sunlight through leaves

I'm taking a stroll in a wood, in Tuscany. It's a summer's day, a gloriously sunny day, and the sunlight is penetrating the wood, creating a dappled light. And for the moment I've stopped in my tracks. The sunlight is falling on some green leaves. And I am underneath these leaves, so I am seeing the leaves with the sunlight beaming through them. And of course it is beautiful. This semi-translucent nature of the leaves, means that I can see their internal structure. I can see the veins. I can see patches where some tiny creature must have eaten away at the inside of the leaf. It's as if I'm seeing the very heart of the leaf.

And seeing this, seeing the way the sunlight, coming through the leaf, reveals its inner nature, it reminds me, it reminds me of our spiritual work. The spiritual journey is an inquiry, an exploration, of the inner world, of ourself. Instead of focusing on the outside, we shift our attention to the inside. And this sunlight beaming through the leaf, shows that it is possible. It's possible to see the inside, to see the inside of oneself, through meditation, through reflection, and through the longing to live in truth and in peace.

These things are like the sunlight. With these longings and these tools, we can probe inside ourself. We can see what's there, we can see our inner structures, our own veins, and those parts of us that have been eaten away and need healing. All of this is part of the play that we are involved with: this inner inquiry, looking in, looking into oneself. And of course, if we look deeply enough, we begin to see the mysteries of life, revealed in our own being, just as this sunlight is revealing the intricacies and the mysteries within each leaf.

And so this is what the sunlight and the leaves are reminding me of just now: that it is possible, miraculous though it seems, it is possible to discover our own mysteries.