Beyond the Wonderful: Transforming the World with the Light of Your Being

By Donald E. Weiner Ph.D. and Diane Weiner M.S.

So what is beyond the wonderful? It is taking a quantum leap into the seeded possibilities of what Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan called “the pull of the future”. We invite you to use your highest imagination to realize the creative dynamic between the manifest and transcendent parts of your being, through which life’s problems become portals to the sacred. Everything then speaks as Gabriel, the divine messenger. By fulfilling the deepest desire of your heart, you participate in the brilliant becoming of all that is enfolded in the Universe. You have a unique and precious gift to offer to creation.

Wisdom emerges from the circulation and transformation of the light of your being with the light of whatever you are in relationship with. Ultimately, life is your teacher that presents you with never-ending opportunities for awakening and growth. In this book, we offer an approach to spirituality in which you will learn to develop your faculty of creative imagination, modulate your consciousness, and discover yourself as a multidimensional being by working with many practices and guided meditations. By deepening the relationship between your manifest and transcendent aspects, you enable new possibilities to emerge which transform the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669810933

Donald E. Weiner Ph.D.

Don Weiner is a retired Ph.D. psychologist. He has been teaching meditation to a variety of populations for 50 years and is a Murshid (senior teacher) in the Inayatiyya (a Sufi Order). He has written GPS for the Spiritual Journey and Upgrading the Operating System of the Soul: A Manual of Quantum Sufism. He and his wife Diane have written The Gabrielite Work – Broadband Spirituality for the 21st Century, and Awakening as a Human*Divine Being. They have developed a synthesis of their work together over the years called the Gabrielite Work, which offers advanced spiritual methodology integrating contemporary scientific discoveries with the wisdom of ancient Sufi traditions. Diane Weiner is a retired public-school counselor. She enjoys an active artistic life, creating in the mixed media field. Most of her teaching has introduced church populations to the teachings and practices of the Inayatiyya, in which she has been recognized as a Murshida (senior teacher). She has enjoyed teaching and co-writing with Don, and co-creating the Gabrielite Work, which challenges spiritual aspirants to express their unique talents and abilities on their paths of realization.

Book preview

Beyond The

Wonderful

TRANSFORMING THE WORLD

WITH THE LIGHT OF YOUR BEING

Donald E. Weiner &

Diane Weiner

Copyright © 2022 by Donald E. Weiner & Diane Weiner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 02/15/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

840064

Dedicated to the One

who resides within

your soul,

reminding you of your worth,

orienting you toward your purpose

and filling you

with shining light,

enabling the unique possibilities

that only you can offer

as a gift

to all of existence

Contents

Introduction

PART I: THE GABRIELITE WORK

Twelve Mysteries for an Evolving Spirituality

Beyond Limitation to the Fullness of Who We Are

Our Path is Always Unfolding

Living in a Circulation of Meaningfulness

Harmonic Perception of the Deeper Nature of Reality

Reimagining Our Relationship with the Universe

PART II: TRUE IMAGINATION

Our True Imagination Enables God’s Experience

Building a Scaffolding of Consciousness

Creativity and Revealed Knowledge

Imagination as a Tool of Discovery

Spiritual Hotspots and Exercising Your Imaginal Faculty

Everything is a Portal to the Sacred

PART III: MAKING GOD A UNIQUE REALITY

Becoming a Natural Human Being

The Double Reflection of the Light of Glory

Interplaying with Light

Fulfilling Our Unique Purpose in Life

Composing the Allegory of Our Soul

PART IV: NUTS AND BOLTS OF SPIRITUALITY

Enabling New Possibilities in Difficult Situations

Finding Freedom in Limitation

Living in the World as a Human*Divine Being

The Love Story of the Human-Divine

Life is Our Teacher

PART V: OPENING YOUR PRESENCE

Presence Emerges Through Relationship

The Gentle Shattering

Blossoming Our Desires in the New Creation

The Unfolding Revelation of Divinity in Existence

Recommended Resources

Glossary

Introduction

This book is based on five series of classes given by Don and Diane Weiner via Zoom during the Covid pandemic:

Each of you is a pioneering soul who has answered the call to open to more of what is possible. There is no end to the discoveries that take place in the revelation of divinity in life by means of your being present to every aspect of yourself in relationship with every aspect of the divine being that you encounter, whether in the world, or in more subtle realms. Your imaginal faculty, trained through spiritual practices, enables you to navigate through different states of being and to link up with others in different places and times in the totally interconnected reality in which you exist.

