed, and if ego or desire does not get in the way, and if there is trust, then there is nothing which can stop or distort the revealing of truth and guidance. Ponder of this, for in this is a solution to many things.

Remorse is the inner sorrow of feeling separated from God and the Garden, when we realize that we have drifted into the dark and cold, and we long for the warmth of God’s Presence once again. Then, God reaches out the hand of Forgiveness, to welcome us back home, once again. Estafurullah is traveling back home. This is all part of our narrative of leaving and coming back, of forgetting and remembering, of suffering and redemption. Maybe this whole scenario, of here and there, is to learn about ourselves and about the Divine Presence.

In meditation we can ascend the planes. We can rise above our normal personality level of mind, into a higher level of mind. Higher levels means a higher vibration or frequency, rather than literally going above the head, though sometimes there might be a sense of rising above the head. Yet the deepest meditations are in the heart, and all of these higher levels are really in the heart-mind.

It is possible to rise into the consciousness-mind of a great master, or love-wisdom soul. This could be a great master teacher or saint from one of the spiritual paths, who has ascended out of this physical world into the invisible hierarchy of ascended souls. This teacher-saint could be male or female, but when in that refined consciousness there really isn’t any gender distinction. These soul-beings will sometimes incarnate to serve the world more directly in a physical form, but more often they work invisibly from the mental plane to serve humanity and earth. In addition, they might work directly through the mental realization of a someone in meditation. In other words, their higher consciousness can come through one’s meditation. This is when one enters into the higher consciousness-mind of a great soul, radiant with light, love, wisdom, and spiritual will. One comes into this radiant higher consciousness; thus becoming such. Once this has been experienced, it is possible to actually practice entering into a higher consciousness, such as entering into the heart-mind consciousness of Christ, or of Buddha, or of Krishna, or any revered master, saint or prophet.

In fact, this is the esoteric meaning of Catholic communion, (“Do this in memory of me.”). These higher levels of consciousness are stations on the Way to absolute Union with God. Christ, for example, is a level of God-realization. So in one sense, Christ is God; but in another sense, Christ is an intermediary.

Many people need a personal divine Guide and Healer. Sometimes she or he is a living guide and healer. But if this is to be an extraordinary Person, then for most people this will be someone from history. And this historical person will have become mythologized. Consider Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, and Padmasambava. These are four of the most revered persons for many people. Each of these people lived regular lives, but later on they were mythologized into being Supreme Beings. Well in a way, they were supreme beings, exceptional and extraordinary beings. But were they equal to God or to the Absolute? These were people who lived as teachers and healers. Yet who are they now for us? Let us consider Jesus. He lived a man and died as a man. He was great in wisdom and love, but he was not the Absolute God. He was enlightened and had attained a true relationship with the Absolute Divine. We can know him as spiritually enlightened and as a great healer of souls. So who is he now for us? Jesus is here to help us, guide us, love us, and heal us. Jesus is not the identical same as God, yet Jesus is at-one with God, meaning he is completely in tune and aligned with God. Jesus can help us on the inner planes of mind and heart. So in this sense, Jesus is Divine.

Krishna is a religious-mythological personification of Divine Love in relationship with personal self. So is Jesus. Let a personified form of Divine Love abide in your heart. This is very alright. It’s good. Krishna represents God indwelling in the heart.

Find the inner space where one knows God, where the experience is deep and certain. This makes for a profound inner transformation. The experience of God needs to be deep and certain, not merely trite nor contrived. It has to be real inside, a real true feeling, a real true knowing.

With inner visualization, go up the mountain. Climb the mountain. Ascend up to the highest plateau. And there meet the master. This is also about spiritual work and achievement, which is more inward and personal than outer achievement. Inner spiritual achievement is much more important than the outer. So climb the mountain. And meet the master, or meet your highest and truest self.

from Matt: 3 intentions of practice: presence, breath, and praise

1. Be completely present, physically, mentally and heartfully, with life, others and nature; being fully present in each moment with the totality of my whole being.

