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Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self

Book by Kabir Edmund Helminski · 26 quotes · Sufi Way, Mindfulness, Awakening

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Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self Quotes

“We live in a time when there seem to be very few heroes. The original meaning of hero was someone favored by heaven and having godlike qualities. A hero is not without humility; humility is our awareness of our dependence on Spirit, and our interdependence with our fellow human beings. Gandhi, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King were all examples of both humility and heroism. Often humility exists because of the hero's connection to a higher aim: humility in front of a great idea, in front of the Infinity of Life. It is this kind of humility that leads to the forming of a connection with the infinite creative energy. (p. 144)”

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“The simplest form of meditation requires two things: a body that is still and relaxed, and an object to focus attention on. Many traditional postures for meditation exist. I have found the greatest ease and stability sitting in a chair, with the spine erect and the palms of the hands resting on the knees. The focus of attention that I have found most useful for the beginners is the awareness of breathing combined with a mental focus: „I“ as a feeling in the heart with each inhalation and „am“ as a sensation of the whole physical presence on the exhalation. It should be understood that this is not the „I“ of the ego as we commonly know it, but an I-ness rooted in the heart, an „I-ness-without I.“ (p. 56)”

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“Holistic, unconditional love, agape, is the unity in which duality disappears. It is as if a certain internal boundary has vanished. With agape what we love is ourselves, the way a mother loves her child as herself. This is the meaning of loving another as yourself – transcending our phenomenal borders and experiencing ourselves in another and the other in, not apart from, us. Eventually, if love is comprehensive, it unites us with everything and allows us to know that we are everything. Therefore, how can we support the illusion of this isolated, separate self that is threatened by and defends itself from everything outside? Love returns us to the unity that is actually Reality. Reality is not the isolation, suspicion, envy, selfishness, and fear of loss that we have come to accept as normal; it is that we are all part of one Life. The same Spirit moves in us all. You come to know this better when you realize that we all have the same kinds of feelings, the same wish to be known and respected, to share ourselves and let down our defenses. We are continually faced with a choice between personal achievement, personal security, and comfort on the one hand, and working for the whole and helping everyone and everything toward perfection on the other. We are faced with a choice between looking out for ourselves and contributing wholeheartedly to a common good. We are faced with focusing on self-love or increasing our love of all Life. (p. 191)”

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“The state of emancipation toward which we are journeying can be described as freedom from the fear of loss. It is understood that Life flows to us from an unstinting Source of grace that will never lessen its giving as long as we are open to receiving. The people and things that are so precious to us are embodiments of qualities, and these qualities are derived from this beneficent Source. What we are so afraid of losing are qualities that we have invested in the particular forms we are attached to. We have confused these qualities with the forms we have discovered them in. Their beauty is like the beauty of sunlight that falls upon a brick wall: „Sunlight fell upon the wall; the wall received a borrowed splendor. Why set your heart on a piece of earth, simple one? Seek out the source which shines forever.“ Rumi, Mathnawi II: 708-09 The wall may crumble or be torn down, but the sun will always return to shine. To be spiritually mature is to be free of the fear of loss, knowing that we are connected to the Source of all generosity. (p. 161)”

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“We may also struggle with what could be considered justifiable fears. We have fears of loss, pain, disability, and death. These can be transformed only by the human being who has come to know what it means to „die before you die“. In the discipline of transformation, this expression means coming to know our spiritual home, our eternal Self. It is not a metaphor but an accurate description of a psycho-spiritual truth. Many of those who have lived through the experience of a clinical death and have returned to life know that death is not something to fear and that life is an immeasurable gift. These people return to their lives with less fear because they have experienced their true metaphysical home. At the same time they have known that this physical body is important as a means of contact with their fellow human beings. Against the backdrop of eternity this transient human life has acquired a new beauty. To die before death is to detach from our physical body, our thinking, and our emotions at will, as a conscious choice. This is the aim of certain forms of spiritual training. Through control of the breath, fasting, and sustained awareness it becomes possible to separate from our coarser bodies – physical, emotional, mental – and to mount the steed of pure consciousness. When consciousness is separated from the conditioned intellect and desire, it makes direct contact with the electromagnetic field of Love. The soul comes to know a different relationship to all the beings within this electromagnetic field. When we are connected with this Love, we are free of fear and of the domination of the lower self and the thoughts it generates. As Rumi said: „Thinking is powerless in the expression of love.“ Love is reckless and does not count the cost; it expresses itself through courage and self-sacrifice. Often our fear is a lack of love. To be free of fear we must love very much. (p. 159)”

