Journey To The Self – Viaje Hacia El Ser

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  • Arch of Triumph, Erich Maria Remarque

    Triumphal Arch by Edouard Cortes
    Triumphal Arch by Edouard Cortes

    Here is an extract of one of my favourite novels, Arch of Triumph by Erich Maria Remarque. Delight yourselves in this marvelous reading. Enjoy!

    ” He bent over her. He felt her trembling.

    “Joan,” he said. “Don’t think about anything and don’t ask any questions. Do you see the light of the street lamps and the thousand colored signs out there? We are living in a dying age and this city quivers with life. We are torn from everything and we have nothing left but our hearts. I was in the land of the moon and I’ve come back, and here you are and you are life. Don’t ask anything more. There are more secrets in your hair than in a thousand questions. Here before us is the night, a few hours and an eternity, until the morning rumbles against the windows. That people love each other is everything; a marvel and the most obvious tiling in the world, this is what I felt today when the night melted away into a flowering bush and the wind smelled of strawberries and without love one is only a dead man in a furlough, nothing but a scrap of paper with a few dates and a chance name on it and one might as well die_”

    The light from the street lamps swept through the window of the taxi like the circling beam of a lighthouse through the darkness of a ship’s cabin. Joan’s eyes were alternately very translucent and very dark in her pale face. “We shall not die,” she whispered in Ravic’s arms.

    “No. Not we. Only time. Damned time. It always dies. We live. We always live. When you wake up it is spring and when you go to sleep it is fall and a thousand times in between it is winter and summer, and when we love each other enough we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind, and that is much. Day by day we are conquerors, beloved, and year by year we are defeated, but who wants to realize that and to whom does it matter? The hour is life, the moment is closest to eternity, your eyes glisten, star dust trickles through infinity, gods can age, but your mouth is young, the enigma trembles between us, the You and Me, Call and Answer, out of evenings, out of dusks, out of the ecstasies of all lovers, pressed from the remotest cries of brutal lust into golden storms, the endless road from the amoeba to Ruth and Esther and Helen and Aspasia, to blue Madonnas in chapels on the road, from jungle and animal to you, to you…” “

  • Expectation

    Jacob's Ladder by William Blake
    Jacob’s Ladder by William Blake

    We all know how frustrating it is to see how suddenly the perfect image of reality that we have created in our own minds unfolds in front of us just like a nightmare, instead of like a blissful dream. How is it possible that everything we thought was going to happen, everything we planned, didn’t work out? Well, there is a simple answer to this question, and also, a not so easy solution.

    It is expectation and desire that lead the way to inner torment and victimism. The only solution for it is non-attachment; non-attachment even to the present moment, eventually. Accepting each situation as it is in the moment, and not wanting it to be any other way, is the secret to fulfilling our soul’s hunger for eternity. It takes practice and patience to achieve mindfulness, but in the end, it is the only way to supress our ego’s thrill for expectation.

    When we open the door to imagining an outcome that isn’t there yet, we let our expectation of the future moment take the reins of our lives, and thus, we loose complete control of our emotions, relying completely on an unidentified future image that doesn’t even exist. If that personal desire isn’t completely fulfilled as thought, well, we all know what happens next: we enter the turmoil of grief and lost hope, thinking it was something other than ourselves who is guilty, and we start blaming everything and everyone around us. But, as always, everything is inside us, the victim and the executioner. Therefore, pain and happiness are also part of us. We just have to learn the art of balancing the light and the darkness; none of which can exist without the other.

    We must never confuse ourselves into finding perfection, because as human being, our gift is to experiment all the opposites and thrive for equilibrium. Peace is found in balance. Completeness is found in balance. Stillness amidst the chaotic waters of life will lead us to the infinity of oneness.

    There is no goal, no end, in the cycle of eternity. Living is the way, creating and co-creating with the Laws of Nature is something to be thankful about. We can cry and laugh; feel extreme love, and extreme hate; we can feel our hearts break into millions of pieces only to be put back together to love unconditionally. It is all part of being human; spiritual beings in a human journey able to feel, to touch the infinite possibilities that exist in every second.

    We do not need to expect anything, we just have to learn how to surrender to what is, always with a thank you in our hearts.

