For instance, very recently on the way to university, I had this feeling to pull into a parking lot I normally don’t park in. But I didn’t listen to that feeling. I continued into the normal parking lot. Then I parked, and I sat there thinking (i.e. reasoning) with my intuition. Intuition pulled up something about flooding. “Well,” reasoned my reason, “actually this is the higher ground so it would be better in the case of a flood anyway.” And so, reason having won that argument, I got out of the car and went to class. After class, I went back outside and a water main had busted at the higher end of that parking lot. It was gushing (according to one of the maintenance guys) water out at 1000 gal/min. A number of cars in that parking lot had a few inches of muddy water constantly flowing under them where the owners of said cars would have to walk through just to get in their vehicles! I was fortunately about 20 feet or so from any running water, so I walked around the busted main, and I re-parked further away.

But anyway, reason failed in this instant while intuition was right all along. So, true reason should also have the ability to reason itself away, in my opinion, until only Truth is left which is beyond intellectual reason or knowledge and exists only in an unadulterated experience of this moment.

You can catch us still at 9AM (central time) every Sunday.

If one doesn’t shine, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she is darkness. It is true that when people do stupid things, they go down. But a lot of people on earth do a lot of useless things and remain just where they are, neither going up nor down. When people do good, they go to heaven but if doing good doesn’t turn into a habit, they are at the risk of fall back to the material world. When people have done enough good that they have lost count or can’t even track or keep an account or measure it, they become established in eternal heaven.

It was nice reading your blog post.

I would like to differ in one thing you mentioned, that there are good grounds and bad grounds. I believe that all grounds are potentially good.

How to prepare the ground? It’s an easy thing to answer but difficult to practice. What does the farmer do with the ground after reaping the season’s crops? He just lays it aside for some time i.e. he doesn’t continue farming. The analogy for humans is limit doing the spiritual practices and allowing oneself to receive grace. This can be the easiest of things to do and also the most difficult. This is because while it is easy to do a spiritual practice to give the mind the acknowledgement that there is some progress being made, it is uncomfortable to let oneself under the grace of an external source. It’s as if one is standing naked before a worldly canon without any spiritual armour. I just read the other day at a Church that ‘We can prepare the horses but the Lord does the battle.” The emptiness that’s in a plain mind sucks in the grace automatically.

Regards,
Arvind