Tara Brach - From Human Doing to Human Being (2018-05-30)

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

From Human Doing to Human Being (2018-05-30) - Like Sisyphus eternally pushing the boulder up the hill, we can spend many moments busily trying to manage our life. This two-part talk explores how we can awaken from our non-stop doing, including the incessant inner narrative, and discover the mystery, love and freedom that arises in Being. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. A friend of mine who is a unitary minister described a interfaith dialogue, and it opened with an inquiry, which is really what shall we call the divine? I mean, shall we, as we're speaking, shall we call the divine God? And right away a female Wiccan said, no way, no way, how about goddess? And, ha, remarked a Baptist minister, mm-mm, spirit.

No, atheists didn't like that one. So they went back and forth for a while and finally a Native American suggested that it be called the Great Mystery. And they all agreed. And I think of that often, and I guess I'm curious for you all, how many resonate with the word mystery for that kind of sense of the sacred? Yeah, good number. You know, in a way, whenever we slow down enough to face that we really don't know

what's going on in this universe, I mean, really what is love or what are black holes? I mean, really are just the mystery of these new spring leaves around us or when someone's died, that sense of that vacancy, you know. As soon as we get to the edge of our knowledge, it really is a mystery. And it's also the domain when we get to that edge, whether it's birth or death or the magic of nature, there's a place of wonder and of, a kind of communion that we can't describe in words. It's beyond thoughts.

This is all paths in some way have that sense when the path goes to the place of experiential, not just conceptual of the mystery. And yet, as many of us know, how often do we live kind of awake and available to that kind of awe? And I've always been struck by John O'Donoghue, the poet and philosopher who says that we're just so busy trying to manage our life that we cover over this great mystery we're involved with. Doesn't that resonate some? It does for me.

So we go around in daily life and this is why it's sometimes called a trance. we're just not available. And we're kind of living in a smaller cocoon with basically this monitoring in the back of our mind saying, what do I need to do next? What's going to go wrong? How do I solve this problem? You know, that's kind of the world

that there's a lot of moments that we're inside. And it cuts us off, you know, from creativity or from a deeper kind of presence. So this is all kind of, the context for the consciousness that reconnects us is a quality of beingness when we're not on our way somewhere else. Have you noticed how much of the time in some way you're on your way somewhere else? Have you?

So it's being. It's the being states that allow us. us to reconnect with what we most cherish. And it's the hardest thing because we have a really difficult time not doing. You know, as it's said, we're human doings often not human beings, which is the theme of a two-part series that we are embarking on together, which is really how do we shift from this chronic human doingness more to being states? And I often think of it like how do we have our inner Sisyphus. You remember Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the mountain and then it rolls back and pushes it up again,

rolls back over and over again? How do we convince our inner Sisyphus to take a break, you know, go on vacation? in some way. So I'm not sure where the title will be. It may be convincing Cissivis to chill out and take a break or something like that, but that's what we're going to explore and it's difficult. I remember a story of two women that were meeting up somewhere socially and both their children had gone through school together and graduated high school together. They were sort of catching up. And one of them, they were asking what's your kid up to? now. One said, well, he's at a holistic center. He's doing a lot of meditation. And the other

said, well, what's meditation? And she said, I don't know, but at least he's not sitting around doing nothing. So we'll explore moving from doing to being. And you might, some of you might be thinking that, well, it's fine to spend more time in being states if you're, you know, wealthy and retired and you don't have two kids you're putting through college and, you know, 10,000 deadlines and so on. Or maybe if you teach meditation for a living, you might be thinking that. When I bring this into our shared reflection, I'm not advocating that we all go retire to a yogi cave or anything like that. You know, to contemplate, nothingness. I don't say contemplating your navel because that's really doing something.

It's actually doing something hard, don't you think? I mean, just contemplating your navel for a long time, that seems like a lot of doing. There's a story of an old monk who's talking to a young monk. They're on a terrace in a monastery high in the mountains and there's Zen Buddhist monks. They're contemplating the great emptiness and void of the out yonder. And the old monk says, Ah, my son, one day, all of this emptiness will be yours. It's not where we pay attention. We are focused on getting things, doing things, accomplishing things. So when I bring this into our reflection, far from retiring to your yogic cave, it's really

we're going to be looking at our addiction to doing, overdoing, over controlling, overmanaging. not knowing how to pause. Okay? Now, I'd like to share with you this is a poem by Judy Brown. It's called Fire. And I think this poem really says a lot about this area we're contemplating.

