Jan 21 2025 7 mins 2
[This episode originally aired on January 31, 2023] A common idea about the spiritual path is that it is punctuated by gigantic breakthroughs, by big revelations • but many deep and important insights don't come in that way; they come in through glimpses, which can be sudden or they can just kind of seep in • in some ways glimpses are similar to a jigsaw puzzle: we have all these pieces, and we have little insights that this piece fits into that, or this piece doesn't fit into that • we begin to put some things together and we kind of swim around and we don't really know actually where it's going to end up • but eventually, step by step, the complete picture begins to emerge • the whole notion of practice and study is that we're deepening our understanding, but it doesn't happen in a linear fashion • it happens through glimpses, and sometimes those glimpses can be shocking; they can completely upset our whole view of things.
