Early morning thoughts on words

First published in 2009

Author and publisher

Shabbir Banoobhai

collection may be copied, reproduced, stored

or transmitted in any form without the prior

written approval of the publisher.

Email address: shabbir@iafrica.com

Website: www.veilsoflight.com

Cover Design

Sumayya Essack – Dizzy Blue Dezign

Based on the artwork of Billy Alexander

found in the website: www.sxc.hu

and gratefully used with his permission

Email address: sumayyaessack@gmail.com

Edited by: Peter Strauss

Printed by: Mega Digital, Cape Town

ISBN 978-0-620-44488-0

for my teachers

and the authors of

the books in my library

contents

v Ultimate goal

v Waves in an ocean

v Words and mystery

v The all-encompassing nature of the Divine

v Loss

v Oneness, otherness and violence

v Antagonists in a war

v Loving, and living in peace with others

v Spiritual caution

v Love, opposites and integrity

v Potential

v Generosity, what we see and our spirit

v Love and letting go

v Hope and doubt

v Giving

v Ego

v Freedom

v Giving and receiving

v Emptiness

v The spiritual and the physical

v Being ‘stranded in this world’

v Balance

v Attachment and detachment

v Insights gained from opposites

v Loving without attachment

v Living ethically

v The non-existence of spiritual contradictions

v Unity and multiplicity

v Selfishness and selflessness

v Light and darkness

v Knowing God

v Spiritual seeking

v Gifts of love and gifts of non-love

v Love as knowable or ‘dark light’, and mystery

v Oneness and otherness

v The key to loving

v Love, imperfection and perfection, illness and its cure

v Human and Divine Consciousness, and the gift and challenge of form

v The nature of creation

v Helplessness

v Humility

v Seven principles

v Mission accomplished

Ultimate goal

Our ultimate spiritual goal should always be to know our essential oneness with the Divine. Ideally, we should not see the existence of duality at all; but, being human, we are invariably confronted with this ‘reality’ too.

However, since knowledge of oneness itself often develops from knowledge of duality, duality (as a teacher) is to be respected. Paying attention to what we are being taught can teach us that duality both conceals and reveals unity.

As all spiritual learning depends on humility, we need to be aware of the role of grace in our lives, and trust that one day our learning will become complete and with it our loving, when we will see only the existence of the Divine.

Waves in an ocean

Everything that exists is like a wave in an ocean; a wave that changes every second, though it appears not to change; a wave that often disappears, even as we are learning to love or know it, and then, over time, deceptively re-appears, again and again, as if it were the original wave – which has long since dissolved.

Being so taken with such waves, we invariably do not pay sufficient attention to the underlying energy within the ocean that makes the waves visible; we ignore the ocean and the force that gives rise to the waves, succumbing to the distraction of the visible ‘wave’ or ‘disturbance’.

Whatever we love changes, physically, even as we are learning to love it. Yet the memory of the original love often remains, long after the physical form of the beauty that we initially loved has changed. Our love is kept alive by a vision of a deeper beauty that never fades or alters.

Understanding that it is love of a deeper beauty which keeps our love for visible beauty alive can help us change our focus from loving what is superficial to loving intrinsic beauty, so that we remain at peace even when external beauty fades, consoled by the knowledge that an eternal inner beauty remains.

Everything around us is in a state of perpetual restlessness or ‘disturbance’, caused by the dropping of a dark stone of consciousness into a lake of light; when this happens, the lake becomes alive, the universe is born, stars form, shine, explode, die, winds blow, storms rage, and the unseen energy of the lake, transformed, ripples outwards – as knowledge or love.

Multiplicity is shaken (or stirred) out of unity; and each aspect of the ‘created world’ comes into existence – capable of revealing the potential for the infinite forms of existence that can arise within the lake without adding to or changing the nature of its existence.

The scene dazzles us. But our sight itself then becomes the source of our blindness to what lies within and beyond what we can physically see. Compounding our loss, on hearing the music of the reeds, the wind, the birds and all of nature, we often forget the real musician.

Afraid of losing the myriad reflections of beauty around us, we are tempted to try to hold on to just one thing of beauty that we hope will stay with us forever. But whatever we try to capture in this way is too subtle to be captured physically; for it is we who have to become captives of whatever we seek to capture – in order to gain what we desire to gain.

Because we grow to love the waves in the ocean rather than the ocean itself (and because there are countless waves in the ocean) when we lose one, immediately we seek another and then another. Since no wave is permanent, every wave we love is an ‘illusion’. Yet if we loved the ocean we would find its presence more enduring, and where the ocean is the ocean of love itself, it would prove endless.

This ocean lies within us. What we find outside us are the ripples caused by the force of the ocean within us. If we recognize that the source of the light we are seeing outside us actually lies within us, we will find no need to possess what we see outside us; we will no longer be afraid of losing the light we can physically see, for its very existence outside us is confirmation of the existence of a light within us.

A river that flows downhill needs to hold itself together to reach the sea. In its flowing to the sea are important lessons in oneness and togetherness. Water needs to combine with water to build the momentum it needs for its journey. But how does a river flow upwards, to refresh the source from which it began?

The water needs to dissipate. It needs to discover a higher oneness, beyond itself; needs the sun, the wind, and the air; needs warmth, cold, lightness, and heaviness so that it can be transformed into clouds, be carried across countries and continents, over deserts and valleys, fall as rain on a mountain top, perpetuate its journey to the sea.

We too need to dissipate our consciousness of ourselves to be in harmony with everything around us; need to realize that it is the ocean that deserves our closer attention, no matter how much we may enjoy surfing its waves.

Words and mystery

Words do not exist in isolation. The most powerful words have the deepest or most vital meanings and the closest or most subtle associations with other powerful words. Peace is incomplete without justice, justice incomplete without freedom, freedom incomplete without love, love incomplete without knowledge. Reducing these essential associations diminishes the mystery of our existence.

If this mystery did not exist, the very words that have the capacity to create or negate mystery (that make it possible for us to contemplate a world of mystery) would not exist in their fullness (as each word creates mystery as much as it is the creation of mystery).

A danger we face, in trying to prove that some mystery does not exist, is that we might have to destroy mystery that does exist; just as, to prove that mystery exists, we might have to create some mystery so that it exists. The challenge then becomes: how can we avoid negating mystery (while struggling to comprehend it) and yet avoid destroying it (through the very act of contemplating it)?

As much as the mystery of our own existence provokes this challenge, we should also remember that mystery, ultimately, does not only need comprehension but needs to be experienced in uniquely different ways.

When our search is for a higher mystery that pervades all existence, if we allow our seeking to be guided by grace – allow ‘the sought’ to be the seeker, the only seeker capable of knowing mystery without diminishing it – we may find that within us is the mystery we are seeking to know.

The all-encompassing nature of the Divine

If we existed inside a book – as one of the characters in the book – how would we know that we exist inside it, unless we managed to free ourselves, go outside, learn to read, read the book, and so find out that we are actually inside – and now also outside. A challenging process, if we have no prior knowledge of being inside, for then the outside, effectively, would not exist.

Since it is only when we look at ourselves from the outside that we can find ourselves inside, and since we have no consciousness of being inside, how would we even know there was an outside and that from the outside we might find out who or what we are, inside?

It is only if we are simultaneously outside that we can know we are also inside. Once inside, and simultaneously outside, we would try to find words to describe our experiences; and expand these experiences to understand the words we are using to describe them – so that we can fully comprehend what it means to be at once within something and yet outside it, both here and yet beyond.

Being at once inside and outside can best be illustrated by understanding that the book (of existence) that we are really referring to, is essentially blank; what we are reading merely reflects what we are thinking – so that, in effect, when we are ‘reading’ the book we are in fact ‘writing’ it. And therefore, though we may believe that we are outside the book, we are actually within it; and the book, simultaneously, is within us.

This interplay between our external and internal selves (between who we understand ourselves to be, and who we really are) illuminates our relationship with the Divine. Ultimately it reveals the all-encompassing nature of the Divine itself; for it implies there is no book (of knowable Divine existence) apart from the (Divine) reader (‘us’).

To understand the existence of the Divine before it becomes known as Divine – by the Divine Reader (‘us’) – let us consider the existence inherent within a candle (similar to the existence we contemplated within a book).

