spiritual self-knowledge
Without sermonizing to you, I want to point out the importance of thinking for yourself. To think for oneself, it is paramount that you examine the whole content of all that you think, feel, believe and accept. What is important is that you see things for yourself. In seeing for oneself, there is freedom and intelligence.
Now, I am going to relate what I mean to you of a discussion I had the other day with a young man who proclaims himself as a Christian. Of course, as some of you may know, I am always challenging religious fanatics for one reason or another. Now, in the midst of our discussion, I asked him, is it not logical and sane to go directly to God, if there is one? He was rather shocked at first at my comment and the possibility of bypassing his messiah, which he believes in. In his reply, he exclaimed, no, you can’t do that! Now listening to someone say such a thing is truly awful. You may laugh at his lack of understanding, but what about your own? So I told him, that is hearsay, rather you are accepting the words of your preacher or the influence of your scriptures. Overall, another has dictated hearsay to you. Then he scolded, saying, no, the scriptures of the bible are gods words, so they are true. Without understanding the absurdity of hearsay he held strongly to his beliefs. For he could not see that what comes from outside of oneself is not self-knowledge and therefore meaningless. Without tasting the truth of life for oneself, know that you are utterly lost and mislead by the shadow of ignorance.
Self-knowledge awakens when the heart of ones being is no longer tethered by the mind as memory and all its endless thoughts. Through self-knowledge, the doorway into the unknown is open to you. To know oneself is the threshold of spirituality and to discover oneself you must listen without resistance. If you are going to listen, I ask that you listen with your whole-heart and transcend the mind. To be wise is to be completely open and detached from all that you know, feel and believe. It is to be so open that there is no center from which you look and listen.
Spiritually, in the heart of silence, there is stillness and liberation. The essence of self-knowledge is to taste life for oneself and not accept what others put before you. It is to look into the mirror of life dispassionately, without distortion. When there is self-knowledge, there is freedom. Freedom to look and listen whole-heartedly without the background of knowledge and its apparent limitations.
To know oneself is the beginning of spiritual wisdom from moment to moment without conclusions. After all, wisdom means understanding every facet of yourself. Without understanding oneself, you can never discover what Truth is. To discover Truth one must be willing to look at ones life, not with the self as thought but the stillness when the thinker as thought is not. When the self is not present, you are then free of the past and all its belongings. It is to realize that silence is key. When there is silence, there is nothing and no one in which you are not. It is to discover that you are all there is. You are the spiritual fulfillment beyond mind and this life of sorrow.
Adonis Alexander
(Author of Secret Sayings of Adonis)
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