Sparks of Wisdom Glowing Brighter

    From a very young age, from before I could speak, I've had a calm, intuitive sense of what's right, true & meaningful, and felt a deep empathic connection towards suffering humans & animals. This same sense seems to have given rise to a few sporadic instances of my inexplicably knowing, with a quiet confidence, that an important, specific, future event would turn out well.
    Many get a glimpse of this unusual sense of intimate familiarity or oneness with the cosmos after a few drinks - the feeling of being "in love with the whole world." There's immediate pressure then to quickly dismiss it as "just the booze talking." After all, the only taboo remaining in our Western society is the one against anything that might be deeply meaningful!
    Indeed, by around age 2, we start being conditioned by the prevailing dogmatic belief that human beings & other living "things" are accidental, isolated lumps of matter, in a mechanical, meaningless universe. So, we spend much of our adult lives trying to be as happy as possible given this narrow, stunted worldview.

    “Our talent for division, for seeing the parts (reductionist left hemisphere), is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole (right hemisphere).” Iain McGilchrist

    “Not only is the universe stranger than we think,
it is stranger than we can think.” Werner Heisenberg

    “There is but one cause of failure
And that is man’s lack of faith
in his true Self.” William James

    "All shall be well,
and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich, English Christian mystic

    “So long as one is merely on the surface of things,
they are always imperfect, unsatisfactory, incomplete.
    Penetrate into the substance
and everything is perfect, complete, whole.” Philip Kapleau

    "You learn about a thing ... by opening yourself wholeheartedly to it. You learn about a thing by loving it." Barbara McClintock - Nobel prize-winning geneticist

    "Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough." George Washington Carver

    Fortunately, at least a small "spark" of early-childhood's innocent form of unity consciousness survives into adulthood, and many feel that at this pivotal time in human history, this spark is increasingly becoming fanned towards awakening.

    “Spiritual practices are methods that can begin to soften our stance toward our self, toward life in general, and to open us to what transcends the habitual. They are invitations to become intimate with the wisdom of silence & stillness.”
    Dorothy Hunt. “Ending the Search. From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness.” Sounds True, 2018.

 Two (imho) EXCELLENT 15-minute Eckhart Tolle videos: