Sometimes I Call Myself A Freelance, I

Religions Have Found That If You Behave In A Certain Way, If You Sort Of Perform Certain Rituals That Expand Your Mind And Make You Realize That Will Make You Realize And Help You To Seguey Into Transcendence And Perform Certain Acts, Adopt A Certain Lifestyle, You Develop New Capacities Of Mind And Heart, Just Like The Dancer, Or The Athlete That Make You Into A Whole Human Being And Principle After One Of These Disciplines Right Across The Board In All Of The Faiths Is Compassion, The Ability To Feel With The Other Person.

The Constant Reprimands Made Me Hyperconscious Of My Own Performance, And So Instead Of Getting Rid Of Self, I Had Become Embedded In The Egoism I Was Supposed To Transcend. Now I Was Beginning To Understand That A Silence That Is Not Clamorous With Vexation And Worried Self-regard Can Become Part Of The Texture Of Your Mind, Can Seep Into You, Moment By Moment, And Gradually Change You.

I Left The Convent And That Was Because I Wasn't A Very Good Nun. I Could See That I Wasn't Going To Make It. It's Very Difficult To Be A Nun, Or To Live A Religious Life. It's Very Difficult To Live A Life Of Total Celibacy Or A Life Without Any Possessions Or Material Responsibilities At All, Or In Total Obedience To Somebody Else, And Remain A Mature Whole Human Being, And I Knew That I Wasn't Going To Be One Of Those.

You Have To Get Into The Water And Learn Against What Seems To Be The Law Gravity To Float And Dancing, Or Athletics Takes You Years Before You Develop A Skill. But If You Work At It, Practicing Daily, You Can Enable Your Body To Do Things That Are Utterly Impossible To An Untrained Physic.

It's Quite Common For A Sufi Mystic To Cry In Ecstasy That He's Neither A Jew, A Christian, Nor A Muslim. He Is At Home Equally In A Synagogue, A Mosque, A Temple, Or A Church Because When One's Glimpsed The Divine, One's Left These Man-made Distinctions Behind.