I am in the midst of a transition within my practice in several areas, including in emphasizing a different approach or model for what I already provide.

I am honestly trying to offer a unique and enjoyable perspective to those aspects and bits of information which I consider an important supplement to or even a complement for the support I provide.

Foundationally, I approach helping others in a very Rogerian way, emphasizing empathy through understanding, and I make use of Jungian ideas and principles for how the mind works, which I usually feel led to share.  This includes relating how the unconscious acts as a storehouse of information for what to work on, this material coming up as part of a natural process meant to inform us.

Dovetailing or building on Jungian principles of the unconscious, combined with or maybe even supplanted by spiritual understandings I know and have experienced over a lifetime, approaching half a century now, I am all into offering the esoteric knowledge I feel essential to living a fulfilling life.

(Esoteric knowledge being that which may not necessarily be readily available to know--knowledge that is hidden even.)

This is what it comes down to, I feel.

I can provide support and help others transition through difficult experiences and experiencing in life, but I feel like I have a storehouse of knowledge and understandings just waiting to be shared, for me to provide.

If this is the best that I offer, how can I not share it?

This information may actually be more informative in a curative and healing way than any conventional approach to helping can provide.

An attempt at summary of the esoteric knowledge here:

1) We are all driven by the desire to know ourselves completely, which ends up being as an individual expression of the universe as a whole.

2) Between any two in this world, whether this be between a person and a place, an object and another object (or thing), or between any combination of these three, the natural tendency is towards union and wholeness, relating rather than distinguishing and distancing.

3) Personal power means our ability to experience and do what we want.

Conclusions to be drawn from the above:

1) We are not ultimately in control of what we do if we are all being pulled towards knowing ourselves as an individual expression of the universe.

2) We can assist in this process more gracefully by using our personal power to go towards this understanding with awareness.

3) Some level of surrendering to the mystery behind this pull towards knowing ourselves completely seems inevitable.

Concepts which support the above:

Magic describes the dynamic pull towards union we experience when we surrender to this process and experience the wonder of it.

Alchemy models the transformation of ourselves into this ultimate expression of ourselves.

Divination becomes an act of surrender to the mystery pulling us towards knowing ourselves in this complete way.

The sacred feminine, finally, represents the ultimate love of the universe, bridging the gap between us and this understanding of who we are, pulling us towards this understanding.

Now, I feel I am ready to share more openly this information that I know, and I am happy to provide this as part of what I do.

I look forward to being able to share this with you, for you to enjoyably benefit from it.

I believe there are two paths we walk on this earth.  The one we all know.  And the one we are walking, perhaps unbeknownst to us.

To be who we are, to be and do from this place, individually this gives us joy, allows us to experience the freedom of being ourselves.

When we do this, we are tasting of our true nature.  We are recalling the reality we know beneath all we experience.

We are uncovering the esoteric meaning of life.

All actions can be seen to serve this drive towards knowing ourselves in the ultimate sense.  In moments of wonder, in the joy and freedom already mentioned, and to a lesser degree, in moments of love and peace, we are experiencing some level of who we are.

To uncover what is already there in meditation, to understand the joy of living, the joy of life, the joy of wonder in the mystery of it all, these speak volumes to what I am trying to say, to what I am trying to share about who we are.

To experience these is to know what I am referring to, words falling short, the experiential knowledge the key.

Awareness of our joy and freedom keeps unlocking the door for us throughout life, to know the meaning of life, this drive to know who we are at the most expansive and deepest level.

And, it is ever so near.

Beyond this, or in addition to this, supplementing this going towards realizing the untraceable memory of truth within us, calling to us to remember who we are, I have enjoyed combining Eastern and Western concepts, and I use the words magic and alchemy in intentional and often defined ways to express the nature of who we are and the universe.

Magic represents the fabric of reality, as much as it can be said to exist, and it also expresses the dynamic of it, really a kind of love of the universe, ever present, able to be touched on and tasted if we shift our awareness in that direction.

In fact, between the experiencer and the experience I would say an alchemical connection exists, a kind of loving connection, which we may experience to one degree or another, even if it means we pull away as a result.

We are all going towards this reality of who we are, a more complete and indescribable understanding than words can afford, than we can ever completely express.

I am here, I feel, to counsel on this understanding, this opportunity, this inevitability of uncovering who we are at the most complete and completely experienced level.