What makes a fire burn is space between the logs, a breathing space. Too much of a good thing. thing, too many logs packed in too tight, can douse the flames almost as surely as a pail of water wood, so building fires requires attention to the spaces in between as much as to the wood. When we're able to build open spaces in the same way we learn to pile on the logs, then we can come to see how it is fuel and the absence of the fuel together. That makes

fire possible. We only need to lay a log lightly from time to time. A fire goes simply because the space is there with openings in which the flame that knows just how it wants to burn can find its way. We know it building fires. So what about building a life? Do we create the spaces that really allow our aliveness to be at its fullness. So take a moment, if you will. We'll take a moment to pause to be. You might close your eyes. That's what happens when the invitation is to simply be,

not to do anything. If you notice there's a doing of something, including doing a thought, trying to figure something, just gently say thank you, let go, let go. Just be, being. What's it like? When the body's tensing, that's a kind of doing. So, releasing the tensing helps to rest in being.

Relaxing is a pathway to being. When we tense into thoughts, re-relaxing the mind, into being. What is it like just to be, to let life be just as it is? What do you notice? How much being did you experience today? Were there pauses? Was there some space between the logs today? We all have time for a few moments of being here and there.

What really stops us? Open your eyes if you'd like, although you might continue to be if you'd like to do that. Continue on. So here's the inquiry. What stops us? What keeps us so hooked on doing? I often think back to those furry little ancestors, there's little mammals that were scampering around the earth before humans took form. And, you know, they really scurried vigilantly.

And I sometimes imagine if they would stop on a flat rock and do some yoga and chigong and then say, okay, I'm just going to be, you know? And they'd become kibbles immediately for some big creature, right? And so, through evolution, we developed a nervous system, right? You know, we have a nervous, edgy system that is designed to tense and to anticipate trouble and to grasp after what will help us survive.

And that's part of naturally what's there. And it's exacerbated in humans because we're conscious of our mortality. So not only are we, you know, vigilant and tensing in our body, but our mind is doing it at hyper speed, you know, like squirrels on caffeine, but our brains like that. And I often think about Joseph Campbell describing the first word in every religion was in some way help. It was a cry for help, that there was this apprehension of the uncertainty and the fragility of being mortal beings

and looking for something that can give us a sense of groundedness and he called religion the inoculation against the mystery because what happens? Well, as we start to build up our philosophies and our theories and our rules and our regs and our minds keep planning and worrying and we cut off from that very presence and beingness that is the portal to the mystery. We cut off. You know, if you are in the middle of a stressed-out day

and you suddenly stop and you just say, okay, stop, I'm just going to be, you're not going to go into the bliss of the mystery. What do you think it'll be like? You're stressed and you all of a sudden just stop and say, okay, I'm going to be, I'm going to pay attention. What do you think you'll experience? Anybody?

What's it like? What's it like to stop in the middle of stress and be still and just pay attention? What is it? It's quiet, and in that quiet you start noticing. You notice how the stress is in your body. You start actually getting in touch with the fear that you're staying busy so that you can solve.

When we stop initially and we're speeding around, There's agitation in there. I know for myself that most moments when I first check in, there's some clenching in my heart. It's a kind of existential organismic fear that I think all creatures have, that in some way, you know, something dangerous can happen. And out of that we're fighting and flating and fleeing, you know. So I often talk about the spacesuits.

that we get born into a challenging world and we put on this space suit to help us navigate. It's got our defenses and our aggressions and our personality and so on. And it's really our egoic strategies. It's the executive functions that help us get through. And we need that. This is not to say we don't need the doing parts of ourselves. The challenge is this, that the... The controlling strategies of the spacesuits seem to take over our lives and there's no space

between the locks. So humans have gone into human doings, we've gotten our spacesuits really well equipped to be able to do all sorts of amazing things. But the reason so many people feel depressed or meaninglessness or that they're in chronic anxiety, we don't know how to be. We don't know how to stop. So that's the suffering. It's when the sense of who you are is wrapped around what you do, wrapped around your doing, moment

by moment and day by day. So again, Sisyphus, it's like our doings keep our patterns going. The more we are trying to run away from that existential anxiety and do more, create more, and more, the more were cut off. So I want to bring in the signs of our inner pacifists, so you can look at your own life, and then we can begin to explore how do we make more spaces? Even though we know initially as we try to make space, we might feel some of that anxiety, it's actually the gateway back into the mystery, back to love, back to creativity.