The allegory or story of your soul unfolds through the expression of your desires in your life. You have a precious gift to offer that the rest of creation longs to see. Every situation you encounter is a potential portal to the sacred and you can learn to bring forth whatever quality is needed rather than closing down and reacting to difficulties.

You are a being of light who experiences and communicates through light. Wisdom emerges from the circulation and transformation of the light of your being with the light of whatever you are in relationship with. Ultimately, life is your teacher that presents you with never-ending opportunities for awakening and growth.

Your unique divine countenance can be experienced nowhere else in existence. Feel the ecstasy of the Universe that emerges in your relationship with all that you experience, in a journey that has no end.

In this book, we offer an approach to spirituality in which you will learn to develop your faculty of creative imagination, modulate your consciousness, and discover yourself as a multidimensional being. By deepening the relationship between your manifest and transcendent aspects, you enable new possibilities to emerge which transform the world. What is gained from your life becomes part of a never-ending transmission of wisdom and a source of blessings to all of existence.

Part I

THE GABRIELITE WORK

Twelve Mysteries for an

Evolving Spirituality

Awakening is a process of discovering what has been as yet unknown to us, and requires our openness to new ways of thinking and experiencing. In many spiritual traditions and ways of understanding, there are usually concepts to learn, but in developing what we present in this book, we explore reality in terms of mysteries, rather than limiting our knowledge to our previous frame of reference. Let us briefly focus on each mystery.

Relational unity means a very special kind of connection with what we are experiencing. Rather than being merged with the transcendent in a way that our distinction is gone, or being in a manifest condition in which we feel separated from what we are experiencing, our goal is to be in a state of relationship in which there is a circulation between ourself and what we are experiencing. In this state, we maintain our distinct sense of identity. Sufis say that creation took place because the divine being wanted to be known, to love, and to be loved. For the purpose of creation to be fulfilled, there has to be a relationship between what is manifest and what is transcendent.

Uniqueness refers to the particular ways of perceiving, creating, relating, and loving that each of us embodies, different from those of any other being in existence.

Interconnectedness refers to the fact that everything in existence is interconnected. Everything has the potential to affect everything else, regardless of spatial or temporal separation.

Multidimensionality means that there are many levels of existence, both subtle and manifest. We are multidimensional beings who exist on multiple levels of reality, although normally, we are only conscious of physical manifestation. If you are familiar with the Magic Eye books which were published many years ago, on each page there was a picture that looked like a jumble of nothingness, and the instructions were to offset your focus. When you got this just right, a three-dimensional image would just appear to pop right out of the page. Once you saw it, it would remain and you would think, How could this have been there and I couldn’t have seen it before? In a way, all of the other levels in which we exist are like that three-dimensional image popping out. We can’t perceive them until we’ve developed a capacity of perception which is not dualistic, and does not involve dissolving our identity into something else. It’s being in a state of relational unity.

Time is not what we think. We think our existence takes place on a linear arrow of time which moves from past to present to future. Physicists have discovered a phenomenon called retrocausality, in which something in the present can affect something in the past. Mystics say that we have both a temporal and an atemporal existence. We will discover that the different mysteries are intertwined with each other, such as the fact that there is interconnectedness in the way that time works.

The path is always unfolding. Rather than thinking that our spiritual path is predetermined, in fact, we participate in the creation of the next step on our spiritual journey. Our spiritual path is not a linear process, but rather one in which there are discontinuities and quantum leaps.

A really important mystery is what we call the meeting place. This refers to the interface between ourselves and what we are experiencing. Ibn ‘Arabi says that we are beings of bi-unity, with both human and divine aspects of our being in relationship with each other in the meeting place. His term for the meeting place is the barzakh. In this place are stored the essences of the things that are created. Each human being brings something unique to the divine in this meeting place. Representational knowledge is a model of reality, and usually we live in a representation of reality and identify with our representation of our self. We can reach a state of being in which we are living in what we call the meeting place. This is a condition in which we are in deep relationship with whatever we are experiencing. In that state we can carve out reality in a different kind of way than ever was possible before.

