Vaughan Lee Quotes

I changed what I could, and what I couldn't, I endured.

We live and work in a world that carries preoccupations about money, but what does the soul care about such things?

The wise have inherited wisdom by means of silence and contemplation.

The journey towards oneness emphasizes the opposites and we are caught in their conflict.

love has no end, because the Beloved has no end.

Does it feed into my psychological patterns, my defense mechanisms, or does it take me beyond myself, make me more free, maybe more vulnerable, help me to participate more fully?

Those who wish to enter this path must accept that they can never explain either to themselves or to others the mysterious inner unfolding that is taking them home.

There is a time to struggle to achieve what we want and a time to give up any desire, a time to be strong and a time to surrender one’s strength.

The ego tries to claim everything for itself, even subverting the soul’s longing for Truth into another illusion.

Restaurants that refused to serve Dorothy Vaughan had no problem waiting on Germans from the prisoner-of-war camp housed in a detention facility under the James River Bridge in Newport News.

Life is an interdependent living organism that reflects the collective consciousness of humanity.

How can we speak about sustainability without speaking about the Sustainer?

The Sufi relates to God not as a judge, nor as a father figure, nor as the creator, but as our own Beloved, who is so close, so near, so tender. In the states of nearness the lover experiences an intimacy with the Beloved which carries the softness and ecstasy of love.

We have separated matter and spirit and through the power of this collective attitude have starved the world.

Love is the dominant force, and in its light there is no deception.

Every spiritual path leads the sincere seeker to the truth that can only be found within. The Sufi says that there are as many roads to God as there are human beings, “as many as the breaths of the children of men.” Because we are each individual and unique, the journey of discovering our real nature will be different for each of us. At the same time different spiritual paths are suited to different types of people.

There are no shadows in which deceptions can be born, no dance of appearances:

What I changed, I could; what I couldn’t, I endured,” Dorothy Vaughan told historian Beverly Golemba in 1992.

Love has come and it flows like blood beneath my skin, through my veins. It has emptied me of my self and filled me with the Beloved. The Beloved has penetrated every cell of my body. Of myself there remains only a name, everything else is Him. (Rumi)

To be a Sufi is to give up all worries and there is no worse worry than yourself. When you are occupied with self you are separated from God. The way to God is but one step: the step out of yourself. (Abu Sa'id Ibn Abi-l-khayr)

In the West we are so addicted to the notion of progress that we project this idea onto our spiritual life, and can become very confused by the dawning realization that He whom we seek is always with us, that we are always close to Him but do not know it. The spiritual path is a process of revealing this nearness, the intimacy of love that is always with us.

What else can I say? You don't know your own worth. Do not sell yourself at a ridiculous price, You who are so valuable in God's eyes. (Rumi)

[T]he light of oneness is available to all of us, present in hidden aquifers where life’s waters continue to flow, waiting in a living silence for us to notice.

… the sacred principles of life have never been written down: they belong to the heartbeat, to the rhythm of the breath and the flow of blood. They are alive like the rain and the rivers, the waxing and waning of the moon. If we learn to listen we will discover that life, the Great Mother, is speaking to us, telling us what we need to know.“ —Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufis Know the Secrets of Love "Longing takes us back to God, takes the lover back into the arms of the Beloved. This is the ancient path of the mystic, of those who are destined to make the journey to the further shores of love. Why we are called to this quest is always a mystery, for the ways of the heart cannot be understood by the mind. Love always draws us back to love, and longing is the fire that purifies us. Sufis know the secrets of love, of the way love takes and transforms us. They are the people of love who have kept alive the mysteries of divine loving, of what is hidden within the depths of the human being.

One might have practiced on a spiritual path for thirty years, or one might be walking through a dappled wood, or one might have just met a friend who will be a friend forever—suddenly love is present, arriving unexpectedly, as a tender feeling, a fragrance in the heart.

We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual “autism.

Our separation from the natural world may have given us the fruits of technology and science, but it has left us bereft of any instinctual connection to the spiritual dimension of life—the connection between our soul and the soul of the world, the knowing that we are all part of one living, spiritual being.

