‘I must be back in the blog writing mode, I’m really hanging out for a new topic.’ I blurted out to my partner hermit just now.
Actually, it was desperate. What I actually said was ‘I’m really desperate‘ for a new topic. I quickly modified it to anxious then again to keen, in an attempt to keep the sound of attachment out of my voice. Finally, in these notes, it’s morphed into ‘hanging out’ which is obviously no better at all.
Her reply needs no disclaimer, no modification: ‘The answer comes from the silence,’ she said quietly.
I’ve actually had a relatively quiet – even silent – day: resting in recovery, laying on my bed, sometimes sleeping, sometimes simply following my breath.
Mind wandering, of course, that’s what minds do after all. But overall at least a semblance of silence seemed to be the order of the day.
Even then, after all that silence, quiet, rest and mostly a not overly busy mind, the best I can come up with is ‘I’m desperate’?
As in, I’m really hanging out; really anxious; really keen. As in, I”m not really listening – not at all silent. In fact, so full of desire, clinging and attachment for a new blog topic was I, that actually noticing one come out of the ‘silence’ would likely take a miracle.
All day – hours – I lie still. As I said, only sometimes sleeping, the rest of those several hours watching my breath, attempting just to be in silence and in the stillness.
So is it me? Am I missing something? An answer has come (here I am making notes for a new blog post), but what’s this ‘silence’ business from where answers apparently come all about?
Clearly, silence does not always seem to require an absolute, complete, and total absence of noise, voice, words, thoughts, if it is indeed the source of ‘answers’.
Maybe silence itself produced an apparent state of attachment to a new blog idea as a kind of ruse or trick to have my Self fool myself into seeing the foolishness of attachment as well as showing me how silence really works – in the real world.
Silence is not some sort of rarified mystical state that we have to enter through rigorous spiritual practices. It is actually a condition that emerges from everyday moments, ‘random’ thoughts, or comments made seemingly without thought or any apparent significance or meaning. Actually silence lives everywhere, is in everything and is all the time.
Right at the end of our last post, I mentioned – in an almost off-handed manner – that the hermitage has moved. Better to say the hermits were lead by the ever not so subtle universe to leave our refuge of a year for the safety and seclusion of another abode a few hundred metres away.
Why? Why did the hermits have to move? Well here’s the thing, the owner of that space that had graced us with its protection for that year decided to revive his on and off again campaign to sell the property. And with great success too: very soon there was a buyer very keen to move in ASAP
So, the search was on for a new abode to house the hermits. Cutting a long story short, and leaving out a multiplicity of praises, gratitude, and details, here we are.
Now you know why we moved into a new hermitage. Or do you? You have a few of the facts about how the process of us moving actually manifested in the material world, but as to proper answers to the why questions? You’ll agree that it’s all a bit vague, mundane, and that I haven’t given any answers to why at all.
That’s because I don’t know either; no idea at all.
It’s true, there were some unusual obstacles and pressures – but aren’t there always for everyone as they negotiate and try to manage their lives in the world?
And I could add that the timing could have been better – see above rhetorical question for my response to this one.
No. Like so much (actually everything really) that happens in the on-going, non-stop re creation of the physical world (constant flux, change,seeming chaos, conflicts, setbacks, advances, ups and downs) as it flows along in its own way at its own pace, I have to admit, its a mystery to be unravelled. Or not: there are some who would dare to label this constant re creation, God’s will.
So, we can ask why here? Why now? What’s the lesson to be learned from the move to the new hermitage.
Or we could just tell ourselves that that’s just the way the Cosmos does things. By any standards it’s been a no hitches, no hassles, change of address. But let’s not get distracted by dualities: It is what it is, as I like to say.
And there’s no good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
There are many blessings that come with the living of the hermit life. And I am especially blessed as I am not a ‘hermit alone’ – I share my life, the Hermitage, and my spiritual practice with another hermit. We are partner hermits.
One component of that spiritual practice is our times spent together reading a few verses from the Bhagavad Gita. We pursue our own personal studies, but sometimes one or the other of us will share an especially resonant verse, or an insight or thoughts.
This morning my partner hermit told me, in a casual almost by the way manner, that she’d just read a verse that spoke about not disturbing others, and not letting ourselves be disturbed by others.
At first, I had no memory at all of this verse; I just couldn’t place it. Which might sound a little worrisome, given I’ve been studying this text for seven or eight years.
