There, in the dark of fate,

No one to watch me, darkness far and wide.

There is no signal for me to dial –

No other light, no guidance —

Except for my heart, the fire, the fire inside.

Saint John of the Cross

What do you want?

What do you want really?

There is a fire that burns within each one of us, a fire that cannot be put out with knowledge (of the intellectual kind), that can only be satisfied by solving deep within our being the Great Question: Who/What am I? What is Real/True? Because I am here?

“Life is suffering” is a translation of the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. We are all suffering. We all want things we don’t have and we all have things we don’t want. This is the cause of our suffering.

So if this is the simple truth, why can’t we just end our suffering by fully competing with our lives, having what we have and wanting nothing more or less?

Believe it or not, the answer to this question is that we have lost touch with what we really want and have substituted many other things for what we crave the most. We go around thinking that if we had enough money, sex, power, drugs and alcohol, knowledge, etc., we would finally be happy. But no amount of any of these things will satisfy us because this is not what we really want. (By the time you’ve gotten around to reading this book, you’ve probably figured it out for yourself.) And we can never be completely satisfied, we can never find the peace and fulfillment we long for.

One of the reasons why none of these things bring us happiness is that all of these longings are outward/future focused. Everyone is predicted to achieve something we don’t have yet. And happiness can only HAPPEN now, at this very moment. You can’t be happy in the future! And as long as we are focused on achieving something bigger in the future that finally fulfills our longing, we can never be happy.

But the main reason why none of these things bring us peace and happiness is that they are not what we really want. What we really long for is our True Self: our wholeness, in and of ourselves, and our connection to others and the Universe/God. And these things we already have; we do not have to go looking for them outside of ourselves. The problem is that we don’t know, that is, we have forgotten, that we already have these treasures, that we are already complete and connected with all life.

So how do we remember/awaken to the Truth about ourselves? The path begins with the recognition of the suffering/dissatisfaction of your life. What is not working in your life? What do you want not to have? Is it a love relationship, your health, enough money to feel secure, peace of mind, a feeling of vitality/joy, a feeling of fulfillment/connectedness? And what do you have that you don’t want?

Can you feel that feeling of dissatisfaction right where it lives inside your body/mind? Where in your body do you experience discomfort/pain/blockage?

How does it feel?

And how do you relate to this uncomfortable feeling? Do you hate it/ignore it/ push it away/fight it? Or do you hug him?

There is a saying that I often use: “The only way out is through.” Whatever you are looking for in life, whatever the source of your dissatisfaction and suffering, paradoxically lies right in the center of the very thing that you are avoiding within yourself.

So I would like to invite you to end the fight within and against yourself and begin the journey back home, the yellow brick road back to your True Nature, allowing yourself to start moving towards rather than away from this pain. longing that you have just come in contact with in yourself. In truth, the journey back to your True Self is accomplished by making direct contact with this inner longing, this inner fire, and then simply (but not necessarily easily) consciously surrendering to the longing itself.

The journey requires the personal qualities of patience, perseverance, determination, courage, self-forgiveness and compassion, discriminating wisdom, willingness, vulnerability, insight, power and strength, and you also develop these qualities in the process of undertaking the journey itself. .

So what is this place inside of you that you really like? Where, exactly, is it alive in your body? How deep inside of you? How big is it? What is its shape? Color? Surface texture?

Can you get close enough to it with your awareness/perception/attention to feel the kind of energy emanating from it? (Sort of like when you walk past a hot stove you feel the heat coming from it.) What is coming out of this place inside of you that you have spent most of your life avoiding?

Can you get close enough to this thing inside of you to really “touch” the surface with your awareness? What does it look like? How does it feel?

Can you now find a way to get into the surface layer of this thing, to enter it, to become one with it, to experience what this surface layer is like that divides you in two from within, to come to know exactly what is there? made of… what is it really? Take your time with this. You want to get to fully experience each step of this incredible journey so that you begin to see exactly how you work/who you really are, beyond all your ideas/beliefs/images of who/what you are, to see clearly and directly this human mind in all their machinations and in all their splendor.

Pause here for a minute or two. Feel what this surface layer is like, what it is made of. Get to know it well so that you can enter it at will and not have to avoid it in the future.

And when you’re ready, see if you can let go one more level down in this longing so that you’re still in contact with the surface layer, but now from inside the longing space instead of outside. What is it like to be inside it for the first time? How does it feel? What do you feel in this space? Rest here for a few minutes and let yourself go. Let whatever wants to come into your awareness arise there: any thoughts, feelings, images, memories, sensations, etc.

And when you’re ready, release your grip on the surface layer and let yourself be drawn in/down/to the center/bottom/other end of this yearning space, as if a magnet is drawing you towards something. Let go, slowly and with great awareness, allowing whatever wants to be revealed to you to come into awareness. Let yourself go until you find some kind of barrier and you can’t go any further. And then just stay there, right where you are, “lean into it,” as Pema Chodron says in her wonderful book, When Things Fall Apart, until you can get into the surface layer of this next barrier that keeps you separate from what you are. deeper within yourself.

Many people are afraid to take this journey because they believe that something deep within themselves is bad – some “original sin” – and they don’t want their belief confirmed. (I distinguish between “belief” and “faith” in that faith is based on direct personal experience, whereas belief is simply a thought. For several years after my son was born, I lived in fear that he was going to die. .in childhood. I mentioned this to someone once and she asked me, “Do you know that he is going to die, or are you just afraid that he will? I really do. That brought my fear to an abrupt end!) How could one live with oneself if one knew their True nature was truly horrible.Therefore, they never look deep enough to discover the Truth of Who/What they really are, which is absolutely the antithesis of horrible (but! is full of wonder!) An ex-aunt-in-law used to say, “Don’t look too deep!” I guess that says it the way it does for most people in this culture.

Keep releasing it, layer after layer, until you get to the middle/bottom/far end of the yearning place, or until you’ve gone as far as you can for now. Rest here for a while. Allow yourself to remember what you went through to get here, so that you can find your way back whenever you want. And from this place, look back at where this journey began, at the surface of your funnel, and see how you created suffering for yourself, exactly how you got out of this place of relative (or absolute, as the case may be). ) wholeness / connection / peace / realization, he forgot his deeper Truth and got lost in his own (and others’) fear, confusion and delusion. And let him know that he can always come back to this place when he’s willing to take as long as it takes to come back again.

Now, if the above process didn’t work for you, there is another way to work with this longing within you: Instead of letting it in, let it expand within your body until you are completely filled with it. Do this by making contact with the longing where it is alive within your body and then allowing it to expand beyond your current limits, one millimeter at a time, until its energy fills every cell, every space within your body/mind. Do it at your own pace, but don’t stop anywhere until you’re completely full. At that point, you will have found what you have been looking for/longing for all your life. It really is that easy!

Because the inner fire is created by separating from deep within oneself, it can only be extinguished/resolved by making the journey to the center of the fire, where there is the peace we all long for, exactly like calm. in the center of a hurricane.

Albert Einstein said: “Discipline is remembering what you really want.” So WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT?

Dale L. Goldstein