Finding Divinity In The Mundane

Can we find Divinity in the mundane? If so, how? What is preventing a direct experience of the divine? What is the Ultimate understanding of the Intellect?
Join us to discuss these questions, and come closer to your true SELF.

Transcript

And the next breath in, We keep in, We don't breathe out. Slowly breathe out and let go. Let go of all your efforts. Let go of any expectation or anxiety that has to do with today's meeting or any other event that might happen today or tomorrow. Let go of any past impression that may cloud your availability to be here, Completely present. Another deep breath in and let go. Become aware of the position of your body upon your seat. You may scan your body from the tip of your toes to the top of your head. Make sure there is no tension hiding in any organ. There is no need for tension right now. If you found a place that is contracted or tensed, You may breathe through that area, Fill it up with oxygen, With life, And breathe out anything that is not of use for you right now. Relax more and more. Comfortable and relaxed. Become aware of the point at the base of the spine, The first chakra. Every breath in goes down to that point, The base of the spine. Become aware of the point at the top of your head, The crown chakra. Every breath in goes up to that point, The top of your head. Once again, Become aware of the point at the top of your head and the base of the spine. Allow the breath to travel between those two points, Top of the head, Base of the spine. Top of the head, Base of the spine. Allow your breath to open up this chamber, This passage, Your inner core, And clean it from any residue, Any useless blockage, Any tension or contraction. Breathe it out and just become aware of the inner silence that is revealed within you. For a moment, Become that silence. You are peace. Another deep breath in. Allow your attention to come back to your body as it is, Seated here, Upright seat, A part of our virtual circle. Let's unite our individual intentions into one unified intention, One intention to grow, To develop, To evolve. With a smile, Another deep breath in. When you feel comfortable, You may open your eyes. How are you today? I hope everyone is comfortable in this opportunity we gave ourselves. We are giving ourselves every week to hold hands and walk the path together, Even if for a short while, Just to make sure we always remember that we are never alone here. And there are people who are dedicating themselves to the same calling, To grow towards an awakened consciousness. So, As I keep mentioning at the beginning of every session, I would like to remind everyone that this is not a lecture. Even though the platform only allows me to speak, You are a vital part in this conversation. And your questions are the propelling force that moves this ever forward. So, I invite you to ask and be generous to contribute your part to it. Ask truthful, Honest, Courageous questions. This is how you would be contributing to this journey. Today I was inspired to suggest that we walk under the question of how to find divinity in the mundane. What do you think? Is this a question you would like to ponder about together? Yes or no? Yes. Please. Let's do it. So, First we need to ask ourselves, What is divinity? What is that elusive term? Divinity is that experience of us being connected, Us in the presence of something that is greater than us, Us experiencing what is greater than the individual separated self. When we feel that we expand beyond the artificial limitations and borders of our own ego, Our own self, Our own identity, Our own story, This is when we are in the presence of divinity. And those borders melt, Even if for a faded moment, Those borders that separate me from life, From the rest of the world, From other people. This is when we experience the Divine. Now, Historically, Divinity was associated with religion. Religion took over that. And in order to connect with divinity, You would have to go through the church or the mosque or the temple or the synagogue or whatever, And identify divinity through what was considered to be divine, Religiously speaking, The divine scriptures, The divine artifact. Divinity was classified into four segments, A place, A time, An artifact, Or a person that were tagged as divine by the authority, By religious authority. There are those sacred times, Sacred days that we are supposed to use them to connect to divinity. There are certain places, Holy places, Where divinity hides, Usually guarded by the religion authorities, By priests, By rabbis or whatever. We have divine artifacts, Whether it's the holy book or a holy sculpture or another artifact that is considered to be holy, The cape of Jesus or whatever, It doesn't matter. People define an artifact as divine, Or a divine person that was named divine by the religious authorities. For example, Tonight we are celebrating the New Year's Eve in many places in Europe. It is called the Sylvester evening, And that is because