This evening we would tell you a short story about a young man who was seeking and had been seeking for many years to find out what the truth was about himself and about the Creator. Who was he? Where did he fit into the plan, into the scheme that kept the planets and galaxies in place?
This he sought, and at this time he was on a ship which was temporarily harbored off a rocky coast. A terrible storm came up and the young man threw himself into the sea, for it appeared that his ship was breaking up around him. Portions of wood lay all about him in the white and frothy water, and although the water was not deep, as the young man clambered toward the rocky shore, yet it was perhaps the most physically difficult thing he had ever done to climb out of the stormy waters and onto the rocks of land. As he gazed at the land, he found that there was something mysteriously entrancing and magical about it. There were few trees, but there were dark rocky hills which seemed to climb ever upward and which ended in a magnificent castle. Somehow the young man knew that within that castle was the answer to the questions that he had been seeking. The young man studied the mountain very carefully. It seemed almost impossible to achieve the climb and indeed it took him three days and two nights. He was able to find good water but was not knowing enough of plants to find food, and when he finally clambered to the top of what was almost a sheer cliff, he was starving and exhausted.
Now he was faced with more water, water over which a bridge could be put down but there was no bridge; he was not expected. He called out and called out again and no one heard him. And so he plunged into the moat, swam to the other side and again carved his way up the steep bank until he stood at the gate of the castle itself. The front door opened easily. There was no one to welcome him. There were, however, many, many closed doors. Each had a different lock, and so he began to try the doors, knowing somehow that behind one of them lay the answers to the questions that he had been asking for so many years.
He could not get any doors open, not with a battering ram which he made of his shoulder, not with his amateur lock-picking, but he found that a simple knocking at the door would open each one. And so he began knocking upon the doors. The doors opened, one after the other. Some rooms held great gold and silver, some rooms were veritable treasure houses of precious stones, and many rooms held one person or a small group who turned and looked into the eyes of the young man who sought entrance.
The young man attempted to speak with these beings. He had for years worked on the most clever and intellectually precise set of questions that he could formulate about the nature of his being and the nature of his Creator. Each entity or group of entities in each room gazed in love and said nothing in return. The young man mounted the stairs, trying doors, finding no thing that answered his questions, becoming more and more agitated.
Finally, in what appeared to be a kind of dungeon, he came across a double door of beaten copper. He requested entrance from it, and the doors swung outward to greet him. He began to explain to this room which was empty exactly what it was he wished to know. He was interrupted by a voice belonging to someone he could not see.
“Have you been in each room of this dwelling place of the spirit?”
“Yes I have; this is the last,” he said desperately.
“Do you still wish to seek the answers to the questions that you have, regardless of the cost?”
The young man looked about him. He did not see implements of torture, he could not imagine the implied threat of what it might mean, but he was quite sincere in his seeking. “Yes,” he said, “I wish these answers more than anything in this life which I live.”
“Very well, then,” came the unseen presence, speaking to him in [a] voice of gold.
Suddenly the room was filled with the same storm-tossed water which he had left at sea. He was caught up in the maelstrom. Somehow, he did not have trouble breathing, but he was moving very quickly and in directions of which he was not at all sure. Darkness had descended upon the face of the ocean and there was no moon, so it came to him after several minutes had passed that he was out at sea being tossed to and fro in the stormy ocean. A sense of despair came over him. He could not see land and he said to no one in particular, as far as he knew, “I surrender. I give my life. I welcome the deep. If there are no answers, that is well. I surrender.”
Suddenly, the storm ceased to rage about him, and he was basked in a peculiarly effulgent golden glow. It seemed to take the place of a boat, for he was now dry and he could now rest. So he lay back his head and began to try to come to grips with what had happened to him. He could not. After what seemed to be an infinity of time thinking to himself, he spoke to the light about him.
“Who are you or what power do you represent?” he asked the light. Into his mind came a concept: “I am love,” it said.
“Who is ‘I’?” asked the young man. Suddenly, the young man was again in the stormy waters.
“Love, come back,” he called. And again he was safe.
The young man was dumbfounded. He did not know what to ask; he could not formulate any questions any longer. And so he simply spoke to the light that was around him.
“I have sought long to know the truth about myself and about the Creator. I do not understand what has happened to me, what the meaning was of my shipwreck and of this craft of light that keeps me from the storm.” He was back in the water immediately, the storm raging about him.
“Love, come back,” he called, and again he was in the craft, safe and dry.
Love then spoke to him, briefly. “My child,” spoke the glowing light, “I am love. You are love and all is love. This is the truth about who you are, this is the truth about who the Creator is, and this is the truth about your connection with the Creator. If you wish the storm, so you may learn of the Creator; if you wish peace, so better you may learn of the Creator. But love speaks only to love and tempest to tempest.”
Each of you may make that choice at any time—the tempest or the peace. Both are equally full of love; one is intellectually distorted, the other distorted by the biases of compassion and unity. If you accept tempest into your mind or your heart, then you shall learn by the tempest, and it shall be a good learning, though hectic. If you accept the calm within the storm, then love shall speak to you plain and clear. We urge you, my friends, to seek the calm within through the quiet of meditation and contemplation. What inspires you may not inspire another, what aids you in meditation may not aid another. Each is unique, and it does not matter how you attain those few moments each day of quiet. What matters is that you intend to rest in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator.
All of you move across the face of the deep. All of you are ocean voyagers, and a long, long way from home. We bid you a fair voyage and a craft built with love. And when you are in the midst of tempest, we bid you rejoice that you learn from the storm.
Gosh, can it really be that simple?
Possibly so.
