What is it all for,
Beloved?
All this searching and longing.
Have you not met these footprints before?
And are they not your own?
Have you not already passed this way a thousand times before?
Albeit under different names and different pursuits.
Every time you seek,
You enter the same familiar forest and follow the same worn down track.
No matter what you set out to find,
The search always plays out on the same terrain,
Even though you're convinced that this time will be different.
Is peace not the heart of every search?
Is this not what all your longings are at their core?
The quiet ache to go home and take off your shoes and rest beneath the sunlit window?
You cannot count the ways peace has been sold to you,
As a path,
As a place,
As a person,
And as a practice.
And what have you paid for it,
If not with your peace?
The deeper truth is that you are in peace,
And it seeps through every cell,
Every heartbeat,
Every breath,
Making the search for it nothing more than a search for yourself.
And you cannot find what you are,
Only be it.
The seeker's forest is the realm of the conditioned self.
It is where the false and elusive grow like bindweed and ivy.
It asks for your peace in return for its promise to help you find it.
As long as you seek,
The conditioned self has its purpose,
Which is why ending the search feels very much like a death.
But only the false and elusive perish.
Peace remains.
You remain.
So have heart,
And stay home,
Beloved.
Peace is closer than birdsong,
Closer than gentle rain,
Closer than spiritual thought or undisturbed emotion.
Place not one more foot outside of yourself,
Gather no more miles away from your home,
And ask just one question,
A question that gently reveals the peace that you are,
And repeat it silently in your mind after me.
Who am I?
From where does each word rise and fall?
From the quietude of what you are,
Of course.
Who am I?
The space between each word is the space of who you are.
Each word is absorbed into the unknown,
Aware mystery of your very nature.
What does life become when that search for what you are is over?
And you stay barefooted,
Rested and sunlit.
It becomes a reflection of you,
Quiet,
Even if there is no sound.
It becomes a reflection of you,
Still,
Even if there is restlessness.
Intimate,
Even if there is unfamiliarity.
Where have you looked for yourself?
And how long have you been away?