We are all going towards this understanding.

I feel I am here to help accelerate this natural process, like an alchemist, one who has seen nature at work and wants to accentuate the divine witnessed in it, through self-agency and hands-on application.

Negatively felt experiences and ripples in the idea of wholeness are opportunities to trace these waves of experience back to their source.

I help provide a different perspective, shedding light on and helping to promote healing, defined as remembering who we are.

This is wholeness.

Rather than provide relief only from just what may be immediately experienced, I offer a deeper level of understanding, beyond what may be just occurring on life's surface.

Rounding out recent thoughts I have had of alchemy and Tantra (see the post Alchemy: Destination Red), I want to relate how I see magic as synonymous with love in terms of being the fabric and dynamic of reality.

The untraceable memory of truth within us calls us to realize who we are as a unique expression of the universe, while simultaneously being the universe itself.

We are all moving towards this understanding, whether we are consciously doing so or not.  Thus says Vedanta.

An experiential knowledge that we are the universe, according to Tantra, comes from us feeling the vibratory reality of it, this sacred tremoring or vibration of the universe, perhaps a feeling of love or joy within ourselves, permeating our whole being, coming to us in peak moments, although certainly not restricted to them.

That being the fabric of reality, the dynamic of reality comes to us in everyday life in the form of the connection between any two: a person and a person, a person and an object, a person and a place, or even between an object or a place and another object or place.  (The word "thing" can be used in place of "object" here.)

If all of reality, according to Vedanta, becomes nothing but an expression and experience of the very universe itself in our greatest understanding, the experiential Tantric dynamic of it has the relation between any two physical manifestations, as described above, as being alchemical in nature, that is, the natural tendency between any two phenomena becomes ultimately the experience of the universe as whole.  The vibratory or joyful experience or dynamic between any two represents the natural desire for wholeness or union, the experience of the undivided, absolute universe.

We can say love exists between them, desiring wholeness.

Saying nothing about how magic, in being the fabric and dynamic of reality as just described, may be manipulated or worked with in intentional and conscious ways, which I have nothing to say on, although the framework and reality of it is clearly there--magic as an expression and dynamic of the universe can easily be substituted for the word "love" when recalling the feelings we have in peak moments and when resonating with others or other objects or places in a special way.

What motivated me to post, and what this post has come down to in a very simple way, this has me sharing how the tasks of daily living, I like to think of as an opportunity to experience and express magic, as acts imbued with love, for those tasks done especially to help and assist others, and for those done to help keep the peace and cleanliness of our own space and domain.

These are not to be seen or experienced as mundane activities or detail work.

They are the very acts of life itself, regular everyday life, but possibly able to be experienced as a way of working magic, of expressing personal love, or a way of sacredly connecting to what you are doing, or who you are doing it for.

I am somewhat self-conscious sharing this information, but, I think it important to be myself and relate what ties in with the work I do.  It helps explain the framework behind the process of my counseling, shedding light on relevant beliefs and understandings that come into play in my practice.

What I am sharing I would like to put in the framework of alchemy's three stages, which can be found in other posts or under the Alchemy menu on this site.

As a way to accelerate a natural process, whether this be for metals or for human beings, alchemy's stages outline how we reach for wholeness.

Being a mystic fits in well with the stages or steps.  By going deeper into oneself, or losing oneself through the embrace of something greater, the desired goal of wholeness, where we are more purely ourselves than at any other time, this wholeness can be tasted, experienced, and touched on, requiring nothing else at this time.

I have a sense that there is no divided experience from anything or anyone else when we come into ourselves more like this, ironically disappearing into this unified wholeness as we realize ourselves more and more.  What transpires then, or on the way to experiencing and knowing this, I might describe as a thinning of reality or as a taking away from any experience the substantiality of it.

Things do not bother us like they used to, and they do not have the weight that they once did.

They simply do not have the substance like that.

Now, this experience may last for but a short time, the example of a deeper experience of meditation coming to mind, along with the felt experience of reality afterwards.

In alchemy we could say that we are in the world of the everyday, its thoughts and ideas, and removing ourselves consciously from it in the next stage, which allows us to return to the world in the third stage, with a closer experience to or approximation of that golden destination of feeling and being whole, experiencing the true nature of reality as less substantial and weighted than before we entered deeply into meditation.

