Everything is Within

In India there is a day where we celebrate our teachers. We thank our teacher for showing us that our ultimate Teacher is inside our own hearts. Poonja-ji, who has left his form, is still with us in our hearts. He is always in mine. If it weren’t for him I don’t know where I would be. I had searched and searched and gone from place to place and from book to book. Poonja-ji was the one who showed me that everything was inside of me and that there was no place to look outside of me. I will always be grateful to him for showing me that!

Poonja-ji always made it a point to make sure that everybody understood that he was a human being. He always wanted people to think of him that way. Many times it was difficult to think of him that way because he was so beautiful and awesome in so many ways that we could easily think of him as an image of what God may be. But immediately he would remind us that God and our own selves are one and the same.

There were many occasions where people could not believe that it was possible for him to be doing what he was doing without having any ulterior motives. We’re not used to things like that. We’re not used to having someone teach that way without having some ulterior motives for power or money. But he didn’t have any. So I have total respect for him and am totally in love with him.

Even when he was leaving his form he told those around him to look within themselves, that that is where everything is.

Why is it so difficult to accept that

everything we’ve always wanted,

everything we’ve always yearned for,

everything that is essential,

everything that is true

is always within us?

Why do we find that so difficult? We look to other places. We look at other things and at other beings mistakenly thinking that somehow or another they will tell us something that we don’t know.

We don’t give credit

to the Teacher in our own hearts

that speaks to us all the time.

We don’t listen to That. It’s a lot easier to listen to somebody else. We don’t listen to what we already have in our hearts. That’s why enlightenment seems so difficultwe’re trying to get from ‘out there’ something that is inherently already within us.

Often it appears that we are not getting any where because we make this thing so complicated. We make it so difficult. We tell ourselves the first great lie, “I’m not worthy of these things.” And then we amplify that with, “I’ll never figure it out; I’ve got to do this and that; I’m missing this or missing that; I’ve got to go here and I haven’t been there.” Instead, if we could just be still for one second to have a conversation in our quietness with our own mind and heart to say to ourselves, “Everything is all right. There is nothing to find.”

Ramana Maharshi told Poonja-ji that Krishna (God) was in his own heart and that he should stop looking outside. That advice did it for Poonja-ji. But it seems we need to hear this over and over and over again because we refuse to entertain the possibility that God and we are not separate. We refuse to accept that we could possibly be one and the same with this word that we use for the Mystery.

It also takes courage and arrogance sometimes to make a statement like this because we have to set aside our physical imperfections to say that we are one and the same with God. If we concentrate on our physical imperfections which we all know so well, we can never think we are one and the same with God. We think that, if we were one and the same with God, we would not be involved with all the puny things that we involve ourselves with every day. But God also has a tremendous amount of fun with puny things! It would be very boring if all we were involved with were high-powered important things every day!