New creation refers to the fact that something new is born at every moment. Not only is there the current state of creation, but everything is created anew one moment after another. We can become capable of participating in that new creation. The prayers of our heart and the discoveries that we make are transforming things in a new creation.

Our deepest desire is the fuel that we bring to the meeting place, and what enables something unique to emerge in the new creation. Our deepest desire arises in our heart, rather than from something external or something that we think of in our minds.

Optimization of light means that it is the nature of light, of which everything is a manifestation (not the light of a flashbulb or the usual point sources of light), to always seek to come to a higher state of expression of itself. Everything is moving towards the gradually increasing capacity for divinity to be expressed in existence. It’s not just like pouring more of something into a container; reality is opened up such that there is the possibility of a greater expression of light to take place than there was before. Light is the conduit for the divine qualities. Light is also the substance of which we are made. It’s a remarkable paradox that we are each a being of light, understanding through light, and communicating through light with everything that is another expression of light. It’s like light revealing itself to itself and transforming itself through light.

Existence has a fractal nature. If you look at a fern plant, you see the principle called self-similarity. The whole plant has a certain pattern, if you look at the tiny new growth, it has the same pattern as the entire plant. There’s a similarity of structure on different levels, from large to small. In attempting to understand the multidimensional reality in which we exist, we can never possibly take in the whole thing at once. We can never get outside of it all to look at it, but we can explore our fractal neighborhood. As we get an understanding of what relationships are like in whatever neck of the woods we’re in, whether it’s in manifestation or an inner state of meditation, gradually we get a sense of what the totality is like. That’s the fractal nature of reality.

The greatest mystery is you. You can fill that one in by yourself.

Each of the Gabrielite Work mysteries is related to all of the other mysteries, but we can’t talk about twelve things at once, all being related to every other part. We will come in from different angles. Imagine that we are discovering and creating a multidimensional tapestry that we will be weaving. We can’t see the whole thing at once, but we’re going to see how one part connects with another part. We will see a pattern emerging each time we bring another aspect to this tapestry.

Let’s explore two of the mysteries more deeply, first relational unity. In the usual way of thinking about things, particularly related to spirituality, there are generally only two choices on the menu. One is a state of duality, which is our usual state of action and perception, the world of our physical senses and our concepts and emotional responses which cause us to feel separated from what we are experiencing. In many spiritual traditions, manifestation is thought of either as being an illusion, which in Hinduism is described as Maya or the divine dance, but it’s really illusory; or it’s thought to be a place where there’s been a fall of the divine into existence and the purpose is to go back to the way things were before there was a creation. The goal is to restore things to the way that they were. How’s that often understood? It’s through a dissolving of personal identity and merging back into the source. In yoga, often the aim is something called nirvikalpa samadhi, which means without seeds. It is a state of total unity which is completely indescribable. There’s no longer any personal identity. It’s a state of being merged into an infinite ocean of bliss.

In Sufism, the aim is not to go back to the source and dissolve. Nor is the aim to remain in a dualistic state, because that does not bring fulfillment to us. In fact, that generally brings a lot of frustration, because we can’t fulfill the deepest desire of our being, which is to fulfill the divine purpose. Perhaps sometimes you’ve gone to your favorite restaurant. You like it because of your favorite dishes on the menu, and then someone tells you that you can order off the menu. You can pick something that’s not listed.

What’s not listed here, what has typically been unlisted, is a state called relational unity. What is relational unity? It is a modality of relationship between ourselves and whatever it is that we are experiencing. That relationship can be in the manifest world, for example with a person or with a beautiful place in nature. It can be in a relationship with a subtler level on which our being exists, such as the angelic level. It can be tuning into a great being, a master, saint, or prophet in the inner realms. What’s different about relational unity? In relational unity, our identity is preserved but it’s not rigid. It’s not based on thinking that we stop at the boundaries of our skin or even our concepts of who we are in the inner realms.

If we’re imagining a higher state of being, we probably don’t picture that we bring our physical body up there and move around. We have a consciousness, but in relational unity there’s a sense of identity that isn’t lost. It’s a way of relationship in which things are very permeable. There is a circulation with whatever it is that we are experiencing. Sufis say that there is a light upon a light. Language makes this very challenging to describe because we usually think that in circulation something goes from one place to another and perhaps back again, like water circulating through a pipe. In relational unity however, it’s as if every part is in contact with every other part. Everything is opened up through every part to every other part. There is an interplay of light. What’s the effect of this? Sufis say that when there are two presences that come together a third presence is born. Something is born from this circulation of light that couldn’t have been there from either side by itself. It’s in the new light that arises that we can fulfill our divine purpose. Now we can participate in the new creation and bring something to it that is brought forth through our human-divine relationship.

