Guide me
on writing and walking #4
I tried to be someone that I’m not. I tried to be something — someone for other people. So I don’t know what I am. Who am I? Who am I if I stop trying to be someone? What if I stop trying to be someone I thought I had to be for my loved ones? What if I stop trying to be the successful son, the successor? What if I stop trying to be a CEO? If I stop trying to fill roles I project onto others? If I stop trying to be all these things, I only know one thing: that the only thing that remained is my search for truth. That’s the only thing that stayed always.
And I long for it.
This longing.
But it was covered up by my stories of trying to be someone I am not.
So I forgot.
A voice message I recorded for myself. Words or sentences like these just come out of the blue — which I value as insights. Walking into this dark…
No one — absolutely no one, no thing, no doctrine, no philosophy, no substance, no person, no community — “Nothing is going to save me.”
Nothing.
No one.
No place.
Nothing.
Then I sit here and open a page of Rumi’s quotes:
“God’s cooling mercy is stronger than the scorching heat of His wrath. God’s wrath is mighty, but when you tremble before Him, He is appeased. The countenance of Power is turned toward the hard-hearted; when you are humble, He shows you His mercy and goodness. Whoever is reduced to nothing cries wordlessly: ‘Guide me.’”
Guide me.
Only one step — that’s how far I can see.
Suddenly I remember.
There are chemicals in my body.
There is electricity in my body.
What happens in between?
What actually happens from neuron to neuron?
What happens in between?
What happens in the bardo?
What happens at the chinvat?
Is this what is meant when it is said:
“When you realize the nature of mind,
There is nothing to stand on and nothing to lean on.
Yet you continue to walk.” — Milarepa
?
The work this inquiry comes out of — practice, personal research, psychoanalysis and community — lives at www.turiyosho.net. The next retreat — Coming Back to Love — opens this September 2026 in the Peruvian Andes, co-led with Lesley Myburgh and Kannon.
— Turiyosho