Seeking what has not been lost.

There is a silence into which the world can not intrude.  There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost.
ACIM W-164:4:1-2

Isn't that absolutely comforting and reassuring? Those words resonate in me because that is what I seek. 

Seeking?

Hmmm!  I am getting lost in ego's language again, aren't I?  "Seek" is an oxymoron because how can you seek that which you have not lost? But my mind tries so hard to convince me that this "thing" that will save me is away from where "I am"...It  requires another physical journey into some dark mysterious cave away from where I am right here and right now.  I put on my Indiana Jones hat and away I go on another adventure looking for the precious  treasure "hidden in my heart". "Seek inward" still takes me away.  It requires movement, doing, looking with the body's eyes, a future projection adding to the idea and story to satisfy the searching   "me."

Who is "me"?

Who is the "me" that is seeking?  That is the first question to ask.  The me my mind tries to appease is simply just another idea...another thought form created by thought...and the mind wants to build on that thought form by giving me more thought in which to explain it, rationalize it, add to it. So it is sending me on yet another journey to do so.  "Okay, here you go...now you are one of those evolving seekers that is looking inward instead of outward."

Where is "me" going?

Where is the "me" going?  That is the next question to ask. The mind says, "This time you are going inward." It tries to make it alright by saying, "It is not like the other times I sent you out there on a mission to find your self so you could be happy....No I'm not fooling you this time ...really.  You will find what you are looking for.  I promise .  You just have to go inward this time instead of outward."  The thought of "inward" is offered to appease the thought form of "me".  Getting confused yet?

"Inward?"

"Inward" is just another idea. "Me" is just another idea too.  They are illusions created by the noisy mind that does not want to be still.  If the mind becomes quiet, if the mind becomes still it will lose its power over us.  We will realize that there is no journey...no mountain to climb, no attackers to escape, no big rolling boulder to run from, no cave to explore...no "hidden treasure" that will make us happy. It is all just a script written by the mind for dramatic effect.  :)

Why does the mind send us on these senseless adventures?  It does this to keep us away from the truth. It needs the  drama. If the mind becomes quiet and still we will see that all our "searching' is just useless mental activity.  If the mind becomes still...we will see that it is all just one big fancy illusion.  Most importantly if the mind became still we would see the truth  that ego tried so hard to deflect us from.

Hidden Treasure

What does the mind not want us to find?  The mind does not want us to know who we are. So it creates this screen over that reality and it plays movie after movie on that screen.  We get so absorbed in the movie watching we come to see everything that is happening on the screen as our life and we lose ourselves in the characters.  We become them...we become the "me" when all it is, is just a thought, a projection from  a movie camera.

 If we were to lift one tiny finger and poke it through that flimsy barrier that exists between the little "me' with  its many life events...and the true Self and the only Life there is...it would go through easily because the veil is so very thin. And if we were to allow  the hole to grow...for some it grows fast, others it is more gradual... eventually we would see the Truth beneath that screen.  We would see the space that surrounds it. We would hear the silence and feel the ancient peace.

Beyond that veil created by thought is all there is, all there ever was and all there will ever be.  There is nothing.  There is everything.  There is "now" the only time there is. In that still space, who we really are exists.  It is there where the Self is not found but is. The Self is.  The peace it offers was and is always in our heart, never lost and never hidden by anything but mind chatter.

We just need to get beyond the mind chatter. We need not seek anything.

You are not what happens to you.  You are the space in which it happens.
-Eckhart Tolle


Sorry...another rampage. I need to step back a bit.  :)