When we know only the manifest world we are estranged from our true home, living in exile, and always waiting, whether consciously or unconsciously, to return home at last, to finally rest and forget all of our woes and worries. Now the time comes, in the lap of the luminous darkness, in the depths of total mystery. We recognize this without anyone telling us, for in our hearts we have always known. Our minds have told us various stories about where home is, where rest is, where contentment is, but now we know with certainty that we are home at last, and wonder how we came to be lost. We feel like celebrating, full of joy and dancing with delight.  

Many people go into spiritual practice without dealing with their animal soul, without recognizing that there is such a thing. Some even become enlightened but never find out that they still have an animal soul. This means that the animal soul is living in the dungeon, waiting for a chance to come out. The moment the observer inside relaxes and a wonderful object of gratification appears on the horizon—perhaps an object more wonderful and available than ever before—that’s when the animal soul will come out. The love of the truth is in some sense our beacon, our way to become more human, more developed, more refined. And this does not happen by abandoning our animal needs—you can’t abandon these needs—it happens by not putting them ahead of the truth.

Regardless of the stories you tell yourself, at this moment, this very moment, there is only this moment, here, now. Nothing else exists. For your direct experience, only the here and now is relevant. Only now is real. And it is always like that. At each moment, only that moment exists. So we need to ask why we put ourselves on hold, waiting for the right time, waiting for the right circumstances to arise in the future. Maybe the right time will never come. Maybe the conditions you have in mind will never come together for you. When will you begin to exist then? When will you begin to be here, to live? Regardless of the ideas about past and future that dominate your experience, right at this moment only this moment exists, and only this moment has any significance for you. The most direct and obvious fact of experience is that the moment, the here and now, is all that exists. This is all there is for this moment. Whatever is happening at this moment, that is your life. The future is not your life; it never arrives. What is actually here is always only this moment. So can you let yourself be? I am not suggesting that you let yourself be to get anything or do anything, even to understand anything. I mean just to be. Are you giving yourself the simple privilege of being, of existence? Why do you think that what you do, what you have, what you get or don’t get are more important than just being here? Why are you always wanting to get something or go somewhere? Why not just relax and be here, simply existing in all your cells, inhabiting all your body? When are you going to let yourself descend from your lofty preoccupations, and simply land where you are? 

We find that home is the inner of the inner, in the most secret chamber of our heart. When we discover the absolute in our heart, which is a particular realization of the absolute, we find out that it is what our heart has always been looking for. (See The Point of Existence, chapter 41, for a discussion of the process of finding the absolute in the heart.) We learn that we have been erecting idols in our heart, when our heart is in reality the Kaaba, the throne of the divine essence, the absolute. We have been loving so many people, so many things, and filling our heart with them and then wondering how come we are not completely happy and totally fulfilled. But now we realize that we have needed to keep our heart vacant, emptying it from all other loves except the love of the truth. We did not recognize what should truly fill our heart, who our real beloved is, until now. When we see the luminous crystalline mystery in the depths of our heart our love runneth over; we are beyond ourselves with deep joy and passionate love. We finally recognize our true and one beloved, the one we have been looking and waiting for, and understand the reason for our previous lack of total contentment and complete fulfillment. All these loves were simply expressions of the true beloved, reminding us of Him, and because of that we loved them.  

So indulgence is going along with a tendency or an attitude that you know is detrimental to your freedom, your health, or your development. The result is that you don’t take responsibility for yourself. You don’t take your life in your own hands. Implied in this is that you are waiting for a savior. A savior could be any number of things: an insight, a blessing, a person, or the attitude that things will change in time. Time becomes a savior. But that belief is an indulgence, and you will know it’s an indulgence just by looking around at some of the people who are in their seventies and eighties. Has time changed them? Usually it does change them—in the wrong direction. The patterns don’t dissolve; they calcify. So what can we do? What is the best way to go about dealing with indulgence? Essentially, what indulgence amounts to is that you’re not taking responsibility for the regulation of your own system. You expect somebody else, or time, or God, or whatever, to do it for you. 