Though ‘inside’ (though an unlit flame existing as ‘potential’ within a ‘candle’) when it looks at itself from the ‘outside’ (when it appears as if a candle with innate consciousness of the potential inside itself were looking at itself as a flame) – effectively when the unlit flame’s consciousness of itself constitutes the candle – the candle not only sees the intrinsic nature of itself (‘inside’) but the unlit flame inside simultaneously knows its own potential ‘outside’ (as a ‘lit’ flame reflected in the transforming or ‘translating’ consciousness of the ‘candle’ which helps to constitute its ‘lit’ existence ‘outside’).

What is being seen ‘outside the candle’ (seemingly outside itself, though effectively by itself, and therefore inside itself) as a lit flame (which really is non-existent as itself, as the candle itself is an ‘illusion’) in essence, is the unlit flame seeing its own potential. The unlit flame itself (effectively) sees itself without a candle! The candle does not really exist; except to provide the illusion that grants the (unlit) flame its visible existence.

The potential inherent in itself causes a flame to ignite from a ‘candle’. The unlit flame realizes its potential because of the existence of the candle; and the candle effectively becomes more than wax through the existence of the flame (the candle, though an illusion in one sense, is not an illusion in another sense, as it reflects the existence of a real unlit flame). In effect, spiritual light has been translated into knowable form and given a name – in the process creating The Book of Existence which, really, remains The Book of Essence.

Creation is a blank book, being ‘continuously written and wiped clean’; effectively it exists as a flame that has neither been lit or extinguished! What exists within is what exists without; what is reflected as ‘existence’, does not exist as itself anywhere; and what does exist, exists as itself and as other than itself simultaneously (exists as itself and as its potential, or as the potential of its source).

In saying anything – in saying I am love – the Divine says many things – including: I am one, I am alone; (I am beyond being alone); I am within, I am without; (I am everywhere); I am present, I am absent; (and nowhere); I am being (and non-being), word (and wordlessness); and I am none of these because I am above light and darkness, above illness: when I wound, I heal. I am many-faceted; I am mystery; I am essence; I am integrity; I am all there is; and ultimately I am unknowable.

There is no word or letter that exists entirely as itself or is only what it seems to be. There is no sound or colour that exists entirely as itself or is only what it seems to be. There is no world or universe that exists entirely as itself or is only what it seems to be.

We are all part of an ever-changing ocean of being and non-being, knowing and unknowing, part of an existence that is continuously being veiled and unveiled, that continuously flickers between reality and illusion. We are all part of a contraction and expansion that with each inward and outward breath negates us and affirms us, annihilates us and brings us closer to the truth.

Loss

A loss, invariably, is hurtful when it is recalled – when we replace the present with the past – when, in perpetuating the past, we give it a life that does not legitimately belong to it. But a loss can also bring unexpected freshness into our lives, remove the staleness of certainty and restore our freedom to rethink where we are, where we want to be, and how we intend to get there. In many ways, losses are lost guides found anew.

Oneness, otherness and violence

We cannot counteract violence with even greater violence and then claim to be non-violent. If our very breathing is an act of violence, then how much more violent is killing other human beings, whoever they may be?

We dissolve into oneness; separate and aggregate into otherness. All separation and aggregation is intrinsically violent. Even the act of loving another as ‘another’ –essentially different, separate or distinct from oneself – provocatively, may be considered an act of violence.

The passing of every law, too, is as violent an act as the lawlessness the law tries to prevent, for it requires that an ‘other’ first be created or identified (representing some form of physical, emotional, intellectual, psychological, social, or spiritual aggregation of ‘otherness’) that can be subjected to the scrutiny, values and control of the entity passing the law and having the power to implement it.

Even sustaining ourselves (through what we eat or drink, what we wear, how we travel, how we cultivate the land, or develop our minds) inevitably involves the committing of act upon act of violence.

In fact, all living that constitutes the promotion of any form of self-interest is essentially violent. A thought itself, that results in the coming into being of some kind of enlightenment through the creation of some form of ‘otherness’, carries within it the seed of violence.

Can we ever be non-violent when we understand violence in this manner? What healing can we find in our beings and in our lives that can redeem us, make us truly holy, and restore us to light? What must the nature of our loving be so that its inevitable violent component becomes so subsidiary to the goodness it generates that we no longer see it as violent at all, but the essence of goodness? And what must the nature of our laws and our quest for justice be to redeem them of their intrinsic violence? Can anything other than the deepest understanding of our essential oneness save us?

In condemning violence, and certainly gratuitous violence, we should not be hoodwinked by those who inflict devastating violence needlessly on others, and then claim that it is the minimum required for restoring some justice they consider essential – often without taking cognizance of the (possibly) even greater or overriding right to justice of those upon whom they are wreaking their violence.

If we see our very breathing as an act of violence (so as to be more sensitive to the right of everyone and everything around us to live a full and fulfilling life) we will be less likely to be silenced by those who would like us to stay quiet and unresponsive to their acts of violence.

Antagonists in a war

What if we were one of the antagonists in a war, a war that seemed interminable?

What if we were unable to bear some pain caused to us by the ‘other’ in that war?

What if, during the conflict, we managed to create a period of unremitting darkness?

What if this darkness was compounded by our power, our arrogance, and our anger?

What if, in the ripening darkness, we were free to think of any harm we could inflict on our opponents?

Would we think the unthinkable? If the darkness were complete, what might it allow us to think?

Loving, and living in peace with others

Here are some thoughts on loving, and living in peace with:

those who love us, and those who do not;

those who believe they love us (but may not);

those who we believe love us (but who may not);

those who we believe do not love us (but who may);

those whose love is essential for us to be truly happy;

and those whose love is not essential for us to be happy.

All our everyday loving is made up of the following elements:

First, a love, whether we realize it or not, for the Divine (or for a beauty we sense is both within us and beyond us) – whose ability to give us joy does not so much depend on our possessing it, as on our being possessed by it – which is only possible when we have no desire to exclude others from possessing it or being possessed by it.

Second, a love for tangible beauty, including the desire to possess what is not meant to be ours. Even the worst such love can appear to be good because all love, by its very nature, has within it some element of good. This is why evil thrives when we allow ourselves to be deceived by any dishonesty.

An observation that applies only when we have the most profound understanding of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is that, from a spiritual perspective, it is possible to recognize goodness everywhere (even in what appears to be evil); but this is not an indulgence that should be afforded to those who are likely to abuse this insight for personal gain.

The gain of love is always distinguished by loss. What we lose of the consciousness of our own beauty, we gain in becoming conscious of beauty beyond us; what we lose of the consciousness of time and space, we gain in becoming conscious of eternity and infinity; what we lose of the concentrate of physical life, we gain in its dissolving in the water of spiritual life.

How can we use this knowledge to help us live in peace with others, whether we know them intimately or peripherally? The more we seek a tangible return on our loving, the more it indicates the tangible nature of our investment in that loving; so when we fail to receive an acceptable tangible return on such loving, the more we are likely to be unhappy. Therefore, we need to transform the very nature of our loving (of the investment itself) to a loving of the intangible (of the essence of whatever it is that we are tangibly loving) so that we may be at peace.

Loving the intangible, our return no longer reflects the external value of our investment but its underlying worth – a worth that is inextricably linked to (and unfailingly mirrors) the real value of what has been invested for how and what we love (outside us) now reflects nothing other than the quality of love that we have cultivated within us!

Spiritual caution

We should be careful not to associate with any human being any darkness that they may not deserve to have associated with them, lest it becomes the means of our justifying diminishing something that we are not entitled to diminish, some aspect of their right to a life of physical, economic, psychological, intellectual, social and spiritual dignity; for we, ultimately, become victims of the darkness we create.

Love, opposites and integrity

‘To love’ means to know integrity through knowing the true nature of opposites: to know the higher through the lower; to know formlessness through form; to heal the illness of appearing to be other than Divine and not knowing the true nature of what we are, by recognizing the Divine in everything, and knowing what we are not.

All desire stems from the need to fill some vacuum in our lives, and invariably results in our seeking the existence of ‘complementary opposites’ to help us counter whatever it is that is causing the vacuum. These opposites (whether we realize it or not) themselves ultimately negate or disprove the existence of whatever it is that gave rise to them. And in so doing, they enlighten us, eliminate the vacuum, and restore our essential integrity.

All desire therefore is associated with pain; and all love that springs from such desire inevitably is also painful – the pain lasting until the desire is fulfilled or the love requited. ‘Pure loving’ (on the other hand) is ‘needless loving’ – a loving that is not necessitated by the need to find something outside us to perfect something within us, but which is the expression of an inner perfection that itself perfects what is outside us. It is the natural outcome of an inner integrity demonstrated in a life of compassion.

