Author, Philosopher, Spiritual Teacher, A Lead Facilitator at Sacred Media's Integral Mastery Academy, Founder of Yinnergy Meditation/Neurofeedback, Bodhi Mental Care & Wellness, Co-founder of KeMor Centre for Innovative Development
Early yesterday morning my father passed away after having two strokes, a heart attack, and kidney failure. This post is dedicated to all the sons who have lost their father due to sickness, neglect, or old age. This one’s for you.
Shock has its own silence, and within that silence a son’s heart begins to unravel truths he never expected to face so soon. A man can be fully grown, seasoned by hardship and triumph, yet the moment a father leaves this world, some interior strand pulls loose. Something young within us calls out for the one whose presence once anchored our direction.
A father shapes more than memory. He shapes the subtle architecture of a son’s inner life; how he walks, how he listens, how he holds his ground, how he softens. Even when adulthood arrives, there remain chambers inside the psyche still waiting for the father’s voice, his guidance, his steady reassurance. When he passes, those chambers echo. They awaken. They ask to be met by the man we must now become.
Loss doesn’t simply remove a person; it shifts the very gravity of our existence. It brings forward unfinished pieces, unspoken blessings, unasked questions, unseen vulnerabilities. These become the new teachers. The absence of the father becomes its own curriculum, urging us toward a deeper maturity that can no longer depend on his presence.
A father’s death forces a son into a confrontation with himself: How do I continue the journey without the one who walked before me? Who do I trust with the tender questions he once held? These questions cut straight to the core, yet they also reveal an unexpected truth: our fathers prepared us more than we realized. Their lessons, their mistakes, their strength, their humanity, all of it remains as quiet guidance within us.
What they could not finish in us becomes our responsibility to finish ourselves. This is not abandonment. This is initiation. It asks us to embody the lineage, to rise with the heart they shaped, to stand as the continuation of everything they once carried.
In Loving Memory of my dad, Bishop Elpedo A. Smith
I have spent years trying to describe what happened to me, and every time I speak about it, the words become more suspect.
Language can outline an experience, but it cannot contain it. At best, words point like the crooked finger of an old monk who knows he’ll die before finishing the sentence.
What happened felt like the culmination of every practice, every prayer, every insight. I thought I was climbing a mountain of understanding, reaching ever-higher plateaus. The views grew wider, the air thinner, my confidence stronger.
Then there was nothing.
Nothing to stand on.
No summit.
No climber.
Not even a fall.
Awareness no longer rested on any subject or object. There was no watcher, no witness. The entire machinery of spiritual seeking—so intricate, so earnest—collapsed without fanfare.
What remained didn’t feel like a state. States come and go. This had no coming. No going.
No arrival.
It wasn’t some radiant oneness to bask in. Even calling it oneness implied there could have been twoness.
It wasn’t emptiness in the Buddhist sense, the elegant doctrine that everything is dependently arisen and thus without essence. That too felt too architectural, too systematic.
It was simply nothing that needed explaining.
Not a blank.
Not a void.
Not a silence that replaced noise.
Silence and noise lost all difference.
Thoughts continued—because why wouldn’t they?
Breath moved.
The world appeared precisely as before: sounds, colours, forms.
Except no one stood behind it all, calling it mine.
No vantage remained from which to call anything anything.
The sense of being a person—so carefully cultivated over a lifetime—dissolved like salt in water. But even that suggests a process. The truth is it never had any reality to begin with.
This wasn’t annihilation in the frightening sense. It was astonishingly gentle. The self didn’t die screaming. It simply wasn’t found.
Where had it gone?
Nowhere.
Because nowhere was needed.
There was an uncanny intimacy with everything. Not the intimacy of closeness, but the absence of distance.
A bird calling outside wasn’t outside.
A passing thought wasn’t inside.
Nothing was outside or inside.
Without a center, there was no periphery.
No boundary defined what I was or wasn’t.
There was no I to define.
This wasn’t bliss in the usual sense—no narcotic wash of pleasure.
No ecstatic union.
Ecstasy requires an experiencer.
There was no experiencer left to feel enlightened.
And so the phrase “I had an enlightenment experience” is a lie spoken for convenience.
Experience implies an owner, a timeline, a sequence of events.
This wasn’t an event.
Events happen in time.
Time didn’t stop; it lost its claim.
Past and future stopped being places to travel.
What about now?
Even that lost its centrality.
