Quick Reads From Awakening Wholeness: a book that helps young leaders develop compassion for Myself, Others and The Earth.
Our Mission is supporting Youth Globally in learning Compassion for Oneself, Others & our Environment.
1.
A salt doll journeyed for thousands of miles through dry and dusty lands for longer than it could remember. It didn’t know from where it had come or how long it had been travelling. It was simply alive and walking, beneath the hot sun, in the sand-filled winds, in the icy moonlight of the night, day after day.
Eventually, it came to the edge of the sea. It was fascinated by this moving liquid mass, so unlike anything it had seen before. “Who are you?” asked the salt doll. “Come in and see,” replied the sea with a smile. So the salt doll waded in.
The further it went, the more it dissolved, until there was only a pinch of it left. Before the last bit dissolved, the doll exclaimed in wonder, “Now I know who the sea is. It is me.”
2.
A famous mystic, Rabiya of Basra, was looking for something beneath a lamppost on the street outside her house. The sun was setting as a few
people gathered around her. “What have you lost?
What are you searching for? Perhaps we can help,” they said to Rabiya. Rabiya replied, “I have lost my needle.” One of the people said, “It’s getting dark now, and it will be difficult to find the needle. Where has it fallen? Tell us, and we can help you find it.”
Rabiya told them, “It has fallen inside my house.” Everyone started giggling. Then a person said out loud, “If the needle has fallen inside your house, why are you searching for it on the road?” “Inside the house, there is no light, but there is still a little light on the outside,” Rabiya replied.
The people laughed and started dispersing. Rabiya called them back and said, “Listen! That’s exactly what you are doing; I was just following your example. You go on seeking happiness in the outside world without asking the most fundamental question: Where exactly have I lost it?” After a pause, she continued,
“You have lost it inside, and yet you are looking for it on the outside for the very same reason: your senses are outward bound, your ears hear sounds on the outside, and your hands touch things on the outside.
That’s the reason you are searching outside. For a very long time, I was also just searching on the outside. But the day I searched inward, I was surprised. That is where I lost it, and that is the only place it can be found.”
3.
There once was a musk deer who, at some point in his life, began to notice this heavenly scent in the air. Intoxicated by its smell, he set out in search of the source of this divine aroma. He searched high and low, and everywhere he went, he could smell it lightly in the air, but its source always eluded him. He looked for the source through the forest, cutting through brambles and often injuring himself in the search. He looked through the depths of every forest, smelled every tree, tasted every shrub and blade of grass, and still couldn’t discover where this scent was coming from.
He remained steadfast in his search because the scent was intoxicatingly glorious. The poor animal no longer ate, drank, or slept. Finally, starving, disappointed, exhausted, and wandering about at random, he slipped from the top of a rock and fell, mortally wounded. The musk deer’s last act before he died was to lick the area just below his navel.
His musk pouch, which ruptured when he fell from the rock, poured out its perfume. He gasped and tried to breathe in the heady perfume, but it was too late. The perfume that the deer looked for externally was contained in himself all the while. After a lifetime of searching, in the final moments of his precious life, he finally realised that the scent was coming from him the whole time.
These three stories have made a deep impression on me. For me, they are metaphors for our search for happiness and love — our own journeys of evolution. Not only do we search tirelessly in the wrong places for happiness and love (outside of us, in people, places, things, and achievements), but we are also searching for that which we already are! Oneness with life is our home.
Being one with the infinite love that life is is where we find lasting happiness, fulfilment, and peace.
We search for happiness and peace at the level of our senses, thinking (erroneously) that either some person, place, or thing will give us lasting joy and fulfilment. But it doesn’t, because everything in the realm of the senses is temporary. Every single cookie finally crumbles! So it can never, ever, ever give us lasting peace.
Yes. It can give us momentary thrills. It can give us temporary satisfaction, but it can never give us the lasting peace and the lasting okayness that belong to our innermost core — our awakened, magnificent, and whole self.
May these stories remind us all that what we seek is right here.
We are the source of our peace, happiness, and well-being.
~ Dr. Dean Ornish
Our nature is to be happy, peaceful, and loving.
We already have it in us.
When we run after things to make us ‘happy’
We disturb what we already have in us.
Think: How can I stop what I’m doing to focus on what I
already have?