As long as our vision of integrity remains incomplete we continue to need opposites, see opposites, seek opposites in order to restore what we deem is essential for our sense of balance – and we continue to be susceptible to pain.

When the need to know opposites (solely as opposites) is sublimated, our integrity starts to be expressed naturally through our actions, and our loving too becomes part of this natural expression. When pure loving replaces need-related loving, pain is replaced by contentment.

Both men and women have certain unique innate spiritual characteristics that may (to varying degrees) be termed ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. The feminine or earthy characteristics of the soul allow it to absorb and reflect Divine light; while the masculine transparent light of the spirit (that needs to be known) becomes known only when it is absorbed by the purest reflective ‘darkness’ or ‘emptiness’ or ‘nothingness’ that is capable of reflecting or revealing it as light.

But there are risks involved. The soul is vulnerable to believing that the darkness itself is beautiful, regardless of how well it reveals the light it is meant to reveal – while the spirit needs this very ‘covering’ of ‘darkness’ – effectively of love, so that it can be visible.

Therefore, if ‘to love’ means to know integrity through knowing the true nature of opposites, then knowledge of a knowable God can be considered knowledge of integrity through knowing (and surpassing the knowledge of) opposites. Through love, what is knowable of God becomes known. And despite love, what is not knowable about God remains unknown; for God cannot fully be known through knowing opposites alone (or even through surpassing opposites) as ultimately, God is beyond opposites.

Yet, through grace, when we reveal God in our beings (in becoming a light that shines through darkness) a Divine light that is beyond darkness is lit within us. This most complete knowing of the Divine, essentially, is the Divine knowing the Divine; for the ultimate knowledge of God is God’s prerogative alone.

Potential

Each moment is born with the whole of its potential intact – potential that is not diminished by what has gone before. So we should never fear that as a consequence of something that has happened in the past, we will in some respect always remain unfulfilled.

Generosity, what we see and our spirit

No one is perfect as themselves. It is God’s love for us, reflected in our loving one another, that makes us perfect. Imperfection is created when we are ungenerous to our spirit, fail to recognize the higher in what we see and see instead what we should be blind to.

It is love that adds substance or value to whatever we see. When we see a flower it is beautiful because we imbue our seeing with love – otherwise (primarily) it would be seen as something fragile, something that exists for a few days and then withers away, something that perpetually fails to fulfil its promise of beauty – and therefore is deceptive – almost deceitful.

Yet viewed with love flowers blossom, add colour to our lives, heal us with their softness, make us vulnerable to beauty with their fragility, entrance us with their shapes and colours and textures. They become the most enduring symbols and images we can find of beauty in the world.

The same applies to fire, steel, animals: everything we see. When we imbue our seeing with love, or are generous to what we see, we see infinite beauty and potential. When we withdraw that generosity, fire burns, destroys; steel is cold, kills; animals lack grace and goodness, and become objects of fear or hatred. For it is love that gives everything its wholesomeness, its beauty, its richness.

But what is it that we are really doing when we imbue our seeing with love, when we so generously make the imperfect perfect through our loving? What really are we seeing, when we see different textures of beauty in a flower or in anything that exists on earth?

Is it not the different textures of beauty of the very spirit that does the seeing, the loving? Only a loving spirit can imbue what it sees with beauty.

In seeing beauty in a flower, our spirit effectively says to us, ‘This is the nature of my beauty, the beauty of your spirit.’ And in seeing beauty in fire, or in steel, or in an animal, it effectively says, ‘and this’; and in seeing beauty in everything around us it says, ‘and this, and this’ – until its infinite beauty is revealed in its loving.

All beauty outside us exists within us (that is why we find it outside us). It is easy to appreciate a certain quality of beauty in the inanimate; we do not lower our estimation of steel because steel is hard (we simply find the right use for it!). Yet when human beings are said to be like steel, it can imply they are uncaring, stubborn, cold – or else firm, upstanding, principled!

The different qualities of steel are revealed in a more nuanced way in a human being than in a steel pipe, since what we see in a human being is a combination of what exists outside us (in the objective behaviour of another) and what exists within us (in our subjective perceptions of that behaviour).

When someone acts with integrity and we assess that action with integrity, the positive aspects of ‘steel’ are revealed. Without this integrity (either in the action, or in our assessment of it) its negative aspects are revealed.

Love and letting go

We have a tendency to think of love in big terms – often focusing on the importance of the love of a parent, a sibling, a partner, nature, art, beauty, or God. Yet all love is important – and its effect on us similar – so that if all we have ever loved in a lifetime is an insignificant plant or insect (for a single moment) that moment of love can suffice us for a lifetime – as much as a moment without love is loss for a lifetime.

The transformational effect of love is so great that love transforms ‘nothingness’ itself to selflessness or essence; so much so that when those who do not believe in the Divine demonstrate love in their living, they are in essence (without realizing it) as close to the Divine as any believer. This is so because the ‘distancing consequences’ of non-belief (when non-belief lacks the arrogance of not-believing) are intrinsically similar to the ‘distancing consequences’ of humility in a ‘true-believer’.

The most critical ‘distancing consequence’ is the creation of an empty space (of purity or clarity) between us and God that (metaphorically speaking) can be ‘filled with Divine light’; or that, expressed differently, enables us to recognize that we ourselves are this light. Since true humility is not easy for anyone to attain, an atheist who lacks arrogance may potentially be closer to truly knowing the Divine than a believer who is over-confident of his or her believing.

Therefore, before we claim we love the Divine, we should consider that if we loved anything without reservation, for a single moment, we would probably die instantly – if not physically, certainly inwardly!

It is always safer not to consider ourselves ‘spiritual’ for, invariably, we will be lacking in some way. What is preferable, regardless of the nature of our occupation, is to live ‘ordinarily’ – from day to day – like a labourer – fixing cracks, sweeping floors, keeping things tidy – doing basic remedial things that hardly seem useful to anyone.

Occasionally, if we are fortunate, we may become lost, and find ourselves in the same terrain where those who are truly spiritual live through God’s grace. In a moment of undue optimism, or foolishness, we may imagine God saying to us, ‘I don’t know how you got here, but since you are here you may as well stay’ and so we may stay.

What does all this really mean as far as love is concerned? Love should be accompanied by a letting go of any understanding (even of love) before it becomes inflexible. Inflexibility prevents an understanding from deepening, widening, changing, evolving – thus destroying the very essence of why we seek understanding in the first place.

Flexibility prevents arrogance, stagnation, and ultimately illusion (or delusion) taking root in our minds. Our loving will always benefit from letting go of any understanding of love that is debilitating or which limits our ability to love fully. Letting go does not mean allowing love to die, but negating the need to possess what we love.

The secret of loving is (at once) to be in love and not ‘be in love’, to love and yet not succumb to loving selfishly, to be near to love even when we seem far from love. Or perhaps there is no secret, and we should just get on with it. And once we have fixed the cracks, swept the floors, tidied up, we may consider doing the dishes, reading a book, or writing a letter; and if we are fortunate, find, at the end of it all, that unknowingly we have lived a life of love.

Hope and doubt

What good is a saddle of hope

On a horse named Doubt?

When a flame is extinguished by the wind and the candle has to be relit, the flame does not refuse to come alive because it was not respected by the wind. When we have to function as a flame, we too cannot remain discouraged forever by what a wind occasionally thinks of us.

Giving

Everything around us (whether animate or inanimate) is continuously giving up something of itself – so that it can be known both as itself and as other than itself. Day forever gives up its light to become night; and night forever gives up its own light to become day. In dying as, or in diminishing as itself (in some way) each proves the impermanency of the ‘opposites that exist within its nature’, and reveals the integrity existing in its essence.

Giving or letting go helps us to see whatever we see of the world – as we only see something when we give up seeing something else. When the sun sets and everything starts to fade (gives up something of itself) it creates an overarching beauty that far surpasses the beauty we would otherwise notice of a sea, a shore, a sky, and birds.

Even holding on to seemingly sublime thoughts or dreams can be enervating unless they lead us to more challenging thoughts or dreams. Ageing thoughts and dreams often are the cause of inflexibility, stagnation and harshness.

The very words and thoughts that help us to understand the Divine and express our appreciation of beauty often themselves become the limitations that prevent us from knowing what we want to know more deeply or expressing what we want to express more clearly.

When we seek the Divine within anything, we should seek the flexibility that exists within the seemingly inflexible, the firmness that exists within the seemingly soft, the curve inherent in a straight line, the fullness that exists in everything that seems empty.

