If you listen you can hear the eternal song of the universe. Singing out: 🎶 Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you We can tune into this at anytime. Drinking deeply the sweet succor of our simple being. Our very molecules dancing

When my eyes drop into the heart, it's like the inherent beauty of the world starts shining through, Sometimes completely ordinary people just seem so beautiful to me. It's very agape.. their beauty isn't driven by sexual attraction or desire just inherent. Sometimes I feel like a child of the world, i feel at home where ever I am. I find my heart opening and yeilding in moments where it would normally close off. I feel kinder I have more patience and I feel more availible.

These online disputes about God are kinda funny in the sense that very often no one establishes what the other person means by God. So often they kinda end up talking past each other using the same words with different meanings.

I think what impacted me most was experiencing a moment of no mind, a complete cessation of thought. In that it became obvious how everything I consider to be myself, was being given to me. I had never understood all that "all is one" spiritual talk. Like how can we all be one when clearly we're separate. Yet in that moment of clarity it became clear that everything I am, even my vaunted intelligence was not originating in or being generated by me. Instead its all apart of what reality is doing, not isolated to me but everywhere. I don't own my intelligence or mind and they don't end and begin at my skin. My mind, my knowing of myself was clearly apart of a greater knowing a greater mind. So it's become clear that my intelligence, my personhood wasn't primarily human in orgin and rather it's emerging from what existence is doing at large. The same fundamental forces that make it rain, or rustle the leaves and make the birds sing is moving me, giving animus to me. Thats what made me interested in mysticism. It was a paradigm shift, suddenly this dead inert world became fully alive. Or perhaps rather I recognized that which was alive in me, animating me was in all things.

The mysterious way that God works in aren’t mysterious as in unknowable. Mysterious here means infinitely knowable, inexhaustible in depth. Like a horizon that unendingly recedes upon each step towards it in the name of comprehension. A constant revelation of more to know.

People love guarding a gate that Christ has left open…

Be still and know.. It's such a simple instruction. In that I hear an invitation to simply abide, to rest and align with reality. To trust. From this vantage i am intimately aware of all the ways I step away from that and get involved in trying to know for myself. It feels prudent that i have my own thoughts about this or that, that i properly conceive of what's next what needs doing. However I find that if i can manage to be still, that everything that needs doing is done. Every word that needs said is, spoken, the thoughts that are needed arrive on time. Whatever the moment needs, is supplied. In abiding I can see that there's no need to "drive" myself to manage and predict. I am enough as I am, and in abiding I expanding into a kind of availibility that yeilds my full capacity to whatever is needed.

The algorithm cooks sometimes

Once you have recognized yourself in stillness/silence this is how the mind looks. You see through it no longer driven forward by it. You can let thoughts and feelings pass by without being captivated by them. Just like in this image it doesn't mean thoughts have to fully disappear. Yet suddenly you have more options. And your sense of self is less contigent on whats passing through your mind. This is the beginning of freedom.

With all this spiritual knowledge and wisdom available it’s very easy to get some funny ideas. Much of this stuff would have been gated behind practice and discipleship. A common trap to fall in is to seek to become impervious to pain and suffering. Genuine spiritual depth and insight does the opposite. It opens you up to feel more. The difference is it changes the one feeling it. Your sense of self becomes expanded and the mind sinks into the heart. Who you feel yourself to be, is less contingent upon this or that.

I think it helps if you can understand God as something/someone ancient people were noticing and in trying to relate to and understand developed religions and ideas around. That means religions aside there is something possible to note and recognize today.

Epistemic humility is the posture of the mystic

There are other kinds of knowing besides thought. It may be hard to believe or even fathom but if you stop thinking the world doesn’t disappear into a meaningless blob. It is actually possible to be awake and aware and experience life un-mediated by thought. This is mystic vision

When your sense of self is stemming from the everyday cascade of feelings and thoughts you cannot know true rest. It means you have not recognized yourself in stillness and your identity is hung upon active cognizing. Thus to stop thinking would be a type of death. Rest becomes impossible because it's something you must initiate and maintain.

Spiritual insights cannot be held or contained in the mind. They come from a different way of knowing. Though the mind can derive all sorts of meaning from insight, such meaning will always in some way be beside the point.

Perhaps it could be said that our intelligence is constantly being invested in our thoughts. And we're so inundated with our thoughts we start to believe thinking itself is where our intelligence comes from. Thoughts are an output of what is intelligent within us. It is possible to stop thinking. We do it all trhe time but it tends to go unnoticed. If one can manage to stop thinking the world doesnt de-evolve into a meaningless blob. Instead all the meaning obscured by our thinking is revealed.

Have you ever tried not knowing? Like to know nothing at all. That may sound like a closing of the mind, or perhaps a resignation into meaninglessness. However it's actually an opening of the mind. It's a shift from perception to reception. Continued contact with reality, rather than closing into the minds conclusions.

This is a common misunderstanding… that worship is demanded. But it’s not demanded and worship is not stemming from recognition is empty. It’s like laughing before you get the joke… Worship follows recognition. As a parallel it’s like becoming and adult and seeing how much your parents sacrificed and expended for you… the gratitude that naturally follows, the effusive thanks.. Worship is like this. It’s in response, it’s similar to feelings of awe at a scene of splendor, tears at the moment of heart break and like joy at the moment of success. It’s what’s follows recognition. Worship is a heartfelt outpouring that naturally happens in response to seeing clearly the gift that a lifetime is, and recognizing the Giver.