angelbirdflies

What is the difference between your experience of Existence and that of a saint? The saint knows that the spiritual path is a sublime chess game with God and that the Beloved has just made such a Fantastic Move that the saint is now continually tripping over Joy And bursting out in Laughter and saying, “I Surrender!” Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think You have a thousand serious moves.”       ―  Hāfiz

The whole spiritual search has lost its luster. After a while the enlightenment carrot starts to look like…well… a carrot, no different than any other carrot, the pursuit of another ideal in one form or another. Oneness chasing oneness is another case of conceptual bullshit.  Utter and complete. Every attempt to experience oneness/enlightenment/liberation is a movement away from it and toward a conceptual world of twoness...the illusion of illusion.  It just doesn’t matter. Our western conditioned minds, raised on autonomy, the pursuit of happiness and platonic thought, divide body and soul into oppositional constructs, only to provide some arbitrary point of reference. Today, while at work, I had a seizure.   This one was accompanied by hours of disorientation, loss of words, heart fluctuations, dizziness and the typical emotional aftermath.   Hours later, as I sat with the vulnerable uncertainty of life, I realized I am no longer interested in concepts.   I don’t give a damn

We are, each of us, a paradox, a seemingly senseless combination of contradictions that, when considered in full, prove to be the truest expression of self.  We each try to negotiate our interactions in an effort to cloak our inconsistencies from ourselves and those we love.  How can we be both joyous and sad?  How can we experience deep love and union alongside contraction and separation?  How can we be patient and irritable, tolerant and judgmental, kind and cold?   We crave closeness, belonging and connection but are afraid to be known fully. My godmother and one of the great loves of my life, recently … I don't even know how to write it…died? (Death is a word meant to point to a mystery beyond anything the mind could comprehend and yet the mind doesn't like inconsistencies.)  She lived a long life as a remarkable being.  In the days and weeks following her death, people remembered her and in their memories she became less and less human and more and more saintly.  She