There is a simple, self-evident truth, a certain kind of insight that is the ground of self-realization. It is actually the ground of a person's gradual entrance into a new level of being. Using a simple analogy, the more still the waters are in a lake, the truer the reflections from that body of water. If the surface is rippled, you see nothing. If it's just barely rippling, you see just some of what is being reflected from above. But if the water is perfectly still, you can't tell what you're looking at -- whether you're looking up or down. The image is precisely the same with the same qualities, the same character.

The reason that analogy is so important is because if we could become as inwardly still as this reflection exemplified in physical existence, the stillness in that consciousness would begin to reflect all the qualities and characteristics that exist in a mind that knows nothing of itself because it is in a constant state of agitation that prevents it from seeing what is above itself.

You don't see what is above yourself! But you are given the capacity to actually be able to see another order of being that is complete, that is already inside of you that you are unaware of. This is important because of the following:

If you are still, and you walk outside and see the sunlight catching some flowers starting to bloom, in that moment there is a complete relationship between yourself (the observer) and what is observed. That complete relationship is the annulment of an individual outside of what is being perceived. There is just the sharing of the color, the shape, the movement, the brilliance of the flowers -- that's all there is.

In such a moment there is the understanding that the observer and the observed are one thing; they're not separate. The observed -- the bright flowers -- are in that bush outside, but inside of you there is something that is no longer held as being apart from that. There is a unity that comes about. The experience is one when the mind is quiet and doesn't want anything more than just the depth and breadth of the experience of being whole -- not whole because of something outside of it, but because there is no outside of it, and there is no inside of it separate from the observation.

When the observer is the observed, our eyes are the eyes of the Divine. It is the way in which the Divine knows what it has brought about in this world. It is the way it knows its own beauty, its own form, its own shapes.

The hope of compassion, the hope of kindness, the hope of everything that is good and beautiful in the world belongs to the possibility of a man or a woman awakening thoroughly enough to recognize that who and what they are is an expression of something Divine seeded into a world in a physical body for the purpose of uniting what is heavenly and earthly at the same time.

Think what it would mean for you to gradually enter into a relationship within yourself, in this true observer, where you understand there isn't anything between you and what you see. The seeing is inclusive, and there is an order of being inside of this quiet seeing that doesn't long for anything because it already is a part of everything.

Then you can begin to understand -- through a mind that is slowly brought into quietude -- that you are what you are looking for. Not you by your name, but the you that longs to know the truth of yourself -- the you that has those moments where you drop away because something replaces it with something delightful, delicate, and kind.