For me, it is the paradox of it all.
The deeper my perception of reality is, the less interested I become in finding an explanation.
Reality is full of contradictions. We are here, but everything is passing…
We spend our lives trying to become someone, but paradoxically we find the deepest peace when that ‘someone’ becomes less important.
The mind wants certainty, but some of the most profound moments happen within uncertainty.
We want to understand life, but we can never fully understand it from within the very mind that appears inside it.
That, to me, is mystical.
The paradox is that what we spend so much of our lives trying to acquire what is available through surrender.
We seek freedom by trying to change our circumstances, only to realize that freedom comes when we stop forcing circumstances to change.
We seek wholeness by adding things to ourselves, but we learn that wholeness comes from removing what we falsely assumed ourselves to be.
Even the concept of awakening carries a contradiction. We speak about waking up as though there is somewhere else to be awake in. There was never anywhere else to go.
And then there is the greatest paradox of all: consciousness seems to become a separate person to experience a world of separation, only to spend a lifetime trying to remember that separation was never absolute.
The mystical begins when we become open enough to allow the paradoxes of life to coexist without forcing reality into one conclusion.
Because the paradox is not a flaw in reality.
It is when something that is already whole is perceived through a mind that divides. It is a mirror through which reality shows us that it was always larger than the mind trying to understand it.
My experiences with visions, supernatural experiences, or extraordinary states of consciousness were certainly fascinating. The biggest mystery, though, appeared to be much closer than that.
I found it in the ordinary experience.
I found stillness while the entire universe seemed to move around me. In learning how to be alone, I found intimacy with existence. I lost identity only to feel more like myself. I surrendered control to find that life is intelligent and doesn’t require my effort.
I stopped searching for meaning and noticed that everything is saturated with it.
May you experience the beauty within reality’s paradox.