Contemplative Currents Podcast

In our 7am Peace Chapel Meditation group this morning, we read and shared from the anonymously aggregated sayings of the Desert Fathers. It brought to inspiration one of the most beautiful and freeing realizations for me. The thoughts on attachment, how we attach to things, people and ideas, and what liberation from these mistaken positions could look like. From the passage: Two elders were staying with each other and never quarreled. Said the one to the other, “Let us quarrel the way people do.” In answer the other one said to him, “I don’t know how a quarrel begins,” but he said “Look, I am putting a brick between us and saying it is mine; you are to say, “No, it is mine,” and that is how it begins.” They did so and one of them said “That is mine.” And the other one said, “No, it is mine.” And the first one said in reply, “Yes, indeed; take it and go.” And off they went, finding nothing to quarrel with each other about.Isn’t it so darn intersting that this brick, is everything we hold and silently call ours. House, the property, money, relationships, friends, pets, the dog who lies at your feet while you read, the years that have already happened, the years that have not yet happened, the car you drive. We even have a brick for ‘my life’. Every quarrel I have had, every grief I have felt, even the fear that wakes me up at four in the morning begins exactly where the elder said it begins— the moment a claim of this is mine is made. The moment that small, almost unnoticeable word “me/mine” lodges itself somewhere behind our breastbone, the brick stops being a brick and becomes a fortress that we put a flag on.It’s also so freaking intersting to see that the moment we do that, somehow, like clockwork, sometimes sneakily, life comes and rearranges things. Have you not noticed? For me, sometimes it’s that incredible friendship, or that job or a title I hold dear. For some it may be that their friend moves, a diagnosis that changes the prior status of things, or a pet that suddenly starts to limp in old age. We, in introspect, then discover that we were never as solid as we thought, things that visit us as provision etc were never as stable as we concluded. We may then begin to see that our experience of things, relationships, positions etc are more of visitations than a thing we could ever lay a hold of. I am keenly aware that nothing is mine. Nothing could ever be mine. Nothing taken was mine to hold onto, nothing I have achieved was mine to acheive. Everything can and will be taken…not by me. Just taken, the way light is taken back into evening. And the crazy thing is that this is not something philosophical. It’s so literal when we can allow oursevles to relax into our bodies, release the tension that grips subconsciously at the need to control anything. That in essence is what surrender is and then we experience clearly this understanding of nothing ever being truly owned.Meister Eckhart had a word for this. Gelassenheit. Letting-be. Allowing what is, to be what it is, without the small hand of the self stepping in to claim or to refuse. He went so far as to say that the truly poor person is the one who knows nothing, has nothing, wants nothing as the deepest kind of freedom. The freedom of someone who has finally stopped pretending the brick was theirs.The Tao Te Ching points the same direction, sideways. The sage acts without acting, and so nothing is left undone. Water does not own the riverbed. It moves through, shaping and being shaped, never claiming, never refusing. And somehow the valley gets fed. In the 12th verse it says, Colors blind the eye, Sounds deafen the ear.Flavors numb the taste. Thoughts weaken the mind.Desires wither the heart.The Master observes the worldbut trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go.His heart is open as the sky. The Desert Fathers were sons of the same insight, sitting in their cells, calling no thing their own, and finding that what was left over(once all the bricks had been handed back) was a peace that bewildered the empire that had birthed them.I want to be careful here, because teachings like these often get heard as a kind of cold detachment. Someone may then say, Well, does that mean you are careless with things? Well, why not just give me everything you have? The opposite, in my experience. The grip is not the love. Often the grip is the very thing that holds love at arm’s length, busy defending a perimeter that was never really there to defend. To live without the claim is to live with the hands open. To love a partner without owning them. To run a business without owning the outcome. To pray without owning the answer. To live, even, without owning the life — receiving each day the way one receives a guest, knowing the guest will go.The brick that the elder handed over with such ease was no less real for being given away. If anything, it was more itself. Merely given.And the quarrel? No real quarrel could ever find a true foothold.So this is the contemplation for today.Is there a brick somewhere you have been defending or holding tightly. A role. A possession. A version of yourself. A future you have been writing in your head. Notice the grip. Notice where in the body the claim lives. And then, very gently, do what the elder did. Hold it the way you would hold something that was loaned to you for a little while. Cool to the touch, particular, present, yours to enjoy. Yours, perhaps, to hand back when the time comes.Yes, indeed. Take it and go.And see what is left when nothing has been taken from you, because nothing was ever yours to begin with.Prompts to sit with this week* What is a brick you are quietly defending right now? Is it a role, an outcome, a person, a self-image? Where in your body do you feel the grip of mine?* Recall something you once held tightly and have since lost or released. What does it feel like in retrospect? Was it the thing itself that was painful, or the claim you had made on it?* Sit with this for five minutes: Everything I have today was given. Everything will, in time, be taken. Watch what arises. Is it resistance, grief or a strange relief. Don’t try to fix it or do anything about it! Just notice it. * Pick one thing today: your morning, your coffee, your conversation, your body and receive it as a guest who has come to visit instead of something you own. What changes when you hold it that way?Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe. It’s totally free! You will receive new posts. That way, you support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

One morning in March, I looked up and the tree was green.You don’t understand! I could have sworn that the day before, it had been bare. No leaves, branches looking so dry and dead. In fact, three nights earlier I’d used that same bare tree as an analogy on a phone call with a friend, pacing my backyard, probably irritating the heck out of any neighbors listening over their fences. All winter it had been bare, naked branches against a gray sky behind the yard where I’d been sitting most mornings with a book, a cup of coffee, and Milo at my feet.And then, three or four days into spring, it was a different tree. One day? Two? Three? When did the leaves return? I had been sitting right there!So I’ve been thinking about that tree a lot lately. About the impossibility of pointing at the moment when seeing actually shifts, when reality starts showing up as the undivided whole it always was. About how the change is undeniable and unlocatable at the same time. In several interviews, hosts have asked me, when did you start seeing things differently? And then I’d narrate an experience when things changed for me, some shift I could locate. Now I realize those are just stories. Like every story, mostly meaningless. Like every story, just a figment of imagination. Like every story, they just need to be dropped. The hope of the seeker is that one day, something dramatic happens and then they finally become enlightened. My gosh, no wonder the seeking becomes painful and endless. No wonder we become sad when the expectation of some grandiose event fails to happen. So we spend hours in meditation, prayer, fasting. Some reach for psychedelics. Some hope the experience that happened to “random guru” will happen to them. And then what? Sail into the golden sun forever?(I tell you this for free: even if one has an “awakening,” life will come back for its pound of balance).So here’s what seems true.We are always being refined. We are always being changed. Even our deep sleep is in favor of wakefulness. Each relationship, each circumstance, each event is in service of awakening. Everything we have ever encountered has been a tool for our “highest purpose,” whether we know it or not. So in some ways, there’s nothing to do. No meditation. No silent retreat. No need for yet another practice.And yet, the paradox has another face. The meditation, the practices, the silent retreat: those are also what the unfolding is asking for. The pull to lucid waking does the pulling. So what do we do?We take the posture of the five who kept their lamps filled with oil — the wise ones in the parable of the ten virgins. Their wisdom was this: they didn’t know when. And they kept the lamps filled anyway.Stay ready. Stay tended. Effortlessly! My gosh, the paradox is the joke after all. The ability to stay effortless yet ready? That’s the entire posture! Isn’t it just crazy that that’s what it means to be awake. LITERALLY! A few days after this event when I noticed the leaves had grown and the tree was back in its full glory, I went out and stood close to it. Up close, I could see the smaller branches still working, some leaves already flat and open, some still half-curled like fists. And on a low branch I hadn’t looked at all winter, there were tight buds that had clearly been forming for months.Months.The whole bare tree had been preparing all winter. What looked like a sudden green explosion was just the final visible move in a long, quiet rearrangement. I think waking up is like that. I will say then that the tree knew. The tree always knew.So the question isn’t whether anyone is waking up. The question is whether we’ll bend close enough to see what’s already growing.A small prompt to sit with this week:If you looked at your life as a whole, do you see what has been unfolding? Remember, you don’t have to make it spring. You just have to bend close.Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Welcome, fellow explorer.If you found your way here, ‘something’ must have brought you. Maybe you saw one of my videos. Maybe a friend who said you should read this. Or maybe it was a discussion you and I had inspired me to forward a link. Or maybe you saw a Substack Note somewhere while you were scrolling down the Substack rabbit hole at 11pm and this piqued your curiosity. Whatever the path, I’m glad you’re here.Let me tell you what this is, because I think you’ll know quickly whether it’s for you.Contemplative Currents is a weekly newsletter for people who have, somewhere along the way, been seekers. People who’ve read all the books: the Richard Rohrs, the Eckhart Tolles, the Thomas Mertons, the Byron Katies, the Kabir Helminskis. People who have explored the Christian mystic paths, Advaita Vedanta, Zen and other nondual paths. People who have meditated, prayed, journaled, fasted, sat in silence, went on meditation retreats, sat in groups. People who have done the work.And still, somehow, feel like something is missing. Well, not necessarily in a desperate way. But you’ve felt that sense that what the books, the videos and what the teachers were pointing at is closer than the books and the teachers made it sound. That maybe the actual thing has been hiding in plain sight all along. That maybe you’ve walked past it a thousand times this week. Or maybe you’re that person who has had that glimpse! That big wide open glimpse(you know what I mean?) and then boom! It disappeared. If that resonates, you might be in the right place.Friend, here’s what I’m doing here! I’m not a guru. I don’t have it figured out. I don’t even believe there’s anything to figure out. But that’s another topic for another day! I’m not enlightened. I don’t even know what that means. I have a roommate dog named Milo, a watercolor practice, a writing life, a day job coaching software teams, and a small group of friends who gather to sit in silence on Thursdays. I read Jean Klein or Ramana Maharshi and don’t always understand him. I watch some of Angelo Dilullo’s videos and have floating question marks above my head. From time to time, I sit with grief that doesn’t always lift. Other times, I notice a cardinal in my backyard and feel the biggest opening. I get a $3,000 car repair bill and feel something close. You see, that opening and closing is what I have then discovered is the function of a slow blue-flame burning joy that’s always present. In fact, I wrote an essay called Overjoyed to express that. Yikes! That opening and closing, that there is the work! Looking, together, at what’s actually happening — and noticing what was already here that we kept missing.I write because I have found joy. It was hiding somewhere beneath all my drama. And so I express some of it here. I write because sometimes it helps clarify the seeing. And I publish because, somewhere along the way, I figured out that my seeing helps you see, and your seeing helps me see, and the looking is shared whether we sit in the same room or not.So that’s the offer. We’re going to look together. I’ll bring my week. You bring yours. Some weeks the looking will land with both feet on the floor. Some weeks it’ll be a small turn that you almost miss. Some weeks I’ll just point at something simple, like a single line …and we’ll sit with it.For all of these, I have no curriculum, no path to graduation, no level to reach. Just the simple looking that’s always looking, and the slow recognition that what we’ve been searching for has been right here, PRESENT, the whole time. As I type this, I feel the overwhleming bubble of joy emanating from the recognition of this grace…this grace that stands so close to us that we miss it. We miss it because we focus so much on the ‘story of our lives’ that we don’t explore the Life itself that stands so obviously as the orchestrator of what even perceives the said “stories of our lives”. So a few practical things, since you’re probably new here.* I send two notes a week. A longer piece on Sundays, I call it the Long Walk. A shorter one on Wednesdays, sometimes a contemplation to try, sometimes just a single pointing.* Once a month, on the first Sunday, I write what I call a Letter to the One Still Looking. This will be a piece that sits with one of the questions I keep getting asked, or that I keep asking myself. You know those questions? Like What do you do when meditation feels fake and copped out? What happens when grief makes God feel absent? How do you tell the difference between presence and dissociation? What if this searching is just nonsense? Are you in a Oneness cult? What can I really do to wake up? Are you enlightened? What is enlightenment? The kinds of questions you don’t see addressed honestly very often. Or when they are even addressed, they are made of abstract nonsensical jargon. See, I’ve been there! * And once a month, I open a thread with just one question. It’s also a place for readers to reply to each other. I refer to us as Explorers. Not students, not seekers. Explorers. Here’s why? We start as seekers, we find(because when you seek you find), then you realize nothing was missing. The mistaken journey to God ends. And a journey in God begins. In that endless journey, you find it has always been about exploration. It’s the looking together at what’s already here, what’s already true. If you reply to anything I write, I read it. I write back when I can. I’m a real person(not AI) on the other end of these notes, and you’re a real person on the other end of mine. That matters to me. And in some way, you and I share of this unexplainable Essence. If this resonates, you can subscribe at the top of this page or the bottom. It’s free. It will stay free. Yes, it will always be free. You may see a paid tier. That is just an option to support this writing channel(and for those who will receive a free copy of my upcoming book, Beyond Silence). All content here will be remain free. If it all doesn’t resonate, that’s okay too. Maybe the thing you’re looking for is somewhere else and I hope you find it(we always do). But if there’s a small turn happening as you read, if some part of you is leaning forward, then sit a minute. Read one or two more pieces. See if the looking matches what you’ve been almost-noticing all along.The work is already happening. We’re just learning to see what’s already here.Welcome.Three places to begin if you’d like:* A Lived Doorway essay— for a feel of the texture* A Wrestle essay— for a feel of the depth* A Practice piece— for something to try this weekContemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Dear friends,I have not written as frequently as I normally do. That’s because a lot of interesting things have been going on here. To be honest, I almost cannot keep up with myself at this point.Still, 159 essays in, I've enjoyed experimenting with different styles of writing while finding a consistent voice, and the most authentic way I can share of this experience of awe. And that's exactly why I'm excited to properly shape Contemplative Currents within a strategic frame. One that brings more value to you, opens more room for what wants to come through me, and becomes something you or I can return to from time to time.I want to make something very clear. I do not position myself as a teacher, a guru, or someone who has achieved anything that isn't already the case for you, for me, for anyone. There's no ladder I've climbed, no special state I've arrived at, no insight I hold that you don't already have access to. My excitement in carrying out this project is simply this: to bring some simplicity and clarity to what our seeking— and our restless quest for "more" tends to overlook entirely. The very thing we keep reaching for is often what's already here, waiting beneath the noise of the search itself.I tell you this: with tears in my eyes while writing this at this moment, I feel so incredibly blessed to share of this experience of living. That I can live, love, be broken down emotionally, be built up in confidence, argue with friends, dance in sorrow, swirl in joy, mourn a loss, break up in shame, enjoy the taste of tacos from Cantina Louie, get a new pair of glasses, rack up $4.99 wine bottles at Trader Joe's, walk Milo at dawn while the neighborhood is still half-asleep, fumble through a hard conversation and find my way back to ease — that I could listen in love and care to my closest friends as they share with me their challenging times, fully present to their pain while quietly holding what I know are temporary moments, never rushing them past what they're feeling. I get it! Because everyone’s pain is connected. Oh, all of these finite experiences are an incredible joy! That I can sit on my bench and point attention back to the source of attention itself, gaddamn it! Right there, nothing missing, nothing to chase. The outpouring of joy is delightful. Oh, wasn’t it the writer Paul who said, ‘count it all joy…’ These are the reasons I enjoy writing here, connecting with you, connecting with the world. And so, friends, you should expect in the next day or two a new cadence to my work here on Substack. If you haven’t already, please check out the About page of this Substack. Also, there are more interesting things coming. Here are some, and here are the highlights:* First and foremost, the Hold Within app is now live but only for Android. I hadn’t bothered making the announcement till I finish up some paperwork with Apple. But if you have an Android app, please go ahead and download the app for your own contemplative practice. The Hold Within app can be accessed through https://holdwithin.app/* Secondly, I am excited to also add a visual angle to Contemplative Current. I will be adding a YouTube channel for this. * Thirdly, I have been invited on a few podcast interviews, some already lined up for the next couple of months and I’m super happy to share of the excitement of these conversations. Special shout out to Inside the Minds Eye for this interview. You should check out Adam’s other YouTube content too! Great stuff. * Progress on my upcoming book had been put on hold with all of the shifts this year but I’m glad to let you all know that I’m about 90% done with the first draft. * If you don’t already know, I released a new single called Hey Brother. You can find a link here https://seyekuyinu.com/music. It’s inspired by my recognition of all beings being a part of this one universal family. More on that later. And music video is underway. * I have also updated my personal website, https://seyekuyinu.com, to include and indicate that coaching services for me will remain free as I’m abundantly provided for in my other businesses. Also, while a paid tier is going to exist on my Substack starting from next week, every single part of the content uploaded here will be free. Forever. The paid tier will just serve as an opportunity for voluntary donations + a free signed copy of Beyond Silence, my upcoming book. Once again, more to come on that. * Also, if you didn’t already know, I am a part of Bayit: Building Jewish, as a game designer. We recently put out one of many board games, Journey To Sinai which can be gotten on GameCrafters. It’s a cooperative game of wandering, waiting, and revelation.Oh man! There’s so so much I want to talk about. I hope in some ways, my excitement is contagious and you become infected by this excitement. My hope, my deep hope in this time, is that what I share here on this Substack brings so much value to our shared experience of being. That in some ways, what gets exchanged here, me to you, you to me is in the deepest truth an expression of the incredible joy that is Living.For anyone who subscribed recently, I’m incredibly glad that you are here. I hope, yes I really do hope that this platform does not grow beyond where I don’t have the time or bandwidth to respond meaningfully to each and every email.Today, what bleeds out of my breathe is so much love. Love held within and beyond the context of this shared being. Love, Seye KuyinuContemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Do you know what the source of attention is? Like, if you’re paying attention, where is the location of that which projects the attention? I wish I had known this earlier. And if you haven’t seen this yet, this might save you years of searching in the wrong direction.The thing is, all meditation practice, underneath their techniques and the various traditions, the fasting, the prayers, the rituals etc. They all point at this one singular thing: they are attempting to help you stay longer in concentrated awareness. That’s it! That’s all they are doing(for the most part). So, the breath counting, the visualizations, the mantras and all of that, they are really a scaffolding for the same building. And the building is just sustained, undistracted attention. But why does this matter? Oh! It matters a whole lot! In concentration, you begin to see what moves and what stays constant through all movement. And then it becomes clearer where the movement emerges from. You see where movement comes from and then you start noticing the flow of attention! Oh, you don’t know what I am talking about? See, most of us experience attention the way we experience water from a tap. Sometimes, and when we pay attention, we may notice what it lands on, what it fills, and what it drains from and then we chase after the object of attention. For example look at how thoughts move. Look at any thought! A thought appears and then almsot instantly attention flows towards it. Or you may notice an emotion rising and then your attention rides on it. Instantly! Or see a sensation too! It calls within the body and then attention answers and moves towards it. Attention moves object to object to object. Over and over and over again. But somehow we have not made the bigger Inquisition! Where does attention come from?This is one of the most fascinating discoveries. Writing about it to give the answer is of course impossible. But this is a discovery that even transcends the mind’s utility of understanding objects. I tell you, this practice of tracing where attention comes from is foundational to any deep spiritual practice. I insist you try this now. Rather than following attention outward toward the next thought, gently turn it around. Well, that’s the best pointer for this…turn attention inward. Not to think about attention but to sense where it arises from. This sounds confusing or even like a moot idea. Why would anyone do that? But practice it. Attempt it! Bring attention back to itself. Or try to this. At first, you find the ‘yourself’ you’ve always called ‘yourself’. The “me” behind the eyes, the familiar sense of the individual who is doing the noticing. That’s the first important discovery. Most people live their whole lives never pausing long enough to find even that. But stay with it. Don’t settle there.Because the “me” is still a location. It is still a point of view, a perspective, a gathered-ness of experience that calls itself a self. Ask again: where does this “me” arise from?What you find… or rather, what finds itself, is not another object. It is more like the recognition of what was always already present before attention even spawned from anywhere. It’s almost like it’s prior to aliveness itself. Almost like aliveness came out of that sense. In Buddhist lingo, it would be called Emptiness. It is the awareness that isn’t owned by anyone. In particular, not owned or originated from a self. It would infact appear to be the source from which the individual perspective pours out, the way light pours from a lamp without diminishing the lamp. Finding this, it becomes less convincing that you are a self enclosed in a body, separated from the world by skin and circumstance. What remains during this discovery is a kind of seamlessness. No inside and outside pressing against each other. No self-straining toward others. Just the source, this aliveness, awareness, the ground of being— breathing as everything it appears to be.What’s interesting about this is it moves away from the realms of mere philosophy to a direct noticing, that available in any ordinary moments.Practicing this turning inward, then, is not the accumulation of spiritual experiences. It is the gradual wearing away of the habit of looking only outward. Until slowly(at least for me it’s slowly), like dawn, you find you cannot locate where you end and anything else begins. It is such a wonder! Such a mystery! The Mystery! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

