Spiritual progress is not a process of accumulation from without, it is an unfoldment from within.
(Kitty Davy)

When one wakes up in the morning, for just the first instant, one is only conscious of being conscious. This is immediately followed by becoming aware and possessed, by the programmed definitions of who we are; our nationality, personality, age, relationships, fears, responsibilities, opinions, beliefs, and hopes. That is, the envelope that we use, in our interactions with others.

Nowadays, the immediate chores stemming from our ID, our relationships and problems, come to interact with an avalanche of global breaking news and gossip on everything; climate change, politics, hurricanes, bigots gaining ground, products to consume, new viruses, asteroids that might crush us, waters that might flood us, conspiracy theories and opinions of all sorts. “Information” it is called. All come together as a daily package, along with the impulses, fears, hopes and memories surging from within us, which nature depends on your state of mind.

Hey, listen, they just found out that microplastics are poisoning us all! And new nebulae have been discovered by the Webb telescope. Zillions of opinions are flowing on X, Facebook, Tic Toc, Google. But don’t worry AI is coming, all will be fine. And Donald Trump’s name and face haunts you everywhere and you can also get to know if Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos have one billion or two more. And how popular is Taylor Swift (now hated by Trump). Yes, information or babble like this, plus about all things, people and happenings, constantly spills, as a sandstorm that surrounds you.

Then there is all the accumulated history/legend, the story about our collective human journey, the cast of prima donnas and endless extras, the perceived notions of what has been, whether it is true or not. Like let’s go back to America before the Europeans “discovered it” and named it after a lost Italian sailor once they found out that it was not India (yet still the millions of inhabitants of the “new” continents were all called Indians). That is how history is written. The Europeans migrated en masse to “discover”, “colonize” and “conquer” this “new world” in spite of it being full of people. Funny how definitions change with time. Today when Africans and Central Americans and Haitians arrive in Europe and the US, they are not seen as “discoverers or colonizers” but a bunch of offending migrants.

Thus appears the world as we all wake up. History, countries, politics, corporations, invitations to vanity, nationalism, and pleasure, and so on. So many flags, colors and symbols, patriots, borders, anger at the tribes with other languages, color of skin mixes, and customs and all other different little things from our egos. So many simultaneous films are being projected into and from these so many ego minds of ours. It is mindboggling.

Sure, there is also beauty, magic, the enchantment of the universe, love, and good feelings surrounding all in varying proportions. But headlines, news commentaries and social media content are mostly made up of shootings, gossip, political power struggles and promotional stuff.

However, deeply haunting everyone and usually cast aside or postponed, in the middle of so much excitement and hullabaloo, are the questions; What is this life all about? And death? Who am I? What is this for? The existential questions that we all ask and postpone, as we seek the thrills and escape the threats. Or that we pass on to others to respond, and follow their blanket beliefs, because they seem unanswerable to one’s own mind.

Mind. That thinking thing that seems to be us and is dressed in so many formats and points of view.

So, what is all this? Mind asks as she grows. A creative paradise that was lost because of an apple. Or is it a vacuum of space exploding in a Bang, becoming overheated and giving birth to hadrons and muons and what not, that upon cooling congregates, bonds, invents and becomes paradise lost, and apples and original things and sins? The answer given by mind, through thoughts expressed in words and opinions, is based on either a scientific reductionist rationalist method, or a wide variety of myths and beliefs. Or maybe a combination of both, but all in concepts, words, theories, and beliefs.

Many physicists express the opinion that the universe could have arisen spontaneously from nothing. They believe. On the other hand, religions, based on communications from people that have experienced states of consciousness beyond words, thoughts and concepts, talk about a God, a supreme being, a oneness, that created the universe. But it seems that in reality those word streams and concepts cannot grasp or describe the reality of what Is, is. That real knowledge is beyond words and concepts.

All this rush of form and circumstance starts with birth. Yes, that moment of apparition in flesh, and point of view, of a drop. Like a seed, it brings with it a potential, a genome, a script based on perhaps countless apparitions on stage, an unconscious history of assemblage and experiences of duality at so many levels, as they enable the unfoldment of the full consciousness of being.

As a child, before thought and memory developed, I was totally absorbed in awe at the apparition surrounding me, including my body. When I started to become aware of thoughts, I fantasized myself as a little being inside the head of my body, that would peek through a periscope, at surrounding things. I remember, while walking to school, turning my head mechanically, focusing my ‘periscope’ on the sights. I also remember that the breezes brought by the Caribbean trade winds, as they passed through my hands, felt like the ethereal hands of a loving Being that accompanied me.

But life does not stay there. Its streams and rapids relentlessly push you through falls and stagnant waters, exhilarating discoveries, asphyxiating passages, rains that heal, and droughts that almost kill the flow. And one is no longer in awe, witnessing our evolving role, the stage and setting. Instead, we become fully identified with our point of view and ID, firmly believing that our nose and thoughts are the boundaries of our being.

Forces and circumstances within us and around us diverge. They can be calming or exploding, caressing, or injuring. All sorts of combinations of ignorance, glimpses of truth, moments of dark night and sublime joy and peace happen constantly in varying proportions, within and outside our bubble of self.

And one can run but can’t hide. We cannot escape the relentless building and deconstructing forces of life, sooner or later they will get us, sooner or later, one must face the turmoil to continue to find out and become, whatever it is that we really are.

