Beyond the Material

     We're hard-wired to survive, as long & as well as possible. Like a possessed workaholic, our left brain obsesses about surviving & winning in this material world.
    INEVITABLY ALL of this turns to dust - all at once as in a fatal heart-attack or car crash, or slowly, incrementally as time & illness take back every bit of our hard-earned physical & mental capacities. Aging is a relentless, increasingly difficult 'school of hard knocks,' even if we're relatively fortunate!
    Our left brain's sole function is controlling the material environment. It CANNOT understand NOR cope with loss of control, at least partially explaining the ever-rising rates of depression, anxiety, addiction, violence, suicide, etc.

    Dying on the cross, “Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ' ” (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46)

     “True love and prayer are learned in the hour when love becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.” Thomas Merton

    WHEN we realize the USELESSNESS of being lost in suffering, anger, regret, frustration & impatience - we CAN grow infinitely WISER with age AND spontaneously re-connect to our true nature, source & destination.
    ONLY AS our material world & 'small self' evaporate, can we fully appreciate our Divine True Nature.
    Please read / watch Amoda Maa's SUPERB teaching "Suffering as a Doorway to Liberation" : http://www.johnlovas.com/2019/04/suffering-as-doorway-to-liberation.html

    “Emptiness is two things at once:
     the absence of self
     and the presence of the Divine.
     Thus as self decreases,
     the Divine increases.”                             Bernadette Roberts

    "A man cannot enter into the deepest center of himself & pass through that center into God unless he is able to pass entirely out of himself & empty himself & give himself to other people in the purity of selfless love." Thomas Merton, quoted in M. Basil Pennington. "Centered Living: The Way of Centering Prayer." Galilee Trade, 1988. 

 
    “It is the perspective of the sufferer that determines whether a given experience perpetuates suffering or is a vehicle for awakening.” Mark Epstein

"Death is not extinguishing the light;
it is putting out the lamp
because the dawn has come."
Rabindranath Tagore

Fleeting moments of near perfection