So, it wasn’t till she gave me chapter and verse and I looked it up for myself, that it finally clicked into place. Of course I knew this verse, but it had slipped from conscious memory.
And that surprised me: this verse seems to me to be speaking to a key concept in the teaching of the text as a whole, as well as to my personal aspirations. Surely, I would think, it should be, what’s the expression? Top of mind?
He [sic] who disturbs no one, and who is never perturbed by anyone, who is unattached to happiness, impatience, fear, and anxiety is dear to Me.
Bhagavad Gita 12:15
This verse is full of meaning for me. It’s like a one-stop how to lesson in avoiding the personal suffering that’s brought about through attachments. Mind you, once again I can’t help wondering after years of study, and with how much this verse resonates for me, why I had such a hard time remembering even seeing it before.
I suspect the power of the ego and the mind have a lot to do with it. Ego – along with its master, the mind – love attachments to the world, to anything really. I guess they are always doing their best to keep me attached to my compulsions and aversions.
Imagine though, not being disturbed by anything – or anyone – and me actually not doing anything that disturbs anyone or anything?
Not just people and other living entities in my immediate physical environment, but out there in the wider world – in the Universe even.
It’s about vibes isn’t it? What vibrations am I putting out into the world? Are they vibrations and waves of love, peace, compassion, detachment, equinimity? Or at they vibes of discord, dislike, anger and sorrow over the stuff I can’t control?
And just think what it would be like if I weren’t so attached to the idea that my happiness depends on getting pleasure or ‘results’ from worldly things, activities based on the senses? Imagine really understanding that the only true and real and lasting happiness and satisfaction can only come come from within my Self?
This doesn’t mean at all that I can’t be happy, or can’t have fun or enjoyment. It is merely saying that, if I can accept whatever comes to me in life without clinging to the things I want, or running away from the things or situations I don’t want, then there will be less suffering.
Ego is jumping in now and wants me to note that, while I may in fact be on the path to detachment and freedom, I’m not far along enough yet to escape its clutches. Anyway, moving right along.
Impatience, fear, and anxiety are tricky presences in the attachment arena. I’m even less far along the path to letting go of these stubborn attachments. But, again, at least I’m on the path.
And what is that path? Where’s it going? Well (paradox alert), on the path in this instance is another way of saying I’ve not realised fully that I am already at the path’s destination. I just think I have a long way to go.
Swami Ramdas (1884-1963) Courtesy Wikipedia
I think Swami Ramdas said: ‘When you set foot upon the path, you have reached the destination.’ I think!
That’s the ‘dear to me’ bit of the verse explained. The ‘me’ in this phrase represents the aspired to full realisation that I am free, liberation or enlightenment some call it. It’s a place, or state of mind in which I move through the world with peace, calm and equilibrium, where nothing disturbs me, and I disturb no one.
That state of liberation doesn’t mean I have given up, or will have to give up, all desires for things I want, nor will I have escaped the things I have aversions to. It simply means I will no longer be driven by those desires and aversions, I will no longer be attached.
It means, too, that I will no longer be concerned in an attached way, to who says or does what to whom, when, where, why or whatever. At that stage I will be in the world, but not of it.
Of course, I am a hermit; you would think it’s easy for me being secluded from the world (well it’s not total seclusion). If only that were true.
I still have the clingings, cravings, and aversions; I’m even attached to the clingings and the aversions.
The one desire, the one I permit myself to cling to, is the desire to free from all other attachments, the attachments that cause so much suffering.
As long at I have that desire guiding my life, then I will be satisfied, when I can be, knowing that one day I will fully realise that I’m already free, unattached, liberated and happy.
There’s a song I wish I could remember the name of, or at least who sings it, but there’s a line in the lyrics that, says something like ‘I don’t want to go searching for what I already have.’ That’s me!
Sharing our prayers this morning, the hermits each reciting a prayer to the other so each can pray, and talking about the oneness of life (prompted by one of the shared prayers), the dependence of one species upon another.
As we reflected on that idea – of interdependence – it occured to me that perhaps, there might be a problem in how we as humans, interpret its meaning. We can maybe call it a kind of paradox, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
Our dependence – as humans beings – on so many other species is actually a well known, and I hope increasingly accepted, reality. For food, for shelter, for water, air to breathe. Everything.