2. Be continuously in a conscious harmonious breath, consciously breathing with the Presence of God and in harmony with Mother Earth and with love.

3. Be in a state of praise, in regards to life and God, which is an upliftment of mind and heart, in a higher and deeper connection with God. (helped by a silent zikr of Allah in the heart center).

We give energy to conscious good-will, building the good-will, the will of good.

The Mother’s Breath is a harmonious balanced rhythm of breath, in tune with Mother Earth. One can think of this breath as in harmony with the Earth’s love vibration. When we harmonize our breath with the natural balanced rhythm of Earth Mother, then we our being comes into harmony and also the energies all around us, and thus we can even positively affect the world and space around us.

Praise can be given to others but can also be given to God and also to nature. Praise to others builds their positive self-esteem. It makes them feel good about themselves and also helps their self-motivation to make even greater goals. So praise to others is good and helpful to them.

Praise to God is different, though, because we don’t need to make God feel better or to have a more positive self-esteem. Neither are we trying to please God. Most people think of praising God as a kind of bargain; like if I give God enough praises then He/She will reciprocate with blessings and good fortune. But let us avoid this kind of anthropomorphic projection upon God, treating God like a egoistic King who demands praise before giving out His approval and support. God does not need praise, nor does God demand praises. Instead, we can give praise to God for no practical reason at all, neither to please God nor to get anything in return. Praising God is not something to do in order to get something out of it. It’s to be done for just its own sake, similar to appreciating a naturally beautiful setting for no reason to achieve anything out of the appreciation.

So really, praise to God is simply a natural feeling, a natural and sincere response to life itself. This is the true meaning and practice of praise. It is a natural response, but it should still be considered a practice because we often need to remember praise. In other words, like other spiritual practices, we often need to remember the practice and do it with intention, because we have to make some conscious intentional effort to bring our energies out from the often usual dredge of lower emotional and mental entanglements, and raise our consciousness and energies to higher levels. This requires an extra bit of effort and intention, because otherwise our consciousness tends to remain caught up in automatic routines and reactive patterns, and thus repeating the same old stuff and same old patterns of being. Therefore, we need to wake up out of the usual automatic waking-sleep state, and by being awake in a higher level of consciousness we might well enter into a natural response of praise, praise for life and praise to God. Or maybe we will need to remember praise as a conscious practice.

This praise [to God] is a state of being. That is, there is a definite state of being, possible for anyone, which is a state of praise. It is similar to the state of gratefulness, and gratefulness may be also present in one’s experience, but praise is a distinct state or feeling on its own. And each person will discover this feeling on their own. Praise is a very high feeling. It’s a very high state of being. In praise, one’s energies and consciousness are raised up. By this praise to God, we raise up.

Imagine and feel your arms raising up, with hands open facing the sky above, and even feel yourself raising above the ground in this praise. This is one way to feel and understand praise, but always feel free to experience practices in your own way, because the real goal is to come into a very real and sincere experience, a very real and true natural [spiritual] feeling.

Another avenue to this state of praise is through chant, whether audible or silent. Many religions and paths have phrases and chants of spiritual praise, which can be defined as devotional practices, and these involve the heart and higher emotions. Most often the chant is a repetition or even a singing of one of God’s many names. Whether one is chanting Allah or Krishna or whatever, if one is truly in a state or feeling of praise, or devotion, or love, or any of the higher emotions, then this is a very helpful practice for transmuting energies and coming closer to the Divine Source. For one is opening their heart in receptivity, in love, and in praise. The devotee or mystic finally looses their separate selfness (and also looses their lower ego energies) in this praise and love, this praise to the Highest, to the Source, to our Creator and Sustainer, to the Great One, to God or by whatever name we hold for the Highest and Greatest. Or even if we praise a personal deity or divine being, such as Krishna or Jesus or Kwan Yin, this too is good, for it raises us up to higher energies and a higher state of being.

