You can't separate the meaning of this life from who you are and your relationship to it. They are inseparable. The kingdom of heaven is within. What do you think that means? Some lost horizon that one day you're going to arrive at? No, it means that this very moment is the expression of the kingdom and everything in the kingdom is present to you if you will be present to it.
This oneness with life -- and its consequent freedom -- is not something that you win. It's a movement that, as a unique creation, you are intended to be a participant in. But you can't participate in this unique movement -- this unique relationship of light and form and energy -- if you're anchored to whatever your mind is telling you the moment is about, because then you have yourself as an anchor, and it's a weight that carries you down, not up.
The more the mind describes to itself the moment, the less the moment has the possibility of bringing to you what that moment has come for, which is to reveal you to yourself. This name for everything -- this part of you that goes before you at all times to literally anchor the sense of who you are and where you are -- actually impedes the hand of the Divine because, at any given moment, the more cluttered the impressions coming in, the farther away you are from what those impressions are intended to reveal to you.
And similar to the way a GPS works with fixed points to triangulate your physical position and tell you where you are, there is a psychological (but illicit) triangulation of imagination, associations, and all the accompanying sensations that tell you who you are. Something happens (it could be anything), and the moment it happens, don't you have a name for it? And you don't ask for the name, do you? It just pops up: "This is not right," This shouldn't be like this," "This is what I want." Instantaneously something appears and names for you the meaning of the moment. Now, where does this guide that appears to tell you the meaning of the moment (and ultimately how to get through it) come from? Can you know the meaning of the moment? You participate in it, or you don't. Any meaning that you apply to a moment is the process of imagination projecting onto what it sees or perceives as being real... and that's what it calls the meaning of the moment.
Think of someone who has ever been a problem to you. Can you call that name up without bringing up a whole history? Imagination instantaneously steps up and describes to you what has happened on a big board with a professor and a pointer clarifying for you why the pain that you feel in that moment is justified. And the minute the description appears, comes with it everything connected with it in the past. All the accompanying sensations that appear as associations build the truth behind the false perception. But it's not you, is it? Certainly you're not your imagination. Imagination is a marvelous creative gift, but it's not intended to tell you what just happened, let alone what may come. Associations are actually required for some forms of progress because you build upon certain things in this life. But relative to the meaning of life -- relative to the possibility you have for discovering that this very moment already holds within it all that's necessary for you to be a whole human being -- associations are corruption because one then looks at the past for a way to interpret what can't be interpreted by thought.
So if you put together this imagination and you couple it with associations and all of the reactions that are inherent in those associations, now you're literally flooded with sensations connected to old energy patterns, and boom, "I'm real." Are you? For a moment you have a very definitive sense of self, but that sense of self is a derivative of a process that starts when the unattended mind is allowed to name and describe what has happened.
Your mind is not meant to go before you. Thought is not meant to go before you. And that's all that goes before you now. This is the name-giver, the storyteller. And the minute the description appears, the future of the describer is laid out as the describer has laid it out. All the associations that validate what you've described as being true and what the next moment will therefore bring, appear. All the associations of being a victim and being in danger are there, and so you couldn't be more certain about who you are, where you are, and what has to be done.
In moments where things have been difficult and finally you can't lie to yourself anymore and you can't push them away, what you're left with is this seeming emptiness that's really the presence of all that you have been trying to avoid. You're left with you as you are, and it is in the clarity of that impression that comes the transformation. The clearer the impression, the deeper the transformation goes, and the flip side of it is, the more that impression is impeded or corrupted by the content of thought, the farther away you are from the possibility of transformation inherent in the possibility of that moment. And if you do understand that, then it implies that you have to reach the point where, the instant you catch this description appear inside of you, the instant that comes up, you understand "This must be let go of."
And when I let go of the name that I have -- the reason for why I am the way I am -- what else am I letting go of in that moment? Instantaneously, there is no longer a "me" who knows why you're wrong, and why I'm consequently suffering over it. In that moment, there is a complete dissolution. It's only for a moment, and for a long time that's all it will be, but you'll have caught the name-giver. In that split second, "Oh there it is. I didn't know I was on fire. I didn't know I was falling into a pit getting depressed -- finding more reasons to be angry. I didn't know that, but there it is. Okay." and I bring myself back into this raw presence, this awareness I'm left with. Suddenly my guide is shown as being a false guide -- not because I've "discovered" it but because in that moment of relationship with awareness, it's evident I was being misled by myself, and I have nothing else to do. Even though I don't want to give myself up, I must give myself up.
You do this enough -- see the truth of this enough times -- and it will literally become what may be called second nature; but in truth, it's the action of your first nature. It's the action of who and what you are meant to be -- free -- not because you create freedom but because you cease to take part in what is creating the prison called this pattern of the name-giver.
