S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 7 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 2 1 8 5 J iří Vacek In this incarnation, my spiritual path started sometime during the war years, and i didn’t even know it. However, i had a huge gift, which was faith in God. God, his existence, seemed natural to me. at a conscious level, i started spiritual practice or began meditating at Christmas 1945 and keep practicing to this day. Like any seeker, i have also made many mistakes. i believed in the power of exercise and was still looking for the most effective one but did not find it. Only now has the most important truth occurred to me. They are two truths, to be precise, regarding the spiritual path. 1) There is no path to God or to the realization of our true Self without love. 2) The spiritual path or practice is a spiritual matter, not a material one. Therefore, he who identifies himself with the body and with the mind is not truly on the path, but lives as the ego and in the ego, or, to rephrase it, lives the opposite of what should be lived. Therefore, the first task on any spiritual path for it to lead to the Truth is: 1) To learn to love unconditionally. 2) To dissolve the identity with the body and mind. Only when these two goals are achieved, it is possible to speak about true practice of the spiritual path. What precedes it – the identification with the body and with the mind and a state without love – is only the path of the ego, false i, and nothing else. The sum of all other spiritual skills cannot change this fact. in this respect, as of today, i value Paul the apostle, his great Song of Love and his finding that he who has no love is nothing, as stated in the chapter 13 of his First Epistle to the Corinthians. Therefore, every true path to God, or to the realization of the Truth about us, begins with the cultivation of love and the dissolution of the ego, that is, our false identity with the body and the mind. Nothing but this counts – no samadhi, no knowledge of the scriptures or anything else. The only things of true merit are the true love and the dissolution of the ego, which is our false identity with the body and the mind. Therefore, the highest gain on the spiritual path is sincere love, which includes everything and everyone and knows no exceptions or excuses. Love truly is God and it is also our essence, which we share with God, with whom this love unites us. The obvious fact that God is the Spirit and therefore no one has ever seen God (with external senses) is expressed in the About the author Ing. Jiří Vacek is a Czech mystic, spiritual author and translator promoting mysticism, yoga, and Advaita Vedānta mainly in the tradition of Indian sage Ramana Maharshi. He is the author of the comprehensive encyclopedia of yoga and mysticism published in the form of a book series. His articles on spiritual practice have been published in national and international journals. Being retired, J. Vacek dedicates his free time to public meditations and meditations with his friends/students. He is available at jirimu.vackovi@ pratelejirihovacka.cz. need to liberate our Self from the matter of the body and return it/us to the Spirit/God and His Light. It is not enough just to know and believe in these Truths, but in the first place it is necessary to live them, and live them constantly, whether we are seemingly engaged in even the most mundane activities. If the world is to become the kingdom of God, it must first and foremost become full of love and friendship of all and in all. Nothing else helps. He who believes in the effectiveness of just physical measures will eventually find that they do not work. Only various egos are nurtured by them. ← ← Michael the Archangel – Andrei Rublev
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