There was a teacher and student. The student asked the teacher how to experience the Absolute Truth. The teacher said that he needed a sacred tool to reach this experience of Ultimate Truth. So the teacher gave the student a special sacred tool. The student placed this object on his alter and for many years he revered this sacred object and praised it with gratefulness, knowing that his teacher had given him this for his enlightenment. But the student later went back to the teacher, bringing the sacred object, and confessed that he had been revering this sacred tool for years, but he still hadn’t yet seen the Truth. So the teacher took the sacred tool from the student’s hand and placed it on the student’s head. The sacred object was a pair of glasses, and from then on the student could see more clearly.

Motto: teachers will give us tools to reach Truth, but we need to discover how to use them, rather than worship the tools as though they were the treasure being sought.

At deeper levels of meditation, the obstacles become more subtle. Thus, many practitioners think they have attained enlightenment when thoughts and emotions finally cease to control their mind and experience, or when a profound pure peace is experienced without distracting thoughts. This would be a very profound state, and it is certainly important, but more subtle thoughts often lurk in the field of such states, and the separative ego-self may still be leading the show. One then needs to take this practice to a deeper level of self-noticing. One might well discover that a separative I-ness or selfness still lingers in the experience, Ego thoughts of self-congratulations and achievement may also be brooding around. So even in deeper states, there is often stuff to surrender and transformation to be done; the stuff and the work just gets more subtle and more difficult to pin down. Thoughts were more easy to let go when they were seen as obviously stupid or irrelevant to the time. But now, the thoughts, the content of deeper mind, are subtle and can thus be more deceptive. Mostly these will concern oneself. We want to find oneself and discover who we truly are down deep. This is truly important, but at some point in our meditational journey this idea of myself can hold back an even deeper journey to Universal Essence, to the transpersonal Self, to God Being. For at some point, it is the very concept of my self that becomes the final obstacle. Self, me, and I become the final veil which holds back the very ultimate experience. This is the final surrender, yet the full surrender actually happens in stages. In other words, there are stages or levels of self surrender, and very few in the world know about these.

There are three main aspects in this surrender, related to three kinds of surrender, having to do with mind, heart and will. One kind is surrender of mind. This begins with surrender of thoughts, then there is a need to surrender self-concepts, and finally one surrenders mind itself. Now this will seem dangerous to mental health workers, and it is rather dangerous, which is why few teachers ever speak about it. If one were to do this right at first on the path, there is great danger, because there are many psyche powers still in place who will be glad for you to surrender your mind to them. Yet further on in the meditational journey, or the path as it were, the mind can be surrendered because God or True Being is already known to be waiting for you. So one can give up one’s mind to God, or to Life, or to Truth. More practically, in meditation one can practice surrendering self-concepts. More deeply, one surrenders the very concept of self, which is deeply implicit in all self-concepts.

One essentially way to surrender the concept of self, surrendering the I or the me, is to surrender it into love. Surrender yourself into love. This is very subtle. There is this lingering sense of myself as something distinct from the world and from the One Being. Surrender this self into love. For in love, the self disappears. Contemplate on this. Experience this. In love, the self disappears. So surrender yourself into love. The self experience makes a boundary or separation from others or from the whole of life; like this is my self, this is who I am, this is me. But the love experience, if fully IN love, without any boundaries, is also without any selfness. The distinct self dissolves in love. Self delusions dissolve in love. The whole problematic enterprise of self dissolves in love.

The Reality of Life, the Reality of Being, is One Essential Self. And this is Love. So surrender yourself into this One Being, this One Great Love. The One Great Being IS Love. This is the mystical secret. The Real Self is Love. All other selves are either pieces of this One Love or else they are delusions. The Real Being is Love, while every self-I is but a temporal transient concept – a concept which often has a huge amount of emotional weight and attachment.

Practice love… with others and the world. Be in love, open in love, lost in love and giving of love. Be a love bowl !!

