The things we try to change in ourselves are resistant to that change, because we make the attempt. This very effort is where they derive their energy.

Our motive for change is the active shape of our fears, because we believe that if we don’t change, acceptance will never occur. And yet, the act of seeking change conveys the very lack of acceptance we fear! Thus is breeds itself, and feeds on its own energy. When the impulse to change disappears, then the fear also does, and the desired object is achieved. So why would it matter if we change or not?

The Revelation of God, as the term should imply, is about revealing God. If one’s religious experience involves only the members of the community, or its ethical and social principles, then there is still the biggest part yet to discover.

Likewise, morality may change our behavior in this manner, changing us incrementally toward a transcendence of condition that may lead to entirely different modes of being.

The reason why I study most things is not for the knowledge that I might gain, but from the change of heart – the maturation of spirit – which results. If I read a book, and then shortly after completely forget its contents, yet if I read it deeply its effect will remain. I may not remember the characters, but my life will carry that change as a part of me.

In this sense, perhaps achieving a certain degree of material knowledge is not so very important – or thinking that we understand the words of the Prophet – but rather that we involve ourselves in those activities and pursuits which will cause our spirits to grow and develop. Sometimes, a sunset can do this better than mastering trigonometry.

The beauty of truth is neither tawdry, nor specious. In fact, in the very pain of truth lies the cathartic essence of its beauty.

When we associate beauty with pleasure, or the things we find desirable: I agree, truth offers nothing of that. But until you’ve tasted from the “cup, bitter sweet”, it won’t really make sense.

Haven’t you ever told a lie, then realized the goodness of undoing it? Wasn’t there the kernel of something else in that confession – besides the guilt, beyond the redemption – that made of the honesty itself a kind of gift?

It is this ethereal thing, ineffable, that the philosopher pursues with all his heart, and the world finds easy to discount. But it can’t be pictured. No more easily than explaining love to the feint of heart.

Ecstasy alone can encompass this theme, not utterance nor argument; and whosoever hath dwelt at this stage of the journey, or caught a breath from this garden land, knoweth whereof We speak.

I seems to be facing a block which I cannot get past. By its feeling, I believe I have encountered it many times, and in many ways, through the past ten years. Perhaps more. But certainly ever since believing in the Bahá’í Faith, and hopefully asking questions about things I had not believe in before.

The block occurs whenever I try to shift my consciousness fully into the immediate present. At such times I encounter a particularly paralyzing way, which at the same time produces a suspension in my gut. As though I were trying to be in the moment by “holding on”, as if for fear of losing it if I let go. But I cannot let go. This only produces more of the same feeling in a slightly different context. Am I afraid of losing myself to the wash of what’s around me? Can I lose myself?

I have also called this barrier the “boredom point” before. It occurs whenever I am not driven or excited to do anything else. And I have had great difficulties with boredom all my life. Is it a fear that communicates to me through this sense of impeding tedium? A proven way of diverting my attention into another direction?

In the past I have ended the suspension by fantasizing myself away from where I am, and usually becoming interested in something else at that point, like friends or a movie. But I have always been interested to know what lies on the other side of the boredom point. Which seems like it would be a very unhurried appreciation of wherever I happened to be at that moment.

Only, why the long-term psycho-somatic effects? When it is not plain restlessness leading me there (toward that barrier) it is often a philosophical realization that kindles my desire to come to terms with my immediate self. In those cases, I don’t let go so easily. As a result, I may suffer abdominal tensions, acid and indigestion for more than a week before seeking release in some other form of absorption. Why does my own self turn me away? Force of will has never broken the barrier, and insight alone offers only temporary reprieve.

It has always felt to be an impossible problem with a definite. If only I could find the way that offers no trace, and answer the question that refuses to be asked [the koan problem].

The concept of ownership is one that holds true only when the scope of consideration is the individual himself. Broadened to encompass society, however, the spending of money to acquire goods should more accurately be stated as “paying off social power to act on one’s behalf.”

That is, if we were to go into a TV store and pick up a TV, without buying off society, it would, ultimately, bring all of its force to bear upon us for trying to steal from it. However, when we hand over the requisite sum of dollars, it will gladly let us walk away with the TV. Therefore, the money paid does not make me owner of the TV, but purchases the complicity of social power in my taking it.

Seen this way, that money is only a contract with the current social power, it seems that there is no “owning” whatsoever. If the regime changes hands, all previous contracts may be annulled. Furthermore, if I spend my life in pursuit of financial gain, what I’m really doing is trying to stack up bargaining chips in order to social power according to my wishes. In a sense, I am then playing to its tune. It is the strong-arm of the law, and I a lowly citizen trying to drum up enough money for it to heed my voice.

