Tenderness in Harsh Times

    "Ask yourself … 'Does this path have a heart?' If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.” Carlos Castaneda

    A powerful contrast to "a path with heart" or experiencing unconditional love as central in one's life, is illustrated in the 2024 Netflix documentary, "Martha." Martha Stewart's parents were unable to show her unconditional love, and Martha likewise was unable to show her only daughter unconditional love. Her marriage and then her relationship with her long-time boyfriend also failed due to this crucial lack. She became a driven perfectionist doer, earning, then losing a billion dollars. She said, with some pride, that she had no interest in "how her boyfriend was feeling. What he was going to do" is what interested her. Martha's life, despite all the fame & fortune, was that of a materialist who couldn't understand why, despite working so hard to perfectly rearrange all the deckchairs on the Titanic, she remained unhappy. See http://www.johnlovas.com/2018/07/healing-basic-wound-of-heart.html

    “Not knowing we are loved and lovable makes the heart grow cold. And all the tragedy of human life follows from there."
    John Welwood. "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. Healing the Wound of the Heart." Trumpeter, 2006.

    "The truth is, what one really needs is not Nobel prizes but love. How do you think one gets to be a Nobel laureate? Wanting love, that's how. Wanting it so bad one works all the time and ends up a Nobel laureate. It's a consolation prize.
    What matters is love."                      George Wald - Nobel prize-winning, Harvard biologist

    “What really matters is your capacity to turn towards the tenderness of your heart in the midst of that which offends you.” Amoda Maa

    Amoda Maa skillfully expands on this (Amoda Maa - 2nd Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview https://batgap.com/amoda-maa-2/ ) :

    Amoda Maa (AM): “… the darkness that we see, the chaos that we see, and that we are seeing increasingly, the horror that we see, the confusion and all of this that we see is not necessarily a sign of things having gone wrong. It’s a sign that that very darkness, that very terror, that very horror, is the place that is the catalyst for the end of division.
    As the outer world becomes more divided, more horrifying, and more terrifying, that’s where we are triggered into our judgments, our sense of rightness and wrongness, our sense of righteousness, that I am right, even when I feel wronged. Righteousness is what drives the division that we see in the world. There’s a lot of that going on today.
    But before anything can happen in the outer world, we must first bring about the end of division in the inner world. 

    Rick Archer (RA): There’s a polarity in American politics these days, that seems to be unprecedented, and it largely reflects what you just said, the sense of 'I am right.' Even among so-called liberal people, there’s a kind of militant refusal to listen to other perspectives. People are shouted down with bull horns, or forbidden from speaking on campuses if they try to express a perspective that doesn’t jibe with the liberal perspective. People on both sides of that divide are guilty of it.

    AM: We see that very obviously in the world, but we don’t see it so easily in ourselves, in our response to that. I still see very intelligent, very open, very spiritual, very conscious people, still operating from inner division, that inner division just is a sense of righteousness. Of course, we must have a sense of discernment in terms of justice in the world and all that, but when we’re giving ourselves to that sense of righteousness in ourselves, we’ve created a very strong us and them in ourselves, a rightness and wrongness in ourselves. That creates further division. If anything’s going to change on the external, in terms of the division that we see in the world, then that response in ourselves has to change first, and then we can move from intelligence, then we can respond intelligently, and that may have a very different outcome.

    Going back to the original part of this conversation, the horror and division that we see in the world is precisely the catalyst that we need to reflect on our own inner divided response. Actually, dare I say, it’s a blessing. It’s a gift. It’s the doorway. It’s not that there’s something gone wrong, it’s actually something gone right, in the sense that in order to cleanse ourselves of our own inner divided state, the external world is there to reflect it.

    RA: Yes, it’s reminiscent of what you said earlier about heartbreak on an individual level being a potential catalyst for deep realization. The situation in the world can also be a catalyst for maybe collective realization.

