Are the stars too distant? Pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all. -- Margaret Fuller

It can be easy to believe that growth and awakening require hard work in order to attain something. This is the conditioning we have all been subject to since birth, a continuous message about striving for "someday." Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, play fair, study hard, be thrifty and save, lean in, never give up, never say die, and you will be rewarded. Someday.

On the material level, for many of us "someday" never comes. The system is rigged against "someday" for people of color, poor people, most women, and anyone on the margins of mainstream society. But even for the privileged and the lucky, even for those who succeed according to the rules of the system, "someday" remains a mere illusion, the carrot at the end of a long spiritual stick. Why? Because the future does not exist. If you're going to become even just a little bit more enlightened, it's not going to happen in the future, it will happen now.

Now is all there is. Liberation is not over there somewhere, it is here. Freedom is not That, it is always only This.

Thoreau said, "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." Right here, that patch of dirt or concrete you are standing on. That's heaven. It has been my experience that until we can recognize this true fact we will keep chasing after "someday," believing that we can't meet our needs until something at a distance has been attained.

What a trap! And the really interesting thing is that it's a trap with a wide open door, an exit we can walk through any time we want. When we get quiet, slow down, and check in, what we find is that happiness, ease, wisdom, peace, strength, and love (to name just a few) are present. No need to chase anything. No need to wait for "someday" or push hard to achieve a special state of being. What everyone wants, on the most fundamental level, is available. Here. Now. This.

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here. -- Wendell Berry