Written on March 12, 2008 by Tom Stine
When I look within and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom.
When I look without and see that I am everything, that is love.
And between these two, my life turns.
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All of our thoughts are conditioned. We all are thinking exactly along the lines we are conditioned to think. Programmed like a computer. Anybody who thinks they are actually choosing of their own free will the line of thinking that they have is completely deluded by their thinking.
Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you’re not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn’t someplace else; it’s the naturally occurring human state. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn’t in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it’s there too in the vastness of who we are.
In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.
Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.
Their food is knowledge.
They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?
We always want someone else to change so that we will feel good. But has it ever struck you that even if your wife changes or your husband changes, what does that do to you? You’re just as vulnerable as before; you’re just as idiotic as before; you’re just as asleep as before. You are the one who needs to change, who needs to take medicine. You keep insisting, “I feel good because the world is right.” Wrong! The world is right because I feel good. That’s what all the mystics are saying.
