“A seed grows with no sound. But a tree falls with huge noise. Destruction has noise. But creation is quiet. This is the power of silence. Grow silently.”
In this section I will be sharing essays on different topics around spirituality. I find inner silence as the core of the discovery of being. Therefore the essays will also include knowledge about the fundamental practice of meditation which is a ritualised way of deep inner listening. I hope anyone whoever feels a resonance will benefit from what is shared in these pages.
BRIEF STORY OF MY PATH
As we are starting, let me rewrite what spirituality stands for in my perspective. When I say spirituality I don’t mean religion. Spirituality is a way of living a conscious life. It is the art of entering into one’s silence by the practice of deep inner listening. When we begin spirituality things go into question, putting us in the edge of discovery in the unknown. Spirituality doesn’t truely begin until we start to relinquish grasping onto the known so tightly (what we know, what we think, all the self definitions and the narrative of the mind). Spirituality needs an inward willingness to enter into the mystery of being. Without this, it is just a bunch of words and ideas.
And when we give our attention and ourselves to the depths of this listening, the quality and the meaning of our lives change dramatically. ‘Every being, myself and life matters’ is one of the core expressions of spirituality. It’s about what we care and value in life. When we give our attention to what we truely value in life then we are on the path to reach our fullest potential.
I had a deep impulse and great motivation on seeking the truth. Therefore in my story while traveling I found myself wandering here and there, visiting wisdom schools, monasteries, ashrams, dergahs, opening myself to the deeply transformative and eye-opening teachings of many different traditions to absorb what I needed to know.
As it is for many people, suffering was the initial cause that stimulated me for a deeper search. As a consequence of an unexpected staggering experience occured in my life suddenly, I was in great pain. So this inevitably drived me into an even more intensive inquiry and quest that would be life changing eventually. My path began with seeing the surface layers of the ego, recognising what this so-called I, the little self is. Then I started purging the burdens of this identity. In this phase the core teachings of Buddha and my teachers on Buddhist tradition helped me greatly to show me how the mind functions. Without knowing the mind and the nature of our perceptions, it is not quite possible to open to that silent space within. In this process, I used different meditation forms like focused attention, open monitoring or analytical meditation and started developing concentration which would be helping me significantly in further times.
Then all these insights went much deeper as I found the most intimate and resonant path for my heart during the times I was sitting in the transmission of Ramana Maharshi in India. This auspicious unfolding guided me to dive deep particularly in the path of Non-duality and self-inquiry and then navigated me to explore the nature of reality with the guidance of my dear teachers; Adyashanti, Rupert Spira, and Francis Lucille. Non-dual understanding (Advaita Vedanta) indicates the path of the realization of non-separate self, therefore the unity of all existence.
Anyone can start directly from the deeper teachings but frankly speaking if I had come across with ‘non-duality’ perspective before my former practices and investigations, I guess I wouldn’t be able to grasp what it is guiding us to. We all have different lines of growth or learning. There may be many paths that enable us to recognize the light, the real Self in and out. In my story, it was as if my spiritual path took me step by step from primary levels to the higher ones in the most beneficial sequence for me to realize. My gratitude is beyond words for this process.
All these were so revolutionary that I stopped seeking, my search was over as I recognised I am home, I am the Self already. Spirituality first feels like a wonderful adventure but at one point on the way, you get the sense that your spiritual interest is no longer straightly speaking from your own. You start to see that your spiritual instinct rises from somewhere deeper than the ego which is not as limited as the ego. Since then, I am opening myself deeper and deeper to the experiences not from illusory-self (ego) point of view but from the deeper inner source, the essence.
Apart from the direct path of Advaita Vedanta; various paths are also contributing my discoveries greatly with their unique natures such as; contemplative quality of Tibetan Buddhism, simplicity of Zen, the concept of Love in Sufism and the powerful outward facing explorations -on the body and the world- of Classical Tantra and Kashmir Shaivism. Poetry is explicitly mesmerising me as well as the texts of great mystics. I highly regard the transmission of enlightened energies through the masters and through sacred places like temples, shrines, rivers, mountains. So in my travels I take my chances to visit and rest by their presence.
Along with the momentary practices and inquiries, meditation is my main practice that is available to us in any moment. After extended explorations by the great guidances of my teachers and my soulful commitment, my practice became simplified and refined. When I say meditation I mean the ritualised way of deep inner listening that is the core of the discovery of Being. Having pleasant experiences for ourselves like peace, love or well-being can be the aim for meditation but actually true meditation can offer an immense wisdom that is way more than all these. This investigation I am pointing out is deeper than all the common mindfulness practices which are useful but at the same time just the beginning or the surface of our discoveries. And when they are not grasped truely they can unfortunately reinforce our conditionings mostly on ourselves. Then our meditation doesn’t have a chance to help us break through the self-centered perspective.
Regardless of the differentiated names given to meditation, here I am refering to the fundamental foundation of meditation in which we flip the whole perspective around and feel and experience life from the standpoint of our true nature, instead of the ‘I’ we believe ourselves to be. We first go inwards, use self-inquiry to challenge our belief of being a separate entity and by this way gradually discover our true identity. Then we travel outwards to feel that this essential identity belongs to every being in existence and we embody our insights out in the world with this understanding. In this way, deeper practice of meditation becomes the art of returning consciousness back to its source at any given moment.
With each breath, the journey is ongoing. Even it is demanding at times, I am devotedly loving to live in the state of discovery of Being. It is an everlasting, nonlinear learning and awakening process.