“All major mystical traditions have recognized that there is a paradox at the heart of the journey…Put simply, this is that we are already what we seek, and that what we are looking for on the Path with such an intensity of striving and passion and discipline is already within and around us at all moments.  The journey and all its different ordeals are all emanations of the One Spirit that is manifesting everything in all dimensions; every rung of the ladder we climb toward final awareness is made of the divine stuff of awareness itself;  Divine Consciousness is at once creating and manifesting all things and acting in and as all things in various states of self-disguise throughout all the different levels and dimensions of the universe.

“The great Hindu mystic Kabir put this paradox with characteristic simplicity when he said:

Look at you, you madman,

Screaming you are thirsty

And are dying in a desert

When all around you there is nothing but water!

“And the Sufi poet Rumi reminds us:

You wander from room to room

Hunting the diamond necklace

That is already around your neck!”

 

Visit Andrew Harvey’s website at http://andrewharvey.net/