The Taj Mahal Within

Anyone can build a cheap house. In life, the cheap house is that which you substitute for the depth and grandeur of who you are. It’s the reduction of who you are to an identity, a character, a narrow set of beliefs or actions aimed at the achievement of a narrow set of results.

No matter how many coats of paint you apply, or how many flowers you plant in the front yard, the cheap house will always, in the end, collapse. This is because it is built upon a flimsy foundation, a misconception of who you are. It is a façade that seeks to hide and replace your exquisite design, complex structure, and depth of being.

You are not the cheap house no matter how hard you try to prove to yourself that you are. You are not singular in nature, and cannot reduce yourself to a singular expression, personality, character, or identity forever. One day the grandeur within you that you have worked so hard to hide will make its presence known to you, and you will hear yourself asking, “Isn’t there more to me than this?” And there is.

There is infinitely more to you than this. You are not the cheap house. You are the Taj Mahal — an exquisite wonder of depth, beauty and complexity. And moving in alignment with the wonder that you are yields markedly different results than dedicating yourself to any temporary façade you may have adopted.

Discovering who you are means exploring the many chambers within. It means not dismissing the myriad sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and even resistances as they present themselves to you. It means paying attention to the visions, inspirations, and ideas that float across your day and night, and perhaps following their trails to see where they might lead you. It means noticing what your external world is reflecting back to you and, considering, for a moment, that it might indeed be you that is the source of these reflections.

Embracing oneself in this way may seem daunting at first because it requires a trust and embrace of the mystery that is you. It requires a letting go of the story that has kept you safe, but so completely limited. It requires taking a chance and risking success within the ongoing discovery of who you really are. It requires giving up the lead, yet, paradoxically, learning to listen, trust, and follow yourself.