To have encountered so much contrariness and being of so sensitive a disposition explains to me why I feel I’d better be perfect in all I do, say, and think. I enter each new day determined to straighten out the crookedness I feel exists in me—surely each new effort will put my life to rights.

In doing this, I fail.

I have seen wonderful things pour out of me, but gentle and kind thoughts given no credibility, seem to not carry the weight of the disapproving ones. This is amazing, is it not? I go to myself bringing everyone I’ve ever met to judge me with the judgments I, myself, have given them to have of me. I do not even argue with the perspective they are convinced I share; I cannot displease. I bring a bossy crowd with me to the table of my daily bread. I can’t seem to find my own true self at that table. What kind of daring do I need? It is daring, as I perceive it, to side with myself.

I mislaid my connection to my inner knowing by paying attention to external directives. Even only pretending to be paying attention to the world, leaves its mark―I now no longer trust myself. How can I side with a self who has become empty? How can I listen to what no longer has authority for me? Hasn’t what is told to me by others become the authority; the voice needing to be obeyed? Isn’t “God” a fixture made of rules? In this world, “spirit” is bound in words. Just the act of hearing words causes doubt, making the mind a teeming place and the inner quietness not felt. So subtle is the separation this causes that I have not stood guard against it. Creeds and dogmas pull me outward and entice me into dance steps not original to my Self. But the reality is: my true self has no equivalent out there.

Loud external discussions never let up. Where has peace and quiet gone? What is reality? I no longer am what I simply am: a deep wordless thing needing no explanation of self. I must become seen and made comprehensible to someone other than myself. How can I be at rest in this rather adversarial experience of life? Something vast is missing. And that something vast is a Closeness that cannot be found outside my innerness. Oh, I need to find my daring. A rapturously beautiful world lives inside me. I know, because my Creativity shows it to me. It is born by my Imagination, that subtleness that is real as nothing in this world is real. The world that lives in me is true. I don’t have to hide it from myself or feel that other people have a right and the power to reduce it to their understanding and therefore shut me up that I not contradict them.

As I write this, I begin to see that the daring I need is to love in another way. To love in this world, is not about agreeing with this world and making others comfortable by my acquiescence. To love is to value myself even as I do not fit in and never will. I have sold my Soul to live agreeably in a dreaming world. But Souls don’t wither and die. Souls speak their presence in their own way and require a different kind of “paying attention.” Thank God for my discomfort, it keeps reminding me that nothing held forth out there is my Soul.

A luminous River flows through my heart. It contains my life’s nourishment. On its banks I sit and listen to the Piper from the Hills Above. He comes to fill my cloudiest days with Light. In his music I hear the echoes of all the promises I forgot I made to myself before I fell asleep to my Soul.

I’ve been lonely in a mind that is not made from contentment. Enticing threads of many colors have unraveled me from myself. They are absorbing and intriguing in their brightness. In their company I find myself no longer mistress of my own wanting. I’ve gone far away from myself to engage in an outer reality that holds me in its thrall.

Why do I do this? I ask myself this question all day long and find no answer that satisfies. It is so odd to not be at peace with myself and I am not the only one in this dilemma. All about me everyone is being something other than what they really are. They’ve become what is … expected … or suffer for not doing so. We are all fitting into a separatedness that has us in its grips and our solution is to be unhappy about it all. Why do we do this?

There is another reason to be alive, the Piper’s music tells me; there is a joyful order of expression for me to stand within. In the Great Silence I am, I contain the Stars of the Infinite Magnitude of Heaven. They appear to be outside myself now only because I follow enticing threads of color not made by me. And I don’t need to be doing that.

I know I am not alone in being of this magnitude of Goodness or thinking it lost to me. That is why I am telling you about the Piper from the Hills Above.

A jealous wind woke me this morning, carrying its bundle of sorrow. It comes from a world believing in unhappiness but, I, do not come from such a world. The wind is jealous of my higher knowing. It frequently glides over my dreams and stirs my heart to darkness, but I never stay there long.

