We need to stop hiding the rough edges — we can only fix them when they are seen

We should stop being so sensitive.

How can we empathize if we don’t discuss?

We remove topics of conversation because we fear offending others. Books are banned. Topics are deemed too outrageous for sensitive minds.

The sensitive minds are the targets. They are the ones who feel the injustices and see the hurt. They are the children who learn to speak for others who can’t. They are the tellers of tales that have touched them.

The first book to really touch my heart was The Diary of a Young Girl. Anne Frank’s life is an incredible story. It was awful to know a girl my age couldn’t move all day for fear someone might hear her, someone had to sneak them food to survive, and she couldn’t even walk in the street. When I finished the book, I learned Anne died in a concentration camp. It is a miracle that this book even survived to publication. I became a reader of all things WWII. I learned of horrors beyond my years, but I grew because of it. It created no damage, but instead taught me the power of story. It angers me that people want to remove sensitive topics from libraries.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was originally published as a series in a Washington, DC newspaper before it was published as a book. Families would gather around the dinner table and read the paper out loud, eagerly awaiting the next installment of Stowe’s story. The book was published in 1852, and slavery was finally abolished in 1865. Stowe created 13 years of uncomfortable conversation before the 13th Amendment passed. She still creates feelings of unease for all who read her tale, but that knowledge brings us closer together for glimpses of a shared past. This is why we tell stories, so that others feel what we do.

Someone else’s trauma is uncomfortable, but it is the reason it should never be silenced. Glimpses of the unshared past can unify the future. They give us common ground and knowledge of what went wrong. Sensitivity is a gift that we should use, not something to lock away in a box.

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Against the Silence was originally published in Contemplate on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You are always playing, do you know what play you are in?

You Are Always Playing

Whether you know it or not, you are always playing.

You may understand the character you have assumed, or you may mistake it for who you are. You may consciously participate in the enterprise, or you may simply follow the instructions handed down to you by your civilization, family, profession, or tradition.

But the play continues.

You do not enter existence as a blank page. You arrive within conditions shaped by karma, carrying tendencies and encountering circumstances through which those tendencies find expression. Your actions produce consequences; your attachments bind you to particular patterns; your relationship to Dharma determines how you respond to the demands of life.

You are continually being tested, not necessarily by an external examiner waiting for you to make a mistake, but through the very conditions in which your nature, intentions, and governing principles become manifest.

Will you serve greed when the opportunity presents itself? Will you follow Dharma when doing so costs you something? Will you mistake the authority of your position for the authority of truth? Will you confuse belonging to a spiritual tradition with having realized its teaching?

The company provides the role, but the role reveals the participant.

And the participant may remain unaware of the larger enterprise in which the character belongs.

Karma, Dharma, and the Company of God

Karma and Dharma are not suspended merely because you do not recognize their operation.

Your ignorance of the larger play does not exempt you from its consequences. Nor does adopting a spiritual identity automatically place you beyond the laws governing existence. Not everyone who calls me ‘Rabbi, Rabbi’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” — Yeshua

Most people believe they are going to heaven when they die, few still remember entrance to heaven must be granted.

You may serve an earthly enterprise with admirable intentions, while another uses a religious enterprise to pursue wealth, recognition, or power. Appearances alone do not settle the matter. The governing intention, the action itself, and its consequences all belong to the question of Karma.

Whether that Karma aligns with Dharma is a separate question — the question of right action.

The Bhagavad Gita repeatedly brings you back to this essential point — action matters, attachment matters, and the orientation of your life matters.

Yet Yoga is not simply the attempt to become a better employee within the existing hierarchy. It is the science and living spiritual path through which you begin to understand the nature of action, the bondage of attachment, the demands of Dharma, and the deeper purpose of existence.

Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Dhyana Yoga, and Bhakti Yoga are dimensions of this comprehensive path. They are not exercises performed alongside an otherwise unchanged life. They concern the transformation of the life itself.

The character may continue to act in the world, but the meaning of the play is no longer confined to the character’s ambitions.

Who Hired You?

Perhaps you believe you chose your identity. Perhaps you believe your profession, beliefs, loyalties, and aspirations define you. Perhaps you have moved from an earthly company into a spiritual one and assumed the change of employer settled the question.

But the deeper question remains.

What enterprise are you serving? What direction is your life taking? What binds you to the character, and what may lead you beyond it?

The Divine Lila is not merely a spectacle to be watched from a distance. You are already participating. You have a role, whether you recognize it or not. Your actions unfold within the consequences of karma and the demands of Dharma, while the greater architecture of existence remains invisible to the ordinary mind.

The question is whether you will continue to play unconsciously, mistaking the temporary character for the Self, or begin the work of understanding the order in which you participate. The companies are hiring. The roles are being assumed. The play continues.

But the one who discovers the nature of the character may begin to ask a question the character itself could never answer.

And it is unresolved questions that propel the journey to begin

Download Hidden Wisdom for free at omsangam.com.

Om Sathya Yukta Sharanam
Om Tat Sat

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The Companies Are Hiring — Part 2 was originally published in Contemplate on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The earthly companies, the company of God, and the character you play across lifetimes

The companies on Earth are hiring. They are always hiring.

The operating civilizations, cultures, and systems of the world require people to occupy their positions, assume their identities, and perform their functions.

Some people choose their professions and lifestyles — choice = dharma. Others are pushed into them by circumstances, inherited obligations, or the conditions into which they are born — inevitable = karma. A mix of both is always present.

Either way, they become participants in an enterprise already in motion.

You may become a merchant, a politician, a soldier, a physician, a teacher, or an employee in some vast organization whose purpose you have never questioned. You learn its language, accept its rules, adopt its values, and gradually identify yourself with the character you have assumed.

