Reflection 673

Welcome!

The treasure is yours on two conditions

[This priceless treasure] is your very own on two conditions. The first is that you don't just read about the experiments … but actually do them with sincerity and an open mind. If you think that you don't need to do them — because you know what the result would be if you did — you couldn't be more wrong. You can no more see into your True Nature by studying words and pictures in books than you can smell a rose by sniffing at the letters R-O-S-E. Alas, long experience has taught me that a large proportion of the people who read books on this treasure will, on one pretext or another, avoid fulfilling the conditions that ensure delivery of that treasure. Don't be among these wasters of time and opportunity!

 

The second condition is that you make a genuine effort to go on seeing what the tests reveal, and so build your discoveries into your life. This isn’t easy or quick. Being Who you really, really are, remaining awake and centred instead of lost in off centre dreams — this is the great challenge of your life. But go for it, and the pearl of great price is yours.

 

In a sense, of course, it is yours anyway, because it is exactly what you are already. To fail to enjoy it is like having a credit balance of a million pounds in the bank, which is no use at all till you start drawing cheques on it. You have to real-ise, through the day and every day, your infinite reSource, comfort, and joy. You don't earn or achieve it. You wake up to.

 

But let's not exaggerate the difficulty of staying awake. To have severe human problems, to be fed up with our unregenerate selves, is to have a strong motive for renewing the vision of Who we really are till the vision comes to us quite naturally and without effort. Given need, curiosity, a little energy, a taste for adventure, and a pinch of humour, you may well be one of those fortunate folk who readily take to this enterprise of enterprises. In which case, congratulations!

Douglas Harding