See, any exploration in contemplation(funny I say this because contemplation is in fact that exploration), has to go beyond the content of one’s experience to the origin of experience itself. You don’t just drink water, you go to the source of the water. That exploration is, in fact, the true unveiling of one’s self. Or in other words, a discovery of Mystery. In that exploration, one may find something so darn obvious that it evades our own seeing! It’s the understanding that there’s no ordinary vs extraordinary, no spiritual and non-spiritual, no here and there, no this and that, no myself and others(ultimately, of course). Contemplative explorations lead to the fundamental foundational knowing in which all categories of this vs that sit. Only then can one see that distinctions are orchestrated by the self-referential mind. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We just have to not be lost in its utility. And this is part of what makes a contemplative practice, a searching for the Unspeakable, truly rewarding.We can’t doubt, for instance, that there’s a world. We experience a world. We sometimes call it reality. We trust its existence because it feels solid, feels reliable, feels independent of oneself. For instance, we don’t doubt that everyone else experiences what we experience.But we gotta pause for a bit. We have to go deeper. So let’s explore! Everything you have ever called the world arrives as experience. Is it not true? Color, sound, sensation, thought. You do not step outside this stream to verify it. You remain within it. Or so it seems. Would you also agree that what we sometimes call reality is already filtered and shaped by memory and then conditioned by language? We see this in simple ways. For instance, two people walk into the same room, one of them feels a type of tension. The other feels warmth or doesn’t even sense anything. Yet, the room has not changed. The world each one meets is different. Not slightly different! No, no! Fundamentally different. So does the room change? Or is it the attendance of our perception that gives the room its characteristics? The truth is, every moment we live in is filtered through a lens we did not consciously design. Your upbringing, my fears, your desires, my language, your expectations... even the mood we wake up with every morning. It somehow adjusts the world we meet. You see what I mean? If you are tired, the world seems dull. If you are in love, the world glows up. You see possibilities! If you are afraid, the world tightens and looks dangerous. In all of these, it feels like the world itself has changed. What are we doing? Oh, it is this: we inadvertently take what arises within and project it outward. Then we call it reality.So could it be said then that our experience, more closely seen, is not even something we are observing but something we participate in. This may feel unsettling at first, but let’s go yet another layer deeper. At this point, you may begin to agree with me that reality is not fixed. And so, if it’s not fixed, what can we truly rely on? Honestly, my friend, could you entertain the fact that the world we live in is not what is present but how we hold it. Pure and simple. Oh, man! This begins to open a door that many traditions have pointed toward, often painted in strange language. Prayers! Miracles! In fact, what we call psychic phenomena sits right at the edge of this understanding/misunderstanding. Telepathy. Intuition. Precognition. Most people either dismiss these or treat them as rare powers. What we label as psychic may not be supernatural or extraordinary. It may be sensitivity or some form of variance. The problem is not that these things are impossible. The problem is that our model of reality is too rigid to include them. We assume solidity. Separation. Fixed edges. But if we could entertain for a second, the fact that reality is fluid and participatory, then the extraordinary is just ordinary. Life, all of it, the esoteric, the seeming ordinary, the metaphysical…all of it simply ordinary. Consider the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, often marked in headers as the Feeding of the 5000 in many Bibles. The narrative is usually framed as a miracle. The feeding of 5000(3000 in some translations) is framed as something that breaks the rules of reality. But what if the assumption is wrong? What if it did not break reality, but revealed something about it. Look at the situation again. There was scarcity, a crowd, limited resources, a shared belief(of Jesus’ disciples) that there is not enough. That belief then shaped perception, tightening the field, narrowing down what was possible. People(well, Philip here) held back, guarding his own truth that saw lack everywhere.Now imagine a different perceptual angle, one that was a deep deep recognition of sufficiency. If one person stands in that, fully, it begins to affect others. The emotional field shifting, allowing the lack or the sense of lack to loosen and then people begin to see differently. And act differently. They share, revealing what they had hidden. They participate in abundance. Suddenly, what seemed impossible becomes visible because perception changed, and behavior followed. Experience reorganized itself ordinarily to create what others in the sidelines would say is extraordinary.This is a way to view the story. In fact, it deepens the story and its lessons, instead of making it this magical, miraculous occurence. And the hints of these things are everywhere. A leader walks into a room with calm presence, and tension drops. A parent reassures a child when they are exhibiting fear and the fear dissolves. A shift in interpretation changes an entire relationship. Nothing material has changed, yet everything feels different. These are the little aspects of experience. So what is more powerful? The external arrangement, or the perception that organizes it? Now, none of this is about controlling reality or abracadabra-ing things into reality or validating a law-of-attraction fantasy. I am saying, in short, we are not separate from anything. Not even the appearance of anything. We are part and whole of the field in which everything ‘shows’ up. The practice here, and the orientation this should pull us to is awareness. In awareness, we see thoughts as thoughts, not facts. We see feelings as movements, not definitions. We see the world as appearing, not as something fully pinned down. We begin to notice more. Feel more. Respond less from habit. We begin to see that we are creating the miracle of life each moment and the miracle of life is creating us each moment. We are less likely to be locked into a single version of what is happening. Awe then begins to deepen as the extraordinary becomes ordinary and that ordinariness is no longer reduced. Soon, it becomes so freaking obvious that every conversation is energy in motion, every moment is a field of perception unfolding, even the sense of self loses its solidity, as it is seen that the focal point which was before seen as “me, going through life, as person” is truly an unfolding of the Universe(seen and unseen) itself. Unmoving, yet allowing all movement. Empty, yet full of everything. The rather interesting thing is seeing that the question, “What is reality?” may be a foolish question. Not because it is unanswerable, but because it has no static finality. It is unfolding like a flower that’s in slow bloom. And you are not separate from that unfolding. You and I, and all creation are that unfolding. Oh, my! Does that seeing, not make one’s inquiry soften, where we no longer need to solve reality. Instead we meet it! We meet it in all its messiness! In its rawest, crudest, rudest, meanest form. Oh! Man! That’s what Grace is! Question for you: “What have you assumed to be impossible because you believed reality was fixed?” Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! You know subscribing is totally free! That way you support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

I could not find a more appropriate title to this one. Earlier this week, I was lost in thought after watching someone narrate their harrowing experience during a visit to Mauritania. There seemed to be so much poverty, so much suffering. I could almost smell death just watching the video. I mean, things felt ominous at the same time conclusive. Like, there was no possible way a place like that could ever blossom. But of course, this was me getting lost in my own thoughts and assumptions. Admittedly, this was also a video, one perspective, and from this person’s viewpoint. It got me thinking about my own experiences when I have visited slums and homeless shelters and environments where death felt real and lurking in the background. Oh, sometimes the ICU is another place to feel all of that. In these moments, I realize how freaking easy it is to speak about God when the sky is soft and the music is blasting fast and hearty music, and the barbecue grill is lit and afrobeat dances with the rising smoke. It’s so easy to see God when a long-yearned-for promotion hits or when we see the view of a well-mowed meadow and small dandelions dance to the soft blowing wind. Oh, the sun needs to be golden in these moments and then, suddenly, we see God. Oh! It is so easy to see God when love feels close and it wraps our imaginations in warmth. In those moments, God feels like an explanation of beauty. We then point there and there and there and say that’s God.But when suffering slaps us in the face and there’s no poetry, no comfort, no meaning in sight, then what happens? When struggles, real human struggles, hit us and we are confronted with our own humanity, confronted with the gore that life sometimes comes embodied as, then what next? Where then is the same God that showed up obviously in the blessings?Well, I think this is usually where a lot of philosophical debates crash and the religious gymnastics that wrap up the Divine as a feel-good mechanism starts to crumble— the neat mold of goodness that we have ascribed as God. Oh, I am not doubting any goodness in all of this. I am just trying to shed light on a different perspective. And that perspective should start with a different type of question. Perhaps the question when we see or hit suffering should not be ‘where is God in all this’? Once again, a question like this presupposes an entity, a finite thing that sits outside of suffering. Or an entity who can snap his fingers and make all things beautiful but sits cowering in helplessness at our own helplessness. An entity that basks in careless undecidednesss or maybe even in a secretly silent pleasure picking and choosing who gets to enjoy their experience of living and which 2 year old dies of cancer.My friend, if God is only what feels good, shows up when our oxytocin levels are up, then suffering is obviously a contradiction. Either God disappears or God becomes cruel in the midst of that suffering. But the question should evolve, our contemplation of what the Divine is, should really ask, “what do we even mean by God in the first place?”.There’s another way to look at it. Another way to SEE it. To do so, we have to be brave enough to sit with what is actually present in suffering(not the story or the interpretation) but what is there in the suffering…the pain, the fear, the loss. We want to face it squarely. We want to look deep into its face. We want to bear the pain even if the result of that pain is total obliteration. I bet if anyone has come out of that tomb of death after staring into that void, you know you come out experiencing something so glaringly obvious. Oh only if you stare that death in the face till it dissolves. It becomes so obvious that the resultant is the revealing of Self, the unveiling of The Lover, the company of the Fourth, That which has been there all along. Oh, it becomes so obvious that there is nowhere one can go without THE KNOWING. That part, that Knowing, it turns out, is not touched by suffering. It is the part(and whole) that simply knows. Oh, that is Awareness Itself. See, if God is excluded from suffering, then suffering sits outside of reality itself. That doesn’t make any sense(not like sense is needed for any exploration of reality). And no, suffering isn’t divine. Pain still freaking hurts. Suffering is not glamorous. But our relationship to suffering is what we eventually come to see. We may begin to understand how suffering is not something we can own. It is not personal. No one has ever created suffering, so how can one control suffering to turn it off? Instead, we can turn to it. Yikes! We SEE what it is made of. In that exploration, we may also find that the Divine does not intervene in suffering(surprise surprise). The Divine is the ground of experience itself and suffering is part of experience. God is the field in which both beauty and suffering appear. How can this even be true? Well, you have to see it. If only we can allow ourselves to see it, then the same ground can allow both a child’s laughter and a battlefield. Sorry, there’s no clean resolution in this one! And maybe that’s the point. Any view of God that removes that tension too quickly tends to become comforting and then collapses in its shallowness. So maybe we don’t resolve it but stay with it, letting both truths stand side by side: suffering is unbearable and calls for response. At the same time, in the deepest layer of reality, it remains unchanged by it. From this standpoint, we don’t explain away suffering. We meet it more directly. Something to think about: if the same awareness is here in both myself and the one who suffers, then separation must thin out. Compassion then, is no longer a moral rule but the obvious move. And in that, I feel compassion for those that suffer, I see my suffering in it, and the suffering of humanity. I see God in all of it. Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

You wake up to the clarity of the present moment. Then the mind steps in with deadlines, memories, and unfinished business. The peace feels lost.This piece looks at that tension. On one side, there is the direct seeing that only this moment exists. It is not a slice of time. It is a living field where everything unfolds.On the other side, there is the pull of plans, tasks, and past experiences. The sense that you need to move ahead and handle life. The shift may come through the recognition of the body.You begin to notice a subtle tension. A readiness. A leaning toward the future. As if something important is waiting in the next moment.It is something to see.From this view, the moment is already complete. It carries everything it needs. Action still happens, but not from force or control. It arises on its own.What remains is simple.Notice the urge to move ahead.See it clearly.Let the moment unfold. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Every single morning, about sixty of us gather in silence at 7.20am. We spend twenty minutes sititing in stillness. Then a poem is read, or a verse, a passage from a novel, a song lyric, a fragment of something really powerful, written by a thought leader. And then, one by one, we share how it landed. We say a short prayer and close up the Zoom room. What I most often leave with is a word. A phrase. A single sentence that has somehow found its way under my skin. The best way I know to describe it is a word/phrase that I want to lick over and over again like licking a lollipop, rolling the flavor slowly over the tongue, not rushing to the center, savoring the sweetness as it opens.This is, in fact, what lectio divina is. Lectio is the ancient practice of sacred reading where you let the word you mule over to consume you. Here’s the thing: when we consciously direct attention away from the noise of content, away from the mind’s endless commentary about reality and toward a single unifying word or phrase, we begin to see, with a kind of gentle shock, how much of our world is constructed story. How much suffering lives in the gap between what is happening and what we are telling ourselves is happening.The movement of attention from the headspace into the body is itself a type of homecoming to what is. We begin to notice what rest is, bodily sensations become more vivid, mental patterns become visible. And mystery, rather than threatening us, begins to feel like welcome country. It’s to me like the joy of seeing a new level in a game of Zelda. Or like traveling to a country for the very first time. I built Hold (you can find it on holdwithin.app) , a free Contemplation app, for exactly this…to give a thought, a phrase, a prompting, somewhere to live and breathe. To hold it without needing to resolve it. You can work with it so slowly, so closely, that it begins to dissolve the very sense of self that picked it up in the first place. Using technology, you can be brought to remembrance during the day this jewel that becomes the gateway in which that self melts. Hold will be available in a few weeks as I iron a few kinks with the iOS app. I have been sitting lately with one phrase, and I will share with you how it’s landing for me. It is: resting in the arms of the Lover.I let it ask its questions. What is rest, really? What is rest, REALLY? Is it not the dropping of the shoulders, the releasing of everything that has been quietly clenched? Letting go of our assertion that things must go as we want it? And what are these Arms? Are they not the very arms that instrument all of existence — the groundless ground through which everything rises and to which everything returns? What is it to rest in that which is objectless yet creates all objects, to trust in that which cannot be known?All there is, is the Master. All there is, is the Lover. And to rest in those arms, it is the most radical act of trust we can demonstrate. Oh, what it means to trust in God. Is this not what it means to say ‘you are my shepherd, I lack nothing!’.Oh friends, oh friends, oh friends — look at this spacious space in which everything exists. Is this not the Lover? How can I fully rest in the arms of this Divine Lover?Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

What if the most wondrous thing you could ever encounter is something you've never actually left?In this essay, I walk through four movements releasing origin stories, opening the aperture of perception, dimming the noise of self-concept, and the practice of remembering ..that point toward something prior to all of it. Not a philosophy. Not a doctrine. Just a crack in the ordinary, and the strange light that comes through it.Includes a short contemplative practice at the end.For anyone who has ever suspected that mystery is not a problem to solve, but the ground everything is standing on. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

I sit on a bench in my backyard everyday, silently observing what nature is doing. In these cold season, I'm well familiar with the dormancy of grasses that grew before my eyes just a few months ago. And the trees, their greenery stained the dew with their luscious green. But now they are dormant. The three of them. You see, there is something about sitting still long enough that the world stops performing and just simply is. Not like it was performing before. I was the one who stopped performing. Clearly, the yard doesn't know I'm watching. The grass doesn't straighten itself. The trees don't rehearse their sway. Everything here, just unselfconsciously alive, and I find myself quietly undone by it all.As the wind blows from time to time, the wind chimes chime and the branches bend to the wind's blowing. There seems to be no single sense of reluctance or negotiation. There’s just this immediate, complete obedience without protest. I am ever so in awe of how nature does not fight the weather. It receives it. It becomes it. I stare at the branches and they don’t brace themselves against the gust while calling the gust an enemy. It simply moves, and in moving, it demonstrates something I have spent decades trying to learn: that all my ‘gra gra’, all my resistance is not strength. It was never strength at all. We have been taught to show all our muscles when we just needed pure understanding. The understanding that we are not separate from it all. That the most alive thing in the yard is also the most surrendered thing in the yard, it calls the structure of inner resistance— the propped up ego into check.Oh the birds! Let me tell you! The birds have started to visit the feeder and my supplies are running short. This one I’m looking at— a cardinal, it would appear that it never complained about how cold the earlier month has been. None of them could have language for complaint. They just didn’t show up to grace this shed. And now, they just arrived, ate what was there, and flew away again to only-god-knows-where. I'm brought to my knees in abject recognition of how pure and simple everything is. The birds didn't earn the feeder. They didn’t work for it. They didn't deserve it more today than yesterday. They just showed up, and the feeder was there. Why did I even buy it? I thought I was the one choosing to bring beauty into this backyard. But lil ol me doesn’t see sometimes that I’m moved in ways I couldn’t possibly know. I’m brought to my knees again at this recognition. It's the simple formula — if it's happening, it is just pure mystery.Oh, how oh, can I be in partnership with it rather than complain, grumble, murmur about the cruelty of the world? The nincompoops who fail to pick up the dog poop after themselves. The stranger who is perceived to be rude. The morning that didn't go as planned. I catch myself mid-murmur sometimes, mid-sentence in some internal trial where I am simultaneously the prosecutor, the judge, and the only one in the courtroom. And I have to ask: what exactly am I protecting? What territory am I defending that was ever truly mine? Isn't his rudeness the beauty of a god that takes the shape of rudeness? Isn't the chaos we see in the world the perfect setup for wonder to take full shape? I don't mean this as spiritual bypass …like a tidy reframe to avoid the sting of things. I mean it as something far more unsettling: that the whole theater of difficulty, of inconvenience, of other people's unresolved selves bumping into mine — all of it may be the very instrument through which something larger is working. The friction is applaudable, such a sick, sick design. Isn't my constant pull and toggle to control the world just my illusory belief that “I”, the ego, the small s— self, have a power of my own? That somewhere beneath the performance of preference and opinion and scheduling, there is a self-pulling lever that’s authoring outcomes and shaping days? The deeper I look, the less I find myself. And the looking continues because there’s a belief that if I look long and hard enough, I will find the self that has been doing all of this. I never do. And somehow, that is the most relieving thing. And yet those desires — the ones I carry, the ones that embarrass me, the ones my moral and spiritual uprightness try to go to battle for and against, are the assigned backlog items in which the universe, sic god, sic life, uses to make the whole world whole. Nothing is wasted. Not even my failed ambitions, not the longing, not the small daily wanting. Even my resistance to resistance is folded into the unfolding. Oh my gosh! Isn’t that wild?? There is nothing outside of it. There is no position from which I can observe the whole and remain unincluded! That’s so freaking marvellous!!! You know, marvellous as in... ‘marvel’ + ‘us’ Today, like every day when I remember, I drop deep into the wide arms of this Tender Grace. Knowing I've never done anything my entire life. Knowing I've never owned anything my entire life. Knowing that my amazing success was not mine, my failures included. Keenly aware that I live, I move, and have existence in That which could and would never be fully known. The bench holds me. The yard breathes around me. The chimes ring once more, unprompted, as if to say yes, this. exactly this.I sink into this contemplative inquisition where the question is more important than the answer, and the answer dissolves the one who is asking, I share these seeds with you, my Friend. It is these question: * what is life made from?* what is it that brings life to my being?* what is my being?In other news, I’m excited for my upcoming app that I believe could support your contemplative practice. The app, Hold, will be immediately available for Android and iOS. Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

