Are the answers you’re seeking already within you?

What if what you’ve been chasing all these years has been in you all along, waiting for the chance to be loved into existence? ~Andrea Balt

I recently heard the Care of the Soul author Thomas Moore being interviewed by Oprah where he revealed he no longer was “seeking.” After a lifetime of intensive spiritual study, including authoring over a dozen books on the soul, Moore said he had discovered all that he needed to know. No more seeking, just finding.

It reminded me of a story that The Alchemist author Paulo Coelho tells that hints at the folly of our endless seeking. I wrote about it early last year, but it’s message is so compelling, it bears repeating here. It goes like this:

One day the sages were discussing the secret of life and where they should hide it so that men and women could not find it. 

 Bury it under a mountain, one sage suggests. No, the others counter, they will find a way to dig up the mountain and uncover it. 

 Put the secret of life in the depths of the deepest ocean, another sage suggests. No, the others say, one day they will find a way to travel to the depths of the ocean and will find it there. 

 Put the secret inside them, suggests another, they will never think to look for it there. All the sages agreed, and so the secret of life was hidden within us.

“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”

The passage above is from the renowned 13^thcentury poet and mystic Rumi and merits your consideration. What if the things you were looking for out in the world, were actually dwelling within yourself? Would that change how you approached life? Would it make you more likely to look within, instead of without, for peace, love and guidance?

If those who lead you say to you, ‘look, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds will get there first. If they say ‘it’s in the ocean,’ then the fish will get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you and outside of you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. And you will know that it is you who are the children of the living father. ~Jesus

Reading the passage above from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, you might wonder how you can “come to know yourself”? A book could be written (and many have) that attempts to answer this question. But in a nutshell, you need to look past the thin outer veneer that is the false self, aka the ego. Then, slow down long enough to connect with the deepest part of your self, the place where the soul lives.

The writer and female empowerment virtuoso Andrea Balt tapped into something we all know in a recent Facebook post. It touches on what many of us want, that feeling of being truly alive to the people and events around us:

Deep down you’re seeking purpose, love, acceptance, intimacy, pleasure, creativity, abundance, bliss – ALIVENESS. You want to feel alive before you die.

We want to feel alive. Connected. Loved. This is a game played from the inside out. When all is right within, when we are calm and centered and at peace with ourselves, we are better able to offer our unique gifts to the world. Balt explains it this way:

This love, this freedom you seek, this creativity you need, the pleasure or adventure you crave, all the things you admire in others are already planted in you, waiting for the chance to be watered & trusted & summoned out into the light & bloom through the life you create.

What if Balt, like Paulo Cohelo and Rumi and Jesus before her, is correct? What if what you seek is already within you, waiting to be uncovered? Balt reminds us:

Nothing is missing. It’s all already yours. The chase is futile, the battle is in vain. By letting go of the specifics & trusting the creative god-dess in yourself guiding you from within, you have already won.