This then leads us to the heart surrender. This is simply saying to the Universal Spirit, here is my heart, here is my love. I surrender my heart to Thee. Give yourself up to the greatest experience of love in the whole universe, to our Loving Creator and Sustainer, to the One Love Itself.

Next, one can surrender one’s will. This is more difficult to explain, so we will do this later. The only thing to say briefly is that the Universal Self, or God, does indeed have will, meaning not just that it has power but also purposes. We can follow these purposes, or be in alignment with them, or not. We could believe that there is no universal Will, nor Divine Purpose, and thus believe that we have no obligation except fulfilling our own will or desire. But this later view is to be rejected; for there is a Divine Will and Purpose, to which we can surrender our own little will.

God is Love. Immerse yourself in Love. Jump into Love. This is the most transforming experience possible in life. It is only for the most courageous. With any fear, you will not be able to make this leap, this leap of love. It is for those who fear not the danger of losing oneself in Love, and never coming back to what was normal before. So if you have the courage, immerse your self in Love. Jump in, with the whole body, the whole self, and be prepared and willing to never come back. Be prepared to lose your whole personality and abandon all fixed and permanent ideas about yourself. Be prepared to let Love move you, and nothing else. And if you find yourself back on dry ground, then jump back in the water of love. This is the radical path of Love’s annihilation, which only the most fearless mystics ever died in. It is also the path of union with God. Because God is love.

Zikr practice has its physical-technical component: that which is objectively done, such as the sound and the repetition. But also it has its experientially component: that which is subjectively or emotionally done, or that which you are doing inside, in your heart and by your intention. Also included in this subjective component is the idea; for every zikr practice has its particular pervading idea or theme, which is like the thought of your intention and the recognized quality of your experience.

Be present with the breath, be present with mind and heart, here and now, then gradually open more of the mind and heart, to include more of present reality, to be an expansive presence. Loosen the boundaries of mind and heart, allowing the mind and heart to naturally expand and include more and more of all life.

Next, after mastering the above practice, one will soon realize that everything is within one Great Mind and Heart, which we can call God, and this one Being/Presence is present everywhere. Then, we know more of the God experience, and reciprocally, God experiences through us.

Practice being in a greater mind and greater love. Come out from personal reactions and desires, then into the divine mind and love. Rise above the lower-self tendency to react and to sleep. Disengage from the outer superficial patterns of self, as well as disengaging from external troubles. Instead, be engaged with deeper feelings and qualities of the soul. Be engaged in the inner world first, and then move outward from this inner awareness and strength.

Open up to the mother energy of divine nurturance, which is nurturing in the space of love. The Divine spark, the soul Christ within each person and humanity, comes forth into fulfillment. The soul blueprint is the Divine I deal seeking to manifest, nurtured by divine love. The self-will can nurture the soul by giving its unfoldment a useful efficacious environment of order. and the self-will can become a useful instrument for the soul.

It’s a few days past this day’s theme, so may those who are guided to read this understand it. This is the secret zikr practice. But its description will often vary, because of different uses of words and also different emphasis. Part of a secret to any spiritual practice is to use the description or guidance given, but then explore it with experience and re-make it one’s own, and not be fanatical in doing it an exact way. Here is the practice. After clearing the mind and heart, or letting go of the self-preoccupations of mind and heart, which may take anywhere from minutes to hours to years, this practice can now begin. The three essentials of this zikr are conscious breath, sound (or word), and deep surrender, all of which can help also in the preliminary clearing part. So, while maintaining conscious breath, sound and repeat Allah. This can be audible but can also be a silent sounding in the heart. Allah is the sound of the opening heart, or opening love, and of course Allah is Love, or the Beloved, or the Self Who IS. Many possible words to translate this One. Now if the practice were just about saying Allah repeatedly, then it wouldn’t amount to much, even if said 1001 times. Because the Real Secret of this practice is to actually come to Allah, from deep in one’s heart.

