Hi Reader,

It occurred to me this week that in this spiritual work I'm fumbling my way through I'm like a student who's been given the answers to the test—but who is unwilling or unable to accept them.

I'm looking for proof.

I'm familiar with the idea that I don't exist, that my ego isn't the real-real, that my mind is incapable of coming home. I'm familiar with it in the sense that I've heard about it. I've read about a lot of the stuff out there: Buddhism and nonduality and Christian mysticism. But I don't know it yet. So I keep looking for proof.

But here's something I do think I know: this proof I say I'm looking for isn't something that can be found "out there." The only place that exists to look for it is within my own awareness.

So it's not that I need to find proof. It's that I need to create my own proof.

It's hard for me to let go of answers. In my daily life, I prefer problems and puzzles that were created by other people; questions with one right answer. It's why I'm good at taking tests.

But I can see that life isn't a test. It's more like a playground. My ability to create may have atrophied a bit as I've honed my ability to get the right answers.

If life is like a playground, I've gotten really good at separating myself from the other players in this way. I connect with the questions and the puzzles they create, while I'm much less practiced and comfortable connecting with them as people (or as life itself). This is true for you, by the way. I'll take your answers, but I'm afraid of your light. I read it in the shadows cast by the words between us.

For me, you are a reflection of me (just as, for you, I am a reflection of you), so in this way I see I am also afraid of my own light. Thank you for revealing this to me. Perhaps it is exactly the next step of the proof I seek.