In any case, an aspect of this interdendcence idea that struck me as perhaps missing, that I’ve not really heard before (I haven’t researched this; just winging it thought and contemplation wise) is this; If, say, bees disappeared, or all trees were cut down, would humans survive? Definitely not.
On the other hand, let’s say that in an instant or even over time, all humans on Earth disappeared. What would happen to all the other living beings? All the bugs, the fishes, the animals of all kinds, trees, grasses – all the living beings?
It seems to me that all those other species, all those beings of all kinds, would not only survive, they would most likely thrive.
Actually, now I think about it, I remember during the COVID lockdowns, people in various places around the world were amazed at the return of birds to usually busy polluted cities, and how the air seemed fresher in some places when in ‘normal times’ it was getting hard to breathe. And beaches and rivers looked a bit cleaner than usual.
Fewer people commuting; fewer planes flying; less goods being transported on congested roads; less waste going into rivers and the oceans. Seems life on Earth was doing better when we (humans) were out of the picture, even for a short while.
Which is to say, humans may not be necessary for the survival of planet Earth and the other life that lives here. Putting it very simply: We go, they thrive; They go, we go too.
But, my thought train races along its newly discovered track here, what if I’m wrong? What if I’m looking at the whole issue on just a superficial level? What if all I am seeing is the gross material level of the whole question? What if I’m missing the real point of it all?
Well it seems to me that on that purely physical, surface level, my theory (borrowed as it may be perhaps) might be right, the irony true: we go, they thrive; they go, we all go; they stay, we all get to stay.
But who are ‘they‘? Who are ‘we‘? For me it’s clear that we are not all simply and only our physical bodies and our minds living here in the material world; that’s all temporary and comes and goes. No, there has to be more to it than that.
Which is what I end up coming back to so very often: there is only one. No separation; no you and me; them or us. Just one. Without a second. Only Consciousness.
I think the best thing to do, just to be on the safe side is to look after each other – regardless of the particular body we happen to be inhabiting at the moment.
Today I would like to share with you a prayer (it’s a poem too, but …) I’ve written in praise of the Divine Mother. It’s actually the second prayer I’ve written to and for her. I shared that first one, called simply, A Prayer to the Divine Mother on the blog previously and you can find it here.
That post will also give you some background to my reverence for the Divine Mother – what she means to me; where my initial devotion comes from; my heart sense that this universal creative energy drives and sustains all creation; and finally how Divine Mother may be worshipped in many and varied (and even no) forms.
The prayer I share with you today – Jai Shree Maa – emerged as I knelt chanting those exact word at the alter of a holy place dedicated to the Divine Mother as revered by many in her form as Our Lady of the Rosary.
It is a temple in that name I sometimes go pilgrimming to for quietness, meditation, and devotion.
Please accept my prayer. Thank you
JAI SHREE MAA
In this temple to the Divine Mother upon my knees and praying. Jai Shree Maa
I chant with sacred love in my heart, sacred words upon my lips. Jai Shree Maa
Divine Mother, with these words, Jai Shree Maa I invoke your holy presence; I speak from my heart to yours.
It always surprises me how quickly, how easily – how smoothly – a perfectly okay conversation or train of thought will, just like that, morph into a full-on gossipy rant.
You know the thing: pointing the finger at what someone else is doing wrong; or precisely and with great clarity of analysis detailing how another person (or sometimes myself) has erred, how they’ve slipped up, made mistakes they could have or in ‘my opinion’ should have avoided.
How easy it seems to happen that I will suddenly find myself very eagerly ranting about the sawdust in the eye of another, while breezily ignoring the huge plank in my own eye. The errors in someone else’s way are so often clear to me, while my own not so terrific ways are completely ignored.
And the weird thing is, how it sneaks up on you. I mean on me. As I said at the start, one minute I’m having a pleasant and reasonable conversation, the next minute I’m ranting about him, or her, or them, or who or whatever.
Such an error in my own ways, occured this morning as I fell into what felt like a perfectly rational pointing the finger session, full of criticisms and judgements about someone I actually quite admire.
That is until one of the hermits with just one comment, brought the whole thing to a sudden and definite stop:
‘We should be sitting here sending out good vibes. That’s our job.’
A perfectly timed cause for a pause for thought. And absolutely correct – as hermits, as monks committed to the welfare of all beings, it’s more than our job; our lives are dedicated supposedly to love, prayer, service, contemplation on the Divine in all things and how we can best serve that Divine.
