Isn't it true in the moment when you look out and see a beautiful pink sky ablaze at sunset that it awakens the same beauty inside of you? When you see something timeless, when you see something beautiful, what you see is not outside of you. What you see outside of you is simply reminding you of something that you're asleep to in yourself. The beauty isn't out there in a pink moment. The intelligence isn't in a timeless thought or insight. Those things are merely moments in which you are able to see, for a split second -- because you're in the present moment where it is taking place -- that you have the same thing living inside of you. And when you live, you're nourished; you're full.
We don't live! I know that you're thinking, "What are you talking about, man? Look at me; I'm angry right now at what you just said. I'm alive. I'll show you full!" No, when you live, you're full, but we don't know what living is! We were born into a world -- a family, a culture, an environment, a creed, tradition -- that told us what it means to live. And we were told that if we did what it means to live -- meaning following the purposes of those things that were laid down before us -- that somehow we would be fulfilled for our actions! But we aren't fulfilled.
And the mind that pursues what it does in an effort to fulfill itself merely betrays itself, because everything it does to fill itself with something outside of itself disappears, changes as it must. And every time it does, a person feels empty again, feels as though they have to fill themselves all over again. So they enter another relationship, a new thrill, another drug, so they get rid of this feeling of emptiness they have inside of them that they've never been able to make go away.
But we have, right inside of us, given to us by Life, the possibility of living in the crucible of the present moment, "living" meaning being aware of ourselves -- awake to ourselves -- because, if we are, all the ingredients that we need are there! Our thoughts, positive or negative; our feelings, high or low; all the energies that come with meeting people, with being in strange rooms; walking down a street; taking in the smell of something; seeing somebody that reminds us of our weird uncle -- whatever it may be. In those moments, we are a living crucible!
The only task before us is to willingly enter the crucible of the present moment -- to let what is be what it is and not try to fill ourselves because, in that moment, it seems empty or not complete in some way or we're not getting the stimulus that we want. The universe itself, everything about our life -- all aspects are in a continual convergence that renews itself. And guess where the center of the renewal and the convergence is? In us. In our awareness of that. Not in our resistance to what we don't want or fear or even don't understand.
Everything can be transformed. It's a tremendous alchemical process that the light of awareness produces when a person is willing to allow that awareness to act as this beautiful crucible in which life and all of its content moment-to-moment is pouring. And when life is always doing that, and there's always that change taking place, and always that sense of real life that's coming from it, you don't want to hold onto anything. You have nothing that you're looking to keep, because you're continually being resupplied with something that's Life itself.
This is what the work is about -- finding out that the hunger that we have to fill ourselves can't be answered by the self that searches outside of itself for that nourishment, and that it's an invitation for us to discover the interior path where we ourselves become actively working in the crucible of the moment.
