There You Are

Wherever you go, there you are. -Anonymous

My friend Gil left his lucrative practice as an electrician in southern California to move to a remote jungle section of Maui where he rents a tiny ramshackle cabin for a hundred dollars a month and collects unemployment. Gil did some electrical work for me because he needed the income to pay his phone bill. "But I thought you lived out in the jungle?" I questioned him.

"I do, but I have this massive addiction to talking to people on my computer."

"You have a computer in your shack?"

"I ran a line through the bush and got a state-of-the-art computer. But then I got into trouble. I was totally compulsive about communicating with people all around the world, and I ran my phone bill up to $900. I told the phone company to cut me off-it was unmanageable. This was no mild addiction; I was mainlining-they might as well have just wired the phone line into me intravenously. I could escape L.A., but I couldn't escape myself."

Geographical cures rarely work. You can extricate yourself from a place, but you cannot escape your own thoughts. Move somewhere to get away from an uncomfortable situation, and you will likely recreate the drama with a new set of actors playing the same roles. Heal your mind, and you are free anywhere.

Dr. Michael Ryce teaches a seminar called Why Is This Happening to Me Again? "You leave New York to get away from a painful relationship," Dr. Ryce illustrates, "and the person who picks you up at the airport in Los Angeles completes the sentence the person in New York began."

Our first and foremost responsibility is to face ourselves and heal our minds and hearts. Then we may go anywhere and live in peace.

I pray to be unafraid to look within and find the light I am.

I create my world with my consciousness. I choose to live in peace.