Before the world shaped you with names and narratives,
There was a truth woven into your being,
Silent,
Luminous,
And unbroken.
It did not need to be earned or explained.
It lived quietly beneath all doing,
Untouched by effort or explanation.
Even when forgotten,
It remained,
Waiting in stillness.
It waits,
Like a seed beneath winter soil,
Like a mirror beneath the bark.
Close your eyes as if you are closing the gates of the outer world,
Not out of rejection,
But out of deep reverence for what lives quietly beneath the surface of your awareness,
That space untouched by the noise of opinion,
Expectation,
Or time.
Take a slow breath in,
Let it stretch,
Like a wave reaching toward a forgotten shore,
And then let it go without resistance,
As if the body itself is exhaling centuries of urgency.
With each breath,
Feel yourself dropping inward,
Not downward,
But deeper,
Descending gently through the layers of tension,
Through the curtains of thought,
Through the brittle shell of identity,
Until all that remains is presence,
Warm and still.
There is no place to get to,
No one to impress,
No truth to invent.
Only this,
The quiet,
Steady rhythm of your own becoming.
In the vast darkness behind your eyelids,
Let something begin to take shape,
Not with force,
But with the slow inevitability of dawn,
A place both strange and familiar,
Alive with the memory of a thousand generations.
You find yourself standing in a forest so ancient,
The trees feel less like plants and more like sentient elders.
Their trunks wide and knotted with wisdom,
Their branches stretching overhead like open arms,
Their roots braided into the earth like the stories of your ancestors.
The air here is thick with silence,
The kind of silence that listens back.
This is not a place you travel to with your feet.
This is the place that awakens when you stop pretending to be lost.
With each step you take upon the leaf-covered floor,
Something within you softens,
As though the ground itself is remembering who you are beneath the names,
Beneath the armor,
Beneath the scaffolding of the life you thought you had to build in order to be loved.
Up ahead,
Resting between the roots of an impossibly large tree,
You see a figure,
Not a person exactly,
But a presence wrapped in bark and shadow and stillness,
The kind of stillness that doesn't demand attention but simply radiates truth.
This presence does not ask your name.
It knows you by your silence.
And in its hands,
Held as gently as a bird's egg,
Is an object that glows faintly,
A mirror unlike any you've ever seen before.
This mirror does not reflect your face.
It reflects your frequency.
It does not show you how the world sees you.
It shows you how truth feels you.
At first,
The images that arise are familiar.
The shape of your life,
The masks you wear with elegance,
The roles you've played so long you sometimes forget you are playing.
You see the outlines of your past,
The expectations you've carried like inherited garments,
The stories you've wrapped around your pain to make it seem poetic or useful.
But then,
Almost imperceptibly,
The mirror begins to change.
What was form becomes essence.
What was image becomes light.
What was story becomes silence.
And you begin to see something else.
You see the self that never needed permission,
The one who was whole before the world told you who you should be.
You see a flame that was never extinguished,
Only buried.
You see an innocence that survived the fire.
You see a strength that never learned to boast because it never forgot how to trust.
Let yourself be seen now,
Not as the world has sculpted you,
But as the universe once dreamed you into being.
This is not memory.
This is recognition.
And then,
As if from deep within the mirror,
Or perhaps from some hidden chamber within your own heart,
A voice begins to rise.
Not a voice made of sound,
But of resonance,
The kind that makes your ribs hum and your eyes sting,
Even before a single word is heard.
It asks,
Not with pressure,
But with clarity,
Who are you when there is no one left to perform for?
What still lives in you that you have long abandoned?
What truth have you buried beneath the need to be accepted?
There is no rush to answer.
This is not an exam.
This is a remembering.
Let the questions move through you like warm rain falling on long-forgotten soil.
Let them soak through the layers.
Let them crack the old masks open.
Let them stir the roots.
Who are you when there is no one left to perform for?
What still lives in you that you have long abandoned?
What truth have you buried beneath the need to be accepted?
You feel something rise,
A sigh,
A tear,
A tremble.
That is not weakness.
That is truth reclaiming its place in your body.
The mirror begins to dim now,
Not because it is fading,
But because what it shows you no longer lives outside of you.
You have taken it in,
Woven it into your bones,
Into the electricity of your breath,
Into the way your chest lifts when you choose to live with nothing to hide.
The figure before you nods,
Not with farewell,
But with respect.
This was never about answers.
This was about waking up.
And as you turn to leave the forest,
You do not feel like someone leaving a dream,
But like someone stepping back into the world with their soul intact,
Unburdened,
Unedited,
And quietly radiant.
Feel now the weight of your body resting once again upon the earth.
Feel the coolness of the air as it enters your nostrils.
Feel the way your chest rises,
Slowly,
Like the tide of something ancient returning to shore.
Place your hands over your heart,
Not as a gesture of comfort,
But as a seal,
A quiet vow that,
From this moment on,
You will walk not as a fabrication,
But as a living echo of the truth you've just remembered.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Gently,
When you're ready,
Let your eyes return to this world,
Not to be consumed by it,
But to bring your clarity into it like a lantern in the dark.
The truth is not a place you go.
It is a place you return to.
