Realizing your true nature

Although you recognize the value of improving or making friends with yourself, you may be spurred to meditation by a desire to penetrate the veils that separate you from the true source of all meaning, peace, and love. Nothing less will satisfy you! Perhaps you’re obsessed with one of the great spiritual questions, like “Who am I?” “What is God?” or “What is the meaning of life?” In Zen, they say that such an intense yearning for truth is like a red-hot iron ball lodged in the pit of your stomach — you can’t digest it, and you can’t spit it out; you can only transform it through the power of your meditation. Your quest may be motivated by personal suffering, but you’re unwilling to stop at self-improvement or self-acceptance and feel impelled to reach the summit of the mountain — what the great masters call enlightenment or satori. When you realize who you essentially are, the separate self drops away and reveals your identity with being itself. This realization, in turn, can have wide-reaching ramifications — including, ironically, a happier and more harmonious life and complete self-love and self-acceptance.