From white, to black, to red tinged with gold, to speak chiefly of the colors of the alchemical stages just outlined.

Alchemy, whether we know it or not when we follows its stages, helps us arrive more quickly at this place of wholeness.

Being a mystic helps us arrive there in the way just outlined, and by doing practices like a mystic might, we give ourselves the opportunity to experience this.

Meditation might be one way to this.

In the practice of counseling, certainly how I approach it, two people have the opportunity to thin out reality together or for one to lead the other in practices which help this to occur.  Working through problems or concerns or issues, to give just a general description of counseling, this is a way to lessen the load and help make less substantial the obstacles or difficulties on one's path, which include within oneself.

Any experience becomes an opportunity to experience wholeness, if we are able to let go fully into it and touch on the underlying reality within the moment, it being of less substance than we might have otherwise experienced then.

Being a mystic, I have almost a need to dip into this underlying reality for my sense of balance and well-being as a person, although it does not tolerate well at times experiences that fall short of this deeper immersion.

It may in some ways be easier not to be a mystic while living on this earth, but I do think it aligns me with a knowing that I truly do cherish, however it may be beyond any of my ability to help not having this drive or this experience.

I just work with what my experiencing of reality is and has been, that has informed me and continues to do so, and I think it has its benefits when helping others with their own drives and needs in reaching wholeness.

I feel like I have finally come to a place where I can share openly, if not completely so, the knowledge I have that has meant so much to me throughout my life.

This knowledge I can share will be on a path unique to each person, but it translates into freedom for everyone, a loving sense of being, a peaceful sense of existence; it is dynamic and powerful, loving and human.

It accepts no authority, but your own.

In the ultimate sense, it is authority for everyone.

When looking at the basic processes of alchemy, in which a material becomes purified to a point of perfection, reaching its own innate essence or self, the final destination becomes colored red.

This may symbolize the material's own innate perfection achieved.  It may also signify its ability to change other materials into their own perfected states.

This, I am so happy to have discovered, perhaps urged on silently by the work of Carl Jung, who himself found in alchemy so much rich meaning for his own discovered understandings of how we reach for wholeness.

I will say I have come across this perfected material before, sometimes called a stone, throughout my life.

A most recent encounter with it shaped myself and the beginnings of my practice, introducing the sacred feminine to me in a way I had not known.  The importance of self-love was pointed out, not in a distorted way, but in a way which had me feeling more whole.

Reading books on the subject, I found in the sacred feminine a suppressed understanding, lineages or potential lineages of women who incorporated everyday living into their daily practice.

If a path of truth were to be walked, discarding everyday life and love did not seem healthy based on the recent experiences I had had at the time.

I encountered the red thread designation of Meggan Watterson, which harkened back to the women of the past I was discovering.

Completely separate from her, I found out there was a Red Thread Zen practice, incorporating everyday living into its unique form of Buddhism.

There are other encounters with this color, and I will come to another of them in a moment, but when I discovered in alchemy just recently the path of making this treasured material, perfected in itself and which could transform others as well, I was shown how I could incorporate all of my path in a way which could be communicated to others, the symbolism of alchemy and its processes having paved the way with their precedents.

Repeated from a previous post, here are the sequences of changes when transforming a material into its perfected state, signified by color change and including my own interpretation of what each stage means.  Transforming oneself, as well as other materials, has been a goal of alchemy historically.

Black - a distillation of ourselves past the everyday world and mind talk.
White - insights and information gained from the experience as we return.
Red - living our lives changed from the knowledge of our experience.

While I had very deeply and clearly encountered my own personal experiences of the first two stages of alchemy, not until I encountered the need of the sacred feminine in such a fundamental way could I have found meaning in the third stage, even though I had experienced it in my own way, if not highlighted or talked about in the traditions I had followed.

Without elaborating on this, I will simply say that any tradition that advises practice and discipline away from others or from even basic human sexual understanding, without honoring either of them, or without honoring the connecting human link we have to all, this potentially complicates the path, sometimes to an alarming degree.

You may reach a state of understanding without consciously honoring our humanity or sexuality, but depending on the degree of neglect, this will return at some point to challenge you.

A religion, for instance, may honor a removal of oneself from the world to gain insights and understanding, as in the first two stages of alchemy, but it may not have much to say on how to be a human and work with these.  This represents a feminine addition to the knowledge, to my mind, and to my heart, for a more complete understanding, for how to humanly work with this knowledge and any insight gained.

