Your vision will become clear only when you look into your own heart.

Who looks outside dreams. Who looks inside awakens. – Carl Jung

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Guiding Thought

We are ready and willing, here and now, to be courageous. We release our minds’ ideas of security, of “right” and of “wrong”. We allow our personality to dissolve and to become One with the Love that Is, everywhere. All false boundaries evaporate like mist in the sun as we devote ourselves to the Oneness of Love.

Reflection

I read the Jung quote before I began this morning, and I thought, “Ah! This is a perfect accompaniment. It asks people to look into their hearts, and it promotes looking within to awaken. Perfect!”

Then I read the Guiding Thought and felt all confused: “Ohhhh yeah. Even the distinction between inner and outer (just like us-them or self-other) is a boundary that can be dissolved in the Oneness of Love”.

So I applied the Guiding Thought to the Jung quote.

Who looks outside dreams. Who looks inside awakens. This is presented as two options. Either a person can look outside or inside, each perspective producing a different effect–dreaming or awakening.

When I read the Guiding Thought, I recognized that my initial reaction to the Jung quote created false boundaries. I found myself totally on board with looking within and awakening, and rejecting looking outside and dreaming. I have long been a fan of the edict “Know Thyself”, so of course! I would choose looking within as opposed to looking without. I also have a strong desire to awaken rather than to dream, so of course! I doubly choose looking within. And besides, “dreaming” implies a bit of “lack of attaining”, doesn’t it? Who want to identify or associate with a quality that is so insubstantial?

What if the distinction between inner and outer is a false, because there are no actual boundaries? What if thinking that “looking within is ‘right'” and “looking without is ‘wrong'” is simply a misunderstanding, and when I release my mind’s ideas of inner-outer/awake-dreaming I’ll simply experience Oneness?

What if there really is only Oneness?

Then, there would be no distinction between “inner” or “outer”. I could look anywhere and find myself; I would awaken to myself everywhere.

If that is the case, then what really distinguishes between awaking and dreaming? Nothing. It too, would be the same–a different experience of the same phenomenon.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your own heart. Yes. But “your own heart” is also everyone’s heart (MYOUR)–the further we can get from thinking in terms of mine-yours-ours, the closer we get to the experience of Oneness.

This is why we must be ready and willing, here and now, to be courageous. Courage is a quality of the heart, but the heart knows no limits; it takes courage to release the ideas that “I am I” and “that is not I” and embrace the fullness of what unites us–the Oneness of Love.