There are Stars that dance like ribbons of light as they curl through the air that fills my room. I watch and I wonder at the Wonder. It is such beauty, this dance of Light filling an empty space with Joy. This Joy is the currency of Life. My life. All life. But a world in doubt cannot feel it. I must stand apart from this doubting and call forth what IS in the face of the sorrowful.

Each Star, it tells me, is more than a self-contained oneness. Each star is worlds within worlds and the whole of it never knows beginning or ending. It is what is from now and before and for always. For always, my friend. There has been no cessation, no interruption of this Joy. Even as the Sea moves its tides with no concern for what came before, nor for what will follow, each of its waves is unique, each an eternal moment.

It is good this, to relax into warm arms that hold one safe and calm one’s brow with soft tender kisses. The child I dream I am never grows old, never turns brittle and gnarled and feeling the loss of the suppleness of being. I, too, am a dancing Star making swirls of happiness in a world asleep and dreaming sorrow. Because I love, I will bring Joy to it by claiming this Joy that is what I really am. I will know what there is to Know.

Unexpectedly kind thoughts coming from me become the morning dew upon the life around me. I am endewed in a sparkling world. This is the outer picture of my hidden self.

I need not say another audible word for the Silence clusters around me forming the Presence unknown in a world depending on the audible. I need no longer be preoccupied with the heavy empty boxes littering the supermarket shelves. Simple drops of purity fill me to overflowing and my heart shows its own sacred Light.

This Light is taking me to tiny stairs leading inward. I hadn‘t noticed them before but, somehow, I know they were always there. I no longer hear the jumbled sounds of troubled people although I was one myself just a moment ago. How powerful is this world of tiny droplets to my perception of things.

I hear a whisper from a part of me that I locked away to keep it safe. Listen, it is saying. Listen to inner rhythms that bring understanding. Listen well. Make nothing important save the soundless that ignites and inspires each action with harmony and beauty. You receive the gift of life flowing from within. You are the Infinite Light. You are the Being worth valuing in the world. You are the power of each moment and the offering of yourself to yourself reveals treasures never known before. Believe this humble truth.

You live from within out. Give no thought for externals. You possess pocketfuls of guidance and wondrous joy and faith in magic. You bring laughter to shower the sky with colors newly born each minute. You are loved, dear one, loved and adored, and waited upon by your Source.

Trust yourself.

I am a star, said the quiet child, the one pensive and solitaire who grows himself
a garden underneath the stair. It was no surprise that the clouds brought him water and the birds seeds from foreign lands. It was no surprise. A big surprise was the tears that kept falling despite the smile on his lips. Tiny crystals flowing down his little round cheeks. One quietly following the other. Every day. Every night.

He was a dear child, full of dreaminess and quiet contemplation. His friends were the flowers and the mice of the field and the butterflies and the other creatures that made a home in his wee garden. He had a wheelbarrow and a watering can. He filled the patches of dryness with sweet earth and watered with the clean fresh rain the clouds brought him. There wasn’t ever a day when he didn’t come to his garden and its creatures delighted at the sight of him. He was a soldier of Spirit. A quiet soul that marched to the sound of a hidden rhythm.

He was a child of the Universe. He knew he was a child of the Universe. He listened to the hum of harmony that was within himself. He listened to nothing else. He heard it in others although they didn’t hear it in themselves. He was ever vigilant and ever present to the sounds his heart would make, silently passing by the clatter of the day the world would make.

He was quiet in this way. And he was strong. He held to great kindness and when he put up a little fence around his garden it was with love and out of patient understanding. His neighbors were unaware of the strength of their chatter and the size of their feet. He found it best to keep to himself and his own out of reach. It had taken him a while to learn this – but when he did, it was with thanksgiving and peace of mind. His heart remained open and his mind willing as he firmly kept his garden gate closed. No one seemed to mind. No one seemed to recognize that the little scrap of land underneath the stair was a garden. And certainly it was too small to care about. Nothing so small and so hidden could mean anything. So they walked by. And so they never knew.