July 14, 2026

We're All Wounded Healers 

Last Card from Etty thrown from train, taking her to Auschwitz

"Christine, Opening the Bible at random I find this: 'The Lord is my high tower'. I am sitting on my rucksack in the middle of a full freight car. Father, Mother, and Mischa are a few cars away. In the end, the departure came without warning... We left the camp singing... Thank you for all your kindness and care."

Wounded Healers

Friday, October 26, 2018

 From the Center for Action and Contemplation Richard Rohr 

Only people who have suffered in some way can usually save anybody else—exactly as the Twelve-Step program illustrates. They alone have the space and the capacity for the other. Deep communion and compassion are formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure. Jesus told Peter, “You must be ground like wheat, and once you have recovered, then you can turn and help the brothers” (see Luke 22:31-32). In general, you can lead people on the spiritual journey as far as you have gone. Transformed people transform people. When you can be healed yourself and not just talk about healing, you are, as Henri Nouwen said, a “wounded healer”—which is probably the only kind of healer!

James Finley shares insights drawn from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ work with the dying:

Those who come to acceptance in death don’t look up at you from their deathbeds to say how happy they are in the ways we typically speak of happiness. For those who come to acceptance in death pass beyond the dualism of happiness and sadness as emotional states that depend on conditions that are conducive to happiness. Those who come to acceptance in death have about them a certain transparent childlike quality, an uncanny peace. It's a peace not of this world. For in accepting their seemingly unacceptable situation, they are transformed in ways that leave us feeling strangely touched and privileged to be in their presence. Being in their presence can open up in us a deep sense of how invincibly precious we are in the midst of our fragility. 

This experience of being with those who have come to an acceptance in death can help us renew our ongoing efforts to learn from God how to die to the last traces of clinging to anything less or other than God’s sustaining love. For insofar as we learn from God how to die to all that is less than or other than God’s love as our sole security and identity, it just might be possible that when the moment of our death finally comes, nothing will happen. For in some deep, unexplainable way we will have already crossed over into the deathless love of God. [1]

We can see Etty Hillesum’s work to find this kind of acceptance in letters she wrote from the Westerbork transit camp:

This is something people refuse to admit to themselves: at a given point you can no longer do, but can only be and accept. [2]

Such peace allowed Hillesum to serve and love her fellow humans, even when, as she wrote, they “don’t give you much occasion to love them.” She discovered “there is no causal connection between people’s behavior and the love you feel for them. Love for one’s fellow man is like an elemental glow that sustains you.” [3]

Finally, on a card that she threw out of the train on her way to Auschwitz, Etty wrote:

In the end, the departure came without warning. On sudden special orders from The Hague. We left the camp singing, Father and Mother firmly and calmly, Mischa, too. We shall be traveling for three days. Thank you for all your kindness and care. [4]

Hard to believe these could be her last written words. Where does such generosity of spirit come from? From God, only from an Infinite God and an Infinite Source of Loveion are formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure. Jesus told Peter, “You must be ground like wheat, and once you have recovered, then you can turn and help the brothers” (see Luke 22:31-32). In general, you can lead people on the spiritual journey as far as you have gone. Transformed people transform people. When you can be healed yourself and not just talk about healing, you are, as Henri Nouwen said, a “wounded healer”—which is probably the only kind of healer!

July 13th, 2026

A Life Honestly & Consciously Lived,

Provides All the Essential Ingredients

For Reflection, the Fuel for Redemption

And the Path to Integration

I've lived in a manner that didn't utilize nor integrate my past train wrecks into anything other than a sense of shame, Brokenness, even more as a label I self-assigned.

§

As I moved into the So-Called Second Half of Life, which came with the Desire for Growth, Reconciliation and Honest Appraisal, did I begin to see my Past as a road map pointing to... Metamorphosis.

If I'm able to use my past blunders — born of ignorance — and honestly reexamine the events, therein lies the challenge/opportunity to use those experiences as the leaden base to feed my transformation.