But social power can serve us. If we use money to direct social power toward the benefit of society, rather than ourselves exclusively, then rather than paying off the social bully to leave us alone, what we’re doing is directing his energies toward strengthening the very basis of his own power – the people who make up the society.

As for the danger of praise, it is only so venemous as the desire to escape the consequences of past actions. One is always who he has chosen to be. Once he can accept the biting pain that comes with admitting a bad decision, he will openly welcome the wondrous bounty of acknowledging a good one. Life is but a succession of such choices, and only one’s own moral judgment can guide the way. It has nothing to do with external comments on how this process may appear to others.

When, through meditation, the mind has a release from the conscious duality of opposites, there is a dawning within the person that occurs. The direct effect of this is that it bestows upon life a certain vitality; it’s almost a meaning bestowing force. It’s like opening the inner eye, a door that leads to the inner reality of things. Because the mystical/mythical component of man begins to direct itself toward the eternal aspects of things. As Bahá’u’lláh says, “A pure heart is as a mirror, cleanse it with the burnish of all things save God, that the true Sun may shine within it…”

The supreme motivating force in creation is Love. It is the only truly transformative power. Hatred and force, however ably exerted, can never effect a lasting change of the heart.

So, if we wish to change ourselves, doesn’t it follow that this change must be made through the power of Love, rather than anything negative? I would think that if we truly loved ourselves, and made this a characteristic of our internal life, we would begin naturally to avoid the things that cause our soul harm, since it is only when we do not care about a thing that we are able to engage in an activity harmful to it.

In fact, I think even our intolerance of others is born of our intolerance for our self, since if we were always caring, forgiving, nurturing, supporting, that would become the natural tenor of our lives, and would pervade the spirit of all of our doings – especially toward that being we’re most constantly in association with: our own soul.

Anyway, that’s just a thought that came to me. And it was such a warming, door-opening, thought, that I wanted to share it with you. Learning how to truly love seems to be the great task of this life: to love in a way that embraces all creation, in every form. And so it occurred to me that my own self falls under that banner, and that I sometimes treat the world one way, and my self very differently. But wouldn’t it make sense that the spiritual path is One Path, and not one way for one person, and another way for everyone else? It is all love and kindness and goodness. All!

I am starting to doubt the “reality” of our conscious, everyday, awareness, since it is so firmly rooted in the falsehood of material existence. There is too much that is more real, that is not within the scope of our sensations or awareness. Perhaps it is faith that allows us to move in that sphere, and be affected by those influences, more than it is our limited understanding and sensitivities. It reminds of the story of the Roman soldier in the New Testament. Jesus was healing people, and the soldier came to him. Jesus said to lead the way and He would heal his companion. But the soldier said, “No. Only say the word and I know that he will be healed.” And Jesus marvelled, and told everyone there that such faith He had not yet encountered. He then said, “Be it done according to your faith. Go home, and you will find your friend healed.”

The reactionary player

A reactionary player has no plans of his own, and in the absence of threats will make whatever move comes to mind. When pressure builds, he typically tries to avoid attack, or makes single-move counter-attacks in response. This grade of player is highly susceptible to combinations and tactical setups, because he doesn’t look far enough ahead to avoid them.

The emotional player

When a reactionist starts forming his own ideas, and pursues them even in the presence of purposeful moves from his opponent, he will often meet with success if he psychologically outlasts his opponent.

The scientific player

The scientist is also the calculating player. He achieves tactical mastery through evaluation and analysis of the position. There is even a fair bit of strategic knowledge used here, though without the sort of ethereal cohesion the artist is able to develop.

The artistic player

The artist looks not to fulfill certain theories or guidelines, but instead seeks out an indescribable “something” which counts as most beautiful in his eyes. At this level, coordination of the pieces becomes more natural, rather than labored, and calculation is more efficient, since relevant lines are examined – rather than everything that might be possible. But overall, the artist lets his nose lead him in interesting direction, engaging the intuition far more than rational judgment.

The masterful player

The master understand chess in itself, and his own sense of right and wrong has become somehow harmonized with the game. He can tell a bad line from a good line almost from sight, without nearly the mental toll incurred by the other players. He is acutely sensitive, and able to dive very deeply into long calculation when it seems appropriate. This type of player almost never loses “the plot”, since the plot is more the game itself to him, rather than a collection of pieces that must obey certain rules. You might call this level the Zen of playing chess, since there is a certain unity of mind between the player and the game he plays. In fact, is there really so much distinction between the player and the game?

The only truth we encounter is the present, and the words of the prophets. Because the past we remember inaccurately, and our conceptions of the future are uncertain. And all of our abstractions about reality are incomplete. Although we may not understand the truth that is presented, that is the form in which it presents itself to us.