In the physical world, the nature of the presence of the Divine within something is probably best understood as the potential for (reflecting) perfection that exists within that thing. Falsehood is created whenever any notion of God becomes fixed, for every understanding that makes God knowable also diminishes God in some way!

The very existence of the Divine within the human is made possible through the intrinsic quality of ‘giving’ that forms the essence of all existence. This ‘giving’ acquires form when God ‘creates’ us so that God may be known and we ourselves become all there is to know: the creation of the imperfect making knowledge of the perfect possible.

Since it is inconceivable that God can allow imperfection to exist in reality, the physical world fluctuates between being physical and spiritual – continuously losing and instantly regaining its spiritual nature – appearing to be constantly physical – yet, essentially, remaining spiritual. Were it not for this act of Divine mercy we would forever be stranded in the physical world.

In apparently creating otherness or imperfection (in effectively creating ‘nothing’), God becomes ‘completely’ knowable (to the extent that God can be known through love). When we reject a way of understanding that limits itself to this imperfection that our sight and intellect constantly present to us, we not only refute the possibility that anything other than the Divine exists, we also validate God’s integrity.

Otherwise, we negate the limitless potential of the Divine and the mercy that makes it possible for the world to exist in the form it does without succumbing to this form. The essence of love is giving. The essence of giving is humility. Humility not only makes us human, it makes us divine.

Ego

If we give the camel of our ego enough water to drink, it will be prepared to carry us across any harsh desert. But if we have no water left for ourselves, will we survive?

Freedom

We know the benefits of freedom; ultimately, the freedom to define in a myriad ways the meanings of the words that most shape our existence: love, justice, peace – whatever we consider to be the most precious gifts of the Divine.

Being free, we are able to shape both our physical and our spiritual landscapes: we can remain chained to perceptions that limit us when we might perceive a new horizon if we cared to, or we can grapple with thoughts of being divine even as we are learning to be human.

When we are finally free of the ‘burden of being human’, we lose the ability to malign or demean others who remain attached to values that, we think, limit them. We lose the freedom to be less than we know ourselves to be.

We fail freedom when our words become bigger than us: when the fruit of freedom grows on a tree whose branches remain undeveloped (when we are lacking in knowledge, understanding, or compassion). For the ultimate proof of our understanding of the biggest words is to be found in how they influence us in the minutest ways. Whenever we fail, our failing has tragic consequences.

Believing that we alone know the strength of freedom, we trample into the dust those who do have not the strength to resist us; caught up in our own understanding of love, we become disdainful of those who love what we love, without loving as we love; believing in the superiority of our own beliefs, we assume inferiority in the beliefs of others; wanting peace for ourselves, we destroy the peace of others when it does not enhance our own.

If, instead of being ritually violent and promoting this violence as an unavoidable sacrifice that has to be made at the altar of our conscience, we alter our conscience and avoid all violence, and if, instead of merely engaging in ritual worship, we occasionally become more vulnerable and ask love to guide us, we may indeed become worthy of the gift of freedom that we possess.

For even in a snail that takes an eternity to traverse the smallest distance, even in a leaf that has turned yellow on a rotting plant, even in the confusion that words create as we reveal what they try to conceal of our behaviour, there is something of the Divine at work: something of a love that will not succumb to despair, something of a freedom whose essence we can never completely lose, for its very boundaries make understanding of the infinite possible.

Giving and receiving

What we give to others is valuable.

What we receive from others is priceless.

One way of finding the key to the heart when we have lost it, is through the redemption of service or practical giving, where our very restlessness, when harnessed, allows us the opportunity of rediscovering something essential of love and compassion: helps us to find the lost key to grace.

Emptiness

When we try to create an ‘emptiness’ within our minds that we hope will become a haven of peace, we run the risk of creating instead the absence of God in our hearts. For, instead of our minds becoming ‘empty’ of unwanted thoughts, our hearts can become empty of the love of God.

It is safer to purify our thoughts by purifying our hearts. When we establish the presence of the Divine within us through becoming ‘absent’, no longer conscious of being separate from the Divine, we no longer need to be more than (or other than) we are already, to be at peace.

In consciously trying to achieve such emptiness, we run the risk of damaging the fabric on which a unique presence of the Divine is painted at our birth. We may mistakenly paint over the original painting, and create a new painting by blanking out the original, without even realizing that it exists on the canvas we are painting over. Or we may simply stop after blanking out the original, believing this to be the emptiness we are seeking.

On the other hand, if we allow this emptiness to come into being by becoming less self-conscious, the Divine within us would itself unveil the original painting on the fabric of our purified consciousness; and the beauty of the original itself would be so great that our minds would instantly become empty of everything else that exists.

The spiritual and the physical

The spiritual, even when it is revealed by the physical, is not only not bound by the boundaries that define the physical, but (paradoxically) the boundaries themselves allow us to gain (spiritual) insights that surpass those revealed by the original entity viewed (in isolation) purely as a physical entity. Invariably, this new variegated light comes into existence through the integration of opposites, though this also creates new opposites (and as a result, new possibilities for knowing the spiritual).

Being ‘stranded in this world’

If the physical world were purely physical, we should be ‘stranded in this world’, unable to return to the (spiritual) source of our existence. But in reality the physical is spiritual, even when it is physical. What this means is that whatever exists does not really exist in the form it appears to exist; and what presents as The Book of Existence, in reality is nothing but The Book of Essence.

For this essence to be known – as light, or as anything at all – a consciousness of otherness first has to be ‘born’ – and (through this consciousness) otherness ‘created’. Our consciousness, in seeking to understand this essence ‘interprets’ or ‘translates’ it, in the process giving rise to (the multi-faceted light of) physical existence. What exists in knowable form, therefore, may be considered as ‘light upon light’ or ‘light within light’, particularly when our consciousness is sufficiently quiet or subdued – and able to reflect Divine light (‘interpret’ or ‘translate’ it) with minimal distortion.

But how can this understanding make our day-to-day existence happier, and help us to avoid finding ourselves stranded in this world? How can we live physically yet, at the same time, have a tangible spiritual existence?

Whatever exists in our consciousness exists in a certain form because we focus on certain aspects of it (to the exclusion of other aspects) that effectively constitute that form. Even if we require a friend, we constitute a friend by focusing on the qualities someone has that we consider essential in a friend; and when we no longer require a friend, we focus on the qualities someone has that make it easy for us to dismiss that person as a friend.

When our focus becomes too firm, when we give too much weight to ourselves or to our ego, we tend to create (out of the infinite meanings we are capable of finding for our existence) a ponderous existence that is often jaundiced, prejudiced, or lonely. Therefore, unless our encounters with others and with the world remain fresh and open to new insights, we will never be free of what is outside us that prevents us from doing justice to what is within us.

Since everything in its natural state and its natural place is completely weightless, even an atom’s weight of self-consciousness that creates an existence which is un-natural ‘outweighs the world’, and it is this heaviness that we create that can cause us to be stranded in the physical world, sabotaging the grace and mercy of God that makes the physical itself weightless and essentially spiritual.

Divine light reflects best on the pure ‘nothingness’ of a subdued consciousness, the light of a higher consciousness revealing the integrity of Divine existence – restoring us (and all existence that is born from the activity of our ‘seeking’ or ‘translating’ consciousness) to original light –undistorted by our conscious understanding of it.

Restored to original light, we become one with everything around us, the physical ‘dissolves’ into the spiritual, and we overcome the danger of being stranded in this world.

Balance

When we are unhappy with someone because something they have said or done has hurt us, we have two choices: we can either cross out the incident (and the best way of doing this is by weighing it against something else that they may have said or done that has pleased us or helped us) or we can cross out the person – a very drastic act. So often we cross out the person! And in doing so we not only delete the wrong-doer as a wrong-doer, we eliminate a person who is also a good-doer!

Attachment and detachment

Too great an attachment to another, without sufficient detachment from our baser selves, reflects possessiveness more than love: an attachment possibly clouded by some fear or arrogance that can even make us destructive.

Too extreme a detachment from others can also become a form of attachment to ourselves. Ultimately, the proof of any wholesome detachment is to be found in the nature of the attachment that results.

Consider the colour red or the colour green. What is it that makes us attached to red or to green? We could be attached to red or to green for any number of reasons; most would relate to our genetic make-up, our nature, our experiences, or the ‘self’ and what it thinks of itself.

If we are initially attracted to red, and then attracted to green, at some precise moment we relinquish or diminish our attraction to red.

Attachment and detachment are closely related as there can be no attachment without detachment. In the above example, a basic attraction has been replaced by another basic attraction, an attraction to another colour.

