The House You Live In

“The words you speak becomes the house you live in.” Hafiz

Imagine your self as a house.  Imagine there is a window in it, from where you can see the world.

There is a lot of space in the house, you don’t know quite how much, but most of what is visible, remains unexplored as you spend much of your time looking out the window into the world, trying to do things and get things from there.  Your thoughts and feelings arise inside the house and any time some unpleasant thought or feeling arises, you put it into a room inside this house, and you lock it up.

As the years pass, you lock up more and more unpleasant thoughts and emotions in the rooms around you until there are no more empty rooms to fill and your face is pressed right up to the window and your back is turned on the shunned feelings and thoughts, which are now collecting right behind you.

These shunned thoughts and feelings are like inhabitants, who are constantly talking and whispering, constantly repeating what you are trying to ignore. And the longer they are ignored, the louder grow their cries and laments and ravings.

All this constant talking and whispering makes you miserable.

But because you never look inside – you don’t want to look inside – you are always looking outside,  you imagine that you hear these voices emanating from the world.  It is the world that is saying these things to you, or making you say these things to yourself.  So you rant and rave at the world and you think it is responsible for your miserable state. And every so often, when it gets too much, you try to change your location or the people you are with.  Or you change your job, or go for a vacation or go shopping.  Or you drink something, or eat something or do something or seek something that you think will numb the pain.

But nothing works for too long; you are miserable again, in the new place, with the new people, at the new job, after the holiday.  In fact, as time goes on, you become more and more miserable.

Then some disaster befalls, or you get utterly exhausted from being miserable, or one day you wake up and finally admit that your life is sheer hell.

And if you’re lucky, you ask, “Is it possible that so many people and situations in the world are wrong and I am right? Is it possible that all of them out there and the world out there, are making me miserable? Could it be that I have something to do with the way I feel?”

You find courage you didn’t think you had to turn away from that window and begin to look inside the house.  You seek and get help in all sorts of ways, from all sorts of people and slowly you begin to open the rooms locked up for so long.  Initially, you are shocked and horrified by the inmates of the rooms.  But very soon you realize they are only shadows. They make a fearful noise, or raise a terrible spectacle, but evaporate like smoke as soon as you listen to them, as soon as they say what they have wanted to say to you for so long. And once you’ve heard them out, they leave, making you feel so much better, so unburdened, so much lighter.

You become more courageous, you seek hidden rooms and dungeons and secret passages and go meet the inmates. You are like a detective on the trail of a wonderful mystery.  You read subtle clues, you sense the presences and secret doors.  You learn to decipher the meanings of ancient symbols and the words carried on barely audible, faraway whispers.

As you go deeper inside the house, you realize that its passages and rooms are never ending and the mystery that unfolds, tells a gripping and enigmatic tale that enthralls you more and more.

Now that the noisiest monsters have been heard, they have been quieted forever, and the house is mostly silent and filled with light.

You start to live deeper and deeper inside the house.  You have so much space now.  You have a solitude, a stillness, a depth, an inner retreat and sanctuary, no matter where you are and what is going on around you.

You have pulled yourself back from the window.   From this new depth, you see so much more in the outside world.  Your experience of life is so much richer.  The ordinary becomes extraordinary.  The mundane becomes sublime.  The routine is filled with pleasure.

You love where you are and you love who you’re with.

And the world loves you back.

And one day you walk through the house, through the empty, spacious hallways and rooms bursting with a pure light.  You see no more shadows, you hear no more whispers.  There is nothing holding you back and nothing pursuing you. There is nothing weighing you down.

You rise effortlessly and fly, swift, graceful and lithe like a bird, into an enormous never ending room, with a ceiling so high you cannot see it. In the center of the room is a blazing turquoise-white fire, cool and inviting.  And you leap into it…

And you disappear…

And you are free…