    AM: It is and I don’t think anything’s going to change in the world until we actually get that or see that, one person at a time.

    RA: A lot of people talk these days about the divine feminine. In fact, I just interviewed Vera de Chalambert a month ago, and she was talking a lot about that, and many others do. You make a commentary on this, you say, ‘The new spiritual frequency arising today may have the look and feel of a feminine vibration, but it actually has nothing to do with gender. Rather, it’s about something much more universal. It’s actually a frequency and expression that can come through a female or a male body, or through any life form.’

    What’s your whole take on this sort of popularity of the divine feminine that you hear these days, and in light of the point you just made in the passage I read?

    AM: I think the conversation around the divine feminine is prevalent today because it’s a redressing of the balance. It’s a response to the grip of the masculine or the patriarchal. That’s part of what I’m saying, but really, the feminine that I’m speaking of is not about anything in opposition to anything. It’s not got to do with the battle of the sexes, or the return of a feminist approach, etc. I’m talking about the infusion of love into humanity. And the infusion of love is what’s been missing. And what I mean by that, if we go a bit deeper, is the capacity to turn towards gentleness; the capacity to turn towards the tenderness of the inner heart, which is not what’s been happening. Whether we’re on the patriarchal or matriarchal side, in some ways we’re still operating at the level of some kind of hardness.
    So I’m talking about the capacity to turn towards tenderness in response to our experience, and therefore in response to each other, and therefore in response to the world, which requires a shift from mind to heart, through surrender, not through knowing. And so we can apply that to ‘spiritual practice’ or we can apply that to the totality of our life’s experience.

    And I get the sense that this frequency is beginning to filter in. I call it ‘feminine’ because it’s about surrender, but it’s filtering in through everyone, whether we’re male or female, whether we’re long time on this planet or just born, there’s a different frequency that’s coming through and I guess that’s what I’m referring to. I don’t speak about the feminine much actually.

    By tenderness, I’m not talking about passivity, ‘woo woo’ or anything like that. And it’s not got anything with a goddess archetype, it’s got nothing to do with archetypes, stereotypes, roles or concepts.

    The tenderness I speak of, if it’s going to serve any purpose, is a tenderness towards our inner experience. If we examine that, we probably can see how we are not tender towards our inner experience, which means that when we have an experience we don’t like, that makes us feel uncomfortable, that makes us feel vulnerable, that makes us feel scared, that makes us feel unloved, that makes us feel alone, or anything like that, then we attempt to reject it, suppress it, deny it, constrict it, change it, maneuver it, squeeze it, spit it out, and so on and so forth. And that is not tenderness. That’s aggression. That’s violence. We are violent towards our own experience.

    If you can stop that violence, and choose tenderness towards your experience, then you can forget about spirituality, you can forget about spiritual practice, you can forget about spiritual teachings, and you will live fully awake and fully human. Because that’s what it is – nonviolence towards our inner experience. Because when we’re violent towards our inner experience, what follows that is then ‘I’m wrong,’ or ‘they’re wrong,’ or ‘it’s wrong,’ and then you have become a victim of reality, and as long as you’re a victim of reality, you are separate, and when you’re separate you’re living in the dream of separation, and all horrors, all suffering personal & otherwise, arise from that. So this point about tenderness is key, and way more powerful than the word tenderness implies.

(People who commit terrorist attacks) are at war with their own fear. Everything violent arises out of fear. And that fear may have a thread, a root in a sense of injustice, in a sense of being abused, a sense of not being complete, whole, and safe and one and all of that. So it has a certain intelligence in it, but when we’re violent towards that fear, then it ends up as a violence towards that which appears to be causing that fear, and so then we have the terror, and the war, and the violence in the world.

But if we can turn that tenderness towards ourselves – those of us who have the capacity to do that, a vast majority of the privileged Western world, not all, but certainly a proportion – we do have the capacity to turn that tenderness towards ourselves, towards our inner experience. And that’s very often overlooked. And if we take that as the only spiritual practice there is, I would say that there would be a vast transformation.

