To find yourself, you must look within.

Turn away from the world.

Look within.

You are formless.

Feel the stillness now.

It is a love that needs nothing.

Within the stillness find you mind, your thoughts:

You are not your mind.

The images in your mind of who you are: they are just images.

The images arise, and disappear, arise, and disappear.

You are not an image.

If an image hangs on, ask yourself "could I let this go?"

Just a question.

You don’t know.

You don’t know anything.

Let the answer come from the stillness, from the love that needs nothing.

Feel the stillness.

Now hold your body within the stillness.

Little tensions, contractions, can you feel them?

Perhaps there is a mental contraction or dullness with them.

Perhaps there are thoughts surrounding them.

Each tension, contraction, dullness is a gift; each holds a secret within; the secret of your true identity.

Hold each precious gift carefully, and ask it "what is your secret?"

"Maybe there is a picture of myself I am holding on to."

"Maybe there is something I am unwilling to be, but I am."

"I don’t know."

"I don’t know anything."

Hold these precious gifts, they will open when they are ready.

Maybe someday, in the stillness, you will ask yourself "Who am I?", "What am I?"

And you will know the answer.

You will accept the answer.

I am the very stillness itself.

The Silence of the Heart.

Joko used to tell a story of prison camp in World War II. Every day, all of the prisoners would have to line up to be beaten one-by-one. A guard would beat each prisoner down until he had to be dragged away.

One day, the guard beat a prisoner down, then looked up at the line for the next prisoner, and there, at the front of the line, was the man he had just beaten. The man had gotten up and gotten right back in the front of the line to be beaten again.

It is said that this so disturbed the guard, that he stopped the beatings for the day.