The shifting sands of space-time
"Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction." - Rumi
While we often hear the question "Who am I?" in spiritual circles. Also, although not as often, "What am I?"

Great questions to be sure but there is another question that is rarely asked that is equally penetrating. Where am I?
We all know the relative answer to that question.
I'm at home.
I'm at work.
I'm in the bookstore (ah well, one can hope.)
The actual location changes but the same word is used. HERE! So where exactly is here?

Someone would ask,
"Hey G, where are you these days, you still in Europe?"
"No, I'm here, in the U.S." I would answer.
Now I could answer that question with, "I'm sitting on my couch in the living room." That is actually correct and even more precise than my first answer but it would be completely off and not actually answer my friend's question.
So where is here? Is there an absolute here? And, if some well-meaning spiritual person tells you to be in the "here and now," where exactly is that?
The only reasonable answer is, wherever you are. And you can define it however you like. In other words, YOU ARE HERE. Not like on the sign at a shopping mall, but you are the HERE-NESS.
At the age of 9 a young Lakota boy was taken over by what appeared to be a psychotic episode. Here in our "sophisticated" culture, he would have been put on some debilitating drug for the rest of his life. But these people knew exactly what to do. They sent for the shaman.

The shaman showed up and knew exactly what was going on, simply because the same thing had happened to him at about the same age. He took the boy and gently guided him through the entire experience. When he emerged from this state he announced, as all the shamans before him had that he had had a vision. He saw many things, including the future annihilation of his people.
He said he was taken to the top of the mountain at the center of the universe. As he put it, "The center of the universe is Harney Peak. But the center of the universe is everywhere." A true mystic vision of the unity of the dual and non-dual. The boy became known as Black Elk and, in 2016 Harney Peak was renamed Black Elk Peak.
The center of the universe is everywhere.
The center of the universe is here.
The center of the universe is you.
If the universe is indeed infinite, then every point within it is the center of it. And there is no point that is not within it.
When, in our minds, we divide up the indivisible space, we can imagine the center of all things is somewhere else. We even speak that way. We speak of the universe as something other than ourselves. The universe bestowed a gift. The universe is abundant, it is limitless potential, it is everywhere. But then on a subtle level there is this feeling, "Everywhere but here."
You are the universe. it could be no other way. The infinite would not be infinite if, somehow, it was everywhere except here. Right where you happen to be. Right where here is. The only here that matters. The only here there is.
The HERE doesn't merely refer to a point in space, for all points in space are here and all points are the center. It refers to your eternal relationship with the inexhaustible whole. You can only have a relationship with something other than you. You are the here.
Where is here?
Everywhere
You are here
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