Since the new attachment is also a basic one, it is unlikely to have significantly higher value to us than the original attachment. In such instances, where we relinquish one basic attraction for another, the new attachment occurs first, and then detachment from the old follows. Although there is detachment in a nominal sense, in essence, the original attachment remains.

But there are times when colours lose their individual attractiveness. In such moments of integration, the vision of the higher is made possible through a more substantive detachment from the lower – when red or green no longer seem as beautiful individually as when they are part of a ‘world of colour’ together with other colours.

This attraction to the higher (to beauty, as opposed to an object of beauty) invariably occurs when detachment from the lower precedes attachment to the higher. We, too, are created anew, attached to the higher, transformed into spirit, integrated into essence, through detachment!

Insights gained from opposites

Insights gained from knowledge of opposites are essential for our spiritual enlightenment, particularly when we are beginning a quest for a deeper understanding of integrity; but as any profound work of art demonstrates, the higher the level of integration of opposites within the work of art, or the more nuanced or subtle the opposites that are the outcome of its creation, the more sublime (or spiritual) the work of art is considered to be.

Loving without attachment

A friend wrote as follows: All religious teachers say that we must love, but not be attached. I have always found it difficult to differentiate between the two. He then went on to say that he had found this beautiful saying in the Upanishads (cling to the one who does not cling; and so clinging, cease to cling) and asked for my response.

This was my response.

When should we love? And when should we prefer to be compassionate rather than ‘loving’?

In the physical world, the presence of God co-exists with the absence of God. ‘Creating’ the physical world through our consciousness of light, we bring light into knowable existence, as love. The presence (appearance) of a physical world effectively creates the potential for knowing the existence of God. But in loving the world (as the world) we simultaneously create the absence of God in the world.

Love, therefore, is both an act of creation and an act of annihilation. Paradoxically, this functioning-together, of creation and annihilation, is essential for our ultimately knowing God. In truly loving someone we cannot only be attached to the person we love. We must simultaneously let go of our attachment to ourselves.

Since both the lover and the loved are essentially one, they do not need the clinging (the tangible manifestation of loving) as much as they need to be known as love – need to be light that becomes visible in darkness.

All loving (in its highest form) is a loving of beauty beyond us, whose existence can only be known within us. When we are concerned that any love might degenerate into an unhealthy attachment, we should convert our love to compassion. This compassion is a love that does not cling; one that annihilates all that negates the beauty of loving.

Living ethically

One way of bypassing sorrow is by trying to live up to the highest expectations we can reasonably have of ourselves at all times. Then, if someone has high expectations of us, we will be unlikely to disappoint them; and if, despite our striving to live ethically or compassionately we sometimes fail, or are perceived to have failed, we will not be devastated by this failure.

But a word of warning is needed here: we must be careful not to deceive ourselves that our behaviour is as ethical or as compassionate as it could or should be when it is not. Whenever we have something tangible to gain or lose from our behaviour, we need to exercise even greater care in our self-assessment.

The non-existence of spiritual contradictions

Sometimes we make an anguished reference to a light that is fading, and at other times, an ecstatic reference to a light that is endlessly bright. How can both be true?

Consider a tree that is rooted to the earth and dependent for its life on water, the equivalent of ‘light’ to someone seeking spiritual nourishment. When the roots of the tree receive water, light exists as far as the tree is concerned.

When there is a drought, and its roots are denied water, the tree may start withering. If it could feel pain, it would be anguished, for it would now effectively know darkness, the opposite of light; in this case, a shortage of water.

The tree’s very identity as a tree is threatened without water. If it sees itself as a symbol of firmness, or as a provider of fruit or shade (if it sees these as the essence of a worthwhile or purposeful existence) it might feel a great sense of darkness, and know the pain we might know when observing the fading of essential light.

But what if the tree has already been uprooted and has already lost its memory of being earthed? An uprooted tree that has lost its memory of being earthed is the equivalent of a human being who no longer needs to see earthly light as physical light.

No longer needing physical light – water – the uprooted tree can now be considered to have moved beyond the grasp of light and darkness. The tree, effectively, has become ‘spiritually enlightened’; and if words are needed to express this enlightenment, the tree may choose to say that it now knows ‘endless light’.

What makes an uprooted tree (a dying or dead tree – one that we nearly always would consider to be less useful than a living, vibrant, shade-providing, or fruit-bearing tree) more worthy of being considered ‘enlightened’ than a tree that is alive and rooted to the earth?

Unless there is some value in its dying (even if that value is known only to itself) its enlightenment would be meaningless. It is far better (common sense tells us) to be rooted (and at times even know pain, or darkness) than to be uprooted and useless, but presumably ‘enlightened’ (in a meaningless way) especially if other trees in the vicinity remain rooted and appear to be thriving – with happy families picnicking beneath them.

What the uprooted tree offers us, is this: in giving up the desire to be ‘a tree’, we become free to be almost anything we choose to be. Being ‘a tree’ is a stage in a journey that inevitably must continue, from forever being rooted to the earth, forever in need of light, forever fearful of darkness, to being a lighter spirit.

There are times when, rooted to the earth (as we should be) we know the pain of fading light. And there are times when, uprooted by love, we know the joy of endless light.

Unity and multiplicity

From God’s perspective, ‘giving up’ the right to exist alone (even if this occurs only in God’s imagination) is the highest form of giving imaginable. From our perspective, giving up the right to remain attached to multiplicity, validating God’s belief that through multiplicity we will discover unity, is the highest form of giving imaginable.

Selfishness and selflessness

Without understanding the challenges hidden within selflessness, and what is redemptive about selfishness, we cannot complete our loving, for we will then either simply avoid people who we consider are inclined to be selfish, or become angry at their selfish behaviour.

And since it is impossible to be angry and content at the same time, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for us to be happy. True happiness requires that love both suffices us and makes us content: empties our hearts of every concern, so that the detachment purifies our happiness.

Selfishness (whether a benign negligence or a malevolent negation of our presence) has at least one useful benefit – provided we respond to it without rancour (provided we respond to it with selflessness): as much as it can hurt us, and diminish our freedom, it can grant us the opportunity to be free of what we may not otherwise be free.

The selfishness of others towards us lessens our ‘burdens’ – not of loving them, being good to them, or helping them if they need help – but that of being overly tied to them (except in respect of what is the highest within their essence – an essence that might even be hidden to them).

This freedom completes the axis of a full and productive existence, and provides the basis of much that is precious in our lives. In fact, to the extent that we do not find this relief in any naturally selfish behaviour of others towards us, we generate it in how we behave towards others.

Selfishness can be as valuable for our day-to-day living as selflessness. Therefore, our response to any kind of selfish behaviour displayed towards us should be free of anger or hurt to the greatest extent possible, though this response may fluctuate from time to time: we should always try to restore our equilibrium as soon as we are able to do so.

Both selfishness and selflessness are essential aspects of the freedom we need for a full life. Selfishness provides us the same enlightenment (ultimately) as selflessness – but through what we perceive as ‘darkness’ rather than ‘light’.

How can selflessness diminish some freedom that we may possess? The selflessness of others towards us may permit us to generate new associations, but it may also limit our freedom if it necessitates our becoming indebted to them.

The giving to us of something by others (in their selflessly sharing something of themselves with us) or the taking by us of something that belongs to others (in the acquisition of something, even some knowledge, they possess) makes us indebted to them for whatever we have taken, which now constitutes an essential part of our own beings.

Since selflessness can compromise our freedom when we perceive it needs to be compensated, when we ourselves are selfless and help others we have a responsibility to free those we help from the need to feel grateful to such an extent that it causes them loss. True selflessness is an almost careless giving that does not seek reward.

The unhappiness we feel at the selfishness of others often arises from a need which we may have for love or support not being fulfilled. When this need diminishes, our unhappiness also diminishes. We can reduce this need through effort, in learning to help ourselves, and through wisdom, learning to understand ourselves, others, and the world better.

Light and darkness

God is beyond light and darkness. In fact, everything that exists, even in this world, is essentially beyond light and darkness, or else love as justice and justice as love, so vital for integrity to prevail, would not be possible.

As difficult as it may be to perceive in a world of death, destruction and devastation, beyond the barriers of sight and intellect all is perfect, all is light. We would not other-wise find goodness and beauty where we least expect it to be present.

Justice itself is possible only because of the presence of darkness. And yet darkness, paradoxically, is impossible because of the presence of justice. Neither love nor justice, both of which exist because of the coming into being of darkness, can co-exist with darkness. They immediately destroy the darkness which gives them life.