Realize that Allah is already here. One is not invoking Allah, as if Allah needed a phone call. No, one is sounding Allah in order to open one’s heart and come to Allah. God has already been calling us; we are now answering that call. So it’s more like a greeting. Allah is already here and all around, and we are in the One Self. We are now just waking up in this Divine Beingness. It’s like coming into Love Itself, or into Light Itself, with a feeling of surrendering into it, or melting or dissolving into it. Personal I-self is like a little drop (with a boundary or cell-wall all around), but in this zikr practice the little self-drop surrenders and dissolves into the Ocean of Divine Being, Allah. This our coming back to God. It’s like diving into the most sacred pool of pure Water of Spirit. In this is cleansing and transformation. This is the fana (which is really a verb, meaning self-dissolving); it’s an action, a transformation. Baqa is also, esoterically, a verb, meaning Self-Understanding or Discovery. It’s an event, not merely a stasis state. So, in this secret spiritual practice, unknown to anyone but oneself and God, the little ‘I am’ surrenders into the One Self-Being (Allah) and so dissolves into this unbounded Love/Light. Then from this Awakening Experience, there is Self-Discovery. There is a Knowingness of God and of one’s own true soul. But this was way too wordy. Go there, go to Allah to understand. May the Secret of Allah be revealed. Salaam.

In the ontology of Spirit the Divine Qualities have a necessary function. Divine Qualities, or the Divine Powers, emerge from Spirit Itself. They are the Powers or Qualities of Spirit. If just Spirit manifested, life would be rather boring, kind of like a house with no color and nothing in it. In Sufism these were called the Divine Names, but even earlier a mystical Christian sect wrote a book called the Divine Names. Still what they meant were powers or qualities. Powers and Qualities are synonymous in this context, because every Power has its quality and every Quality has power, so we could not speak of one without the other. A Name, on the other hand, functions predominately as a tool for communication, but also is a tool for knowledge. A Name gives us a landmark, in the vast ambiguous field of gnosis, for knowing something such as a quality or power. So we need Names for knowledge sake; though it is debatable whether Names have any further significance. The ancient and also medieval teachings gave special importance to Names, sometimes to do with the sound of the name but certainly to do with the invocationary power of naming. The invocationary power of a name has to do with a magical metaphysical principle of name correspondence. If one knows the right Name for a power-quality, then the thinking of this name or its repetition will invoke that corresponding power-quality.

The possible significance of a name’s sound is an additional magical principle regarding sound vibration; the idea being that sound vibrations create form and manifestation, which of course is true. What is debatable, though, is whether a particular sound is in fact the right sound for doing the work that one believes it ought to be doing. The thought principle is more certain, because it goes right direct to the quality. For example, if you think peace, saying this word silently, you will automatically be thinking about the quality-power of peace. You know what quality the word peace means, and you know what the quality of peace is. And if someone else from far away in a different language thinks about peace from the medium of their own word, they too will be thinking about the very quality of peace – yet by way of another word (and another sound). Most certainly, the vibration of a quality itself is the most direct way of invocation, by the principle that a small vibration will invoke a bigger vibration of the same. So by feeling some peace, more peace will come.

Now, since spiritual each power-quality emerges from Spirit, the Source, it is also true that each spiritual power-quality, the Divine Quality or Divine Name, will bring us back to Spirit. Thus, we return to the Spirit Source by way of a spiritual quality or name. So, if we want to return to God, Spirit or Source, make use of a particular Name or Quality, or realize it.

Every moment and circumstance is an opportunity for development of Divine Qualities in oneself, such love, courage, tolerance. Every day of our life is the Teacher. The world is this kind of place, a teaching ground or an opportunity of life-long learning. God isn’t planning out our individual challenges, nor setting them up. It’s just the world itself which naturally presents learning situations.

Spirit sees through the individual self, by way of its perceptive capacities. Spirit knows itself through our minds, it feels itself through our feelings, it expresses itself through our bodies, it wills itself through our will. But this cannot happen unless there is some surrender and transparency in this mediumship.