We Are All a Part of God "Recently I was sitting in an airport lounge full of people waiting to board a flight. For a few moments my eyes were opened, and I saw how each person was full of His presence, how there was nothing other than He, His light, His love, His beauty. And in the same few moments I also saw that these people did not know it. In this experience I realized that the real mystery is not that we are all divine, are filled with His substance, but that we do not know it. We do not know that we are a part of God. This experience filled me with wonder, the wonder that part of the mystery of creation is that we have been allowed to forget Him. It is His will that in us He forgets Himself, just as it is His will that He allows us to remember Him." — The Circle of Love

Nothing is excluded and the unique nature of every aspect of creation is celebrated. This is how oneness works when it is not just a concept but a living presence. Many patterns and attachments that we think are essential to life will fall away, just as our present structures of power will become redundant. And the wonder of this change is that it need not be gradual, because it belongs to the now. Any real change is always a miracle - it happens through the grace of God.

Your journey is towards your homeland. Remember you are travelling from the world of appearances to the world of Reality. – Abdul Khaliq Ghujduwani

When you seek God, seek Him in your heart. – Yunus Emre

It is said that what you think, you become. If we continually think of Allâh we become one with Allâh.

The bond between the lover and the Beloved is the strongest link with the beyond, and it is through this link that grace can flow into the world. (p. 42)

By human soul, I mean an individual person’s ultimate place in the more-than-human world—his or her place in the Earth community, not just in a human society.

By “developing” the planet, we have been reducing Earth to a new type of barrenness.

It is burning of the heart I want; this burning which is everything, More precious than a worldly empire, because it calls God secretly, in the night. (Rumi)

The inner reality of love means that you give all of yourself to the One until nothing remains of you for you. (Anonymous)

You are more valuable than both heaven and earth. What else can I say? You don't know your own worth. Do not sell yourself at a ridiculous price, You who are so valuable in God's eyes. (Rumi)

When we first arrived as settlers, we saw ourselves as the most religious of peoples, as the most free in our political traditions, the most learned in our universities, the most competent in our technologies, and most prepared to exploit every economic advantage. We saw ourselves as a divine blessing for this continent. In reality, we were a predator people on an innocent continent.

Sufis describe the heart as a mirror which the wayfarer polishes and polishes with aspiration and inner work, until no imperfection remains. Then the mirror of the heart can reflect the true light of the Beloved.

He replied, “I try to remember that it’s not me, John Seed, trying to protect the rain forest. Rather, I am part of the rain forest protecting itself. I am that part of the rain forest recently emerged into human thinking.

First we have to step out of our dream of separation, the insularity with which we have imprisoned ourselves, and acknowledge that we are a part of a multidimensional living spiritual being we call the world. The world is much more than just the physical world we perceive through the senses, just as we are much more than just our own physical bodies. Only as a part of a living whole can we help to heal the whole. Just as we need to work together with the outer ecosystem, we need to work together with the inner worlds. We need their support and help, their power and knowledge. The devas understand the patterns of climate change better than we do, because they are the forces behind the weather and the winds. Just as plant devas know the healing powers of plants (and taught the shamans and healers their knowledge), so are there more powerful devas that know and guide the patterns of evolution of the whole planet.

The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.

To reclaim our dignity and role as guardians of the planet will not be easy. But we can pray for the intercession of His mercy, knowing, according to an ancient promise, that “His mercy is greater than His justice.” There is a real reason that the ancients understood that He is a wrathful God, and made penance and sacrifice to placate Him. We may think that our science and civilization can protect us from this primal power, but the symbol of the dragon as the power of the earth is not without meaning. We have little understanding of the archetypal forces that underlie our surface lives, and of how they are all interconnected and can manifest the will of God. We can no longer afford to be ignorant or think that we can abuse the world as long as we want.

The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature. — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

There was a four-place table with only three chairs. There were what Reacher’s mother had called “touches.” Dried flowers, bottles of virgin olive oil that would never be used, antique spoons. Reacher’s mother had said such things gave a room personality. Reacher himself had been unsure how anything except a person could have personality. He had been a painfully literal child. But over the years he had come to see what his mother had meant. And Vaughan’s kitchen had personality.