So here we go. This is the signs of the inner Sisyphus. And I'd say the biggest overarching sign that we're being controlled by that energy that wants to push and do and so on is some perception that we have a problem to solve. That at most moments we're trying to get through the day, solve a problem, work something out. I'm curious how many people when I say that can resonate with that sense of a problem mentality. Okay, good number. I like to make sure I'm not alone in these things. Thank you.

So then that's the overarching frame and within the problem mentality, this is these little mammal, again, think of our ancestors, scurrying around, trying to work out stuff. Our inner sycifice has a few different ways of dealing with it. And one of them is it's fleeing. If there's a problem, we're trying to get away from where there's trouble. We try to avoid criticism, avoid making mistakes, avoid people's judgment, avoid demands coming at us that we don't want. A low-key way to think about it is, imagine someone that you respect and you're with them.

What is it you don't want them to see? Just think about that. Just think about that. When you're with somebody you respect that you hold in high regard, what don't you want them to see about yourself? And what's the energy that in some way hides that? By illustration, a minister, a priest, and a rabbi were going for a hike. It's a hot day.

They come to a small lake and decide, why not take a swim? So they take off their clothes and jump into the water. It's a pretty secluded place. They feel refreshed. It's a good time. They decide to pick a few berries. enjoying their natural freedom. And as they're crossing an open area,

who should come along but a group of ladies from town? So they're unable to get their clothes in time. The priest and the minister cover their privates, and the rabbi covers his face, and they run for cover. After the ladies had left, the men got their clothes back on, and the minister and the priest both asked the rabbi why he covered his face rather than his privates. So, rabbi replies, I don't know about you, but in my congregation, it's my face they would

recognize. So it's a silly example, of course, and part of what the inner Sisypheus does is pretends, hides, covers over the parts of ourselves that we don't like. That takes energy. Another thing the inner Sisyphus does is usually has an agenda in most relating with other people. Some sort of an agenda of either creating an impression or getting something or in some way controlling the energy, controlling the outcome. A woman and her husband interrupted their vacation to go to the dentist. I want a tooth pulled, she says, and I don't want any painkillers

because I'm in a big hurry. Just extract the tooth as quickly as possible and we'll be on our way. The dentist was quite impressed. You're certainly a courageous woman. He said, which tooth is it? The woman turned to her husband and said, show him your tooth dear. So again, this is this Sisyphus in some way controlling things. And then, of course, the fight energy is when Sisyphus is pushing the boulder with anger and trying to crush the ants and trying to, you know, it's just coming out of anger. The big sign for most of us is judgment, judging others. When we are, living chronically in that, you know, the inner manager is always at it. The big sign for

many of us is tiredness or exhaustion. And if you deal with that, it's really hard to be always managing, controlling, pushing, defending, grasping. It's hard. So we're using our will to make things happen. There's a wonderful book called The Willpower Effect by Kelly and I just want to recommend it because I think it's really good. And she describes willpower also as self-control. And what she says is this is when you use a muscle and it tires, if you don't rest the muscle, you run yourself into exhaustion, right? Well, it's the same thing on all levels.

If you exert your willpower too much, you try to push too much and there's not that rest again, the fire and the space, you're really not going to energetically have what you need. So the big suffering that comes when our inner controller is kind of on duty all the time is that we're disconnected from others. It's very difficult when we're trying to manage things mightily the way we do, to feel intimacy. For intimacy to happen, we have to be able to ratchet it back, slow it down, pause, so we can actually attune to each other. When we're managing, we can't attune, different parts of the body, brain, and consciousness. Underneath that, when inner

sycifice is activated, we're disconnected from ourselves. When we're pushing the older, we're not able to listen to our hearts and remember what really matters to us. We're not able to really detect, oh, I'm actually really lonely or sad, there's something to grieve. Or there's an unprocessed fear that's really keeping me from living and taking risk. We don't pay attention like that. We're too busy managing. So one way of thinking of this in terms of evolution is that we need our space suit self,