Consider the idea of presence. The first thought that may come to mind is that as you are reading this, you will put your cell phone aside and not look at a text you are receiving, even though you are getting a buzzing sound. You’ll devote your attention right here to what you are reading. You think that when you’re present, you’ll really be right here in whatever situation you’re in, whether it’s with another person or in a particular circumstance.

Recall a time when you were having a conversation with a dear friend, perhaps about something spiritual. At first, you were just talking about various things, catching up on things, and even when you started talking about something spiritual, you were in your ordinary state of consciousness. You were sharing your concepts about this or that, but when you reached that point of really connecting with the other person, you found ideas starting to come to you that you could not have thought about before and the other person was having the same experience. Now your conversation came to a place in which amazing things were coming out that neither of you would have been able to cook up on your own.

You may have had an experience of relational unity in a beautiful place in nature, with another person, or during an inner experience in which you felt totally plugged in. Things seemed to be suspended or slowed down, and if you were out in some amazing place in nature such as Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, or Big Bend, you may have felt you were in a state of wonder in which everything seemed clearer and more beautiful. You wished that you could have just remained in that wonderful state, and then when you went back to your usual dualistic state, you had memories of that experience, and you tried to make yourself get back to that state. It doesn’t ever work like that. It’s something that has to arise now in the way that you’re relating to whatever it is that you are experiencing.

There is always an opportunity to shift into a state of relational unity with whatever it is that we are experiencing. That can include reading this book and feeling a sense of connectedness with the authors in which time and distance don’t matter. There’s a level on which we are all deeply interconnected with each other, even though our external forms (which Pir Vilayat, a contemporary Sufi teacher called our spacesuits), may be physically located at a distance.

Pir Vilayat talked about that which transpires behind that which appears. We can learn to develop our subtle senses and experience harmonic perception, being in a state of connection with what we are experiencing in which we are not just objectively looking at something and taking notes about it. More than seeing a rose and thinking that it’s red; it smells like this; here are the seeds and so on, we are establishing a relationship in such a way that what we connect with reveals a much deeper aspect of its reality.

The essence of who we are pervades throughout everything, regardless of distance or time, and that essence is explored in the mystery of uniqueness. Ibn ‘Arabi said, each soul has access to a unique aspect of the divine wisdom that no one else has or ever will have access to. Through us there is a light that can illuminate a part of creation that no one else can bring forth. We each have a unique way of relationship with everything that we experience. This is something that brings the deepest value to human existence.

Ibn ‘Arabi said that God told Mohammed that he had to learn from his followers, because each one of them had access to a unique aspect of divine wisdom. The same is true for each one of us. The light that comes into existence is changed by the light of our being which is unique. Our contribution transforms the light. Our whole story is about light. As we progress, we realize our own uniqueness and our own unique contribution. There is actually a change that happens to reality because of how light is transformed through our own heart. This transformation cannot occur if we are thinking in our mind that we are a limited and separate being.

Perhaps sometimes you wonder what the meaning of your life is. You may feel low-key. If you feel this way, that’s because you don’t realize your uniqueness and how the divine really depends upon you. Your point of view provides God with a new vantage point as you become clearer and are more open. You become able to share what you see from your point of view as you become clearer and more open. Your angle on reality is different than anyone else’s. You could say we are angels with different angles and together we can bring the picture of reality into clarity. Even if you have not discovered this yet, it is ennobling to know that there is something infinitely precious about your soul that can only come through you. Let that be a boost and a source of deep meaning for your life, even though it may not have yet become obvious to you. It’s as if you have a fortune in the bank but you don’t know it. Each of us has a precious divine inheritance that we can learn to access and unfold in our lives.

As each person is unique with a unique way of relationship with existence, each person has a unique way of experiencing subtle levels of reality. Each person brings the interface of his or her own soul, which is in contact with everything else in every realm of existence. Your being is like the connective tissue between all of the realms.

