Spiritual Essence: April 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, April 28, 2019

Quote of the Week #137 - The Experience of Divinity

Quote of the Week #137 - The Experience of Divinity

The self-awareness that we are without beginning or end is, precisely, the experience of Divinity.

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

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Quote of the Week #136 - The Nondual Essence of Divinity

The essence of divinity is found in every single thing – nothing but it exists. Since it causes every thing to be, no thing can live by anything else. It enlivens them; its existence exists in each existent.

Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that Ein Soph emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of it, you have dualized. Realize, rather, that Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not say, “This is a stone and not God.” Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.

Before anything emanated, there was only Ein Soph. Ein Soph was all that existed. Similarly, after it brought into being that which exists, there is nothing but it. You cannot find anything that exists apart from it. There is nothing that is not pervaded by the power of divinity. If there were, Ein Soph would be limited, subject to duality. Rather, God is everything that exists, though everything that exists is not God. It is present in everything, and everything comes into being from it. Nothing is devoid of its divinity. Everything is within it; it is within everything and outside of everything. There is nothing but it.

--Moses Cordovero, Shi’ur Qomah and Elima Rabbati, translated by Daniel C. Matt in The Essential Kabbalah, The Heart of Jewish Mysticism

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