“Once upon a time, which is to say now, and always now, a circle of seekers gathered at the feet of a Great Master, high upon a sacred mountaintop where the air grew thin, and the veil between worlds grew thinner still.”
One wide-eyed seeker stepped forward and asked, “Master, why does everything in this life shift like shadows at sunset? Nothing remains. Nothing holds. What can one trust in a sand-filled world stirred by the wind?”
The Master closed his eyes and spoke, not with voice alone, but with something older than sound:
“You live in a world of movement where forms shift, empires rise and fall like the tides, flowers bloom only to wither, and stars are born to collapse into silence. You see weather change, governments change, relationships blossom and end, and even your thoughts—here now, gone a moment later.
But beneath the drama, beneath the whirlwind of the changing… there is That which does not move.
There is a Silence that listens to the noise, a Stillness that watches the storm.
Picture Broadway for a moment: the curtains lift, the lights dazzle, and every night unveils a new performance.
“New faces, shifting roles—laughter rises, tears fall. Scenes fade, settings transform. Melodies drift into new keys, stories unfold and rewrite themselves. Yet through it all, one truth endures: the silent stage beneath it all, ever constant, ever still.”
Now consider the movie theater. Scenes flicker. Faces cry, kiss, die, and rise again. Battles rage. Lovers dance. But the screen remains untouched. Untorn. Unburned by the fire on it. The screen does not become the story, though it holds them all.”
The seekers remained silent, absorbing the metaphor as the thirsty earth soaks up the rain.
And the Master continued:
“You are like that screen. Like that stage. Your essence—your true being—is not the movie or the actor, not the thought or the emotion, not the body that grows and withers. These are but appearances upon you. You are the Witness. The Canvas. The light in which all shadows dance.
Truth is like this, too. Opinions swirl like leaves in a storm—this is right, that is wrong, this is truth, that is false. But truth, the real truth, is not up for debate. It does not bend to preference. If it changes, it was never truth—only a belief wearing truth’s mask.
Look again at yourself. The body changes—from infant to elder. The mind changes—one day excited, another day disturbed. Feelings rise and fall like waves on the sea. However, there is something that never changes: the one who sees it all—the silent, knowing presence.
But—ah, here’s the rub—this presence, this eternal witness, sometimes forgets itself. It begins to believe it is the body. The mind. The mood. It gets lost in the stories projected on its own screen. It mistakes the waves for the ocean.
And yet… it never truly forgets. How can the changeless truly change?
It only dreams that it is lost.
Your task, dear friend, is not to fix the world of change. Nor to escape it. Your task is to remember who watches the change. To rest in the unchanging. To awaken as the Eternal Self—the background upon which all life plays its scenes.
This is not a belief. It is not a philosophy. It is an awakening.
And when you awaken—truly awaken—you will laugh at the absurdity of it all, like one returning home from a long, strange dream. For the treasure you searched for in every scene, costume, and line of the play was never in the drama. It was the stage itself: silent, unmoving, holding it all. And all along, it was you.
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