INNER WONDERS

So many of the deepest treasures in this world are hidden.

The big, splashy, overt kind we already know about. Warm spring rain whispering across your face as you walk through the woods. The scrunch & rub of fresh grass under your toes. Rolling in the snow, safely protected by scarf bundlings and mittenery. Hearing Mozart. Hearing Sinatra. Hearing the voice of an old friend you've been missing for months. A great, taut, well-written movie. Good hot tea. Good hot coffee. Sitting with friends near a fireplace blazing with life. Reading a great book. A discreet taste of gourmet chocolate. A child laughing. You laughing. Anyone laughing.

These are our obvious treasures.

To get to the secret ones, you have to move very carefully and quietly, preferably with your shoes off. You must be looking without haste, without greed, without anxiety. You must have made at least a primitive alliance with meditation. Then, as the poets say, the world can unfold itself at your feet.

The tick of a clock on your shelf can start sounding like the heartbeat of God.

Washing a cup can become art: watching its stains slide away with the soap is as thrilling as a stab of lightning. Everything: floors, ceiling, windows, furniture, seem to shift gently into benign objects which are here to help.

Listening grows multi-dimensional. Someone brags, and you can hear the pleading underneath the boast; it moves you to enormous tenderness. Another giggles, and you can hear each note of laughter fly through the air like birds on holiday.

New hints, new clues appear in unexpected places. Exit signs on the subway read like messages about oneness. A pet, always your delight, is now even more: your teacher. You open the kitchen cupboard and withdraw a can of food; instantly you understand how the can and the peas within it are related. Small revelations, perhaps, but thunderous in their impact.

This network of insights occurs because you are in a state of extreme openness, one in which your eye can see far deeper into each object than it normally does, and your mind now floods you with new awareness about the nature of life. Some call it the voice of the Self.

It's an extraordinary discovery, really: finding the exquisite intelligence that lies within our own mind, waiting for permission to emerge. In the beginning, it's hard to fathom that magic can occur from withdrawing attention from the outside world, because we are so used to seeking outside ourselves for drama and movement and color. But hard to fathom or not, the fact is that the universe within us is far, far larger and richer than the universe without.

And becoming still is what opens the door.