§

Sounds quite Straightforward

Nah. 

Not at All! 

§

Without Owning and discovering the
Underlying Fear, that I believe, drives selfish, self-serving behavior, I'm bound to continue to act and react in fundamentally the same manner. Oh sure, Dressed up a bit, with a new mask, but underneath the same face.. 

July 12th, 2026

A potpourri of 

The Day Anthony Hopkins Quit Drinking | The Interview

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1mbe4F3YBqw&is=QLMkYdBV1CAIRBfd

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty

Rainer Maria Rilke 

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens

Rainer Maria Rilke

The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing

Rainer Maria Rilke

Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age.

Hermann Hesse

This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification.
Hermann Hesse

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.
Hermann Hesse

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.
Hermann Hesse

July 11th, 2026

O Friend! hope for Him whilst you live, know whilst you live,
understand whilst you live: for in life deliverance abides.

If your bonds be not broken whilst living,
what hope of deliverance in death?

It is but an empty dream, that the soul shall have union with Him,
because it has passed from the body:

If He is found now, He is found then,
If not, we do but go to dwell in the City of Death.
If you have union now, you shall have it hereafter.

Bathe in the truth, know the true Guru,
have faith in the true Name!

Kabir says: “It is the Spirit of the quest which helps;

I am the slave of this Spirit of this quest.

~~ Kabir

A Year With Rilke

We have no reason to distrust our world, for it is not against us. If has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has an abyss, it is ours. If dangers are there, we must try to love them. And if we would live with faith in the value of what is challenging, then what now appe to us as most alien will become our truest, most trustworthy frien Let us not forget the ancient myths at the outset of humanity's journey, the myths about dragons that at the last moment transfor into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once with beauty and coura Perhaps every terror is, in its deepest essence, something that nee our recognition or help.

Rainer Maria Rilke
 
Borgeby gärd, Sweden,               August 12, 1904 
Letters to a Young Poet

July 10th, 2026

Using Metanoia ~ Today & Today & Today & Today

TFTD 
thought for the day

Awaken your divine spark today by recognizing that the physical world is an illusion and that your true consciousness transcends the material. Look inward to find profound spiritual truth, rather than letting yourself be defined by worldly constraints, societal pressures, or the false paradigms that surround you. 

Metanoia

i carried a lot inside for a long time. told myself it was privacy. told myself it was dignity. it was neither. it was a slow poisoning, the kind that doesn't announce itself: no fever, no collapse, just a quiet closing of rooms until i was living in a smaller and smaller house of myself.

~

There's a saying from The Gospel of Thomas that i return to more than any other: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." i used to read that as a warning about honesty. now i read it as a description of how i actually spent my life — not choosing destruction, just failing, again and again, to bring anything forth.

~

Metanoia is usually translated as repentance. that's not wrong, but it's thin. what i needed wasn't to feel sorry. i needed to turn — not away from my life, not up and out of it, but around, toward what was actually there. the alchemists knew this before i did. they didn't discard the prima materia because it was base — they worked it. i had to learn the same thing about my own history. the gold was never elsewhere. it was in the lead. it was waiting on the labor.

~

i spent years believing my past was something to transcend, a container to climb out of. i don't believe that anymore. it was never a container. it was ore.

~

Making the amends was not the hard part, though i thought it would be. the hard part came after — the ordinary Friday when there was no longer a reckoning to prepare for, no threshold left to cross, just the plain fact of having said the thing and having to live now as someone who said it.

~

i think this is where most metanoia stories end too soon. the turning gets told as a single scene — the confession, the letter, the phone call — and then the credits roll, as if the labor were the crossing and not everything after it. but the alchemists never called the work finished at the dissolution. dissolving the lead isn't the gold — it's just the lead admitting what it's made of.

