Epilogue: The Weeks and Months After

(Reflections)

What happens after the silence ends?

This epilogue is not a story of triumph. It’s a return. To the noise, to doubt, to snack-time chaos, and to the practice of beginning again.

Writing this wasn’t easy. It was full of doubts and false starts. But the process, like meditation, became its own kind of path. I don’t know where it leads. But I’m still walking.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

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It’s called the fire that really burns. It’s the fire of the marketplace. See, it’s really easy to go off to a cave and get high, and you know, stay so high and beautiful by denying all that. But when you stay right in it. Right in the marketplace and work with it, and look people in the eye. And deal with poverty. And deal with greed, and lust, and anger, and impurities, and politicians, and paranoia, and all that stuff. And say, “yes, yes, yes, I see it all. Alright, I understand it all. I’ve got to play my part in it, and do it purely and with love.” That’s the work! That’s the fiercest work. It’s the fiercest fire we can stand in.

— Ram Dass, Hear and Now Podcast, Episode 13

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The Weeks and Months After

Once I returned home, I was a fully realized being – completely enlightened, free from all worldly attachments, radiating serenity in every moment.

The end.

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