I have learned that it’s often easier to look externally, with obsessive thoroughness, for what resides surprisingly internally.
It’s habit. It’s societal pattern. It’s seduction.
I’m talking about the myriad of “if only” statements that most of us make. They have a truthiness to them, yet are primarily distraction and distortion from an ever-giving inner world.
If only I could get this project finished.
If only I could move to that other apartment.
If only I had better people to work with.
If only they understood.
These are all satisfying. But often, they overlook unaddressed internal angst, that continues to generate seduction of the external, even when some of them are fulfilled. Around the corner is another corner — always.
I love how American Poet Mary Oliver writes of paying attention to where you are. Of how much is available in the internal focus. Just because. Or because of what it improves in the expression and accomplishment of the external.
I Have Decided
I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains,
somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully
in the cold and the silence.
It’s said that in such a place
certain revelations may be discovered.
That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt,
if not exactly understood.
Slowly, no doubt.
I’m not talking about a vacation.
Of course at the same time
I mean to stay exactly where I am.
Are you following me?
This passage reminds me of a premise that I actually believe, but sometimes lose track of.
In the anything is the everything.
In this moment, in this now, in these circumstances —
there is access to everything,
or perhaps the everything needed that can carry to the next moment.
Right where I am.