Human nature is a tricky topic to think about though. So much of what we do in the world is driven by our desires for more things, for status, for happiness, or pleasure. Eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, I have heard it called by way of summary.
Hermits behind walls are still flawed human beings
I’ve supposedly withdrawn from all that, left it behind ‘in the world’. I live a secluded, quiet, and contemplative life precisely in order to counter those very attributes of human nature.
I suppose all this says is, I am still a human being with all the flaws, all the desires – and aversions – that come with being that kind of, well, being.
Yes, all true. Maybe. But, isn’t it possible that I might use just a bit more discipline? Could I be perhaps a little more clear in my focus?
Perhaps I could ‘sit here’ and send out good vibes. At the very least I could pay a bit more attention to those times when I’m about to slide – or have already slid – into my ‘putting out bad vibes’ mode.
We can’t really ever know what’s going on in the lives of other people, or in their minds and hearts. In any case, it is rarely, if ever, our business to even want to know or make guesses or assumptions about others’ lives.
As a hermit monk, as a pilgrim on the spiritual path I aspire to walk, my only business is the making of ripples (I know it’s a cliché but it works for me, just as so many do), the distribution of waves, or vibrations of replenishment, of love, and kindness, of good things, out beyond myself.
Good vibes to all living beings who I am pledged to serve, to the Divine that is in, and in fact is, all beings, including me, you and all there is.
One of the things I like about one of our local coffee shops is that they play a nice wide selection of music. Mostly popular songs from pretty much every decade back to the ’60s. I think they have one of those looping playlists you hear sometimes in shops and cafés.
It must be quite a long list because you don’t necessarily hear the same songs repeated at every visit. Which is a nice thing too.
Anyway, yesterday the chorus of a song I heard played got stuck in my head. The song, You’re the Voice, was a hit around the world in 1986 when it was released by Australian singer John Farnham.
It’s essentially a protest song reminding us that we all have a voice, and encouraging us to use our voices to stand up against corruption and war. One of the co-writers Chris Thompson missed out on going to an anti-nuclear protest because he slept late. He felt so badly about sleeping in that he wrote the lyrics reminding us about taking personal responsibility and making our voices heard.
Okay, back to the chorus getting stuck in my head.
You’re the voice, try and understand it Make a noise and make it clear Oh woah. We’re not gonna sit in silence We’re not gonna live in fear Oh woah
You see? It’s very catchy, and an excellent piece of advice too. And, for a hermit monk, it’s actually advice I could and do aspire to live by. Just not quite in the sense the song intends perhaps.
This morning, when my partner hermit suggested we just sit in silence for a while, I spontaneously started singing the chorus, though a slightly modified version:
We’re just gonna sit in silence We’re not gonna live with fear.
Then, as I sat in said silence, I got to thinking about the words of the chorus. Nobody wants to live in fear, yet it is an aspect of the human condition and something so many people live with constantly all over the world. All through human history as well.
The message of the song reminds us all that we have a voice which we can use to help create a state of affairs in which we don’t have to live in quite so much fear, fear that’s coming at us from so many sources.
For me, this is a vital, fundamental, and absolutely essential principle. Without those who do stand up, those who do use their voices to try to right wrongs, then, well I can’t think of what that might mean.
Yet, for me, I’ve chosen silence. Not only chosen I must admit: temperament, my own nature, health, all are factors that have made silence the best course for me to take. Silence as in seclusion from the world, minimizing outside imput, and reducing as much as possible the attachment to the world and its things and fears.
And this way of living ironically allows me to use my voice in my own ways to address the Truth as I see it; to help effect change and contribute to the healing so sorely needed.
Being ‘out there’ and engaged with worldly things and activities and interacting with people constantly causes me so much anxiety that it threatens my health and ability to act in the world.
There is also the personal choice aspect, common to so many who live a contemplative life. Silence – when I can actually achieve such a state – gives me the energy and clarity to write; it gives me the mental, emotional and spiritual ‘space’ and energy to pray, to contemplate, and to foster the ‘good vibrations’ I feel are also necessary to turn the world towards peace, healing, and truth, as well as to assist in maintaining the wellbeing of all life.
The world, and all of life, needs both those who can’t or won’t be silent (I’m definitely not suggesting the world needs more noise). We all need people who can and do raise their voices against war, poverty, corruption, and all the ills that plague us.