Thought is based in ignorance, since the motive for engaging in thought is to effect a transition into knowledge. But if thought is based in knowledge, where is the motive? It heads nowhere, because it’s already arrived; and so the mind stays relatively quiet, and uncreative. To think productively, we must find a point of ignorance, and allow it to suffuse our whole mind. Then, as if becoming a child or a student, we may now be taught according to what we see at first as foolishness, and perhaps later as understanding.

“to zen” is to know something without knowing it, to do something without knowing how. It is similar to intuition, but far deeper. It engages the soul’s capacity for the impossible: touching the sun with the eye, hearing silence, traversing infinite distances of time and space in a single thought. In the moment of zenning, everything is reversed: The object is already achieved, and time marches backward to the moment of action. Through the unity of opposites and all elements, a door is opened to every place and time. Achievement is already a fact; the goal, the journey and the question are a single point. The self, an independent entity, yields its boundaries and sinks into the reality of its object – while remaining aware. Nothingness flirts with being and understands it. The mirror communes with the light ray, though its feather touch admits no possession, no indwelling even for an instant. The painter holds his brush and the painting appears; then he begins to draw it on canvas. In this mode, being is knowing. Your friend’s sigh is your own exhalation. It is that it is not and then becomes. It transcends the bounds of our finite reality while never becoming other than what we are: Humility and greatness in the same instant.

When you find yourself confronted by an impossible moment, zen it. The mind cannot, nor the body or the heart, but the soul possesses this capacity – easily, effortlessly, if we let go the reins and allow it. There is a mode of living which is impossible, which we cannot realize until we abandon the possible. Then infinity is a simple matter, even if to mortal eyes the scope of our limitations has not changed. Humanity was meant to live in spirit. The world of the body and its senses and memories is an animal heritage. To leave it requires a mode of being that has nothing to do with it, while including it intimately, completely. “We” are the mirror turned toward the sun; while We are the light and the glory and the radiant Truth. The mirror is not the sun, the sun is not the mirror. Forgo the duality, that the sun may walk upon earth without ever touching it. Then the impossibility of our possibilities can show by what Hand of greatness humanity was fashioned.

That “la” in the phrase “La ilaha illa al-llah” is the ultimate symbol of detachment. Because in that “la”, nothing else has significance in itself. When Plato says that the most significant thing for a philosopher to achieve is the ability to see things in themselves, he would discover that everything in the world, and all imaginings, are vacant. That there is only Him.

We are so constituted that our nature is awakened through understanding. True understanding causes a transformation down to the most basic level, forcing us to open up as if there were some aperture between ourselves and external reality.

The impulses and reactions that we have, such as the erotic complex and such, exist and contend with each other out of innocence; for if there were understanding, these would redirect themselves according to that understanding. This assumes a kind of plan, or certain functioning described by the perfect human, which at the moment is shown a dim and shadowy form compared to its potential culmination.

Our selves can sometimes be like the crust of Earth, which hides the burning, naked heart. And although sometimes we may erupt, it requires the patient necessity of time to wear away our exterior. When we look at the Grand Canyon, we can know that it will happen.

I put my faith in the efficacy of water, and the results which devotion and labor must achieve. So too the farmer, who spends his life and effort in the dirt, throwing stony seeds upon the ground, relying on a hidden process to bring up fruits and flowers from the earth. Every farmer is a mystic.

Why is it that every Dispensation has a winter? A time when the fortunes of the Faith have reached their fullest consummation, and it nows begins to decline into the mire of orthodoxy and excessive dogmatism?

Perhaps because religion is not about belief in God, but love of God. If religion were never to decline, but rather reach a pinnacle from which it never receded, then belief would be easy, and who would believe that such belief was not synonymous with true love? The Faith declines that it may be renewed, so that in each age there are reasons for people to wonder Who God truly is, rather than merely accept what has come to be regarded as unquestionably true.

I am finding there is a difference between merely “short poems” and “haiku”. If we define haiku as provoking that startling element of sudden understanding, like standing in a room and realizing of a sudden that no one is male. I think this is the reason why Zen loves it, in fact since koan and zazen are aimed at the same experience. Good haiku is a good experience.

In pursuit of artistic endeavor, the goal is to capture from an event the essential element which makes it real for the viewer. Only this element is conveyed, allowing the remainder – the “mundane details” – to be recreated in the audience’s mind, by his own creative imagination. In this way, art can be made “pro-creative”.

Because it is not possible to the repeat the real world, nor can the tree of meaning and significance be transplanted directly from the artist’s mind to the viewer. Instead, a seed of pure, refined substance is presented – offered – and the reconstitution occurs in the reader. Just as an oak seed, if it is that, will always produce an oak tree.

These things require mastery of the techniques of distilling rich experience and employing suggestion and subtlety, so that it is brought into an essential moment, and this moment becomes another real event in the viewer’s mind.

