Reading Contemplatively
Whatever truth you have chosen, read only a small portion of it, endeavouring to taste and digest it, to extract the essence and substance thereof, and proceed no farther while any savour or relish remains in the passage: when this…
A Genuine Contrition
Those who tread these paths should be informed of a matter respecting their confession in which they are apt to err. When they begin to give an account of their sins, instead of the regret and contrition they had been…
Facing Our Hurt and Grief
The process of transforming the heart can be difficult because as we open it, we inevitably encounter our own pain and become more aware of the pain of others. In fact, much of our personality is designed to keep us…
Questions Without Answers
As a physician, I was trained to deal with uncertainty as aggressively as I dealt with disease itself. The unknown was the enemy. Within this worldview, having a question feels like an emergency; it means that something is out of…
Open
One of the main tools for entering into the vivid immediacy of quiet mind is “not knowing.” Ordinarily, our minds are filled with all kinds of opinions about who we are, what we are doing, what is important and not…
The Mosaic That Shows Us the Face of God
A mosaic consists of thousands of little stones. Some are blue, some are green, some are yellow, some are gold. When we bring our faces close to the mosaic, we can admire the beauty of each stone. But as we…
Right Under Our Noses
One of the ego’s main defenses against doing so (experiencing our Essence) is the belief that spirituality is something rarefied, impractical, and very far away. In fact, it is closer than we think, as the mystics assure us; we do…
A Hidden Resurrection
The resurrection of Jesus was a hidden event. Jesus didn’t rise from the grave to baffle his opponents, to make a victory statement, or to prove to those who crucified him that he was right after all. Jesus rose as…