The sun-drenched pool at Carnelian Woods Condos looked inviting. Tahoe’s thin mountain air was warm, and the water felt like silk. Stu (my partner and a spiritual mentor) and I had already hiked down to Emerald Bay and back up in the scorching sun, eaten Indian lunch buffet at Nicky’s, bicycled along the Truckee River, and had hot fudge sundaes, twice. Drying off in the sun after a dip in the pool, I reflected on our lives over the past months.
We had been together only a short time, and I was continually bombarding Stu with questions about his spiritual knowledge. He was usually quick to engage in a deep spiritual conversation. Once, in the middle of the high desert as we drive back to Santa Barbara from Sedona, I said to him, “Let’s talk about the meaning of life.” I was half-joking and half wanting to start an enlightened dialogue.
He laughed. “There is no meaning,” he said, and this time, the conversation died right there.
I settled into my seat and watched as we passed through the endless, barren landscape, contemplating the structure within that continually searches for something that will fulfill it, make it whole, solve the problem of human existence. This structure seems to suck up tremendous energy in its unending quest. “There has to be something more, and I will find it,” says the mind. “Without ‘it’ you will die, your heart will stop.” If this searching were to stop, what would remain? Non-existence? Emptiness? And is this something to fear? We have all had the experience of disappearing into a beautiful sunset, a good book, or an engaging project. There is nothing scary about that—in fact it is blissful when the ego-mind with its constant seeking, its incessant need to move away from the present, recedes into the background.
Do you notice the searching activity of the mind? It’s like the constant hum of a machine, a continuous background movement. It seems to be fed by a belief that if it finds that ‘something more,’ it will finally be at peace… and if it doesn’t, then what? It’s like trying to solve a puzzle when you don’t have all the pieces. It’s useless to keep trying. The mind will continue its movement as that is its nature, but as the sages tell us, we are not this background hum of discontent, but we are that on which it appears. We are the silent awareness that falls on the movement of the mind. The peace we are looking for comes with this realization. Can we wake up to this ever-present nature here and now?
Walking back up the hill to the condo, I absorbed the beauty of the surroundings, breathing in the scent of the pine forest, the cool evening air, the sun-rays slanting through the trees, the lengthening shadows. When we are present in our lives here and now, where is the need to search for meaning?
Consider This: You are what you are searching for. There is nowhere else to be but here and now.