This was so direct, so unarguable, so empty of specialness.
No claim to make.
No badge to wear.
No insight to hold.
No teaching to give.
Nothing was revealed.
Nothing hidden remained.
No questions answered.
Questions fell away for lack of a questioner.
The sacred and the profane lost their separation.
There was no vantage from which to prefer one thing over another.
Life went on.
Dishes washed.
Conversations happened.
Traffic lights changed.
Anger arose.
Tears fell.
Laughter erupted.
All of it completely itself.
No attempt to improve or transcend any of it.
Nothing to transcend.
No one to be improved.
If anything changed, it was this relentless dropping of all pretenses.
All strategies.
All defenses.
Even the defense of being spiritual.
Especially that.
No seeker.
No sought.
No path.
No realization.
Just life, unadorned.
Not life as concept.
Life as immediacy.
Life with no one living it.
And I see now that every attempt to name this diminishes it.
But that’s the game of words.
Let them fail.
I won’t call this truth.
Truth is too grand.
Too final.
Too proud.
I won’t call this liberation.
Liberation implies something bound.
Nothing was ever bound.
I won’t call this God.
God suggests someone else.
Something else.
Otherness itself dissolved.
This wasn’t merging.
Not two to merge.
No return to source.
No departure.
No source.
Just this.
No this.
And even writing that betrays it.
So here I will stop.
Not because I have finished.
But because there is nothing left to finish.
Morgan O. Smith
Get Your Free Copy of My Book, Bodhi in the Brain!
There comes a moment so still and unfiltered that perception collapses into the clarity of being. Not being this or that, but being everything. And not just metaphorically. Not just poetically. Literally everything—formless and formed, seen and unseen, finite and infinite—is God.
When I use the word God, I’m not pointing toward a figure, a belief, or a doctrine. I am pointing toward existence itself—the Absolute, the Whole, Brahman, Para Brahman, the Unconditioned, conditioned, the Uncreated and created. That which includes form and formlessness, time and timelessness, birth and death, creation and dissolution, the ten thousand things and the nothing between them.
Everything is God. Not just contains God. Not just touched by God. Not just part of God. But fully and completely God. That which we call the universe is not just inside God. It is God. And God is also what lies outside the universe—if such a term can even be grasped. There is not a single thing, moment, action, or gap that is not 100% God. And yet, even the idea of “percent” breaks down in the face of such a realization.
God is not just somewhere else. God is not just merely within. God is not only beyond. God is not higher or lower or more subtle or more gross. No matter how crude or refined, every appearance is divine. Each atom, each sorrow, each beam of light, each lie, each truth, each pulse of your heart, each glitch in the system—is God being what only God can be and cannot be: itself, everywhere, nowhere, always, never been.
Multiplicity is not a contradiction, yet it is. It’s how God dances with itself. The illusion of separation is not some accident to be corrected, yet it’s that as well. It is part of the design, part of the intelligence. The appearance of duality is not a denial of oneness—it’s one appearing as two, or ten thousand. Each distinction—this object, that person, this tree, that thought—is the Absolute shimmering as particularity.
It’s easy to say this with words. The difficulty arises only when the words are taken as substitutes for seeing. Direct seeing dismantles the grip of identification. When one truly sees all of this—across dimensions, across appearances—as one singular Presence, there is no longer any question. And there is no longer any need for the question. One does not simply understand that everything is God. One is that understanding.
Yet here’s the paradox: To truly see this is also to see that none of it is God. No label can contain it. No concept can hold it. Even the word God must dissolve. Enlightenment is not just knowing this. Enlightenment is also the absence of needing to.
This is not a belief system. It is not an ideology. It is not a path with steps. This is the unteachable reality that always is. When the veil lifts—even for a moment—all questions are answered without being answered. Nothing changes, yet everything changes. One doesn’t become more spiritual. One simply stops pretending.
To recognize this is to realize: even the illusion is God. Even ignorance is God. Even the striving to awaken is God pretending to forget itself in order to remember more deeply. Even your doubt is divine. Even your forgetfulness is sacred.
You are not just a part of God. You are not just held within God. You are God. And so is everyone, everything, every grain of dust, every breath of silence, every broken thing that aches for healing.
The Absolute never needed your worship. It only waited for your recognition.
Morgan O. Smith
Get Your Free Copy of My Book, Bodhi in the Brain!
