This is it.
It's all here.
Within me as me.
Everything I've ever searched for lives inside these bones.
This heart.
This being.
I just didn't know it was so close.
I've learned so much about deficiency and fracture.
I mistook them to be who I am.
My forgetfulness has caused me so much pain.
It has caused me to become absent from my own life.
But I'm here now.
All my searches have finally been seen for what they are.
Momentary losses of sight to what is already available.
Now that I see clearly,
I'm finally able to come home to my whole and undivided self.
I bow to what I am.
Life,
Conscious of itself.
A singular consciousness,
Shared with billions of others.
Here and what I am are indivisible,
Making mindfulness a return to my true self.
I am presence.
I am the aware awakeness that is this moment.
Gentle is the path I meander through the world.
Tender is the way I walk through myself.
Truth is a silk-like creature.
I must learn to see it by noticing what is subtle,
Unseen and quiet in my experience.
The most potent realizations are uncovered through my willingness to turn away from the obvious,
From the accepted and given.
There is so much more to experience in this moment than the narrow corridors of my thoughts.
The mind is such a small aspect of my experience.
I can move away from suffering to discover the openness that is available right here.
The sunlight on my skin.
The warmth of a teacup in my hand.
The brush of grass on my feet.
Exploring this moment through my senses expands my mind's limited narrative of what's here.
Fundamental to my suffering is a self who believes it's in lack,
Who needs to escape what is in order to cope.
I am not the eternally deficient self.
I am able to stay here with whatever shows up in my experience,
Because I do not derive my sense of identity from the scarce nature of thought.
It is in my insistence that something needs to change that I ache.
It is in the insistence that something is wrong with me that I search for relief.
I can let go of the persistent belief that this moment is not enough by surrendering my ideas of what should be here instead.
All suffering is rooted in a thought being believed.
All conflict,
Complexity,
Duality and horror exist within the mind's interpretation of what is.
When I tune into the raw,
Uninterpreted sensation of this moment,
The boundaries of my mental prison dissolve,
Revealing a timeless,
Intimate realm of unconditional love.
Nothing I desire can make me become more me.
No loss I fear can diminish what I am.
I am fundamentally whole and complete already.
I am not here to end suffering,
I am here to change my relationship with it.
All ache ends when I turn towards it,
For it is in my turning away that pain persists.
My most intimate suffering is not personal.
It is a microcosm of the greater collective's ache.
To heal myself by knowing that I am beyond who the world made me is true refuge.
My essential nature is wholeness itself,
Is oneness,
Is undivided,
Is unfragmented,
Is radiant,
Is adequacy.
All beliefs that contradict this are false ideas given unnecessary priority through my attention.
I do not need to reify myself by judging others,
By praising or belittling them.
I am deeply comfortable being unvalidated by the external world,
Because I am held by the safety of my authenticity.
I am an eternal verb,
Not a limited noun.
I am already home as home,
Free as freedom,
Loving as love itself.
I am the body,
I am the mind,
I am the world,
But I am not limited to or bound by their changing states.
Loving awareness,
Who I am,
Moves effortlessly through the depths of my mind,
To birdsong,
To a crying child,
To the touch of a dog's ear.
Everything in my experience is included.
What greater love could there be,
Of unconditional exclusivity?
What greater intimacy could I know than that of myself in everything?
The limited self does not attain wholeness.
Wholeness is simply revealed as my natural state,
As all that is split and fractured dissolves within my ever-expanding awareness.
I do not need to be a somebody in order to spend my life maintaining an identity that is always in a state of lack or resistance.
Being a fully intimate,
Engaged and receptive nobody is truly liberating.
All fear is rooted in the death of self,
But true realization is not an end to anything,
It's a dissolution of what seeming barriers kept me from love.
I am the relative,
As well as beyond it.
I am the glorious both and.
Nothing is in conflict with what I am,
Including what I am not.
I do not need to negate any part of my experience to be what I am.
In knowing myself I realize my search for better and more is truly a search for greater intimacy with myself.
Anything that tells me to maintain and gain certain states is not true to the peace and ease of my unconditioned nature.
I am unpracticing myself home.
I am unlearning my assumption that I was deficient to begin with.
Returning to my curious,
Light-hearted,
Childlike self is the gauge by which I measure all progress.
Mystery and uncertainty are a sanctuary for the insanity of always needing to know.
From the futility of trying to protect myself against the inevitable.
I am conditioned to lose sight of simplicity.
It's okay to forget.
Forgetfulness is too oneness.
I can only see myself as whole in relation to wholeness.
Anytime I feel small and isolated,
I am buying into the idea that I am a singular,
Alone entity in the universe,
And not a perfectly intact part of its entirety.
Whenever I encounter the wounds of forgetfulness in others,
I see it in them and then heal it within myself.
I do not need anyone to be more conscious in order to meet the light that is too within them.
Relationships will always show me what I am yet to love within myself.
Relationships are my most sacred teachers in deepening my acceptance.
I am tender towards my humanity.
It is my chance to be here,
To get to know myself through the diversity of experience.
I don't mind what happens.
I'm not here to do,
I'm here to be.
I'm not here to gain more,
But let go of all that I've mistakenly invested my sense of peace in.
Worthiness and joy in.
My purpose is to know myself,
To love and to follow my curiosity without demanding anything in return.
My own experience is a litmus test for all teachings.
Anything that doesn't reach my heart is of no use to me.
Anything that stays in the mind becomes dangerous conceptualizations of otherwise simple truths.
My body never leaves the present moment.
It is my sacred anchor that brings me back to my unbound self.
True awakening is un-extraordinary.
All ideas of what this is,
How this should look is what's keeping me from embodying the fullness of my being.
All true spiritual practice is an interruption All true spiritual practice is an interruption from my usual way of thinking.
Anything that breaks the habit and addiction of being me is welcomed and treasured.
Realizations of the deeper self are not spiritual.
They are insights into the nature of reality.
Any spiritual practice that separates God from me,
Ascension from the mundane,
Does not consider the nature of reality to be the highest wisdom we can encounter.
There is no dividing line between meditation and the rest of my life.
My life is a devotion to the unseen unity between all things.
Consciousness is my body,
Stardust is my skin.
Unconditional love is my heartbeat.
I am the medicine I seek,
The gift I've spent a lifetime waiting for.
The home I never left and my wholeness does not depend on anything outside of me.
The wholeness I am is gained by surrendering my need to gain.
It is achieved by letting go of my need to achieve.
And I arrive by surrendering my need to get anywhere else.
True self-realization is a matter gently dissolving the idea that I'm not already self-realized.
This is it.
It's all here,
Within me,
As me.
Everything I've ever searched for lives inside these bones,
This heart,
This being.
I just didn't know it was so close.