But what enterprise are you serving?

The answer cannot be determined by your profession alone. Some enterprises serve the greater good; others are organized around the endless accumulation of wealth, power, and advantage. Some participants act with good intentions, while others knowingly serve interests bringing harm.

And many never stop to ask what the system they serve is actually producing.

The company has hired you.
You have assumed the role.
You are performing the character.

But do you know what play you are in?

The Two Directions of the Mundane Enterprise

Within the earthly order, you can distinguish two principal directions — the descending path and the circular path.

The descending path leads toward greater bondage, darkness, and increasingly unfavorable conditions of existence. Krishna describes this movement in the Bhagavad Gita, where he speaks of those governed by demonic dispositions and the gates of hell — desire, anger, and greed.

Such tendencies do not merely influence an isolated decision. They shape the direction of the jiva and the conditions into which it may descend.

The circular path is different. Here, you continue through the familiar cycles of worldly existence. You acquire an education, pursue a career, establish a household, accumulate possessions, and eventually depart. Another incarnation may bring different circumstances, but the underlying orientation remains unchanged.

Advancement, if any, is mostly horizontal.

Yet there may be no absolute limit to the number of lives, variations, and combinations this horizontal movement can encompass. Or perhaps there are limits, but the possibilities of worldly existence may be far greater than anything a piece of wording can contain.

The roles change. The companies change. The identities change. And the jiva continues.

You may rise in the hierarchy of a company, acquire greater wealth, gain influence, or become a celebrated figure. You may experience the opposite. But horizontal advancement, however extensive, does not necessarily alter the direction of the journey.

A promotion is not liberation. A new identity is not necessarily a new destination.

The Heavenly Companies

The earthly companies are not the only ones hiring.

There are also the heavenly companies, represented on Earth through the myriad spiritual traditions of the present and the past — established religions, ancient lineages, initiatory schools, underground movements, and occult traditions. Each possesses its own language, teachings, practices, and forms of participation.

These enterprises belong, in the greater architecture of existence, to the Company of God — the cosmic enterprise of the Lord, whose Divine Lila encompasses the many roles and movements of the jiva. And new branches have continuously emerged throughout history.

You may enter one tradition, remain within it for a lifetime, depart for another, or return to a teaching encountered in a previous incarnation. The circumstances vary, and so do the roles. Yet these movements take place within a greater order the individual personality cannot necessarily comprehend.

Within this celestial order, you can distinguish the exoteric and the esoteric dimensions.

The exoteric teaching is the external form — the doctrines, institutions, rituals, worship, and communal observances through which a tradition is preserved and communicated. The esoteric teaching is its inner, initiatory dimension, where the seeker enters the living process of spiritual transformation.

The distinction is not simply between institutions and mystics. An institution may preserve an authentic initiatory lineage, just as you may mistake personal fascination for spiritual realization. The distinction concerns the external form of the teaching and the living realization toward which it points.

Across traditions, you encounter different expressions of the spiritual path — Yoga in Sanathana Dharma, the Taoist way of alignment with the Tao, and the Sufi path of purification and remembrance of the Divine. Their teachings are not identical, yet each offers its own account of the same journey beyond ordinary, mundane-centered existence.

These are not merely alternative lifestyles. They belong to a different understanding of the purpose of life.

To be continued in Part 2 — You Are Always Playing.

Download Hidden Wisdom for free at omsangam.com.

Om Sathya Yukta Sharanam
Om Tat Sat

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The Companies Are Hiring — Part 1 was originally published in Contemplate on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On the present progressive tense

“I like doing my homework,” was written on my middle-grader’s grammar test in response to the following imperative: Write a present continuous sentence with a time expression.

“That’s a lie,” she pointed out. Duh. It’s fine that she’s honest. It’s not fine that she didn’t understand the material and that I couldn’t explain it well.

There is one debilitating way that I could think of using this tense:

• She is always losing her stuff.
• He is never really listening when I speak.
• They are always having arguments at night.

I read somewhere that using "always" and "never" is like committing a cardinal sin when in conflict. It suggests no possibility of progress in the present, even as we’re speaking in the present progressive tense. When my husband and I weren’t as careful as we are today with our language, it’s easy to negate all that has been good for the past fifteen years in the heat of a singular argument.

After I sought help, I gave birth to my debut poetry book, and he began to lead our marriage community. Life and death are, indeed, in the power of the tongue.

All things considered, the wisest use of the tense is for something happening right now — something temporary that will pass, such as all the goods we can embrace today and the not-so-goods we can take into account without a single “always” or a “never”. Prudent usage of it indirectly requires the speaker to adopt an optimistic perspective over time; to challenge the validity of pessimistic views and, if so, continuously find ways to turn the bad into good.

When I explained it this way, I suggested a few alternative ways to answer the question:

“I am making squishies a lot these days.”

“Not a lot these days, Mom,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Okay. I’m always reading wherever I go?”

“Umm, no. Sometimes I sleep, sometimes I poop.”

“Okay. How about this: I am always thinking of creative ways to solve a problem?”

“I am always thinking of creative ways to solve a problem.”

Affirmative. She always does.

Who knew that a single grammar lesson could reshape your entire life destiny? ⬥

Stacia Priscilla (Blank Stace) is an Indonesian-born Chinese wife and mother of two. She lives in Jakarta with her husband and daughters. Connect with her on personal growth, faith, and motherhood on Medium, Instagram, and Threads.

If you enjoy her writing, buy her a cup of tea or consider becoming a Medium member. For $4 a month, you will get unlimited, ad-free access to all stories on the platform, including hers. Thank you so much for your endless support.

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I Am Always a Work in Progress was originally published in Contemplate on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.