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We spend our whole lives looking for _____.
For love. For god. For peace. For lasting fulfillment. For something to build. For something to tend to. To create. To worship. To truly see. To understand. To cherish. To discover. Amidst this search, what we don’t realize is how while we look, we are becoming the person who is able to hold all of us even if and when we do not find what we are looking for in the tangible world.
There is no guarantee that you will get your way. Or, that even your most wildly coveted wish will come true. What then? There is no promise that you will wake up tomorrow. And maybe who you become on the way to the possibility of anything is what truly holds weight. It’s not the desired outcome, the relationship, job, opportunity, person, or ideal circumstances that will save you from your humanhood.
It’s you. You are what you are looking for. In the hope, trial, triumph, questions, challenge, torn apart and wide open. It’s all a way to the same path that leads you back home— to you. Every time that you dare to dream or wish something for yourself, you also say yes to the possibility that you will never have or know it.
What’s most brave about this is that to want is to encounter and reencounter yourself through the trials of desire, pleasure and the absence of what really matters to you.
All this to say, and I’m going to say it louder for the ones in the back—
You are what you are looking for.
In the dark long dreary drag of a night that goes on and on and in the conscious choice you make knowing that something is no good for you – the extra slice. The chasing. The smallness you let swallow you whole.
Like a cork in the center of my sternum, I dream of it busting open– free. It’s wild and illegal colors flowing violently and then gracefully from my epicenter. To demolish rules, common sense and validation. To paint the walls and the sky with rainbow luminescent swirly bops that you can ride! To throw the chunks and hunks of blinding layers of untruth I say and think into the water, for the lake to consume. My wallowing bound to be resurrected into something truly worthwhile.
What is worthwhile? I don’t know, I’m here.
Something that came in from the peripherals this morning is the notion of having two hands to hold both things at once. I have been thinking about attachment and what it means to be attached. How to be a human being means you are subject to wanting, yearning, longing and creating. Through this wanting, yearning, longing and creating you cling to whatever it is that you think is going to bring you joy or an air of completion. It’s the oldest tale in the book but just run with me for a second. You have to desire. You have to long for something. Anything. You must know what it is like to not get your way.
In the same breath, you can lose yourself in the identification of the content of your experience. Or, you can place both hands up in the air to say, I am free to hold the thing that I want in one hand! And in the other hand, I still have space to hold (not the absence of that thing, necessarily) every potential that could ever exist! And maybe, in that way, we can continue on with excitement, we can continue being ourselves.
When I talk about ‘being yourself’ I don’t mean being the version of you that you describe to another that includes the content of your day to day, or your job, or even what your last name is. I mean b e i n g your s e l f—- which is essentially embodying the truth. A synonym for this? Perhaps living in the Yes and!
You have two hands to hold two seemingly different things to temporarily ease the egoic mind of squandering and flailing in the face of the possibility that it may not get what it wants. Two hands to hold both things. But really, the one that holds the infinite potential is in a way, not necessarily more true, but it is more inclusive.
Think about something that you really want. Visualize yourself putting that possibility in your right hand. Now visualize how you hold infinite potential in the other hand. What does that feel like in your body? Can you taste it? Hear it? Sense it? Where does it show up in your being?
When you focus on holding the thing that you want, does that feel constricting or expansive?
Where does this wanting come from?
When you focus on holding the infinite potential, does that feel constricting or expansive?
Where does this infinite potential come from?
Now marry the two and learn how, with each day, to sit patiently at the center of the two without the need to understand or be promised anything from it. In essence, this is what it is to live.
Come along with me here, take my hands.
To exist is to want, to want is to attach, to attach is to suffer, to suffer is to identify with the suffering, to identify with the suffering is to believe that you ARE suffering, to believe that you ARE suffering is to forget who you are, to forget who you are is to think you are the content of your lived experiences, to think you are the content of your lived experiences is to depend on the quality of content to b e y o u r s e l f to depend on the quality of content to b e y o u r s e l f is to hand over your power to the illusion that you are separate from it all, to hand over your power to the illusion that you are separate from it all is to operate in separateness, to operate in separateness is to resist your truth, to resist your truth is to come into contact with your truth eventually, to come into contact with your truth eventually is to remember your truth as one and in love, to remember your truth as one and in love is to suddenly experience contrast that contradicts that idea, to suddenly experience contrast that contradicts that idea is to be given the opportunity to choose again from this true state of awareness, to be given the opportunity to choose again from this true state of awareness is to understand it even if for a moment as your intrinsic natural self, to understand it as your intrinsic natural self is to be the tree that stands tall amidst the storm, sunshine, rainbow, etc. To be the tree that stands tall amidst the storm, sunshine, rainbow, etc. is to continue being despite, to continue being despite is to feel it all, to feel it all is to be alive, to be alive is to live, to live is to feel, to feel is all that is required of you.
We create illusions in which we can experience the great drama of rage or passion because we are curious about what it is like to feel rage or passion.
We create the illusion in which we are confused and lost because we dream of what can be discovered when we don’t know where we are or where we are going.
We create this game for ourselves to play house. To grapple with the grand distraction and tension of dissatisfaction and emptiness because we are already whole.
To be so distraught that we put our headphones in to tune the rest of the world out so we can exist in our own little world where there is pain to be looked at and tended to. We ache to ache because we are complete within or without.
It’s all perfect. Do not banish or hide or rid yourself of any of it. Instead, recognize it as a delicate fractal that makes up the tapestry of an experience that continues for as long as it has begun, and that is for as long as the Universe has known of itself.
If you do decide to run, know that inevitably, you will return to yourself again. In fact, a better word may be you will remember yourself. You can not get away from who you are. Who you are has always been with you. It is the sky while it drizzles. It is the rock at the bottom of the calm lake. It is the tongue inside of the dog's happy mouth. It is the one who asks, who am I?
It is the opportunity to recognize your holiness and wholeness in all that shows up at your door.
You are the door, the opportunity, the recognition, the holiness, and the wholeness.
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