” A person who has gone through all experiences and has held his spirit high, not allowing it to be stained, such a person may be said to be pure-minded. The person who could be called pure because he had no knowledge of either good or evil would in reality be merely a simpleton. To go through all that takes away the original purity and yet to rise above everything that seeks to overwhelm it and drag it down, that is spirituality; the light of the spirit held high and burning clear and pure.”

—-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Water garden. Cleveland Botanical Gardens; Photo by Barbara Mattio

God and man are not two; a spiritual person does not consider God separate from him/herself. God is not in heaven alone; The Beloved is everywhere. We see God in the unseen and in the seen; the spiritual person recognizes The Divine within and without. So, in reality there is no name which is not the name of God, and there is no form which is not the form of Divinity.

We need to recognize the imperfect and mortal aspect of our being as well as the perfect, the immortal aspect of our beings. The imperfect self covers the soul and confines it in a limited being, and calls itself “I”, a servant of God, and the calls The One, the Lord of the whole of existence.
–Excerpted from The Unity of Religious Ideals

In our daily lives, if we can grasp the truth that the all-knowing Divine is within us and everywhere we travel or have experiences  then we will truly begin to experience the unlimited, infinite aspects of God. How you choose to work on this in your life is your choice. All paths can take you to the experience of the infinite , all encompassing experience of God in the Universe. Simply put, The Beloved is everywhere and within all sentient beings. Being God-conscious gives us the ability to see all people as children of the Universe. Not different, not hateful, not wrong; just other children of the Universe. The spiritual path shows us that God is in the seen and the unseen. There is no name which is not the name of God.

The Universe

“The Beloved is all in all; the lover only veils Him/Her; the Beloved is all that lives; the lover is a dead thing.”

—Rumi