Somewhere deep inside us, in there along with the blood and muscles and nerves- is a cave-like closet.

Thoughts are stored in there, as well as a body-less voice spoken by no one which spews mean unwelcome chatter all day long. Peace is in there too, along with Answers.

Lower down there’s a second closet or an extension of the higher one, where feelings are stashed. Apparently they’re trapped and need help getting out.

It’s all very rich and dark and potent. Kind of like a tropical jungle, but indoors.

You know what else is in there? The past. Stealthily running lives, determining what happens everywhere, lying in wait from childhood on to spring forth its demons at all kinds of inconvenient times forever and ever into the future.

Yup. One hell of a closet.

Everyone knows this and agrees it’s important to turn inward, go deep, do inner work.

We just have to be an intrepid adventurer to go on in there, and we’ll find that closet.  

No boat or map or GPS needed. Just ask and answer some questions, visualize, say “Om” a lot, or pray.

Ready? Let’s go.

When we do find the closet, inside we’ll find “the Real Me.” It lives in there, chilling in the dark, listening to the voice, watching the movies, waiting to be found and validated and seen.

Meanwhile, something that is NOT the Real Me knows about this inner place, makes the trip inside, hears the voice.

That traveller-to-the-inside is also called ‘Me’.

Wait, there are two of them? Which is the Real and which isn’t?

Oh well, never mind. Onward.

Somehow the inner one creates the outer world, outside the closet.

Yet it’s the outside one that has the power to look for, uncover, unlock, examine, shift, transform and/or free the Real Thing that’s stored inside there.  

Ok. So um….

What?

This is a whole bunch of fantastical magic we've been accepting without question all these years, isn’t it?

This concept of “going inward” makes zero sense.

Not that there’s anything wrong with believing fairy stories. But clever Mind-Tickler readers have perhaps already noticed all the preoccupation, time, money, inquiry, therapy, satsang and meditation that has been devoted to looking for something…

that isn’t located where we’re looking.

And yes perhaps we do get to feel like we’re doing something useful, and that we have control over something. And yes the sense of Me is strong when we pretend it has an inside- one we can access whenever we want, or when we do things just right.

Still, if the whole point of going inward is to discover the real, to discover the truth, to shift or enlighten…

We’re not going to find what we claim to want.

Because fantasy, however engaging, is still fantasy. Fantasy will never be Real. Fiction is fiction.

So… want enlightenment? It’s not inside.

Want inner peace? Not in there either.

The real me?  Nope.

Because there is no inside.

There’s no there there.

That inside job is not inside, not a job, and just plain isn’t.

Whew. Suddenly so much free time.

And who knows? When we’re not looking in the wrong direction, we might be more able to notice an already-present vastness, an inconceivable spaciousness…

which could never be contained or trapped by some small, conceived... inside.

Whoa.

Isn’t that what we were looking for all along?

Oh look.

Here it is.