One of the things we’re so frightened of is the experience of loss, whether that loss is the loss of a loved one, or the loss of our own life, or the loss of whatever it is we’ve gained – success, or wealth, or love, or recognition – and yet, our willingness to be tender towards that loss is a very profound opening to what can never be lost, which is beingness itself. It’s like meeting death in everything.

Being tender towards loss is again not investing that loss with meaning. It doesn’t mean that you’re bad. It doesn’t mean that you’re unloved. It doesn’t mean that your life is broken. And it doesn’t mean that you’re a failure. We tend to invest loss with a meaning to do with ‘me.’ It’s all about ‘me.’ But to be tender towards that is to feel the absolute shattering of loss, and yet, for we don’t invest ourselves in that, or meaning in that, we discover there is nothing that can be lost.”

Amoda Maa - 2nd Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview https://batgap.com/amoda-maa-2/  

 
    “Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.” Ram Dass

    “Look at people you don’t love and see them as an exercise for you to open your heart.” Ram Dass

    “There are four questions of value in life … What is sacred? Of what is spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.” Lord Byron

    “We are all just walking each other home.” Ram Dass

Nancy Knox’s Facebook post - thank you Janet!

The Real Deal

“There is something in every one of you
that waits and listens
for the sound of the genuine in yourself.
It is the only guide you will ever have.
And if you cannot hear it,
you will all of your life spend your days
on the ends of strings
that somebody else pulls.”
Howard Thurman

 

    Rick Archer (RA): "Here’s a question from (a listener), 'Spiritual discussions ... are essentially a discussion of the human condition. However, for some people, the word 'spiritual' has baggage, misunderstandings with it, such as baggage from mainstream religions.
    If they actually understood that what is being talked about and explored is really just the essential human condition, then they may be much more attracted to it. Somehow it feels like the word spiritual may put some people off, even though that’s what they’re really looking for. How can language be modified to open spirituality to a wider audience?' "

    Amoda Maa (AM): "Yes, I agree, in the sense that the word spiritual has a lot of baggage, it has a lot of connotations, and it is about the human condition. I do actually speak about this a lot. If you watch my videos or listen to some of my talks, I’ve often spoken about how it’s an existential inquiry, not a spiritual inquiry.
    It’s existential in the sense that this is about the human condition and whatever language we use, it’s always going to be some kind of cover-up against the real discovery of the real truth. We have to use language to have any kind of dialogue and personally, I sort of naturally play with that language in the sense that I come from it this way and this way, and depending on who I’m speaking with, then I hopefully facilitate an examination of what is meant by spiritual and whether that spiritual concept, that idea of spirituality is actually an impediment to something.
    Very often I talk about throwing away the whole concept of spirituality and opening as an authentic human being to the experience you’re having so that the whole polarity of spiritual and non-spiritual just collapses because that’s another divided state. We divide into spiritual and non-spiritual or spiritual and human. Yes, there’s a lot in that question."

    RA: "I always find myself coming back to definitions and asking people to define how they use terms like awakening, or spiritual or whatever, because sometimes these terms are thrown about glibly, as though everyone agreed upon their meanings. Even the word 'God,' I think, a lot of people are squeamish about that one, but it actually refers to something really beautiful if you really define it. Not as the guy with the beard in the clouds, but as the sort of intelligence that permeates and orchestrates every little bit of creation, which you can see plainly if you take a look, even through the lens of modern science, there’s something marvelous and mysterious going on. You have to keep going back and defining these terms if you’re going to use them."

    AM: "Yes, and just keep on unraveling or surrendering every concept that we have that we think we know what it means."

    RA: "Yes, that’s a good point."

