Wherever I Go, I Bring Everything I am with Me

Wherever I go, I bring everything I am with me. Wherever I am, I seek for all that I am to be fully present. If I am not alive to the life around me, I am missing life’s very purpose: engagement, encounter, and connection. And through these, gaining appreciation and joy in living.

The philosopher Martin Buber reported an extraordinary series of sleeping dreams that changed his life, by slowly awakening him to the life around him. He had the same dream over and over for months. Only the final dream in the series differed, and in a most revelatory way. The initial dream unfolded like this: Buber found himself in the darkness, somewhere outside. Feeling completely alone and despairing about his life, he let out a long, loud moan, akin to a “primal scream.” After a few seconds, he heard another person moaning back to him, from the distant darkness. The other’s moaning sufficiently differed from Buber’s to preclude hearing it as a mere echo of his own crying out.

In the second dream, Buber again found himself in the darkness. Once again he cried out, only this time he immediately began listening, to see if the mysterious other would return moan for moan. The other did, just as before.

Every time Buber had the dream, he would do the same thing which led to the same result: engagement, encounter, and connection with the other in the darkness.

In the final dream everything unfolded as before, except that after his moaning, the other did not return cry for cry. There was only silence, growing more intense by the minute. Buber leaned forward and sought to hear the other with his whole being. But the silence continued unabated, unredeemed, and possibly unshared.

Finally, as Buber strained to hear the other, he began to hear the faintest of sounds around him. The first discernible sound was that of birds chirping at the dawning of light. Light did gradually dawn, and as Buber stood there motionless, listening with his whole being for the other, the world in all its otherness revealed itself to him. And he heard and he saw, and he felt and he knew the world at last in all its glory.

And he learned that eternity is connection to others, that eternity is hidden in the heart of today. To enter eternity, you need merely desire it, express your heart, then listen and wait. By and by the truth will make itself known to you, connect to you, and commune with you.

In a world so scattered, so scattering, I strive to remain fully connected, fully present. My religion is my daily life. To worship means to open to today in all its non-repeatable glory, to connect person to person, to hear, to see, to share, and to care.

In his book, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran said about true religion: “Your daily life is your temple and your religion. / Whenever you enter it, take with you your all. / Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute, / The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight. / For in reverie you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.”

By being fully connected to the eternity hidden in today, you are already connected to the eternity to be revealed in tomorrow.