I tell you, it seems like most of my life, I have waited for “this part” to be finally over so I can just move on to other good things. Like when I was in the University. I hated it so much! Life seemed impossibly hard. My classes were difficult to understand and quite honestly, I was disinterested in most of my courses because I was more focused on making ends meet(in my immediate situation) than learning about lipids and “the anastomosis of the heart”. Oh, I hated exam season too, particularly because I had a lecturer who wanted to be bribed before he’d let anyone pass his exams. Yes, true story! It was kind of the small corruption that captured the larger indignity of my whole experience. I was not financially buoyant. My parents were struggling to make ends meet, and meanwhile, my own ends couldn’t even meet anything! Not to talk about having three meals a day. I know this does sound like the beginning of one of those grass-to-grace stories. I don’t even intend for it to be that way(and there’s no success story on this one). But what I am saying is I was broke, hated school, no longer cared to be a medical doctor, and to make matters worse, I schooled in Northern Nigeria, which was an incredibly humid, dry, and hot location compared to where I grew up. So even the physical experience of being in school was so darn frustrating. My gosh! I just wanted to finish, get my degree, and finally start to work and make my own living. That was the finish line! Everything beyond it was where real life would start. No? I just wanted to leave and finally make real money and be an adult! Nobody told me!Well, nobody told me. Nobody told me that this would be yet another spiral. “When I get a job, I will finally breathe!” “Oh, when I get a better-paying job, I will finally be happy.” “When I move to a better city, then I’ll feel alive.” “When the political climate shifts, then I’ll relax into the life I’ve been meaning to live.” My goal post has shifted again because when I retire and finally own that plot of land with two cute donkeys, three goats, and egg-laying chickens, then, then, I will finally have arrived.To be honest, a part of me still does this. A part of me can’t wait to be retired, cash out on my 401k, sip pina colada from the rewards of past investments, chil on my four-acre plot of land with all the donkeys, chickens, and goats I can enjoy tending. And more realistically, my mind finds comfort in hoping that the political climate changes because perhaps then there would be a beautiful conclusion for me, and I would finally stop living in this limbo and enjoy the life I’ve been wanting to enjoy.But I’m not bamboozled. Not anymore. I know exactly how this plays out. There will always be yet another thing waiting for me to finally conquer once I escape this particular reality. Interestingly, coincidentally, all the mystics have been here, seen it, seen through it, and they’ve been hinting at this since like forever.Lessons from Mystics of oldI was shocked and inspired when I read about St. John of the Cross, who spent years in a prison cell, literally a closet, beaten once a week, starved, humiliated by his own religious brothers. Yet he didn’t write his most luminous poetry after the cell. He wrote the poems that we so enjoy reading during. He didn’t wait for the suffering to end before touching something …eternal. The dark night was literally his terrain.Meister Eckhart, the great Dominican mystic, once said something that still rattles me: “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ it will be enough.” Not thank you for the life I’m going to have. Not thank you for when things finally shift. More like…thank you for even this. Isn’t that outrageous if you think about this? Or if you’re in a funk, how can you really relate to this? The Desert Mothers and Fathers, one of them, Abba Moses, when asked for advice by a young monk, simply said: “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” Not go find a better cell. Not wait until the conditions improve. Sit. Here. Now. And let this be the teacher.Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching(Chapters 6 and 28) pointed to the same thing: the valley doesn’t become fertile by climbing upward. It receives everything precisely because it stays low. The Tao doesn’t hurry, and yet everything is accomplished.It so happens that while I recognize the internal movement …the reaching, the leaning toward some future where things will finally be arranged in my favor, there is a growing recognition. A slow, almost reluctant, clear seeing. This path... where I am... is the only way. It is literally the only place I can be and the only place I need to be.Of course, with this kind of leaning, we are bound to question: is this some form of resignation? A giving up without trying? A spiritual bypassing dressed in contemplative spiritual garbage talk? Well, in this clear seeing, I tell you what: There is a weird, might I say, psychotic—acceptance that where we are is exactly where we need to be. And that acceptance, when it is full, comes with a strange enjoyment. Not enjoyment like pleasure or entertainment. More like the enjoyment of a river that has finally stopped fighting its own current. The enjoyment of my weight, your weight resting fully on the ground.Brother Lawrence, the 17th-century Carmelite monk, spent decades washing dishes and repairing sandals in a monastery kitchen. He wasn’t waiting for a more spiritual assignment. Or like the prosperity gospel disease of evangelical circles, he wasn’t waiting for someday God blessing him with plenty of money. He(as the books about him now calls it) practiced “the presence of God” among the pots and pans. He wrote: “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer.” I bet you, he didnt’ have some superhuman equanimity. He just stopped making the distinction between where God was supposed to be and where God actually was, which, for him was right there, in the greasy water, in the worn leather. Oh, I think he even suffered severe pains late into his life. Ramana Maharshi was once asked by a devotee: “How long will it take to reach Self-realization?” He replied: “Self-realization is not something to be gained. It is already there. All that is needed is to get rid of the thought ‘I have not realized.’” In other words: you’re not on the way to the way. You’re in it. This way—with all its mess, all its discomfort, all its unresolved spirals—is the way.I am no longer bamboozledYeah, I am no longer bamboozled waiting for ‘good times’. Unfortunately Fortunately, the spiral doesn’t stop. The next thing I’m waiting for will arrive, and right behind that one too, is another waiting. What shifts for me now is not the circumstances, situations and scenarios I am in. What shifts for me is the relationship to where I stand. And somehow, this shift is also in the body, in the breath, in the way I stand, the recognition of the ground I stand on. That ground is the only thing that’s real. And in that realness, I am fully carried.Ah! It’s just this very moment. Totally complete.Contemplative Prompts* What are you currently enduring that you’ve been treating as a hallway to somewhere better? What if the only thing you can change internally is the orientation you have. So instead of a hallway, could it be a room you were meant to inhabit?* Where in your life are you postponing enjoyment, presence, or peace until a condition is met? What does that postponement cost you today?* Sit with Abba Moses’ phrase: “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” What is your “cell” right now? What might it be trying to teach you that you’ve been too restless to hear?* Can you recall a time when something you desperately wanted to escape became, in retrospect, the very thing that shaped you most deeply? What does that suggest about where you are now?* What would it feel like, not as an idea but in your body, to stop leaning forward? To let your full weight rest on this moment, this ground, this life as it is?Did you read this one?If you liked this one, I bet you, you’d like these other posts: Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

I have had a lot of background conversations about my orientation towards the concept of Prayer from the last post, the one called Pray, Not As Prey. These conversations have circled around questions I've been living with for years: What do we do with our desires? How do we hold our wanting without being consumed by it? Is there a way to pray that doesn't feel like begging an indifferent universe? I want to share something small that's become another doorway into how I see these questions, courtesy of the most patient being I've ever known.I have a 9 am check-in with my teams before my day kicks into full gear. This has happened every single workday for the last 5 years since working mostly from home. Milo has learned this rhythm and so he’s been used to me giving him treats right before the meetings begin. Originally, the treats have been my small indulgence to keep him occupied before I disappear into my day. These are treats that would take him about 20 minutes to chew to get him preoccupied. When he was a puppy I made this a thing so he would not chew up my baseboards or get in trouble doing things he shouldn’t. But over the last 5 years, through some ‘canine efficiency’, he has reduced the amount of time he consumes these treats to about 4 minutes. I am talking about large chews that take smaller dogs days to chew. And the darn packaging would write “long-lasting entertainment”. They lied!Now, here’s the challenge! I’m facing what I call ‘my daily heartbreak’. Well, our daily heartbreak. After one supposed-to-last-twenty-minute treat, he comes back for more! But here’s how he does it: he doesn’t beg, he doesn’t whine or scratch or bark. He’s the most patient dog I know...perhaps the most patient being I’ve ever encountered. So instead, he sits quietly beside me and stares at me. Not just for minutes! Not just for an hour! He stares at me for hours on end. HOURS! Daily! I tell you. I am not even joking! At this point, you’re probably like ‘oh, then just give him some more’. I do! But it gets to a point where you know it can’t be healthy feeding him treats that much, especially when it affects his eating, compromises his wellbeing, shorten perhaps, the very life I’m trying to protect. So, just waiting, with an unwavering focus that would put most meditators to shame, his eyes track my every movement, his body remaining still, poised, and hopeful. The entire architecture of his attention bent toward just one freaking simple single possibility: one more treat, sir. But I need YOU to understand this. He stares at me for roughly three hours daily and I’m not EXAGGERATION! Three hours of patient, quiet, unrelenting hope. DAILY! Now, seeing him do this day after day, I am often so moved to something beyond pity. It’s more like grief mixed with helplessness mixed with a strange, aching recognition of my own hopes and longing. How can he want something so badly, sit so patiently waiting, and yet unsure why nothing is happening to satisfy this desire? If only he would let go. If only he went to lay down in the patch of sunlight by the window, played with one of the darn toys he’s refused to play with, chased the shadows that move across the living room floor. His suffering through waiting and hoping I’ll throw him a bone (pun very much intended) would not be so acute, so prolonged, so utterly consuming. In caring for him, in witnessing his suffering, in realizing there’s very little I can do besides either giving him a lot of unhealthy food or withholding what he desires, I find there’s no way I don’t care for his well-being. My refusal is an act of love, even as it looks to him like denial. Even as it feels to me like cruelty.And then the reflection here for me, as it always does when sitting long enough with anything real, is:What if... just what if he had the ability to know, to be satisfied that I have his best interest at heart? What if he could hold both his desire and his trust simultaneously? Would he not realize that what he currently has is enough, and that in the right time, he would be rewarded with what is actually good, not just what he thinks he wants?I sit with this question. I turn it over like dough, kneading each corner. Turning it around in the mind, turning it over to myself: What would it be like if I realized that what I have is all I need? Of course, someone may say “that is you resigning or diminishing your desires and could be some form of bypassing”. But could we look at it clearly. Oh, I do have strong desires, desires that move through me like weather systems, powerful and undeniable. Can I commit them into what I’m calling the Well of Knowing, trusting that the Universe is not dead, not indifferent, but fully alive and responsive to deal with things as they should be?What then is the role of prayer since I see it not as a cry to an entity that needs those desires spilled out before taking action? Is prayer dead then? The question itself feels almost heretical in our age. But no, I don’t think it is. Maybe another way to see prayer is that it could be an invocation of truth to desire. It’s not the killing of desire, but the offering of it to something larger, something that can hold both our wanting and our wellbeing in the same hand. Once again, my desires aren’t mine. I could not have created a desire. They arise from the field of Nothing. It seems to me then, when I remember this—when I really remember it, not just think about it, then the ground on which I stand becomes the only stable ground. Not because it’s solid under my feet, but because it’s true. Literally. And in that ground, I am fully carried. I don’t have to carry myself. In that awareness, I am reminded that nothing needs to be added or removed. Just this —complete.In With Open Hands, Henri J.M. Nouwen writes, “A person with hope does not get tangled up with concerns for how his wishes will be fulfilled. So, too, his prayer is not directed toward the gift, but toward the one who gives it. His prayer might still contain just as many desires, but ultimately it is not a question of having a wish come true but of expressing an unlimited faith in the giver of all good things. For the prayer of hope, it is essential that there are no guarantees asked, no conditions posed, and no proofs demanded, only that you expect everything from the other without binding him. Hope is based on the premise that the other gives only what is good”. He continues, “Hope includes an openness by which you wait for the other to make his promise come true, even though you never know when, where or how this might happen”. Thinking about ‘the ground’, I think about the clarity of what the Buddhists would call cosmic interdependence, the understanding that nothing exists independently. It is obvious, isn’t it, that all phenomena and all beings are caused to exist by every other phenomena and beings. Oh, can’t we all see it? That our existence as human beings depends on earth, air, water, and other forms of life. Just as our existence depends on and is conditioned by those things, they also are conditioned by our existence.Our longings, our desires, they are part of the miracle of Existence! If they are truly emergent in me, then they belong to Existence. I call it that, you can call it God. And if that is true, if it is true that what I call my desire belongs to Existence, then the words of the writer of the first epistle of John, 5:14 may be pointing to something important. He wrote, "if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us, and we know we have obtained the requests."If we can clearly see that we are not separate from existence, that the many different things— rocks, flowers, car exhaust, Milo are expressions of us, and we are expressions of them, if we can see that existence is true to itself, we can learn to trust this ground. And that’s the hardest part! Geez! That, right there is what to practice— Trust! Reflection Prompts:* What are you waiting for with the same patient intensity as Milo? What would it mean to lay down that vigil, even temporarily?* Where in life might denial actually be an expression of love—either from yourself to yourself, or from something larger toward you?* What desires are you holding that might benefit from being offered to the “Well of Knowing” rather than carried alone?Suggested and related readingsContemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

I want to start this by expressing my immense gratitude for the outpouring of love from my last post. I received dozens of private messages that I am holding so tenderly in my heart. I still am. You see, when I look at my life honestly, without doubt, I see how generously it has been held. Oh, the words of support! Thank you! You know, I could never in a million years have dreamed or willed myself to what exists in this experience of living— a family that cares so so steadily, a career that feels quite honestly like a dream, a business and an income that sustains me very fairly, the company of the very best books there are in all lines of my interest, and most especially the very best friends I could ever have. If I had better friends than I do now, I would explode! If the world crumbled and came back with us all in it, I will find each and everyone again: including you, who reads this from your inbox. Oh, I am so blessed to have been given the opportunity to love as deeply as I do, in the way I do, even if it’s handed back to me, half-opened, arriving unfinished or heart-shattering. Oh, I would shatter it over and over again to reveal my true self. How could I express these blessings without pointing to my roommate, Milo, who teaches me lessons that could never be penned. His presence teaches me more and more the efficiency of moving without words, being without apology, and the joys of companionship with that which is not cut from the same flesh or the same blood(oh, I could write a longer reflection on this).Yet, given the current direction in which the wind blows in this hemisphere, if sustained, I stand the chance of losing all of it. Emmm…not metaphorically. Literally! And nothing has prepared me for this possibility more than the steady practice of surrender(that I write frequently write about here). I understand now why the image of the Muslim at prayer moves me so deeply. Facing east, bowing to the ground, rising only to bow again. What an image! There is nothing ornamental about it. If anything it is a bodily confession. Oh isn’t it what we are called to do daily? Isn’t it what I must practice daily? As my will tightens against Reality, caught in my own illusion of separation, I am reminded to surrender, to bow to Reality, to the glorious Mystery. Again and again. Again and again. And again and again. Oh this must be what it is to be baptised. To die and be buried under The Water, to rise again to the fullness of Reality. And over and over again, we plunge into the Water of Life till we are fully buried, rising up to newness. A way of dying: prayerPerhaps death does not arrive all at once. Obviously! Perhaps it gathers quietly, as the different systemic structures and the structures of self reach their limit. Sometimes through unbearable pain. Sometiems through the most heart-wrenching, gut-ripping heartbreak. Sometimes through the grief of real raw unbearable loss. Sometimes, through the possibility of being chained unreasonably by masked men at night. Sometimes, through the slow exhaustion of holding one’s self together. When that threshold is reached, something just must give. This is where prayer meets me now. You see, I no longer see prayer as a request or negotiation. Gosh, who would I be requesting to? An entity we pray to who has to see people die, break apart, separate from families, and only waits to move based on emotional requests, called prayer? Surely such an entity must be a monster. As I have written here before, prayer no longer functions for me as a channel for asking or pleading or emotionally cajoling, using manipulative language that lowkey sounds like one party is trying to blackmail the other. Instead, it functions as a solvent. A way of laying myself down until there is nothing…absolutely nothing left to protect, nothing left to argue for, nothing left to defend. And so I start with prayers as poetry, the words moving my soul as I drink of the beauty of words gliding through my tongue, the assonances and aliterations and metaphors and imagery, the magic of expressions moved through vibrations in the vocal cord. What miracle it is to have words! What miracle it is to evoke what is present here, right now. What miracle it is that my desires are aligned with the desires of the Universe, the Universe speaking through me, as me. What miracle it is that I am slowly melting in the words, and the words are no longer words as they melt into mutters and mutters into hums and hums into silence, where I cease to be. Where fear dissolves. What miracle it is to know that I have never had a will, as my supposed will breaks into unity with the Divine, and all I am left with is the ‘not my will, but yours be done’. And in this assurance, I am made alive again. In this assurance, I can just be. I can do what needs to be done and rest in peace when nothing needs be done. Is this not your prayer too?A prayerMay Your will move us where our fear tightensThat Your wisdom speakwhere our understanding collapses.That You take my need to be spared, my desire to be in control, and do with it what is true,leaving nothing false standing. Selected posts on Prayer:A Prayer Of ExtolationA simple recipe for meeting the DivineOf Prayer and the Anthropomorphic GodA Prayer In LonelinessThe Nectar of True DevotionLife Takes Care of LifeA wider list of my essays on Prayers, and a longer one on Surrender. Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

I am currently bracing for a season of solitude, putting structures in place for minimal physical interactions with the outer world, keeping documents and important paraphernalia in easily accessible locations, making sure I can easily access emergency contact while figuring out guardianship for Milo, my doggie roommate. In this space, I have also been exploring, as practice, deeper levels of what it means to be free within. In the confines of my own home, projecting the safety within to the chaos that I am seeing without. I am opening up to the experience of grief, heartbreak, at the same time the truest experience of what it is to open up my heart fully…despite! Beyond the logistics of the things happening under the surface, there is a deeper preparation happening for me. In this dense, liminal space, I have been practicing what it is to be free using the confines of my own home. I am attempting to project the safety I cultivate inside to the walls of this house, to the chaos I perceive without. This paradox forces me to reflect on the people and systems that surround us. I find myself holding tight to the inspiration found in the life of Anne Frank. Confined to an attic, stripped of agency, she famously chose to believe in the inherent goodness of humanity. From her, I am learning the critical distinction between systems of oppression and the people trapped within them. And it is so so easy to conflate the two. It is easy to look at those who ride on the wings of broken systems and see them only as enemies. I am learning that we can choose to love the person while still giving reverence to the terrifying power of the systems that shape their movement and behavior. We can acknowledge the machinery without dehumanizing the cog.This brings me to the ultimate question of agency: What is in my control, and what is not?Is loving those who hurt us, who persecute us, actually possible? Is there a pathway to it that isn’t just …spiritual bypassing? Surely, it must be possible. If Viktor Frankl could find meaning in the ashes of Auschwitz, if Nelson Mandela could emerge from twenty-seven freaking years of imprisonment with a vision for reconciliation rather than revenge, then the capacity exists somewhere within the human spirit. It is difficult— excruciatingly so. But I know it’s possible.For me, this is where "practice" falls. How can I look at a person who has truly hurt me and choose to see them as an extension of myself and not a villain? How do I move beyond the performative dance of forgiveness while arriving at a place of true recognition?And what lies beyond my control? Clearly, changing entire systems of oppression single-handedly is out of reach. But perhaps there is a different way to view these behemoths. Can we look at these so-called broken systems and see them as indicators of a deep, starving hunger rather than monsters? Can we see the violence and the oppression as a desperate, twisted cry for attention that the brokenness is calling for? When I ask these questions, I feel a physical shift. If I can let my chest area melt, if I can allow my heart to actually open, the contracted polarities of good vs. evil, us vs. them, they seem to drop away. In that space, I am left only with the raw, difficult, and yet beautiful work of being human.Navigate this season with ancestorsTo navigate this season of solitude and inner expansion, I look more closely at the “ancestors of isolation”, those who turned confinement into a cathedral of the spirit. I think of Anne Frank: The Separation of Soul and System. Anne Frank’s brilliance wasn’t just her optimism it was her ability to maintain an identity separate from her circumstances. As I referenced, when we mistake the system for the person, we lose our ability to empathize. What I learned in her story is that people often act out of fear and conditioning. The system provides the script, meanwhile the person reading it is often just as lost as the victim. By seeing the “good” in people, Anne wasn’t denying their capacity for evil; she was acknowledging that their core self was being suppressed by a poisonous ideology. I think of Etty Hillesum, the Guardian of the Well …while Anne Frank is often remembered for her optimism, Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman in Amsterdam who eventually perished in Auschwitz, offers a fierce, mystical pragmatism. In the face of impending doom, she refused to let her heart turn into a stone of hatred. She famously wrote, “Every atom of hatred we add to the world makes it still more inhospitable.”“Such words as ‘God’ and ‘death’, and ‘suffering’ and ‘eternity’ are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be”Etty reversed the traditional flow of prayer. Instead of asking God to save her, she promised to save God. She wrote: “You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last.” My gosh! That always moves me! I have loads and loads of quotes from her life. In fact here are some:* “Such words as ‘God’ and ‘death’, and ‘suffering’ and ‘eternity’ are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the failling rain. We must just be”* “The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us”* “There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God”* “The more peace there is within us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world”* “We could fight war and all its excrescences by releasing each day, the love which is shackled inside us, and giving it a change to live”* “Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that’s not too awful either, but never, never give up”* “I no longer believe that we can change antyhing in the world until we first change ourselves”* “Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others.”In reflecting on her very short life(she was killed at 28 years) and as I figure out guardianship for Milo, I think of myself as the guardian of that “piece of God” inside. My choice to withdraw is an exciting stage for retreat for me, a sentry duty to protect the inner softness from the hardening effects of the world.I think of Nelson Mandela and The Long Game of Reconciliation. Mandela’s confinement was physical, but his mind roamed free. He realized that hating his jailers would only keep him a prisoner of his own bitterness. He cultivated a “freedom within” that eventually manifested as freedom for his nation. I am learning that my internal state is the one territory that cannot be occupied unless I surrender it. Mandela used his time to learn the language and history of his oppressors to understand how to dismantle the fear that drove them.I think of Viktor Frankl. Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, coined the concept that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. I am learning that meaning is not found in the environment; it is forged in spite of it. If you can find purpose in your suffering, even if that purpose is just to remain soft in a hard world—you transcend the suffering.Practical notes for Solitude* Somatic Release: When you feel the contraction of anxiety or anger, physically touch your heart. Breathe into the tightness. The body holds the score of the outer chaos; you must manually reset it.* Mental Exercise: When I feel anger toward an oppressor, I visualize them as a child before the system got its claws into them. I address the human beneath the uniform or the ideology.* The “Other Self” Meditation: When thinking of those who hurt me, I try the practice of saying, “Just like me, they wish to be happy. Just like me, they are trying to avoid suffering.” It neutralizes the demonization process.* Routine as Ritual: Order in my immediate environment creates a psychological buffer against the disorder outside. The in and out effect also applies see The Mirror And The Dance. * Document the Light: Just as Anne Frank kept a diary, documenting her internal shifts. I have a practice of doing just this, noticing moments where I drop the “polarities.” Somehow, these serve as a tool and roadmap when the darkness feels absolute.* Useful Information: Just like Mandela, solitude can be used to study the ‘perceived enemy’. Understanding the roots of the chaos outside, knowledge dissolves fear that the hatred feeds upon. * Holding the question: When grief takes a hold of me, when I feel overwhelmed, I ask, “What is this moment asking of me?” I don’t bother going through the rabbit hole of asking “Why is this happening?”. The focal point holds the question, “How can I respond to this with integrity?”In a lot of ways, I see that when we shine a light on the human spirit, we are doing the most revolutionary work possible: we are refusing to let the chaos outside dictate the climate inside.Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