    AM: "Surrendering that meaning like, don’t find meaning in the words. The words are just words. Of course, we have to be accurate so we’re not just using any old words in a messy or misleading fashion. I use words very accurately, but don’t over-invest meaning in those words.
    Listen to what is inside that, listen to the vibration. It’s back to the listening thing. Listen with your being and then you’ll find that the words are just like little arrows that keep pointing you to something and if you keep on surrendering the investment of meaning in those words, you fall into the beingness that it’s pointing to."

    RA: "(Recently) Deepak Chopra was going on about how everything is a concept. Every idea we have, even about physical things like the moon, the universe, gravity, or anything else, it’s all human concepts. I kept saying, yes, but those concepts actually do refer to something which has its own intrinsic reality, regardless of how clearly or accurately we conceptualize it. I mean, the moon doesn’t depend upon our understanding of it. It didn’t change from green cheese to rock when our understanding of it became a little bit more mature. It is what it is and we do our best with concepts and words and what not to grasp what’s actually going on and to communicate that with others."

    AM: "If you’re listening from concepts, then you’ll hear concepts. If you’re listening from openness, you’ll hear love.”
    Amoda Maa - 2nd Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview https://batgap.com/amoda-maa-2/

 

    Iain McGilchrist, from his neuroscience / psychiatry perspective, would say that "listening from concepts" is our 'quick-and-dirty' literal left-hemisphere perspective. However, we "listen from openness" and a balanced perspective when our right-hemisphere in charge, which is contextual, capable of understanding nuance, tone of voice, facial expression, body-language, paradox, metaphor etc, while the left hemisphere plays an important supportive role. See: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/

    I often mention how we all have brief glimpses of awakening when we lovingly gaze into the eyes of babies and puppies. We practice the "soft peripheral gaze" during meditation practice.
    Amoda Maa's wonderful take on this:

 

    “The way we see things is fundamental to our state of consciousness. By softening our gaze, we can open to the love inherent in ourselves. It's a falling away of the veils of perception that allows our eyes to open to direct reality.

    When we see from the tight knot of me-self – and what is that ‘tight knot of me-self’? It’s a bunch of unexamined thoughts, beliefs, concepts that has to do with 'my thoughts' usually. My thoughts of this, that, comfort, discomfort, liking, disliking, or even the thoughts of me as a separate entity, that needs to be loved, that needs to be here, secure, and this, this, this… It’s a tight, narrow focus. And then we look upon things, the world, life, and we see separate things. So there’s a division here - a subject and an object, a me here and things, life, out there, outside of me. This we can support in shifting perception in a very simple way, because when we see from the tight knot of me-self – subject and objects, subject and objects – we do not really see reality. We see our projections onto reality. So the world or life is veiled. These are the veils of perception that create the Maya. The world is not as we see it, but as we believe it. We project these unexamined beliefs - even the belief that the world is ‘out there’ is an unexamined belief.
    So we can support a shift in perception that opens the doorway to clear seeing. Clear seeing has a fundamentally different quality. Rather than seeing through the eyes of separation, fear, craving & aversion, we see through the eyes of love. That doesn’t mean that we always like what we see, or that we even agree with it, but something internal changes. It’s an inner transformation of consciousness. That’s what it means to see the beloved in everything. It softens the inner gaze.
    Normally when we look, we look at boundaries. We look at the boundary of a thing and in that way we can identify it. We tend to look at the detail or the boundary, the edges. This is valuable in functioning, doing things, crossing the road, chopping things, whatever we need to be aware of edges as such. But when that becomes the default position, it becomes a limited view that occludes true nature – the radiance of all things, which is really in you, not inherent in the thing.
    Imagine falling in love. You gaze into the other’s eyes. What’s actually happening, in that falling in love, in that moment of gazing? The eyes are very wide open. They’re very soft in fact. The gaze is not narrowly-focused on the edges. When we look into eyes (with love), we are looking into the formless. We are not looking at the form. We are looking into the beingness. We call that 'falling in love.' What we’re falling in love with – of course there’s a whole bunch of other ideas: I like this person, and I agree with this person, I’m sexually attracted to this person, it doesn’t matter which sex it is. Look into the eyes of a friend, look into the eyes of your mother, look into the eyes of your child. 