We usually think of our spiritual journey as having a personal purpose such as wanting to awaken and become illuminated, wanting to reach what is called in different traditions nirvana, mukti, moksha, or the highest state of samadhi. Usually, we feel that our journey is something that we are doing for ourselves. We feel that the way we think of ourselves somehow gets transformed into a higher state of being. That sounds like it’s worth signing up for, but often what we discover in the course of the process of awakening is rather than the purpose of our spiritual journey being just for our own benefit, it is actually enabling our unique participation in the divine’s spiritual journey.

Imagine that God is on a spiritual journey through existence and awakening to him/herself through the relationship with manifestation. Each of us has a part to play and to contribute. It’s not just opening up a book that was hidden in the library. It’s helping to write the pages of the book that have never been written before, except by virtue of our way of relating, our light in connection with the light of whatever it is that we are experiencing. We can never take the whole thing in all at once. Our consciousness will always be focalized in a particular aspect of our being, in what we might call the back story or the backstage of our being. We can come to realize all of that as ourselves as the reality of our being, but now we are focalized through one particular modality of experience.

We contribute to and help to change and evolve within any realm through the light of our being. Every experience that we have at any level, whether it’s the densest level in physical manifestation, or the highest subtle realm of existence, involves an exchange of light, a two-way exchange of light. What is exchanged with that light may be referred to as the currency of that experience. This currency can be any of the divine qualities: light, love, beauty, wisdom, truth, etc. It’s not the case that there is a light of divine beauty that comes to us which remains the same all the time. That light is changed by our experience with the quality of beauty that we are experiencing. All of our experiences change everything in that experience. For example, we might think that the divine qualities are unchanging. We might think that love is love, and we just keep unfolding what is there. No, we’re saying that the divine qualities can never be the same because each quality is epiphanized or brought out, and individualized uniquely through each soul.

So it is that everything, even all the qualities that we experience and feel like are unchanging things, can actually be changed by our own existence. Nothing is ever the same because of our existence and our uniqueness.

To fully experience the mysteries we have described, we have to undergo a quantum shift or quantum leap in our frame of reference, our basis of understanding. Some readers may be familiar with the Sufi principle of fana, which means shattering or breaking down, and baqa, which means reorganization, rebirth, or resurrection. This is not a linear or continuous process which entails just adding a little bit more at a time. It requires stages of letting go of the way that we were understanding things in the past, and even the way that we think things are supposed to be, and being open to the discovery of something we don’t yet know. We need to be able to hang out in the in-between space of mystery. We need to be able to let go of the firm grip and fixed concepts about spirituality that we usually have, including a sense of separation between ourself and the divine or transcendent.

The archangel Gabriel is the divine messenger, but almost always, Gabriel is thought of as bringing the message from the divine to someone in manifestation, like the annunciation to Mary. What if Gabriel is also the receiver of something that comes from the manifest side, the being that the message is delivered to, and there is a returning message that goes back to the divine? It’s then a two-way relationship. Ibn ‘Arabi, a great Sufi who lived hundreds of years ago, said that the nature of our being is one of bi-unity, in which we are human-divine beings. He said that neither side of this relationship has meaning or existence without the other side. We have developed what we call the Gabrielite Work, an approach to spirituality which incorporates a relational way of understanding ourselves, our connection with everything else, as well as our purpose in existence.

Existence involves an evolution in every area. Biologically there is a natural evolution that has taken place in the several billion-year history of the earth from single-celled organisms all the way up to human beings. There is a principle in science of self-organization which states that systems, living systems in particular, have a tendency to self-organize to a higher state of organization. Spirituality also has to be allowed to evolve. Often times, spiritual systems are thought to be fixed bodies of wisdom which are the teachings of amazing beings - masters, saints, and prophets throughout human history. The purpose of entering a spiritual path is frequently viewed as partaking of the wisdom that’s already been put forth, which is called a transmission. Each of us, however, has something unique that we bring which contributes to that transmission. It’s not just that we are a part of whatever school we may belong to, but each of us has something we can uniquely bring to the transmission of that school, something that would not exist except for us.