Hammered into the Heart In the Sufi tradition light and knowledge are reflected from heart to heart. The heart is the organ of the higher consciousness — the consciousness of the Self. Spiritual teachings can be reflected or impressed directly into the heart, bypassing the limitations of the mind. . . . A further part of the Sufi training is to bring the mind into the heart, the mind 'hammered into the heart' as the Sufis say, so that the teachings given to the heart can be assimilated into everyday consciousness. A mind that has been brought into the heart can understand the ways of oneness, which are often paradoxical, sometimes even nonsensical, to the rational self.

Hammered into the Heart In the Sufi tradition light and knowledge are reflected from heart to heart. The heart is the organ of the higher consciousness — the consciousness of the Self. Spiritual teachings can be reflected or impressed directly into the heart, bypassing the limitations of the mind. . . . A further part of the Sufi training is to bring the mind into the heart, the mind 'hammered into the heart' as the Sufis say, so that the teachings given to the heart can be assimilated into everyday consciousness. A mind that has been brought into the heart can understand the ways of oneness, which are often paradoxical, sometimes even nonsensical, to the rational self.

By means of the Divine Lights the heart becomes polished so that it shines like a polished mirror. When it becomes a mirror one can see in it the reflection of all existing things and the reflection of the Kingdom of God as they really are . When one sees the Glory and Majesty of God in His Realm then all the lights become one light and the chest becomes full with this shining light. He is like a man who observes his reflection in a mirror and sees in it at the same time the reflection of all that is before and behind him. Now when a ray of sun hits the mirror the whole house becomes flooded with light from the meeting of these two lights: the light of the sun-ray and the light of the mirror. Similarly the heart: when it is polished and shining it beholds the Realm of Divine Glory and the Divine Glory becomes revealed to it. –  Al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi

The mystic knows that the essence of prayer is the hidden secret, “I am He whom I love, He whom I love is me.” In the deepest prayer of the heart there is only oneness, for when the heart is open and looks towards God, He reveals His unity. In this state of prayer there are a merging and melting that transcend the mind and its notions of duality: the heart overwhelms us with His presence which obliterates any sense of our own self. These moments of prayer are moments of union in which the lover is lost. The lover has stepped from the shore of his own being into the limitless ocean of the Beloved. (...) When love reveals its real nature we come to know that there is neither lover nor Beloved. There is no one to pray and no one to pray to. We do not even know that we are lost; we return from these states of merging only knowing that we gave ourself and were taken. Our gift of ourself was accepted so completely that we knew nothing. We looked towards Him and He took us in His arms, embraced us in oneness, dissolved us in nearness. For so many years we cried to Him, we called to Him, and when He came the meeting was so intimate that we knew nothing. But when we return from this merging of oneness, when the mind again surrounds us, we can see the footprints that led us to this shore, to the place where the two worlds meet. We can tell stories of the journey that led us to the edge of the heart’s infinite ocean, of the nights we called to Him, and the tears we cried in our calling. For so many years our need was all that we knew, a need born of the despair of separation, the deepest despair known to the soul. This need was our first prayer, planted in the soul by Him who loves us, who wants us for Himself. This need of the soul is the bond of love, the mystic’s pledge to remember Him. The awakening of this remembrance is the knowledge of our forgetfulness, the knowledge of separation. The lover is made to know that she is separate from her Beloved, that she has forgotten Him. Awakening to this knowledge, the lover brings into consciousness the soul’s need to return Home, to journey from separation to union.

At the beginning we have to learn the art of listening, the art of being present, attentive, and empty. We have to learn to catch the still, small voice of our Beloved, and not interrupt, not ask too many questions. We have to learn to be silent, because listening is born from silence. But the listening of the heart is always an act of love, a coming together, even when nothing is heard. Listening is a wisdom so easily overlooked, because it is feminine, receptive, hidden, and our culture values only what is visible. But Rûmî knew how central a part it plays in our loving, in our wordless relationship with our Beloved: 'Make everything in you an ear, each atom of your being, and you will hear at every moment what the Source is whispering to you, just to you and for you, without any need for my words or anyone else’s. You are--we all are--the beloved of the Beloved, and in every moment, in every event of your life, the Beloved is whispering to you exactly what you need to hear and know. Who can ever explain this miracle? It simply is. Listen and you will discover it every passing moment. Listen, and your whole life will become a conversation in thought and act between you and Him, directly, wordlessly, now and always.' How can we learn this art of listening? How can we learn to hear what He says? How can we learn to be a part of His silence when nothing is said? How does the heart listen?