    When this focus is soft, unfocused, and we look at eyes – we’re not looking at the shape of the eyes, or the color of the eyes, we’re looking straight into, if you like, beingness. When beingness in you meets beingness in another, love arises. That love gets mistaken for loving the other, loving the form, and then all sorts of either good things or bad things happen, depending whose eyes you’re looking into. This is often where the guru-disciple relationship also gets a little bit mixed up. 

    But if we do not jump to taking ownership of the form, and remain in the openness & stillness of beingness, love arises, love arises in you, because it’s your natural state. It’s inherent in you. So it’s really not about the other, or the object, it’s about what transforms in you: openness, beingness, stillness, presence give rise to the inherent quality, vibration or frequency of love. What is that love? It’s unconditionality, it’s openness itself, it’s peace, the end of the argument. There’s no subject and object to create a division, a separation. For a moment at least there is peace.”
    Amoda Maa “How Softening Your Gaze Transforms Everything to Love” https://www.amodamaa.com/essential-teachings

    “Freedom is available to you here & now, if you are willing to reject nothing, welcome everything, and surrender into the deepest falling of the open heart.” Amoda Maa

    “Real spiritual practice is a heartful expression of what is most true & meaningful to each of us.” Adyashanti

Suezan Aikins - "Iris Moon" - fogforestgallery.ca

"Try It - You'll Like It!"

    Step 1
    Regularly check in to see which Operating system (OS) is running your life. 

    The default OS that is usually running your life in this stressed-out world - and we're usually unconscious of this - is the fight-flight-freeze (FFF) instinct. We're basically just trying to survive, to get by, day-to-day. Our understanding (worldview), again mostly subconscious, is that we're essentially alone (personally, as a family, or 'tribe') in a competitive, and at times hostile relationship with other humans, animals, environment, life itself. This worldview includes the materialist belief that life is nothing more than a meaningless accident & that we're meat-machines which die, end of story.
    This OS helps lower life forms survive occasional, brief life-or-death situations, but is an awful, unsustainable way for humans to exist. The associated nihilist worldview is the underlying cause for our profound personal & societal unhappiness & dysfunction.
    The FFF OS feels unpleasant, stressful, anxious & depressing.

    But the OS in which we feel wonderfully peaceful & truly at home in is the tend-and-befriend (T&B) 'instinct.' We find ourselves in this OS when hugging a loved one, looking into the eyes of a baby or puppy, standing in awe of a sublime sunrise that 'takes our breath away,' and whenever the noisy, fear-based FFF OS isn't drowning out our peaceful, silent, love-based T&B OS. In this OS we experience loving intimacy, even oneness with whomever / whatever we're with, life itself. As we learn to live more & more in this OS, we increasingly resonate with the great sages, mystics & saints of every civilization throughout history: http://www.johnlovas.com/2024/10/true-nature-perennial-philosophy-and.html .
    This is the OS with which evolving humans can awaken, heal, thrive / flourish and with which our environment can recover.

    Step 2
    As soon as you feel the discomfort of being in the FFF OS - rarely useful for humans - learn to let it go & keep returning to & re-embodying the T&B OS.

    I HIGHLY recommend freeing yourself from the unnecessary suffering of FFF OS, and return home to & stabilize in True nature.

    There are excellent current spiritual teachers and others to help guide you in this awakening process. Their message is strikingly similar, but their style unique to their individual personalities, so find the most compatible one(s) with whom you resonate.