When I’m not so heavily caught up in my own life drama or sulking over how incredibly harsh the world seems to be at times, when I’m not doomscrolling from under a blanket curled up like a deplorable fetus lost in the narratives of news around the world and my existential fears, brewing like a moka pot that’s about to boil over, is seen through, I enjoy playing with the display and dance of form through the events, circumstances and opinions that flood my way. Perhaps this short essay is an invitation to you to see how radically beautiful our direct experience can be…and I’m not even referring to a play with the mind or our constantly exaggerated thought processes. I am talking about a very very subtle shift in perception that changes how we see(instead of what we see). Isn’t it incredibly obvious that there is nothing outside of us. Everything happening is undeniably inside. Oh, I say this and(believe it or not, I shrug in real life while writing this) still fall into my own grief..which I realize needs no fixing. You know why? I will tell you! See, the world, my world is a reflection happening WITHIN myself. However we even define and describe ‘self’. Most of us move through life acting as the “repairmen” of our own existence. We look at the external world—our relationships, our environments, global events—and we see a checklist of things that are wrong, broken, or out of place. We believe that if we can just rearrange the furniture of the world to match our inner preferences, we will finally be at peace. If you’ve ever worked with an excellent therapist or a professional coach who knows what they are doing(not the self-proclaimed coaches), they act as mirrors to bounce off the words of our worldly perception as opposed to telling us what to do to fix situations. Why? Because our perception clearly impacts how we move in the world. But it’s not so much about changing our perception. I will leave that to psychology and self-helping. I am speaking about how we even hold perception in our damn hands. There just is a deep truth to explore, a “wonderful setup” to examine. We must start with this assertion: the external world is not a separate, hostile territory to be conquered. It is quite truly, a reflection. It is the play of forms in the mirror of perception. I will explain it with mirrors. The Great Hall of MirrorsIf you were standing in a hall of mirrors and found yourself frowning in the mirror, you don’t try to walk over to the glass and physically twist the reflection’s mouth into a smile. If you did, you’d be there for a long time, no longer frowning but now frustrated and also fighting now to move the frown that turned to frustration into your own self-imagined mould. Instead, with intelligence, you could see that the reflection is secondary and the source of the reflection is in fact the primary reality. In the contemplative traditions, this is often described as the world being a projection of consciousness. The external is not separate from the internal; they are two ends of the same stick.The joy of this realization—the “intense play”—comes when we stop judging the reflection as “good” or “bad.” Or as I like to say in person, we need to stop bleeding the symptom and repercussion of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Side note: my darn entire practice is to learn to remember this. A mirror does not judge what stands before it. It reflects a rose with the same precision and willingness that it uses to reflect a garbage can. Clearly, the miracle is not the content of the reflection, but the capacity to reflect at all. And that is what really fascinates this mind named Seye. As the Sufi mystic Rumi beautifully said:“The nature of reality is this: It is hidden, and it is hidden, and it is hidden. The nature of appearance is this: It is revealed, and it is revealed, and it is revealed.”In the same fragrance, the writer of Proverbs 25 writes, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” You see, the “forms” we see are the revealed dance of the hidden consciousness. So then when I notice unpalatable appearances, I dance! Well, let’s be honest, that happens only when I remember. But let’s pull the thread to its origin, let’s follow the breadcrumb to our very existence! Why do we even exist? To suffer? I reject this idea! I think that suffering exists within our perceptual lens but so do other things! These appearances are the most ridiculous dance! The Divine Play (Lila)Why does this setup exist? If the inner is whole, why project an outer world at all?The answer in many Eastern traditions, is Lila (Sanskrit for “Play”). Consciousness projects the world not to solve a problem, but to experience itself. It is a game of hide-and-seek played by the One appearing as the Many. When seen, the heavy burden of “fixing” the world drops from our shoulders. We realize that the play of forms is exactly that—play. It is a creative expression. The observed reality becomes a playground for the Observer. “So are you saying we shouldn’t fix anything? Isn’t the world broken? Do we then fold our arms and watch the world burn down? Can’t you see all the evil in the world? ” No! No! No! You may be missing the point if you don’t catch the subtle hinting here. Now, let me go slower, painting this out gently while sharing this insight in a way that doesn’t suppress or bypass real life f*ckery. The Wonderful SetupWe often fall into the trap of thinking the goal of spirituality or self-improvement is to create a “perfect picture”—a life with no pain, no conflict, and only pleasant forms. But consciousness is not interested in only the pleasant forms. Consciousness is interested in being.Think of a master painter. A painter does not only use bright pinks and soft blues. They use shadows, stark lines, and chaotic splashes of red. The joy of the painter is not just in the pretty meadow; the joy is in the act of painting itself—the capacity to bring form out of the void. Or in Genesis 1 terminology, “light out of the formless and void”. When we realize that our external reality is a projection of consciousness, we stop obsessing over whether the picture is “good” or “bad.” We begin to marvel at the mechanism itself. We realize, “Wow, look at how powerful this awareness is! It is so potent that it can appear as a difficult boss, a beautiful sunset, or a quiet room.”This is the “play of forms.” The universe is then seen not as a courtroom where we are being judged but a playground where the One is pretending to be the many.The Observer is the ObservedThe core of this contemplation is the collapse of the distance between “you” and “it”, between “me” and “you”, between “they” and “us”.In our ordinary state, we feel like a tiny subject inside the body looking out at a world of objects. We say, “I see the tree.” This creates a duality: the Seer (me) and the Seen (the tree). This duality is useful for moving around and interacting with objects but it also creates friction, fear, and a desire to control when not seen from the other vantage point. If you look closely, can you find the line where the seeing stops and the tree begins?The renowned philosopher and mystic Jiddu Krishnamurti spent his life pointing to this specific realization. He famously said:“The observer is the observed.”He did not mean this metaphorically. He meant that without your consciousness, the tree does not exist as you know it. And without the tree, your consciousness would have no form to take in that moment. They arise together. They are one movement.When you look at a mountain, you are the mountain. When you listen to music, you are the hearing of the music. There is no tiny person inside your head watching the movie of life; you are the movie, the screen, and the light all at once.Nothing to Fix, Everything to ExploreThis is where the joy enters. If the observer is the observed, and if the external is a reflection of the inner, then the war is over.Usually, we approach life with a “Fix-It” mentality. We think, If I fix my bank account, I’ll be happy. If I fix my relationships, I’ll be safe. This is the exhaustion of trying to comb the hair of the reflection in the mirror rather than combing your own hair.When we shift to the view of “Consciousness at Play,” the mandate changes from Fix to Explore.* Instead of asking, “How do I get rid of this anxiety?” we ask, “What is the texture of this energy? How is consciousness taking the shape of tightness in my chest right now?” Anxiety then begins to morph all by itself. I don’t say we explore this to get rid of anxiety! I am saying we explore this because we can explore. The consequence becomes the morphing of anxiety into insight, the transformation of insight into peace. Ah! But we need to remember to explore. Don’t we?* Instead of asking, “Why is this person annoying me?” we ask, “What part of my inner landscape is appearing as this person to show me something about myself?” No!!! Don’t psychoanalyze the hell out of this! I am suggesting we dissolve the self-and-other-ness of the situation and see that the annoyance is only happening within. The person is a projected form that’s erupting the said conditions or situations. In so doing, we can deal with the world but we know that our first point of call is within. You see, my relationships are me! When there is chaos, I take full responsibility. Why? The chaos is happening in me! Do I have to fix the relationship? Yes. But only through the direct dance within my insides as the inside flows to mirror the external! Isn’t that fantastic? As the Sufi poet Rumi wrote,“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”He didn’t say the wound is a mistake to be erased. He said it is an opening. It is a portal for exploration. Every form, whether painful or pleasant, is a valid and safe expression of the consciousness we are. Rumi(I think) further wrote, “Why are you busy looking for your soul in the house of others? Leave them. Enter your own.”But what’s wrong with fixing anything?Fixing assumes a flaw at the center. Exploration assumes openness at the center. The second posture aligns with direct experience. Awareness already holds everything presented to it. “We”, the all forms, moves in Presence. Through Presence, the karmic stickiness of challenges, chaos, fracture, misalignment, unwinds all by itself through guided action. You see, I am not preaching a ‘do not fix anything’. I am saying take a look at ‘what’ or ‘who’ fixes anything in the first place? I am saying what is it that needs fixing? I am saying “could we see that we adjust our seeing and then we see clearly and in truth. I am saying, Jesus was recorded to have said in Matthew 6:22, “The eye is the lamp of the body; so if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.” A Practice: Dissolving the DistanceTo move this from an intellectual concept to a felt experience, try this simple contemplative practice. You can do this with eyes open, right where you are.The Practice:* Select an Object: Choose a simple object in your room:a cup, a flower, or a stone. Place it in front of you.* The Labeling Phase: Look at it and notice how your mind labels it. “That is a cup. It is white. It is over there, and I am over here.” Notice the sense of distance.* The Reversal: Now, soften your gaze. Instead of “grasping” the object with your eyes, imagine the image of the object is coming to you. It is arriving in your awareness.* The Inquiry: Ask yourself, Does the seeing of the cup happen ‘over there’ on the table, or does the seeing happen ‘here’ in my awareness?* The Merge: Realize that you cannot separate the image of the cup from your awareness of it. If you take away awareness, there is no cup. If you take away the cup, the awareness has no form. They are the same occurrence.* The Feeling: Rest in the sensation that the object is made of the same “stuff” as your mind—it is made of Knowing. There is no distance. You are not looking at it; you are being it.When we stop trying to fix the mirror and start enjoying the capacity to see, I find that life becomes lighter. We realize that the “external being” is just the “Inner Being” turning inside out to play with itself. The joy that comes out of this, I find, is present in the ultimate safety of this realization. We are the canvas, and we are the paint. The picture may change a thousand times a day: tragic, comic, boring, beautiful but the Canvas remains untouched, pristine, and open to it all. There is nothing to fix. There is only the endless, joyous exploration of ourselves in the mirror of the world. When I find myself caught up in nagging over ‘my’ life and the world, when Grace brings me to remembering who I am, my ridiculousness is literally laughable! Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

The rather harsh personal truth that’s sometimes difficult to communicate is that I do not mind dying. I sometimes say that if I were given the option to silently disappear without anyone grieving or remembering that I ever existed, I would do this without thinking twice. No, it’s not that I’m nihilistic. Well, maybe some. Rather, it’s that what I am on the external(the personality, character, attributes, relationship to others) has nothing much to do with who I truly am. It’s clear to me that before I was born, I was. After I die, I will. I also joke that when we do die, we would realize we did. That which realizes the end of the personality is itself not ‘dye-able’. So, clearly, nothing of this earthly existence is much of material value. It’s at this point that the argument props up with the question of ‘legacy’. This, in my opinion, is another attempt for the ego to reify itself when true Aliveness is only found in the Divine who was before matter, before constructions, before ideas and legacies. By true Aliveness being found in the Divine, I want to establish that the Divine is that in which all things find form. Form being cast into existence is still not separate from the Divine. That is to say, all things are made of the Divine. The Heart Sutra would express this with these words, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form”.In sharing this thought with a friend, I could sense the grief and the confusion. I could sense how they felt I probably was depressed and perhaps life’s circumstances had really gotten me into this ‘contraction’. “Oh”, I replied, “I can so relate to the Gnostic text of the Book of Thomas where Jesus tells seekers, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will rule over all". I don’t claim to rule over anything. But I can tell you I have been a seeker. I have found. I was disturbed(more on this later, Chris Ogunlowo) but here I am marveling! So where’s the joy in all of this? What’s the point of it all? You see, the way I see it, the more obvious it is that happiness cannot be found in(and would never ever be found in) external events and circumstances, accumulation of wealth, property or status, the more readily it is for us to reassess how we see and define happiness. Okay, I will admit for the 10,000th time, the sheer joy of being alive is a miracle. Not just the personal miracle of acknowledging the ‘wow, that I am still alive is a miracle’. I mean, the fact that an aliveness happens: that things have life, that things have expression, that humans can reflect, that plants can grow, that matter vibrates, my gosh…it is a darn miracle. It is the most fantastic mystery. It is the freakiest most brilliant magic! Yet being alive in the physical sense is just a micro-aspect of Aliveness as a whole. I look at this aliveness of form, the aliveness of the character called Seye as the substantiation of something else that’s more …alive— another conjoined Aliveness that is itself pure potentiality. I see it in the way a fire is already alive. But gunpowder is raw potential waiting to happen. Or how a lightbulb is the substantiation of electricity but raw electricity is pure potential. It turns out I’m not a light bulb. It turns out I believed myself to be a beautiful glassy lightbulb with colors different than others and similar to some others. I then explored and realized I am in fact electricy. And in finding out I am electricity, I also realized you are also not a lightbulb. You are in fact the same electricity that I am. And so, in knowing this, the relative sense of happiness, my relationship with happiness that is sparked by attention, recognition, ambition, success, vitality, ...all of these things are clearly seen as ebbs and flows that have absolutely no truth in them. They do point to truth, I would admit. I do not deny their signaling. You see, external treats are really a relaxation into the sense of self-sufficiency, a wink-wink-nudge-nudge at what already is the underlying truth to them. They do not last because the moment our needs are met, the moment the thirst is quenched, another sense of lack arises again. Wait, tell me where I am wrong here?! Isn’t it obvious that the moment we get that degree, we suddenly see how important it is to get the next higher degree? Or when we buy that new car, the one we have been wishing for all along, our joy lasts a few more hours, days or months and suddenly we realize we should have gotten the other one. Or when we finally land that dream job, a few more months passing by, we then start to recognize the dysfunction that exists in the job and start getting seduced by another job out there that could have been better? What, oh what, is the nature of this contraction if not a signaling to that which does not contract, that which is self-contained, self-sufficient, self-sustained?It seems obvious to me then, that when we truly and genuinely seek, through contemplation, we find. At first, our thirst would temporarily be quenched. This is where we often stop. This is where all the mindfulness crowd ends. We suddenly realize that free tool that helps with sleep, confidence, mental wellbeing and so we think that’s the destination. But when we fully drink, then we would thirst no more. Outer pleasantries, achieved goals, outward successes become the icing on the cake leaving nothing to hold too firmly to. Terrible events do not stop. Gosh, they don’t. Turns out they are part of the package They are part of the package— you know, you can’t have the heads of the coin without the tails. From my current viewpoint, the rather difficult aspects of living the human life become something we also don’t hold tightly to. Why? Because the whole thing....every part of it is part of the divine play. Why enjoy that one scene and not the other. When the curtain closes, and it surely will, we would marvel at all the beautiful characters, the plot, the believable costumes we all have been wearing. They were well done. We may suddenly see there was no ‘we’, there was no ‘us’, no enemies, no friends. No dictator nor subjugates, no parents and children, no man no woman. There no longer exists the branches, as each individual branch falls to the ground in return. There then is only the Vine and we are it. Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. That way, you support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

In conversations with my more intimate friends, when we share the difficult experiences we face, the more dense matters of being alive in society, it is not uncommon for me to share what I have found to be the ultimate stance of our existence in this plain of experience: the posture of surrender. Surrender, it seems clear to me is the only practice that this incarnation, this instance of being has been called to do over and over again.“When you say surrender, what are you surrendering to?” My friends would ask as a follow up. I explain and quite expectantly wait for the next question which never fails to proceed. “How do you surrender?”I ask them, as I suggest now, to look when the mind is not stirred up, when the mind is not reaching, not resisting, not hunting for comfort, distraction, productivity, or relief. In such a moment, you may notice this if you can come to terms with this simple fact: you didn’t choose your place of birth, your race, your gender, your metabolic rate, your preferences for ogbono over waffles, how your tongue rolls or how your pinky and ring finger are not separable when you spread your hands wide enough. Physics has felt more boring to you than art and so being an aeronautic engineer would totally bore the hell out of you? And nothing you could do could change this orientation. Isn’t it incredibly obvious and bewildering that you didn’t choose any of these aspects of manifestation? If we could look long and hard enough at this, would we not find it easy to see that our being is in fact not ours? (So whose is it? Ah! Wrong question! Keep searching!) This being was not authored by a personal hand. And yet a sense of authorship appears. A sense of control. A sense of separation. Where does it arise, if not from thought?Is it not our thoughts that rise up to claim ownership of our destinies, mistakes and inadequacies? Is it not our thoughts that somehow rise up in times of success, to claim that it was indeed our(its) hardwork, our(its) morality and our(its) own doing that resulted in whatever acheivements and successes we take pride in? Maybe, just maybe there has been something else working in the background all along! Something that moves all things. Let’s call it Grace, for the sake of this essay. It is this Grace that our personal minds claim as its own doing. Yet, our bodies live, life unfolds spontaneously. Our thoughts arriving afterward to sign its name at the bottom. Maybe when we drop the sense of personal achievement(the ‘I’ thought) and see that we are always being done, then we can truly “consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spoil: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the filed, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” Is it not when we surrender to living and being that we get the opportunity to see what the Tao had been saying all along? In Tao Te Ching(48), it says, “when you arrive at non-action, nothing will be left undone’. In Tao Te Ching(2), it writes, “The Master can act without doing anything, and teach without saying a word. Things come her way and she does not stop them; things leave and she lets them go. She has without possessing and acts without any expectations. When her work is done, she takes no credit. That is why it will last forever”. When surrender happens, we see that living moves forward without need for commentary. Being stands unfiltered, unadulterated. And this has absolutely nothing to do with belief. It is also not some kind of strategy or coping mechanism. It is clear seeing. To hold this knowing without turning it into a religious view, to rest in it without claiming it as a technique, that posture is surrender. Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading this! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. That way, you support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