It is in the heart that the mystery of spiritual conception takes place. This is not the physical heart but what the Sufis call the heart of hearts. The heart of hearts is the heart of the Self which is on the right side of the physical body. In the moment of spiritual conception a special energy is infused into this heart which makes it spin in a particular way. I once had a vision in which my heart was cut open with a knife, taken out and breathed upon—the dust was blown off—and then spun. My teacher did not interpret this inner happening but said that I would come to understand it. Years later I heard her say to someone else that once the heart has been spun in this way it remains spinning for the rest of that person’s incarnation. The divine energy of the Self vibrates at a higher frequency to our ordinary human self. Through the spinning of the heart, the higher consciousness of the Self is able to be integrated into the lower vehicles, into the denser dimensions of the human being. All the wayfarer’s spiritual work has been a preparation for this moment, and from now on the work will be to give birth to this seed of consciousness, to attune one’s waking consciousness to the higher vibrations of the Self that are now spinning within the heart. This is the gradual process of awakening to the consciousness of the heart, opening the eye of the heart through which the Beloved is able to experience His creation. Sufis are known as “a brotherhood of migrants who ‘keep watch’ on the world and for the world,” because through the open eye of His lovers’ hearts the Beloved keeps watch on the world. Through His lovers’ hearts humanity is kept attuned to the Beloved. Just as a single heart is spun when the individual is ready to contain the higher energy of the Self, so does this same process happen with a group. When the group has a central core bonded together in love then its collective heart, its central core of light, is spun. In order to help this process, groups of souls that have been bonded together in past lifetimes are forming specific groups. They hold the spiritual core of the group that allows many others to be included in this dynamic unfolding. The spinning hearts of the lovers of God are forming the map made of points of light which I referred to in the previous chapter. At this time His lovers are being positioned around the planet. Some have already been positioned. Some are moving to physical locations while others are having their hearts awakened to this hidden purpose. Slowly this map is being unfolded, and in certain important places lovers are forming clusters of points of light. Certain spiritual groups have been formed or are being formed to contain these clusters as dynamic centers of light. When this map of light around the world is fully unfolded it will be able to contain and transform the energy structure of the planet. It has the potential to be the bond that will enable the world soul, the anima mundi, to be impregnated with a higher consciousness. The hearts of His lovers form part of the hidden heart of the world. As this map is unfolding so their spinning hearts can open the heart of the world. At this moment in cosmic time the planet is being aligned with its inner source, allowing the world to be infused with a certain cosmic energy that can dramatically speed up the evolution of this planet. If the heart of the world opens, it can receive this frequency of cosmic energy and directly implant it into the hearts of people. This would alter human life more than we could imagine. It is to help in this opening of the heart that many old souls have incarnated at this particular time and are working together. (p. 36 - 38)

God placed within the heart the knowledge of Him, and so the heart became lit by God’s Light. By this light He gave the heart eyes to see. Then God spoke in a parable and said, “Compared to a niche wherein is a lamp.” The lamp of the Divine Light is in the hearts of those who believe in the Oneness of God. – Al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi

There is a polish for everything that taketh away rust; and the polish of the heart is the invocation of Allâh. – Hadith of the Prophet

It is here, in the secret recesses of the heart, that the relationship with the Beloved takes place. He was always here, waiting to be born into consciousness. But we need to prepare ourself for this meeting, we need to align ourself to the inner vibrations of the Self. How can you notice your invisible lover when your consciousness is filled with the outer world? How can you enter the sacred space of your own heart wearing boots muddied with the desires of the ego? Here lies the esoteric meaning of the immaculate conception. For the Beloved to be conceived as a living presence we need to go through a process of inner purification. (p. 29)

The fire of devotion within the heart, ignited by the glance of the Beloved, contains the secret of divine consciousness, sirr allah. Sirr Allah is a spiritual substance within the innermost chamber of the heart, the heart of hearts. His divine consciousness, which reveals itself within the heart of His devoted servant. (p. 116)

Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden loved math. As children, they showed special skill in arithmetic, and they went on to study mathematics in college. After graduation they worked as teachers before going to work as “computers,” or mathematicians, for the government’s air and space program.