The next stage of humanity’s spiritual path is a fusion of will, love and intelligence. All three are needed. So the ideal is to have a strong will, but with intense love and high intelligence. A strong will without love tends to breed oppression, and a strong will without intelligence breeds unintended mistakes. An intense love without will breeds sympathy but with no helpful action. An intense love without intelligence again breeds mistakes.

The next stage is to become inter-religious, rather than narrowly religious and inter-cultural rather than narrowly cultural. Strict parochialism and narrow minded sectarianism is as out of date as cannibalism, or it might just be called adolescent. To deeply study and follow a certain religious path is fine; in the same way as one might concentrate on a certain form of dance or learning a certain musical instrument. But the mature spiritual person does not hold tight to any one way, nor close their heart and mind to other ways. It is fine to become in love with a particular path and deeply appreciate that path, just as one may fall in love with another person, but we need to remain open to the beauty of other traditions and even newer paths. This is what is meant by becoming inter-religious and inter-cultural. It’s about being connected with others and remaining open to new learning and appreciation. So the inter-religious person seeks to discover a common understanding, and build love, unity, cooperation and synthesis among different people and groups. At the same time, each needs to share their own path and experiences. This act of sharing is vital; each shares but also listens to what others are sharing. This is spiritual inter-relating. Then, appreciation and respect grows, along with inter-group learning. The true spiritual aspirant does not get stuck in just one religious mode and dogma; for the path should always be expanding and the person always growing with new insights and new creative ways of being. Avoid stagnation by reaching out to others, to both share and learn.

Longing for God or for spiritual direction usually only occurs in circumstances of discomfort or distress. If health, pleasure and wealth are always secure; then usually there is no feeling of needing God or spiritual direction. So we might look at ill health or other difficulties as opportunities to seek God or spiritual help. Yet, we might as well walk the spiritual path without any need for problems as motivation.

A first step is realizing or feeling that one is separated from Real Love or from Divine Love Itself. This is a way out of the illusion one is normally in, the illusion that everything is just fine. For one first needs to see how one is mechanical and living a superficial life, and realize that there is a much greater potential for oneself and for this life. The wake-up call is realizing how long one has actually been sleeping and how problematic is the situation. Realize the problem early, rather than have it splash up un-expectedly.

Get people in touch with their inner resources, which are infinite. Within each is the whole spiritual potential. Each person already has the oil but may need their candle lit by another. In fact, no candle lights itself. Everyone needs a spark or a lighted match, coming from someone else who is already on fire.

The spiritual mystic moves in and out of two kinds of realization, which are relationship consciousness and unity consciousness. In relationship consciousness one is a drop of Ocean with the Vast Ocean, and in devotion one surrenders into the Greater Ocean. Then, in unity consciousness there IS only the Ocean, and I am the Ocean. Drops are temporary states, in order for there to be relationships, between other drops and between the drops and the Whole. Each drop IS the Ocean, because its inner constitution is oceanness.

Realize that I am the Divine Self living through this locality of experience. My subjective experience of life, and this very day, is the Divine self experiencing through.

Thoughts are like frozen pieces of water within the Water of Mind. When these frozen pieces melt, there is only water.

Shams of Tabriz was Rumi’s great teacher and inspiration for many of his poems. Yet also Shams referred to Rumi as his greatest teacher, as well. So one might imagine that special relationship; as when they were together, each saw God incarnate and each were reflections of the other’s highest self.

So as the story goes, Shams was being questioned by religious authorities to see if he should be imprisoned or executed for statements of heresy. That is, people had complained to the authorites about many heresy sounding remarks made in public by Shams in Konya. They asked him what he thought of Halaj’s statement to authorities of, “I am the One Truth.” (and remember that Halaj was earlier beheaded for that statement). What Halaj could have said was “I am God’s servant,” which was the more regular Sufi statement. But he refused to affirm this dualism between Allah and servant. Because if there is Nothing but God, then Halaj was proclaiming that he was that as well, and this statement revealed his very deep station of divine experience

And Shams replied that the statement showed Halaj to be stuck at a lower station of Mystical Union. Now this perplexed the authorities, because Shams seemed to not denounce heresy, but seemed to be suggesting that Halaj had not gone far enough into the radical mystical consciousness. So they asked that he explain.

