A little backstory…

About seven years ago, through a friend published by it, I was put in contact with a publishing house. Although our relationship would be short-lived, it would still bear fruit since it would lead to the creation of the first version of Untold Wonders.

I always loved writing—sketches of songs, poetry, essays—yet nothing foretold that I would publish anything. But now that I had a manuscript in my hands, the idea was making its way. We find these words in the introduction of Untold Wonders:

“Since so much is already published on spirituality—not to mention everything available now just a click away—when the possibility of publishing came my way, I wondered if the material I had would add something useful to the conversation. After careful consideration and the encouragement of a few people aware of part of it, I decided to go along with it.”

As pointed out in my biography, from early on a few factors got me interested in spirituality—finding answers to some fundamental questions that the presence of life raised for me, and some experiences that made me realize that the nature of reality is far greater than our conventional experience of it. But that was it. Before that,I had no knowledge of spirituality and no particular interest in it.

A turning point came in the form of In Search of the Miraculous, a book by P.D. Ouspenski on the teachings of Gurdjieff, a spiritual teacher active in the first half of the last century. It was given as a gift to one of my brothers, with whom I was living temporarily. As it laid on the kitchen table, one day I started reading it and got so engrossed by its content that I couldn’t put it down. Something in me was waking up; something a teaching calls “the Flame of the Search.” From there, I read all I could find on Gurdjieff, then studied the major spiritual traditions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sufism, Hinduism, Tantra, Buddhism and Zen—and read Rumi, Hafiz and Kabir. Besides Gurdjieff, I also looked into the teachings of other contemporary teachers, such as Krishnamurti, Aurobindo, Osho, Alan Watts, Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj. My practice at the time was essentially self-observation and some forms of meditation.

One thing leading to another, my journey took me to exploring various forms of psychotherapy, to train in Rebirthing, a form of breathwork, and eventually to find my way to India, where I lived for a time. There, from a single meeting to periods spanning years, I had the opportunity to meet many traditional and contemporary teachers and explore their view and approach—notably H.W.L. Poonja, also known as Poonjaji, Gangaji, Shantimayi and her teacher, Sri Hansraj Maharajji, Amritānandamayī Devi, also known as Amma, Ranjit Maharaj (who with Nisargadatta Maharaj was a student of Siddharameshwar Maharaj), Osho, Kiran Baba, and Sufi Baba, also known as Bapu.

The topic of spiritual teachings and teachers is an important one, and controversial in this day and age, particularly in the West. We find in Untold Wonders:

“Because of all the irrational views and historical abuse surrounding religion and spirituality—all the superstitions, the abuse of power, the disconnection from ordinary life and more—it’s understandable that a lot of people question their relevance. I did too initially. Yet some of us can’t help feeling there’s more to life than what it conventionally offers, so we find ourselves going down this road anyway, for better or worse.

(…) There’s no denying the fantasies attached to spirituality. To follow on some things you shared, we can say that it’s inherently problematic to get answers from others to the fundamental questions life brings. We get all sorts of ideas from others about life, about the nature of reality, about enlightenment or liberation and all that, ideas often completely disconnected from where from where we’re at, yet we still go along with them. I also went down this road, somewhat, and I had to put all that aside and come back to my own experience. As I see it, there’s no other way, otherwise what we get is what others got, which is fine if it’s fine with us. It doesn’t mean we have to dismiss other people’s take on things, dismiss their experience, their realizations, or that we can’t have a teacher and practice within a community. That’s not the point. The point is us. We’re the point.

The point is that it’s between us and reality.

Individually. Personally. Intimately.”

While I was still living in India, word was getting around about two teachers I had never heard of: A.H. Almaas, of the Diamond Approach, and Faizal Muqaddam, of the Diamond Logos Teachings. The two are connected as they knew each other and were involved, with the participation of a friend, Karen Johnson, in the discovery and development of the basic elements of this approach.

For anyone into inner work, this approach has a lot to offer, starting with a wealth of new information about it. I also appreciate the fact that it views the psychological and spiritual dimensions as inseparable, and views inner work and external life the same way. Also, that it considers the potential of inner realization as open-ended, and that its focus is on the teaching and not the ones teaching it. We find in Untold Wonders:

“As I see it, while its teachers are to be appreciated for the essential role they play, a healthy teaching naturally invites our attention, our focus on itself, not the ones teaching it. Its nature does that, while its teachers see themselves as its students as well.”

The teachings that have spoken to me the most on my journey share a larger and more human view of spirituality than the ones exclusively oriented toward self-realization or enlightenment. They include the kind of realizations such terms refer to, yet much more. They embrace every aspect of human life and are oriented toward the realization of all the potential open to us, both inner and outer. We also find in Untold Wonders:

“We can see spirituality as a dimension standing on its own, apart from all else. It’s true in a sense, and many spiritual teachings see it that way. But it’s not the only possibility. It’s also possible to see it as inseparable from all of human life. To see that its significance lies in how it applies to life, to living life in a real way, in a true, authentic way. We may come to experience the presence of our true nature in some way, but what’s the point if it’s disconnected from our life? Then we may as well be extraterrestrials. But we’re not. We’re human beings and the potential open to us is not only to discover our true nature, but to live it, to actualize it, to express it in everyday life.”

❖

What found its way into Untold Wonders is material I kept through the years, ranging from journaling, short essays on various topics, to exchanges I had with people privately and online. Though each essay and exchange stands on its own, I grouped the ones related in any way into different chapters, and then, for the orphans that didn’t fit anywhere, I created a chapter simply titled “The Orphanage.” I also included at the end of each chapter a “weather report.” The term refers to notes I kept about inner experiences and realizations I had on my inner journey. More than for their actual content—since these kinds of experience are so personal, so unique to each of us—I saw including some of them as a way to flesh things out, to make everything else more palpable, more tangible. 

CONTENTS

Untold Wonders is available here

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