    My current favorite guides & my blogs quoting them:

    Amoda Maa http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Amoda+Maa 

    Eckhart Tolle http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Eckhart+Tolle

    Helen Hamilton http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Helen+Hamilton

    Adyashanti http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Adyashanti

    Michael A. Singer http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Michael+Singer

    Henry Shukman http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Henry+Shukman

    Louise Kay http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Louise+Kay

    Richard C. Schwartz - Internal Family Systems (IFS) http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Richard+Schwartz

    Iain McGilchrist - Hemisphere Hypothesis http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Iain+McGilchrist

 Rose Cousins - "Let the Light Come In"

True Nature, Perennial Philosophy and Plotinus

    An ancient Greek philosopher - usually attributed to Socrates - advised, "Know thyself."

    The Bible quotes God commanding, "Be still, and know that I am God."

    A bit of context might actually prove very practical:

    “The term 'perennial philosophy' was coined by Agostino Steuco (1497-1548) and refers to a fourfold realization:
    (1) there is only one Reality (call it, among other names, God, Mother, Tao, Allah, Dharmakaya, Brahman, or Great Spirit) that is the source & substance of all creation;
    (2) that while each of us is a manifestation of this Reality, most of us identify with something much smaller, that is, our culturally conditioned individual ego;
    (3) that this identification with the smaller self gives rise to needless anxiety, unnecessary suffering, and cross-cultural competition and violence; and
    (4) that peace, compassion, & justice naturally replace anxiety, needless suffering, competition, and violence when we realize our true nature as a manifestation of this singular Reality.
    The great sages & mystics of every civilization throughout human history have taught these truths in the language of their time and culture. It is the universality and timelessness of this wisdom that makes it the perfect focus for the spiritually independent seeker."
    Rami Shapiro. “Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent.” SkyLight Paths, 2013.

    “Plotinus (204-270CE) was one of the most profound ancient Greek philosophers. He was not engaged in thinking about the deepest questions, he had deep spiritual realizations. He was an awakened being, and that determined what realizations he came up with on the conceptual level. 

    Plotinus said that at the root of all life, of the universe, is the One. The One is the transcendent reality.
    He didn’t call it ‘God’ he said ‘the One,’ and the One is transcendent to space and time. So the One does not exist in space and time, it is transcendent. And this One, which would be God but not in a traditional sense, the One emanates, there’s an outflow from the One.
    The One emanates, and it emanates first of all, what is called in ancient Greek, Nous. Nous … is Spirit or Consciousness. So there’s an outflow from the One, which has no location in space or time. At first this outflow is Nous, Consciousness, Pure Consciousness, or Spirit.
    Then in the next stage, the first forms arise. The form that arises out of Consciousness is the Soul (Psyche in Greek) – not only the soul of human beings, but the soul of different life forms. So the One emanates Consciousness, and then Consciousness takes on a form.
    Then the next stage of emanation after that is Mind – the human mind, the ability to think. We’re getting further and further away from the One.
    Then the next stage is the Body – physical bodies. And it is the farthest away from the Source.
    So the entire reality is an outflow from the One, which at first is Pure Consciousness, then it assumes form as Souls, then it assumes Mind – human beings come in but also other minds, and then it becomes the physicality of the world which is the furthest Consciousness can get away from itself is the Material World, but ultimately, it is still one with, all emanates, flows out from the One. And Plotinus came to this realization not through thinking, but his own self-realization.
    So it means that you are an emanation! Your consciousness, even your body is an emanation of the One. If you are able to realize yourself, the essence of you as Consciousness itself, by being still, awareness replaces thinking, then you move back on your journey to the Source. Thinking subsides, so you’ve already gone beyond the level of thinking, then you move deeper towards the Source. You sense your connectedness to the One, or at least to the first emanation of the One which is Consciousness itself. And that is God realization, not through any concept.
    All you have to do is become still, and realize that stillness within you is Presence itself, the primordial emanation, in the same way that the Sun emanates light, the One emanates ultimately Consciousness and transmutations of Consciousness. So the first emanation is Consciousness itself.
    Perhaps you can never reach the One directly, but you can reach the first emanation of the One which is Consciousness itself, as your own essence. That’s an amazing thing. I’m talking about it, but the words are there to point you beyond words & concepts.
    So the world is an emanation. The forms that arise here go through continuous transformations & transmutations, but the important thing is that you can realize the essence of who you are!
    Know thyself as this primordial emanation of the One that is you in essence. And you thought you were a person in this world with little problems!"
    Eckhart Tolle “Timeless Wisdom Retreat” in Greece & Online 2024

