The Marketplace

There is a reality that we live in: work, school, friends, family.

No amount of Illumination, of absorption in the divine, will pay the rent -- well, there are some caveats to this, but at this level of description, the truth is, we have to interface with the common reality for the basics of survival.

This gives the Mystic a unique series of challenges that can deepen his understanding.

One's social life can be as equally fraught with complexities. If you are in the Illumination, and your best friend is upset about a bad hair day, it might not be a good time to comfort them with the luminosity of union.

The point is this. If you live in the marketplace, as most of us do, you will spend a great deal of time in what would be called 'shallow' pursuits. The desire to be involved in 'deeper' pursuits can be very powerful. If not balanced, either of these directions can cause intense personal, emotional and psychological disruptions.

The goal of living in the marketplace is to convert the shallow and the mundane into expressions of illumination, but not to deny it its existential truth.

Dive deeply, but come back to shore over and over again. It is easy to become tangled in the weeds at depth. There is no shame in following the spiral of your path, there is only shame if it flattens into a circle. Our real art is ourselves; our writing, our poetry, our sculpture are the echo of the things we are, the things we have seen, however dimly. Come to shore to enrich and enliven, to challange and reform, then back to the waters to start the cycle anew.