I am. I know I am. There is no need to say I am this or that.  The feeling of “I am” is free of characteristics. It doesn’t matter if you are a king or a clerk. The feeling of “I am” is the same for all. Established in beingness you are always happy and free.

The person, on the other hand, has a lot of conditions for its happiness. Things have to be in a certain way: “The world must make me happy.” The question Who am I? is answered by a set of characteristics that must be acceptable, and preferably flattering, to the person.

Each person has a different set of conditions for happiness. “I can ONLY be happy if such and such is present in my life.” “I can NEVER be happy if such and such is in my life.”

Sadly, the conditions that the person has set for happiness often remains even after s/he has embarked on a spiritual journey. The person is still in a state of want and s/he still thinks that certain conditions apply for her happiness. 

But instead of the world making the person happy s/he has now made it God’s job. S/he starts to bargain: “Dear God, I will do this if you do that.”

When it became clear to me how deviously ignorance infiltrates spirituality I wanted nothing to do with it. Spirituality is the safest haven for ignorance to grow. It can go on undetected after taking on this protective shield,  It can continue as usual in the person, now under the perfect camouflage of being “good” and, of course, “right.”

So for me there is no spirituality anymore. I don’t want to encourage ignorance in any way. I don’t want to deal with unnecessary concepts. I want to entertain less concepts and not more. Concepts imprison. The more concepts you entertain the more difficult it is to see beyond them and into the soul.

There is only life anyway. Why complicate? I don’t need anything to meet God.

The world will give you a mixed bag of sweet and bitter. But there is a part of you that is always in peace. (Hint: the I am.) Find that place and stay there as much and as often as you can.

You were given life without any conditions. It was handed to you in blind trust. Now you must show the same blind trust in how you live your life.  Trust that the same force that gave you life knows how to take care of you.

I have started about five different blog posts the last week but stopped after a few lines. I don’t have much to say anymore. There is so little to talk about.

There is no truth that will set us free. There is no method that will tell us how to live. Spirituality is not separate from daily life. Spirituality is life. Life is spiritual and I have no clue about life. I know absolutely nothing.

I don’t even understand myself so how can I know anything about life? I don’t know what is going on inside my body and I don’t know what my subconscious is up to. I can only observe and ponder.

I try to be as honest with myself as I can. At least I try not to lie to myself. But even that is difficult because I can’t always separate my own inner truth from expectations and wants created from the outside.

I don’t follow any particular disciplines. No particular diet, no particular exercise, no particular time for meditation. The only discipline I follow is to try to make my kids laugh every day. I try to listen to them and see them. They are my best teachers.

I just live and let it all flow, fluctuate and form itself into the life of Charlotte. Life is so short. All we have is our relationships.

The deep spiritual relationships – where you recognize each other as you are, beyond the person – are priceless, divine in nature, beyond time and space. These relationships are always nurturing and loving.

The psychological relationships – where the personal afflictions are at play – show you your wounds and offer ways to go beyond, if you are open to it. These relationships can be both loving and destructive.

I live day by day, breath by breath. Life is freakishly real in one way and the most incredible illusion in another. It’s God and I. I don’t question God. I try not to bargain with God. I try not to judge but I forgive myself if I do. Life is. There is so much IS-ness about life that it’s hard to tell that it’s all you.

I’ve been thinking of truth lately. What is true in life? What is false? What is it in my life that I can always trust?

First I came to the conclusion that joy and love are the only things in life that are really true – they help us transcend ourselves. I then thought beauty does that, too. Often neglected, or judged as superficial, beauty is important because it opens the heart to love and joy. It expands the heart.

Life has a funny – or not so funny – way of showing you what you need to see. A turn of events showed me clearly that even the idea of joy and love can be false and, as we all know, beauty fades. Things break or get worn out, things are sometimes taken away.

I found that while love and joy may be true in essence, the mind has a very distorted way of understanding and interpreting the world. The mind has an idea of what love is, an idea of what brings joy and then gets disappointed when that idea doesn’t work out.  

Mind makes love relative and joy elusive. Mind isn’t capable of absolute love, unconditional love. For that mind needs to be transcended.

Mind somehow recognizes the essence of beauty and love, a faint memory perhaps. Mind searches for it, longs for it, thinks it has found it but discovers again and again that it wasn’t what it seemed. It was all an illusion.

 What’s left then? What can I trust? What is the simplest, purest form of life? Where is true love, true joy, true beauty?

So I came to the conclusion, which others have come to before me: the only truth is my sense of being, my sense of presence, pure beingness; the I completely free of all descriptions such as age, sex, nationality, etc.

This sense of being never changes over the course of a life. It has always been the same. When I was three it was exactly the same as it is now. In thirty years it will still be the same.

This sense of I is identical in all humans and I think in most animals, mammals at least. It’s often overlooked. The world is loud and the spirit speaks silently. When this sense of I recognizes, and is recognized back, by another sense of I there is pure joy and pure love. Blessed are those who experience that.

Interestingly, just holding on to your sense of I brings love and joy. So I’m back where I started. Love and joy are true. Only this love and this joy aren’t depending on the world outside. It’s there as soon as I feel my beingness. It can never fade or disappear. It’s always with me. Only I can step away from it or forget about it.  It never leaves me.

It’s holy. It’s what makes us supremely equal. It’s what makes us divine.