there was a pope called Sylvester that was nominated as holy by the Orthodox Church centuries ago. So we call this evening Sylvester because of that decision to make someone holy and divine, To declare him to be divine. So what are we learning here is that divinity was subjected to preconceptions about a certain place, A certain time, A certain artifact or a certain person. And most importantly in that sense is that it was defined as opposed to something else. This day is divine, This occasion is divine, But that means that other days, Other occasions are not divine. Or this place is divine, As opposed to other places which are not. So this makes that place unique. You see what I am saying? This person is divine, Because he did this and that and the Church or whatever certified him to be divine, To be recognized as divine. So he is divine, As opposed to the other people around him, Around us, Which are not. This occasion is divine, As opposed to other occasions which are not divine. Chris, I find divinity most in silence and stillness, Away from noise and overthinking. Beautiful, But false. You see, This is our intellect that divides our experience into yes and no, Into holy and mundane. Our intellect decides for us what is good, Truth, Worthwhile, Worthy, And what is not. What is divine and what is holy. These are artificial stamps laid by our intellect, Or laid by other people and accepted by our intellect to be true. Our intellect makes those differentiations. This person as opposed to the other persons. This occasion as opposed to the other occasions. So if this is holy and that is mundane or unholy, Then only when this is happening I can hope to meet God or divinity. Usually these are very unique and rare opportunities in time. Generally there is noise, Generally there is overthinking, Generally I am just preoccupied with the mundane life that I have to live, Make money, Whatever. And only on special rare occasions I can take time off that and sit and reconnect and meditate and then recognize, I am divine. So those rare moments in time where I can take those breaks and remind myself, Are so special and precious, Almost divine. Do you see what I am saying? This is the intellect doing that. The truth is beyond the intellect. The truth is beyond intellect. Intellect has to mature in that sense. What happens when we stop this endless judgment, Or at least stop believing the automatic way our intellect interacts with reality? What happens then? We have to speak about the intellect to understand that. The intellect divides our experience of reality into two. This duality is created by the intellect. Right and wrong. Even now when I am speaking you might listen to me and automatically hear those inner voices saying, Yes, Yes, He is right, He is right, Or no, No, No, He is wrong. Yes, Yes, Yes, No, No, No. This is the intellect. This is worthwhile, This is useless. This I can benefit from, This I might lose from. This is good, This is bad. This I want, This I am rejecting. We have to fight cravings and aversions in Buddhism. This is the cause of suffering. Cravings and aversions. This is a good time to remind ourselves of the first conversation, According to the Holy Book, That humans had with the Divine. The first time there was an interaction between a human and a Divine. Do you remember what it was? It was God saying to Adam, I created this Garden of Eden for you. You can go and have fun, Enjoy. This is for you, For your pleasure. There is only one thing I ask you not to do. Yes, Do not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It wasn't an apple, But anyway. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is the first commandment, The first line that God ever spoke to a human. And somehow we keep forgetting. We want to know, We want to believe our intellect, To decide what is good and what is bad, What is good and what is evil. So God says, Okay, If you are insisting on trying to decide, Then you have to go and search for that outside of the Garden of Eden. You are welcome back. The gates are open. But you need to let go of that obsession, To know if whatever is happening is good or bad. To know better than God if this is good or bad, If this is mundane or divine. That separation, That artificial separation that happens in your intellect, It separates you from life. It separates you from the present moment. It separates you from direct experience. It separates you from God. Do you see that? God cannot be anywhere else other than here. God cannot be any place else. God cannot be in any other time other than now. If you want to find divinity in the mundane, You have that responsibility to bring yourself back to the mundane, To the present moment, To whatever is happening right now. Then you will find God there. God is always there. Don't wait for God to appear. That waiting creates the gap. Because you don't believe He is here now. You wait. Don't wait for something else to happen. Something more holy, So you will be able to experience