we need our ego, we need to have the capacity to control things and develop that. But when it's overdeveloped and it disconnects us from being states it's a developmental arrest of consciousness. And if we want to keep moving, if we want to keep evolving on a path of consciousness, we need to sense, where's the space? Am I creating enough space in my life to come back home into those being states that allow me to connect with my inner life and with others? So there's a limited domain we can actually control and it's helpful to face up to that, that the ego can control certain things but the big domains like aging, like sickness, like death and like each other, we can't

do it. It doesn't work. So one of the metaphors that I like about when I think about being a human doing and a human being is to imagine a boat that is moving in currents and there's a lot of winds and we're kind of rowing desperately trying to get somewhere and we're exhausted and we feel like we're the victim of the winds, but we're also the controller trying to do things. And there's this whole self-identity that comes with it. If you pay attention when you're in the midst of your day, there's a sense that behind the curtain there's a doing self.

There's an agent. Who you are is the doing self. So there you are, rowing against all the currents. And then what would happen if you shifted? and you put aside your oars and you put up the basically the sale of presence. You just put up the sale of presence, allowed it to unfurl so you could be carried by the winds. Not for your whole day but for a little while, you know. Just say, okay, I'm going to stop doing.

There's nowhere to go when you stop doing. All of a sudden you're not trying to get somewhere. and you're no longer, there's no longer a sense of a doing self so the who you are enlarges. In a way you become the sail and the water and the wind and everything. It takes practice and it takes trust because we have a deep conditioning basically believe that something's wrong and we've got to do something about it. That's that problem mentality that keeps the doing self in place. So I invite you to investigate when you are moving through the day, just pause and sense,

okay, if I completely stop, what's here, and notice that kind of agitation that's driving the doer, we're going to practice this in a little bit, but also notice that sense of that who do I think I am, wow, this is the doing self. It's not an identity that is very spacious, creative, loving, or wise. It's just a space suit self. We're out of touch with who's looking through the mask. So we're shifting now. How do we begin to practice and start creating spaces to pause, to reconnect?

Now, sometimes circumstances arise that jar us into it, that in some way stop us in our tracks, but give us a taste of, oh, I was living in that doing self and it really wasn't taking me anywhere. And one of the examples I've always loved from Emily Bennington describes this, she wrote it in a blog post some years ago. some of you might remember. She describes the night that her mother told her that she had breast cancer. And she says, you know, if you've been in that situation, there's a flood of emotions all at once. The initial shock is really overwhelming.

Here's what she writes. As it usually does, my mind immediately went into planning mode. Okay, so this is the inner controller. What needs to happen? What are your treatment options? How soon can we get the lump removed? You know, you get the idea. And then she says, thank God for this work, for this practice of unfurling the sale of presence.

Because despite a complete head spiral, I still had enough presence to ask myself that question. What am I noticing now? Okay? So this is beginning our way back from doing to being. What am I noticing now? There are certain questions you're going to find, I'm taking a little pause from the story, that help you to unhook the doer. What am I noticing now?

Or what am I not wanting to feel right now? What's really going on inside me? Inquiry is a powerful way to cut through the doing self. So her question was, what am I noticing now? And she says in that moment I was able to see something I would have missed otherwise. My mother didn't want to talk about any of those things. As I was weighing her options, lumpectomy with sentinel node biopsy or mastectomy with, she sat in the high top chair in my kitchen staring blankly into a cup of coffee.

I was trying to be strong for her sake of mind, but suddenly it became clear that wasn't what she needed. She was scared and she needed to be scared. I debated whether to give her a hug, which sounds terrible I know, but I was very, Charlie holding it together, scurring around, making dinner, pouring over doctor's paperwork, staying busy was my way of avoiding a total collapse. Being present allowed me to shift to her away. I took a breath, walked across the room and wrapped my arms around her. It was an awkward sideways hug, but it was also a long, necessary one and then something

happened. she started rocking side to side like a mother rocks a child, except the child was now the caretaker. It was a sweet, tiny moment I'll never forget and one that I surely would have missed if it were not for the power of mindfulness. I hope you're also able to appreciate a tiny moment today and I hope it's as beautiful even if it's as heartbreaking at the same time. So this is, to me, a beautiful example of the gift of being able to shift from doing to being. We miss our lives and we miss those moments. It's like we're racing across the surface and we don't let ourselves arrive in the moments.