One of the most challenging invitations of this human life for all of us is or would be the call to intimacy. We often limit the call to intimacy to an outward experience like the sometimes clumsy dance of physical and emotional connection within and without our relationships. We learn to navigate the landscapes of a partner’s heart, we learn to build bridges of trust, and to find shelter in mutual understanding. This external intimacy is a world of vibrant, primary colors: the bright red of passion, the sunny yellow of shared joy, the deep blue of sorrowful empathy. It is essential, beautiful, and a universe unto itself.And yet, there is a deeper, quieter, and far more radical intimacy that awaits all of us. It does not require another person. Instead it requires a sincere willingness to turn our ‘looking’ inward. This, my friend, is the intimacy with the raw, uncurated self, the journey into an inner room most of us hvae kept locked and unvisited most of our lives. This is where the colors become muted, subtle, and infinitely more complex.Entering this room requires a unique kind of courage. It asks for a relentless, moment-to-moment candidness. To enter this space is to agree to be utterly, uncompromisingly naked with one’s self. On this table, we must place everything we carry: our fears, our joys, the fragile globe of dreams; the heavy leaden weight of our shame; the shimmering, gossamer threads of our hopes; the cold, jagged stones of any type of guilt. We must lay them all out, side by side, under a clear and steady light of pure unbiased observation. This, is practice! The Practice. It is not a one-time confession or a touch-and-done situation. It calls for a daily appointment. It is the practice of sitting in that room, with the door closed to the world’s demands and noise, and lovingly acknowledging every piece of ourselves on that table, on that altar. In that room, we must learn to hold the splintered fragments of our secret fears with the same tenderness we give to our most cherished aspirations. We must see the beauty in the intricate patterns of our ,what we thought was our brokenness and the light that glints off the sharp edges of regret. It is to turn to the unconditional self-acceptance that feels, at first, like an impossible feat.In the sustained silence of this naked room, as we continue to sit with the “packages” of identity: the hopes, the fears, the stories we tell ourselves, we begin to notice the space between them. We begin to notice the quiet hum of the room itself. We become suddenly aware of the quality of the light that illuminates everything without any darn preferences. When we can face ourselves so squarely that we see the complete, transparent emptiness at our core: the sky-like nature that holds the clouds of thoughts and feelings, a monumental shift seems to occur. It is here that God seems to step in.But oh, God didn’t step in from an entrance. This is not the “visitation from a distant deity who was waiting for you to become sufficiently pure or open”. No, it is a grand and breathtaking noticing. It is the wave, in the midst of its rising and falling, finally realizing that its very substance is the ocean. It is the sudden, earth-shattering recognition that our own fundamental being and the Being of God were never, for a single moment, separate.The room, the table, the light were not mere metaphors for a space inside. We see clearly then that we indeed are the Room: the silent, aware space in which all of life happens.And the packages on the table? The hopes and dreams, the aspirations and fears, the shame and guilt? We see them for what they truly are: mere objects. It becomes so incredibly laughable to see they are objects that we glued ourselves to. We begin to see that they all are experiences that can be picked up, examined, and even set down. They are clouds passing through the vast, open sky of Awareness. This is the vibrant intimacy that is painted in muted colors. An intimacy that’s not loud or dramatic. It’s one that’s quiet, unwavering. It’s the peace that comes from finally seeing that our mistaken self was the temporary character in the story and who we are is the silent, loving awareness that witnesses the entire play! It is the discovery that the most profound love affair we will ever have is with the boundless, divine space that we have always been. Life feels intimate without intensity. Sacred without effort. Ordinary without loss.Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. That way, you support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

You know that chair the laundry sits on? That chair! YOU KNOW THE ONE! Okay…if you don’t have the chair, you know someone who does! It’s that chair you dump clothes and things you plan to deal with later. Those clothes you wore once or the ones you might wear again later. The clothes you tested out but were too tight or didn’t match but you were in a hurry so you just dumped them on THE chair. The chair that holds the clothes you regret wearing. It’s the chair that now houses the clothes that came out of the dryer but you have no strength to fold! It’s the chair those clothes now permanently sit on! The chair of intention and postponement. The monument to the feeling of ‘not quite being caught up’. You know what I mean! Oh, I know this very chair of mine. For this exploration, we will use this chair as our guiding metaphor. Two weeks ago, I had a very important interview that I had been anticipating for an entire month. During that waiting period, my literal hold-everything chair carried the weight of my domestic messiness. I postponed folding, sorting, and tending to small chores because my attention was quietly occupied elsewhere. After this really high stake interview, I came home and lay down to rest. What followed was the deepest nap I have had in years. When I woke, still enjoying the residue of that rest, something became clear. There had been a powerful buildup of anticipation surrounding the interview that I had not consciously noticed. Once it was over, the release of that tension showed itself in the quality of my sleep. That moment brought the chair metaphor into sharp focus. I had my inner chair filled with piles and piles of laundry. With the conclusion of this interview, I had emptied the contents of my inner chair. How heavy are our inner chairs, and how often do we tend to the laundry?We sometimes call this chair and its content our personality, our responsibility, our history, our truth. Yet it is only laundry. A collection of moments(and things) waiting to be washed in attention and folded into clarity. Nothing more. The mind builds the chair. Our thoughts gather as piles of old stories, future plans, opinions we have not tested, fears we have rehearsed and then settle them on that chair of mind only because there is space for them to sit. And then the pile grows. Little by little, the pile grows. Soon it feels like a burden. Soon the weight feels like identity. Sometimes we look at the heap and say ‘this is who I am’, ‘this is what I have become’. We forget the heap is made of moments that arrived, stayed too long, and never asked to define us. The heap, just content that wants to be let go of. When we take time to gently examine this inner chair, the whole structure begins to soften. Soon enough, we see that the stories we held on the chair begin to show their seams. The fears show their age. The opinions show how provisional they are and what once felt like a solid self becomes the loose fabric of impressions. The act of actually ‘seeing’ is what creates space. Within the space, we can tell the difference between what is true and what is habitual. It becomes easier to sense the difference between lived presence and accumulated clothing. The more we look, the lighter the chair becomes. The more we question, the less we feel owned by the pile. And the chair itself transformed…and so even the metaphor. In the wake of my past crucial interview and personally exploring how metaphors can be an excellent tool for practicing this inner knowing, I see how examining our metaphoric pile, not from analysis but from the curiosity, takes us into a different expression of experience. By that, I will explain through an exercise that could help is examine the texture of our botherance— the clothes on the chair. We can also do this exercise as a way to sharpen perception, the seat of the right brain’s hemisphere. You see, most of us lead with a strong left-brain orientation which leads to our thought processes being more linear and analytical. To such minds, this exercise may feel strange or pointless at first. That is useful because, paradoxically, the stranger it feels, the more it loosens the grip of habitual analysis. The right brain works through imagery, sensation, intuition, and spacious awareness. When you explore the qualities of your inner state, you bridge both sides. You train the mind to perceive in more than one direction. You teach yourself to feel rather than explain. You give the chair a chance to be seen with fresh eyes. And once the chair is seen clearly, the weight of the pile begins to fall apart on its own.Before we go to the guided meditation(which is included in the voice-over, or if you care, you can find it on my YouTube), I’d like for you to take a few seconds to get quieter to notice what’s happening in your inner space. Notice there is movement of thoughts, activity, palsations etc inside of you. Now ask these crazy questions: if they had speed, how fast do they move? Perhaps, they are slow vibrations, slow movements or fast rumination? Perhaps, there’s a sense of confusion about what I am even asking. Notice how fast or slow this sense of confusion appears? If your inner state had a texture, what texture would it be? Rough? Smooth? Coarse? Sharp? Dense? Loose? If all went well, these are the textures of ‘clothing’ on the chair of the localized mind. You are not judging anything but instead, naming the quality of the moment. You have mapped the surface of your inner pile. We will use this exploration in the guided meditation. You are practically exercising the right hemisphere and cutting out of the habitual thinking process. But before we go, I offer up a treasure to hold on for contemplation. The treasure is a reframing of the chair metaphor. What if the chair becomes the Universe, the ground of ALL THINGS? What if we are the ones who can sit there. What if we can let our lives rest on something far more stable than our thoughts? What if I can allow myself to remember the last sentence? The chair becomes the presence that holds all experience without strain. We rest as the one who is held. We melt into the chair, becoming one with the chair. What, oh what, can be wrong with anything?Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

I am no stranger to the emotion of fear. Sometimes life events would rise to unearth energetic residues within me, and then sometimes I resist what life is presenting and suffer even more. Sometimes, all that is there to do is see what’s going on under the hood. In observing today about what was showing up for me, I thought to share a reflection from the Skanda Purana, one of the Mahāpurāṇas. If you’re like me a couple of years ago, your question would have been ‘what the heck is that?’ You see, Hindu imagery used to lowkey terrify me. I mean, a blue woman with a necklace of skulls? Or a creature with a man’s body, an elephant’s head, and way too many hands? Don’t even get me started on the monkey-faced warriors or the pale figures draped in heavy flower garlands. It wasn’t just Hindu iconography. Believe it or not, even the illustrations in the Jehovah’s Witness My Book of Bible Stories— as polished and colorful as they were, also made me uneasy. Now that I think about it, Greek mythic images didn’t seem to faze me as much. Who knows why? I suspet it’s because we tend to carry those greek stories with a secular lens; making them feel safer with the triumphant character and strength and vigor of figures like Zeus. Or let’s be honest, maybe I was more comfortable because these were just Western mythic stories. The last three years or so have allowed me to revel in the wisdom of these traditions as opposed to putting them far at arms length. As my practice has deepened, I’ve realized that objects, concepts, and ideas aren’t as solid, objective and true as I once thought. The rigid form that I used to hold of them no longer holds like before. Instead, everything seen and perceived is obvious to me to be bendable. Like Play-Doh, things have become something to be held, molded, sculpted, and put down just for the fun of it.Hindu tradition, like any tradition of old, is obviously baked in myth. It turns out the gods and symbols aren’t necessarily meant to be concrete, objective, literal figures, but representations of our earthly energetic experiences. When we look at mythology this way, the stories give the mind something to suck on like a lollipop…keeping the inner child happy and occupied. And for the practitioner, the seeker, they provide a way to make sense of experiences that simply aren’t grounded in matter. No experience, it turns out is what it looks like. Now, if you were to see your experience from the lens of archetypes and stories, they will definitely take shape. And so today, for this post, I would love to introduce a story from the Mahāpurāṇas. The story of Skanda Purana. If you don’t already know, the Mahāpurāṇas are a massive ‘spiritual-biographical’ collection of ancient Hindu texts that mix mythology, theology, geography, moral teachings and devotional stories. The story of Skanda(or also called Kartikeya) is one of the 18 major puranas in this Mahāpurāṇas which exploits the teachings of Shiva(who for anyone coming from the Christian thought carries the attributes and conception of the Abrahamic God). Okay, so stay with me here for a second and then we will go into the contemplative reflections of this story in relation with fear as I am turning this into. So, in the text, the demon Tarakasura had become so unstoppable. Part of the reasons was he was allowed to cause havoc and perform severe austerities using the advantage he had from a ‘loop hole’ in his right to existence. Now, if you are coming from the Christian or Western school of thought, see this figure the way you’d see the mythical Satan figure. The unfortunate loophole in getting rid of him was that he could only be killed by the son of Shiva. Tarakasura, was the perfect trouble maker. This was like a Loki(if you turn to Greek mythology) Why was he the perfect trouble maker? Did you ask why? Well, it was because Shiva was so deep in meditation. He was gone into meditative absorption for years, centuries, etc. Shiva was not interested in marriage, sex and children. In this ascetic withdrawal, he seemed to be outside the world and all its affairs. So this was perfect for Taraka! It meant for him, ‘No son of Shiva, no death for me’. So he terrorized the worlds and none of the gods could stop him. Until they also realized the loophole. The only way they were going to restore balance was to actually find a way for Shiva to have this son.They had to awaken Shiva from austerity and unite him with Parvati, Shiva’s consort. Well, Parvati is not a ‘wife’ in the traditional sense. Converting our mythic image to what she represents energetically, she’s the other side of divine polarity. She represents energy, manifestation, vitality, the movement of life, the impulse toward connection, the play of form and all the things you could associate with the Holy Spirit(if you’re coming from the Christain faith tradition). In the sense of oneness, you could see Shiva as stillness and Parvati as the creative power that moves from that stillness. Or if you see Shiva as the sky, Parvati is the weather. If Shiva is the silent witness, Parvati si the dance of experience. Get the point? So the gods and the universe conspired to bring Shiva and Parvati together. Their union, the union of both poles(in Taoism, see it as the yin and yang coming together) beocmes the joining of pure consciousness with creative energy. This becomes clarity that moves. This becomes an explosive spark. Shiva’s seed became six sparks. The sparks landed on a lake and six celestial mothers nurtured each spark into children. Parvati arrived, saw the six children and then embraced them. In her embrace, they merged into one being with six heads.Now, in several classical interpretations across Tamil, Sanskrit and tantric traditions there is one consistent thread to what the six heads represent. Each head sees a different angle of reality. You see, our human vision in one-directional while divine clarity is multi-directional. The one head sees outward. It is the awareness of the world, appearances, the concrete facts of experience. The second sees inward. It is awareness of what I would describe as the interior world: the omvements of mind, emotion and identity. The third head sees the back/the past. It is the awareness of the patterns that have shaped us, the causal threads that produced this moment. The fourth head sees the future. It is aware of consequences, trajectories and the possible directions of life. The fifth head sees above, it is the awareness of the larger whole, the transpersonal, the absolute vantage. Lastly, the sixth head is the awareness of the roots, the foundations, the hidden forces under the surface.When they all come together as Skanda, they become one integrated vision, not fragmented selfhood or splintered attention. They become just one clear seeing, as I often express here. In other words, six heads become one awarness.So why is this story meaningful?Remember there was Tarakasura who was this demon that was creating chaos and unrest. The solution to the problem was his annihilation by the son of Shiva, who was now Kartikeya/Skanda, the 6 headed man.So Kartikeya goes to battle. He’s young, fiery, overflowing with focus. But at one point, in battle together with the devas(or the other gods), they all panic. The battle looks hopeless and they start to flee. Kartikeya does something important! He stops running. He turns towared the fight, picks up the spear and pierces through. In many traditons this piercing through is the integration of all six heads.Now what’s the meaningfulness and relevance of this to our situations? It seems when we stop running from discomfort, picking up the spear of clarity and face what stands before us, then we are transformed. Oh, remember the mythic story of Moses? When he stood in front of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army racing behind, almost catching up. He prayed to God! God please save us? What was God’s response? Why are you praying to me? Yes, that’s what Exodus literally says happened. God then says “What do you have in your hands???”The spear of clarity is what we often need. We only have to pick it up and face that which stands before us. In the story each head represents a part of the mind that usually gets scared and overwhelmed. When they merge, it becomes like the fire of Shiva and Pravati.* One part no longer hides from the world* One part no longer hides from the self* One part no longer clings to the past* One part no longer imagines the future in fear* One part no longer forgets the divine vantage.* One part no longer forgets the ground.When these six stop being fragmented, the battle is no longer a threat but what is simple here. It becomes total integral seeing. The Desert Fathers, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, they all talked about the single eye. That’s the inner clarity here. Even Meister Eckhart says ‘what you turn away from stays with you’. Kartikeya shows the same logic. When the mind stops scattering, courage rises.In this mythical story, we can equate Shiva as the ground of being and Parvati the movement of grace in life. The devas are the swirl of fears, confusion, and the sense of losing control that rise up in us when life feels overwhelming. Their plea for help mirrors what happens inside when our own inner world cries out for steadiness. And what is born from that plea? What emerges is Kartikeya, the one who looks in all six directions without flinching. The one who stops running. The one who picks up the spear of clarity. The story says describes this so simply and so fiercely all at the same time. Fear does not dissolve because we pray harder.Fear dissolves when the scattered parts of seeing stop pulling away from each other. The moment Kartikeya turns back toward the battle and lifts the spear is the exact moment Moses hears, “What do you have in your hand?” Both stories point to the same insight. The answer is not elsewhere. The answer is the clarity you already hold but have not picked up. The answer is within. It seems obvious that with the the six directions of seeing folding into one, courage stops being something one has to manufacture with the sign of the cross and pleading the blood of jesus all over the place. It becomes what remains when nothing in us runs.Edit: I didn’t mention that Kartikeya rode a peacock. I wish I could talk more about that! Integration promptsI created these 6 prompts from this reflection to ask when the six ways of seeing feel scattered, perhaps these could bring them back together through clear seeing!• What part of me is running, and what happens if I stop with it for one breath?• What is the spear of clarity in my hand right now?• What becomes simple when I stop arguing with the moment?• What is fear protecting, and can I thank it before I move forward?• What action arises when I look in all directions at once?• What becomes obvious when I stop hiding from the world and stop hiding from myself?Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. That way you support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Friends, a lot has been moving in my personal space. Life has been full! From waiting for my body to heal from a flu to accepting the wishes from friends on my birthday to preparing for a critical appointment… life has been full! This just means my posting has been slower. Today I am hosting friends for Friendsgiving at mine—which means practicing surrender…for someone who would rather be secluded. Before the noise starts, I wanted to share something small. Something to mule over.You know the most obvious, undebatable fact of our entire lives is this: That We Are! It is the Mystery at the center of everything. We do not need a special tradition to point us to it. We do not even need a new practice. We do not need a new conclusion. The most obvious thing in our whole lives is this simple fact. That is it.We are.We ‘exist’. We are conscious. What that means, all of the definitions and labels for consciousness and what we are is totally unimportant but the sense feeling of the obviousness of this fact. This knowing does not need a story. It does not need a fresh idea. It is enough to notice the sheer obviousness of this are-ness. But what’s the consequence of this knowledge? If we stay with it and let attention settle into it, something shifts. Well, at least it becomes so totally obvious how miraculous everything is. In that noticing, everything seems to quiet down. The daily pressures soft. The sense of being a separate person with a problem(or problems) loosens. In that softening there is wonder. In that wonder there is joy.And I am not referring to the sugar-coated joy that denies pain. It includes pain. It is a quieter type of joy. A joy that lives even when life feels tense or broken.A joy that does not depend on outcomes.This is what the sages have spoken about again and again, each in their own way. Rumi whispered it when he said, “Look past your thoughts so you can drink the pure wine of silence.” Meister Eckhart pointed to it when he said, “There is something in the soul that is unmovable, a simple stillness that no storm can touch.” Richard Rohr described the same truth when he said, “Everything belongs, even the parts you fear, because all things rest in God(as God)”.Different voices. One truth. Right here. Right now.Friends, think about this. Beneath our roles and our thoughts and our worries, something steady holds everything. Something simple. Something without edges. Something without a name. It is there before our next breath. It is there after your next thought. It is not hiding.Today, mule over it. Don’t even do it with effort. Just notice! Just notice!! Let the Mystery reveal itself in the middle of your day. In the kitchen noise, on the bus, on the barber’s chair, in laughter. Or in the small irritations. Yes, even in that! In the quiet moments when we step aside for a second. Notice this ‘weirdness’. I use weirdness to describe this Unknown! Notice that this, whatever ‘this’ is, was there before we picked up the identity of ‘self’. It is the one thing in our lives that does not move.And so I extend my wishes to you too, Happy Friendsgiving.I am grateful you read this at all!Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. That way, you support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

In the after math of an ecstatic explosion of a meditation session yesterday, I quickly penned a reflection in verse. It was this: that i can walk is an absolute miracle, my left leg unsure where we go, the right coming along for the ride, my belly bellies and my crotch crutches, my nose knows and my ears hear. my beard itches and my pinky wishes. that i can laugh is a mystery, sounds leaping free from, somewhere wordless. that i cry is absurdly beautiful, water finding its way down my face, exploring what it means to kiss a cheek so loveable and also backed by the soundtrack of laughter. don’t you see that none of this makes any sense? this living!My short write-up seemed to have been the sweet seed of an earlier journal entry that I intended sharing here a few days ago— a reflection on the nature and wonder of appearances that show up in our lives moment by moment. Doesn’t it also feel you with sheer wonder to notice that we are? That anything is? It does not matter if what shows up for us are wrapped in good emotions or bad ones. That they exist is just utter wonder! You see, some of my day-to-day experiences take the shape of individual fragments that wear very ordinary disguises yet have the incredible opportunities for practice and the integration of that which is so darn obvious. And this obviousness is what I want to share today for practice. Okay, okay, here’s what I mean: just the other day what appeared was the strained relationship with a friend I had been in conversation with. I had stated my position on something they objected to. This event was followed by a political conversation with yet another friend who had very strong opinions about the lives of an oppressed population. The conversation being another appearance on this screen of consciousness left my chest slightly tense. In another instance I had to deal with an immigration update that very naturally created stress in this body. Afterward, there was another dull ache as I watched a business graph lean steadily downward. Ordinarily, these situations follow the natural path for how our experiences unfold— one issue to the next, one celebration, one sad news, a peaceful moment and then another upheaval. Each situation, I clearly see now, is a door, a tremor in stillness that is calling attention to where the idea of “I” tries to hold its ground. Like everything else, these have become thrilling springboards for my daily practice. And the practice is not for fixing anything, but in learning how to see. What falls out of this seeing is a strange and total enjoyment of being. A freedom that cannot be fully articulated. When we stare deeply at what disturbs us without running, without defending the “thing” seems to melt. The edges blur. The story unravels. The metaphor to describe this is how if you were reading a novel and suddenly pulled out of the story you’re reading and start to see the words that you’re reading. For a moment it becomes clear that the story is made up and the words are just words arranged one after the other to create meaning. Now, of course, we do not deny the story we are reading as false. We only see that it’s created and made sense of through our perceptual filters. So also, all of experience. We are able to see how they are shaped by clearly looking at them. What remains is the same spacious awareness that was always there, quietly watching.The prompt for the contemplative practice that I will share today is asking ‘What is this?’ as we look through each notable fragment of our experience. The way I see it here, to ask What is this? is not to analyze the sitaution theoretically. It is to wonder. It is to turn the light of awareness toward the experience itself rather than the story about it, gently moving away from the stories we are living in to the nature of experience itself. Don’t you see that we spend so much of our lives trying to fix or escape what arises. But each appearance, pleasant or painful, may in fact be an invitation to see through the veil, to awaken to wonder.When someone criticizes us. When we feel lost. When joy bursts through unexpectedly. When our plans fall apart. The invitation here is to figure out What is this? What is this moment made of, before it is given a name? When we’re angry, we think we’re angry at something. When we’re afraid, we think we’re afraid of something. Could it be that if we paused and asked What is this? the shape of the emotion softens. We begin to sense the field in which all emotions appear. It’s like standing at the edge of a lake and suddenly realizing that the ripples, no matter how turbulent, are never separate from the water. So also, this prompt is not about labeling or getting a psychological or spiritual explanation. It’s about pure experience, unfiltered, noticed right before thought claims ownership. It also does not seek for the answer to the question “Why is this happening?” but “What is this presence, right now, that is aware of what’s happening?” Maybe each event in our lives is not happening to us but as us. The breakup, the delay, the health scare, the laughter of a friend, the birth of a beautiful baby, the promotion at the job, the stubbed toe, all of it is the same light refracting through different forms. If we follow this thread far enough, it leads back to the source. We may find that our inquiry peels away the layers of identity, habit, and resistance until there is nothing left to stand apart from what is seen. And then the realization may dawn on us: there was never really anything to deal with, only something to see. And maybe that is what it means to see God.Everything we meet is an opening. Every sensation, every thought, every encounter, a mirror showing us the face of what we truly are. And the key to seeing it is simple, almost childlike curiosity.What is this?Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