At Conchita’s Ice Cream this afternoon, while eating a double-scoop of Cinnamon Chocolate and Coffee Almond Fudge, I met two very pleasant people who had moved to this country from Honduras – Benjamin and Gloria. They told me that the population of their country is only six million people! They were both very sweet, and my heart went out to them. It’s funny how speaking in another language takes away the feeling of necessity that I have for communicating something worthwhile. In that context – because I’m also learning the spoken medium itself – I find that chit-chat is a nice way to connect with people without having to be too serious. Yet in English this doesn’t work out the same for me. Interesting.

Altruism of belief is belief that’s given with entire freedom, without reference to the self. Can an unaltruistic spirit really engage in pure belief? Or has capitalism educated us so that we’re always looking for the bottom line – in everything.

Knowledge is not gained until one knows the consequences of that knowledge.

A proof of learning is that we see old things in new ways. If our way of seeing something does not change, it shows that we have not really learned.

Plato’s belief is that you assimilate perfection; that is, you achieve it by becoming similar to it.

Efficiency eliminates creativity, because with too great an efficiency, there’s no free time remaining to create things that had not been planned.

Understanding the purpose of things alters the context in which they are understood, perhaps even altering the face of knowledge. So philosophy certainly has things to offer the practical sciences!

One only feels pain at criticism if he agrees with it. If it meant nothing, he would feel nothing. It almost seems that justification and rationalization are a manner by which the self digests such criticisms, so that the revelation does not utterly destroy the structures one has built.

We create disciplines for ourselves, when we longer trust ourselves. A law or an obligation reflects a lack of trust in the nature of those to whom the law applies. We impose disciplines when we fear ourselves because of this lack of trust.

Behind everything I buy, there is the person who made it, and the time they spent, and the life they must also live.

The newbie doesn’t want simplicity: He wants obviousness of function. Yet the two are rarely the same, since to the uneducated what is obvious is usually not germane.

Form and essence each have value insofar as they balance one another.

Self-confidence is not simply that we believe in ourselves (or maybe, it is exactly that), but that we trust that if we were to abandon our efforts at perfection per se, we would still develop into good and worthwhile people.

Without chess men, a board, and a struggle, there is no game. It may seem that we’re always headed toward a future horizon, but the real purpose is to provide a playing field within which to develop and prove our skill.

There are two ways that action comes about: by relating to the present, to what delights or disgusts; or by attempting to control the future, dictated by one’s desires and fears.

wuwei is being carried by the river, amazed at the fish, taken to places undreamt of. If we stand, to govern this flow, we severely limit our exposure to the possible.

I realize I loathe conflict, and will try to preempt it in my mind first as if to attack it head on, before it catches me, and so tame the fear it holds over my soul.

Setting out to do anything without a clear purpose in my mind, just from a desire to be “doing”, will always lack the full potential of the imagination, and the fecundity of the creative mind.

“spell” in Old English meant “speak”, and casting a spell means speaking words of power such that they invoke something. How is that different from prayer? A prayer as an invocation of the Holy Spirit, that it come down and affect the lives of the people, and the world. It’s the only truly evident power. Teaching and transformation can only occur through its grace. Therefore, a wizard is simply someone who has the faith to cast these spells, and invoke the Holy Spirit.

It seems so awfully strange, that we should be bound to agree with the religious sentiments of our current era. As I look around, I realize that the Faith will look so different from the way it does now – when its membership will include all sorts of people, from every walk of life. Are the attitudes today the same as they were in the 1920s? Our sense of “propriety”, of “reverence”, of “appropriateness”: these are more social conventions that came with our mother’s milk! If there is a Law governing a certain detail of human life, that’s different; but where there is no law, we have complete freedom of action. That is the nature of our free-will. I would say that 5% of being a Bahá’í lies in dealing with the Law. This would mean that the other 95% is the relationship we form from our own sense of His Divine Reality. It shouldn’t be dictated to us by others, no matter how subtlely or kindly. Of the three things necessary to comprehend His Teachings, Bahá’u’lláh lists among them “freedom of spirit”. Outside the dictates of the Law, our spirits have been given the prerogative to soar, and soar, and soar; anything that would bind us is a chain from this world.

Any physical creation exists within a pre-determined set of bounds, making “creation” only an iteration within a domain. Hence creation itself is without value. Statistically, all creation will occur at some time; therefore, significance lies in the experience, and nothing whatsoever in the thing.

What is the quality of experience? It is an interchange between a symbol and the whole man, who, becoming abstracted, is free to relate in a way that is not defined by the domain, since thought and feeling are likewise “creations”.

