I have a very challenging confession to make.
I can’t tell you how I know this, but I know that I know it.
Here it is.
I know that everything I’ve always wanted, everything that’s valuable to have, I already have and I have it inside of me.
No, I don’t have access to it at this moment, by agreement.
Remember when Ramakrishna granted Vivekananda the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi and then said he was going to lock it away in a treasure box until Viveknananda’s mission was accomplished? (1)
I feel like a man who agreed with the authorities to put on a coal miner’s hat to rescue some miners trapped in a mine shaft.
I take up my pick and shovel and go down a deep hole to rescue the miners.
And here I am, hacking away. But I know the whole time that my home is up there and has all the amenities I may ever have wanted.
I’ve been noticing this feeling inside of me for a few days now and haven’t been able to put a name to it. But now I see it as contentment based upon certain knowledge that there’s nothing I lack.
Again these are not feelings that I’d associate with a working journalist, popularly thought to be always on the lookout for a good story. I’m actually not on the lookout for anything, quite frankly. Perhaps I should be; perhaps not. I’m not sure.
I do know that every person I meet looks beee-you-ti-full. Beauty-full. Everyone looks like the perfection of their own type.
I’m amazed at myself as well. By rights I should be crippled over. Having sat at the same desk for so long, I wonder how these limbs still move! And, yet aside from a few aches and pains, I feel great.
And another thing. Something is pulling me to stand up straighter than I ever have before. I must look like a bit of an anomaly but it’s a kind of inner imperative.
Oh, yes, and I’m smiling at every one I meet, everyone I bump into. I mean, really smiling.
Oh yes, and another… and….
Footnotes
(1) Paramahansa Ramakrishna said to Narendra (later Swami Vivekananda): “Now the Mother has shown you everything. But this revelation will remain under lock and key, and I shall keep the key. When you have accomplished the Mother’s work you will find the treasure again.” (Ramakrishna – who has taken form in India again, according to Sri Shankara! – in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 72.
“I shall have to be born once more.” (PR in GSR, 359.) “The Master said he would come again after a hundred years.” (Sri Sarada Devi in Swami Chetanananda, ed. and trans. Ramakrishna as We Saw Him. St Louis: Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1990, 31.) “On a certain occasion the Master, standing on the semi-circular verandah of his room, said that he would be born again after a hundred years.” (Swami Chetananda, They Lived with God. Life Stories of Some Devotees of Sri Ramakrishna. St. Louis: Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1989, 65.)