Traditional Tantra represents such a complete path as I have outlined, as alchemy has put forth.  I have been excited and heartened to discover we have had a Western approach, in alchemy, to a complete path to realizing the truth of who we are, which we are all going towards, whether we know it or not.

Traditional Tantra has been the most complete path I have ever encountered, predating religion as we know it, captured and intimated somehow in the stages of process outlined in alchemy for reaching perfection.

Traditional Tantra has come from India, followed closely by, perhaps around the same time and around the same region, the teachings of Vedanta.  Whereas Vedanta follows more closely the first two stages of alchemy, traditional Tantra, which I will refer to as simply Tantra now--Tantra emphatically emphasizes the third stage of alchemy, incorporating red most vividly in some of its esoteric practices.

The practice of helping others in my life has come to this point of my journey, to be able to follow a Western set of guidelines for Eastern practices, which incorporate the entirety of a path to wholeness, to realizing the truth of who we are.

I will have more to say about the degrees of subtlety found in the three stages of process, the three ways or pathways of alchemy, which capture the full journey of anyone who honors being human as part of it.

As Halloween or Samhain approaches, I want to share my take on whether magick in the traditional sense has any kind of reality to speak of.  I have my own definition of it, which may lean more towards a psychological understanding (click here to see this definition: Esoterica), but does magick, assumed throughout the remainder of this post to be of the traditional kind, does it have any reality in or bearing on the work I do?  As one in a helping profession of healing, do I think magick ever really becomes involved when helping others?

I will share with you what I learned from two trusted sources as I answer.

After reading one contemporary historian's account of his experiences witnessing groups of others performing magick over the course of three years, his conclusion being that the practice of magick does have an efficacy and a reality of success, assuming that there are certain conditions or circumstances when performing a magickal working which do lend themselves to it, I would say that, yes, I do believe magick can and does become involved when helping others.

At least, I trust in the evidence above concluding that magick can work effectively, given the right circumstances.

Carl Jung, when writing about his belief in synchronicities or meaningful coincidences, acausal events which happen simultaneously between a person and a phenomenon or a person and another person without seeming explanation, highlighted the need for a strong experience of emotion to exist for a synchronicity to occur.  He cited one medieval scholar's belief in magick, in its similar requirement for an emotional component being present which lends itself to the magickal working.

I believe in Jung's conclusions in his work on synchronicities, how they parallel the need for an emotional component to be present and felt for magickal workings to be effective.

In other words, I believe magick can work and it does become involved when helping others.

When a strong emotion is present and being felt, either by me or the person I am helping, the information provided and felt during that time can have a healing and lasting effect, make an impression, this being the intention of release or the pureness of it being felt, for whatever it is one may want to tell and never think about again, the experience of a heartfelt sense of being with someone during their emotional recollection of difficult or traumatic times, the inspired sharing of insight and information, shared with emotional strength, to convey the belief and meaning of what is being said to guide another on their path--any or all of these could be viewed from the above examples as being ripe for magick to occur, for magickal happenings to happen, where one, or both of us, feels a strength and clarity of emotion and intent, wanting and willing almost for what is said to be released or embraced, and it is believed in that moment, for what is said, to be how it is, to be how it is said, and that belief and togetherness, through emotion, help wield the workings of what could be called magick, whether the work ever formally arises or is talked about that way.

Yes, I believe magick exists in helping others, and it is the emotional connection and experiences in and of those encounters which lay the groundwork for it to occur.

Please ponder and enjoy as final thoughts the following from historian Ronald Hutton on his experiences observing magickal workings which actually work, in reference to his earlier account above:

"The other consists of those workings in which the operators have a deep personal interest and invest powerful emotions. They are rarely undertaken if they appear to run against the natural course of events or to be based upon unreasonable expectations. They are employed most commonly, and avidly, if a natural process ought to have occurred but seems to be mysteriously blocked, or if the odds for a desirable and an undesirable outcome to a process seem to be evenly balanced. This pattern has been very clear in the five covens which I have observed steadily over lengthy periods, and the apparent success rate of that class of operation is very high indeed."

From The Triumph of the Moon (p.396). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

I hope you enjoy a happy and safe Halloween coming up.

