Peace and Love

Your true essence is total Peace and Love. This Peace is not the opposite of war or conflict, it is the Peace that accepts the appearance of war and conflict. This Love is not the opposite of hate, it is the Love that unconditionally accepts all that arises, including hate.

This Peace and Love are not something that need to be or could be found or developed or learned. This Peace and Love is the essential nature of Being.

In this Peace and Love, there is childlike innocence, magical wonder, great ease... but "YOU" can never find it. The presence of a "YOU" is the seeming separation of "ME" from "the world." In this separation, there is conflict, suffering, striving, desire and fear. We feel we've lost that innocence, that wonder - and we're seeking to get something, maybe Enlightenment?

So there is nothing that can be done to "get" this Peace and Love, nothing "I" can do to find it - simply because the belief in the "I" is the very obscuring factor in recognizing this already-present Peace and Love.

The search is just more of the mind denying the magic and wonder of THIS, what's actually presently happening. Maybe in the future I'll get my questions answered or I'll meditate enough and be able to see it.

But no "I" could ever see it. No search could ever lead to it. And there are no answers as to what can "I" do to see it. "I" can never see it. For the "I" is only another thought arising, another belief created out of strung-together memories.

The only answer lies in the sound of the wind in the trees, the feeling of a warm bath, the smell of hot chocolate-chip cookies and even in the desperate struggle of the homeless, the putrid smell of the sewer, and the pain of love lost.

Peace and Love can only ever be exactly THIS right now - exactly this very ordinary moment, which the mind doesn't care to see, in preference for what might be. - Randall Friend