Stella Adler, the famous acting coach, wanted more from a pupil, who was determined to play the role of Hamlet. She kept telling him, "Bigger! More! Hamlet is not a guy like you." He said, "Oh, you want larger than life?" She said, "Darling, there is nothing larger than life!" 🎭

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It is the contemplation of God which ultimately leads His chosen priesthood to themselves, and it is only by divine, instructive solace that they are able to withstand the loveless blizzard of estrangement from the crowd, each one sequestered in his holy solitude, just long enough for weening; readied to endure the harder wilderness; that somewhat more objective world of private judgments, immediately present to hermetic men, no longer dependent on consensus insistence. Ethereal possibilities, boundless speculations, independent of permission, fertilize their quiet minds with forest nymphs, and faerie spirits of a thousand kinds. All voices praise The One, and each in one's own way; a higher agreement to levity, pinging over the mountaintops of mammoth souls, peaking in their dharmic flights; overarching every grievous contention that could ever arise, ephemerally echoing across the loathsome and loveable, human world below. To the degree that an individual is able to stand apart, and distinguish himself as such an original, thoroughly independent self-recreation, — he must have erected and long inhabited an inner world which is, itself, profoundly alien to the contemporary one, familiarly expressed within his local culture. The so-called "ivory tower" is generally indispensable. True genius, so often, thrusts itself into spheres of absolute abstraction, not because it has such a solid affinity to them, but, because it is the desperate measure which he feels he must invoke, for the sake of extracting his very soul from the prison of worldly entanglements. A heroic soul wants to be fully embodied, but, for this, he must first be dis-identified with the body of his people, so-called. Likewise, there are deeper, ancestral layers of cultural inheritance, to be respected, which can only be liberated by a disengagement from the latest, fashionable manifestations. The most practical hero becomes the most obscure philosopher, in order to achieve that worship-worthy pinnacle of personal perspective; from which to aim Athena's bow, — so as to reenter corporeality at an inspired angle, projected — off the bulging, boldly-brewing, unabashedly-bolting brow of Zeus. One's mind must be sharp, indeed, to go on cutting through the world, day after day, moment by moment, against the grain of social norms; and not be blunted into dullness with the rest. The metal for it, perhaps, must be present already, primordially forged in the preconfigured nature of a spirit; whether it exists there as an active passion, driving an entire chariot of tirelessly rebellious impulses; coughed from The Infernal Core of Hell, — or, else, an amaranthine stubbornness, hunkering down, in the dismal, proverbial drain of that centermost Black Hole; prevailing against The Undertow, or The Abyssal Vacuum, and constitutionally refusing to be dislodged before the End of Days. What oddities of extraterrestrial construction may he hurl into the misty midst of mediocrities, by destiny collected, maybe, only to be scattered; scared, and psychologically scarred, at his auspiciously insane arrival? Who will venture to the still-smoking edge of this crater, where the rare glass of a strange, uncharted globe is swathed, supernaturally gangrenous, in the gauze of a ghostly, emerald gleaming? Mankind is prone to crucify his bravest sailors, — shipwrecked explorers, against all odds (and inconveniencing all experts' estimates), returning home, — and seal the best in unmarked graves: What, then, will he do to a demigod, transfigured in celestial fires, bringing news of an archangelic, interdimensional existence? If the stars are ever to be so favorable, God only knows the season. May Their Lord have mercy on the race of men. Cloak Your Messengers, Grandfather, in a royal wardrobe of smokes, inscrutably disguised; only let Your Messages break through, and bring all the last, lost, everlasting lessons to light! There is no way, Holy God, unless You, Yourself, become The Way. There is no name to bless, nor call upon, without The Hope we have, that is Your Name. Who will receive the infinitude of thanks, which we are so unfit to encompass and express, but which, nonetheless, is so diabolically overdue? Surely, there is One to Whom Our Praise is well directed, by Whom it is welcomed and approved. Let us share in Your Revelations, to the best of our humble ability, LORD; and do not withhold from us even the merest portion of Your Wisdom, if in Your Mercy we are fitted to extract even a fraction of a drop of Divine Influence. Give us eyes to see that we have eyes; ears to hear that we have ears; minds to mind that we have minds; hearts to love that we have hearts; and souls to believe that we have souls. Be with us, ever; for this is all we ask.

THE SUICIDE'S SONG by Rainer Maria Rilke [an English translation by Walter W. Arndt] So it's back once more, back up the slope. Why do they always ruin my rope with their cuts? I felt so ready the other day, Had a real foretaste of eternity In my guts. Spoonfeeding me yet another sip from life's cup. I don't want it, won't take any more of it. Let me throw up. Life is medium rare and good, I see, And the world full of soup and bread, But it won't pass into the blood for me, Just goes to my head. It makes me ill, though others it feeds; Do see that I must deny it! For a thousand years from now at least I'm keeping a diet.

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The honest treasure is appreciation: You could live in a garret, be a pauper, but that sudden ray of gratitude breaks — and with it comes a flood of spiritual gold; one's sense of being sacredly transformed, into the archangelic figure of a gryphon — unchallengeably sovereign over his fortune, as a mother hen, upon her brood of chicks; smiling, inwardly and outwardly, at nothing.

I'm but a captive — led into captivity; Through the sun-scarred wastelands, To the sealed-off cavern; chained-up, Chanting in the charnel underground. How is it, then, that I feel so blessed? Be content to guess what this means: THE NAME OF GOD has come to me!

I am not This Donkey you discuss, — But The Invisible Prisoner on his back! Nor are these rubies, diamond chalices, Sapphire daggers, or emerald coronets, Spilling out of the saddle sacks, my own: I've nothing but nor better than Hashem. I only know My Self as Utterance of Him.

Receive the blessing of this moment. 🕉️

Everything, by dancing, is learning to dance. ☯️

No one speaks, no one acts, no one thinks or works or tries or struggles or becomes. There is no one. There's nothing, really, — but this infinite defiance of description; some inscrutably unmasked, singular, Holy Conflagration, self-evidently present in the midst of itself; which, in a manner of speaking, or only by some spectacular mystery, we are privy to witness; seemingly ourselves, experiencing ourselves as these, self-conscious spirits, simultaneously privileged to endure the unutterable forming, informing, and unforming of what we are obliged to call our souls, — in the unsearchable, paradoxical mingling of participation and perception.

The shifting, insubstantial nature of all that can be known, does not trouble me, to the extent that I am grounded in my own vibration. Sovereign in the vibrant presence of The Knower, there is a primal, universal reassurance, which no separate and particular article of knowledge can afford. Nothing in the end is deep, — all things float upon the surface of a modest pond, — but the recollection of Oneself, and the sense of being seated on One's Throne, almost as EL, before His Elohim, is the Central Jewel of Experience, which this mortal dream can sometimes, albeit impermanently, sustain. What is illumined is The Eternal Reality, which does not change, despite My Vision being clouded, or, rather, only seeming to be so; as though The Original Spirit of Awareness, indeed, has slipped through The Darkened Looking Glass of Dreams, — and adventurously "become" this vast and unpredictable, oceanic theophany; having mysteriously identified with The Erratic Object of immediate perception, in rhythmic waves of emerging phenomena. Awareness is not more than this. Nothing that happens (or arises in Original Awareness) is ultimately foreign to it, or capable of obscuring The True Vision; there is no actual breaking of The Perfect Concentration, which is Spontaneously Active, in The Endless, Effortless Moment of NOW. Enlightenment is not a distinct experience to attain, by certain souls, at certain points in space and time: It is The Only Creation. This is it.