Dear Diary,
The most common topic of these entries – tangled, complex and sometimes somewhat absurd paths to what is essentially easy and simple, yet, due to our habit of living complicatedly, drowning in doubts and reflections, is often hard to access. To the fact that when an endless thought whirlpool stops spinning, when the last word in the head falls silent, when the last image dissipates, we touch something intangible, we plunge into something close and our own, as if merging with our own being, having neither beginning nor end; neither height nor width; neither form nor color.
If one tries to hastily describe this state, the first word that comes to mind is “peace”. Yet as a radiant white color is composed of the entire color spectrum, so this peace, upon examining it, is woven from all the most beautiful human emotions. It is full of burning red love. It is full of inspiringly green freedom. It is full of sky-blue peace. It is full of golden wholeness. Perhaps there is wonderful logic in this – when a person suddenly lacks love, freedom, peace or wholeness, their radiant white peace ceases to be so radiant and clean – the missing ingredient gives it a murky color and the person embarks on a difficult and often painful search for that ingredient.
We have an unspeakably wonderful habit – possessing all the above-described treasure in our hearts, in our filled-to-the-brim inner corners, we wave it all off, cover it with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs, and go searching for it outside. Frantically wave our arms, demanding it from people, places and circumstances surrounding us. In the case of peace (local, not worldwide) – we perfectly understand that for peace to reign in our staircase, you need to punch Antanas from the seventh floor, discipline Vanda from the ninth, and force the Petraitis family from the eleventh to move out. This is how we see and often execute the search for peace outside. However. If we turn away from the outside and find peace first within ourselves, in our own hearts, in an instant Antanas, Vanda and the Petraitis family simply stop mattering to us – we found what we were looking for without them. And if that same peace within themselves is found by all the remaining staircase residents – the staircase entirely becomes a wisdom-and-peace-filled Buddhist temple, to which pilgrims from all corners of the world begin flocking to draw from that wisdom and peace… :-)
Similarly with our other much-craved sensations. Take freedom, for instance. We demand various freedoms from the government and our loved ones. Freedoms to act as we wish, to acquire what we wish, and the possibility to fill all our desires without financial or physical limitation, including the very darkest ones. Yet inside us we have an entirely different freedom – first and foremost freedom from our own desires. Freedom from our wants and don’t-wants, helping us enjoy any activity being performed at this moment and demanded of us by life. And, of course, freedom from the outside world’s ability to regulate our own inner freedom.
I won’t expand further, because this would fill several more A4-format pages in this style, pouring from left to right. Let’s stop at the entry’s main thought – upon feeling that life lacks peace, freedom, tranquility, wholeness or love, don’t rush to search for or demand it around you. Simply look into your heart. What you’re searching for is already there. And there’s plenty of it.
Huge congratulations on the passed Day of Love and the arriving Day of Freedom!