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“As long as human beings are unconscious and dominated by selfish and illusory desires, there is no god who will force us to change. But as the history of revelation on earth testifies, guidance has come to all communities and nations. Through masters, saints and prophets, through sacred texts and oral tradition, humanity has been reminded and warned. Cosmic intelligence has continually been in communication with us; now the burden of responsibility rests on each human heart. (p. 164)”

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“In Sufism we understand the human being to be composed of three aspects: self, heart, and spirit. Self is the experience of our personal identity, including our thoughts and emotions. Heart is something deeper, experienced through an inner knowing, often with a quality of compassion, conscience, and love. It can ultimately lead to the recognition of the deepest part of ourselves - our inmost consciousness, or Spirit, the reflection of God within us. If we simply say that souls is our inner being, then the quality of our inner being, or soul, is the result of the relationship between self and our innermost consciousness, Spirit. The self without the presence of spirit is merely ego, the false mask, which is governed by self-centered thoughts and emotions. The more the self becomes infused with spirit, the more „soulful“ it becomes. We use the words presence and remembrance to describe the conscious connection between self and Spirit. The more we live mindfully with presence, the more we remember God, and the more soulful we are, the more we drop the mask. Care of the soul, then, is always the cultivation of presence and remembrance. Presence includes all the ways we mindfully attend to our lives. Soul is the child of the union of self and spirit. When this union has matured, the soul acquires substance and structure. That is why it is said in some teachings that we do not automatically have a soul; we must acquire one through our spiritual work. (p. 75)”

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“The mirror of pure awareness is obscured by layers of emotional and mental conditioning. Just as polishing transforms a mineral or stone into a reflective object, regularly wiping clean the mirror of awareness will allow a human being to reflect the light of Being itself. The spiritual process can be understood as learning to consciously reflect more and more of this Being. If we would clear the inner mirror, the light of Being would be reflected outwardly, pouring out of our eyes. (p. 100)”

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“EVERYDAY MAINTENANCE OF THE SOUL What does it mean to care for your soul? Care of the soul is the constant practice of bringing loving attention to the problems, conflicts, and longings of our lives. Emotional suffering is something to be attended to, not split off from. We can learn to read our life as a story, rather than as a clinical case. Moreover, if the story we have been telling ourselves is a melodrama or tragedy, we need to rewrite the story. Every human life, when seen from the perspective of the unrelenting Divine Mercy, is the story of grace unfolding. Love is revealing itself in the precise details of each human life, if only we do not impose the script of self-pity, bitterness, and fearfulness. The soul is where the divine attributes of God may be awakened from their latent state to be integrated into our character. These qualities are the soul's natural inheritance from the Divine. It is through communion with the Divine that the soul takes on the spiritual attributes of kindness, generosity, courage, forgiveness, patience, and freedom.”

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“Realization, in its fullest meaning, is not merely knowing something, but making it real in oneself. We come to this essential Self through a process of deconditioning, reconditioning, and unconditioning. This can also be described as minimizing what is negative, increasing what is positive, and, ultimately, opening to Spirit.”

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“A Seed has no energy of its own, but it can respond in the right environment. Every form of life has a capacity for response but none so much as the human being. In an infertile environment this capacity for response may be dormant. The cultivation we need to provide is through conscious awareness. This makes the difference between nominally being alive and being alive abundantly. Life is not just this bioenergetic vitality, but a spiritual vitality that is eternal, and we are that. This life span that we know on earth is said to be one chapter in the story of Life. This eternal Life reflects through us. With awareness we can develop all our faculties. The body, mind, spirit, and ecology form an interconnected whole. When a harmonious relationship exists among all of these, we have abundant life.”

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“We can bring quality into the details of life if we remember to be and act with precision. If we can consciously be at that point where the horizontal force of active choice meets the vertical force of Being, a certain „something“, larger than life, will be activated. This „something“ can be felt in anything produced by the hands and hearts of a conscious human being – in works of art, in a well-tended garden, in food prepared with love.”

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“The soul is a knowing substance that knows the Reality beyond time and space. To acquire this kind of knowing is to become illuminated, to be connected to a greater intelligence that will guide every step of your life. Instead of living in fear and uncertainty, you will more and more be able to trust the unfolding of Life. (p. 78)”

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“The Work of the Soul is the greatest satisfaction in life. It is a long journey with many stages of realization. If you want to know how close you are to living the life of the soul, simply ask yourself: how much of my life energy is devoted to complaining about my circumstances, blaming others for my own unhappiness, controlling others to achieve my desires, deceiving others to make myself look good, or promoting myself? The remedy for all these spiritual diseases is the same: contact with your true inner being, which is a reflection of the Divine. After all is said and done, after all our spiritual practices and all the esoteric knowledge that might be acquired, the real measure of soulfulness is simply the degree of our humility, gratitude, patience, and love.”

