A Life On The Ground

For me as a human being, all quests-intellectual, ethical, and spiritual- are important. Intellectual quest without being bound by ego is important for thinking and for processing my thoughts and emotions andto understand me, others and the world. Moral or ethicalquest without "oughts" is important for me to walk on the moral path. The spiritual quest is essentialfor knowing and realizing my true nature, who or what I am.. In this state I do not feel bound by my own self-created"altitude". This is the state of unitive consciousness in which otherstates with "attitude"get dissolved. I feel grounded and connected with existence, the "being".

Spiritual practices keep me grounded in what is and relate to what is rather than my own fabrications of the reality. I feel free fom my self-createdprison and self-ignorance. In deep meditation state I experiencethe distance between me and the ground going away and I realize that at the core of our being, we all are one. As the great theologian Paul Tillich says," the ground of being."

It has taken a good amount time to know who I am. Remaining awake when I go into the sleep of delusion and working on what makes me fall asleep has been very helpful to me. The challenge for me is not to go back to "sleep". Self-awareness is the key to stay on "the ground of being." Getting feedback from my own selfand from others is also helpful to me for walking on the spiritual path.
Namaste!
Jagdish P Dave'

Thank you for this response, Jagdish. It resonates a lot and I appreciate the Tillich tip. As a recovering atheist/agnostic, I find prayer difficult, but when I think of God as the ground of our being, I can express thanks for and connection to ground of being easily, and I do think a prayer practice--something more active and woven through my days--would be so helpful to keeping my feet on the ground of being and awareness more consistently. It is easy to be swept away by all the oughts and just collapse into the relief of passive escapism (which is great sometimes!), but the quests for connection, meaning, responsibility for each other, etc (values quests)without oughts is where I want to land, and aremade easier from a place of self-compassionate groundedness.