Now Maya's bewitching power No more shall bind us No more shall bind us No more shall bind us
We are free
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The Sufi Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, in The Bond with the Beloved: The Mystical Relationship of the Lover & the Beloved ...
When I was sixteen I happened to read a Zen saying,
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection, The water has no mind to receive their image.
This saying was like a key that opened an inner door, and for two weeks I laughed with the joy of the soul at what I saw. I started to meditate and discovered a reality that was more powerful and more meaningful than an outer world in which I came to realize I had long felt a stranger.
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The spiritual path has no beginning or ending, so Buddhists speak of the pathless path and the gateless gate. In what we call a beginning, we enter a stream that stretches long before and long after. What we call a beginning is a continuation. This is like throwing a pebble into the river, but that did not begin the river again. The pebble introduced a new experience into the river.
No pebble would have been thrown into the river without the river. We see a spiritual awakening or turning point from the perspective of a moment among moments, but there is one river with one moment outside that moment.
Yet, the pebble was thrown into the river. This caused a change in the river. The river will never be the same, yet the river is not another river. The river continues by incorporating the entrance of the pebble, including all its alterations to the river.
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Sometimes, something happens, and we have an intuitive insight, or glimpse, that changes our lives. For Vaughan-Lee, this pebble was a Zen poem. He was not a Zen Buddhist. His path now is Sufism. A pebble, however, is a pebble. So, any label attached to the pebble will work, if we are ready to receive the message. Zen poem could have been Christian poem or Taoist poem or barking dog: all signs able to be carriers of the insight. The pebble is a precipitating happening suffused with revelatory insight, inspiration, and intent.
These life-changing glimpses have been prepared for, possibly for many years, perhaps extending before our incarnation, or they would not arise. Or, if they did, we would not recognize them.
Many years before I began meditating, I was perusing a used book store in the French Quaker in New Orleans. I saw a book on the shelf and felt a movement to pick it up. I saw it was about meditation. I felt the subtle intuition indicating something here was meant for me. I was not ready to proceed with anything related to the subject, so I put the book back up.
I had never been taught about meditation in the religious group I was associated with. Years later, I began meditating. I have been meditating daily for the last 26 years and am now vowed to a Buddhist lineage where meditation is central to the practice. I have often remembered that moment of foreshadowing in the bookstore when I was still a Baptist minister working on my final post-graduate seminary degree.
Sometimes, we might get a glimpse and not act on it, and we may not be able to act on it. The glimpse can be a foreshadowing, however, an inner confirmation of our future, when we are ready. It acts like a seed planted and waiting to come to fruition.
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These beginnings can happen throughout our spiritual walk and vary in intensity, from subtle to jolting. Some may leave little impression at the time of their occurrence, while others may cause a substantial shift in consciousness immediately. One is like a small rock thrown in the river, another like a boulder. The source is the same.
These intuitive arisings are not of the ego. The ego needs to process linearly and arrive at a conclusion. These inbreakings arise spontaneously, free of time and effort. We could call them moments of grace or divine leadings.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
