Dear KOM-ers!
We’re so happy to feature a new book giveaway!
Please enjoy this excerpt from “Who Is In?” by Avikal Constantino.
There are 2 ways to enter to win a FREE hard copy:
- Leave a comment below with your email address (so we can contact you)
- Email us at KOMWriting@gmail.com with the Subject: Who Is In? giveaway entry
The winner will be randomly selected on 12/5/22 and announced on our website and social media. *
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Who is in? is for all spiritual seekers who encounter the basic questions of identity: Who am I?, Who is in? or What is the nature of I? Using the Zen Buddhist koan – a paradox to be meditated upon – ‘Who is in’ as a door to discovering the true self and pure subjectivity, this book provides examples and understandings, techniques and invitations to experiment with self-inquiry.
Excerpt: Let’s get out of the cave
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy. William Shakespeare, author
Or that we can imagine, and our fear try to prevent. Or our laws manage to control.
Let’s get out of the cave of fear and isolation. Let’s get out of the cave of the past and habit. Let’s come out of the cave of distance, of betrayal, of hiding ourselves, from ourselves first; the cave made of all those things that we repeat to make ourselves small, or to feel superior. The cave of things not said to those we love, or things said with anger, resentment, manipulation. The cave of abandoned dreams, repressed flames, cowardice passed off as wisdom. The cave of the postponement to tomorrow when everything will be fine. The cave where we delude ourselves that we have things under control.
The world as we have known it is falling apart and every personal cave is inevitably shaking. Our ideas, expectations, beliefs, whatever they may be, are tested by a planet that refuses to destroy itself, by a life that has no boundaries, righteous ways, morals. A life that manifests itself in infinite, unpredictable and original forms, and possibilities.
Now is not the time to hide and close. Now is the time to recognize that, within any constraint and limitation, each of us is also completely and absolutely free; free to choose to admit to himself what he really feels. Free to tell others, even if inside him that familiar voice resounds and repeats to him that, “You do not say these things,” that he should keep them close to himself and secret.
Free to find delicate and profound ways to communicate with new, spontaneous, loving gestures our existence and the miracle of this breath, of the song of a bird outside the window, of the fear of not being there tomorrow, or of the fear that you will not be there tomorrow.
Now it’s time to open ourselves up, to hear what’s going on in our hearts, in our bellies, in our genitals, in our skin, in our muscles, in our desires. To listen with the same attention and respect that we give ourselves to what happens to others, when they are in front of the unknown that is existence. Right now.
This existence that exists now as and through me, you, us, all of us, all that is. Everything, absolutely everything. The air we breathe, the water with which we wash our hands, we who wash them, the virus that seeks carriers, the sun that is starting to warm this part of the planet or that is setting.
Consistency, predictability, constancy, etc. are social values that have their value and need as we navigate daily life and its social contracts and, at the same time, have zero value when mandatory, if we are obedient and respectful robots that unknowingly bend to the so-called collective need, while deluding themselves of the capacity to have “freedom of choice”.
If the freedom conditioned by restrictions in which we live as embodied forms of Spirit is not guided and supported by the absolute freedom of Being, by the awareness of our presence here/now and the direct experience of I AM, then that conditioned and idealized freedom of choice is just a story that we tell ourselves and that we pitifully share with others. A lollipop, a pacifier to gratify ourselves and stay asleep.
Energetically our field is unlimited, connected, receptive, interdependent, communicates incessantly, knows, evolves, and creates.
* By entering this contest, you give consent to Kind Over Matter to use your name for promotional purposes on our website and on all social media.
NOTE: You can order Avikal’s book from Hunt Publishing or on Amazon.
