This is not a process that happens overnight. It is something that seeps in slowly.

It's about remembering, it is about being reminded, it is about taking a step back every day in a journey towards the most essential thing in your existence.

You can walk into a movie, buy your ticket, sit down, and twenty minutes later you could be crying your heart out. But this journey back to that basic, back to that essential, back to that beauty, is a very slow one.

 

 

 

You're not allowed to run. There is no competition.

There are no mile markers. It doesn't say, "Five more miles, three more miles, two more miles." It doesn't have encouraging signs saying, "You're getting closer. You're almost there."

It's not like that and it never has been like that.

 

 

 

 

Simplicity is not an invention. Joy is not an invention.

The love that you seek is not an invention.

These are the basics of every single human being. And when it comes to being reminded, it isn't all the other things that we have to be reminded of - it is the fundamental things.

Because this is about being alive. It is about that feeling inside that says, "Move. Be fulfilled. Be in that joy. Be in that feeling. Be in that peace. Be in that harmony."

And when you're there, it's so sweet. There aren't a million things - there is just one thing. One thing that says, "I am feeling this existence, I am feeling this breath, I am feeling this life, and it is sweet."

 

 

 

 

Breath comes, and I welcome it. It leaves, and I look forward to the next one.

I'm aware that it came, and I'm aware that it left. Don't ask me why that is so magical, but it is. It's not the air, it's not the thought of the breath, but it is the most wonderful feeling that it brought me.

 

And what did it take? For everything else just to start stopping!

If I want fun, I need to go within. That is my true fun. That is the place away from doubt. A little doubt—okay, you can get away with it. It's like chilies. So far they're eaten with food, it's fine, but if somebody brought me just a plate of chilies and said, "Here's your lunch," that's not going to work.

But we allow so much doubt to come and dominate our lives, and we let it. We say, "Let's go, doubt. Take me where you wantto take me." And where do you think doubt takes you? Into a clear place? Never.

 

 

 

 

I'm not a product of yesterday because, left to my own devices, I would have spent yesterday waiting for tomorrow.

The empty boxes came, and I never caught on that I was supposed to put something in them, so empty they went. And then, the final one: empty-handed you came, and empty-handed you will go.

Nice going. You mean nothing changed? Nothing?

Life began, one day you found yourself with it. Consciousness came, consciousness went. Thoughts came, thoughts went. Something inside surged, wanted to know, wanted to be with that thing, wanted this life to be real, wanted every hair, every cell, every fiber, to feel that there is something real here.

Then, the great Midas touch - everything you touch turns into illusion. Until somebody comes along and says something that reminds you.

 

 

 

That relationship of this breath and me ... is the only one that I can hang onto.

Everything else is transitory. It's here. It will be gone, it will change. Change isn't bad, but the relationship with the breath doesn't seem to change. I've changed, but that relationship with the heart remains unchanged.

The call is there, I respond, and there is a joy - there is an understanding, there is a wisdom in that. I understand where the island is. It gives me the freedom to swim because if I didn't understand where that island was, I would not venture into the waters because I don't want to drown.

 

 

 

I don't want to follow in the footsteps of another - I want to find a path where nobody has been.

If that is what I hear the call from my heart saying, then this is where I have to begin. I have to try to have an affinity with that silence that is so simple, that is so precious. I have to try to have a bond, a relationship, with the eternal, and if a little rubs off on me, isn't that a good thing?

Let me then hang around in that company of the real. Let me hang around close to my heart. Let me get away from confusion and doubt. Let me get away from fear.

 

 

 

It's a peculiar place, this thing called "world".

How much, really, would it take for the fire of hatred to start burning in this world? Not much. Yet this is where you live. And what an incredible contrast between this amazing scenario and the breath within you. All the turmoil, and the most incredible peace.

What a contrast!  What an incredible sorrow, and what an incredible joy – not more than two inches away from each other. What an incredible opportunity to not be empty-handed.

And if you don't want to go empty-handed, you'd better not be empty-handed right now.