Even the light we call light is an ‘illusion’. Everything we consider light or darkness, in reality, reveals an integrity beyond light and darkness. Ultimately, only perfection is possible, as only the perfect, the Divine, exists.

It is in the physical world itself that we can find a comprehensive meaning of integrity – find wholesomeness where it would otherwise be impossible to find, in our day-to-day living – primarily through perfecting our own character.

Perfecting our character requires us to find the Divine within us and in everything around us; requires us to live our lives in consonance with what we consider to be the highest in the nature of the Divine.

In perfecting our character, not only must we learn to be compassionate, we must also be prepared to confront injustice when we find it; and yet, at a profound spiritual level we should be aware that seeing imperfection outside us also reflects imperfection within us. Our unhappiness is a double-edged sword for we can only overcome what we perceive as imperfection outside us by overcoming the imperfections within us. We must be careful though that this insight does not lull us into passivity, as can easily happen if our understanding is superficial.

To be loving we need to ‘become love’. This requires that we consider ourselves less than we are, to enable us to see in ourselves an essence which we would not otherwise be able to see. Humility is the essence of all loving, and true loving the source of peace and happiness.

Unhappiness invariably arises from believing that we are (worth) more than we (really) are – more than the essence that constitutes the core of all existence – effectively, more than anything and everything else that exists. This belief arises from an arrogance that in day-to-day living is reflected in a lack of generosity or charity towards others, and in an over-attachment to ourselves (in selfishness) that is often revealed in an inability to love or to forgive.

What makes us can also destroy us; what we may require to succeed in the physical world may ruin any chance we have of succeeding spiritually. The only way of succeeding in both worlds is by seeing beyond both worlds, seeing the existence of integrity everywhere.

Knowing God

There is a Prophetic saying that in order to know God we have to know ourselves; we understand this to mean our essential selves. We also know that since love is ‘knowable Divine light’, loving, which is the highest form of knowing, is ‘knowing Divine light’; and every act of practical loving (kindness, generosity, compassion) is a nuanced tangible expression of enlightenment – of this knowing.

There is another Prophetic saying that in order to know God beyond the limitations of what we imagine God to be, we have to ‘die before we die’. Dying to everything other than our essential selves, therefore, is the highest form of loving. Again, in practical terms, it means less pampering to what is selfish and greater accent on being selfless.

As much as we may believe that ultimate truth exists, the reality is that we may never know this truth objectively; but subjugating our subjectivity brings us closer. As we are all different, each of us having a unique consciousness of ourselves, we also have a unique consciousness of what is ‘other than ourselves’ or of ‘light and darkness’.

If stones could feel, they would have an entirely different understanding of water to that of plants (if they could feel). Stones and plants remain what they are in water. They know something of the truth of water; but they are also limited in their knowing by their very nature.

For water (on the other hand) or for our essence to really know itself, it needs stones, plants, sand (needs the whole world) so that by flowing against and touching each ‘soul’ that exists, it may come to know itself in its fullness.

Spiritual seeking

Almost everyone agrees that true enlightenment is almost impossible to attain without the guidance of a qualified teacher. But what if there is no evident teacher of the ‘higher’ who can guide us on this journey? We may then have to rely on other teachers, those we find in abundance – the many teachers of the ‘lower’ all around us.

Although the spiritual path seems to be the ‘high road’ to God, if we cannot learn of the higher from the higher, we can still learn of the higher from the lower. That which is taught by some teachers in their speaking, is the same as that which is taught by other teachers in their silence!

The inanimate are as good teachers as the animate. The ‘low road’ to God is no different from the ‘high road’. The Divine is present in the lowest of what we see around us, as in the highest.

Gifts of love and gifts of non-love

We always like receiving gifts, often feel we receive fewer gifts than we deserve, and generally we consider gifts of pure love the most scarce. One way of overcoming the deficit is to discover hidden value in the numerous gifts of non-love – criticism, prejudice, anger – that we receive every day.

For hidden in non-love is a seed of love that has not yet flowered! If we see only the absence of love in non-love, inevitably we will be unhappy: unkind or unfair criticism will make us unkind or unfair, being ignored will cause us to ignore others, and our response to prejudice (swiftly or eventually) will be to become angry or destructive.

But gifts of non-love are just as important as gifts of love. An analogy might help to explain this. Wherever there is emptiness or absence, it creates the movement that allows presence to come into existence. For instance, we are able to know a flower most deeply when we create the absence (in our consciousness) of everything that is not essential for the deepest understanding of a flower.

A flower exists on the periphery of our consciousness when it is one of many things we see at once, moves to the centre when we see it alone or see everything that is around it reflecting or augmenting its beauty – when whatever is associated with it loses its own essence for us (say, the vase loses its hardness) so that the essence of the flower can be known in its fullness.

Non-love (the vase’s hardness) once sufficiently subdued, (effectively, transformed by love) now itself enhances the beauty of the flower, giving its softness a new dimension.

But where is the elusive flower when we are given a gift of non-love that does not come to us in a vase of flowers? The flower is what flowers within us when we receive this gift of non-love. It can be the most beautiful flower in the world, if that is what we want it to be.

On the other hand, if we are too sensitive to insults, and value ourselves, our beliefs, or our loving too greatly, the ‘vase’ will quickly fill up with our anger and hurt.

Every gift is a gift of love. ‘Sacrificing’ the hardness of the vase we enhance the beauty of flowers, sacrificing our love for flowers (as flowers) we give birth to a higher love, for beauty itself. Everywhere absence gives birth to presence.

Love as knowable or 'dark' light,

and mystery

Light becomes knowable through the creation of borders or boundaries. But these very borders or boundaries, which contain or create mystery and allow mystery to be known (effectively, to be born – a knowable God is born within us – as love) also hide a deeper mystery which can only be known through the removal of these borders.

In order to become love or knowable light, light has to be darkened, revealing mystery (allowing borders to become visible – allowing knowledge to form from a combination of light and darkness) through initially hiding mystery.

A useful analogy is a cloud (formed from the coalescing of different elements) that hides the rain until it is ready to dissolve: the initial boundary (or cloud) brings knowledge to light, but then the cloud has to dissolve (die) for new knowledge or a deeper mystery (rain) to be born.

When we start to doubt whether the new knowledge will be as useful to us as the knowledge we have to let go in order to acquire the new, we often reinforce the boundary around our original understanding, and this effectively limits our ability to acquire new knowledge.

As we become more certain of the existence of a greater mystery, we are able to relinquish unessential boundaries more easily – are able to love more easily – and become the knowable light of the Divine we are meant to be.

Oneness and otherness

Why does our loving so often go astray? Just believing we must be good because we think we love a God who is the epitome of love, justice, or mercy, is inadequate if we do not understand what love, justice and mercy truly mean – if we do not know what it is we truly love – for such loving itself can be an expression of deep selfishness.

Can loving anything other than the essence of existence ever be completely satisfying? How would we know when we are deceiving ourselves? And why should we want to know – when our success at what we are accomplishing (even when we are motivated by ignorance, greed, anger, fear, or desire for vengeance) often depends on convincing ourselves and others that we are being good, caring, or humane; so much so that sometimes, obscenely, we even say to those we are killing, maiming, or dehumanizing, that our actions are for their own good!

One way of knowing is by asking: would we like what we are doing to others to be done to us if the circumstances were reversed? Would we bear the harm being inflicted on us with the same equanimity with which we inflict harm on others? Would we benignly agree with our tormentors if they suggested that all the ruin they are heaping on us is for our own good?

Can we truly love another human being or anything that exists if we see that human being or aspect of creation as being wholly separate from our own essence? If this is impossible, then claiming to love anyone who essentially remains an ‘other’ has no real value.

On the other hand, if we see our own essence reflected everywhere around us it becomes impossible for us not to love others – as their existence now constitutes another aspect or dimension of our own existence, a dimension that effectively completes our own existence and essence!

Otherness is born only so that its very existence can be refuted through love, so that oneness can become known as the reality that underlies all existence. For as long as intrinsic otherness remains, only half of what constitutes true loving is complete – the half that identifies what can be loved. When otherness is born, love itself is born; but it is only when otherness dies that love becomes complete.

Understanding that what appears as intrinsic otherness only arises as a result of some deficiency in our loving is possible only when our loving overwhelms us. When we forget what roots us to the physical, love enables us to whirl around an inner light that ultimately transforms our earthiness itself to light.

The key to loving

God is perfect because God loves the imperfect. The key to loving God therefore is simple; we need to find the most flawed presence around us, love that, and we love God; for there is no way of consciously accessing flawlessness except through the flaw that perfects flawlessness – love.

