The path of nadas of St. John of the Cross.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

For a truth, there is a tendency to seek something.

Especially for those on this path of awakening.

Seeking this experience, that knowledge.

It is filling filling the soul with something.

Seeking seeking, always seeking.

It is a form of spiritual gratification.

Been there, done that.

One day a line came to me:

Expecting nothing, receiving everything.

Buddhism holds that attachment causes suffering.

It is so true.

Because where there is attachment, there is that seeking.

Not gaining anything, we suffer from the lack.

It makes me think about going into the desert of nothingness.

In that nothingness, we experience the fullness,

of experiencing the Divine.

My higher Self, what do you have to tell me today?

We sense that feeling of sadness in you.

Existential sadness.

It means no one is free from it.

However good a person’s life is,

there is no escaping, avoiding that sadness.

It is part of your trial and lessons in life.

It is this existential sadness deep within.

that brings many to seek deeper awareness.

That makes you believe there is something higher.

How do you deal with it?

By accepting it, by making it your friend.

When you make it your friend, you accept it.

You do not ask why, you simply accept it,

as part and parcel of life.

As you have experience,

one can be sad and still have that inner joy.

A contradictory statement.

For how can one be sad and with joy at the same time?

It is possible because joy is not happiness.

Joy transcends happiness.

Happiness is a fleeting emotion.

You cannot hold onto it.

It comes, it takes you over.

You are happy and then all too soon,

that happiness passes and you are back

where you were before that happiness hit you.

We are talking about happiness brought on by the material world.

On the spiritual level.

What you experience is joy.

A long lasting joy.

A joy which nothing can take away.

Sadness, adversity, trials, tribulations,

you are able to retain that joy.

Why is that? You are asking as you write this.

And well may you ask.

For again, it is a contradictory statement

Joy once attained to,

is deeply embedded in the soul.

It is a state of being.

It is part of your Divine Nature.

You always have it.

It is like a treasure hidden from you.

Buried deep inside you.

Undiscovered, coming up now and again.

And remained again hidden from you

Until you experienced it in its totality.

And then like treasure uncovered.

Once you experience it,

it cannot be hidden again.

You will always be able to experience it,

in the midst of darkness, sadness, trials and tribulations.

What is this joy? You ask again.

It is a deep abiding joy.

To understand it, look at saints, sages, holy men, gurus.

They possess that joy.

It shines from their eyes, 

it shines from every pore of their being.

Their countenance is one of joy.

Their body posture relaxed and one of joy.

They have arrived at that joy,

at that Divinity which is in everyone of you.

It is when you are one with the Divinity within you,

that you experience the totality of this joy.

Hence joy is often a true gauge of the state of holiness in a person.

Humility and joy, they are the twin gauges.

Look to them, the saints, sages, holy men, gurus.

Learn from them examples of lives well lived.

What brought them there?

You will find it is always that divinity within,

imbued with that divinity within.

It is the seeking of the higher Self,

of the Divinity within.

Of that Divine nature you are imbued with.

That Divine nature that is part of you.

The Divine nature that is you.