Put both feet flat on the floor. Feel the ground beneath them — solid, real, present. The ground is always here. You do not have to maintain it. It maintains you.
Take one breath. Not a special breath. An ordinary breath received with complete attention. Feel the air entering. Feel the slight rise of the chest. Feel the pause at the top — that brief, perfect stillness between the in and the out. Feel the release of the exhale. Feel the stillness at the bottom before the next breath begins.
In that stillness at the bottom of the exhale — before the next thought, before the next plan, before the next movement into the next moment — notice what is already here. Not what you are thinking. Not what you are feeling. The awareness in which the thinking and the feeling are arising.
That awareness — the one that is present right now, reading these words, feeling the ground beneath your feet, knowing that you are breathing — that awareness is what the sage tradition has been pointing at in every article, every poem, every parable, every satsang exchange in this entire library.
It is not far. It is not hidden. It does not require further preparation or further practice or a better version of you. It is here. It has always been here. It is, in the most literal and direct sense, what you are.
Rest in it for thirty seconds. Not trying to make anything happen. Not trying to have a particular experience. Just resting, as awareness, in the simple fact of being aware.
Take one more breath. Feel your hands. Feel the aliveness in them — the warmth, the subtle pulse of life. Recognize that the same aliveness that moves through your hands moves through everything. That you are not separate from it. That you never were.
This is the beginning. This is the middle. This is the end. This moment — always and only this moment — is the whole of the path. And you are already on it. You have always been on it. Walk with joy.
— Free Your Mind
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