An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation

For our purposes we can describe ego as a sort of knot of psyche. This knot of ego gets in the way of our realizing with expanding clarity that there is no separate, isolated self to begin with, for we are all one in God and always have been. The problem is the knot, not the psychic energy itself.

Devotion can certainly play a positive role in the practice of contemplation, but it differs from the silence of simple reverence.

“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

this inner spaciousness, perceived as always having been present, is at the same time always new.

We go at these dualisms tooth and nail, and dualistically bludgeon them into what we triumphantly label “the non-dual.”

As the twentieth-century Serbian Orthodox monk Thaddeus of Vitovnica writes, “Everything is constantly changing; nothing remains static.”

The sheer generosity of receptive mind continues its expanse, an expanse generous enough to cradle in its arms the joys and burdens of a lifetime. Pain still hurts. Joy still gladdens. Despair still flattens. But we are less demanding that the present moment—whether pain, boredom, or bliss—be other than it happens to be.

The simplicity of God is too intimately present for the thinking mind, whether reactive or receptive, to fathom.

“Thinking gets you nowhere.”34 This comes as a rather startling statement from a fiercely analytical young thinker. She continues, “You shouldn’t live on your brains alone but on deeper, more abiding sources, though you should gratefully accept your brains as a precious tool for delving into what problems your soul brings forth.”35