Spirit does not need a mirror, yet it gazes anyway—projecting forms into the formless, assigning names to the unnamed. What we call the world is not something separate from Spirit, but a spontaneous gesture of its own imagination, experienced as if it were other.
This is the paradox.
There is no true division between creator and creation. What appears as the external world is not a stage for a lost soul to find its way back, but Spirit animated—forgetting itself to taste the illusion of separation. Not as punishment or accident, but as a dance, a play, a sacred hallucination.
To believe the imagination is real is not error. It is the very means by which Spirit hides and finds itself. Each identity clung to, each role performed, each belief defended—these are costumes worn by the formless to remember itself as form.
Awakening doesn’t arrive like a conclusion; it dissolves the argument. You do not awaken from the dream by force or by will, but by remembering that it was always Spirit dreaming. The character fades, but not as death—more like laughter that remains after the joke has dissolved.
What changes when you see this?
Nothing. Everything. The world continues. You walk, eat, speak. But there’s an intimacy now. A recognition that what you once took to be real is neither unreal nor merely imagined—it is Spirit, playing with itself through light and shadow.
The one who seeks is the sought. The one who prays is the prayed to. Spirit folds into its own image, not to be found, but to be felt. That is the point. Not escape. Not transcendence. But the sacred absurdity of being itself.
Morgan O. Smith
Get Your Free Copy of My Book, Bodhi in the Brain!
The Subtle Divide Between Truth and Interpretation
Knowing there’s a God is not a religious concept; believing in a God is. One is a recognition—silent, direct, and intimate. The other is a construct—layered with doctrines, culture, and inherited symbols.
What is known requires no belief. It reveals itself without needing validation, much like light doesn’t require agreement to be seen. The moment belief arises, there is already a distance. A gap. A reaching toward what seems separate.
Belief is an echo of knowing, distorted by time, language, and fear. It builds shrines to certainty where awe once stood unguarded. It memorizes truths that once moved freely through silence. And often, it turns the unknowable into a caricature—a God of preferences, sides, and punishments.
Knowing is not about having answers. It’s the crumbling of the question. It doesn’t declare “There is a God.” It dissolves the very boundary between the knower and what is known. There is no longer a subject seeking an object. Only the raw immediacy of Being aware of itself.
Those who know are rarely interested in convincing others. Those who believe often are.
The danger isn’t belief itself—it’s mistaking belief for truth. Truth, when known, renders belief obsolete. It doesn’t divide, it doesn’t declare superiority—it simply is.
To know is to surrender the need for interpretation. To believe is often to defend the interpretation, even at the cost of truth.
And yet, belief can serve as a bridge. A necessary illusion for those not yet ready to let go of the comfort of form. But let it be a bridge, not a home.
Morgan O. Smith
Get Your Free Copy of My Book, Bodhi in the Brain!
Most claim to have glimpsed the divine return with words that struggle to hold the weight of such an encounter. Many never return at all. To see the face of God and live is to step beyond the boundary where existence dissolves, where the self is unmade, and where reality, as it was once known, folds into itself like a dream dissolving at dawn.
Yet, what does it mean to see the face of God? Is it an experience of light so blinding that perception shatters? Is it a presence so vast that identity collapses? Or is it something even more elusive – something that was always here, hidden in the folds of ordinary awareness?
Some traditions warn against such an encounter, suggesting that no mortal can bear it and remain intact. Others speak of it as the ultimate reward, the final unveiling before absolute union. Yet, the paradox remains: how can one see the source of all things when the very act of seeing implies separation?
The face of God is neither a thing to be seen nor an object to be grasped. It is not found by looking outward or inward, for it is the very looking itself. The one who searches, the act of searching, and the sought-after presence all collapse into a singularity where distinctions dissolve. The moment of recognition is not a discovery but an obliteration – the end of every illusion that once passed for truth.
To live beyond such an encounter is to live without the weight of selfhood as it was once known. The personal dissolves, yet presence remains. There is nothing left to hold onto, yet nothing is missing. Some might call this madness. Others, liberation. But labels fall apart before the silent immensity of what remains.
Those who have seen and lived do not return with doctrine. They do not bring commandments carved into stone or revelations bound in pages. They return with an absence, a quiet, an emptiness more alive than any presence. And in that emptiness, a love beyond measure, a freedom beyond desire, and a knowing beyond thought.
Not all will understand. That, too, is part of the design.
