[Uma]

Today's talk had a beautiful Easter prayer in it that I might transcribe and quote elsewhere.

I was reminded today to spend less time in the mind, intellectualizing, and spend more time focusing on centering, opening up my consciousness to the actual experience. Too much thinking can be counterproductive.

"When we are caught up in forms it's so difficult to let go of burdens because we fear the unknown, but we need to take that RISK, when we are so caught in the form, that there may be another possibility of experience."
~ Sri Vasudeva

"Form" refers to the physical body and the mental bodies that are (to put it crudely) like underwear and layers of clothes that the soul wears, the "naked" soul being pure essence.

"It's not by reasoning that you will experience it but by grace. May that grace unfold you as you open your mind to a possibility of existing in a formless state, but yet holding the forms."
~ Sri Vasudeva

Grace is what wakes me up to be able to experience my essence.
Intellect only takes me to the door.

This is the promise that the ancients captured in the Sanskrit phrase "Jivan Mukti" - It means that you can be a sentient* being yet be free from it

*"sentient" means a body that has feeling - because the bodies provide us with senses, both physical and subtle
- Freedom from the senses doesn't mean you lose them. In fact, in the experience of essence they become transcended, heightened, expanded, like super senses, beyond form…

But these are just words. Words that have no power. Intellect is only a tool that takes you to the gateway.