Hazrat Inayat Khan, who brought Sufism to the West in the early 1900s, said that the purpose of spirituality is awakening in life. In the major spiritual traditions such as Buddhism and yoga, generally the purpose is thought to be returning to the source or reaching a state beyond manifestation in which there is a dissolution of personal identity and merging into an indescribable state of being. Hazrat Inayat Khan brought forth a different teaching, saying that the purpose is to awaken divinity in life. What is the life that divinity awakens to? Is it the same for everyone? Do we just encounter a generic divinity that we bring through ourselves like we are an empty channel? The kind of spirituality which evolves says no. We each have a unique contribution to make in the way that divinity comes through. The purpose of spirituality is not to merge; the purpose is to fulfill what is called our dharma, our spiritual duty in life.

We will explore the role of desire in depth later in this book, but here is a brief introduction. Hazrat Inayat Khan said that every desire begins with a divine impulse. Rather than thinking that we’re supposed to just get in touch with the blueprint of that impulse and bring it through exactly as written, instead we transform that impulse by our experiences in life, and we creatively bring something back to the divine side of things. Something arises from the relationship between our human and divine sides that could not come from either side by itself. It’s all about the relationship.

How can we navigate through realms of mystery in the process of awakening? When we want to become proficient with something, we usually think about studying it. We get books and go to a teacher. With the teacher’s help, we learn things about it. We tend to think about spirituality in that way as well. It is very helpful to have a guide on the spiritual journey. We certainly learn things from our teacher, but the most important thing gained in that relationship is not something that comes through any of the words, but through the transmission, the connection that happens. Through this connection something is opened up in us that makes available a revelation of wisdom that we can understand. This helps us to further our own journey of awakening. It does not take place by our trying to do something.

Perhaps when we work with spiritual practices, we may think that if we do 5,000 repetitions of a practice, that should be really good; but it’s better to do just three repetitions in which we are in a deep state of relationship with the practice and what opens up to us through our relationship with the practice. The practice then is not something that we apply that is separate from ourself.

Sometimes we feel that the things we’ve written in the Gabrielite Work manual are so good that we wonder how in the world did we come up with what we wrote? What we wrote came from a state of revealed knowledge and inspiration. When we tap into that place in which our inspiration comes through, things seem magical. Probably each reader of this book has had experiences like this.

Now that you’ve had an introduction to the various mysteries, here is a homework assignment that you can try which involves uniqueness and relational unity. Find a leaf. Intellectually, you know that every leaf is different; every one is unique. You discover more about yourself by looking at the world, especially the world of nature, and you find beauty in a single leaf. You may find that the lines in the leaf that you picked up are expressing things you never knew before. Allow the reality of that uniqueness to break through the way that you usually think, in which leaves on the trees all look at the same to you. Allow a fresh way of experiencing, like a photographer seeing things differently than before, or an artist creating a work of art.

Hazrat Inayat Khan said that there is but one sacred scripture and the leaves on the trees are the pages of that scripture. Instead of thinking of scripture as something fixed and unchanging, consider that each of our lives continually unfolds the divine story, and we are adding to what’s written on the leaves of the trees. Each of our lives unfolds a part of that sacred scripture. Try thinking that as you go through your day, whatever it is that you may be doing, however mundane, frustrating, or boring, that you are writing the divine scripture. You’re adding your part to it that can only come through you. You wouldn’t want to read a novel in which on every page the sun is shining and it’s beautiful and everyone is skipping through the fields. You probably like some mystery, drama, and action, so you have to have some ups and downs. Even in the midst of the difficulties, feel like this is the divine scripture being unfolded. There is a wisdom gained through your experiences when you can enter into a state of relational unity; then you are contributing to that wisdom.

Beyond Limitation to the

Fullness of Who We Are

We usually go around in a dualistic state of consciousness in which there is a feeling that I’m here and you’re there. Whatever you are experiencing seems separated from you, and that dualistic state of consciousness often carries over even into your spiritual practices. When you sit with your eyes closed; when you meditate, you still have a sense that you are here and you’re trying to tune into something else, some other realm of consciousness, some other being. There’s a feeling of separation between you and whatever it is that you are experiencing. In many spiritual traditions, the only available other choice besides this dualistic state of consciousness is the goal of merging into a state of unity in which there is no longer any sense of personal identity. What Sufis really aim for is called awakening in life. This means being able to maintain a sense of identity, while also being able to be in an intimate, permeable state of connection with whatever it is that you are experiencing, what we call relational unity. You can feel a circulation of light between yourself and whatever it is that you are experiencing. No longer do you feel that there is a rigid boundary that stops at your skin which is you and that whatever you are experiencing has some other boundary around it.

It’s a deep