  • Acceptance

    Ladies' Suit by Remedios Varo
    Ladies’ Suit by Remedios Varo

    Sometimes in our lives we are faced with different challenges that require us to act in certain forms; or must I say react, if we were still doing so. Later on we look back upon our actions and we might feel guilt, shame, regret… Is that who I am? We might ask ourselves. Or we might think we were stupid, uncontrolled by our emotions, or maybe fears.

    But that isn’t who we are, neither it was who we were. We were only acting upon unconscious programming and there is no way back. Therefore, there is no need to feel regret. Oh, it is so easy to write it down! I know, it took me more tan twenty years to accept myself, accept my past reactions, and I am still working on it.

    This is where patience and self love come into action. We must first nurture ourselves, our souls; we must empathize with our past beings to be able to accept ourselves and continue our journeys and paths without looking back. And the only way to accept ourselves is to do a continued work of soul healing, of meditating and connecting to our true beings. Only this way we can stop identifying ourselves with our ego, with our actions, with our mistakes, with our personalities; because all that is the illusion of self, it is not who we really are.

    Once we integrate this thought into our lives we can start accepting things as they are, without all the false fumes of identity. And only then we can share this experience with another soul, who we will accept completely.

    Union and love start with acceptance and respect for whatever the present may bring, for whatever the situation may be.

    Acceptance of the present moment; acceptance of our true beings; acceptance of the world, of our interactions with it; acceptance of our bodies, minds and souls. That’s the only secret for true, lasting, real happiness.

     

     

  • Breathe in… Breathe out…

    Art by Kinuko Y. Craft
    Art by Kinuko Y. Craft

    Creativity can only flow through one’s personal sense of life. We create in order to survive. In order to thrive.

    Each thought is a probability of existence. Each present instant was an ephemeral thought in another time, in another place, in another idea.

    And only in silence can we breathe. Breathe the echoes of all existence into that one instant of freedom, that will last eternally. Ignoring the power of our own being can only cut the wings of our own rebirth. Because time is eternal in one second, and eternal in infinity.

    Breathe in, breathe out.

    Everything was meant to be as it is, because in the present there is no space for other possibilities. Can you breathe and let go? Can you accept each instant as it is? Freedom will be your gift, freedom of being who you are; who you are.

    Some nights I catch myself lost in the entanglement of trying to understand, trying to grasp with my mind the complete structure of existence. But there is no understanding possible when the ego is limited. How can infinity be comprehended through the senses? It can only be lived, it can only be celebrated, it can only be felt through the path of no attachment. No attachment to the idea of yourself, no attachment to the structures that physical reality grants us.

    Our lives are a journey our souls need to able to experience in order to go back home. Although home has never left us. What a paradox to walk a path that has no destination; a journey that is the destination in itself. Being love, being light, being endless is who we are. All the rest is just a mirror, a reflection through which we can create a walking dream. It is only through the present instant that we can write our stories, live fully our dreams.

    Breathe in, breathe out.

    The palpitation of the Universe is in our breath. We anchor ourselves to reality through our ego, but we can fly through infinity through our breath.

    Breathe in, breathe out. Just breathe.

     

     

     

  • Vacío. Nada.

    Siento mi sangre recorrer mis venas. El corazón palpita. Estoy viva.

    Mi cuerpo está vivo, y muere cada segundo. Pero mi mente, mi ser, son infinitos y crecen cada segundo.

    Qué paradoja crecer y morir a un tiempo.

    A un tiempo que ni siquiera existe.

    Sólo puede ser que crecer, vivir y morir sean lo mismo;

    Nada.

    Todo.

    Nunca y para siempre. ¡Está tan clara la confusión! ¡Es tan transparente la confusión!

    Es extraño cómo todo cambia y a la vez permanece inalterable. Porque nada cambia más que nosotros mismos. Vemos todo como un reflejo de nuestra alma y, a veces, de nuestros miedos; que nublan y destruyen las más hermosas visiones para dejar en su lugar un rastro de pesadillas y monstruos imposibles de controlar.

    Respira…….

                               Respira……..

    Inhalar……

                   Exhalar……

    Conectar con el Todo. Ser. Dejar de ver la ilusión.

                                                   No existen ni los sueños, ni las pesadillas.

    Me tranquiliza pensar que sólo hay vacío.

    Vacío.