True existence for the soul must lie outside creation, and therefore only take part when there is no creation. No thought, no word, no act or sense or feeling. Entire freedom from these allows action in another manner, since it is not action as understood by this existence.

Spirit. Has no existence in this plane; only expression when not confined, and experience when not hindered.

Thought, activity, creations of the minds, have only relative validity. Only the pure, free spirit is absolute, which is so difficult to attain.

So difficult to attain because it is a test, to the find the conscious, or those willing to relinquish co-Godhood, co-Creatorship.

We cannot truly love or appreciate what we might compete against.

When we are free to renounce creation (both the doing and the thing), then we are worthy to receive the love of the True Creator, because until that moment we are seeking to equal him, and after that moment we stand in awe.

He would not have created us to know him, for to create something, truly, is to bring it forth from beyond the pale of possibility. Therefore, in order for Him to create those would love Him, they must have been created from nothingness, from a condition of not knowing, not loving, with every chance in the world not to know, and every other thing in creation that they have might have loved otherwise. And then, a single world: not a proof, but an announcement: “love Me

that I am”. There is no love created, only an unspoken mystery. This revelation is a revelation of the existence of a truth, and not the truth itself. If the seeker is created through a negative realization of what he is not, and then pursues that mystery, and figures out all the unspoken things, and discovers through his created self that the created self does not exist, then he has transcended the condition of his own existence, and voila, the act of true creation is performed. For at no time during our inception were we already what we would become.

The true lover of God appears from nowhere, with no cause, and the existence of this is our participation in the mystery of true creation, and the fulfillment of our purpose, at least in one respect. To see what is not there is creating sight; to discover what is hidden is only a matter of time. Religion is not a hidden book; its text does not exist, and yet the hands of true faith will hold it dear to the heart, and become glorious in a new creation.

The Chinese classic reads “use four ounces to deflect a thousand pounds.” I think about people and communication: sometimes if we take enough time to learn where a person is coming from, we find that we need only a few words to provoke a reaction which otherwise would require considerable time to convey. People are not so critically different from one another. Chances are, they’ve already experienced before, in some way, what we’re trying to express. So that if we take the time to discover the condition of their being, we may notice that they are even teetering on the point of realization, and it requires only the slightest breath to accomplish all that our words might have done.

As an example, I was talking to a friend one day who was debating whether philosophy really wasn’t just a science that begins with words and ends with words. I’ve spent hours before, in the past, trying to defend philosophy from this accusation. But this time, as I was trying to think of a response to give, the following question occurred to me: “Do you consider poetry to be something that begins with words and ends with words?” She answered no. When I asked why, she said because it can change a person – effect a change in their heart. I just smiled at this, and she understood my meaning perfectly. A handful of words had accomplished successfully something I’d never been able to do in the past.

What if memory is really an emotional process? For example, when I thought to recall the word “atavism”, it didn’t take very long for the memory to come that it is going back to the forefathers, or a directional intention back to origins. But, the reason for my remembering that doesn’t seem to be due to any analytical process, or any actual selection of the memory; but very very far in the background I have the dim sense of the emotion from when I learned the word. So hearing that word triggers the emotion, and then feeling the emotion it’s almost like a momentary reliving of it. And in that reliving I have a sense that fits that impression, and the form of that sense is the definition. Almost as if it were an ideograph imprinted upon my emotional memory. I have the emotional stimulation, and then the most adept description of that stimulation is the sense of going back to the forefathers.

In that sense our memory and our entire lexicon of knowledge, would represent sort of holistically our emotional imprinting through life, and be reflective of our personality – or at least the character of the experiences we’ve had. But is there some way that advantage can be taken of that if it’s true, in order to improve memory, or to take advantage of the mind’s system of recall? Because I don’t ever remember studying, or trying to remember what atavism is – although I may have looked it up more than once or twice – but what about all the other words that I know, that I only looked at momentarily? Could recall be at related to a sensitivity to emotional context?

In parallel with the mind being emotively driven with respect to memory, I would believe, that the same reason why a person does not like going to certain place, or going to a certain house because it feels odd to them, or doesn’t sit right with the flavor of spirit that they have: that this is the same thing which causes them to avoid certain lines of thought. That patterns or categories of thoughts can have a “homey” feeling, just like one’s own home or home-town, while another town across the way can just feel weird, even though it’s never been investigated. But that foreignness keeps the mind from wanting to get near to it.

Someone who has nothing gains at every turn; but someone who has too much, always perceives that they are losing it.

Have little and you will gain. Have much and you will be confused. (Lao Tzu)

Although in our culture humility and lowliness are seen to be “lesser” than fame and accomplishment, actually humility is a more positive state of being: because a man of great pride will tend to be taken down from his high station much more often, while the humble man – the lower he is – will always find himself lifted.

So the poorer you are in the moment, the richer you are in life.