This episode explores the paradox that life is both benevolent and brutal. From lions suffocating prey, wasps laying eggs in living hosts, and dolphins killing for play, to the deep grief of a mother losing her child, we see that nature’s intelligence is not sentimental. It destroys and renews in the same motion. Through these reflections, I look at how the mind resists this truth by grasping for control, trying to manage what was never ours to manage. Trusting life is not passivity; it’s remembering that life has always taken care of itself. The same force that moves the planets moves your breath. The invitation is to relax—in body, in mind—and see that what remains is presence. Life takes care of life. Always has. Always will. And none of it is your business. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Believe it or not, I used to be one of those toxic productivity coaches. I’d set goals, crush them, and then preach about how others could do the same. I even taught people how to “own their mornings.” Oh, I have a book called Good Morning: How To Win Your Day(still on Amazon). But behind the curtain, I was quietly shaming myself every night, wondering why some of my to-dos kept sneaking onto the next day’s list. These days, life laughs at my plans more than I do. Just this very afternoon, I had dinner clearly figured out—Nigerian-style rice, which meant having some good ata-dindin with dodo(plantains), all ingredients neatly scheduled for a Publix delivery. Yet, as I write this, I’m almost certain my dinner plans are down the drain. Yesterday was no different. I drove to the dealership for a simple oil change. Simple oil change! I budgeted seventy dollars, and even padded it with an extra twenty, just in case the economy and Trump tarriffs had other plans for my wallet. Well, I walked out of the dealership without my car and with a $3,000 invoice for “discovered damages.” My gosh! Don’t these surprises just keep coming? But that’s the thing: there’s absolutely nothing that’s certain. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Yet, we want to somehow peg things into the ground to give it as much certainty. And lately, this has emerged into one of the most beautiful practices for me— an adoration of the Unknowing. You see, Not knowing is by itself a type of prayer. It is the quiet turning of the mind toward what it cannot grasp. Don’t you see that now, more than ever, we live most days reaching for understanding, rushing to tie loose ends, and stacking answers like bricks to make our lives feel solid. Yet, in most of our experiences, when we feel the most alive, it is when the mind pauses, when we gosh at the beautiful pastels of the skies, or when we are tickled by the laughter of a baby, or when we frozen from the kiss of a lover. In these times of short freezes, certainty dissolves and we are opened up to something vast, tender and yet wild. By the general nature of the mind, it seeks knowledge. It longs to KNOW. It believes knowledge will secure it, that understanding will complete it, that explanations will relieve it. It chases explanations the way a child chases butterflies- never still long enough to notice the air itself. And yet, every answer it finds leads to another question, and soon the pursuit itself becomes a cage. Tell me you have not yet clearly seen this! Tell me! And so, the more we know, the more we defend our knowing. The more we defend our knowing, the less we see.So the practice of Not Knowing, this(what I will now dub the Prayer of Not Knowing) is a call to intimacy with what unfolds as it unfolds without a need to force it our way. It means sitting with life without needing to define it. It means letting a sunset be light, not language. It means hearing someone’s pain and resisting the urge to fix it. It means trusting that reality is already whole without any labels. In not knowing, the mind loosens, the heart softens, and life shows itself as it is: unfolding, mysterious, kind. Now, I am not saying not to have wishes for what we want our lives to be like. Oh, no! There’s a fine line here if you can bend a bit lower to see what I am putting out here. It’s seeing that our wishes, preferences are also a part of this divine play that we can clearly honor. But it’s also knowing that in the fulfillment or not-fulfillment of them, what we are(whatever this that we are is) transcends even these desires. The sweetest spot in all experience lies here. It is in the bowing to what exceeds us and what we exceed. I swear, there is a quiet joy that comes when you realize you do not need to hold the world together. Even if you tried, you…could…never! We can rest in the Unknown and call it worship. We can let our questions be our songs. We can let silence be our teacher.When we stop clinging to answers, even for a moment, the world becomes spacious again. The trees are no longer “trees.” They are shimmering presences. The wind is no longer “air in motion.” It is this mysterious movement without explanation. We begin to see that we have never really known anything, and that this is not a failure but grace.To live in not knowing is to fall in love with the infinite. It is to live as wonder itself, humble, alive, and free. It is to trust God. Contemplative Exercise: The Practice of Not Knowing* Sit somewhere quiet. Let your body settle. Let your breath become natural. Do not try to focus on anything. Let attention rest as it is, open and unhurried. Feel the weight of your body on the chair or floor. Feel the gentle rhythm of breathing.* After a few minutes, notice how the mind wants to fill the space. It searches for meaning, something to do, something to conclude. It may even ask ‘what the heck is this exercise going to do’. Watch it reach for thoughts and explanations. Gently notice it’s behaviour and the subtle tension it carries. But notice that you are noticing.* Open your eyes and look around. See shapes and colors without calling them anything. Hear sounds without naming their source. Taste, smell, and feel without dividing experience into categories(for as long or short as you can). Allow perception to exist raw, before language. Notice how peaceful it is when you stop insisting on meaning.* Between one thought and the next, there is a small space(don’t overthink it). Rest there. That is not knowing. It is not confusing. It is awareness before it attaches. Stay a little longer each time you notice it. Let it expand like the light of dawn.* Now, whisper inwardly: “I do not need to know right now. All I have to be is here right now” Feel how freeing that is. This is the surrender I refer to. It’s surrender without defeat. It is reverence for Mystery itself. It is what it means to walk with God. * When you are ready, bring your attention back to your breath. Let gratitude arise for this unknowing that allows everything to be. * End with silence.Repeat this practice often. Over time, the Unknown becomes friend, and you can join me in practice as we become less demanding of certainty, living in the open sky of wonder.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! You can support my work by subscribing totally free.Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

A viral outcry over the death of Stranger Things’ Barb becomes the doorway to a deeper inquiry: why do we grieve fictional characters as if they were real—and how is that different from the “character” we call me?This reflection explores how our sense of self is stitched together from memory, emotion, and cultural archetypes—the achiever, the rebel, the caregiver, the cynic—none more real than the roles we mourn on screen. When we begin to see these identities as shifting performances on the stage of awareness, the grip of the ego softens.The piece closes with a contemplative exercise inviting you to witness the fluidity of your personas, to rest in the awareness that never changes, and to live with the lightness of knowing: what you truly are is not the character in the story, but the light that makes the story visible. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Episode Summary:A reflection on the futility and beauty of seeking. How even the small, ordinary moments—like not wanting to get out of bed, or stubbing a toe—can open portals to deeper awareness. The episode explores how the search for happiness dissolves into the realization that joy was never missing, and how pain itself becomes an offering to love.Key Themes:The body as a mirror for unprocessed emotionThe strange permission to suffer consciouslyThe difference between happiness and joyThe exhaustion of the seeker and the simplicity that followsEvery struggle as an invitation to return to loveThe ordinariness of awakeningQuote Highlights:“Even in the unbearable pain of living, this too is permitted.”“Joy hides in the background, not concerned with happiness or its lack.”“The search dissolves like sugar in tea—what’s left is life tasting itself.”“Every ache is a doorway, every resistance an offering.”“The abyss of joy is not empty; it’s full—swallowing both the seeker and the sought.”"The Divine contemplating its own reflection" This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

A week ago, I found myself in the middle of a medical emergency. In one moment I was in meetings, sitting quietly in meditation, and moving through the day as usual. Minutes later my chest was heavy and my cognition slipped away. In that crisis I noticed something striking: while panic rose in the mind, something deeper remained unshaken, watching.This episode reflects on that experience and the insights that followed. I share how unpredictability reveals itself in daily life, how words fail in the face of reality, and how contemplative practice turns even emergencies into teachers.From there, I open up five contemplations:Stepping out of our narratives opens space for wonder.True love arises when the illusion of separation dissolves.Wisdom is found not in control, but in surrender.Fear guards illusions and dissolves when examined closely.Grace comes through aligning with the Tao, not struggling against life’s density.At the heart of it all is a simple truth: nothing needs to be known, nothing needs to be explained. Life itself is the practice. This podcast is an invitation to rest in that bewildering mystery, to see even fear and density as opportunities to wake up, and to slide more lightly through the unpredictability of living. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Episode NotesWhat if not knowing isn’t a problem, but the most honest ground we stand on? In this episode, I use a scene from Silo to explore the big question of why we are here—and why no story ever fully answers it. Beyond all the theories and meanings, one fact remains: we are. In this presence of “I am,” there’s a steadiness that doesn’t falter, even when everything else does. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

How do we love reality in all its messiness? With its crude edges, its weight of suffering, its unpredictability? How do we stay present with what is demanding, unclear, or painfully sharp?In this episode, I explore what it means to be in love with reality. Not as a sentimental idea, but as an act of surrender. It begins with a simple seeing: there is only this moment. Nothing else. Not yesterday’s stories, not tomorrow’s anticipation. Only this. And in this single moment, everything that arises also passes. A breath, a word, even our prayers vanish back into silence.What remains is the shock that anything happens at all. The fact of existence is the great Mystery. To love reality is to bow before that Mystery, to let go of grasping for comfort and resisting what hurts. It is to stop demanding explanations, and instead allow reality to be exactly as it is.This kind of love is intimacy. It is the recognition that you and reality are not two. Every whisper, every tear, every laugh is reality moving through you. Nothing stands apart. In this, the struggle falls away, and what remains is wonder. What remains is love.I close with a contemplative exercise I call Bowing to Mystery. It invites you into stillness, into seeing how appearances come and go, and into surrendering both clinging and aversion. Through this practice, you may sense that life is not happening to you but as you.This is the intimacy of being in love with reality. This is the face of God. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

In past reflections I wrote about The Sweet Sweetness That I Am and The Nectar of True Devotion. Today I want to take this further by sharing a practice that laces my experience with joy and mystery, even in the thick of life’s turbulence.James, the brother of Jesus, once wrote: count it all joy when you go through trials and tribulations. That line puzzled me for years. What joy can be counted in suffering? It can’t be about a distant heavenly reward. It must be something present here, now, in the very texture of living.This isn’t about escaping the dense grind of daily life. We still need practical tools, skills, and relationships. What I’m pointing to is a different way of seeing—one that makes the ordinary pulse with mystery.Think of the sea. On the surface, the waves are restless and loud. But when the diver slips beneath, everything changes. Stillness. Clarity. Serenity. That depth is always there. What if we learned to return to it more often?Over time, a shift happens. Like a fish living its whole life in water yet never recognizing water, we may realize that what we call God, awareness, or life itself is closer than close. Expressing itself as us, through us, in us. Appearing as our circumstances, then vanishing back into stillness—untouched by the turbulence.William Blake put it beautifully: If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear… as it is, Infinite.So how do we cleanse these doors? One path is jnana yoga, the way of self-inquiry. This episode has me read out the prompts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

In today’s episode, I share a story that begins with a small drama by a pond in my neighborhood: a duck, broken and abandoned, dropped off to fend for itself. What seemed like the end of its story turned into a lesson in trust, because of the unlikely care of a young girl named Michelina.From there, I reflect on what this duck’s survival has to say about our own anxieties in a time of layoffs, economic shifts, and technological upheaval. Watching birds at feeders reminded me of an old teaching: that life is more than food or clothing, and that the birds of the air, who neither sow nor reap, are still cared for.But I don’t shy away from the skeptic’s question: “Don’t some birds die of hunger or sickness?” They do. Yet the invitation of the teaching is not immunity from death, but freedom from worry. Birds don’t live crushed under imagined futures. They take what is given, move on when it is gone, and live inside providence.This episode is about that invitation — to live as they do. To trust enough to spread our wings each morning without demanding to know how the next seed will come. To see that sustenance has never been about control, but about recognizing the mercies that arrive, again and again. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

I share the story of an ordinary outdoor bench that became something extraordinary—a place of stillness, communion, and peace during the uncertainty of the pandemic. It was on this bench that I wrote, reflected, and connected with both neighbors and the Mystery itself.But as I prepared to leave my home after five years, I realized how easy it is to mistake the tool for the source, to confuse the object with the presence it points toward. The bench was never the peace. It was only a doorway into what is always here.This reflection is about benches in all our lives—the cushions, rituals, rhythms, and objects that serve us for a time, but are not the essence themselves.Listen in as I ask:How do we turn tools into idols without noticing?What happens when the objects we lean on are no longer there?Where do we look for the sacred when everything familiar is stripped away?The bench taught me what all benches teach: the Mystery is never in the object. The true portal is within, always open, wherever you are. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

This was written to be a contemplative read, and if you’re listening to this as a voice-over, remember to do so preferrably when not doing anything active. It would be more effective if you use this experientially and exploratively. The attempt of this exploration is to point you, the reader, to the experience of emptiness, where paradoxically a sense of fullness emerges. Emptiness? What is that? It truly doesn’t make any logical sense in a semantic sense. But perhaps, for this exploration we can go beyond the words to the experience of.So let’s explore emptiness and the emptying of one’s self. Ready?How did this land for you? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

What if the only thing you’ve ever truly known… is the fact that you are?In this contemplative episode, we explore the mystery of existence—not as a philosophical concept, but as the living fact that precedes every thought, identity, and story. Shay reflects on the nature of life as an unearned, unowned unfolding, drawing on experiences from his own practice of self-inquiry. Together, we examine four liberating recognitions: that life unfolds without management, that the idea of “others” is part of a shared dream, that stillness exposes the wild mind, and that awareness itself is boundless.This episode closes with a set of contemplative prompts to help deepen your own inquiry, along with a moving poem by Sophia Saira that resonates with the essence of the reflection.Bring a journal, take a walk, or just sit with the questions. You may not find answers—but you may find yourself.Timestamps:00:00 – Introduction: The Gift of Life02:14 – Life Unfolds Freely04:40 – Seeing “Others” in the Dream07:10 – The Mind’s Loops in Silence09:49 – Awareness as Boundlessness11:56 – Contemplative Prompts for Reflection12:45 – Poem: Dream by Sophia Saira This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

There was a time when the most captivating part of Noah’s Ark was the logistical absurdity of it all. How could anyone fit every species onto one boat? How did he find a pair of snow leopards—if he was somewhere near Mesopotamia? Did he go on a divine scavenger hunt for kangaroos? Was there really room for the insects, the microbes, the elephants, the entire symphony of living things? And if we take it literally, we’re left sorting through the rubble of impossible questions—geological contradictions, historical gymnastics, textual borrowings. After all, the Epic of Gilgamesh, so much older than Genesis, tells a flood story with strikingly similar bones: the divine warning, the building of a great vessel, animals paired and gathered, the dove sent out to find dry land, the eventual resting on a mountain. The debates were, for a time, delicious. But I later found them to be exhausting.From my experience, something remarkable happens when those arguments lose their flavor—when the mind, weary from sorting truth from fiction, right and wrong, history or non-history, when it grows quiet. In the stillness that lurks beneath belief and disbelief, the story(and all story) reveals another nature entirely. The story of Noah and the ark becomes less a question of history and more a reflection of what’s happening inside us, right now. It becomes a sacred metaphor, a map of dissolution— a story of return, wonder and …ponder. What if the flood is not about water at all, but about the great unmaking, the collapse of egoic identity when the structures of self begin to rot beneath their own weight? What if the ark is the quiet, indestructible refuge of awareness and not a ship? What if the animals are symbols of all our inner opposites, invited not to be tamed or chosen between, but brought aboard altogether? What if the voice that spoke to Noah wasn’t coming from the sky but from the silent depth within?Seen this way, the story doesn’t belong to a past world or ancient lineage. It belongs to consciousness itself. It belongs to you.Let us then enter this mythic story not as travelers exploring symbolism and not archaeologists digging for facts, as I set aside the impulse to prove or disprove, and instead open us up to the mirror this narrative quietly holds. Through the lens of nonduality, Noah’s Ark becomes a living parable of undoing, of abiding, and of awakening. It tells of the flood that comes for all of us, a story of a clearing of the illusion that we were ever separate from the sky, the sea, or the Self that carries us through them both. Well, maybe you’d see this was not about any earthly destruction. So we can look at even the name, Noah. Through a quick google search, the name is said to mean peaceful, or stillness in its masculine form. In the feminine it connotes ‘motion’. A clear dualistic paradigm just by the name. If I could interprete the symbol of Noah himself as the personal self, the individual character that plays with the world, in the world. Noah, embarks on a journey to build an ark that in the reverse sense only denotes awareness itself. Awareness being the unshaken container of all appearances. It doesn’t rescue Noah. It is infact Noah’s true nature. The ark engulfs all the animals, the animals being all expressions of duality , opposites in pairs(male and female, predator and prey), preserved within the field of awareness, not destroyed but transcended and included. This reminds me of Chapter 42 of the Tao Te Ching: The Tao gave birth to One.One gave birth to Two.Two gave birth to Three.Three gave birth to the ten thousand things. The Tao, the nameless gives form to the two(polarity, duality). The two become three(the harmonizing force of earth, heaven and humanity), the three birth 10,000 things. Ten thousand being the shorthand for all phenomena, all htings. And so, there was a flood that destroyed the earth, or you could read that as the fllod that was the symbol of desolution of form, identity and all grasped structures. This flood which lasts 40 days becomes a clear symbol of the full cycle of transformation. From christian scriptural narratives you can see the symbol clearly when you look at the 40 days that Moses spent on Sinai or the 40 years of the Israel in the wilderness or Elijah’s journey to Horeb. Or even Jesus’ fasting for 40 days in the wilderness. For any Jungian enthusiast, you can also relate 40 to represet the symbolic gestation period(40 weeks of human pregnancy). And so, in this 40 days for Noah(and his family), a past collapses. There’s no longer an old world. And there’s not yet a new world. In Dzogchen or Zen terms, it’s bardo— between two nothings. In this collapse, it’s clear that nothing is in anyone’s control. The ark has no steering, no horizon. Noah does not navigate anywhere. He totally surrenders. There’s no longer any efforting but an abidance. In this full cycle, this 40 days of nothing, there is an inner flood of undoing, an abiding in the Ark of Awareness, the waking up to newness. The getting high in the abidance of that which is greater than the identification with form until there’s a need to be embodied. And so the flood ends, Awareness has seen through illusion, the egoic structures are gone but clarity hasn’t stabilized yet. One floats in the quiet unknown. There’s just patience while there is still wetness and no ground, a surrender to the pace of Being. And so Noah sends a raven to find out if there’s land, the raven flies back and forth as the restless mind. Moses then sends the dove, the sign of peace retruning with an olive leaf. Were thoughts still grasping or was silence now yielding to harmony of life as it is? Could those be the symbol? Noah waits for dry land choicelessly as land takes form, as the newness of life emerges, as embodiment becomes gradual and so it is clear ‘old things are past away, behold all things become new’. Noah, the symbol of the identified embodied self, is brought to land to function as man, to live as man. And we are able to see that awakening does not perfect the individual but exposes the person as unreal. Noah gets drunk, naked and exposed. Oh, the subtle hint at the failure of a God that destroyed the earth because of the imperfection of man. Maybe his nakedness was truth without persona, maybe the wine he drank was the mystery of form re-entering awareness. And so Ham, one of Noah’s sons, sees Noah’s nakedness and tells others— the mind reacting to raw Being with judgement and shame. They cover up Noah, the way the mind tries to reclothe mystery in concepts. Haven’t you seen that the ego recoils from things it cannot contain? And so, the story goes on. Oh, what about those who did not enter the ark because of their unbelief? Why would we blame them? Why would we judge them? I would not enter a freaking boat because some guy tells me the whole world is going to be destroyed except I follow him into this boat with loads of animals. Maybe those individuals are ust a representation of consciousness that still clings to form, identity and separation. Their death is the falling away of untruth, like waves dissolving back into the ocean. Oh, illusion doesn’t really die. It only fails to hold reality. In discovering the illusion of form and duality, our true essence unbothered by the storms of life, engulfed in awareness— as awareness, the separate-created-identity of our Noah self, this story can be a contemplative jewel. So here are prompts for you!Contemplative PromptsWhat in me is being dismantled by life right now?What do I still try to keep afloat that wants to sink? Where is the part of me that never panicked, even in the storm?Am I willing to wait without resolution? To surrender without anchor?Can I trust the waters to recede on their own?What inner signal tells me it’s time to step out again?What parts of me are exposed after transformation?Can I let myself be seen without spiritual performance?What in me still resists the ark— still fights surrender?Do I judge those parts, or can I meet them as awareness too?Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. That way you support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

