You Are the Christ

‘Where’s the Guru?’ I asked impatiently, laying our packs down after hours of fighting the dense mountain path.

He studied me, smiling behind his weathered face as he gently pressed his brown,

calloused finger into my chest. “You asked me to take you to the temple; you never mentioned a Guru.”

I was stunned. Five days of walking only to reach several makeshift huts, a stone stupa, and an army of goats I could’ve found anywhere in the Kathmandu valley.

“You mean, there’s no guru here?” The words spilling out of my mouth in churlish disbelief.

“Well, that depends,” he chuckled.

“Many gurus have passed through here—hundreds, thousands even.

Yet each found themselves knocking on the same door, slave to the same question.”

“Which is?” I asked, irritation curdling.

“The curious realization that the guru’s a projection of what’s already within you.

People have lost their minds seeking their shadow.

You are God, Krishna, Allah, Yahweh, the Buddha, you are the Christ.

Sure, holy men live up there in those mountains, capable of feats you in the West would struggle to call anything but magic, but each of them kneels at the feet of the same Great Unknown. Fights the same inner resistances.”

“Holy or unholy, temple or bus station, the light you’re seeking follows you everywhere you project your attention. You’re young. Don’t waste your years away defining the indefinable. Enjoy living, and don’t wish for more or less than you’re granted.”