Every now and again it’s helpful to step back and review what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. What exactly am I trying to accomplish? Why am I making the effort? What do I know for sure? Are there tangible results? Why do I remain committed?

I invite you to step into my mind…

My journey is an inner one and the holy grail I seek is self-knowledge. Who or what am I? Focusing my attention “out there” and following many dead ends took a huge investment of time and caused delay. Inside me—here, now—that’s the mission. To find the answer I dig deep and excavate the dark corners of my mind. I’m on a mental scavenger hunt for clues. With figurative flashlight in hand I work to uncover, examine, and discard the massive jumble of ideas, concepts, thoughts, judgments, and opinions I’ve collected and treasured throughout the years. I find what I am not.

I journey to the center of my mind, the command center of thought, the beast that never sleeps. Relentlessly it churns out thoughts incessantly, one after another, a noiseless cacophony yet deafening. Tired of living in a state of confusion, fear, pain, and suffering, I brave the assault and look for the switch. There must be a kill switch!

Multiple attempts and occasional success builds my resolve. This inner terrain becomes more familiar. There’s a well-worn path growing wider. My mental flashlight casts a broader circle. I’ve found the kill switch and I’m eager to use it. I now know where I am and how to tame the beast that guards the doorless door to my soul.

This effort is mine alone. No one else can do this for me. It’s my hero’s journey. I’m committed to go within, take control, and discipline my restless mind. There is no other way to join my self with my Self. My mind—the thinking, logical, limited, disturbing, turbulent, devilish, self-serving agitator—must be silenced to give way to “no mind” and its storehouse of knowledge and equilibrium. Of this I am certain. I know no other way to still the storm that obscures truth. It is how I actively manage my state of being, my very state of existence. This is what enables me to find clarity in the chaos and transform conflict to peace.

My self-inquiry leads to self-knowledge. Self-knowledge frees me from pain and heals my heart. There’s no longer two of me but one whole, perfect, and complete being in sync with all that is. Here is where I rest in God. My few, brief, fleeting moments of success stir in me a hunger for more. I can’t stop the hunt… nor do I want to.

I am completely self-contained. My Self is observing my self. My self is questioning my Self. I am a party of one: Self.

This Self I seek is everywhere, in everyone and everything. As I learn to recognize it within I can’t help but recognize it without. It is Divine Love revealing itself in a flower’s scent, the colors of a rainbow, the power of the wind. Invisible yet made visible to the earnest seeker.

Over and over and over until hidden, embedded patterns are exposed and dismantled. Now what is is unencumbered, recognized, and free from the imprisonment I once demanded and enforced. All falseness…gone.

Mystery revealed. Thanks be to God.