There is a deep peaceful tiredness in your eyes, they’ve seen through a whole life. They tell about fear, abandonment, loss, hate, love, courage, joy, friendship, beauty, loneliness, longing. You know the end is near, but it dawns on you that you actually know nothing. This apparent next step, which appears to be cessation is not what it seems to be. Your imagination drew images of hope, of salvation because the idea that there’s just nothing to be known, nothing you can rely on, nothing next, nothing to be healed and released was too threatening. How could you just have continued life without hope, for a better future, in the face of inevitable death?
And now you are here, and the future is crumbling. There is no more hope of still something better anymore, time seems to be running out. Many of your dreams have come true, but yet there remains a strange longing, an undefined knowing that this subtle emptiness that you tried to fill with purpose and meaning can never be saturated. You have covered it with layers and layers of vivid but fading colors, writing stories with vanishing ink. Everything seems to scatter, like sand running through your fingers. You look back into your memories, the place where you believe that your life did happen, where it was still alive. Where you were alive. And as you grieve for what was apparently yours and had to go, and for what you never accomplished and never became yours, a sublime vibrancy arises and you are overwhelmed by the intense aliveness that dwells in the depth of your grief. And then you realize that this aliveness has been the foundation of every appearance, sensation, experience in your life. A strange feeling of innocence arises, and in this, it seems as if nothing has ever happened. All is fresh, untouched, unharmed, sacrosanct.
Your tears, your laughter, your pain, your joy – they are all being painted in the most beautiful and dazzling colors and expressions on the canvas of what you thought was your life. And now the picture is slowly fading.
Your gaze becomes very tender, looking back at a past that is evaporating, looking forward to a future that will never happen. A deep peace emerges and takes hold of you. All of your life you’ve been trying to perform, to improve, to become the best version of yourself.
And now, as your dreams and future are coming to an end, it dawns on you: this is the place to be, there has never been any other place to be. All the striving, seeking, craving, escaping, approaching, running away, action, reaction, noise and silence – they were all this place to be, there was never any other place.
And while you are being absorbed in this sublime peace and you are wondering if this peace is love, and then you close your eyes and your heartbeat shifts into the silence in the void.