Be in this world as if you are a traveller, a passer-by, with your clothes and shoes full of dust. Sometimes you sit under the shade of a tree, sometimes you walk in the desert. Be always a passer-by, for this is not home. – Hadith of the Prophet

One of the attributes of the saint is that he has no fear, for fear is anticipating some disagreeable event that might come or expecting that something beloved might pass away in the future. The saint is concerned only with the present moment. He has no future to fear.

The perfect mystic is not an ecstatic devotee lost in contemplation of Oneness, nor a saintly recluse shunning all commerce with mankind, but “the true saint” goes in and out amongst the people and eats and sleeps with them and buys and sells in the market and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment. – Abu Said ibn Abi al-Khair 

Four thousand years before God created these bodies, He created the souls and kept them beside Himself and shed a light upon them. He knew what quantity each soul received and He showed favor to each in proportion to its illumination. The souls remained all that time in light, until they became fully nourished. Those who in this world live in joy and agreement with one another must have been akin to one another in that place. Here they love one another and are called the friends of God, and they are brothers who love one another for God’s sake. These souls know one another by smell, like horses. – Sheikh Abu-Said Abul-Khayr 

Spiritual life means learning to become one-pointed, to focus all our energy in one direction, towards Him. Through continually repeating His name we alter the grooves of our mental conditioning, the grooves which like those on a record play the same tune over and over again, repeat the same patterns which bind us in our mental habits. The dhikr gradually replaces these old grooves with the single groove of His name. The automatic thinking process is redirected towards Him. Like a computer we are reprogrammed for God. It is said that what you think, you become. If we continually think of Allâh we become one with Allâh. But the effect of the dhikr is both more subtle and more powerful than solely an act of mental focusing. One of the secrets of a dhikr (or mantra) is that it is a sacred word which conveys the essence of that which it names. This (“In is “the mystery of the identity of God and His Name” the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”). In our common everyday language there is not this identity. The word “chair” does not contain the essence of a chair. It merely signifies a chair. But the sacred language of a dhikr is different; the vibrations of the word resonate with that which it names, linking the two together. Thus it is able to directly connect the individual with that which it names. (p. 121)

Spiritual life means learning to become one-pointed, to focus all our energy in one direction, towards Him. Through continually repeating His name we alter the grooves of our mental conditioning, the grooves which like those on a record play the same tune over and over again, repeat the same patterns which bind us in our mental habits. The dhikr gradually replaces these old grooves with the single groove of His name. The automatic thinking process is redirected towards Him. Like a computer we are reprogrammed for God. It is said that what you think, you become. If we continually think of Allâh we become one with Allâh. But the effect of the dhikr is both more subtle and more powerful than solely an act of mental focusing. One of the secrets of a dhikr (or mantra) is that it is a sacred word which conveys the essence of that which it names. This is the mystery of the identity of God and His Name („in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”). In our common everyday language there is not this identity. The word “chair” does not contain the essence of a chair. It merely signifies a chair. But the sacred language of a dhikr is different; the vibrations of the word resonate with that which it names, linking the two together. Thus it is able to directly connect the individual with that which it names. (p. 121)

Through the heart of His lover the Beloved can then enter and influence His creation. It is in this sense that His lovers are points of light; places where He can unfold the hidden purpose of His creation. The deepest joy of the mystic is that he can participate in this work. The Sufi sees the purpose of creation expressed in the hadîth qudsî: “I was a hidden treasure and I wanted to be known, so I created the world.” The Beloved awakens the lover so that He can use the lover’s eyes to see Himself—“I created perception in thee only that therein I might become the object of My perception.” Through the eyes of the lover the Beloved can see Himself reflected in His creation. (p. 99)

When we hear our own song as a part of the world song it has a richness, passion and purpose born from the integration of the individual with the whole. It is only in relation to the whole that we can appreciate the full range of our own potential, for the simple reason that our life has a purpose beyond our individual self. When we hear the song of the world soul our own song resonates with this deeper destiny. (p. 104)

If six degrees centigrade of global warming takes place, 95% of species will die out, including Homo sapiens. Mass extinction has already happened five times and this is the sixth. According to the Buddhist tradition there is no birth and no death—after extinction things will appear in other forms. So you have to breathe very deeply in order to acknowledge the fact that we humans may disappear from this Earth in just one hundred years. You have to learn how to accept that hard fact, without being overwhelmed by despair. That is why we have to learn to touch eternity in the present moment, with our in-breath and out-breath.

