In Yoke

Acquire a firm will and the utmost patience.   – Anandamayi Ma “We begin our journey towards the supreme goal of life from where we stand. Just as it is good to be patient with others, it is equally necessary to be patient with ourselves. After all, when the desire to live for others comes to us, we can be haunted by our past mistakes, by the amount of time we have wasted in selfish pursuits. But we must accept ourselves with all our strengths and weaknesses.“ “There are many obstacles on the spiritual path which can strengthen us, and these cannot be overcome unless we have infinite patience with ourselves. If we are patient with others, shouldn’t we be patient with ourselves as well? Each of us is individual, with our own special qualities. We start now, where we are, with our partial love for money, partial love for pleasure, partial love for prestige, and a little love for God. We will progress at our own pace. It is not good to compare one person’s progress with another’s....

As I have perused many treatises regarding the Christ, it is obvious to me that Jesus teaching was centered on three core principles. As I have digested His message, I come back to the three pillars of Jesus' teaching. They are: Kenosis - (letting go, non-clinging) Abundance - ( “I have come that they might have life abundant”) Singleness - (oneness of heart) From Mark 12:28-31: “One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: "Which is most important of all the commandments?" Jesus said, "The first in importance is, 'Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these." Love the Lord your God with all your passion & prayer, inte...

Where are you searching for me, friend? Look! Here am I right within you. Not in temple, nor in mosque, Not in Kaaba, nor Kailas, But here right within you am I. – Kabir Many have begun the spiritual search while still suffering from severe personal problems. Saint Augustine was deeply enmeshed in the life of the world, and pulled himself free only after great anguish of mind. Others suffered physically. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux endured the constant pain of tuberculosis. So there is no need for any of us to feel downcast about our situation or the particular difficulties we face, provided we do everything we can to purify our mind. Meditation is essentially a discipline for slowing down the furious pace of thinking; if you can gradually bring your mind to a state so still that no movement, no thought, can arise except those you yourself approve, your mind will have become pure. We have no need to teach pure motives to the mind. All that is necessary to make the mind...

Mark’s Gospel states: “The Kingdom of God is as if a a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how.” [Mark 4:26,27] The way of general growth or that of “humbling oneself to the role of a seed”, in opposition to the ways of specialization or to those of “exalting oneself by building towers” –  sets the preceding text in relief. To grow or to exert one’s own energy to build – this is the choice which it comes down to – in the last analysis: This choice is the way of salvation and the way of perdition ; or the way of intimate perfection and that resulting in an impasse . The idea of hell is simply that of a definite spiritual impasse; to complement, that of purgatory refers to the process of rejection of the tendencies towards impasses of specialization, with a view to safeguarding and keeping the way of perfection open – the way of salvation. To exalt oneself or to abase oneself, to s...

In the 14th Arcanum of the Meditations, considerable effort is made to fully explain the role of Temperance in one's spiritual formation, the principle of maintaining balance in one's physical, spiritual, and mental aspirations of life. Man is at the same time, a contemplative and an active being...that is--"faith without works is death"...and that, equally "works without faith are death". These postures in theory are as clear as a clear day. However, Tomberg asserts--"With practice however, it is not so clear. Practice entails an arcanum --an intimate savior faire ...and that, the Mystic states, is: Temperance ." In describing our essential or inner self, which is the spark of the eternal--the writer calls one's monad. ..which is the Image or Likeness of God within each human being. Temperance , as a spiritual exercise, signifies the task of knowing the relationship between the image or monad , the likeness of God within oneself, and ...

"The reason God is great, that is, what is Divine for us in Him is not his power in the sense that He is stronger than the totality of forces in the universe, nor is it His foreknowledge in the sense that He foresees, as a perfect engineer, the future functioning of the forces of "the world machine", pre-calculated and pre-determined, nor even the fact that He is absolutely indispensable as the center of all gravitation-spiritual, psychic and physical- of the whole universe. No, what is great and truly divine in God, i.e what makes every knee bow before Him, is His Faith, His Hope, and His Love. For just as we believe in God, so also does God believe in us---but with a divinely greater and more elevated faith, His hope with regard to this immense community of free beings that we call "the world" is infinite, just as His love for all these free beings is infinite. We do not worship God because He is able to do more than we are, or because He knows more than...

According to early twentieth century Russian Orthodox Christian Hermeticist Valentin Tomberg (d.1973) , there are several essential conditions to which any viable spiritual tradition must adhere. [ His perspectives on this and many other issues of vital importance to those who would intend to grow as one of those who follow seek to Christ are contained in his treatise—“Meditations on the Tarot”, published 1985, translated by Robert Powell.   A spiritual director recommended it to me in 2004 and I have read and reread it twice since then. I recommend this book to anyone who desires to dive deep into the practice of contemplation/meditation.] 1. It must be founded from above. That is, it must “come from either explicit revelation, or by direct action from above—acting with moral irresistibility.” Examples: The monastic orders of Benedictine, Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, Cistercian…he goes on to say that “these orders have survived through the centuries because of explicit ...