[Historical note: When I mention this past month in this post, I am referring to September of 2021, when I did have COVID-19, but within a couple of weeks, after feeling better without a fever, I was cleared by the state health department to be out and about in the world once again and to be able to help others once more in September.]

Before old habits and thoughts potentially take their accustomed place again, I want to share what seems relevant and meaningful from having had COVID-19 over this past month.  I also could never express enough my thoughts and feelings regarding COVID-19, particularly for those who have been touched by it in any way.

I have mostly found in my life, perhaps more so when I was younger and certainly over this past month, when I am sick I am able to reach a level of peacefulness at some point, where I am almost completely removed from the everyday world.  I have described myself in other posts as being a mystic, and I think a door for me at these times opens: I am able to just be with my understanding of what the universe is at a larger level.

When I have just only been able to rest, or sit peacefully, or stare even, with hardly a thought to be had, and if this is experienced without the feeling of bodily symptoms or concerns hardly at all, this approximates or is the experience of being a mystic, a similar experience to be found in meditation as well.

One step at a time becomes the approach when coming out of this experience.  The energy expended is just towards each next step.  The energy level is low, but it does not have room for more egoistic concerns, other than just for survival and for being well.  We want to be in this state almost exclusively, it would seem, for our health and for continuing to live.  When other concerns of an everyday nature come up, which we have to expend more energy to meet, we do not want to expend the energy to address them, but we know we must in order to survive.

These all describe my general sense of living: I do not want to do much else other than be at one with, feel that oneness with, the universe or God, if you will.  Worldly or other concerns at times weigh me down and take me away from that state and that feeling, that knowledge of being at one like that.  The trick or the ideal is to feel that oneness, that quality of just being, without the extraneous thoughts, in all circumstances and at all times.

Having had COVID-19 basically enforced this perspective of reality, and I enjoyed it in that sense, that I was hovering as a person in existence at that threshold of just being with the universe, while retaining some sense of myself, and almost dissolving completely in that experience of oneness.  Again, and very accurate: this is how coming closer to and merging with an understanding of the universe is, how a mystical experience comes to be experienced and felt.

Coming back now into everyday life, I see now how my energy becomes expended or is easily tempted to be expended.  I am still somewhat fighting these old habits and tendencies.

What I hope to retain from my time having COVID-19 is the meaningful application and expenditure of my time, which means my energy, and the furthest from my ideal would be to expend my time and energy on worries and concerns that I expend just for the habit of worries and concerns.

This I do not find to be helpful at all, and as I trusted in my body and the universe during my time with COVID-19, I also want to continue to trust in my own inclinations towards healthy ways of living, which include happy ways of living, and in the universe for guiding me and just being with me, maybe even to the point of the universe handling what seem like major concerns or what to worry about but actually are not.

Time needs to be honored each step of the way, for what feels right to you, never pressing the panic button to change reality into something it is not.

When time and self become thinner and seem to vanish, this again would be a mystical experience, and it actually describes living in a fulfilling way, if one is enjoyably being or doing whatever it is one is doing.

With COVID-19 I was surviving, hoping each moment and step to come out the other side, feeling that oneness at times with the universe or God, certainly some real presence Who I hoped had my back.  I certainly enjoyed feeling the closeness then.

Now I can say I can see where our energy may travel, where we may expend it in thoughts that may fritter it away.

It is my hope that we know a real connection to ourselves and to the universe, for our own guidance within and for what the universe can provide.

Perhaps it is a narrower door to travel through, or to keep finding ourselves needing to walk through, than the regular thoroughfares and passageways we walk in life.

The time and energy spent to go there, I think, are completely worth it.  If you are not shown this doorway through your own life circumstances, then I hope you can find it through beginning to trust in yourself and your own ideas and notions of what may be the right path to travel.

The universe has your back, I feel this, and this takes trust and surrender.

Being a mystic, I think this is the only way to live.

Much peace and comfort to you, with a deep connection to yourself and the universe.

I had hopes of a different kind than the reality that presents itself.  I am still furnishing the final details of my newer office space, yet it does not quite capture the place from which I had to move, which makes me feel a bit wistful, with some sadness.

I think individuals have commented positively on the space I am in now, and although it does not capture what I had, it is a positive something new, with more creative input from me than the place I had just found almost five and a half years ago now, content with how it was.

