It’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? What gifts lie at the core of our essence buried beneath the layers of life fused into reflections staring back from a mirror? If I can answer this one do you suppose it would be worth a million dollars to me? Just a little motivation to drive me to consider a question that attaches itself to the core of my being.
As I roll back through the first 30 years of my life, I am struck with the spontaneous repetition of events that always included being and doing with other people. All of my exploring, inventing and achieving took place along side other students of life reaching for some sense of freedom, confidence and independence. I sense the safety and security from “belonging” within a loving circle of family and friends allowed me to be a fearless leader into the adventurous unknown. My willingness to try anything once reflects my inherent belief that the universe is my friend and nothing evil will happen to me.
In pondering the fantasies and dreams that carved out my early experiences, I am reminded of my fascination with the idea of life beyond this planet. Meeting other sentient beings and travelling to their home worlds calls to me as the Himalayas might have called out to Marco Polo. It’s my ultimate adventure, right up there with crossing the earthly veil into other dimensions of time and space. I believe the quest for knowing these experiences is hard-wired into my genetic code because of my life-long yearning for them. This deep desire for exploration and discovery is manifested in “earthly” travel as well.
I just had a query cross the flow of my thoughts. “Isn’t the outer world, the world that we see, just a reflection of our inner world? And if it is, why would you travel outside yourself when all the answers are within?” Quantum is querying me, again. I call this inner voice Quantum because she takes quantum leaps in logic. I am often left scurrying to catch the same brain train for the sheer pleasure of riding along with her to our destination of resolve. A lot of exploring and discovering occurs—just as it is right now.
My brain swirls and mulls over the new query trying to understand my wizard’s meaning. “Don’t you get it?” pipes up Quantum. “You do all this for the sake of intimacy. Now, I’m not talking about being intimate with others but with yourself. You know, IN-TO-ME-SEE. The desire to explore and discover new worlds is merely your outward projection of your inner yearning for self-exploration, self-discovery and self-love.”
We share a smile as her words sink comfortably into my heart. She’s my best friend, and she’s always right, particularly when I listen. Quantum is like Mother Earth’s weather woman. She has her finger on the pulse of the Cosmos and can read the rivers of mystery as though she were forecasting the future by reading my palm. I am definitely in awe of her. “That’s good!” she says. “It means you are learning to appreciate and love yourself.”
There she goes again. I reckon that, seeing into the core of who I really am and standing naked in my world, sums up all of my gifts into one—love. If the formula is life, then the answer is love. As the song says, “Love is all we need.” Something so simple rings so true in its message.
My own deep craving for love first registered when I was a wordless infant and then smouldered persistently, but not always patiently, in my wild adolescence awaiting its moment to spontaneously combust. Although it no longer rages its inferno to catch my attention, love is the undercurrent of all I am and do. Is this the thread that connects us all? What lies beneath your surface as your essence?
