Andrew Harvey ~ The Direct Path

 

 

 ~The Paradox of the Journey~

All major mystical traditions have recognized that there is a paradox at the heart of the journey of return to Origin.

Put simply, this is that we are already what we seek, and that what we are looking for on the Path with such an intensity of striving and passion and discipline is already within and around us at all moments. The journey and all its different ordeals are all emanations of the One Spirit that is manifesting everything in all dimensions; every rung of the ladder we climb toward final awareness is made of the divine stuff of awareness itself.

Divine Consciousness is at once creating and manifesting all things and acting in and as all things in various states of self-disguise throughout all the different levels and dimensions of the universe.

The great Hindu mystic Kabir put this paradox with characteristic simplicity when he said:

Look at you, you madman,
Screaming you are thirsty
And are dying in a desert
When all around you there
is nothing but water!

And the Sufi poet Rumi reminds us:

You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!