I think it is important to share this bit of personal information here at the beginning of this post, because when it comes to helping others on their paths, certainly for someone who might be reading this right now, it really comes down to just you and me, regardless of the space in which we find ourselves.

So the question comes to mind:

Who are we?

If I am perfectly candid, then I will say we are full of the potential for healing, defined as a connection which allows one to realize essential wholeness.

I can never do anything to improve upon your natural state of being. I can only help you allow this to come forth, where healing in this context means knowing and experiencing in this state, where whatever conditions you find yourself in, physically, mentally, in whatever way, you still feel yourself, and know yourself, to be all right.

I am someone who cares deeply for this connection of healing, for my own life path as well, a path of being with and in the moments, however they may be showing up, yourself being someone searching for this place of being and being all right also, which can be accessed in any moment, in any state.

Perhaps this sounds a bit philosophical, but it represents the truth as I know it, which has been uncovered in different ways in Western psychology.

I am someone whose best guess to contribute in the world has been psychologically, informed by what I could say are my spiritual roots, or the essence of my being, really no different than anyone else's essence.

I am to allow this being-ness to come forth, and I know you are here to receive some of this, realizing it for yourself.

Who are we?

We are two beings being together, and I think the essence of this is healing.

I am offering this post as a comfort for times of discontentment and difficulty. I am sharing my understandings for what I feel I know, to a large extent, reality to be. If you find yourself relating to these descriptions, then take comfort. You have been brushing with reality, or ultimate reality, and you may not have even known it.

This post presupposes an underlying layer of the universe which helps make up all of its parts, its possibilities, its every conception conceived of or yet to be conceived. You may call it truth, reality, God, or simply the universe even.

Does there exist an unchanging background to all we see and experience, can experience? Does it provide value to speculate on this, think about it, or come up with reasons for seeking such an understanding in the first place?

Let me share my understanding of what this reality may be, or is even. Then I may elaborate on the value of this, or let this come to you through your own considerations.

If we conceive of an ultimate reality, one which underlies all we experience, then for me I have not found a better explanation for this than in Hindu thought and philosophy, namely, in Advaita Vedanta, as put forth by Swami Vivekananda, in alignment with his teacher, Sri Ramakrishna.

What follows has been shaped largely by their understandings.

First, let us take up the consideration of this world, where we experience the phenomena of the senses, this world which we may consider to be our most easily understood version of reality.

Vedanta calls this a world of duality, a reality of duality, not ultimate reality, which I will refer to later.

We know everything in the context of at least one other thing. We see because one thing is next to another. If it were not, how could we see it to begin with, because then we would experience seeing only one thing?

We smell something in the absence of that smell in what came before, and another smell, or the lack of that first smell, occurs in what comes after.

Whether you speak of before or after in an experience of time, or in an experience of any of the five senses, there has to be a different experience before and after the experience occurring, or else there would be no experience at all to begin with.

Take the example of touching someone's arm: there is a moment of time before you are touching and experiencing this person's arm; there is the experience of touching this person's arm; and then there is the experience after you have touched this person's arm when you are no longer touching it. You need the experience of not touching it to begin with to experience the actual touching of it at all.

This illustrates how an experience of before and after sets up these two types of experiences, the experience of touching, and not touching, and how the experience of touching cannot exist without the experience of not touching before it.

All experiences depend on this duality, if you will, of time-related experiencing. We cannot have one experience without the experience of its absence as well, or without another and different experience being experienced right before or after the experience we are referring to.

We experience phenomena because there are different ones to experience, not just because there is no experience and then there is one. We know black because we know other colors besides black. We need just one other color to be experienced to be able to experience seeing the color black. If there were no other color to be experienced, ever, then we would not experience black, because there would be no understanding of color to begin with, and we would not be able to experience seeing anything different.

If you think about any one of the five senses and any possible experience of it, you will find that any single experience of that sense depends on the absence of that experience, or the experience of something different with that same sense right before that experience.

This then becomes the explanation of living in a world of duality, a reality in which nothing alone can said to be all-pervasive or eternal, in which nothing can be experienced which does not rely on another experience to begin with.

Where does it all come from though? Does this seem a valid question? What would an ultimate reality underneath all reality be like?

If an ultimate reality were to be speculated, it would seem to me to be not dependent on any other. No other experience should be required for it to be there.

In other words, ultimate reality is non-dual, without duality.

