The Path of the Inner Light

I'm not typing this from a cafe today but from home--my bedroom, to be specific. My bedroom is also my home office where I spend the greater part of the day working. Being alone and working seems to be my usual default state, which I equate to happiness.

We all find our happiness in our own unique way. I try to make my work enjoyable. There's always something you can learn from each human interaction and as long as we do not expect anything in return from everything that we do, the appropriate reward will always come our way.

I remember all those long hours working in my small rented room in Singapore, more than 20 years ago. I didn't even have a proper desk then. I had a make-shift one which I fashioned from a piece of flat wooden shelf from my cupboard, which I had removed and placed on top of a cardboard box. And voila, I had a desk. And later I even had a phone line with ADSL connection powering my desktop. I did so much work in that small HDB room overlooking the main road and the food court opposite.

I used to think to myself: I could not be happier than I was then. I spent a lot of time drinking wine, reading and surfing the Net; I travelled every other week, to Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines. I loved all the waiting time I had to spend at airports and on flights because it was my opportunity to read. I met good people and made great friends in every country.

I don't travel anymore and the pandemic had made me even more of a home creature. I guess I've moved on to another phase in my life. The wanderlust of my youth no longer grip me; I'm more of an inner explorer now--of the mind and of the heart. There's a certain ecstasy in being able to make conceptual breakthroughs in understanding, in being able to overcome the limiting selfishness of the heart.

Work is just a path for human interaction which enables us to cultivate epiphanies that reveal themselves at the appointed time. Life is a process of unfoldment. While the passions of our youth drive us to seek love, riches and recognition, the real diamond is being forged within. All the pain and pressure one experiences in one's dealings with the world gives birth to this jewel within.

If we do not know how to seek inward to discover this hidden illumination, we're missing the whole purpose of existence. The quest of life does not end with the accumulation of material wealth in the external world; the fruit of our exertions have been growing all this while within the depths of our soul. Each moment of painful resolution reveals an inner illumination that shines forth brighter with each passing day.

We claw our way out of the social morass, seeking some kind of worldly immortality through fame and fortune. We reach out to the distant star that lures us to its promise, blinding us to the inner sun that had been growing in radiance through those years and decades of struggle. 

It only takes a moment of quiet insight for us to glimpse this inner light. And then we realise that all our external struggles were not in vain. They had cleared away, slowly, all the dross and dirt that had concealed this brilliance. 

And only then do we realise that this is what we have sought all this while. That the tortuous path that we had pursued had only led us back to our true self, here and now. And in that realisation, we find peace, and dare I say, happiness.