Tag Archive | philosophy

All As Truth – Wisdom from Story Waters

Freedom is not superior to limitation;
with this realization I am able to choose freedom.

Happiness is not superior to suffering;
with this realization I am able to let go of suffering

Abundance is not superior to poverty;
with this realization my abundance flows.

Nothing is superior to anything;
with this knowing I step out from
hierarchy, competition and struggle.

In this state I do not judge life;
therefore I do not feel separate from it.

I am so glad of the diversity in the world;
in its reflection I see my own freedom
to be whatever I wish to be.

We are not here to be one;
we are here to be many.

Through seeing that beyond this illusion we are all one,
we free ourselves to be the many.

I am not tied to any singular path to be a certain way.

I am diverse.

I am ever changing.

I am an explorer of All As Truth

~Story Waters








Love and light

Rhea Jamil

Discovering Self-Worth

Rumi-quoteYou are divine, therefore your worth is inherent.  You do not need to prove anything, because you already are the proof of divine love.  There is nothing you need to become in order to be ‘worthy.’  The challenge of being human is to reconcile your divinity with your humanity.  Your divinity is the perfection you were made with.   Your humanity is the suffering you have endured, it is the journey you have taken and the scars you have accumulated along the way.   We are perfection, we are made in perfection, then we go through human lifetimes which have both joy and suffering, and we get a little beat up.  We become, on the surface, less than perfect.  We may even be quite damaged, so that the world when it sees us, it no longer recognizes our perfection.  Humans are often not valued by the world, or we may think that our only value is in some tiny part of us that the world sees as valuable, like having a big house or great job.  However, our true value is always in our whole being, scars and all.  The world does not have the final say on what is worthy, because the world is the illusion of separateness, and through this illusion it sees duality instead of unity.  It creates a dichotomy which makes you then believe that what you are is not enough, but that you need to be something else, or something more.  If someone criticized the sky for being blue, or criticized a fish for being unable to fly, you would think them insane.  And yet we do this to ourselves and others all the time.  We decide we are not enough, that we are somehow not alright as we are, and then we project that onto others as well, and likewise others project their own perceived shortcomings onto us.  This is a state of madness.  The way out of this madness is to rediscover the connectedness to divine reality.  Remove the veil of illusion, the veil which makes you believe that you not divine, and you see the perfection, the inherent worth, in yourself, and in others. 

The journey has caused you to be a little beaten up, but the inherent perfection in you is intact, and now in addition, you have a tremendous story, you have the value of your wondrous journey through life as well and the scars to prove it.  Your perfection and your worth are never diminished no matter how many battle scars, no matter how much the world devalues you.  In fact, your worth increases with suffering by virtue of what you learn and what the universe learns through you.  If the world does not recognize your worth, it is not because your worth is not there.  If you feel imperfect, it is not because the perfection you were made with is not there.  What you are and where you are right now, in this moment, is what you are meant to be.  You do not need to justify yourself, or your place in this world, to anyone else.  You can simply be exactly what you are, knowing your value even if no one else sees it.  True self worth is one of those things that the world cannot give you, but that you must give to yourself.  Once you release the need for the world to acknowledge your worth, then you become the person you were meant to be.


Rhea Jamil

Choice vs. Victimhood


Everything in your life is a choice.  What you have created in life is what you have attracted to you, by virtue of your own choosing.  The unconscious or ‘unenlightened’ state is one of being unaware of this fact, and believing instead that you are a victim of the world.  For many of us, it is difficult to come to terms with the idea that we have chosen all of our suffering.  We often feel like victims, and indeed we wonder ‘why on earth would I have chosen that? No one in their right mind would choose that!’  Let me offer an example to help reconcile this paradox.  Imagine you are in a car with some friends and you are driving.  Your friends tell you to drive faster, and you do.  They continue to egg you on to drive faster and you comply.  Then, a cop pulls you over.  Who gets the ticket?  You do. You are the one who pays the consequence (endures the suffering) because you are ultimately the one who’s foot was on the accelerator and thus it was your decision.  However there is another point of view that would say that your friends are to blame, because if they had not told you to go faster, you would not have.  This is also true, however your friends are not the ones who suffer the consequences.  From this perspective, you look more like the victim.  There is also a way in which you are both.  Yes, you should not have listened to your friends, but your friends should not have been egging you on either.  You and your friends co-created the situation, but you did have a choice.  In this analogy, your friends are the larger influence of the unconscious world driven by ego.  We are here to learn to stand up for our truth and say to our ‘friends’ ‘no – I’m not going to drive faster.  This is the speed I want to go, this is my truth.’  It can be very difficult when you friends are yelling in your ear and if you believe your friends are the final authority on everything, i.e. if you believe the power in the world is greater than the power in you, you are very likely to go along.  It is only when the consequences start showing up that we begin to learn that we need to stand in our own truth, even if it takes us out of our ‘comfort zone’ at the time.  When you learn to do this, it will be uncomfortable for a while, because you will have to withstand the ‘friends’ onslaught while standing by your truth.  However, you know that they are not the ultimate authority, and this gives you the strength to do this.  