     Shamans, mystics & saints had directly experienced their true nature for thousands of years before Plotinus, but each of us can only truly benefit by directly experiencing our true nature for ourselves.
    So, can we practice being still & silent, and get to know directly - beyond words & concepts - that we are Divine?

Old Man of the Glen

Taken in Scotland by Fortunato Gatto • Winner, Plants and Fungi

Italian photographer Fortunato Gatto often goes to the Glen Affric pine woods of the Scottish Highlands west of Loch Ness. According to analysis of pollen in the sediment, this forest has stood for at least 8,300 years. The beard lichen on a gnarled birch tree indicates that air pollution is relatively low here.

The Globe and Mail

Canadian Wildlife Photography Contest 2024

Basics

    “What is the greatest wonder in the world?
      Every day men see others called to their death, yet those who remain live as if they were immortal.” The Mahabharata

    “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Krishnamurti

    “Whenever I tried looking outside, instead of in, I’d be crushed by an overwhelming heaviness and sadness until I remembered again. It took quite a while for me to see that most of what goes, among so-called adults, by the name of depression isn’t a disease or defect at all.
    On the contrary, it’s a perfectly natural response to the pull of the divine which is always disturbing and disrupting and disorienting – straining to reorient us towards a totally different dimension. And it’s those who seem best adjusted ((most 'normal')), armed like tragic soldiers with their psychological theories and fanciful facts, who are most helplessly trapped in their strange delusions.”  Peter Kingsley “A Book of Life.” Catafalque Press, 2021.

    “Spirituality is the indefinable urge to reach beyond the limits of ordinary human existence that is bounded by unconscious forces and self-interest, and to discover higher values in ourselves and to live them consistently in our relationships and roles. It involves developing practices that aid us in rising and expanding, perhaps beyond the merely good to the transcendent, in the process of looking inwards rather than outwards for our own morality and guidance. Above all, it means becoming a more loving and compassionate human being, in thought, word and deed.” Maya Spencer MD “What is spirituality? A personal exploration.” 2012. https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/members/sigs/spirituality-spsig/what-is-spirituality-maya-spencer-x.pdf?sfvrsn=f28df052_2

     “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” Jean-Paul Sartre

    “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Rumi

     “I can nourish myself on nothing but truth.” St. Therese of Lisieux

    “There is a voice that doesn’t have words. Listen.” Rumi

    There have always been among us people who perceive much more & process what they sense far more deeply than the average person. "Sensitive - The Untold Story" a 2015 documentary on Prime suggests that about 20% of people (and over 100 species of animals) fit this category. Artists, serious meditators, mystics, saints & other spiritually-inclined folks may also overlap with this 'highly sensitive people' (HSP) category.
    An important brain function is as a reducing valve to prevent us from being overwhelmed by the shear volume of data surrounding us. This appears to be diminished in HSP, and the resulting frequent overwhelm may inspire them to be more curious & deeply introspective.

    “To imagine that some little thing - food, sex, power, fame - will make you happy is to deceive oneself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.” Nisargadatta Maharaj

    “Our yearning for Truth actually comes from Truth.” Adyashanti

    “As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there.” Nisargadatta Maharaj 

    “The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.” Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Even if death were to fall on you today like lightning,

You must be ready to die without sadness and regret,

Without any residue of clinging for what is left behind,

Remaining in the cognition of the absolute view,

You should leave this life like an eagle,

Soaring up into the blue sky.”

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

 

Leonard Cohen - In My Secret Life (Live in London)