God. Because that is based on the belief that it is not happening here. Something else should happen. That is not true. God waits patiently for your awareness to stop that running away. To stop artificially dividing and rejecting and obsessing. When this yes, Yes, Yes, No, No, No, Ends, Finally ends, You are available then to be present. And God is revealed. However you want to define God, You are revealed as silence in the making. So why do we have it then? The present is in the middle of eternity. Eternity does not happen later. Why do we have that? The intellect? There are many answers to this question. There is no one answer that is more right than another answer. You choose. I can give you the favorite answer I chose. And you may want to choose that too. We have intellect so we can grow beyond it. So we can evolve to the ultimate understanding that any intellect can reach. What is the ultimate understanding of a fully matured intellect? The ultimate understanding of a fully matured intellect is that it is not here to understand. Life is way too mysterious to comprehend intellectually. And when the intellect matures to reach that understanding, It relaxes and stops intervening with direct experience of reality. It stops trying to persuade us to prefer an artificial idea about reality. So we can fully, Directly experience it. And fill it with meaning of beauty and grace and divinity. It is like asking the question, Why did God create the Garden of Eden and invite us and then threw us out of Eden as a punishment? Why? Why did he do that? And the answer to this question is to create the longing to come back. To create the longing. We were there. We have that memory. And we want to reconnect to that. We came from divinity. We came from oneness. And we grew up feeling separated from it. There is a longing to come back and reconnect and reunite and recognize, Recognize, Recognize ourselves as the Divine. And that longing is what propels evolution. That longing is the eternal evolutionary state of the universal consciousness. This is why. So it is not a mistake. We grow together. We grow as individuals. But we grow together. Jessica, I have contemplated the Garden of Eden story in many ways but the perspective you have shared here today is a fresh and enlightening one. Thank you. You are most welcome. What is it? What is what? Steve, I don't know what you are talking about. Suleiman, Intellect is here for experience. No. I am sorry to say. I completely reject that idea. Intellect is here for experience. Intellect interferes with experience. Because there is an idea between me and whatever I am experiencing. The intellect is putting an idea. Even if it is a neutral idea. Like it is not good or bad. There is a tree. I see a tree. There is an eye. There is an idea of seeing. And there is an idea of tree. And this is an eucalyptus tree. And I have all the stories about eucalyptus coming from Australia. They are not indigenous to this nature. And actually we should cut them off and let indigenous trees replace the ones that were artificially brought here by settlers. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la of the present moment leads you to a tantric unification with the present moment. Where there is no more I who experience anything. There is only a tree who is currently being experienced by an undivided consciousness that is available to fill it with meaning. Intellect doesn't help you. Steve, If I could only be inside people's brains to know, To figure out what they're really up to, Why would you care? It's too noisy, Don't bother. You worry about your mind. How noisy is that? You said you could give us your reason for why being away, Separated from the divine or something. I'd want to know it. Your reason. My reason for why being away, Separated? Yeah, I told you. Because that generates longing and the longing propels evolution. That wanting to come back, To unite, That propels evolution. This is why you are asking your questions today. That is what is the driving force behind that, Wanting to come back, To return to the Garden of Eden, To return to God, To return to the origin point. What do you say? So finding divinity in the mundane only requires an undivided attention that doesn't try to tag experiences, People, Situations. God is revealed when you stop looking for it somewhere else. Let me repeat. God is revealed when you stop looking for it somewhere else. You are revealed as God when you stop to look for yourself in other people's eyes, In other people's opinions, When you stop being a football in other people's opinions. Why are we so obsessed about what other people think about us? Because we don't know who we are. So what they think about us becomes crucial. We build an identity around it. We want to know through other people, Because we don't know ourselves. Other people bring their own opinion, Their own judgment, Their own distorted ego. And the reflection that they are able to project back to us is always tinted. Do you see what I'm