“in the bluish eye of flame, i see,
i enter you,
the moongarden there, a temple
is the one, eternal beloved,
you and i,
forever always”
~ a poem by me
Do you wear prescription glasses? Take them off. Back in the day people didn’t have glasses, and as their eye sight weakened as they’d age, they wouldn’t be able to rely on their eyes as much anymore to read and learn. The candle lights at night on the wooden bedside table would not suffice to stay in quietness and retreat in our readings. But wisdom comes with age, with the lifting of veils, with the ability to see not with the external eyes but with the inner ones, with the ability not to rationalize spirituality but to feel it – how does it feel? Where is the candle light?
Learning is purposeful, and I, as the eternal student love learning and expanding. If we were to remove our glasses of pre-conceptions, assumptions of how something should be or look like; if we were to remove the glasses of judgments, external looks, biases, projections and conditions, we may find wisdoms previously set in snow, like a snow drop who isn’t yet on the surface but it will soon be for us to see. We will find what is and deepen ourselves. I believe there is always something to learn, reflect on or deepen into.
I wonder how much is missed by us when we discard something based on looks or titles; and how we assume wisdom will come only from someone who is famous, speaks in a loud voice or is some influencer on social media with likes and followers. How shallow we’ve become, how blind.
I once talked to a monk, as you know I love monasticism, and I remember him sharing how they read and learn a lot; they have many texts and books in their libraries, even if only a small library as his monastery was quite small on a hill on an island. He loved reading and learning new things from various subjects; and yet he shared, God is not one to be rationalized. God didn’t leave us with rules and prohibitions the monk shared; and he said how often his deepest connection felt most profound and alive when he’d take off his glasses at night or just stayed in silence on the shores of the island.
In such divine moments, when it’s as if time stops and we are in non-linearity, we see what love is and how this moment will hold us because it truly is divine and sacred. Such moments can happen in the middle of an ordinary day, perhaps in a store with your family, but suddenly time stops and you see how profound love is and how grateful you are to be with this person beside you, and this is where God is – in this pure, selfless and unconditional love for another.
We see the interconnection of all and the timelessness; we see boundaries dissolve, and how all is everything and we of everything, and profound love enters us and deepens us into compassion. We fall into the gratitude for having hands with which to hold our loved ones, eyes and ears with which to see and hear them smile and laugh; and we the threads that bind us all as humanity, and how we are not so different after all. We all have shared dreams and hopes, and frailties and hesitansies, but the thread uniting us is love.
And it is here where God is. It is the light and soils, and hands and feet, and the flowers and their fragrance, and soil is water is seed is aroma is touch; and while his face we may not see clearly we know of it and how it feels, just as we know what the sun is because of how its warmth touches our skin, and how wild roses bloom because of it, and how ice melts. We may not touch the sun, but know of it through how it touches us, sometimes in subtle ways, or indirectly, and sometimes in more visible and even tangible ways.
There is purpose in feeling, in taking off the glasses used for reading, and experiencing yourself more deeply and what your own personal relationship to him is. This is the mystical path – we open ourselves to the unknown, we empty ourselves of our artificial lights, judgments and expectations and shoulds and musts, and we enter this unknown; we first unlearn to learn, we first unknow to know.
Literalism has no space in deep spirituality, and while learning is so important, we must also devote the needed time for our inner development and experience with that which we seek. Literalism, just like absolutism, sinks us in the water like stones. Spirituality is a non-linear thing, a subtle thing, and that which you seek that you may call God will not come necessarily in the linear way to be rationalized. That’s why we often see in sacred texts parables or logia, because we must allow it to interpret it, but the way to interpret it depends on our own inner vision and ability to receive and perceive that which cannot be perceived in a linear way. We can only perceive that which we have already awakened to in some way; that to which we have opened our inner door, even if only slightly.
If we are taken away our artificial lights, lamps and ability to read, where would we find the divine? In the cave of our heart, home of our heart, because this is where God resides, because the soul resides in our heart. This is why wisdom often comes with age, or rather experience and our ability to actually learn from that inner experience that has allowed us an opportunity for a deepening.
It comes with perhaps the need for our prescription glasses, the lack of wifi, limited distractions and the need or freedom to shift our eyes inward – towards our inner spiritual and emotional wildlands, so that we can light the other flame – the one that truly sees when we enter the cave.
Only the heart and its sound and voice, and its unique language to you can lead you; so you need to know how to understand it and give it the space it needs, with quietness and self reflection and deep listening, so that you can even hear it.
So turn off the outer lights every once in while, or close your eyes, and tune into the wisdom of your heart, hear its voice. Learning matters, but we must also never forget the real teachings – the teachings of the heart.
It’s your own path, and it’s unique to you; along your personal walk and exploration of your inner lands, you will walk with your own lantern, your own inner flame, until it becomes brighter and brighter shining further ahead than before; and it will gift you the ability to perceive that which you hadn’t before. This is why you may read the same book years later and suddenly new insights will emerge.
There are no short cuts, no quick fixes, it is only up to us to light our inner lanterns so that the knowledge and wisdom enter us, and light us from within. Patience opens the soul of matter, kindness and love are the soils of the lands of the heart, and that’s the land that truly matters. And when you light that candle, your lamp, don’t hide it away, as the sacred books say, leave it on your night side table for others to see it when they enter the home, or through the window, to feel inspired and light their own.
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The beautiful cover art is by Vicente Romero Redondo, whose work I love and find so beautiful and inspiring. His official website is here. All rights reserved by the artist.
