What Am I Looking for in My Life?

4 minute read

My life was once simple. It consisted largely of ignorance and foolishness, together with an innate inability to understand what was happening both in my own life and around me.

From an early age, I felt my foolishness literally, not figuratively. Everything was difficult and complicated. Even if I repeated something a hundred times, I retained very little, as though intelligence went out of its way to avoid me.

There must nevertheless have been some spark, because I was regarded as quiet and mature for my age. Looking back, however, I do not see a spark of intelligence. I see only a great deal of experience born from the difficult life I had then.

I do not mean material deprivation, which was ordinary before the Romanian Revolution, but the turmoil within. I was conscious of my mind's helplessness and aspired towards a perfection that could never really arrive, given my poor memory and the flashes of intelligence that seemed entirely absent.

Then, shortly after I turned eighteen, it happened. I encountered the true "I". It marked my life from that moment onwards and seems likely to mark the rest of it. This was the true master whom I respected then and who now takes the place of everything missing from my life.

At first, my poor memory made this difficult, and it remains an obstacle now, because the intelligence within me far exceeds my capacity to retain it. This can be seen sometimes, perhaps almost always, when I discuss one subject, immediately move to another connected with it, and then to another, until I have travelled through three or four levels before finally returning to the original discussion.

I realised recently that memory is the reason. If I discussed only one subject, all the other ideas appearing instantly while I spoke would remain forgotten in the darkness of my mind.

How can you solve a problem that arises from the incapacity of both body and mind? How can you use a body and mind whose native abilities fall far below the expressive possibilities of your soul's intelligence, of the inner "I"?

To my soul, my body and mind resemble what a normal person sees in a person with a disability as the physical incapacity that marks the difference. To my Self, the part that represents me is a disability, a primitive stage of evolution.

Although the Self respects and loves me, gives me all its knowledge and shares its entire experience with me, I will never be more than an observer, unable to keep pace with its revelations.

Sometimes I see it speaking through me and using whatever instruments I can offer, even as it feels my existence's inability to express what it wants. Perhaps those around me are equally unable to perceive what it says. Most of the time, I understand what it wishes to communicate, although that understanding is probably made easier by the revealed experiences in which I participate.

Once, I tried to identify with this "Self" as though it belonged to me. But after reading what my own hand had written while my mind struggled to decipher what had been revealed, I began to feel the difference between me and the "I".

There is nevertheless one point at which our intelligences meet: practice. Inner prayer does so much good to my heart that I do not need to involve the mind greatly or test its native intelligence.

Here, the heart speaks and proves itself far superior to the intelligence of my mind. Some would say that the heart is not intelligent. Yet its capacity to feel and live through experiences and everything happening within and outside demonstrates its superiority. Before it, the mind surrenders its authority.

In truth, when the heart reaches the mind, the two become one and an unforeseen third element appears. It is the place in which the energy animating your existence resides, the energy that makes you feel both your ancestral animal nature and the evolutionary distance between you and the soul.

It is the place in which you were kept alive before you had opened your eyes upon this mad world, when the being who gave you life ensured that you lacked nothing and your present worries had not yet appeared.

This is the trinity of our existence. Although the body is considered the temple that shelters the soul, I understood long ago that it is primitive and ignorant, like the temples and churches that try unsuccessfully to give divinity life within our existence.

It is difficult both without them and with them, especially when they cannot express as fully as possible what the soul or God gives through their existence, whether within us or through churches. Churches depend upon the voice they shelter, and our bodies likewise depend upon the capacity of thought to give voice to what speaks within.

Yes... my inner Self takes the place of everything missing from my life. It is the Infinite and Absolute Love reflected in its existence and, above all, the master whom all people seek in order to understand the meaning of life and of their existence within this world.

It is not yet too late to discover your "Self" and your inner master.

First published in Romanian on 8 February 2011. This English translation preserves the perspective of that period.

Original Romanian article: Ce caut EU în viața mea....