~

so this is the part i don't see written down much: what it is to have brought something forth, and then have to keep living in the room you opened. no one becomes someone new because i shared my truth, my amends. i didn't either. what changed was smaller and slower — i stopped closing that door each morning. i just left it open, and got used to walking past it.

~

that's the part i'm still in. 

not the confession. 

the walking past.

~

and i want to be honest about what that means, because it isn't a plateau. knowing the truth once didn't exempt me from having to bring it forth again the next morning, and the one after that. gnosis was never a diploma. i used to think metanoia was a hinge — a before and an after, a door you walk through once. it's not a hinge. it's a practice of the same door, over and over, on days it would be easier to let it swing shut.

~

so the turning isn't finished, 

and i no longer expect it to be. 

 what saves me isn't the memory of having once brought something forth.

 it's whether i bring it forth again today.

 the lead doesn't stay gold.

 it has to be worked, each time, or it goes quiet and cold and back to what it was.

July 9th, 2026

The Forgetting 

 Seems to me that these recent days of forgetting are an apt description for my apathy and self-serving lack of connection. When I'm in a state of self-embroilment, I've made a choice to return to a state of unconnectedness, a return to i ~ a small i, in a sea of i's.

As noted via the Gnostic tradition, this is not a personal failure (unless owned as such) — it is a gentle reminder that I'm not a failure, but a sleeper who has wandered from the pearl —

the light didn't leave,

I just stopped looking for it.

The Hymn of the Pearl tells it plainly. A prince, sent from the East to Egypt for a single pearl guarded by a serpent, eats the local food and forgets — forgets the pearl, forgets home, falls asleep in a foreign garment. A letter from his parents wakes him: remember. He charms the serpent, takes the pearl, starts home. On the road he's met by his own robe, woven to match exactly who he'd become. He puts it on and enters his father's house.

The Hymn of the Pearl 

Full text 
Also known as The Hymn of the Pearl, the Hymn of the Soul, the Hymn of the Robe of Glory, and occasionally as the Hymn of Judas Thomas the Apostle. 

I don't think the forgetting was ever the failure. The soul's condition in matter has always been described as a kind of sleep — not a fall from grace, just a distance traveled. The prince doesn't sin his way into Egypt. He simply eats, and forgets, the way I eat my own days and forget.

And even Sophia's grief — her exile, her mourning — was never something to rush past or explain away. It's what makes the story move. Passion that gets metabolized, not punished.

So maybe the light in me was never damaged by whatever darkness I've been sitting in. Just covered. Nothing broken. Something obscured, for now — the same way what's within doesn't need to be built, only brought forth. Its absence is the only harm.

~

I don't need a technique for this. I need patience with the dark as a stage, not a verdict. A letter, eventually, will come.

July 7th, 2026

The Thousand Names of the Nameless

Why Every Culture Pronounces the Same Infinity Differently

From Medium

By

Manpreet Singh

,

Somewhere between the first human heartbeat and the first whispered prayer, something remarkable happened. Human beings began to name the Infinite.

Not because the Infinite needed a name. But because the human heart needed a way to call it.

And thus began one of the most beautiful, chaotic, and slightly hilarious phenomena in spiritual history.

Every civilization started addressing the same ultimate reality…

in completely different languages.

The Divine Became Multilingual

In the forests of India, sages chanted, “Om Namah Shivaya.”

In temples, devotees recited the Vishnu Sahasranama, listing a thousand names of Vishnu, each revealing a different facet of the divine.

In Sikh tradition, Naam became central, pointing not merely to a word, but to the living presence of the Divine vibrating through existence.

In Islam, the 99 Names of Allah emerged, each describing a quality of the One -

The Compassionate.

The Merciful.

The Subtle.

The Infinite.

In Christianity, the divine was invoked as -

Word.

Logos.

Father.

Love.

Meanwhile, somewhere in a quiet corner of the cosmos, the Infinite was probably smiling, “Ah… they’re trying again.”

