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Integrating interiority and relationship

Integrating interiority and relationship

by | May 19, 2025

“In certain states of meditative contemplation, the impulse to withdraw from the world emerges. This movement does not express escape, but rather the need to confront one’s own consciousness without external interference. The inclination toward solitude is not a mistake. It is misleading to interpret it as a rejection of others or as a sign of opposition between connection and interiority. Radical autonomy has no basis. Subjectivity is always constituted in reference to others: we are born into a community, we share symbolic systems, and we participate in interpersonal emotional networks.
Martin Buber argues that the “I” is only constituted in the encounter with a “you.” The subject is not a closed monad, but a node of relationships that takes on meaning in reciprocity (cf. Ich und Du, 1923).
Internalization does not require the breaking of ties. Voluntary isolation is not a condition for self-knowledge. It is not necessary to exclude the other, but rather to silence the ego’s pretensions.
For Jean-Luc Marion, the subject is not a source of giving, but a receptacle for the gift that exceeds him. In the experience of love and contemplation, an ontological passivity of the self is revealed (Étant donné, 1997).
Those who reach a certain existential maturity understand that inner life and openness to others are not mutually exclusive spheres. Both can coexist without cancellation or fusion. Withdrawing from the world under the guise of introspection can become a form of evasion. Similarly, diluting oneself in exteriority without reflexivity leads to a loss of self. Integrating interiority and relationship requires the decentering of the self. Shared life is not opposed to authenticity. Joy does not come from isolation, but from the cessation of self-imposed identity demands.
Nishida Kitarō develops, from the Zen tradition, the notion of “the self as a place of negation,” where the self is not substance, but a function of a radical openness to the other and to nothingness (Zettai mujunteki jikodōitsu, 1932).
Serenity does not require constant reaffirmation of the self. It appears when the need to justify oneself to others or to maintain a defined image of oneself ceases.
It is not the world that must be abandoned, but the narcissistic representation of a self split from the whole. Once this fiction is overcome, reality unfolds as ontological communion.
In such a state, meditation and love are not mutually exclusive. By losing their compulsive nature, both practices reveal a structural unity that transcends all possessive or defensive logic of the self.
Prabhuji
The question

The question

by | May 17, 2025

“There is no rigid boundary between faith and skepticism. No conviction, no ”ism,” no belief or disbelief is held without cracks, and no one lives their entire life within a single category. There are believers who, in the darkness of suffering, doubt everything. And there are atheists who, faced with the mystery of birth or death, remain silent with deep respect and reverence.
The labels that separate humans into absolute blocks are convenient simplifications, but they are inaccurate. They do not do justice to the contradictory richness of human consciousness. Every human being has at some time felt the temptation to pray, even without believing. And every believer has at some time felt a sense of emptiness, even without wanting to.
What matters is not the name we give to what transcends or moves us. What matters is the authenticity with which we respond to pain, to beauty, to the world, to others. Life does not demand that we choose between God and nothingness. It demands that we respond honestly to that which, even if we do not understand it, affects us with inescapable force and depth. To reduce another person to their beliefs or lack of faith is to forget that we all share the confusion in the face of death, the wonder of life, the longing for meaning, and the need for love.
Religion does not guarantee spiritual depth, nor does the absence of religion exclude nobility of soul. Both paths can be profound or empty, depending on how they are lived. It is not a question of uniting religions and atheisms. It is a question of ceasing to defend boundaries where there is continuity, transition, and mixing. Human beings do not fit into rigid and stable definitions.
What unites us is not a doctrine… it is the question. It is the humility of not having all the answers, and the courage to keep searching without despising others.
Instead of dividing ourselves by what we believe, we can recognize each other by what we feel and experience: by marveling at the incomprehensible, the vertigo of being alive, the urgency of living with meaning.”
Prabhuji
There is no path

There is no path

by | May 15, 2025

“Walking implies creating. It is not about advancing along a marked path, nor discovering a route already laid out by others. The realization of the highest truth is not inherited, nor is it achieved by reproducing the itineraries of others. Each person is called to chart their own course, with uncertainty as their constant companion and fidelity to themselves as their only guide.
There are no maps or signs. No footprint guarantees the direction. Each step inaugurates a terrain that does not yet exist. In this movement without guarantees lies the possibility of uniting the desire for meaning with a horizon that has not yet been revealed. Immediate certainty or total clarity cannot be expected. Those who commit themselves to the search for truth do not take refuge in the known. Rather, they expose themselves to the open space where reality has not yet been constituted.
Like seagulls crossing the sky without leaving a trace, those who advance toward the essential leave no paths that can be repeated. Their passage is not imprinted in the air, but it transforms the height to which it has been possible to rise. It is not a matter of leaving a mark for others, but of inhabiting a unique form of presence. What is valuable is not what is left behind, but the verticality that has been conquered.
Not seeing a path does not mean being lost. In many cases, it is a sign of having reached the threshold where freedom begins. Where there are no previous marks, the most radical task emerges: walking, creating, sustaining movement without abandoning the internal orientation that defines the direction. This task is neither easy nor comfortable. But it is the only one that responds to the need to live without betraying oneself. Every step, however small, is a silent affirmation of the right to exist from oneself and not from an imposed model. It is not a matter of imitating, but of assuming the responsibility of embodying a unique form of reality.
The path is not found, it is constituted in the very act of walking. And in that silent construction, those who dare to move forward without certainties actively participate in the establishment of a meaning that is not inherited, but founded.
“Wayfarer, your footprints
are the path, and nothing else;
wayfarer, there is no path,
the path is made by walking.
By walking, the path is made,
and looking back
you see the path that
you will never tread again.
Walker, there is no path,
only trails in the sea.“
Antonio Machado ”Proverbs and Songs – XXIX”
Prabhuji
A path for one

A path for one

by | Apr 29, 2025

“More than a decade ago, I understood something that irreversibly transformed my conception of existence.
Spirituality, the authentic inner calling, is not a path that can be traveled in a group.
It is not a collective project or an adherence to communities, rituals, or organized societies.
The search for the spirit is strictly intimate, silent, and individual.
It is a journey to be traveled alone. Neither the recognition of others nor constant company allow one to advance beyond one’s own state of consciousness.
For a long time, I believed that the warmth of the group could sustain me. I thought that sharing experiences would give meaning and direction to the inner journey. However, concrete experience revealed the true nature of the path.
When the spiritual night darkens and the soul is filled with questions, only one traveler remains facing the abyss: oneself. Understanding this truth did not imply resignation, but rather a form of inner liberation.
Spirituality ceased to be a shared endeavor and revealed itself as the most authentic journey one can undertake.
Every step, every discovery, every fall, and every light found along the way belong exclusively to the individual. There are no shortcuts that allow one to avoid the essential difficulty of the path.
Nor are there voices capable of guiding us beyond the threshold that each of us must cross on our own.
No one can accompany the traveler on this decisive journey. The true journey begins only when it is undertaken in solitude. This solitude should not be interpreted as punishment, but as a way of accessing truth.
It is the realm where, at last, one learns to listen to what cannot be articulated, to contemplate what cannot be shown, to become what cannot be taught. Today, after years of travel, I look back on the path I have traveled and smile. I know that I am not alone by mistake or by chance.
I am alone because I chose to respond to the most demanding and luminous call of all: the one that arises in the unyielding silence of the soul.
The spiritual path is, in essence, solitary.
And it is in that solitude that the true greatness of being is revealed.”
Prabhuji