I think real certitude is the product of assiduously striving to gain a deeper understanding of life, and a faith in God thereby. And as we begin to live and move in a different sphere, our certainty in the reality of that sphere – and the consequent nothingness of this ephemeral plane – begins to become so obvious that we really can’t see it any other way. In that sense, if another person were to assail us with questions and doubts, we would think, “But how could life possibly be less than beautiful, when the true reality of things touches me every day?” From that comes the true heart certainty: of having known faith directly, through concrete experience and development.

A set of digits that can represent hexdecimal, in a manner without ambiguity whether spoken or handwritten: 0-9 F L N R Y W.

Our relationship with our spouse can be our closest relationship to God. Proof:

1. Everything in existence is a reflection of God’s attributes.

2. Man, above all, is endowed with the capacity to reflect all of God’s attributes.

3. Our contact with our spouse is the closest contact we will ever have with another human being, on all levels.

4. God, in His Essence, is unknowable. We can only relate to Him through His attributes.

5. The greater our relationship to those attributes, the greater our relationship to God.

6. Since man, above all, reflects His attributes more truly than anything else, then through man, the greatest relationship with His attributes is possible.

7. Therefore, if our spouse represents our closest human contact, they are also potentially our greatest experience of God.

How do we judge life, as a quality? Is it merely a question of a functioning brain and heart, or why would we look on invalids with a pity that seems to suggest lost potential?

It would seem to be quantitative as well, leading to the assessment that the young are more alive than the old, the healthy than the infirm, and the sane and rational than the mentally afflicted. Seeking a summation of what that yardstick must look like, by which we separate the living from the moribund, it would seem thus: the freedom to conceive thoughts relative to the common world that we all perceive, and to enact those thoughts if we choose to do so, combined whit a proclivity toward inventing such thoughts, both often and variously.

This distinction then also separates the rich from the poor, the morally constricted from the amoral, the waking man from the dreamer, the city-dweller from the country man (because of the greater variety of possibilities), and the contemplative from the reactionary.

From this conception, the most vivacious individual conceivable would be a male, due to the preferences accorded by our culture, living in a culturally active part of the world, of an accepted racial background, young, wealthy, free from any burden of religious duty, intelligent, somewhat philosophical (but not morosely so), in perfect health, strong, energetic, virile, abiding in the heart of an active metropolis, and with every door of opportunity open to him. This also implies acceptance by his social group, the approbation of the many, good breeding and family, and an excellent reputation.

Such a man would see the world as his oyster, and we consider him so full of life, that our envy would provoke considerable opposition to his progress; although of course he would affably overcome that, palliating us such that we would actually support him, and continue his rise to pre-eminence.

With this is mind, the exact opposite – the dead among the dead – would resemble a poor, old man or woman, afflicted with some debilitating condition, and forgotten by the world. So dead, in fact, that society has ceased to regard them, and even their infrequent visitors – perhaps family caught in the trap of duty – look on with lugubrious eyes, counting the days they might have remaining.

Such is the fallacy recorded by our culture, who consider that the body is the key to the purpose of life.

It seems strange, but there appear to be at least two levels of awareness going on inside me. Remember how I had said I did not know myself, and what I genuinely wanted? Well, it appears that at another, more subconscious level, I do know what I want; and I think it’s the immaturity of these desires – a childlike fantasy, really – that helps to prevent them from coming to light.

It’s strange. It’s the sort of things where if you examine yourself within a single day, you can’t see it; but when you extend the perspective to cover weeks or months, then a faint, but definite pattern begins to emerge. It’s like my consciousness directs my daily plans, but this hidden aspect of myself governs the overall outcome. And to a fated degree, as if it must happen. I have an Indian friend who would call this “being”.

But here is an example: In my interactions with people I’m often not “planning” things, as if I had some ulterior motive. But when I stand back and look at my interactions with that person over a long period of time, I notice some definite scheming going on – as if I’d known what I wanted all along, before conscious of it.

And the scheming is carried out so well sometimes that it seems entirely incongruous to my everyday self. Not at all as shy or hesitating; more like some brooding mastermind determined to have his way, and also to convince everyone that that was the way it must naturally have been.

And this quality of its being the seemly evident outcome makes it either sinister, or magical, depending on your point of view. This subconscious awareness is what seems to be able to read people’s thoughts, and react in just that way which would eventually produce the result desired. Strange, brooding and dark. Invisible except for the remote view. Like chaos, until the underlying order is discovered.

