Order your copy of The Hridaya Cookbook! Explore this collection of plant-based recipes from our centers, and bring presence and intention to every meal.

St. John of the Cross – Everything and Nothing

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"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
–Carl Jung

This famous poem by St. John of the Cross from The Ascent of Mount Carmel expresses the spiritual dialectics of all/nothing (todo/nada) very well:

To come to enjoy everything seek enjoyment in nothing.
To come to possess everything seek to possess nothing.
To come to be everything seek to be nothing.
To come to know everything seek to know nothing.
To come to what you do not taste go to where you taste nothing.
To come to what you do not know go to where you know nothing.
To come to what you do not own go to where you own nothing.
To become what you are not go to where you are nothing.

If you linger somewhere
you will never conquer the whole.
To come wholly to the whole you must leave the whole.
And if you come to where you can grasp the whole, have it without wanting to have it.

For if you want to hold fast to only something of the whole, so you will not have your treasure purely in God.

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