I feel like I have a secret. I really do. Like any big secret, I’m practically exploding with desire to share it. And I’ve discovered that the silliest and also the most challenging thing about this secret is it doesn’t matter that I have it, because I can’t tell it to anyone. I can only be the secret.
The only way the secret is shared, the only way anyone will ever come to actually know the secret, is if I keep it to myself. Any good secret that someone keeps inside will cause them to burst eventually, and this is not only a good secret, it is the best secret of all. It is for that very reason that I must keep it under wraps — if I go on sharing it and telling it to everyone, the secret loses its potency, and I lose the pressure building effect of holding it in. So it is very important that I maintain my integrity while at the same time being totally greedy and selfish with my secret.
The funniest thing of all is that we are all the possessor of this secret. We ‘know’ the secret — it is very much ours, and only ours. We end up looking out into the world to see if anyone else knows what we know, and when what we see fails to match up with our own secret, we start to question its validity. But that is the secret!
If we already know it, why do we need to verify it?
That is why it is so important to keep to ourselves — when we share it, we are wondering if anyone can give us the approval we need that ironically can only come from ourselves. It is this great circular trap — our approval of the validity to the secret can only come from our own realization of it. It’s like being the only one to know the punchline to a joke — we think the joke is very, very funny, a hilarious joke with the best possible punchline. Yet if we find that when we tell the joke, no one else gets it, and no one else is laughing at the punchline. Suddenly we lose our faith that the joke is as funny as we once thought it was.
This is totally bizarre — because initially, we thought it was the funniest joke ever to exist. We thought we were so clever to know it! And we could repeat the joke internally and never fail to laugh to ourselves. We can go on like this for as long as we hold the joke inside, laughing to it whenever we feel the need to entertain ourselves, with zero need for any outside entertainment.
We have an infinite amount of joy at our fingertips. We are laughing at our own punchline and we can laugh with other people laughing at their own punchline, but if we try to explain our laughter we suddenly lose the joke and remove people from their own. They are wondering why we are telling such a ‘bad’ joke when their own joke is so much ‘better’. They can always laugh at their own anytime they like — why should they listen to one that might be different than theirs? Why should we even try to offer our joke to other people when they are already laughing at one that seems to be perfectly amusing to them?
The secret is a great irony and alarming paradox all wrapped into one. It’s like holding the keys to the gates of heaven, but the keys are attached to you and you have to be there yourself to unlock the gates and let other people in. You can go down to the Earth and share all these great stories about heaven all you’d like, and even show people the keys yourself, but this does nothing. People remain on Earth, and you are on Earth with them trying to push them behind up to an impossible height. Once you leave Earth and go to Heaven you actually use the keys that you were just showing off before, and now you can open the invisible door that wasn’t seen before to the Earth-dwellers and welcome anyone and everyone who chooses to come up. But you must be in Heaven to open the gates with your keys and welcome them.
You cannot bring Heaven to Earth, and you cannot bring Earth to Heaven. You can only be in Heaven yourself and by consequence, Earth will rise up to meet you there. You can only live your secret, and by living it you give others permission that it’s okay to live theirs as well.
It’s okay to do what you feel is right. In fact, it is the only thing that is truly okay. We always know in our hearts what is right. That is the great secret. But no one can tell us what is right for us. That is why it is such a great secret. It cannot be shared, it can only be lived. And by living it, we are unlocking the gates and being an invitation for others to join. Living it IS sharing it.
We all have beacon of light within us, just calling each other home.