This is part of two of my miniseries on Tranlucent thinking. It is not my intention to endorse or proselytize others into jumping onto the latest and greatest spiritual bandwagon, but rather, to pass along, hopefully, some food for thought. Here are some more quotes and sayings from Arjuna Ardagh,s book The Translucent Revolution.

Translucents do not choose between spirit and the world.: They embrace both or they have neither fully. Spirit is expressed in form, and form only works when it is infused with spirit. The inner life is incomplete without material life, like a metal untested by fire. Material life is incomplete without spirit, like a cathedral without an altar. To be successful in a rapidly changing world, you need to be at the source of your experience, awake to who you really are. Translucents embrace life, inclusive feelings and sexuality, the shadow as well as the saintliness, the failures as well as the triumphs.

Translucents are in their bodies, and care for the body as a sacred garden. They practice yoga, martial arts. They play tennis, ski, and surf, for sheer joy of being embodied, not to achieve anything. They dance as a sacred art form. And translucents are generally very sexual and sensual: they experience the body as a doorway to the real.

The tendency to resist life, to become a pattern of interference, is so strong in all of us that it takes considerable awareness, honesty, and willingness to feel what is uncomfortable, to not resist it. This is the pivotal difference between contemporary translucents and traditional mystics….and…unlike many traditional practitioners of spiritual life, translucents are not interested in running away from anything or amputating any part of their experience. In fact, they have learned to walk toward what they have previously run away from.

Translucents embrace spiritual practice not as a means to achieving a future goal but as a way to a more fully lived present moment, with open heart, open mind, and open body.

In the maturing beyond dogma and the rules of tradition, translucents have also grown beyond hierarchy. The tradition setting of one Enlightened, one sitting on a raised podium, answering questions from differential devotees, is being replaced by the sacred circle, where wisdom is everywhere in the room at the same time, where meeting is eye to eye, heart to heart. Realizing the deepest truth of who we are may occur on the mediation cushion or in a cave. To discover our potential to live as radiant love and humorous art requires involvement with other people. Through the alchemy of meeting with others in honesty and trust, we can take our inner wisdom for a test-drive and find out what happens when the rubber meets the road.

Tranlucents are lions, not sheep. They walk alone, although sometimes in each other’s company.

Translucents display willingness to be wrong, to let go and move on. Their perception of their identity is the way we might experience a crazy uncle who can be tolerated, enjoyed, even loved. There is no reason to change your mad uncle, but there is also no reason to defend him or apologize for him. If he disturbs the neighbors, a little damage control is simply intelligent.

Translucents have a natural interest in forgiving and moving on. Forgiveness is no longer a moral virtue, or something we need to practice, but the effortless by-product of no longer needing to protect an identity with a story attached to it. The past is not healed: it simply ceases to be useful….A translucents forgiveness is neither a moral quality nor a cultivated virtue, but the natural and inevitable consequences of knowing oneself as something more than the past.

Translucents have fewer beliefs to protect; They are comfortable with not knowing what to do until they really know. They have less need to think and dramatically less need to be right. When we are acting translucently, our actions come from a different place within us. Instead of reflecting a system of belief, they are a direct response to the situation as it is…Often we talk and take action based on preexisting set of beliefs about what is right and wrong. Our behavior is predictable and they almost always meet the present moment based on our past…and…having developed a complex system of beliefs, we become more interested in defending them than in knowing what is true. The actuality of life becomes secondary to the principle of the thing.
The role of a translucent teacher is to relax and allow a deeper part of the questioner to tell her what she already knows but cannot hear. This is the deeper role of a teacher; not to deliver a precooked set of dictates and theories but to be used by the Great Knowing…The key to accessing a deeper source of thought and action is the willingness to relax and wait...rather than accept the statue quo notion of avoiding “I don’t know” at all cost. Translucent action requires the wisdom of “I don’t know” as its firm foundation….