The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The journey of a million miles begins by sitting down.
The whole drama of the self, which wants this and doesn’t want that, and gets anxious and then doesn’t like the anxiety and wants to be rid of it – why not take a little step back and touch into an awareness which includes all of that, which holds all our experience in a kind of peaceful embrace. Why not love ourselves as we are, with all our self-wrought stories and dramas. From the vantage of the awareness that is always here, which like a mirror is never touched by any of its contents, we can just watch them, as the awareness watches all things, like a cabaret show.
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Coming home to oneself. There is a home, and it’s always OK when we are at home in our self. This is the meaning of sati, of smrti – of remembering, recollecting, of the Greek anamnesis or non-forgetting. Coming home, within, to a place of stillness, non-judging, not-minding, where in stillness there is nevertheless great quiet activity. Home.
It’s not so easy. Hence, in the classic epic the Odyssey, almost half the action takes place after Odysseus gets back to his home island of Ithaca.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The journey of a million miles begins by sitting down.