And how often is it we stop and say, this is it right here? I often share that my husband Jonathan and I have kind of a ritual and sometimes we'll go for walks and we'll stop and we'll say, this is it. And we'll go, no, no, no, this is it. No, no, no, this, you know. And there's something about the way we're always in movement tumbling into the future that does mess out. So we need to make the space between the logs.

and when we do, we actually connect. We actually shift from the doing self, the human doing, to the being self that can sense in others' needs. I was reminding myself of this story and another one came to mind that some of you might remember of a woman who had a young son and she was an executive, very, very busy, stressed and she was often pushing them to hurry up and get dressed in the morning to get to child so she could then and so on and so forth. And then she got the diagnosis that she had a year to live.

She had one year to live. And she describes her new mantra, which was, there's no time to rush. None of us have time to rush. We miss out when we race through our lives. So it can be very clear when we have a year to live or when somebody we love has just gotten a diagnosis, something in us, it's like, you know, the bottom drops and it helps us to step out of the trance of always tumbling into the future.

But how do we in our lives when we don't have maybe something that's that kind of up against the wall, how do we stop pushing the boulder so much? I think that's really the important question for all of us. A daily meditation practice, get ready, here's the promo. Every time we practice meditation, every time we're often thought, and something in us notices, okay, going down the track again, come back right here. That's a moment of instead of pylium or wood, we're actually finding some space. We're coming back into the living moment, the presence that's here.

That is training to stop pushing the boulder. It's our daily training. We need a daily training. There's a whole understanding in neuroscience that neurons that fire together, wired together. And we have huge wiring to have all these thoughts of what we have to do and what's wrong and where we're going and monitoring how am I doing now that keep us pushing the boulder. Tons and tons of thoughts and feelings that keep us pushing the boulder. So unless we have some daily practice to begin to undo all those associations, they have

a tremendous force. But if you even a few minutes a day come into stillness and then when the mind drifts, just say, oh yeah, for right now, let's just come back into this beingness, just noticing what's happening, not doing anything, just right here. Even a few minutes actually create some sort of a kind of a calling us back through the day. There's something in us that had a taste and we say, oh yeah, let me try some being right now. It's fabulous to have formal meditation practice and then informal practice through the day. So let's look at informal practice.

Like how can you begin through the day to pause more? And one big place you can do it is in conversations with each other. Because typically in a conversation there are times that the other person is talking and you're not. Right? Hello? Right? Two ears, one mouth.

We're supposed to be listening. So, pause during listening and sense what would happen, instead of planning what you're going to say, having an agenda for something to happen in the conversation, trying to end the conversation, whatever it is, what if you just said, okay, just be? Just let the listening receptively happen. Just be. It's really, really hard. an anxiety that comes with it. But once you practice it some, I'll give you an example of one

man, he and his partner had a, this is kind of a typical gender thing where he was a fixer. And she described different things going on and she was in a, she's working DC in the government and in these last few years it's been intense. So she would talk about it and he'd trying to help her to work with the stress of it, so on. So he was reading. and reflecting on this whole theme of human doing human being and realized he was a fixer and so on. So without telling her, he just, he went on what we call a Sadna, which is a kind of a spiritual practice of,

okay, I'm going to try during these conversations to actually be, to just be there and not jump in with the fixing. And so she'd speak and he listened, and sometimes what he would do because he was pausing more is he might ask her a question instead of trying to fix it. And that was different. He would sometimes say, is there anything more about that or what was that like for you? And sometimes he found, since he wasn't trying to fix and he was listening,

he would just kind of reflect back things like, well, that sounds really challenging. That sounds hard. And sometimes he was just quiet and she'd be speaking and then he was quiet and then she'd come up with something that actually kind of dropped it deeper. So it was a really interesting time. But about two weeks after he was doing it, they were talking and he was being quiet and she said, you know, then she had tears in her eyes.

She said, you are so much more here than you used to be. She really knew. We are so ritualized in our conversation. We're so below the line in terms of consciousness. Remember that line, above the line is what we're aware, below the line we're unaware. We're so habitual and how quickly we say something back. Count three seconds before you speak. That itself, you'll feel all sorts of uncomfortableness.