Here lies the delicious paradox that arises when you try to name the nameless.

The ultimate reality is beyond all names.

The Upanishads declare,

“Yato vāco nivartante…”

Words return from it, unable to grasp it.

And yet, every tradition insists on naming it anyway.

Why?

Because the human mind cannot relate to the infinite without symbols.

A name is not the Divine.

It is a doorway.

A sound-key.

A vibrational bridge between the finite and the infinite.

The 1008 Names and the Infinite Facets of Reality

Why does one god have a thousand names?

Because one name is simply not enough.

Take the Lalita Sahasranama or the Vishnu Sahasranama.

Each name reveals a different dimension.

Creator.

Destroyer.

Sustainer.

Witness.

Beloved.

Void.

Light.

Silence.

It is as if the sages were saying,

“Let us describe the Infinite from every possible angle…

and still fail magnificently.”

The number 1008 is not mathematical excess.

It is poetic surrender.

A recognition that the Divine is so vast that language must overflow to even gesture toward it.

In Sikh Dharma, the concept of Naam goes even deeper.

Naam is not just a label for God.

Naam is God in vibrational form.

Guru Nanak points to this with breathtaking clarity,

“Ik Onkar.”

There is One Reality.

Naam is the essence of that One.

Not confined to syllables. Not limited to language.

It is the underlying resonance of existence itself.

The pulse in your heartbeat.

The hum in the cosmos.

The silent presence behind every sound.

Chanting the Name is not calling God from somewhere else.

It is tuning into what is already here.

Imagine standing at the shore of an ocean.

One person calls it “water.”

Another says “jal.”

Another says “maa.”

Another writes an equation describing its molecular structure.

Different expressions.

Same ocean.

Similarly…

Shiva.

Allah.

Rama.

Waheguru.

Brahman.

The Void.

The Absolute.

Different names.

Same reality.

Arguing over which name is correct is like arguing over whether the ocean prefers to be called “blue” or “wet.”

The ocean remains unimpressed.

The Sound Beneath All Sounds

Many mystical traditions point to a deeper truth.

Behind all names lies a primordial vibration.

In Hindu philosophy, this is Om.

In Sikh tradition, the unstruck sound is called Anhad Naad.

In Christian mysticism, it appears as the Logos, the Word through which creation emerges.

This is not ordinary sound.

It is the vibration of existence itself.

The universe is not silent.

It is singing.

Galaxies spin like celestial ragas.

Atoms hum with quantum rhythms.

Consciousness vibrates with awareness.

Naam, in its deepest sense, is this music of the spheres.

Humans, being wonderfully inventive, took these many names and did something rather predictable.

They began arguing.

“My name for God is correct.”

“No, mine is superior.”

“Yours is outdated.”

“Ours comes with better rituals.”

Meanwhile, the Infinite quietly continues being… infinite.

It is like children arguing over which window shows the real sky.

All the while, the sky stretches endlessly above them, slightly amused.

At some point in the spiritual journey, a realization dawns.

The name is not separate from the named.

The sound is not separate from the silence.

The seeker is not separate from the sought.

The Divine Name is not something you merely repeat.

It is something you become aware of.

It is already present. Right here, right now.

Flowing through breath.

Echoing in awareness.

Pulsing in existence itself.

All names arise from one source. And that source is not somewhere else.

It is the very consciousness reading these words.

The same awareness that hears the chant.

The same presence that longs for the Divine.

The same silence in which all names appear and dissolve.

Call it Shiva.

Call it Waheguru.

Call it Allah.

Call it Nothing.

Or say nothing at all.

Because ultimately, the greatest secret of Naam is this,

The Divine has been calling you

long before you ever learned how to call it.

And if you listen carefully…

you might just hear it

whispering your name back.

Thank You for reading,

Manpreet Singh

(https://theunmindproject.substack.com/p/the-Thousand-Names-of-the-Nameless) 

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