Love, imperfection and perfection, illness and its cure

In a world of duality, love is both imperfection (an illness) and perfection (a cure). All love is flawed because we are flawed; we create imperfection, and effectively make God seem imperfect by understanding God imperfectly. And yet all love is perfect because God is perfect, so in a world of oneness with the Divine we too are perfect.

The illness can only be cured when the cure itself becomes the illness. Love (as illness) can only be cured when love itself (as perfection) becomes the cure for love! But since imperfection cannot really exist within perfection (or as perfection) the illness is merely an illusion that is created so that the cure may be known; perfection alone exists.

God is both love as we know and experience it and, at the same time, beyond everything that we can experience as love. When we love (as much as that experience of loving may be flawed) the flawed experience is also perfect, as it is only through the illness that such a flawed experience constitutes, that the cure for the illness, love that rejects the existence of essential imperfection or otherness and affirms Divine integrity or oneness, can be known.

All day-to-day loving – whether it is rational or irrational, confident or diffident, calming or disquieting, consistent or inconsistent – contains an element of perfection in it that is beyond any visible imperfection – as the knowing of perfection through love, is the knowing of perfection through ‘imperfection’.

The highest love is to be found in knowing God beyond imperfection, where we cease to be (the illness), where only God or perfection exists, where what appears to be the highest human knowing of the Divine is nothing other than a Divine knowing of the Divine (God knowing God).

The existence of love (as knowable Divine light) is made possible through trust – through God’s trusting that through the existence of love (as illness) we will be cured of the real illness of not recognizing His or Her essential perfection within and beyond all that we are aware of.

Even in day-to-day living, trust is the ground or earth on which love takes root. The highest trust reflects the highest innocence, purity, or humility which is required of us to recognize the essential integrity of another as our own.

Without this trust there can be no flowering or becoming, evolving or growing: for we would have no foundation for being truly compassionate, no way out of the darkness of otherness, no way of being a cure for the ‘illness’ of being.

Human and Divine consciousness,

and the gift and challenge of form

‘Human consciousness’ effectively, may be thought of as the awareness of God of what is ‘beyond’ God; and ‘Divine Consciousness’ as the awareness of God of what is ‘within’ God. Form is the ‘emptiness’ that is created when Divine Consciousness ‘suspends’ its knowledge of Divine nature in order to make human consciousness possible – in order to constitute the ‘illusion’ that can provide knowledge of opposites to God without compromising God’s integrity.

The emptiness (the silence, absence, or silencing of God) may be considered a musical instrument through whose ‘sound’ the knowable light of the Divine is born: its music enables the presence of the Divine to be heard or known outside (the instrument). Divine sound may be thought of as being created from the rippling or quivering of human consciousness brushing against Divine consciousness.

This sound transforms formlessness into tangible form. Ultimately, all appearance of form arises from sound, and all disappearance of form is the result of its dissolving in Divine sound.

It is important that when we (physically) see, we do not only see, but ‘hear’ with our eyes. If we were only to see, we would only see the physical everywhere. If we ‘hear’ what we are seeing, we will not just see, but hear the music of the Divine and know the Divine everywhere.

Our physical sight is limiting because when we see (only), we only see the musical instrument. But it is what we actually hear (when we see the musical instrument) that determines what we are really seeing.

Otherwise, all we will be doing is describing the physical features of the musical instrument, and since we would not have heard anything, we might then complain that the music is an illusion.

In the existence of form lies a great gift, and also a great challenge. It is not possible for love (the knowable light of the Divine) to exist without form, but knowing the Divine through form is fraught with danger: unless we listen deeply, we may fail to hear the music within the silence.

The nature of creation

When other-consciousness forms within Divine conscious-ness it creates a mirror of emptiness, the soul, which is capable both of reflecting Divine light as Divine light, and of self-consciously imagining itself to be intrinsic light.

Self-consciousness distorts the reflection of the original light and forces the mirror to come face to face with its own imperfection when compared to the light it (our souls, we) originally reflected.

In reality, what is reflected in the mirror (in our souls) when our self-consciousness is subdued, is the endless potential for perfection that exists within the original light. Other-consciousness itself, is an illusion that allows perfection to be known; and exists only in the imagination or mind of the Divine, in its seeking to know the meaning of its own perfection through knowing imperfection.

All existence is a reflection of the inner on the inner – though this existence may often seem to us, each with our unique sensitivity or ‘subtlety of consciousness’, to be purely an outer existence, or an inner existence reflected ‘outside’ itself. In reality the inner is reflected on an outer that is also the inner – as there really is no inner or outer and the mirror itself is a ‘multi-dimensional’ mirror.

Not only is the universe multi-dimensional, a multitude of multi-dimensional universes exist. But simultaneously, every existence is merely an imagined existence whose imprint on our souls varies, depending on how the unique qualities inherent in our individual consciousness trans-late essential light into knowable light.

Our individual consciousness is simply one of the infinite dimensions of self-consciousness that arise from the initial ‘darkening’ (or subduing) of Divine consciousness.

This darkening may also be thought of as the ‘covering’ of the ‘container’ of emptiness – where Divine energy converts to vibrations (sounds) on rippling against self-consciousness; the sounds convert to thoughts that reflect as light on the mirror of self-consciousness (on the soul) – effectively reflecting ‘outside the Divine’ the potential for myriad forms of perfection ‘within the Divine’.

As human consciousness is simply the capacity created within Divine consciousness for its potential to reflect Divine presence through Divine absence, this perfection ultimately is really reflected within the consciousness of the Divine itself. The reflected light becomes aware of the existence of its ultimate perfection when it overcomes the confusion caused by self-consciousness.

The original light restores the world and us to oneness, creating within us an emptiness of other than the Divine, removing the notion of otherness through transforming our understanding of creation itself; as elucidated by the understanding of the real nature of the existence of a book lying unread on my table.

There is a book on my table. But as I have not yet read or acknowledged it, effectively there is no book on my table. It is only when I read it, if I read it, that it will become a book (to me). But then what I read (really) will become my book and will no longer be the author’s book – as I will make of it what I want to; effectively, in reading the book, I will be rewriting the book.

But, at the same time, the author’s book (which is no longer the author’s book) on my table will never (really) be my book, and as my book is only in my head, and has not been written, there is no book (really) on the table, that can truly be considered mine (or that exists).

So, although there is a book on my table and always will be, there is no book on my table and never will be. The book is only the author’s book for as long as the author has not written it down! And yet it is also not a book until the author has written it down! Immediately the author writes it, paradoxically, it is no longer the author’s book; its existence is destroyed or refuted by its existence itself – as much as its existence in the author’s head (at some point) can only be established by its physical existence.

If creation has indeed been created, it has been destroyed by the very act of creation at the moment of its creation. What now exists is only our imagination of that original creation – as revealed to us by the nature of our individual consciousness of physical creation. Yet this creation is different from the creation that was conceived in the mind of the original creator, where it will always exist as a book whose meaning the creator alone knows.

Let us now consider the perennial philosophical question of what came first: a mother or a child, fruit or seed.

Since a child cannot exist without the existence of a mother and a mother cannot exist without the existence of a child, both must come into existence simultaneously for either to be known to exist, for the moment either were to seem to exist only as itself, it would refute the knowable existence of the other. This implies that a child can only become a child when it comes into existence in the mind of a mother (when it is known or loved by a mother) who exists simultaneously in the mind of the child.

As far as the creation of the world is concerned it implies that the world can only become the world when it comes into existence in the mind of God (when it is known or loved by God) who exists simultaneously in the mind of the world (in our minds).

Similarly, before fruit is fruit (before the world becomes known as a physical world) it is a thought (it has a spiritual existence) in the mind of the seed (in the mind of the Divine). But once it is fruit (once it transforms into knowable existence) in the mind of the seed (in the mind of the Divine) it becomes seed (the Divine) in the mind of the fruit (in our minds) – becomes the spiritual within the soul of the physical; the physical now exists within the spiritual, and the spiritual within the physical.

The fruit is in the seed and the seed is in the fruit. Neither exists (is knowable) before the other exists (is knowable). Yet both exist (are knowable) when either exists (is knowable). Neither is real (really knowable) until the other is real (really knowable). Yet both are real when either is real, as each is the cause of the knowable existence of the other. Both have to exist simultaneously as the other if they are to exist (in knowable form) at all.