In the search for ultimate meaning(assuming one hasn’t short-circuited the journey by adopting someone else’s conclusions), we eventually run into paradoxes. I am talking about loads and loads of paradoxes. The rookie mistake is trying to resolve them. And the impulse to tie everything up in a neat bow is what strands many of us on the roadside of what is, in truth, an endless unfolding of experience with, to and in the Divine.In my experience, the first and possibly most disorienting paradox is this: in seeking the Divine, one finds oneself; and in finding oneself, one finds only the Divine. This paradox is swiftly followed by yet another: there is no true self to speak of at all. Only the true Self, the Divine, is. The mind, eager as always to grasp, asks, “Okay, but what do I do with this?” as if any of these paradoxes are a riddle to be solved. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

I am overjoyed when I remember that I'm alive. I am alive, just like you, in the most mysterious, boundaryless sense. And that Life, as such, never began and cannot possibly end. For if life did begin, at what point did it begin? Wouldn’t we have to locate the starting point? Was it the moment of birth? The moment of conception? The formation of stars? Of atoms? Of time itself? Of God? And if Life ends, like truly ends, then what is it that ends, and where does it go? If it did then it would not be life, it would fit the misunderstanding of Life being the opposite of death. If Life did end, it must leave to go somewhere else? No? If Life were truly the opposite of death, and this binary was a switch that flips from presence to absence, then death would somehow be the more constant state, the backdrop from which life springs forth temporarily. No? If we look carefully, we may see that death is only a story told from the perspective of form. Death is only associated with form! The assumption that death is a counterweight to life becomes clearly an assumption, a narrative hung loosely on transitions. Life, being this animating current, doesn't have an opposite. It simply is all that is. I am overjoyed when I remember that I am Life itself. No, not the ‘me’ that carries an identity, that spots a like and dislike, that files taxes, curates playlists or gets annoyed in traffic. Not the face in the mirror, or the sum of accumulated memories. Certainly not this body, lovely and worn, born on a gentle November morning. That could not be who I am. That would be the body being born, not me. What enlivens the body? What aerates every cell, what animates each glance and gesture— that is closer to what I am. And even that language blatantly fails because…where then does this animating life come from? Is that Life not who I am? Who we are? Sadly, this is not a comforting philosophy despite my overjoy in articulating this. That’s not the point. The point is recognizing directly how I am not(and you are not) a thing that is alive. You are Aliveness itself. I am overjoyed when I see clearly that the circumstances erupting and unfurling across the landscape of this living are nothing more than passing weather—fleeting expressions of what cannot be named. The so-called content of life, with all its laughter and tension, its schedules and surprises, is secondary. The miracle is not what happens. The miracle is that it happens at all. And it is all being seen. Pause for a second and split your noticing in two. There is the experience: the flood of thoughts, the bite of cold air, the dread before a meeting, the pleasure of silence. And then there is the Experiencer—the invisible, ever-present field to whom all these arise. Oh, go deeper, the Experiencer isn’t the one doing any of these things. The Experiencer is the one witnessing activities that may be labeled as passively or actively. The Experiencer witnesses without entanglement. The Experiencer is like a screen, experience is the movie. The screen is not affected by the movie. The movie shines on the screen. All phenomena—thoughts, sensations, emotions, actions they pass through like the flickie flickers of movies, but none stick. Not even the drama(all of my drama) or the story about what any of it means has any power to stain the Experiencer. And isn’t that… joy?I am overjoyed knowing that while nothing whatsoever matters, this very non-mattering is what allows for real choice. I can say, “this matters to me,” and pour myself into it. Not because I must, but because I may. It becomes an act of grace. It becomes my offering. It becomes my devotion to Life. I get to say yes to a thing and then give myself to it wholeheartedly, not to prove worth, not to secure identity, but because love plays in particulars. Oh, I’m overjoyed because everything now matters. The lotioning of my ashy elbows, the soft glance at a stranger, the letting go of a petty resentment, the reply to a spam caller, the protection of my calendar, the one hour quick visit to my friend at lunch break, the reply to that Teams message about something that’s not my business. Oh, it all matters! All of it, sanctified. The sacred is in no rush, and it misses nothing.These light and momentary trials—yes, even these, they fold into the symphony. They are notes in the great song of being, weightless in the hands of the One who sees without eyes, touches without hands, loves without condition. And so I rejoice, not in spite of the friction, but through it. This Joy is not me escaping. It is a returning. A return to the centerless center, to the place that was never lost, where nothing needs to be added, removed, or improved. Overjoyed, because I see there is no elsewhere to reach—only here, expanding, collapsing, dancing within itself. The world goes on spinning its tales, but I—what I truly am—am still. Unmoving. Unbound. Through time and space, I have always been. I am overjoyed because the roles I play—friend, lover, sibling, partner, coach, stranger—are like characters in a dream that I no longer confuse with the dreamer. The dream plays out, but I no longer need to edit the script(all that law-of-attraction b******t, all that fake-it-till-you-make-it, all that work-hard-so-you-can-leave-your-legacy). I can laugh in the middle of sorrow, rest inside of chaos, cry without interpretation. Oh sorrow comes! Chaos? That’s my last name. Crying! Oh, I can analyze the taste of my tears for you! I can forget, and then remember again, and the forgetting becomes part of the symphony too. There’s no failing. Only the movement of clouds.I am overjoyed because attention itself becomes worship. Not that worship! No not that fake ass worship where one bows to a separate God in a separate place, but a living, breathing intimacy. A kind of union. When I give my full presence to the cup of tea, the unwashed dish, the wordless hug, the difficult conversation—I am worshipping. I am lighting incense on the altar of this moment. And this moment is always enough. Yes, despite the aches and pains. And still—I am overjoyed. Even as sorrow sits beside me, uninvited but not unwelcome. She arrives like a fog that makes the morning quiet, softening the world into a hush. She brings nothing new. Only the echo of things I thought I had already wept for. Grief. Not the one that’s ounishment, but grief that is itself another cloak of presence. A different flavor of intimacy. I used to think sorrow was the thief of joy. But I see now they are siblings. Twins, even. One opens the door; the other walks through it. Joy stretches the heart wide, and sorrow fills it. Or perhaps it's the other way around. I can no longer tell. They each bow to the same altar, each carve the soul open so it can breathe more deeply. What joy teaches with laughter, sorrow teaches with silence. With the ache that has no clear name. I am overjoyed because I no longer flinch at the arrival of pain. I watch it. I breathe with it. I let it rest its tired head in my lap. Poor darling! Sometimes it howls. Sometimes it just wants to be seen. I do not try to fix it. I do not ask it to go. And in that, it begins to shimmer, not unlike joy. The same light, refracted.I am overjoyed because sorrow has made me more honest. It stripped away the performance. It humbled the part of me that thought it could manage the mystery. It taught me how to bow. Not in defeat, but in reverence. I bow to the unanswered questions. I bow to the tremble in my voice. I bow to the way my heart still opens, even after closing a thousand freaking times. Sorrow does not interrupt joy. It deepens it. It makes it less sugar, more soil. Joy, when it returns—and it always returns—comes with roots now. It no longer floats. It has weight. It knows the terrain. It has walked with grief and not tried to outrun her. It has sat in rooms that smelled of antiseptic and still remembered the color of sky. I am overjoyed because sorrow did not destroy me. It refined me. It showed me that what I truly am cannot be harmed. That even when everything else burns away—the plans, the expectations, the sense of how life should feel—something remains. Quiet. Vast. Undiminished. That is what I rest in. That is what I call joy.And so yes—bring sorrow. Bring joy. Bring boredom, confusion, awe. Let it all come. I will not push any of it away. I will live as the sky lives with its weather. Open. Spacious. Unafraid. And overjoyed.I am overjoyed because time softens. It doesn’t erase. It softens by being re-understood. Time no longer is the tyrant marching me toward death but a shimmering veil through which eternity moves. Oh, time is only present when there is movement! Eternity moves. What I thought was “my life” was just one way of carving a story from the infinite. I don’t have to hold it all together. I don’t even have to make sense. All of this doesn’t even have to make sense. The need to be significant dissolves like mist in morning sun. And what’s left is enough. More than enough.More than enough! That’s why I am overjoyed. This breath is proof. No, not proof of survival, but proof of presence. Of unarguable being. Of unnameable light. This breath, and this one, and this one. The body rises and falls. Sensations come and go. Thoughts stretch and scatter. And still, something remains. Something watches. Something is. And that something… is what I am.I am overjoyed because there is no arrival. No going to heaven, no going to hell, no going to paradise, no going to anything beyond this. And strangely, that’s the relief. That’s the punchline. That’s the punch to the chest. There is no finale, no curtains to close, no applause to wait for. Just a quiet yes that echoes through every ordinary moment. Yes to the socks on the floor. Yes to the ache in my knee. Yes to my 2000 unfinished projects, the weirdo that just texted me, the crooked painting. Yes to it all.Overjoyed, because even the question “Why am I overjoyed?” floats like a feather—held, loved, but never answered. Because the answer would be too small, unnecessary and beyond words. You know, when attention is pulled back into itself, it becomes easily seen that my joy is yours and yours mine, and that’s where we spring out of— joy! I thought to include this recording of Rob Bell. I was glad to be a part of the audience. Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you'd like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I'm grateful for your support in whatever capacity. Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

In this episode, I reflect on a heated phone call with a family member that unexpectedly opened a doorway into deeper inquiry. We explore how our constant mental tug-of-war—between what should have been and what shouldn’t have happened—pulls us away from the raw intelligence of what is. What if the moment isn’t wrong? What if presence is found not in fixing, but in resting with what unfolds? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Our everyday perception suggests a clear dualistic distinction: there's an "outside" world of solid objects and an "inside" self that observes and interacts with it. This sense of solidity is then reinforced by our experiences, where we feel like distinct entities moving through a concrete world. So we may think, “ I am here and you with all other things in the world are things that are apart/separate from me”. We may come to believe that the world is a set of fixed, permanent objects, with you being the subject, stand apart from it, observing, reacting, experiencing”. Our senses, truly the mind, creates this illusion of boundaries of inside versus outside. It’s a fascinating assumption that when seen through presents a different and dare I say, more enjoyable experience of living. For me, it started with a number of self-inquiry questions, one of which crumbled the idea of inside-outs and the non-solidity of reality. I will share a few notes about why this matters, particularly how this could lead to a better way of living and being. Of course through this we can make a slight tilt in the way we look at our mistaken belief that we are separate entities, and perhaps this might affect our emotional wellbeing, our understanding of devotion, and especially for me, the awe of being.What if reality isn’t what we think it is This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

For a second, let’s engage in this thought experiment. Let’s imagine you’re in a dream. I’m in it too. In your own dream! Remember that! It’s just you and I taking a walk on the streets of where-ever-the-heck dreams conjure up. We are having an existentialism conversation. I then pose a question to you, “What if you are not in your body, and you’re located somewhere totally different? Perhaps not even located in the dream at all!” You would probably argue with me, pointing out how you could be nowhere else apart from the body which you gesture with one of your hands.Scenario over! Now, on this physical plain of reference, if I asked the same question, your response may be “Of course, I'm in my body! Where else would I be?” So in this one, I want to explore with you the possibility that you may, in fact, not be IN the body, contrary to our collective belief. The body exists in awareness. In other words, awareness isn’t trapped or localized in a physical vessel—rather, the entire bodily experience arises within awareness itself. I will attempt to explore and investigate this using inspiration from the work of Greg Goode in his book, The Direct Path: A User Guide. I will then go into why this matters in the grand scheme of things. And that’s the beautiful part of this for me!Flipping the Subject-Container AssumptionOur default view of ourselves is a subject-in-a-container model: “I” (subject) am inside this body, looking out at the world. This ingrained “container metaphor” conditions us to see ourselves as enclosed entities separate from everything else. But where exactly are you in the body? Upon investigation, we may find we are actually not where we think we are. In Greg Goode’s book he guide’s the reader into this investigation which I will spell out in my own words here(and there’s also a video below to demonstrate this).The investigationIf you split the body in half, say at the waist, ask yourself if you’re in the upper half or the lower. Chances are you would identify yourself being at the upper half. We then split this top half into two, the head and neck being one half and the rest of the abdomen being the second half. Now, if asked where you are, you would most likely point to the topmost half— the head and neck half.Now let’s split the face in half horizontally around the nose line. Now, are you above the nose area or below it? If you’re like me, you may start to conclude that you are somewhere on the line of where the eyes are, somewhere behind the eyes— some small location somewhere mid-head behind the eyes.As you go on this investigation, finding that place that you are, the real question we should now ask is “is that you or are you observing that?” You may see that that feeling or sense of where you are is something YOU are observing. No matter where you find ‘yourself’ you would notice that location is just something that’s arising in awareness. You would ultimately find that, like in a dream, you don’t have any location.Also, you can consider this other investigation. Close your eyes and notice what’s actually present: perhaps pressure around the face, darkness, mental imagery of your head’s interior. Those sensations and images appear to you, the awareness. They don’t prove that “you” are literally inside the head; they’re simply thoughts/feelings labeled “me in the head.” The mind takes perspectives (like vision originating between the eyes) and weaves a self-location story around them. It’s an ingenious illusion.But you may still think “Well, I still feel and believe I am inside this body”.There is yet another analogy we can use that I will call the space-in-a-pot analogy. If you imagine a jar with space in it, would you agree with me that the space within the jar is not different than the space outside the jar? When the jar breaks, it’s obvious that inside and outside were one space all along. Likewise, awareness or consciousness appears “inside” a body, yet it remains the indivisible, all-pervasive reality. Awareness is neither inside nor outside the body, but everywhere —the very notions of “inside” and “outside” simply don’t apply to it the way the space inside of your room is not different than the space outside it and is vastly wider and freer than its occupation. Why then do we define the room by only what we see?In our belief that we are IN the body, we have unknowingly reversed the truth: identifying as a thing (body) that contains awareness, instead of awareness containing all things (including the body) is like saying the room owns the space in it when in fact, the room appears in space. Once this is clear, it’s easy to see that “You are not in the body, the body is in you… Everything arises in the vast, open, empty space of Consciousness or the Self”. That understanding helps you realize you are non-locale! You are not found in time and space. In that awakened perspective, the body, mind, and world are experienced as contents floating in the expanse of awareness. The subject–container illusion is then seen through, what’s left is awareness or the Self as the true locus of experience.In reality, awareness has no size, shape, or location—it’s the aware space in which all locations and positions are imagined. As Advaita texts remind us, the Self is space-like: subtle, without parts, and all-pervasive . Location applies to objects, not to the subject which is aware of all objectsWhy it mattersDispelling the illusion of being “in the body” could be mind-blowing literally. First, it undermines fear at the root. If you believe you are a vulnerable entity sealed in a bag of skin, the world appears threatening and “out there.” But when you realize your identity as boundless awareness, the body is understood as an appearance within you, not as your ‘prison’ or even meat suit, as some would express it. This loosens the grip of the fear of death and harm. The body may be subject to injury, sickness and death, but you (awareness) are not in it to be killed. As one contemplative, Dr. Andy Atwood put it, you shift from being in pain to finding pain within you—surrounding it in a vast expanse—and thereby transcend much of its sting. A fearless peace reveals itself when you know yourself as the space in which all experience comes and goes.It is true that the physical matter of your body is inside the matter of the house, and the matter of the house is inside the matter of the universe. But you are not merely matter or physicality. You are also Consciousness as Such, of which matter is merely the outer skin. The ego adopts the viewpoint of matter, and therefore is constantly trapped by matter—trapped and tortured by the physics of pain. But pain, too, arises in your consciousness, and you can either be in pain, or find pain in you, so that you surround pain, are bigger than pain, transcend pain, as you rest in the vast expanse of pure Emptiness that you deeply and truly are.— Dr. Andy AtwoodSecondly, this flip opens the door to non-separation. No longer seeing others as “out there” separate containers, you recognize that the same awareness that is your essence is equally the essence of all. There are no multiple awarenesses, just one field in which different body-mind patterns arise. This dissolves the hard borders between self and other. Compassion and empathy cease to be effortful moral ideals; they become the natural outcome of literally feeling others as within the same awareness. The Upanishadic vision “All this is Brahman” shifts from concept to lived reality.Finally, it reshapes your devotional and contemplative life. If awareness is the true temple, then our relationship with the divine transforms. We are no longer tiny supplicants locked in a body, addressing a distant God. Instead, prayer and meditation become an interior communion in the very space of awareness where the divine presence lives. Christian mystics have long intuited this. For example, Paul is recorded to have recounted a Roman poet’s knowing, in God we live and move and have our being, suggesting that we exist within the Divine Life, not outside it. Likewise, he spoke of our life being “hidden with Christ in God.” These statements echo the nondual truth that we are living in God (Awareness), and that is our real home. The bodily sense of separateness gives way to a felt unity with the ground of Being. One realizes one’s consciousness is not a tiny flame inside the body, but a single, vast light in which “body” and “world” appear. In devotional terms, awareness is the sacred meeting place (the “inner sanctuary”) where one is one with God. Every moment of life is then happening within that hallowed space. This is a radical reorientation: life is no longer lived from inside out, but seen as the glorious dance of appearances within the infinite openness of Spirit.Discovering that you are not in the body but that the body is in you (awareness) uproots a fundamental misperception. It removes the false boundary that made you feel small, vulnerable, and separate from the divine. What remains is an uncontained, fearless, and all-embracing identity in Spirit. “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:6, NIV). So if you’re sat with Christ in heavenly realms, where else can you be?Contemplative Inquiry PromptsTo verify and deepen this realization for yourself, here are some direct inquiry exercises in addition to Greg Goode’s Direct Path book. I also could not recommend enough, Brian O’Connor’s book, Awareness Games: Playing With Your Mind To Create Joy. It has exercises and prompts that subtly dissolved my own association with solidity.These contemplative prompts are meant to guide you to experientially see through the illusion of being “in” the body. One or more of these may resonate deeper than the others:* Point of View Experiment: Close your eyes and notice the sense of being located somewhere in your head. Gently inquire: Where exactly is the observer? Can you find a clear boundary or point inside the skull where “you” reside, or only thoughts, images, and sensations appearing to awareness? If you are still convinced you’re there in the head, how small are you?* Hearing as an All-Directional Field: Listen to sounds around you (a bird, a car passing). Notice the sounds simply arise in awareness without traveling from a place outside to a listener inside. Ask yourself: Is awareness boxed into a head listening, or are sounds occurring in a boundless aware space?* Body Sensations in Awareness: Bring attention to bodily sensations (pressure on the chair, the chest rising and falling). Instead of assuming these sensations mark the edges of “you,” observe them as events within your awareness. Are you inside those sensations, or are they sensations inside your awareness? Do they enclose awareness in any way, or do they come and go in the open space of knowing?* Exploring “Inside” vs “Outside”: Gaze at an object in the room. Where is seeing happening? Is there actually an “inside” self looking out at the object, or is the object, the light, and the entire experience of seeing appearing within consciousness at large? Can you find a line separating an inner viewer from the seen, or is it all one continuum of experience in awareness?* The Waking Dream Check: Recall that in nighttime dreams you also feel located in a body within the dream world—until you wake up and realize it was all in your mind. Now, ponder: In the waking state, could the feeling of “me inside body, looking at world” likewise be an appearance in the mind of God (awareness)? Allow yourself to “wake up” to the possibility that right now, everything — your body, thoughts, and world — is unfolding within the infinite dream of awareness, which is what you are. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

