The Search for Truth

Walking through life, I struggle to find the answers, seek to find Truth.

I hear all sorts of sages, priests and pastors, gurus and masters, speaking of God, speaking of Enlightenment.

My life is full of ups and downs, I seek to find that which is beyond what I know in my everyday existence. I seek to know the Truth so that my suffering will end. I seek Peace, because my life is full of conflict.

Spontaneously, I become aware of a presence, something which is watching all this strife and struggle. There is a presence which simply reflects all this activity, like a mirror.

I feel it when I'm at my lowest - the depths of depression or grief - it is more than the mind can bear. Something beyond the suffering is just witnessing.

I feel it when I'm at my highest - in the heights of joy and passion - something beyond is watching, shining through.

Getting caught back in the everyday story, this shining presence seems to recede, obscured by the mind, hidden by the mental habits which relate everything back to "ME". I am the center of my world again - everything that happens, I am affected.

But once again, this shining presence, this simple awareness, reflects these activities, registers what's happening without any sort of attachment. I recognize that this presence of awareness has always been there, hasn't changed over the years, is the same as when I was a child.

Suddenly - I realize that this "person" is arising only as a thought, a concept, a container for all these references. The person is only an idea, based on memory, strung together in thought.

So where is the seeker? There never has been a seeker - only a false identification with the body-mind.

What I am is just this shining presence, the open space in which all this "stuff" happens. I am never touched by any of it! I don't change, I can't think, I can't use words or make decisions, I can't feel or speak. I simply watch.

I have no body with which to feel, to move around. I have no mind to store memories, to accumulate time, to run off into the future seeking some goal.

I have no goals, I have no life, I have no self. All these appear in what I am!

I am simple, ordinary, everyday awareness.