This is so true, isn’t it?
Nepo nails me when he writes of himself: “I waste so many hours not just in trying to get published, but in hunting for the right publisher, one that will make me feel worthy in the eyes of others. None of that effort, even when successful, has ever brought me any closer to the pulse of life that writing uncovered for me in the first place…But, we often fantasize in secret, do we not, imagining that life is better elsewhere if we could just get there?” (from The Book of Awakening).
Life is better elsewhere than here? Hm!
Maybe this nails you, too. Right where it’s painfully true. Here’s what I’ll do today. Maybe you could do the same. Spend a moment or two…at least whenever the thought comes to you – and, having read this, I suspect it will quite often because, as many of you know, I’m learning you can react to life with resistance, as I do so often. But, of course, when I do, I suffer. Plain and simple. And, when I do, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard the Buddha whispering in my ear when the little me in me raises its voice, demanding, “This should not be happening!” So, today, ask yourself this question…”Instead of ‘there’ what could ever be better than here?”
As Robert Mason puts it, and this is a loose paraphrase, “You don’t find happiness by moving your inner furniture to another town or bedroom.”
HERE is all THERE is.
Here is all there could ever be. When you and I get lost HERE in the forest of some imaginary THERE, what we have lost is LIFE itself.
Life, or what I call God, could never be THERE. Only ever HERE! In other words, if you can’t be happy HERE, how could you be happy THERE? So, No Parking THERE! Park HERE!
This is the secret to happiness.
