First I came to the conclusion that joy and love are the only things in life that are really true – they help us transcend ourselves. I then thought beauty does that, too. Often neglected, or judged as superficial, beauty is important because it opens the heart to love and joy. It expands the heart.
Life has a funny – or not so funny – way of showing you what you need to see. A turn of events showed me clearly that even the idea of joy and love can be false and, as we all know, beauty fades. Things break or get worn out, things are sometimes taken away.
I found that while love and joy may be true in essence, the mind has a very distorted way of understanding and interpreting the world. The mind has an idea of what love is, an idea of what brings joy and then gets disappointed when that idea doesn’t work out.
Mind makes love relative and joy elusive. Mind isn’t capable of absolute love, unconditional love. For that mind needs to be transcended.
Mind somehow recognizes the essence of beauty and love, a faint memory perhaps. Mind searches for it, longs for it, thinks it has found it but discovers again and again that it wasn’t what it seemed. It was all an illusion.
What’s left then? What can I trust? What is the simplest, purest form of life? Where is true love, true joy, true beauty?
So I came to the conclusion, which others have come to before me: the only truth is my sense of being, my sense of presence, pure beingness; the I completely free of all descriptions such as age, sex, nationality, etc.
This sense of being never changes over the course of a life. It has always been the same. When I was three it was exactly the same as it is now. In thirty years it will still be the same.
This sense of I is identical in all humans and I think in most animals, mammals at least. It’s often overlooked. The world is loud and the spirit speaks silently. When this sense of I recognizes, and is recognized back, by another sense of I there is pure joy and pure love. Blessed are those who experience that.
Interestingly, just holding on to your sense of I brings love and joy. So I’m back where I started. Love and joy are true. Only this love and this joy aren’t depending on the world outside. It’s there as soon as I feel my beingness. It can never fade or disappear. It’s always with me. Only I can step away from it or forget about it. It never leaves me.
It’s holy. It’s what makes us supremely equal. It’s what makes us divine.