Spiritual Essence: February 2019

SPIRITUAL ESSENCE:

Focusing on the essence of spirituality from all times, places, cultures…and beyond. Serving and cultivating the innate, inherent spiritual nature contained within all: the religious, the non-religious, the spiritual but not religious, the atheist, the agnostic, the mystic; whatever one does or does not consider oneself. We are beings at many different levels with many different aspects: physical, energy/life force, mind, intellect, emotion; but at our deepest common core, we are all spiritual beings. We all yearn to love and be loved, to nurture and be nurtured, to express and serve and realize each of our unique destinies. We can all help each other along our individual journeys, united by our common needs and yearnings.

Quote of the Week #156 - Listening/Hearing for Non-material Sustenance

Quote of the Week #156 - Listening/Hearing for Non-material Sustenance

Every one who is thirsty, come and drink. He who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good. Let your soul delight in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, that your soul will live…

--Isaiah 55:1-3, The Living Torah translation by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Quote of the Week #132 - THE EXPERIENCE OF GOD

Quote of the Week #132 - THE EXPERIENCE OF GOD

This experience of God is the experience of my profound Self, the paradoxical experience that we are most intimately our own and at the same time superior to ourselves. The necessary condition is to have a pure heart.

The experience of God thus consists in touching the totality of Being with the totality of our own being; to feel in our body, our intellect and our spirit the whole of reality both within us and outside us. And paradoxically, it is the experience of contingency: we merely touch the infinite at a point.

The experience of God is the experience of the Mystery that governs our lives from both within and without.

--Raimon Panikkar, The Experience of God; Icons of the Mystery

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Quote of the Week #131 - The Battle

Quote of the Week #131 - The Battle

Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

--Anonymous

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Quote of the Week #130

Quote of the Week #130 - The Meaning of “Adonai Hineni”

To love each other in the name of God! Now, here is the greatest challenge of all, for who is loving whom? Are we really separate from each other, or are we just exemplars of the unity of God? The mind can conjure up all sorts of splendid ideas, but it is only the heart that can truly understand. We are asked to polish the mirror of the heart. We do this by knocking at the door of the heart, remembering that the door is opened up from the inside. We ourselves cannot open it. So who opens it? Only when we can say, “It is Thou [Adonai],” in answer to his question, “Who is knocking at my door?” that the door can be opened. [Only when we can say, “Hineni/I am here at your service,” in answer to his question, “Where are you/Who is there?” that the door can be opened].

Only in complete humility can we approach the door of the heart. We approach the door of the heart when there is nothing else to do. When we knock properly, it shall be opened unto us. That is the promise that we were given, and are given, from the beginning of time. We are veiled by endless masquerades, until the right time comes for the veils to be lifted, and we can see him face to face, and truly say, “Oh Thou!”

--Adapted by Steven J. Gold from Steps to Freedom by Reshad Feild, with editorial notes in brackets [ ]

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