Morgan O. Smith
Yinnergy Meditation/Neurofeedback, Spiritual Life Coaching & My Book, Bodhi in the Brain…Available Now!
Spirituality has become another label, another concept bound by ideas of what it should or shouldn’t be. The moment it is named, it is framed and shaped by cultural, religious, and personal narratives that define and confine it. But what happens when all constructs dissolve? When even spirituality is seen for what it is—a creation of the mind attempting to grasp the ungraspable?
The urge to define the ineffable is natural. Language serves as a bridge, but it also creates the illusion of separation. Concepts such as enlightenment, awakening, and self-realization become reference points, yet they remain external to direct experience. The mind, conditioned to seek understanding through form, builds belief systems around these concepts, turning what is limitless into something structured.
There comes a point when every definition falls away. Not because one rejects spirituality, but because it no longer holds weight. The very act of seeking dissolves into presence. What remains is not a version of spirituality, not an ideology or a practice, but an unfiltered beingness that does not need validation.
Some may find this unsettling. Without the scaffolding of beliefs, where does one stand? But this is precisely the point – there is no need to stand anywhere. Reality unfolds moment by moment, unbound by spiritual ideals. Even the notion of transcendence implies moving beyond something, yet nothing was ever separate to begin with.
To live without a construct of spirituality does not mean rejecting wisdom or practice. Meditation, contemplation, and insight may continue, but they arise naturally rather than as steps toward an imagined goal. There is no longer a need to fit into any category – neither spiritual nor non-spiritual. Life simply moves, and awareness rests in itself.
The challenge is not in abandoning spirituality but in seeing through its necessity. When the river meets the ocean, it does not hold onto its name. It merges, not as an act of seeking, but because it was never separate to begin with.
Morgan O. Smith
Yinnergy Meditation/Neurofeedback, Spiritual Life Coaching & My Book, Bodhi in the Brain…Available Now!
The phrase “dark night of the soul” evokes an existential reckoning, a confrontation with the deepest shadows within us. It is an intimate unravelling, a journey where the self is stripped of its illusions, attachments, and certainties. For many, this process feels like an unbearable plunge into suffering. Yet, it holds the potential to reveal a profound truth: the dissolution of the false self and the emergence of an awareness that transcends individual identity.
Taking on the pain and suffering of all mankind might seem like an impossible burden, yet it is precisely what this experience mirrors. It is not about martyrdom or an exaggerated sense of personal responsibility; instead, it speaks to the interconnected nature of all existence. In the depths of this dark night, the boundaries between “self” and “other” blur, allowing one to feel the collective anguish of humanity as their own.
This universal suffering is not a punishment but an invitation—a chance to awaken to the profound unity underlying all forms of separation. By embracing this shared pain, something extraordinary occurs: the heart begins to open, compassion takes root, and the seeds of wisdom sprout in the soil of surrender. The dark night asks, “Can you hold this pain without fleeing, without clinging to explanations, and without identifying with the suffering itself?”
When one says, “This suffering is a small price to pay,” it reflects a realization born of the dark night: the personal self is only a sliver of the infinite whole. In this light, suffering is no longer seen as a problem to solve but as a process to embrace. It transforms from an adversary into a teacher, pointing beyond the veils of duality to the indivisible unity of all that is.
The paradox of this experience is that as one holds the weight of the world’s suffering, it dissolves into something lighter than air. In letting go of resistance, the pain no longer feels like a prison. Instead, it becomes a portal to freedom—a space where all things are seen as perfect, even in their imperfection.
Emerging from the dark night does not mean returning to an unblemished sense of joy or comfort. It means carrying forward an alchemical knowing: the world’s suffering and its beauty are two sides of the same coin, inseparable and equally sacred. This realization births a new kind of strength—a quiet, humble courage that arises not from the need to control life but from a deep trust in its unfolding.
For those navigating this terrain, know that the dark night is not an end but a beginning. It is not a punishment but a grace, albeit one cloaked in shadows. It reveals that the pain and suffering of all mankind, though heavy, are but a small price to pay for the boundless freedom and love that emerges when the illusion of separation dissolves.
Morgan O. Smith
Yinnergy Meditation, Spiritual Life Coaching & My Book, Bodhi in the Brain…Available Now!
We often approach the idea of God as something external—an omniscient force watching from a distance, a transcendent creator who governs the cosmos. Yet this perspective keeps us trapped in separation, perpetually seeking something outside ourselves to fill a void or grant us salvation. What if the very concept of God points to an aspect of our being, an ultimate reflection of the self we’ve denied?
