Close to the Beating Heart of Everything

There is nowhere you need to go. There is nothing you need to do. Even now you are close to the beating heart of everything. The scaffolding of your life is imperfectly, precisely, just as it is. Remarkably and beautifully you are just as you are. The god of ambition is dead; leave her be. There is no need for resurrection and there is no prison to escape. Icarus flew too high. Traveling toward transcendence he was destined to fall. Dionysus, on the other hand, knew he had it all: sensuality and faith, drink and devotion, play and madness, a true and deep integration without ostracizing anything save ostracism itself.

When you are parched by the arid nature of your days, exhausted by the circles you try desperately to escape yet run in anyway, slow down and treat yourself with a few moments only to be. Notice where you are. Look and listen. Breathe life in. Breathe yourself out. Return to your surroundings. The trees are your teachers of things to come, the ground already anchoring you to the riches of the real, the sound of the wind and the waves whispering to you sweet nothings by name. Close to the beating heart of everything you understand there is nothing you can do to improve on what dwells within you. Adding this, subtracting that, scurrying about, you send yourself on a fool’s errand only to return to the very place from which you left. Instead, learn to be in your body, for your body is precious, a vehicle for your awakening, as Gautama knew. Remember to feel the day, with your heart, with your hands. Laugh! Love! Cry. Ache. Your body is a tender touchstone to the truth, gateway to all you once imagined distant, in reality as close as the very air you breathe.