The audacity of youth is in its unquestioned thinking that time does not concern it, that death is an imaginary, far off event that simply cannot intrude upon its life as now imagined! Even those times when death came close and brushed its barely felt crows wings across ones face, were simply seen as spice…
Could this be the new cooperative community model? Having just witnessed one of the largest and most significant gatherings of heart-awakened spiritually-conscious visionaries and sacred-activists in the world though deeply touched and heartened I come away feeling overwhelm with the challenges that face us. It is not then by chance that I am simultaneously reading a…
In this present dismaying climate of high alarm and outrage, it would seem appropriate to offer a gentle alternative to the "righteous anger" rising up on all sides. Our minds seem to make everything far more complicated than they need to be. We ask inappropriate questions born out of the drama of the fearful ego's…
There is no moment or space in which what we call G-O-D is absent. It fills all that we see, touch, taste, smell, hear and know. It fills all before and after and beyond; It fills all below, above, around and within. It knows nothing but Itself hurled into being into a measureless, boundless expression…
"Expectation is premeditated disappointment"
There are no seekers worthy of divine grace. Grace is a gift we cannot negotiate our way into. There are no techniques, no processes which can open the Gates of Heaven. Surrender is the only thing we can do. Yet without the unearned grace of the divine relieving us of the burden of the self-absorption, we…
There is nothing more to seek. There is no seeker to be found. There is no place or time where the Beloved is not. Yet, the unity of "knowing" does not still the sense of twoness where lover and beloved meet. Advaita Vedanta speaks of this paradox of the One and the many: "not one,…
Daily life is sadhana enough. Our humanity is imperfection enough. Our humanity is imperfection enough to provide a spiritual burr under-the-saddle! When we finally understand that no spiritual technologies can guarantee or manipulate the receipt of divine grace, what do we do? We continue practicing and surrendering to the fact that we cannot extort the…
War is the violation of the innate civilizing moral compass embedded within each human heart. It is a deliberate and crushing denial of the moral imperatives of individual conscience. It declares the individual the property of the state, thus rendering personal moral accountability irrelevant. The innate value of each human life and the unicity of life…
Walking Lilly the dog just after 6 a.m. this morning I was looking up at the gray sky and suddenly given the understanding that just stopping to inhale the silence beneath all the flutter of leaves in the cool breeze, the punctuated song of birds, the movement of clouds, and the occasional passing car is…
Emptied of Myself BLOG by Andre van Zijl - musings, poetry and art 