Life sends us no sorrow. It is only our perception of it – our misunderstanding of life – that causes us hurt. We are the authors of our own grief. The journey from an imperfect world to divine paradise is within us. It begins and ends in our own hearts. By progression is not meant outward movement or change, but rather for us to take “the step of the spirit”, and enter the world of “no defect canst thou see in the creation of the God of mercy; repeat the gaze: seest thou a single flaw?” In that place, “He seeth war as peace, and findeth in death the secrets of everlasting life.” “From sorrow he turneth to bliss, from anguish to joy; his grief and mourning yield to delight and rapture.” All of this is a change in the heart, a triumph within. For how often has He told us that, “We are closer to you than your life’s vein”; “Ye are but one step away from the glorious heights above and the celestial tree of love”; “behold the shores of that ocean are near, astonishingly near unto you. Swift as the twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this imperishable favor, this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift, this most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty”; “Yeah, although these journeys have no visible ending in the world of time, yet the severed wayfarer – if invisible confirmation descend upon him, and the Guardian of the Cause assist him – may cross these seven stages in seven steps, nay rather in seven breaths, nay in a single breath, if God will and desire it.”

In another place Bahá’u’lláh states: “Likewise, reflect upon the perfection of man’s creation, and that all these planes and states are folded up, and hidden away within him.”

Does thou reckon thyself only a puny form When within thee the universe is folded?

The entirety of the journey, its beginning and end, are with you now. The Divine Creation is all around you, at this moment. Paradise, everlasting peace, reunion, communion with God, our heavenly home: These are all about us, as though a veil – not distance – separated us. The veil of our own lack of knowledge – or perhaps the fact that we have taken our ignorance to be knowledge, and therefore have thrown the true God behind our backs, the God we can never know because He is unknowable, and yet the God Who is forever present, and evident, because it is impossible to escape Him?

Take thou one pace, and with the next, advance into the immortal realm, and enter pavilion of eternity.

Mistakes are not just a thing that happens, they are the ebb and flow of our lives. Do not think that mistakes will debar future service, because people will remember them and hold them against us. If God wishes us to serve in a certain capacity, He will achieve it. We should even be glad of mistakes for their value, and rejoice in them, because the alternative is to be ignorant of the fact that we make them all the time. Being aware is about being conscious; it doesn’t relate to the actual number of mistakes occurring.

There is no absolute existence for anything but God. No evil, etc. But for us, who see things imperfectly, different things exist relative to our progress. Thus certain things impel us to turn away from God, and others guide us toward Him.

If we were to abide in the perfection of our nature, there would be no perception of otherness and separation, and no room for speech in the context of self-definition.

So there exists a world of relativities, an illusory world because it exists only insofar as we perceive differentiation in God’s creation. The very perception of this world, and the judgments we use to erect it, and the failings we possess which hinder us from seeing beyond it, are proofs of the interposition of “self” between us and God.

Otherwise, we would be capable of seeing past this veil, and recognize that “all things are of God”.

But we cannot lift this veil through judgment and discrimination, or by analysis, because these tools require knowledge to function. And it is our very acceptance of ignorance, in the guise of relative understanding, as knowledge, which creates the sense that the self has validity.

What is knowledge, and how can we approach understanding? True understanding is a comprehension of the reality of something, apart from its appearance. But since the reality of all things is that they are reflections of the attributes of God, we have access only to our perceptions of things, and no direct intercourse with the thing itself (refer to the argument of the noumenon).

Our truest relationship is not one of knowing truth, then, but of leaving it to its mystery and engaging it directly. In this state judgment is not possible, but experience is. Take for example the lover and his beloved. In the moments of purest engagement, one does not enjoy the moment while reflecting and considering the quality of that enjoyment. At such a time the beloved simply is, and her being is its own proof, leaving no further questions.

Self, then, is a blindness to our lack of division from things. By desiring to establish a “knowable” sense of permanency, as apart from the faith inherent in trusting our own eternity, we devise a world which we claim as our creation – although mostly it is more unpleasant than it is enjoyable. But we can at least own this, and since one cannot be secure in unknown realities, it at least gives us a fleeting sense of not being in the dark.

People’s obsession with alien abduction may boil down to a feeling that something superior is among us, secretly, acting toward an unknown end. Which unknown could be negative or positive.

A lot of myths follow this picture, going back to the Greek and Roman, in which the gods often entered into human affairs secretly.

Going all the way back, perhaps this is a mythos which exemplifies the relationship that man has had with God since the beginning. The details of this relationship are inscribed in our psyche, and play themselves out at every time in history, only differing the details.

When we can’t remember something, but we know what it isn’t, this is a sign of a different kind of memory.

We learn something, and forget it, but remain touched. We can feel our way to an answer, independent of rational processes. The result of an experience may linger, and guide our reactions, even when we are not thinking about it. Things we’ve seen and forgotten are replayed in our dreams. We can have a dull sense of prognostication about the future, or the “sense” of a person, but this happens in the flash of an instant, before time for thought even begins. The course our life takes over the span of a year may be vastly different from the course we choose day to day. There are things we fear we’ll do – almost know we’ll do – and then we watch ourselves, in hindsight, cleverly bring them about. The “flavor” of our life can greatly outlast the emotional changes of a single day. Years can go by, and yet a smell or word can bring back instantly the sense of who we were back then.