Qualities you may experience when reaching this understanding: your sense of self disappears, you are dissolving experience away from a separation of yourself and that which is experienced, one form of duality--you are beginning to lose a sense of separate identity as you approach this ultimate experience of reality underlying it all; your sense of time disappears, you are experiencing reality not dependent on another, where no sequencing of before or after is required since you are approaching the one experience all-pervasive, by definition one without a second, no time required for two or dual experiences; your sense of worldly concern vanishes, you experience that which allows all reality to be, where you are not present and time no longer matters, or exists--in your experiencing of this, ironically when your sense of self is not there, you are not separate from anything or anyone, you experience truth underlying and informing all existence, existence that ever was, will be, or is.

Meditation helps bring you to this understanding, and if you take notice of or recollect past meditations, you may find these qualities having been there or started to emerge.

Devotion to your own understanding of your higher power, or God, or even some general sense of the universe, which we may emotionally feel a connection to within ourselves, devotion can play a role in bringing us to these experiences of dissolving into something greater than ourselves, beyond us.

Reasoning, as briefly begun above, or even in the realms of science, quantum physics coming to mind, our minds are our pathways to these experiences of such an understanding as well.

I believe in these experiences. I have had these experiences.

I imagine that you at some point have come across these experiences in your own life too.

These are what set us on a different path of living life.

These are what give us glimpses of ourselves beyond the everyday world, of limited duality.

I think the value in all of this, you can come to explore.

I know the value in all of this informs the work I do.

May they ever be of comfort and of curiosity, such non-dual experiencing for you.

I consider this a follow-up to my previous post, where I spoke of darkness and light being a key to fuller understanding of oneself. They are the negative and positive aspects of and range of experiences of oneself, both within and without us, or outside of us.

When darkness occurs, when we experience what may be called a negative experience, we may be quick to shut off and shut down the memory and recollection of what happened. Much of this may be natural for psychological reasons, for containing a sense of self in the face of a perceived or real threat to what happened.

I spoke of embracing the mystery of life, allowing it to unfold naturally, or more naturally, as a way to work with the darkness of experiences, and by inference, the darkness of oneself.

When a negative experience occurs, part of us will always or naturally be led to wanting to understand more fully what happened, and to know why, what are the reasons it occurred.

We can come to understanding ourselves in relation to what occurred, but to understand beyond this, I might suggest the approach of embracing the mystery of life, of embracing the mystery of what occurred.

For me, and for I believe the experiential reality of others, life seems to expand and resonate more richly, be full of more light, and begin to be full of possibilities again, if we are able to allow the unknown of life, the unknown about why anything might have occurred, if we are able to get in the spirit, allow the spirit, of the vastness of the universe to be with us, as if looking at the night stars, away from city lights, into the seemingly infinite blackness of the starscape before us, where we feel small, but somehow comforted, knowing our place in the universe in this way, feeling content within ourselves, allowing a resonating and perhaps vibrating sense of energy within and with the universe, ourselves feeling peaceful and curious, perhaps spiritual and connected, not without alignment with what we see, feeling a part of this vastness, full of its space and perhaps uncommon beauty.

Darkness, in ourselves, in events that occur, contains a natural beauty, but only in the context of letting go into the unknown, into the unknown of why anything might have occurred, into the unknown where answers are not forthcoming, but we are able to tap into an understanding beyond the event, larger than the event itself, where we may get our self-referential answers of understanding, where we may feel embraced by a loving universe, the comfort and nurturing presence of it being felt as there, being felt as always there.

We are embraced in the vastness of the universe in these moments.

This we can know.

Some may align more, or try to, with the cold light of truth.

I feel it is time to speak of the love of the unknown of the darkness, however, of the love of the ongoing mystery of life, where we can feel out the answers, come to an understanding, where what we can know may never be enough for a rational and searching mind, but we can rest easy and at peace in knowing ourselves in the context of this larger scale of understanding.

We are embraced in the universe, in the night, peace, and darkness of it, in the unknown of it, where the answers of whether we are supported or not, of whether we have a place in it or not, become revealed as the mystery unfolds.

We do have a place in it, each and every one of us, but this does not come from knowing all the answers.

We must proceed unknowingly, trustingly, allowing the ever enveloping mystery of life, of the universe, to unfold. We will not know a love, on both this intimate and vastness of scale, if we do not.

Embracing the mystery of life, we allow the universe to unfold.