When the Sufi Abû Sa‘îd ibn Abî-l-Khayr was asked what Sufism entailed he replied: “Whatever you have in your mind—forget it; whatever you have in your hand—give it; whatever is to be your fate—face it!

The Sufi is interested in neither this world nor the next, in neither heaven nor hell. He will pay any price to reach Reality in this life. The price is that “everything has to go,” and like any mental belief, the values of good and bad can be a limitation. Even the desire to renounce must be left behind. One Sufi poet wrote: “On the hat of poverty three renouncements are inscribed: ‘Quit this world, quit the next world, quit quitting.

The Sufi path is subversive rather than confrontational. It works from within, from the Self which lives in the very depths of the unconscious, in the secret recesses of the heart. The changes begin far away from the conscious mind, where they cannot be interfered with. Then slowly the energy of the Self filters into consciousness, where it begins the work of altering our thinking processes.

As a Canadian psychiatrist observed: When a human being is standing with both feet firmly on the ground, with both legs on the earth, and is “quite normal” as we medical practitioners call it, spiritual life is very difficult, perhaps impossible. But if something is not quite right with the mind, a little wheel not working properly in the clockwork of the mind, then spiritual life is easy.

The Enlightenment values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are being reconfigured. Life now includes the larger life of the earth, individual freedom requires responsibility to community, and happiness is being defined as more than material goods.

Like ether, let us remain undivided and not become narrow and unyielding. Like the earth, let us help and share the burden of all. Like the water, let us flow untethered and quench the deepest thirst. Like fire, let us eliminate the unnecessary and unimportant. Like air, let us silently become a lifeline for all.

In Interior Castle she describes seven different “mansions” of the soul and the progress by which prayer and spiritual practice take us into the innermost place of mystical marriage of the soul with God. In The Life of

By means of the Divine Lights the heart becomes polished so that it shines like a polished mirror. When it becomes a mirror one can see in it the reflection of all existing things and the reflection of the Kingdom of God as they really are . When one sees the Glory and Majesty of God in His Realm then all the lights become one light and the chest becomes full with this shining light. He is like a man who observes his reflection in a mirror and sees in it at the same time the reflection of all that is before and behind him. Now when a ray of sun hits the mirror the whole house becomes flooded with light from the meeting of these two lights: the light of the sun-ray and the light of the mirror. Similarly the heart: when it is polished and shining it beholds the Realm of Divine Glory and the Divine Glory becomes revealed to it. – Al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi

The ecological situation is not a problem to be solved, but a wake-up call to a different way of being and relating.

Everything in the world of existence has an end and a goal. The end is maturity and the goal is freedom. For example, fruit grows on the tree until it is ripe and then falls. The ripened fruit represents maturity, and the fallen fruit, freedom. The final goal is returning to one’s origin. Everything which reaches its origin has reached its goal. A farmer sows grain in the ground and tends it. It begins to grow, eventually seeds, and again becomes grain. It has returned to its original form. The circle is complete. Completing the circle of existence is freedom. (Nasafi)

Pain and happiness have the same shape in this world: You may call the rose an open heart, or a broken heart. (Dard)

Strive to become the true human being: one who knows love, one who knows pain. Be full, be humble, be utterly silent, be the bowl of wine passed from hand to hand. (Al-Ansari)

I know nothing, I understand nothing, I am unaware of myself. I am in love, but with whom I do not know. My heart is at the same time both full and empty of love. (Attar)