When you are truly being patient, you don’t feel that you’re being patient; you only know that you’re doing what you’re doing. If you feel that you are being patient, then you are most likely tolerating the situation, just waiting for things to get better. Though the ordinary notion of patience is the willingness to continue waiting one hundred years without complaining, this kind of patience is nevertheless limited because it is dependent upon a certain attitude toward the situation: that the outcome should be some kind of change. This is the patience of the ego, not essential patience. Real patience implies an openness to the situation and trust in the process. It is not an attitude of waiting—for waiting implies a desire for a particular kind of change to occur. Many people think I am very patient but, in fact, I never feel patient. I just don’t abandon the task—it is as simple as that.

Thus, each moment of our life is the teaching. And each moment has its own value because each moment is really the way that True Nature is manifesting itself, the way it is appearing, the form it is taking. We have seen that when we recognize the truth of our experience, the meaning appears and we can recognize that meaning. When we see the truth and abide in it, we recognize its value. So we look for meaning in our life—what the value of life is—but the fact is that it is not somewhere waiting to be discovered; it is always here. We just need to recognize that it is here. At the beginning of our journey, when we are not able to be ourselves, value appears more in terms of what our mind thinks is valuable. But when we are real, when we are genuine, sincere, we recognize that true value is actually the same as recognizing the truth of the moment. Then we experience a kind of value that is not mental, that is heartfelt, that makes our heart feel satisfied. 

So when you know yourself in this way, when you are complete, there is no waiting. Time is not experienced as waiting for something. If you’re not anticipating, wanting or fearing anything, then there is no waiting. There is just Being; you just are. And that “is-ness,” that Beingness, will not necessarily satisfy your mind in terms of what your mind thinks is good or not good, since as I said, it doesn’t mean you feel fulfilled or satisfied, full of strength or compassion or any other aspect. It’s not a matter of having any particular quality. As long as you believe that you need to have something particular in order to be complete, you are not yet complete. 

Often, there is an attitude that “Nothing good is going to happen until I get rid of this problem.” This attitude eliminates any openness to what might arise in the moment. If people are going to be heavy, waiting to solve their problems, there will be no happy people left. We’re talking about a certain focus, a persistent stubbornness, a narrow-minded view of wanting only what you have in your mind, what you think is good. You are saying then, “I know what is best and I’ll close my eyes to anything else that is there.” This only leads to suffering, frustration, and tension. You will be much more compassionate and kind, both towards yourself and others, if you just learn to relax. Say, “What is this? Why am I driving myself crazy? Why not relax and have a cup of tea?” Take a walk, forget about all the problems for a while. Why do you think you can only enjoy yourself if there are no problems? Why do you have to wait until you get enlightened? Don’t wait for the mantle of loving kindness to drop on your shoulders before you can be nice to yourself and everyone else. Why wait for it to drop spontaneously, so that you begin to do everything right all of a sudden? That’s not how human life is. You have to work at certain things, exert effort, deal with problems here and there. There will be pleasures, enjoyments, and fulfillment which will help you in dealing with the problems. 

We are a beingness, not a thought following another thought. We are something much more fundamental, more substantial than that. We are a beingness, an existence, a presence that impregnates the present and fills our body. We go so far away from ourselves, but what we are looking for is so near. We constantly put our attention on whether the situation is what we want or don’t want. Is it good or bad? But the significance of any experience is our mere presence, nothing else. The content of any experience is simply an external manifestation of that central presence. So what is the point of waiting? What exactly are you waiting for? Is somebody going to give you what you always wanted? Will a train come from Heaven bringing you goodies? But nothing that could ever happen could be as good, as precious, as who you are. What stops you from being, from being present, is nothing but your hope for the future. Hoping for something to be different keeps you looking for some future fantasy. But it is a mirage; you’ll never get there. The mirage stops you from seeing the obvious, the preciousness of Being. It is a great distortion, a great misunderstanding of what will fulfill you. When you follow the mirage you are rejecting yourself.

When you’re complete, you can be; you can just be and not take any action whatsoever for a million years, and there’s no waiting, no desire for things to change or not change. From this completeness arises the only action possible then, which is love. Love becomes the basis of one’s life. It is abundance. So the process of the Work becomes an exploration of the desires, fears, wants, gaps and holes, uncovering them one by one, so that in time you stop believing they are real or necessary. Most people live their lives believing that their desires, fears, and plans are real, and that they determine what’s supposed to happen. And when fulfillment is not forthcoming, the result is disappointment and surprise.