THE DEVIL AND THE SERAPH
This profound excerpt comes from the book Heart Dweller by spiritual teacher A.H. Almaas. It explores the human condition of spiritual sleep and forgetfulness of our true nature. Almaas reflects on how identification and ego-gratification lead to inner violence, greed, and suffering.
The core of the ego is a feeling of deficiency and bottomless hunger for fulfillment, represented by the Buddhist metaphor of the hungry ghost. Almaas advocates saying yes to this emptiness instead of desperately trying to fill it. This requires courage and trust in our true nature.
Almaas shares his excruciating process of accepting his own emptiness under his teacher’s guidance. The intense burning purified his identification with egoic desires. Though painful, it led to states of joy, gratitude, and selfless love. He began remembering subtle feelings of his true nature.
Staying with the fire of deficiency incinerated Almaas’s ego-self. This allowed the flowering of his essential Being, like a phoenix rising renewed from the flames. He realized accepting emptiness and loving oneself are intertwined.
The excerpt ends with a quote from Kabbalah that a seraph, an angel of pure light, is a devil completely burnt out and transformed. This points to the potential for consciousness to undo ego-identification and reveal our intrinsic spiritual brilliance.
Almaas’s raw sharing of his inner battles inspires self-reflection. His message calls us to courageously inquire within and reconnect with our natural state of wholeness and luminosity.
