Here is a simplified breakdown of the different levels that make up an individual's being: the physical level, which includes sensations and abilities; the emotional level, which involves desires and feelings; and the mental level, which encompasses memories, thoughts, and imagination. Additionally, there is the level of attention which is often mistakenly believed to be a function of the mind; but people have limited understanding of their own functioning. In their typical state, individuals operate on all three levels, each with unique energies.

"I am the Lord your God.

You are unhappy.

Your unhappiness is caused by unfulfillment of your desires.

Your unhappiness is caused by shortage of what you need.

Your unhappiness is caused by lack of satiety, self-realization, and content. 

The importance of expressing repressed emotional energy has been emphasized numerous times, but many seekers still struggle to fully engage in this technique even with years of practice. Anger is a powerful emotion, and its repression can complicate the expression of other emotions. The fear that anger may inadvertently break through contributes to controlling all of our emotions, including sadness, preventing any expression.

There is a belief that certain native hunter-gatherers cannot be held accountable by God as they are unaware of His existence. These individuals may worship ancestor spirits or similar, but they have not yet come to know the One Almighty God, and since He is not known to them, there is little to expect of them. Conversely, those who have come to recognize God’s existence, are also presented with the responsibility to abide, provided knowledge about the trueness of God was paired with instructions on how to worship Him and live in accordance with His rules. "Once you know, you are responsible."

Breaking from identification with the physical body, emotions, or mind is achieved through observation of the object of identification and realizing that there is a distance between the observer and the observed. The longer you can hang in there as an observer, the more you realize that human lower bodies rank below consciousness. Not the other way around, as people may think. 

The mind is in control of the body. The child learns the basics of body management when he begins to walk and go potty. Then control requirements become more sophisticated- you must learn to restrain your discontent to not displease your parents. Every year the area subject to control expands because new energies add up, such as the energy of sexual arousal; besides, desires multiply, which often cannot be given free rein. One's freedom of expression is restricted to a greater or lesser degree. In severe cases, upbringing creates so many internal bans that a person lives in a habitual and constant control of desires and emotions, suppressing everything that contradicts the prohibitions learned during upbringing.

We’ve got a little problem, on a global scale. In the 20^th century, trailblazing ideas got extinct, that is, humanity ran out of fresh ideas around the 20^th century. We left behind an experiment of building the ideal communist society (this paradise-on-earth) and the Darwin theory of higher and lower races. Philosophy came to an end in the 20^th century as well. Take Martin Heidegger, for example, his tenets are a telltale sign of philosophy decay, why he was acknowledged as a philosopher is beyond me. Further, consider World War II with its massacre—it scared people to death; also, atomic bombing, holocaust, and what happened in our country, including the blockage with famine cannibalism, and over 20 million of total losses—a horrifying number of fatalities—the aftermath of this terror was the trauma that set off overcompensation mechanisms through endowing human life with the absolute value and establishing a doctrine of man being a measure of all things.

Ruslan Vladimirovich Zhukovets (born on September 19, 1968) is a Sufi Master and the founder of the School “Ascending Flow”. He is the author of 20 books on contemporary Sufism where he extensively delineated consecutive stages of the spiritual Path, including the final highest stages of one’s Unity with God. Grounded in first-hand experience, the books’ narrative presents a comprehensive up-to-date interpretation of the stages of one’s spiritual development. The Master developed a set of practices which were then consolidated into a learning system that has been actively applied by seekers in their spiritual work on themselves.

It happens at times that one is given a task to solve, yet can’t figure out a solution at a first glance and have to try different approaches. Consider the famous Zen koan: can you reproduce the sound of one hand clapping? And all those Zen monks would go on contriving to express a sound with no sound, a clap which does not exist, that is, would get highly creative because the riddle seems to be unsolvable. The riddle though is easy to solve, should you choose to focus on the clap rather than the sound. So long as your thinking is narrowed to the subject of the sound, it is constrained. Think of the ways of making a clap sound and you will realize that a palm technically can slap against any surface, for example, a table or your own thigh, if you will.

God, teach me to love.

God, teach me to not be allured by power or seek might; God, open up the path of love to me.

God, teach me humility. Teach me to be in the world but not of the world and wean me off of looking for imperfections in myself and others.