The Deeper You Go

"You are not a drop in the ocean.

You are the entire ocean in a drop."

Rumi

When I first began my spiritual journey, I thought for sure that there was some destination I would reach in the not-to-distant future, where everything would be problem free and I would walk around in a state of perpetual bliss. Yet, as the years ticked by, I began to notice that, the future I longed for never came. In fact, it dawned on me that this imaginary problem-free future was an illusion, as was the 'me' that was seeking it, and the only thing that was actually real was the Here and Now. In fact, I noticed that I never once left the eternal Now, even for a single second, except when lost in thoughts about the imaginary past and future. Furthermore, the depth and peace that I had discovered during the years of walking the Way, wasn't some static destination that I arrived at - never to leave again - but was instead a depth of wide-open spaciousness that only grew deeper the more I entered it, Here and Now

After years of 'seeking' for a better 'me', and never seeming to find anything that stuck around for longer than the next thought, I finally gave up the illusion of ever finding this elusive 'me', and instead, relaxed into the simplicity and depth of who, and what I already was in THIS eternal moment. The amazing thing was; when I let go of trying to find a greater depth in me, I landed in the openness and freedom that I had always longed for. When I gave up trying to get somewhere that the mind told me would deliver the long-sought after state of permanent bliss, I found myself fully where I already was, and able to enjoy every unfolding moment that presented itself.

The truth is, there is no destination we can arrive at that will give us what we are looking for, no matter how hard and long we may look. In this realization, we are presented with the choice to relax and come home to the depth that is already HERE, and rediscover the spaciousness we have always been. Like the vast ocean, whose depths are endless, so the inner depth of our true nature is without end, and more vast than the mind can ever comprehend or figure out. All we have to do to know this depth is to follow each in-breath all the way in to it's source, and all the way out into the infinite space from which it came. In this practice we find eternity, and the truth of our own fathomless depth.