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“What we most need is what we already are: our essential Self. There is no escape; there is only coming home [...] The submission of the lower self to the Higher Self, of the self to the Whole in each moment, becomes the central fact of existence. Submission is t olive for one's Self - the eternal I - not for one's ego.”

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“In Sufism we understand the human being to be composed of three aspects: self, heart, and spirit. Self is the experience of our personal identity, including our thoughts and emotions. Heart is something deeper, experienced through an inner knowing, often with a quality of compassion, conscience, and love. It can ultimately lead to the recognition of the deepest part of ourselves - our inmost consciousness, or Spirit, the reflection of God within us. If we simply say that soul is our inner being, then the quality of our inner being, or soul, is the result of the relationship between self and our innermost consciousness, Spirit. The self without the presence of spirit is merely ego, the false mask, which is governed by self-centered thoughts and emotions. The more the self becomes infused with spirit, the more „soulful“ it becomes. We use the words presence and remembrance to describe the conscious connection between self and Spirit. The more we live mindfully with presence, the more we remember God, and the more soulful we are, the more we drop the mask. Care of the soul, then, is always the cultivation of presence and remembrance. Presence includes all the ways we mindfully attend to our lives. Soul is the child of the union of self and spirit. When this union has matured, the soul acquires substance and structure. That is why it is said in some teachings that we do not automatically have a soul; we must acquire one through our spiritual work. (p. 75)”

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“In the world of the Spirit, the human being is a witness. The mirror is for witnessing not only the outer, visible world, but the inner, invisible worlds where spiritual qualities abide. Through the sensitive screen of our own awareness, we behold moment by moment and flash by flash the manifestation of infinite beauty, and that beauty need never be absent from the mirror. What may appear in the mirror at a given moment is a gift and should never be underestimated or taken for granted. As we polish away conditioning, concepts, and the false, reacting self, wherever we turn there is the face of Reality. „There is a polish for everything“, said Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, „and the polish for the heart is the remembrance of God“ (Bukhari)”

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“Spiritual attainment is a fundamental transformation of the „I“ from a separate, limited, and contracted identity into a rich and infinite one. It is a movement from separation to union. One of the first steps in this process is to observe and understand the chaotic and fragmented nature of the ordinary self and to understand that a very practical integration and harmony can be achieved. This integrated self is the drop that contains the ocean. At the dimensionless center of our identity is the creative potential of Universal Intelligence. (p. 120)”

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“Grace is always there. It is the Life that flows from the Source of Life. What we need to learn is to receive it and to become aware that grace is flowing from Life all the time. This Life is within us. All the qualities we might need are available if we can form the right connection. The three unlocking keys to the Source of Life are humility, gratitude, and love. When these qualities begin to prevail in our inner life we become receptive to grace. (S. 144)”

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“What is most characteristically human is not guaranteed to us by our species or by our culture but given only in potential. A spiritual master once expressed it this way: A person must work to become human. What is most distinctly human in us is something more than the role we play in society and more than the conditioning, whether for good or bad, of our culture. It is our essential Self, which is our point of contact with Infinite Spirit. This Spirit is not to be understood as a metaphysical assertion requiring belief, but as something we can experience for ourselves. What if you, as a human being, represent the final result of a process in which this Spirit has evolved better and better reflectors of itself? If the human being is the most evolved carrier of the Creative Spirit – possessing conscious love, will, and creativity – then our humanity is the degree to which this physical and spiritual vehicle, and particularly our nervous system, can reflect or manifest Spirit. That which is most sacred in us, that which is deeper than our individual personality, is our connection to this Spirit, this Creative Power. Whereas conventional religious belief has the tendency to anthropomorphize God/Spirit, this process consists of the human being becoming qualified by the attributes of God. It could be called the „sanctification“ of the human being. Our human nature is realized through the understanding and awareness that the essential human Self is a reflection of Spirit. To become truly human is to attain a tangible awareness of Spirit, to realize oneself as a reflection of Spirit, or God. The education of the Soul is the Great Work. The beginning of this Work consists of awakening a transcending awareness...”

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