August 1, 2026
In contemplation
Who am I?
This is one of the great existential questions. Mystics and philosophers have struggled with it for centuries. Let us contemplate some of their teachings.
Day 36
You live in a world of your own making. Your world is what you think it is. It is built of memory and imagination.
You imagine a future based on past experiences. Your imagination generates desires that produce expectations. You strive to attain a desirable future.
Whatever you envision do not desire it. See it for its own right. Work to fulfill your vision without expectation.
Expectations lead to experiences of pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow. These are states of mind determined by attitude.
How you see an experience determines your reaction to it. The me of the body sees with ignorance and fear. Your true nature has eyes that see with wisdom and joy.
Experiences are the waters of the world. They are troubled by your own thoughts. Will you drown in turbulences of fear or be healed in stirrings of joy?
Do not desire joy. Do not aim for joy. Joy is not something for which to strive. Joy is nothing. It has no existence. Do not expect to find joy through effort. Remember joy as your true nature.
You are the expressing of the world. You are consciousness in existence. There is no world without you. Be the joy in the world that you are.
The world reflects you. How you see yourself is the world in which you live. You choose your image. You create the world by your actions.
Act within the whole of the all. If you have any purpose at all, this is it: to remember that you are consciousness in existence.
In truth, you have no purpose. There is nothing to strive for. There is no movement from here to there.
What you seek and find in the world is not real. It leaves you with pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow. To find what you seek is illusion. It does not last.
Stop seeking. Do nothing. You will remember the joy that you never lost. Joy is your true nature. Live in joy and have peace of heart always.
