Many years ago, I had an experience of the fundamental quantum of Consciousness as the matrix and basis of everything. Boundless, formless, outside of time & space altogether, precipitating all mind and matter from itself in spirallic gradients of increasing density, mixing itself up and evolving itself in the worlds of form, AND continually, unreservedly cherishing the whole mess back into Itself….

I recognize That is both my source & goal, not just as past & future history but really at every breath, every instant as the fundamental identity behind who-I-appear-as at the surface of my experience.

From inside that perspective, there is no meaningful distinction between “spirit” and “matter” or “self” and “other.” I don’t see saints or sinners, but just the One Being in different conditions of wakefulness or sleep.

At one end of the continuum is pure Perfection, with no distinction whatever… not even a unity-of-pieces but a total unity of undifferentiated Essence. At the other end, a roiling stew of Life scorched to the bottom of itself or merging and separating in astounding magical deliciousness.

What I’ve come to over the years of repeatedly losing-and-regaining that awareness is that “the spiritual path” isn’t some “self-improvement” add-on to life but it’s as necessary as breathing. It’s food for the soul. “Spirit/Consciousness” is the living source of our very existence, and if we’re not consciously connected in felt-identity with it, we don’t *have* a real self or a real life from which to make the most of these few breaths we are granted in human embodiment.