#david chaim smith

[improvisedliturgy]

"not pantheism, just pan-"

This is the divine paradox: Reality is at once an open assertion of pure possibility and a surging of that potency in absolute fullness.

David Chaim Smith, Commentary on The Fountain of Wisdom p. 8

The world is neither finite nor infinite as representation would have it: it is completed and unlimited.

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition p. 57

[library-of-babel]

“Bath of Bright Silence” by David Chaim Smith (2018)

[noise-vs-signal]

Kabbalistic and Alchemical Mandalas by David Chaim Smith.

[theflamingones]

As Gnostic longing matures, meaning is self liberated into its essential nature, and individual relative meanings are subsumed into the absolute meaningfulness of incomprehensible wisdom. We cannot ever grasp wisdom with knowing alone. It dawns as it merges with the open expanse of unknowing in the midst of each moment: Where moments are sent off to die within the graveyard of temporal and conceptual limitations. The Gnostic impulse seeks to break through the mind's layered shadows to unfurl the beauty of this paradox at the root. Beauty comes into its own, until all appearance exudes it as an alchemical distillate equally suffused, indiscriminately.

David Chaim Smith (The Awakening Ground: A Guide to Contemplative Mysticism)

[satanic]

David Chaim Smith from the series Deep Principles of Kabbalistic Alchemy

[improvisedliturgy]

[…you will ascend to activity, from activity to experience, from experience to visualization, from visualization to inquiry, from inquiry to knowledge, from knowledge to ascension and from ascension to certainty — until you fathom the explanation of each and every thing.] […] Within the foam, the mind engages in the "activity" and "experience" of holding and considering reality. Within that action the mind discovers itself as the ruach. It can think about the fact that it is thinking, and feel the fact it is feeling. This allows the mind to enter itself, where it is enclothed in the visualization of all perceived appearances. Consciousness then transfers the intimacy of its feeling to contemplative "inquiry," along with all its daat or "knowledge," and it dwells as ruach without attaching to identity. Then, daat is offered up to keter, and the ruach "ascends" and remains until "certainty" is cultivated. This paradoxically happens while the world still appears as it is.

David Chaim Smith, Commentary on The Fountain of Wisdom (pp. 96-7)

[improvisedliturgy]

David Chaim Smith, Commentary on The Fountain of Wisdom p. 16

the crowning of reality complete and like a thread pulled from a flame seven-fold fire on yud wings

[improvisedliturgy]

Contemplation seeks translucence in the midst of a seemingly finite and opaque universe. Each step in the hishtalshelut (kabbalistic ladder of worlds) presents the same central issue anew with each step. Manifestation either becomes reified into an ordinary mental object or it returns to the primordial awakening ground. Therefore each step of the ladder is equally precious if it can be realized as infinity in itself, avoiding the conceptual grasping that instantly freezes the cognitive field on contact.

David Chaim Smith, The Awakening Ground