As we wait on the borders of a new age, there is a great need for the mystical essence of love. There is a need to remind our self of our real nature, of the oneness that embraces every cell of our body and every sigh of our soul. We need to reclaim the sanctity of mystical love and make it conscious, to bring into the marketplace of our world this ancient secret. His lovers are here for this purpose. They have come together from across millennia to awaken the world to its innermost connection of love. What is lived within their own heart belongs to humanity; it is an essential part of the mystery of humankind. Without this thread of Divine love, the song of the world would be lost, the music that gives meaning to our ordinary life would fade away. ~ THE SECRET SUBSTANCE OF DIVINE LOVE

Oneness in Everything Facing our darkness we struggle towards the light. Finally, worn away by the conflict the ego surrenders and we are taken beyond these opposites. Just as we first awoke to the pain of separation and the darkness of the lover's imperfection, so do we awaken to the higher consciousness of the Self that experiences the oneness in everything. People often have dreams of the teacher acting in an improper way, swearing in a church, smoking in a meditation room, in order to shock them into an awareness of this higher reality. The perfect man embraces both his own imperfection and also that of mankind. This is illustrated in the story of Jami who was mistaken for a thief. On being asked if he was a thief the saint replied, 'What am I not?

Oneness is not a metaphysical idea but something so simple and ordinary. It is in every breath, in the wing-beat of every butterfly, in every piece of garbage left in the city streets. This oneness is life, life no longer experienced solely through the fragmented vision of the ego, but known within the heart, felt in the soul. This oneness is the heartbeat of life. It is creation’s recognition of it’s Creator. In this oneness life celebrates itself and its divine origin.

How can we heal and transform the world without the living presence of its Creator? Monotheism pointed us away from the many gods and goddesses of the ancient world towards a single transcendent God. If the living presence of God is to return to our consciousness it will be not as a step back to the old ways, but as a divine Oneness that embraces all of creation. Mystics have always experienced the oneness of being, the many facets of creation reflecting the single Essence. We are beginning to be aware of the ecological unity of life and its interconnectedness; economically and technologically we are being drawn into an era of global oneness. We now need to understand divine oneness: how the different qualities of the divine form a living presence in the inner and outer worlds, and how these qualities work together as one. On a very simple level we do not have the power or technology to “fix” our ecological crisis on our own. The problems we have created are too severe. And yet here is the very root of our misunderstanding. We cannot do this on our own. We need to embrace the divine not as some transcendent being, but as a living presence that contains the visible and invisible worlds, all of the spirit and angelic beings that our ancestors understood. The oneness of God includes many different levels of existence. We know for our individual self that real healing only takes place when our inner and outer selves are aligned, when we are nourished by our own soul and the archetypal forces within us. What is true for the individual is true for the whole. It is from the energies within and behind creation that the healing of creation will take place, because these are the beings that support, nourish and help creation to develop and evolve. How can we heal creation without the help of the devas and other spiritual forces that are within creation? They are waiting to be asked to participate, for their wisdom and power to be used. We need to once again work together with the divine oneness that is within and around us.

The world has been through many crises over the millennia, but this is the first global crisis that has been created by humanity. Whether we take responsibility for our predicament will determine our future and the future of the world. There is an ancient teaching that in times of imminent catastrophe we are given the opportunity of divine intercession; we can look towards God and pray for divine help. We are at such a moment and the soul of the world is crying out. Are we prepared to welcome back the divine and work together with the forces of creation?

Timeline 1795 Daniel McInnis, John Smith, Anthony Vaughan 1804-05 The Onslow Company 1849-50 The Truro Company 1861-65 The Oak Island Association 1866-67 The Eldorado Company of 1866 (a.k.a. The Halifax Company) 1878 Mrs. Sophia Sellers accidentally discovers the Cave-In Pit 1893-99 The Oak Island Treasure Co. (Frederick Blair) 1909-11 The Old Gold Salvage Company (Captain Henry Bowdoin) 1931 William Chappell 1934 Thomas Nixon 1935-38 Gilbert Hedden 1938-44 Professor Edwin Hamilton 1951 Mel Chappell and Associates 1955 George Green 1958 William and Victor Harman 1959-65 Robert Restall 1965-66 Robert Dunfield 1969-2006 Triton Alliance (David Tobias and Dan Blankenship) 2006 Oak Island Tours Inc. (Marty Lagina, Rick Lagina, Craig Tester, Alan J. Kostrzewa, and Dan Blankenship)