And it needs those who are able to ‘just sit in silence’. The work to be done is the same; the outcomes perused are the same; and in essence the means themselves aren’t all that different either. Silence as mentioned can include the use of our voices in ‘quiet’ ways, in ways that don’t have to relate so directly the affairs of the world.
It really is a symbiosis: Those of us living secluded and contemplative lives with our prayers, our witness, our creative endeavours, support those active and vocal ones out there trying to heal the world.
And at the same time those out there in the world support the secluded and contemplative ones. Their efforts and hard work, and simply knowing they are there, are encouraging and nurturing for the secluded and contemplative ones.
We are One after all. Yet our voices are all unique, each and every one. That’s what I understand to be true.
Among the physical exercises I try to perform on a daily basis, are a couple for strengthening the hips. One of these begins with me standing upright, feet together, eyes level, looking ahead.
Then I swing one leg at a time for ten repetitions in a kind of arc like motion out to side, keeping it level with the side of my body, bringing the leg back to the rest position with feet together. It’s a pendulum motion.
Anyway I’d been merrily going along doing these exercises more or less every day for ages, months really, until one day my partner hermit was watching me, and said:
‘You’re supposed to be doing it slowly and mindfully’. Or words to that effect.
You see I had been quite happy swinging each leg out in turn at a fast pace, kind of like an aerobic sort of thing. Just to get it done if I’m honest. Wrong! Supposed to be slowly and mindfully.
Lift one leg slowly in an arc like motion out to the side of the body. Pay attention to the movement as it’s happening; no need to push the leg out, just lift it to a comfortable position. Just let the arm trail loosely and of its own accord, along with the leg. Then, again slowly and paying attention to the process of the movement, bring the leg back.
And I do have to say there’s been an amazing difference. I can actually feel the muscles working during the exercise, and can sense the minute incremental motion as the leg swings slowly. It’s a way better exercise than it was, and now I wouldn’t do it any other way.
I was reminded of this incident this morning as I came across a short admonition, a little reminder to myself I have stuck on a Table of Contents page in my Bhagavad Gita.
Go slowly and mindfully in everything
What’s interesting is that, despite seeing and reading this so-called reminder more or less every day, and despite proofs of the benefits of actually listening to the reminder, such as what I’ve just described with the exercise , the reminder seems to mostly go right over my head, in one ear and out the other as they say.
Today, for some mysterious reason, it actually got my attention. At the same time, again who knows why, it triggered a truly relevant and appropriate memory to act as a kind of metaphor to illustrate the point to me.
I suppose it’s stating the obvious, but I can say that doing that (or any) exercise slowly and mindfully – in a watchful and observant manner – acts as an exercise in presence. Otherwise I’d not be sensing or feeling the muscles and the movement, or the peace of no random thoughts.
Did I mention that, having corrected my modus operandi with that particular exercise , I’m feeling the benefits? It definitely feels like things with legs and hips are loosening up, getting stronger. I’m actually walking further now without my legs aching on me.
More than that, I actually find myself wanting to do the exercise as opposed to ‘wanting to get it done’. Why is this? Well, I think it’s because I’m yearning to rediscover that feeling of presence; it’s a bit like a meditation, and in the same way clears the mind of random thoughts – at least for the short duration of the exercise. Having said that, even a short duration clarity plays its part in reconditioning a stubborn mind.
So, mental clarity, good exercise for the body, for the heart, even the soul?I think it’s the perfect metaphor for how I aspire to be living my life.
Just now, on rediscovering a quote I’d noted down months ago, I spontaneously decided to download again the book I took it from. This will be the third reading: seems to be one of those books that keep calling you back.
The book (The Abbot’s Shoes by Peter Robertson) tells the story of the author’s foray into monastic living in New Zealand way back in the early 1970s when he was twenty something.
One of many mini monastries we’ve been blessed to live in
I’d like to share the mentioned quote with you, because I think it really speaks to my own commitment to the contemplative, hermit life, which is for us a monastic life too – a hermitage is actually a mini monastery.
Sitting in his apartment one night, completely dissatisfied with life the universe and everything, the author contemplates the state of the world around him.
‘All the marching, all the writing, all the campaigning in the world isn’t going to change this insanity, brutality, and carnage.’
Actually this isn’t the quote I’d made a note of; it’s the preceding sentence which I saw again today and it seemed to just fill out the context for me. Anyway, after a few moments of quietness and thought, the author concludes:
‘I somehow intuited that the most powerful, significant , and influential action I could take to change the course of this kind of history, was to hide in a monastery.’