saying? The only exception for that in a relationship is a relationship with a spiritual master. Where in that play between you and the spiritual master, There is only one ego, And that is your ego. So that's why a relationship with a spiritual master is so unique and precious. I strongly recommend finding a spiritual master and surrender to it, To him, To her, To it, If it might be a river or a book. Stop searching for yourself in other people's eyes, And you will find the divine within, The divine that you are, When you stop hoping to be somebody else. When you let go of that idea that currently you are not, You are not developed enough, You are not mature enough, You are not worthy, You are separated. When you go beyond those self-made ideas about yourself, You come to realize, No, Divinity is everything, Everywhere, Anytime, Me included, It cannot be any other way. Do you see what I'm saying? So looking for a sign, For a sign, This endless circle. Why do you wait for a sign? You know, In the old era, People were looking for miracles. So Jesus has to walk on water and provide endless fish and bread. It doesn't matter the tradition or the religion that you come from, There are always stories about miraculous things that saints were able to do to prove that the divine is there, Speaking through them. We don't need that anymore. We have matured from performing miracles as a prerequisite to surrender to the divine. Why do you need signs? God is here waiting for you. Just open your heart. Stop putting conditions on your open heart. This is not good enough. This is not accurate enough. I have an idea, A different idea, A better idea of what should happen. And when that would happen, Then I would open my heart. No. I tell you, That will never happen. God cannot wait for you someplace else, Somewhere else, In another time. It's not going to happen, My friend. I'm sorry. You are sentencing yourselves to an endless wait. Wake up and find God. Find divinity. Recognize it. In the mundane, You are that. It is as is. In the Bible, In the Old Testament, When God was asked by Moses, Who are you? The answer was, I am that I am. I am that. I am that. That's it. That. Whatever it is. I am that. Not something else. So if you want to find, Reconnect, Reunite with the Divine, You are invited to let go of that expectation of something else. That endless wait for something else, Somewhere else. And if you want to find God within you, You are invited to let go of the idea that you are not. You are that. You are that. Waters were separated. Sticks turning into snakes. Yeah. We don't need that anymore. I don't see it within other people. Some. It's scary and scares me. I'm not sure what scares you, Christine. So when people always say you have to believe in a higher power, Something greater than yourself, It means something greater than your separate self, Right? Because this greater divinity is within us, Or rather we are or are within the divinity. What I'm saying here is beyond belief. You are not required to believe anything. Remember, Belief is an idea. An idea separates between you and the direct experience of the is-ness of things. You don't need to believe. You just experience. Vacant yourself from ideas, Preconceptions. Take it as homework. Find opportunities during the day. And allow yourself to directly experience whatever it is you are facing without any preconception, Ideas, Wants and needs, No agenda, To the point where there is no even I that is trying to experience something. And you'll find there is no I am experiencing anymore. There is only a direct experience. You reveal the truth. You become a revealed truth. That I am, They are hollow, And it's scary, Don't know the words. We call it influence silence. I 100% agree. Silence is what awaits at the end of every sentence. Ramana Maharishi once said that at the end of every sentence he ever said there was an invitation for silence. So it might be better just to shut up and allow silence to be directly experienced. What do you say? There is time for one last question. And thank you for your donations. It helps a lot in helping us continue to use this platform. Who wants to seize the opportunity and with a bang the ultimate question that was not asked yet. So I'm just reminding you of the homework for the next week. Let's start the year with this intention. To allow a direct experience of the present moment. Free from any judgment, Preconception. Free from any idea about good or bad. Free from any interest of the ego that wants and needs. Just complete availability. And we can meet next week and tell me if you happen to find God there. In the mundane. Within the soap bubbles of the dishes that you currently wash. What do you say? Yes? Or no? Yes. Good, Good, Good. So thank you guys for your presence and your lovely questions. And I'll see you next week to move forward together. There is a new course available on my page. You're welcome to check it out. And I wish you a very happy new year. And love you very much. Bye-bye.