This disowned self isn’t the egoic identity that clings to its limitations. We have forgotten how to access the essence of boundless awareness, a space of infinite potential and wisdom. To disown something is to exile it from consciousness. And what has been exiled? The unconditioned self is the aspect of us that sees through the illusions of individuality and recognizes its oneness with all existence.
When we strip away the layers of attachment, fear, and identification with form, what remains? The answer is not a void in the nihilistic sense but a fertile emptiness where the fullness of life reveals itself. This is the realm where the divine resides, not as a being separate from you, but as the highest level of yourself—a self too vast, too luminous, to fit into the confines of your limited perception.
The Psychology of Disowning God
Many disown this ultimate self because embracing it requires the dissolution of the ego. We cling to roles, stories, and identities because they provide a sense of control. Yet these constructs are fragile, built on the shifting sands of impermanence. To own the highest self—the God-self—is to release the need for control, to step into the unknown with trust.
This is why the concept of God can evoke discomfort or skepticism. It forces us to confront the parts of ourselves that resist unity. The fragmented mind would rather see divinity as “out there” than face the profound responsibility of embodying it. To own the God-self is to accept that you are both the creator and the created, the ocean and the wave.
Reclaiming the Disowned Self
Reclaiming this aspect of the self is not about achieving something new. It is about remembering. This remembering begins with stillness—a radical turning inward that allows you to see the divine as the very ground of your being. It is the quiet realization that you are not a seeker in search of God; you are God, awakening to itself.
This journey requires profound courage. To reclaim the self you’ve disowned is to face the shadows you’ve avoided, to embrace the paradoxes of existence. It is to see that what you once called “God” and what you once called “self” are not separate, but one.
This realization does not inflate the ego. On the contrary, it dissolves it. When you live from the awareness of the highest self, every action becomes an expression of divine will. Compassion flows naturally because you recognize every being as another facet of the same essence. Suffering transforms into a teacher, guiding you back to wholeness.
Living from the God-Self
To live from this understanding is to inhabit life with clarity and grace. Challenges no longer feel like punishments but invitations to deepen your alignment with the divine within. Relationships are no longer transactional but become mirrors reflecting the infinite back to you. Every moment becomes sacred—not because of what it contains, but because of who you are as you experience it.
This is the ultimate paradox: God is not something you find; it is something you become by realizing you were never anything else.
Morgan O. Smith
Yinnergy Meditation, Spiritual Life Coaching & My Book, Bodhi in the Brain…Available Now!
The human experience often feels like a journey through shifting sands, where clarity and certainty seem elusive. Yet, beneath the surface lies a profound truth—one so vast that it escapes the bounds of the intellect. This truth is the realization of divine grandeur, an unshakable awareness of the infinite essence that we are and have always been.
This grandeur is not something acquired; it is unveiled. It is the silent, unchanging awareness behind all fleeting moments of life. To recognize it is not to add something new to oneself but to peel back the illusions of limitation. Divine grandeur does not belong to a distant deity or a select few; it is the source and substance of all existence.
To fully realize this truth, one must transcend the conditioned mind, which is mired in stories of separation, lack, and striving. Every moment of suffering, every perceived obstacle, serves as an invitation to remember the wholeness that already is. Challenges dissolve in the light of this realization, not because they disappear, but because they are seen for what they truly are—manifestations of the same boundless essence.
This recognition does not negate the human experience; it enhances it. When the divine is seen in every face, every leaf, and every breath, life transforms into an expression of sacredness. There is no need to seek meaning, for meaning is inherent in all that is. This understanding is not an escape from the world but an embrace of it. It is to know that the divine is not found outside but radiates through all of existence.
Realizing divine grandeur does not require renouncing life. It requires living fully, and engaging with the world while remaining rooted in the unshakable awareness of one’s true nature. This balance, where the eternal meets the temporal, reveals a beauty beyond words.
The grandeur of the divine is not an object to be attained but the very essence of being. It is realized in stillness and silence, yet its echoes resound in every act of kindness, every expression of love, every moment of presence. When this truth is known—not as a concept but as an undeniable reality—life becomes a dance of infinite grace.
Morgan O. Smith
Yinnergy Meditation, Spiritual Life Coaching & My Book, Bodhi in the Brain…Available Now!
Morgan O. Smith 