I have entered many deep, rich, alive spaces over the years listening to my friend Guy Sengstock speak during the workshops he teaches. I have been regularly amazed by his spiritual clarity, how he naturally attunes to the deep way of things.
Here are some written quotes by him that leave me feeling open, inspired, and clarified after I read them:
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Wonderment is totally natural when we are being ourselves. When we directly contact the truth of our reality, it is impossible to not be in complete dazzlement, awe, and wonderment. Think about it. Right now, computers, words, chairs, bodies, floors, ceilings, trees, sky, earth, solar systems, universes! All spontaneously arising! Where is it all coming from? Where is it going? Why is it even happening at all? Out of the infinite possibility that nothing is, there’s this! How come? Why this and not something else? Hell, why “something” at all? If your not in wonderment, it’s simply feedback that your not in touch with reality. Your not being yourself. You are lost in the narrative of your, life like a child transfixed in front of the TV watching cartoons. So let’s all wake the fuck up (speaking mostly to myself)!!!
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As I think about it, it seems like there are two aspects to being nourished. One is about content: to create and be close to people, places, things, events, and situations that are nourishing to me. The other is about the context of permeability. If I’m not permeable, it doesn’t matter how nourishing something is, for I will not be able take in its nutrients. In my experience, permeability is the tricky one, for it has to do with how I make contact. And how I habitually make contact usually mirrors how much love or fear I grew up in. If I grew up in an atmosphere of fear, criticism, threat, neglect, etc., then often times our relationship to the world (how we do and do not make contact) will reflect this atmosphere. I may avoid contact by dominating, submitting, or withdrawing from others. And conversely, if I grew up in an environment that held me in love and acceptance, I may likely be more open to my experience of the world through making genuine contact. I imagine that we all a have a mixture of both.
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We’ve all had the rare occasion of feeling deeply “gotten” by another person. Those moments where “my” reality is seen, understood, and shared. The person says just the right thing in the right tone and in the perfect way that lets me know that I am no longer alone in the unique position I find myself in. My experience is valid, makes perfect sense, and I get that I’m sane. My shoulders drop, my heart opens, and the light comes on, “Yes! That’s it”, as my very being exhales in existential relief. I find myself somehow *more* myself through you. My reality seems less fixed as I am freed from the prison of my own point of view. I look up at you in effortless affinity, feeling deeply appreciated, understood, and accepted. I now know in my body that you get exactly where I am at, so I can begin to trust you to take me where I want to go. I am open to you.
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Agency is the place where genuine strength and vulnerability come together in a single gesture. You could say agency is a “proactive vulnerability”. When I’m truly BE-ing myself with the world, I stand on nothing but my own self-existing-legitimacy and self-permission. I feel what I feel, think what I think & experience what I experience AS I look reality straight in the eye without flinching or guard. I am truly open, with conviction that rests on nothing, and is never “against” anything. I truly speak. I discover, through my speaking, what I have to say. I truly listen – I am an active openness to you. I am moved by your genuine “other-ness” (even if I don’t agree), in a way that has us both more ourselves. I truly act, without hesitation. The paradox is when I fully give myself permission to be, experience, speak, and act, I implicitly invite you to do the same. I have no enemies. Strength has no reason, only realization. Vulnerability is invulnerable. Communion is born.
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It seems to me that IS/the facts/objective-reality has three facets to its nature: it is open (like space), it is radiant (like light), and it is cognizant (like mind). In other words, IS is-es by floating, by glowing/showing, and by knowing. When I get present to presence itself, and then interpret/imagine/frame my experience in a way that is consistent with openness, light, and knowing (in the deepest sense), then I am true to my nature, and thus fulfilled and happy.
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“Unknowing”
The angel came to him early
enough for he could still
hear her.
She whispered deeply into his
hearing what would echo
with him his whole life
through.
She said, “Do not be to quick
to put a period after your
name,
you reach beyond your own
conclusion and sing a song
as yet begun.
Vastness happens if you
could speak your
name as a question and
know that confusion is
your highest state.
Wonder ceases if you confuse
comfort for joy and the
invisibles for
nonexistence.
Make your life reach beyond
you grasp into the
farthest horizon of your
unknowing.
Let the questions breath
you and ride its rhythm to
the place you most
squirm.
For madness is beauty just
begun.
And beauties widest orbit is
God drinking himself in
your dying.
And in this place we will meet
again.