The world (by which I specifically mean the illusionary world which is driven by ego) will try to push you in directions that do not feel right to you, it will try to convince you that it is the ultimate authority and the ultimate reality.  It can be very convincing.   You could decide to blame the world, as in the above scenario you would blame your friends.  You can decide that you are the victim.  That decision is not entirely untrue as in the example above, from a certain perspective yes, you are the victim, however that is also the position in which you negate your own power.  If you focus on the power the world has over you and decide you are the victim, you give away your own power.  At the end of the day, you – your essential, highest self – is the one who has the power.  You are the only one who can stand in your truth, you are the only one who can control your perception, your reaction, your inner state.  The key is finding your inner knowing, the part of you that is capable of withstanding peer pressure is also the part of you that knows your own truth and knows your own power.  It is the part that knows you are the one in control, no matter what the rest of the world is trying to convince you of.

There is a very real way in which the human race is like a teenager who is finally growing up and realizing, “hey, I know who I am, I know what I’m about, I don’t need to give into pressure from others, from the outside world, or from the ego, I do have my own power, within me.”  We are waking up from the ‘victim’ mode of being and beginning to find our power, which we had the whole time we just did not realize it.  We are like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who had the power to go home the whole time, she just didn’t realize it.  However by the same token, if she had realized it and gone home immediately, she would not have learned the valuable lessons that she needed to – about her own mind, heart, and courage – reflected back to her by her friends the scarecrow, tin man and lion.  So, we needed to learn some things, and we found the perfect reflections in each life to learn what we needed to, but we have had the power to enlighten ourselves (go home) the whole time, we are just finally waking up and growing into it. 

-Rhea Jamil

The infinite moment


When I was a child I became fascinated the concept of forever. I tried to imaging it – forever – something that never ends. Since I grew up with the notion that eternity in heaven awaits us, I would try and imagine that. I tried to imagine existing in heaven, or in any form, forever. I tried to imagine a timeline stretching out into space and going on and on forever. And try as I might, I just could not. It even frightened me a little. How can something go on forever? Have no beginning and no end? If you really put your mind to that question it is bound to drive you a little insane. That is because we are wired to think in a linear manner. If you are thinking linearly, there is no way to understand the infinite. A line has to have a beginning and an end. Something has to come before, then after, then again after that, etc. The infinite is non-linear, it does not have a before and an after. In fact it does not have any quantity at all. You cannot add or subtract from infinity. What is infinity minus 1, or infinity minus a zillion? There is no such number. Even a zillion is still a set quantity, large as it is, it is not infinite. There is no number in existence that can express the infinite, because there are no quantities in the infinite, it simply is.  To help begin to grasp this concept let’s look at something which is infinite which is part of your common experience: the moment that we refer to as “now.” When did that ‘now’ moment begin? You could say, well, it began a second ago. But that is not the case, because that second is now in the past, it is no longer now. When does now end? You could say it will end in a second, but again, that second is in the future, it is not now. In reality, now has no beginning, and it has no end. You cannot add or subtract from the moment we call now. It is infinite. It is the only moment in existence. It is the only moment you ever have creative access to, so it is all there is.  Past and future are only in the mind.

Physics even tells us that time is an illusion.  Physicists cannot come up with any ‘proof’ that time exists.  In truth there really is no time, there is only now. However, what we perceive as time is actually the space in which evolution occurs.   Evolution can only go in one direction, thus our perception of the linear nature of time.  The past is therefore the space that contains our earlier forms, it contains the progression of evolution of your being to what you are.  The past can be learned from, but does not need to influence your Now.  The Now moment is a new creation, an opportunity to evolve and to release what needs to be released.  Quantum leaps are possible and happen all the time, former ways of being do not need to be clung to in order to evolve, in fact clinging is what impedes evolution.  In actuality the past has no bearing on the Now other than what we give it. 

The future, like the past, does not really exist, however the ‘future’ is about trusting within the Now moment, which means living without fear.  Future is where fear lives for most of us.  When we learn to live in trust instead of fear is when we begin to awaken to the infinite Now, and that is when those quantum leaps of insight, awareness or inspiration become possible.  We cannot cross the gap with fear, it will always block our path.  Trust is the only way forward.  That is when we embrace the moment and harness its creative power, without needing the past to tell us what to do or how to do it.  Are you an athlete who has experienced the ‘zone’, or an artist who has become completely consumed in your art form to the point you lose track of anything but your own self expression?  Have you ever had a lightning bolt of insight or inspiration that just ‘comes’ to you? These are the experiences of knowing the infinite moment.  You have no fear in those moments, you also have nothing from the past which holds you back.  You are connected to the infinite.   Meditation is the quickest way to find this space intentionally.  Sit quietly and observe your breath.  Let all thoughts that come to you pass through without judgment.  Observe your thoughts without becoming or identifying with them.  Find the awareness behind your thoughts.  Slowly the stillness will seep in and in that stillness, you will find the infinite Now. 

-Rhea Jamil


Taming the Ego

-Rhea Jamil


Child of the Universe


-Rhea Jamil