To be ‘the other’ (to be physical without being spiritual – or vice versa) is as impossible as it is for either to exist (in knowable form) alone. In the physical world (in the book that is created in our minds) we are, simultaneously, both human and divine. But in God’s mind (where the real book of creation exists in its uncreated form) we forever remain a dimension of spiritual essence.

Helplessness

We need great inner subtlety, and fairly considerable knowledge and insight, to understand even day-to-day complexity; and great flexibility in dealing with even the most basic challenges in order to sustain our happiness. Imagine how much more difficult it is to sustain this happiness when the challenges we face are profound.

One way of overcoming this huge hurdle is to develop a helplessness; not the helplessness of a victim unable to protect himself or herself from harm, but the helplessness of someone who rises above a debilitating or destructive understanding of good and bad, success and failure.

Through such helplessness – through an utter inability to stop loving, permanently, any created being or thing – we may (if we are fortunate, aided by grace beyond our ken) become truly human, and triumph over anger and fear.

Humility

Before I share some thoughts with you on how we may be able to relate to the Divine with greater humility – to a God that, hopefully, is not the creation of our imagination, nor the extension of our egos – with a love that, hopefully, is not the expression of a deep and profound selfishness – here is a personal story.

Recently, on the day of Eid (the day of celebration after a month of fasting) one of the nicer things I did was to print my latest Ramadan writing, and get the local copy shop to make a ‘book’ of it, so that I could get a feel of what a book might look like, if the writing was eventually published.

I came home with my book, delighted. In my exuberance, I said to my wife, who is always extremely supportive of my writing, ‘Ruxanna, I am so pleased. I remember last Eid I also made a little book of my Ramadan writing. Isn’t that wonderful?’

Ruxanna was busy preparing lunch. Without turning to look at me, she said: ‘What are you so pleased about – that you remember?’ Only when I complained about being struck by a very low blow did she turn around and smile.

And now for the thoughts I want to share with you on how it may be possible for us to be close to the Divine without being conscious of this closeness – how to love without having an overt or dysfunctional awareness of loving – how to make less of ourselves and our affections so that, hopefully, we may be free of self-deception.

Instead of aspiring to an audience with the Divine that is visible, and therefore risks being appealing to our egos, why not allow grace to surprise us if it wants to – where if we are nothing but a rag, the rag may be used to clean up a spill at a King’s feet, or where if we are a stray cat that somehow has managed to get close to the King, his hand may instinctively comfort it as he continues to conduct some business of state, or where if we are a withered leaf, a propitious breeze may cause us to fall onto the King’s lap – even if it is only to be clipped away.

Is it not such gentleness that can make this world a better place – for us and for everyone and everything around us?

If we remember to demonstrate our generosity of spirit in little acts of kindness to others, remember to demonstrate gratitude in appreciation of the generosity and kindness shown to us by others, remember to be loving at all times, would this not be the beginning of a greater happiness, a deeper, surer, more enduring inner peace?

Seven principles

Looking through the notes I had made when I was writing my long prayer, Dark Light – The Spirit’s Secret, I found a reference to the following seven principles that I tried to incorporate into the prayer; principles that can contribute to the development of a greater inner stability.

1. The principle of non-interference – with our essential goodness – which means that whenever we encounter an absence of love, our response should not be to subvert any natural tendency we may have to love others.

We should not allow a perceived absence of some external love to create the reality of the absence of love within us.

2. The principle of balance – where we treat all difficulty and challenges (resulting from encountering ‘opposites’) with equanimity: hardness and softness, the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown.

Understanding the true nature of opposites is essential for a full and proper understanding of integrity.

3. The principle of needlessness – that helps to convert the physical itself to the spiritual. Whenever we need something (including anything that may be considered spiritual) we create the physical.

When physical need dies, the physical becomes spiritual. When our thirst has been quenched, water becomes a (spiritual) symbol of life; when we are dying of thirst, it is a physical necessity for life.

4. The principle of motivelessness – even in our altruism – where we should try, in a holistic or wholesome way, to do what we need to do in order to attain a required outcome; but where we should remain sufficiently detached from wanting that result, so as not to manipulate the outcome; our intentions and our actions always remaining pure.

5. The principle of acceptance – and appreciation of the possibility that sometimes what initially seems to us to be hard to endure or hurtful, may contain some redemptive long-term benefit; for hardships often have the potential for bringing about long-term happiness in our lives.

6. The principle of dissolving – becoming unknowing, after becoming knowing; becoming less than we are in order to become more than we are; becoming blissfully lost in order to find what cannot be found by seeking alone.

7. The principle of immateriality – ultimately, of humility and surrendering to oneness; where our egos fade as we evolve in our understanding of integrity and become one with the essence of everything around us.

Mission accomplished

On 30 December I wrote:

There is a pigeon sitting patiently and lovingly on two small eggs in what was Ruxanna’s ‘herb garden’ – a pot just outside our kitchen door. It has been there for five or six days now. Whenever we open the door we try to do so carefully so as not to disturb it, but often it flies away.

When the door is closed again it returns. Both Ruxanna and I are terrified of disturbing it. We hardly open the kitchen door any more. Even when we do, we try to do so only when the sun is out; so that it does not leave the eggs unattended and unwarmed, when it is cold.

Here is what transpired subsequently:

The eggs hatched on 11 January, approximately 18 days after they were laid. They newly-born chicks looked like tiny pieces of limp, wet, yellow rags; we only saw them because the mother flew away when we opened the door. As it was a cold day, we closed the door quickly so that their mother could feel it was safe to return; but we did manage to take a photograph before we retreated.

For an entire week both parents took turns to keep the young ones warm, staying with them throughout the day and night. It was amazing to see both parents sharing the responsibility for their care. And I learnt later that both parents had shared the hatching responsibilities as well.

The young ones are fed rich milk by the parents in the first week of their lives. At the end of the first week they were much bigger; but still yellow, and fluffy.

After the first week the parents felt it was safe to leave them alone for a few hours each day. Once, concerned that they might be hungry or thirsty, I tried to place some food and water nearby which the father sent scattering. This sent me scattering to Google: which reassured me that the young ones obtained their water from the food provided by their parents. I did not try to feed them again!

What was also interesting was how different the father was from the mother – physically, and in temperament. The father was bigger, and had a more predominant grey ‘mane’ around his neck; the mother was long and slender; the father was also stronger (and aggressive when he felt that he and the young ones were threatened); the mother was very timid, and invariably flew away when we came close.

By the end of the second week, a complete transformation had occurred. The birds had lost their yellow tuft, grey feathers had developed, and they had grown exponentially in size, so much so that they looked half-adult!

It seemed as if one of the young ones was male, the other female. The female stayed still most of the time. The male bobbed up and down continuously. I did not see either walk – ever. And I did not once hear them make any sound! But at different times of the day, I found them seated next to each other in different parts of the pot.

Sometimes I saw them facing in the same direction, and sometimes in an opposite direction (but with their heads leaning against each other’s). And I often saw the female with its head nestling under the wings of the male. This was absolutely touching to see.

During the course of the second week the parent that was responsible for them during the day often left the young ones alone for long periods, but one of the parents always returned later that day and stayed the entire night.

During the third week the parents left the young ones alone the entire day (perhaps they did come in for a few minutes to feed them but I did not see this); but one of the parents always returned almost exactly at sunset, and stayed till sunrise.

At the end of the third week, the young ones had grown so remarkably they looked almost adult.

On the evening of Monday 2 February (when they were three weeks old) for the first time neither parent arrived to sleep with them at night. They seemed to be sending out a message to the young ones, preparing them for a momentous occasion.

The next morning one of the young ones (the male) flew for the first time. The timid female remained seated on the rim of the pot. It stayed there a long time while the mother waited on a wall – waited, it seems, for it to fly. But it was not yet ready to do so, so it did not.

After a while the more confident sibling returned (to support the sibling not yet confident enough to fly). Both siblings returned to their ‘nest’. Again, neither mother nor father spent the night with them.

The next day at about 9.30 am both youngsters flew away! I was not there to watch this, having looked into them just before and after 9.30 am. The mother was waiting on the wall. I assumed she wanted to be sure they were safe. Later she was joined by the father. The parents waited a long time; but the young ones did not return.

I marvel at the lessons in love I learnt over this time – lessons that I shall never forget. I am thankful for the healing this love provided me at a time when there was great bloodshed in the world. I am awed by the patience, courage and wisdom of the parents of the young ones, and by a young one’s returning to support a sibling in need of support. And I am reminded, in the miracle of flight without practice, of a saying by a mystic that birds fly not because of their wings but because of their will!