It's okay, you'll survive. Three seconds. It's amazing. What comes out will be more creative. You will have interrupted a pattern. Does that make sense? It's like walking. I notice when I walk half as fast, I see twice as much.

It's the space between the logs. So how do we practice during the day with each other some actually just intentionally? Okay, be, just be. And then we're going to next class talk about how we're going to next class talk about how we're we shift from human doing to human being in the real high-stress situations where our doings aren't helping but it's really hard to stop? We're going to leave that for the next time. But to practice shifting and pausing, pick moments that are actually either pleasant or

in some way something is grabbing your attention that's pleasant, moderately stressful, something beautiful, or maybe just the feeling. of the shower, you know, on your body or whatever, and just say, okay, just be, being, just being. Let everything be just as it is. Just stop. You might, in those moments, take three long, deep breaths just so that there's a way to do it that actually keeps you there. Inhale for six seconds, exhale for six seconds. Relax with your experience. I notice for my I often will mentally coach myself by saying, just stop. Stop, sweetheart. Just stop. You know? It's kind, but it's like, just drop it. Or sometimes just the word drop.

And I do that when I'm meditating. I'm a Tibetan teacher that I studied with quite a while just described just the word drop just to let everything fall away that we're holding on to, and then just be. Drop. So you can, when you're speaking with someone, just pause a few seconds before you respond, really be in the listening. You can do things that you do that are not so hard to do that you might do habitually and do them more mindfully with more beings, more of a being state, like a shower, like washing dishes, that kind of thing. And when it's more intense and stressful, and this is for you to practice between now and our next exploration,

you can on purpose decide you want to get to know your inner Sisyphus better. So this is kind of your assignment. It should you choose to take it on, is to get familiar with your inner Sisyphus when you're stressed. And we're going to close with a short reflection on how to do that. so find yourself sitting comfortably. And again, I invite you to consider that if Sisyphus was able to stop rolling the boulder, there would be that freedom to come back home to himself, to his life, to the beloved. It's like the more we are busy pushing the boulder, the further way are from what we love.

So we come home to what you might call the beloved and the moments we really stop, that we drop, that we just be. So I'd like to invite you to bring to mind an area where you know you're pushing the boulder where your inner Sisyphus gets into really striving. And it may be a situation at work where you just get very, very caught in the boulder, you're in trying to race the clock and get things done. It might be in a relationship where you know you're controlling, maybe with an offspring of yours or with a friend, with a parent.

Maybe the controlling is trying to use your will on yourself. You're trying to control how you eat or you're trying to control the way you do certain things. But see if you can bring to mind an area where you're. You know that inner manager, that you're just really busy managing things. And when you bring that to mind, since when it's really stressful what that's like, when you're stressed and when you're really in management mode. Take a moment to call in your highest self, your witness, that in you which is aware, awake.

You might consider it your future self. what you're evolving into, to really bear witness without judgment to how your sisifist, your inner sycifis, the ego is striving during the stress. So you're kind of watching it like a movie, watching, sometimes we call it the over-controller, pushing the boulder. And you might inquire, well, what would you have to feel if you stop pushing the boulder? Just to honestly breathe with whatever's there. There.

You sense from the inside, okay, so there's agitation, there's fear that something's going to go wrong. You can breathe with it. You might sense how much this energy has prevented you from pausing, from really being with the beings of your life, from being with yourself. And just hold with compassion what's there. Let your high self hold with compassion, that energy that's being with your body that's being been driving you, the Sisyphus energy. And you might ask yourself if there's no problem

to solve right now, no problem to solve, what is here? Who would I be if I put down the oars and allowed the sale of presence to unfurl or if I stop pushing the boulder, whatever metaphor works for you? No problem to solve what's here. And just let go into that. What's right here when there's no problem to solve. What if more moments you allowed yourself to connect with this mystery and tenderness that's right here? It's the sounds, the stillness. You might listen to these words from poet Robert Hall who guides us to reconnect with the beloved to stop the busyness and come home. He says, within the body you are wearing, now we're going. Now, we're inside the bones and beating in the heart lives the one you have been searching for so long.

But you must stop running away and shake hands. The meeting doesn't happen without your presence, your participation. The same one waiting for you there is moving in the trees, glistening on the water, growing in the grasses, and lurking in the shadows you create. You have nowhere to go. The marriage happened long ago. Behold your mate. Namaste and blessings.

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