And Shams replied: Halaj said, “I am the TRUTH.” But How did “I” get in there?

Experiencing means to have a direct sense of, or feeling of, or perception of, or knowing of; Rather than merely a concept of, or thinking about, or just a faith or assuming about what is told from books or stories. Experience can be either inward or outward, but it has to be direct and certain.

God, for me, does not mean a Grandfather figure nor a Kingly figure, nor any particular Image. I mean the One Being we all are and in which we exist, and all forms emerge from this Being (God), Whose Primary Qualities are Consciousness, Creative Power, Intelligence, and Love, and Who has the power to guide and heal us and even to live through us.

Synonymous with what I mean by God are: The Divine, Divine Being, the One Being, The Universal Self, Great Spirit or Brahman.

I don’t expect to experience God in an Absolute sense, and it’s not really important in this theme. That is, I don’t expect to experience God in the Fullness that God experiences Himself. For example, I don’t expect to experience how God is experiencing the whole Universe of Life, though in some limited reflective sense I believe this is possible.

What I believe is possible is to experience the nature of God, the presence of God, and the qualities of God. This is God experience, Divine experience. For example, if I can experience being truly loved, or experience being IN love itself, then I accept this as an experience of God. If I feel truly guided, or hear true inner guidance, then this is an experience of God. Divine Presence might be experientially felt as a Great Compassion pervading the space around me, or as a Presence of Expansiveness, or as the Presence of Peace, or the Presence of healing. These are all possible qualities of Presence -- possible experiences of God ---- which can be experienced both inwardly and outwardly.

I want to experience God Essence, or God in the most immediate and truest essence, the deepest and most profound essence-reality of God….. how God is, how Being is, how I am. Yet I accept that it may be only possible to experience God’s Self-Essence and Qualities in a limited way, or microcosmic way. I also accept that the Divine unfolds (or reveals) to each person in a limited yet progressively expanding way.

What I’m seeking are tastes, perceptions, listenings, feelings, or any direct experience of the Divine --- of Divine Presence, Divine Qualities, Divine Being. So my theme is to experience the Divine in other people and in nature and generally in my life, and also experience the Divine Self in me. There are different levels of experiencing the Divine; even the small levels are good, yet I wish to go deeper. Sometimes in deepest meditation, experience is just of consciousness experiencing; so isn’t this God experiencing through me?

Insights (which I need to examine but I don’t think I will share at this time):

Ordinary experience most often involves either forms/phenomena or concepts, depending if it is sensory or just mental. Yet it is also possible to experience just emotion or quality. I think we are more awake in life if we are aware of emotions and qualities pervading any place or relationship. If we delve more deeply into this moment or place, it is possible to perceive/experience a deeper Quality, Truth, or Meaning. It is often difficult to understand this, but it would also be a mistake to immediately reduce this experience into a particular category, concept, or Name. It is better to hold this quality of experience as the inquiry.

Then all cells are in harmony, since they are all vibrating as One consciousness. This is at-one-ment.

1Some [false] teachers will explain that all circumstances are the just result of personal karma; in the belief that there can be no real injustice, for justice is always everywhere, and in the sense that everyone deserves the circumstances they are in. This teaching has no validity, and it is even cruel in itself. It unfairly blames all victims for their circumstances, and also contents itself with a belief that there are no real injustices to oppose. It’s complacency about injustices is just as repugnant as the belief in divine determination, in that both beliefs deny any real injustices as caused by other people; though ironically, the ‘its all personal karma’ belief is an extreme form of personal responsibility; while the ‘its all God’s intelligent Mercy at work’ belief is an antithesis to personal responsibility.

2and if not everything is God-intended, then not every event is God-intended, meaning that not every occurrence in life is ‘from God’ or ‘has divine purpose’.