Living a normal life is an important cornerstone of our work because it tends to ground the work in our life instead of making it some kind of mystical, spiritual, otherworldly thing that exists apart from our daily experiences. This is the other world. This table, as you see it, is God’s back. In the beginning, you might have all kinds of far-out experiences that separate the face from the back, the depth from the surface. In time you realize that the very world we live in, what we see, everything around us that looks like stone or rock, is really the love that we feel in our heart. The world lives in harmony and luminosity. And the more you see that, the more your need for love from other people relaxes. You pine after love, and one day you open your eyes and see that the rock is made of love. People see love manifesting all around them all the time, and yet they still want this one person to love them. Who cares about all this other love! But in time the love and the true beingness touch your consciousness. Your sense of ego dissolves a little and you relax. You become more reasonable and less of a brat. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, ch. 7
People who are oriented toward the impersonal, universal spiritual life have a certain misunderstanding. It’s true that to forget about your personal life, to forget about yourself and become a monk or nun, can lead to liberation and enlightenment. But is that why we have a life? Are we supposed to abandon our life on earth to go somewhere else? The majority of humanity rejects this path, and continues to seek happiness and fulfillment here, in this life. So even though it’s not possible to have a fulfilled life the way most people try to get it, there is something very deep and true in that striving for personal fulfillment. In that yearning there is a seed of understanding that all of this life, including the universal and divine, is for us. Why are we here if the abundance is not our lot in a personal life, if we are not going to enjoy it? The way the ego goes about it doesn’t work, but the original impulse is not false. This is a mystery that is rarely understood. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, pg. 197
Being knows how to do things with grace, with beauty, with power, with effectiveness, with precision. However, Being does not know about how to fix a window. Your true self has nothing to do with windows; it does not know about windows. It does not know how to water plants. That is where your consciousness, your personality, comes in. But when you are watering plants, Being certainly knows how to do it in the best way, in terms of the sense, of how to hold yourself, how much effort to exert, how to do things in such a way that you feel integrated within yourself. Being shows you how to manifest the beauty outside. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Four: Indestructible Innocence, pg. 84