There is an Inner Garden, and this is where life really takes place. You live on the subtler levels. Right now you do.

I have always agreed. Yes, I would say, the life of the soul is the real thing. Before embodiment, all was well. After embodiment, all will be well. The physical isn't as much as it is made out to be, just a rather odd interlude and not even really real. And so forth.

The expression "Inner Garden" stops me short, suddenly making me realize that I don't know what I'm talking about. Inner Garden. If that is where I am living right now, how come I don't know it, how come I don't feel it, how come I'm not walking there or not aware that I am?

Well, the little subjective truth is that the physical is really all I believe I have. If I knew I'm living in the Inner Garden right now, what on earth could bother me, what would I be worried, angry, sad, annoyed or even hopeful about? Correct: nothing. All my professions of belief in the only true reality of spirit/soul/God were essentially wishful thinking and lip service if not incantations. All the while, deep down, there has been this gnawing suspicion that actually the physical might be all there is. And about the Garden – could this talk that all that's missing is awareness be so much flimflam? Is there such a Garden? What if I'm silly enough to believe there is and then it turns out it's a hoax?

You know there is something that seems to be out of your immediate grasp, yet it is eminently familiar. You know you know it. You just can't quite put your finger on it, and, oh, how you long for it.

I have been telling myself that a longig is proof of the existence of what is longed for, for nothing can be longed for that isn't somehow known and nothing can be known unless it exists. I found that convincing and comforting. It was just a clever idea. In reality, I do not believe a word of it. If I did, what could be the matter?

No, as long as anything is perceived as being the matter – health, money, relationships, self, anything at all – there can't be any substantial belief in God or Garden. And love for Heavenletters may be the last-ditch attempt so save your self-deception from falling apart, after which you would have to admit that what you really believe in is eternal night and lostness.

But there is hope of another kind. All I ever thought and believed and perceived could be wrong. What an elegant solution. But really, hope is only in my being utterly off the mark. And from there, maybe looking and listening into that Inner Garden with other, as yet unused faculties becomes possible, faculties that are absolutely different from the ones I have been using.

That which is unseen by the eye holds the most power. That which is not heard with the ear makes the most profound statement. That which is beyond the senses is the substance of you. It always was. It is right now.

So what I have been longing and looking for has nothing to do with what my eyes see and my ears hear and, hence, nothing with what my mind thinks and emotes. They simply aren't the guides I took them for. Since searching is done by mind and the senses, that means the search is called off now. Entry into the seamless state of wonder happens at death when the power of mind and the senses finds its natural end. And if it happens while alive, it's probably something akin to death; mind and the senses do not contribute to it. Then, oblivion is no more whereas now it reigns.

Maybe it's true that I have allowed myself to be blinded by the physical, even using it as an excuse. I like that resolution better than the conclusions I have reached so far.