The Mature Monk

The universe is in your hands.

It's in your hands, it's in your eyes, it's in your feet, it's in your breasts, it's in your back, it's in your body. There's a wonderful scene in "The Last Temptation of Christ" where Christ is on the ground and he's writhing and God is inside him. And it's not pleasant; it hurts. This is a very different point of view than we get in the usual stories about Jesus in the Bible. It has upset some people, but there's some truth to it.

Spiritual growth and development is at times very painful. At times it's difficult, like any growth and development. But there needs to be a recognition of who we are and what we are and what the truth is. The truth is that the universe is in our hands and it's in our body. Self-discovery and enlightenment is not something that is outside of us physically. It's here. We are it, and it's in everything. Everything is the eye of God. God is in everything, and God is everything. To not see that is to be blind.

There's a resonance inside us, a sense of who we are. We're a multi-bodied traveler. We're an essence. We're a feeling, an awareness that has an ancient existence. The world of meditation puts us in touch with that being. Happiness is not something that you'll ever find in life, in the world. It doesn't exist there. There's no place that you can go to on the earth that will completely fulfill you. The Himalayas are beautiful. Ladakh is a very nice place. But if you go there, it's still just a place.

You've been to lots of places and it's fun to visit them. Each place has its own powers, its own beauties. People are interesting. There are all types, shapes, colors, sizes. They have different types of minds; you can experience them. But they won't make you happy.

It's interesting to have a successful career. It's worth working towards because it gives you a sense of self-discipline; it trains your mind. But having a successful career, having a great car, having a great lover, having everything doesn't make you happy. It just passes the time. That's all it does. There's only one thing that makes you really happy and it's not found in this world. Otherwise everyone in this world of things and places and experiences would be happy. The only thing that makes you very, very happy is to go beyond this world to a world where there is what they call heaven - an absence of pain, ecstasy, a sense of completion, not just a sense of completion, but actual completion.

God comes in different forms. There's the form we see with our senses, and there's the form we know in meditation that we feel during the day and during the night if we extend our awareness. God is found in silence and in noise, but we get a deeper side in silence. Noise can take us to silence. Flesh can take us to spirit. Pain can take us to ecstasy. We use all the routes there are in our quest for enlightenment, perfection. But you should know that you'll never be happy if you just try and get things and avoid things because then you're in a world of pain and fear, loss and gain, of ego, time and space. Happiness is gained by getting outside the circle of all of this, the circle of self.

Enlightenment. Enlightenment is knowledge of who you are in a very real sense. Not just who you are in terms of what your personality is like, your likes, dislikes - that's a simplistic overview of the personality structure. Who are you? You're not a person, certainly. We take that form. We're an essence. We're an awareness of God's. We're made up of countless, countless realities. To come to know that is to know the truth, and the truth always frees us.