My eyes were closed now, I was experiencing one of those rare moments of spontaneous silence and meditation. The room was quiet, behind the closed eyelids I could see a vast field, painted in sunsetting colors, a red soft intermingled with shadows, a perfect blend of serenity. On the horizon a silhouette was calmly walking, floating in the mist. I breathed in that silent inner vista as I realized that it was me walking on the horizon, devoid of personality and name, just being.

Just shortly before that space, I had been in an inner turmoil. Remembering previous moments that were hurtful, repeating them again in my mind, the exciting adrenaline thrills, the moments of pride, shame, pain, associated with my life, my personality, my ID. Why? What is the meaning of this recorded content playing again and again, and its relationship to this unbound being, walking now in that inner horizon sublime?

Life moments seem to parade in a caravan, bringing out in slow motion all spent moments, reviving what happened in the past, around one’s character. This is who we think we are, and we are so attached to this definition, that we tend to forget the moments of just being aware of awareness, without any attachment to ID, those evanescent moments of I am.

Most of the time we are thinking, defining, reacting, desiring. Engaging the enveloping context with the perceptions and impulses stored within ourselves, who we think we are -our programmed minds, our “personalities”, our bodies.

I remember, it was the day of the Ganesh celebrations in India in 2001. I was visiting some friends in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra when I received a phone call that my 93-year-old mother was in the hospital in Puerto Rico, and that I should go to see her as soon as possible. I had no plane reservation, and this was a particularly bad time, at the beginning of September to travel to New York from India and catch a connection to San Juan. So, I was going to try to go on standby. First I had to get to the Mumbai airport, which at that time in 2001 was not an easy ride at night (at least 7-8 hours’ drive), without considering the Ganesh festivities, which would crowd streets in the villages we had to cross en route to Mumbai. A friend arranged a taxi to transport me. We left probably around 8 PM, with the hope of getting to the airport by 3 or 4 in the morning, still in time to hunt for a standby on one of the early morning departures to Europe and then New York.

The driver had to take some back roads to bypass congested areas. At some point in time in the middle of the night, maybe by 11 PM, the driver made a stop for tea and gasoline. There I was in the middle of nowhere, in the Maharashtra countryside. The dark starry night enveloped everything, I stretched my legs as I waited for the driver, and walked around looking at the dark horizon, enveloped in sounds of distant music, voices, and night contexts that should have been totally foreign to me. Yet somehow, a profound unexplainable nostalgia took hold of me. I felt, in ways I could not comprehend, I was intimately bound to that setting. I had the same feelings as similar moments in the mountains of Puerto Rico, where I grew up and which I was so familiar with. Some other center of memory was influencing my consciousness in those Maharashtra hills with real emotional sentiments.

The universe is an unfoldment of consciousness. The processes of this evolutionary unfoldment are contained within a duality of opposites, atoms, the building blocks of matter and life, in different conformations or elements, like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen come out as byproducts of the intense energy occurring in stars. Life is made of these same elements combined, arranged exquisitely enabling synthesis through closeness. The first elements are said to be born out of energies vibrating at unimaginable levels of heat and pressure. The petals of a rose and the tender skin of a butterfly are composed of the same energies operating at unimaginable levels of suave tenderness. From beginning to end, an ebb and flow of energy sustains, unfolds and nourishes the universe.

Sometimes, inner freedom is felt. Freedom free of the tapestries that weave you, an awakening beyond being awake. And for a few instants one is alone, untied by definition. Beyond the juxtaposition of you and I. Alone, yet whole, beyond the hive. Beyond the House of Mirrors. Beyond the ancient evolutionary drives. In a distilled essence of total freedom, in a together loneliness. Where plenitude does not look like anything and does not need anything. Beyond time, space, thought and definition.

This inner multitude that peeks out as woman or man, changing like chameleons their skin on each round, in a spontaneous game of hide and seek and camouflage, hurled out of the stillness of Being. Seeking the paradise of self-consciousness. Bouncing on boundaries of nothing, expanding in space in a cosmic dance, as we hold hands in quantumness. Rebounding with each other, coalescing into forms more settled, rearranging in ever more elaborate filigrees of matter and energy.

But a subtle awareness dawns, between our bouts of vicious attachments to form, images, and ephemeral experiences. It floats intertwined, with a sensation of permanence, dancing with all the characters in the surrounding play.

Sometimes diverse points of view merge into one continuous boundary-less apparition. The setting then acquires an eerie, sublime nature, and a cloud of empathy, love, compassion and beauty descends on everything. It is a state akin to the twilight, between dreams and awakening out of a deep night sleep. Veils are still preventing a totally clear sight, but one can sense the rarefied nature of the in-between. The shifting of consciousness, or one could say the unfoldment from within. This is the work we all face today and every day.

Sacred essence in innocence, an openness of heart. Coming together to celebrate the unexpected. Dreaming together the invitation to come in, to heal, to be. With joyfulness, integrity, responsibility. Acknowledging the miracle of life. Restoring a direct experience of surrender, celebrating the unexpected. With humility, welcome the spiritual dimension of the heart. Our presence in this play, with deep forgiveness to all, we offer our service, in reverence for life. To provide fertile ground for the heart that will make Mother happy.