It’s as if life finally picked you up by the scruff of your neck like a lioness does her cub, not to punish you, not to abandon you, but to deliver you back to the very place you never left. And suddenly, with no trumpets, no neon lights, no sense of achievement, you realize: you’ve never driven one single day of your life. And weirdly, it’s not terrifying—it’s delicious.Now, every event becomes its own generator.Every itch, its own scratch.Every mistake, its own lesson.Every gift—given by the Self, to the Self.And even the gift is the Self, …appearing as a gift.You stop cataloging emotions into “good” and “bad.” Grief arrives and you don’t brace. Joy rises and you don’t cling. Like the sun shines, and the rain pours, the hurricane slashes through the city ripping houses apart, lifting swimming pools and sheds, each emotional state appears, pours, and dissolves. No editorializing. Just weather.You don’t say, I am breathing. Breath is just happening.You don’t say, I must respond. Speech simply emerges.Thoughts are heard like background birdsong—chirping, changing, never really belonging to …you.The body is no longer a vessel you manage.It is the earth, tasting itself from inside.Oh, sensations, cravings, physical pain. Who would be the one to own them?A ribcage expanding is the mountain range stretching.A heartbeat thudding is thunder beneath your skin.The personality becomes impersonal.A choreography of tendencies arising from who-knows-where.Decisions are no longer squeezed out of you. They come to your table like a waiter placing food on a table that you didn’t order from—but it’s always exactly what you’re hungry for(even if you aren’t aware).You find yourself laughing in the middle of a conflict, not because you’re aloof, but because the seriousness you used to wear like armor doesn’t fit anymore.You watch a friend misunderstand you completely, and instead of clenching butt cheeks, scrambling to correct them, something in you bows—this too is allowed. Misunderstanding is part of the show. Oh, friendships! Friendships develop out of nowhere. And friendships dissolve, the way they were formed.The chicken and the egg? Irrelevant.The chicken came first as well as the egg. The way they came next. And came again together, the first being last and the last being first.It doesn’t need to make sense—it all is seen as perfection, and that’s enough.Strive to be present! Strive to be present? You no longer strive to be present. You’re not "being present"—you are presence. Silence is no longer a state to enter. It’s the room you never left, the foundation that all of sound, form and objects were built on top of.Even effort(and efforting) is allowed, but it’s like a child dressing up in adult clothes—playful, not desperate. It’s like finally letting go of the steering wheel only to realize the car was never moving. The scenery? Projected. The driver? Imagined. And the road? Home all along.That’s what it feels like. So darn surrendered. So darn free. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Summary:In this introspective episode, Seye Kuyinu explores the radical proposition of letting go—not just of beliefs and concepts, but even of religion and spirituality themselves. Rooted in a recent Substack post and a private conversation with a friend, this reflection invites you to examine the hidden attachments beneath their most sacred practices.Rather than attack belief systems, Seye challenges the over-identification with them—suggesting that true freedom does not lie in clinging to spiritual tools but in recognizing their impermanence and utility. The goal is not nihilism. It is awakening to direct experience and the ever-present awareness that underlies all things.Key Themes:* Holding on vs. letting go — We often cling to spiritual or religious frameworks out of fear and perceived safety.* Spirituality as utility — Practices are useful, but not ultimate. Mistaking the “fork” for the “food” leads to spiritual distraction.* Direct experience as primary — The core of truth lies in immediate awareness, not concepts.* Paradox of teaching — Even this very message is an idea to be let go of.* Self-awareness — The real is not religion, thought, or ritual, but the direct knowing of experience itself.Quotable Moments:* "Safety can never and will never be found in anything that's outside of ourselves."* "Imagine being more interested in a fork than the food you are eating."* "When we are so present, concepts are just thoughts—they have no independent reality."* "What is real is the self. Or in more spiritual lingo—what is real is God."Mentioned:* Seye’s Substack: Check out the essays * Practices mentioned: meditation, prayer, scripture reflectionLinks:* Seye Kuyinu on Substack* More about Seye’s work This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Just this week, scrolling on Tiktok, I watched in sadness as a woman recounted her unraveling in tears. At 57, she had lost everything: her house, her savings, the career she’d built over decades— all happened in the last 3 years. Her voice cracked with the raw bewilderment of someone who had followed all the rules and still ended up with nothing. She wasn’t like soliciting for pity or help or anything. She was intending to document the rawness of her dire situation instead of waiting till she came out of it to share with her followers. If you’re like me, the comment visitor, I went to the comments to assess people’s thoughts. This was even sadder to experience. There were comments like, “55 here, broke.” “Same.” “Exhausted my retirement, too.” The weird resonance was immediate and haunting. In a way it was as though we were watching our own lives unravel, pre-lived on screen. Well, at least that was one story this mind came to. There’s something uniquely disorienting about witnessing another’s collapse when you’ve lived your life believing in a kind of earned immunity. We silently think: “If I work hard, save, follow the steps, I will be okay.” But what happens when someone does all that and still finds themselves emptied out? And this could be even in an investment in a relationship, a project, a child etc. In hearing stories like this, it’s not uncommon to switch from empathy to panic. The mind may begin to ask: What if that were me? What if I lose everything, too? What if I’m already on the path and just don’t know it yet? It’s astonishing how swiftly the psyche transitions from witnessing to personalizing. The experience is no longer hers; it becomes ours. Not in solidarity, but in fear. There is a vulnerability beneath our skin we often ignore, until someone else’s misfortune lifts the veil.I remember being the kind of person who would instinctively say, “God forbid” to stories like these. As if uttering the phrase could form a barrier between me and the chaos and unpredictability of life. As if those three syllables could cancel out the possibility of my possession, status or comfort. But life—honest life—doesn’t operate on magical phrases or positive mantras. And I know this is an arguable position, especially in the town hall of the law of manifestation cliques. What we forget is that life includes dissolution. The old structure falling apart is just as natural as the new one being built. The losing of some position is also as natural as gaining new positions, whatever these positions are. Sometimes both happen simultaneously.These days, I no longer reach for optimism as a shield. I don’t pretend to know what tomorrow holds. Neither I nor any self-professed prophet can tell what tomorrow is apart from the clear understanding of the cyclical nature of life. But you see, there’s a strange freedom in understanding this. There’s a falling into deep surrender seeing the wisdom in this. And no, this is not a nihilistic surrender. It’s a kind of sacred openness. You see, if we can no longer rely on predictions, we are invited to rely on presence. That’s where the deeper trust begins—not the kind rooted in circumstances going our way, but the kind that holds even when they don’t. Oh, how can we, instead of laying our future tents of hope— our tents filled with the expectation that everything good that we plan for and hope for will happen to us, instead of holding on to this, could we instead hold on to the knowing that despite what happens to us, we are fine. It would be naïve to say this trust comes easily. It doesn’t. I type this, I say this, I preach this, I have said this to people countless times and I still know it doesn’t come easily. In the tough situations where I’m encountered with loss, remembering this becomes the actual mantra. It demands the abandonment of safety as we’ve traditionally defined it. Safety, for most of us, has been tied to the material: homes, jobs, retirement accounts, identity markers. But those can vanish and will vanish one way or the other. Sometimes overnight. But then, let’s slow down and investigate this one thing: what remains when these things vanish? To find the answer, we have to go beyond the narrative of personal protection and touch something prior to the mind’s stories. There’s a kind of peace not born of having our ducks in a row, but of seeing that even if they scatter, something is still intact. Untouched. Unborn. A presence that was never dependent on outcomes in the first place. This is not the kind of thing we can conceptualize once and be done with. At least, it hasn’t been like that for me. It’s a practice. A continual unlearning. Every time I forget and begin identifying with this finite body and fragile identity, I suffer. The world tightens. The walls close in. The "I" contracts into its smallest form. And I mistake that constriction for reality. But when I remember—really remember—that what I am is not the story playing out but the space in which the story arises, everything softens. We are not separate drops in the ocean, said Rumi, but the ocean in a drop. Yet we spend most of our lives building borders between ourselves and the ocean of life. Borders that whisper lies about control. About permanence. About being able to outsmart uncertainty. We create entire models of self and universe on the assumption that we are the exception. Catastrophe visits others. Until, of course, it doesn’t. See, the invitation I’m offering here isn’t to armor ourselves better. That would be the foolish game we have culturally erred towards. Perhaps it’s instead to disarm entirely. Not with recklessness, but with reverence. To stop trying to guarantee the future, and instead become intimate with the moment. Not to be passive, but to become rooted in something deeper than our plans. There’s a kind of rest available when we stop defending against life and allow ourselves to be held by it. Not because everything is figured out, but because we see that nothing needs to be. The body rests. The mind rests. And into that rest, a deeper question may arise that brings even more clarity: Who am I, really, without all these layers?If we follow that question—not intellectually, but experientially—we may see that what we are is not fragile. That life, in all its wild unfolding, doesn’t need our constant supervision. In that place, trust is no longer something we manufacture; it is revealed. Quiet, unshakeable, vast.Like in Rumi’s meditation, A Small Green Island(see below), we can learn of the imploration to the white cow. Like the white cow, we need to remember that the grass grows overnight. We need not make ourselves miserable by the fluctuations of the field. And this is not me trying to instigate laziness. It’s an alignment. It’s the recognition that the true Self—the one watching, witnessing, aware—has always been held, always been whole, even as the structures of life rise and fall.Now, what if it all does fall away? That isn’t a question to fear. It’s a doorway. Do you see the doorway? Can you enter it? A Small Green Island by RumiThere is a small green island where one white cow lives alone, a meadow of an island. The cow grazes till nightfull, full and fat, but during the night she panics and grows thin as a single hair. What shall I eat tomorrow? There is nothing left. By dawn the grass has grown up again, waist-high. The cow starts eating and by dark the meadow is clipped short. She is full of strength and energy, but she panics in the dark as before and grows abnormally thin overnight. The cow does this over and over, and this is all she does. She never thinks, This meadow has never failed to grow back. Why should I be afraid every night that it won't. The cow is the bodily soul. The island field is this world where that grows lean with fear and fat with blessing, lean and fat. White cow, don't make yourself miserable with what's to come, or not to come. Contemplative Exercise: The Receding Shoreline1. Begin with this image.Picture a coastline you've seen.One with cliffs or rocks or sand slowly giving way over time.You may not notice it day by day, but year by year, the shoreline changes.What was once firm becomes soft. What was once expansive becomes thin.Can I sit with the image of slow, natural erosion—without resisting it?What happens in me as I hold this image?Pause.Let the image settle in the body.2. Turn the image inward.Now ask:What in my life feels like it’s slowly receding?Is there a role, a belief, a sense of control, or a structure that is subtly being worn down?Don’t try to stop it.Don’t try to repair it.Just name it.And be with it.Then ask:What emotions arise as I watch it change? Fear? Grief? Relief? Confusion?Notice how those feelings live in the body.3. Let the deeper question emerge.From that quiet place, ask:If the shore continues to erode, what remains?If the “me” I know becomes less and less fixed, is there something beneath that stays steady?Now pause.Drop beneath the images.What do you find?Not the answer your mind wants—just notice what is here when everything else changes.4. Release defense. Cultivate reverence.Now consider this:What would it feel like to stop fighting the tide?What if I let life shape the shoreline without fear of what it removes?What becomes available when I trust the changing form instead of clinging to how it once was?Let that sink in.The earth doesn't grieve the sand.The waves don’t apologize for the pull.5. Rest in the foundation beneath it all.Say quietly to yourself:There is something deeper than the sand.Something that doesn’t erode.Even as forms shift, I remain as the stillness beneath the waves.Breathe here.Anchor in that quiet.Let the breath be your shoreline now.6. Integration.Ask:If I lived with the knowing that nothing essential can be taken…How might I show up today?What can I let go of defending?Let one insight surface.It may be small.Hold it.Live it. Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you'd like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I'm grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Episode Summary:Seye shares a deeply personal story of being struck in a hit-and-run accident on December 24, 1998. What began as trauma unfolds into a powerful exploration of consciousness, the nature of the Self, and the mystery at the heart of suffering. Through reflections on Ramana Maharshi, Rumi, Carl Jung, and David Hawkins, this episode investigates how intense pain can become a gateway to a deeper awareness—one that witnesses everything but remains untouched.Topics Covered:The surreal stillness within trauma"Seeing yourself seeing yourself" – an early glimpse into non-dual awarenessChildhood recollections and mystical insightWhat is the Self? Why we miss it David Hawkins' “slit-window” method of detaching from contentAwareness as the unchanging background to all lifeThe joy of recognizing the illusion of separationLife as divine play, beyond nihilismKey Quotes:“The Self is what is looking for itself.”“What flickers cannot be the Real.”“This seeing of one’s self by one’s self is what I believe could happen in intense suffering.”“You can’t find it—because you are it.”“This character called Seye—they’re just masks the Divine wears to play with Itself.”References: Dr. David Hawkins, The Eye of the IClosing Thought:The moment that broke the body revealed what cannot be broken—an ever-present stillness beneath all change. What we are never arrived and can never leave. It simply is. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Episode Summary:In this episode, we explore the transformative power of presence—how truly seeing each moment allows us to recognize the divine in all things. Life’s circumstances, whether joyful or challenging, are not separate from the sacred but expressions of it. When we cultivate stillness and open our eyes, we begin to perceive reality not as fixed and solid, but as a fluid Mystery unfolding before us.Key Topics:* The practice of coming to presence and what it means to truly see.* How every situation—whether beautiful or chaotic—is an expression of the divine.* The shift that happens when we view life through this lens.* Reality as pure Mystery: moving beyond fixed perceptions.* The deep peace that arises when we no longer resist what is.* Seeing every mundane activity as devotion to the divine—this is Bhakti!Notable Quote:“And in that bowing, there is a paradoxical discovery: We are not diminishing ourselves; we are expanding beyond the boundaries of self. We are not losing; we are dissolving into something vaster. And so, the driver who cuts me off—this small, trivial disturbance—becomes a doorway. Not to patience, not to moral superiority. No, no, no! Hell no! It’s not that! It’s instead, the recognition that there was never a ‘me’ apart from it. Only this. Only now. Only what has always been, wearing every face imaginable.Even this is Its face.”Reflection Question:Where in your life can you soften your perception and see the divine revealing itself?Connect & Subscribe:* Follow the podcast for more episodes exploring presence, contemplation, and the Mystery of existence.* Share your thoughts or experiences—reach out or follow me on https://seyekuyinu.substack.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

🕊️ Episode SummaryIn this episode, I explore the nature of surrender as a shift in perception, a turning toward the source of all seeing. Inspired by a post from Philip Atter, I examine how modern coaching and therapy often focus on changing thoughts, whereas a deeper transformation, if you will, arises from embodying the source from which thoughts emerge. Looks like a lot of words that mean nothing till we go directly to the experience of it. Through reflection and guided meditation, we can explore the space of this awareness, the ever-present stillness behind all experience.🔹 Topics Covered:* The illusion of control and the nature of surrender* How thoughts appear and disappear like clouds in the sky* The direct experience of reality beyond the mind* Awareness as the unchanging witness to all sensations and perceptions* A 10-minute meditation to explore and rest in awareness🔹 Mentioned in This Episode:* Philip Attar’s Instagram Post * The "hard problem of consciousness" and its relation to direct experience. You can explore more on that here. https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/#:~:text=The%20hard%20problem%20of%20consciousness%20is%20the%20problem%20of%20explaining,directly%20appear%20to%20the%20subject.🎧 Listen Now & Dive In:Whether you’re walking, painting, or simply resting, allow yourself to listen from a space beyond intellectual analysis—one that invites direct seeing. It would be less helpful listening to this while doing something active…like driving. 🧘🏽‍♂️ Guided Meditation (Starts at [00:19:55])This episode concludes with a meditation designed to help you experience awareness as awareness itself. If you’d like to skip directly to that, jump to [Timestamp].💌 Show Notes & Resources:* Philip Atter’s Instagram: Philip Attar* Other contemplative audios and writings from Seye Kuyinu: https://seyekuyinu.substack.com/t/contemplations 📢 Let’s Connect* Subscribe & Leave a Review: Your thoughts and reflections help others discover this podcast.* Share Your Experience: What did you notice during the meditation? DM me or reply to my latest post.🌿 Grace and peace be on you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

What if the weight of responsibility we feel in adulthood is just a box of our investment in a future or a past that we would rather control. What if being cared for isn’t something we have to earn, but something already happening—something we simply need to see? In this episode, I explore how our attachment to future thinking and past burdens keeps us from experiencing the effortless care that life provides. This reflection inspires me to see what’s already given— what already is the case. Through the lens of childhood, a saying attributed to the Jesus’ of the Christian bible, and direct experience, I talk about and invite one to consider what it means to truly let go and be held.Key Takeaways:* Adulthood vs. Childhood: The longing to be a child again is often a longing to be free from the burden of constant future-oriented thinking. Responsibility isn’t just about tasks—it’s about where we place our attention.* Three Layers of Experience: Whether as children or adults, we all experience:* Mind – the thoughts that arise * Activity – the things we do* Self – the unchanging awareness behind it allThe last one, the experience of Self, is always present. When we recognize it, we return to something effortless and childlike.* Returning to our childlike state: Jesus’ words—"Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven"—aren’t about a place but a state of being. The kingdom is here, now. It is who we are. * Trusting the Care of the Universe as the Parents: Just as birds do not worry about tomorrow yet are cared for, we too are held by something much greater than our personal effort. Returning to childlike presence allows us to see this care in real-time.Connect with Me:Let me know your thoughts—I’d love to hear from you. * https://seyekuyinu.substack.com* https://instagram.com/seyekuyinu This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Episode Summary: In this episode, I explore what remains after deconstructing religion—what prayer, practice, and communion look like beyond traditional frameworks. Deconstruction often leads to throwing out everything, but I’ve discovered that some essential elements still hold deep meaning when reframed.Key Themes Discussed:* The Aftermath of Deconstruction: How the journey of questioning and dismantling religious structures often results in losing valuable spiritual practices. After deconstruction, the next thing to do is reconstruction. * A New Outlook on Prayer: Recognizing there’s no God out there and none in here creates a different outlook on an understanding of prayer.* Active Prayer: Centering prayer.* Passive Prayer: Seeing all of life as an ongoing prayer. We are being prayed through. * Neutral Prayer: The silence of simply being.* Practical Prayer: I talk about creative prayer, introducing the work of Padraig O Tuama and John O’Donnohue.* Practice as Relationship: Love as the central practice—examining how relationships can be deepened and transformed through love, that then becomes the only spiritual practice. * Communion Beyond Religion: Finding and connecting with others on the 'pathless path'—those who resonate with this journey, offering mutual support, inspiration, and belonging.Takeaways:* Prayer does not have to be tied to religious dogma; it can be a way of being.* Spiritual practice finds its truest expression in relationships.* Communion is not about conformity but about authentic connection with kindred spirits.Listen & Subscribe: This episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.Connect With Me:* Website: https://seyekuyinu.com* Instagram: https://instagram.com/seyekuyinu Join the Conversation: What has your journey of deconstruction looked like? How have prayer, practice, and communion evolved for you? Share your thoughts in the comments or tag me on social media! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com

Episode Summary:In this episode, we explore the difference between surrender and quitting. Surrender is not about giving up; it is a recognition of our non-separateness from life itself. The act of surrender is not an act or something we do—it is something we see. True surrender includes both action and inaction, revealing that all movement, all decisions, and even the refusal to quit are not personal efforts but part of the natural unfolding of life.What You'll Learn in This Episode:* Why surrender is not the same as quitting* How our illusion of control creates resistance* The role of both action and inaction in surrender* Why surrender is not something you do, but something you recognize* A simple perspective shift that reveals surrender as always presentKey Takeaways:* The idea of a separate "doer" is an illusion; life moves on its own* Resistance comes from believing we can control outcomes* True surrender is not passivity—it allows for action without the weight of personal control* Seeing through the illusion of control is itself surrenderMentioned in This Episode:* The paradox of effort in practice* The difference between surrender and resignation* Hebrews 4:9: … for whoever has entered the Sabbath rest has also rested from his struggles.* How acceptance dissolves resistance naturallyMeditation on Surrender:At the end of this episode, I guide you through a meditation designed to help you experience surrender not as a choice, but as the absence of an imagined controller.Connect & Share:If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who would love to hear it. Let’s keep the conversation going—reach out with your reflections and experiences.🎧 Listen now and embrace the surrender that is already here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com