Break this Idol of Power
Q: What exercises do you recommend to acquire extraordinary powers?
A: Idols exist in various forms; they do not come in one shape. Sometimes, I-ness and idolatry reveal themselves like the search for extraordinary powers.
Worship only one god, the One, the Unique and the Unbound Lord. This is the way to transcendence…
Do not go after worthless and destructive things. Perceive only the One who is “No-thing”. If a river runs through a dry-dead desert, it will bring flourishing, joy, growth, greenness, bliss.
Such life, such flourishing and growth would not be artificial. You would have not indeed tried to make anything happen; they would appear by themselves during a spontaneous divine procedure.
Let the divine river of guidance flow through the dry-dead desert of your life. Unknown forces and invisible powers of the Lord will flow into [your existence] and will make your [potentialities] flow as well. This is only one of the blessings [you may receive].
If you wish for the revelation of the presence and greatness of the Lord in you, you have to be empty like a reed – empty of everything and full of the Lord’s Presence. Then you shall witness wonders and miracles you would never dream of. This is greater than any other exercise…
“I” leads you to “I” and not beyond “I”
Q: What do you think about asceticism? Don’t you recommend us to practice it?
A: Asceticism is hardship; there are no hardship and suffering where love is. Hardship is what you get with hardship; it will not lead you to God. Sadness will bring you sadness and trouble and not happiness and divine bliss. The continuation of bliss is bliss.
Closeness to the Lord brings joy and comfort and not suffering and discomfort. Asceticism is self-inflicted pain and since the Lord is not separated from one’s self, therefore, tormenting oneself is tormenting God…
It is absurd to believe the Lord enjoys tormenting His creature. The Lord of creation is in love with His creation; He, therefore, is seriously unhappy with his creature’s suffering. Those who have such beliefs, knowingly or not, accuse the Most High Creator of masochism.
Those who slander the Lord Most High are not blind, for a blind cannot see; but they are pessimist fabulists who see only their own delusive hallucinations and live upon them…
One cannot reach the Lord through asceticism. Those tears that get one closer to the Lord are not shed out of weakness and depression but they streams out of a loving enthusiasm. When hardship is combined with one’s love for the Lord, it is not hardship anymore; it becomes joy and comfort; for love is an elixir and an alchemist that transforms sorrow to rapture, suffering to healing and asceticism to purity.
There is no hardship and unpleasantness along the divine path. Asceticism is a delusion in divine guidance. When you love someone and cherish him, if you endure the hardest miseries and the strongest pressures, it feels like a pleasure and not a pain. Love begets enjoyment and not pain and hardship…
When “I” am, pressure and hardship are present. This “I” desires something and that “I” desires something else. There will be a quarrel between these two and one will win over the other. One will enjoy while the other will suffer. However, in the realm of love and in the world of the Beloved, there will be not a single or any other “I” to suffer or to enjoy.