This old world is full of fake promise. It appears to be able to provide us with what we are truly seeking:
A stable identity
A feeling of security
Lasting happiness
…but it cannot. It can only promise them to us in some non-existent future. We must all eventually discover this for ourselves: that the only value this world has for us is in offering us this illusion. Only insofar as we believe it can actually deliver on these promises do we give the world meaning; it has no intrinsic value on its own. The moment we come to realize that what we are seeking can never to be found out there, we simply stop expecting the world to give us what it cannot. Saddened by all our effort, our striving, and now completely exhausted… we must be honest with ourselves: we’ve been hoodwinked. Actually, it’s worse than that… we’ve hoodwinked ourselves!
“How strange when an illusion dies. It’s as though you’ve lost a child.” –Judy Garland
But there is some good news. All these things we’ve been asking the world to give us are suddenly found, here and now, hidden within ourselves! Why, they’ve always been a part of us, we just forgot. So why did we have to chase fool’s gold for so long?
Why, to remember! to rediscover for ourselves, one person at a time, our own intrinsic value. Seeing as how the whole world couldn’t give us what we longed for, we had to take back the importance we gave to it… and give it back to ourselves. Yes, it’s that simple. We go back to when we were children, didn’t know any better, and traded our own importance for a bright, shiny world of promise, of surprise, of possibilities. The world promised so much joy and happiness… who wouldn’t give it a shot? Yet after all our fruitless seeking, we discover that, wow! it is our own inner Self that is beautiful, authentic, and full of love… and not the world.
Thus, in truth, we are greater than the whole world.
Yes, once we find our identity, security and happiness within – the more we taste pure gold! – the more we discover that the only thing that was ever of any true value here in this world… was our inner Self.
“Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world,” says Jack Kerouac, “and you will remember the lesson you forgot.”
Joy Biscuits 