the most important concept on the Word Gems site

At the time of this writing, the Word Gems site conceals 1500 documents; if printed, 10,000 sheets might ensue.

I no longer feel the need to add anything to this corpus of information. Especially, with this final chapter of the "small room" book, I ask myself: if required to choose one most important concept from the many gold-nuggets I’ve been privileged to see, what would it be?

It’s is the “mind the gap” principle - introduced in the “Surrender and Acceptance” page, and further discussed in the “Zen” article, along with the “Just Sitting” writing.

“Mind the gap” means that one perceives the great existential separation between “true self” and “false self.” It allows one to say, “I am here, the real me, reveling in a quietude of peace, and over there, across the divide, is the emotional chaos which, for so long, has been masquerading as my essential self but, in fact, is an imposter.”

I feel there is no more important precept that one might possess to prepare one’s spirit for life in the next dimensions. Why is this? It is so because “mind the gap” means that you’ve not only accessed, but have crossed over the threshold into, the domain of the sacred soul.

In that celestial realm of certainty, wherein one is linked to Universal Consciousness, all mysteries will yet bow the neck and bend the knee to one’s investigations. In time, the hidden regularities of the universe will disgorge themselves as you come to understand more and more and more… and not even some of those on the other side for thousands of years, who have not yet perceived the efficacy of “mind the gap,” will be able to stand against you.

Some may ask, shouldn’t love have something to do with a “most important concept”? And I would say, yes, of course, as mystics, poets, and saints instruct of its highest expression of the human spirit. However, unless we access the “true self,” we will never experience authentic love, but only its ersatz counterpart, mere egoic wanting and needing. When we do find ourselves in this way, true love, a perception of oneness, automatically and naturally rises to the surface of consciousness. It was there all the time, in the silent reaches of the soul, inaccessible however, due to “static on the line” from the “false self.”

Editor’s note: Recently, I've come to view all of the above as "second most important." See on the "ultimate reality" page.

from the book, “The Power Of Myth,”
a discussion with Dr. Joseph Campbell 

Moyers: I remember a lecture in which you drew a circle, and you said, "That's your soul."

Campbell: Well, that was simply a pedagogical stunt. Plato said somewhere that the soul is a circle. I took this idea to suggest on the blackboard the whole sphere of the psyche. Then I drew a horizontal line across the circle to represent the line of separation of the conscious and unconscious. The center from which all our energy comes I represented as a dot in the center of the circle, below the horizontal line… Now, above the horizontal line there is the ego, which I represent as a square: that aspect of our consciousness that we identify as our center. But, you see, it’s very much off center. We think that this is what’s running the show, but it isn’t.

Moyers: What’s running the show?

Campbell: What’s running the show is what’s coming up from way down below…

The Dazzling Darkness is a concept representing a frame of mind untrammeled by the dysfunctional ego. Therein, freed from illusions of the base passions, one might apprehend not only the identity of one’s true mate but also a realization of the living presence of God in one’s life. READ MORE

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