Without working to create it, there is here a great reservoir of thought and memory that we fail to credit as “real”.

If I were placed in a room with no reflecting surfaces, it would be impossible for me, using only my eyes, to behold my own face. This would result in a situation in which the organ of sight, the heart of sight, is imperceptible to itself.

Perhaps in a similar way, God, Who is the Author of consciousness, is experienced by our consciousness, although never perceived. Mirrors exist to reflect back to the organ of sight its particular nature; but where is the God mirror, by which we of created reality can look back and witness the operation of our own awareness?

Thus there is a permanent remove, since consciousness cannot truly apply its abilities back to its own self. What does our tongue taste like? How does the inner part of our nose smell?

There is no inversion possible, of the acting agent upon the actor, when the reality of that thing defined by its action. Removing the eye ball from its socket, we could then examine it, but not by using the faculty we just gave up. Likewise, it may be that realization of God’s essence would imply the cessation of our existence. We are not greater beings of which our consciousness, like an eyeball, is a mere part. For us, awareness is the eye, and is also our whole being. This implies that stepping outside the boundaries of our awareness would be no different from complete negation.

There’s something about patterns that only occur in a dilated time view, as if, by stepping back, the mosaic against which we do all of the things that we do reveals the context of the underlying desires that drove the momentary ones. Maybe it’s only in that way that we ever contact the more inward drives that we have: the things we don’t see because our attention is too narrowly focused on the moment.

A reason for a diary to be kept private is that it contains one’s thoughts in one’s own language. Which is different from expressing an idea to someone using terms that they will understand. A diary is mainly to write back to one’s self, so that he can remember what he was thinking, or of what the context of his life was at a certain time.

But even if you aren’t intending to keep a secret from someone else, it won’t always be in a form they would understand or construe correctly. There’s none of the background information, or elucidation; which might be more confusing than not in the hands of someone other than its author. And why always write so that others can understand? That’s exactly what a diary is for: Somewhere to transcribe your thoughts themselves, and not their outward form.

Rational plausibility is a hermenuetical technique of interpreting religious scripture by inventing a scheme whereby the madness of it seems less mad. This means inventing a metaphor, or analogy or argument, that simply shows that the thought is conceivable in some contact – however fictional – and thus points the road to further elucidation. If anything, it is a way of at least palliating the mind, to give the soul a chance to feel, and might exchange inspiration for sheer consternation. In this sense, it is not a tool for furthering understanding, so much as it is a technique for discovering moments of spiritual upliftment, which may often be themselves the real key to understanding.

The detachment mentioned in the Seven Valleys is not absolute detachment. It is detachment from all things save God. This detachment occurs because one becomes so enamored of God, there is room for nothing else.

Anyone who has fallen in love can relate to this experience. In those moments of communion with the beloved, everything else in the world disappears – time, place, consciousness of self, etc. – as if the lover were carried away on a sea of bliss, tossed by waves that know nothing, wish for nothing.

To attempt detachment by any means other than absorption in God is a terrific task. I think the Writings indicate that so All-Sufficing is the nature of God (as revealed by His Manifestations), that in His presence we would not find detachment rare at all, or precious, but simply the natural result of devaluing of every lesser thing. As Rumi describes it, the invisibility of the candle when placed before the sun.

To find this, we must be willing to cease paying so much attention to worldly things, or cherishing the hope that they will grant us any peace or happiness. This is not “detachment” yet, but a prerequisite along the Path. The more time we spend in prayer, and reflection on the transient nature of the world, the more we discover that only the former offers anything in the way of peace.

If a bird's wings are so soft  
  that beat the air  
and so small as to be tiny dots,  
  far away,  
then why do I feel them,  
  brushing against my heart,  
whenever I gaze up at the sky  
  and join in spirit  
  their vaulting, skyward flight?

#edited 03/17/2004

The light is pure,  
even as a wash of something  
cool and bright  
that refreshes me  
despite the lateness of the hour.

Work, and the grind of day,  
have left me hollowed out,  
an old soul,  
full of empty dreams and memories  
of my youth, crazy and reckless;  
when days would not end  
and nights quickly slipped away...

I stare in emptiness and quietude,  
as she pours her white, mother's milk;  
until my lips, where anguish lived,  
return to a warm, moonlit grin.

#written 10/29/2003

This is a schoolyard where souls learn patience:  
a quiet hour, the falling of hopes,  
the beginning of a wait interminable.