What You Are Searching For Is Right Here
Received on December 30, 2023 Listen to the complete audio on SoundCloud
Okay, let's all breathe.
Returning to the centre, returning to your centre. If you close your eyes, the funny thing is you don't find the centre. Breathe inside, breathe in this space. Find the centre of your mind…
But we don't find the centre. If you look inside, you don't find an edge, you don't find a circumference. You don't find an ending, you don't find a beginning. If you don't find an edge, then you don't find any centre. You don't find any centre, you don't find any direction.
We find the free-fall. We find a suspension, and that is the ground. This beautiful space, endless space. Eternal space, eternal light.
You want to find no end? Close your eyes and look.
Feel a vibration, feel the heartbeat. If you feel one vibration, that vibration is tied to all things. When you feel one thing, you feel the capacity to feel all things. When you hear one sound, you hear all sounds. It's tied to the original sound, the dawning of time and space, the dawning of the universe. When you close your eyes and look, you go back to that place as well. If you were to travel back in time, all the way to the beginning of time, before the Big Bang, before any materiality, before any manifestation, before anything, what was there? What is that? Can you go there? We could say there is a something there and we can also say that that something is not a thing. It's a beautiful space. If you go there, you can see that space. The only way you can know that space however, is by being that space. By being that space, you enter into being; not a being or an entity, but the realm of pure being, nothing else.
If you follow this exercise from before the beginning of time, before the Big Bang, to find this beautiful being, and then you come forward to here and now, you find that that being does not change. Time, space, the universe, planets, solar systems, galaxies, this planet, all of the wars, all of the histories, all of the people, all of the lives—none of it has changed that space. The animals too, yes, [cat walks into the room] that space always remains the same.
So if you close your eyes and look and you connect to that being, you find that it is not just ancient, because it is before any idea of ancient. And it is not just ancient, because it is always ever-present. When you approach this ever-present being, it brings you to the presence, and in that presence, you are in its presence, and in its presence, you are its presence.
In the Zen tradition, they talk about your original nature, your true face. They say, “Show me your original face before your parents were born.” Who were you? The faceless, the placeless, the unknown mystery, unmanifest, non-conceptual.
So everything we think we are is everything that we've put on top of that place. Everything we think we are is all of the ideas, the stories that we've placed on top that we've learned along the way. But the truth is, who you truly are is what was already underneath before everything was put on top: before your name, before your parents, before the place you were born, before your experiences, before the trauma, before the drama, before your laughter and your tears.
The 13th-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart says, “God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.” Enlightenment or realisation isn't an addition. It's not doing more, it's not having the right things. It's not self-improvement. It's not self-improvement because that place cannot be improved upon. And it's not a division. It's, rather, a subtraction: taking away everything that you are not in order to find what was there all along. If you can touch that, even if you touch it just for one second, just for a millisecond, it is the most healing, it is the most holy, it is the divine living waters that flow. It quenches our thirst, our longing, our endless search for something, for some meaning, just to find what is right here and now when we let everything go.
So, if we pay attention, this beautiful medicine also brings us to that place to clear out everything that was there to give us a clear vision. The medicine person—medicine man or woman—the mystic has been called someone who sees far, a wider perspective, the periphery. While the ordinary person sees things, objects, the material world, and manifestation. The mystic sees the space between things. While the ordinary person sees things, the mystic sees all things come from one thing and that one thing is not a thing. And therefore there are no things. There is just one being that all is the manifestation of. There is nothing separate. It is non-duality, oneness, unity. How could anything exist outside of existence? You cannot stand apart or stand on top of it. You're not different from it.
The masters have told us that our problems and our suffering is the belief in separation. Take a moment and take off that belief.
Let existence be.
If you touch deeply that place of Being, then the search is over and you can discover what you're really looking for—if it is peace, you find is already here. Discover what you're really looking for—if it is love, you find it's been in your heart all along. And if you discover what you're really looking for is happiness, you find that when you stop searching for it, it finds you.
