Open-Secrets

Author: John

  • Quintessence – Essence of the Essence

    Merrill_hall_asilomarI just returned from a 10–day retreat with A.H. Almaas. The retreat was held at Asilomar near Monterey, California.

    The focus of the retreat was Quintessence which Almaas refers to as the Essence of the Essence. In his book, Brilliancy: The Essence of Intelligence, he refers to brilliancy as the essence of the essence.

    I asked Almaas about this and he replied that this was an example of the evolution of his teaching – The Diamond Approach to Self-Realization. When he became aware of brilliancy as an essential quality, he saw that it contained all the other essential qualities within it in a unique way. He started referring to brilliancy at times as the essence of the essence to reflect this capacity of brilliancy.

    Later, when he discovered the Quintessence, he started to refer to it as the essence of the essence. He no longer refers to brilliancy as the essence of the essence.

    So, brilliancy can be viewed, in part, as the essence of all essential qualities, but the quintessence is fundamentally the essence of the essence.

    Which probably raises the question for you – what is the quintessence?

    Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French quinte essence, from Medieval Latin quinta essentia, literally, fifth essence
    Date: 15th century

    1 : the fifth and highest element in ancient and medieval philosophy that permeates all nature and is the substance composing the celestial bodies 2 : the essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form

    More on that later.

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  • The World of Man

    World-of-manDown
    Down
    Down
    Into the depths
    Of the human condition
    Down
    Into the saline depths
    A shower of tears
    A river of tears
    An ocean of tears
    Into the depths
    Of being human
    Pain and suffering
    Beyond the light
    Darkness and despair
    Beyond hope
    And the well of longing
    Beyond the anguish of the soul
    Stripped of its treasure
    Down
    Into the depths

    Intimate knowledge
    Dark waters
    Births a real human being
    Blesses the soul
    Frees the heart

    A radiance
    From the depths
    Down
    Down
    Down
    Into the world
    Of man

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  • Human Maturity – Ego Immaturity

    Human_maturityUsually when we think of maturity, we think of growing up – becoming an adult. But, how many adults do we know that seem incapable of growing up?

    The whole topic is an open invitation for the superego to have a field day.

    When discussing human maturity it seems the first logical step is to discriminate what we mean by human maturity. Here we are not talking so much about the maturation of the body, the emotions or the mind – though the maturation of these human aspects are part of the process.

    Ego maturity is more centrally involved, but ego maturity needs to be free of the constraints of parental and social standards. Real human maturity is not dependent on the superego or the personal “conscience” based on superego dictates.

    Arrested development is a manifestation of ego immaturity. The psycho-dynamics of arrested development need to be addressed and the energies trapped within freed for the soul to move toward real human maturity.

    Human maturity, as we are using it here, could be referred to as the “ripening of the soul.” Here human maturity is seen as the soul and the human being integrating and embodying not only the maturation of the body, mind and emotions, but also waking up to the underlying nature of reality.

    Human maturity is then seen as a movement deeper into true nature or as an unfolding of the soul.

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  • Principles Worth Defending

    Global-warWhat is this space we say we need
    and violently refuse to cede
    Our bodies willingly we’ll bleed
    if our words they fail to heed

    Seeking love with heart sincere
    a bloodied child sheds a tear
    Our cause is just, the course won’t veer
    such hypocrites, we have no peer

    From global wars to marriage spats
    righteousness wears white hats
    And just like hissing alley cats
    soon throws itself upon the rats

    They say we live an age of reason
    apparently there has been treason
    But let us wait another season
    before removing ego’s lesion

    Religious leaders take such pride
    in claiming God is on their side
    As human passions they seek to hide
    in fear the flock finds they lied

    If all is fair in love and war
    then our poor world will heal no sore
    And children raised on local lore
    will also rot at the core

     

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  • Being Fake – Fake Being

    Fake-beingWhen you’re being fake, you’re faking being.

    The ego does this all the time – it’s what it does. The ego-self cannot be real or do real. We can genuinely be our ego identity, but from that identity, we cannot be genuinely real.

    In the normal course of events, people are being fake all the time, though they take this fakeness to be who they are. Being fake means pretending to be something we aren’t.

    This is the exact state of affairs when it comes to ego identity, but the rub is – we actually believe we are this identity. We don’t realize the fakeness.

    Being fake at the ego identity level means we are taking ourselves to be a historical self, a body, a mind, a set of images. It’s not that these things did not happen or are not real in a relative way – it’s a case of mistaken identity.

    What we truly are is much deeper than this and this awareness has been lost to our immediate consciousness, so we live fake lives trying to get real – or not.

    If we are trying to get real, to be genuine – it’ a conundrum – how can fake become real?

     

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  • Evocation

    tulip-nightinggale.jpgEvery morning
    The sun
    Entices the tulip
    Out of herself
    Petals wide open
    To Living Daylight
    Beauty dances
    With radiance
    One day
    Will open her
    Completely
    To birth
    A nightingale

     

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Open-Secrets