He goes on to reflect that by doing so – living simply, in a community devoted totally to contemplation and prayer – he could become a tiny part of ‘the turning of the tide’.
Years later, reading Thomas Merton‘s diaries, he discovered that Merton had felt the same way, concluding that those living simple, prayer filled, contemplative and quiet lives were ‘keeping the universe from crashing in pieces and falling apart.’
There is a strong sense among contemplatives, hermits, nuns, monks, that this is their function: keeping the whole thing going. Or as our author says, each playing a tiny part in the big picture. I would say, like I know Merton did many times (and acted upon his words), that action in the world is absolutely necessary; it’s just that it can’t do all the work alone.
In our hermitage we too speak often of these ideas, and think about them deeply and try to realise how they affect our lives as hermit monks.
So, hiding in a monastery? Or in a hermitage? It’s true it’s very much a hidden life in many ways. For me though, it’s not about being hidden, it’s more about just what Black Elk says, I’m trying to make my every step a prayer.
Speaking for myself, it’s not that I’m unwilling to pray for a specific individual, or for peace in such and such a country, or relief from poverty, and oppression for specific individuals or communities.
It’s more that: picking and choosing in that way risks leaving people and issues out inadvertently or through some unconscious bias.
I have chosen to live this life apart as much as possible from the world in order to minimise the anxiery being ‘out there’ causes me, to have the quiet, the time, the ‘head and heart’ space to simply pray. To make of my life a prayer
Let every step you take upon Mother Earth be as a prayer
My partner hermit is fond of reminding me of the well known aphorism that a stone dropped in a pond will make ripples that spread out and out. Just like the vibes – the vibrations – emanating from a prayerful life, from all the prayerful lives.
He was referring to what he and his fellow monks are actually doing with their lives in the monastery. He said their lifestyle was helping them to:
‘foster who we truly are before God.’
Hearing this, I had to pause the video, make notes, and do some thinking. What had actually struck me, my first thought on pausing, was that this is exactly what I’m doing as a hermit monk dwelling in our Hermitage. Exactly what I’m doing. Well, at least it’s what I’m aspiring to.
There are two aspects or primary intentions that inform the life I try to live as a hermit and monk that are in fact integral one to the other; they merge actually to become one primary focus of my life.
I practice an ever evolving and I hope intensifying devotion to the divine, with the upliftment of the world and all beings as its central theme.
The other, integral focus, is an equally ever evolving and intensifying quest for self-knowledge, for the answer to the question, who am I?
In other words, I am attempting to foster who I truly am before God. Foster as in ‘encourage the development of …’ (as one definition puts it).
In this case, the development is the growth of the knowledge of my true nature – who I am above and beyond this physical (and mental) creature running around madly trying to figure things out.
In my life there is much effort devoted to the cultivation – a synonym for foster – of that knowledge: meditation, prayer, contemplation, study, just sitting, being still. Did I mention the aspirational nature of all this? It’s an ongoing project to say the least.
Speaking of aspirational: Two more synonyms for foster that I like are nurture and support. Both are even more in that aspirational category; at least it feels like that sometimes. Actually, maybe there’s a more accurate way for me to be putting this.
After all, as I think about it now, even I would agree that my whole lifestyle, my entire way of being in the world supports and nurtures me.
Except for me, myself, and I, that is: Lest the inner grammarian sends me mad in a search for antonyms for foster, let me just say that I am overly skilled in the self-critical and self-destructive departments. My ability to put myself down and to tear myself apart is legendary.
Anyway, with overwhelming nurture and support coming from my partner hermit all the time reinforcing my sense of Self, all I have to do is work on ridding myself of these self-destrucitive and self-critical tendencies.
So, the conditions for the banishment of self-loathing are there; all that’s missing is discipline on my own part in seeing the Divine in myself as I profess to be trying to see it in everyone else.
I need to be rid of the forgetfulness that blinds me to the Truth that is actually very plain to see.
Speaking of the Divine, the ‘before God’ is the vital element for me. God is all there is, so it is always before God that I act, whether in a positive or in a not so great manner.
The best prescription is for me to remember. To remember that God is everywhere and everything (did I say that already?). To remember that me, myself, and I, are also included in that everything and everywhere.
I think that once I do remember these truths even for the odd moment now and again, then the real fostering of who I truly am will have begun.
Notes from the Hermit's Cave 