Once upon a time I was a little boy. My father was away. My Mother was at home with me and my little brother, who was just some months old. My Mother acted strange, she collected things, created kind of an altar with some lotto coupons and stuff. She was preparing to go to God, that’s what she said when I asked her.

She took my brother in her arms and said to me that I should put my clothes on. We went out, it was a dark and it was drizzling. My mother started walking and I walked along with her. She walked and walked, and I walked beside her. She was carrying my brother.

We walked for a long time along the road. Many cars passed us by. I was getting tired, I asked my Mother where we were going to. She said we were going to God. I followed her, that was the only thing I could do, I had to follow her.

The town was dark, the street lights glistened on the wet tar and on the cars passing by. We walked ever onwards towards God. I was tired, but I just needed to follow my Mother who carried my baby-brother. We were walking to God.

After a long long while we came to the center of the city, streets to the left and right, cars and people everywhere, and my Mother walking ever onwards to God. I followed her, I had no choice.

Finally we came to a big dark door, she opened it and went in. I followed. A hall with straight backed benches, pews with lots of dark people. My Mother had brought me to God. And then she was taken away, and we, my brother and I, were taken away, too.

My Mother landed in a mental hospital and my brother and I in a children’s home kept by the Salvation Army. Our Father fetched us the following day.

My Father also wanted to go to God. He had his visions of how it was done, how he would reach the Promised Land of his dreams, that unknown out there. The following is one of his many poems describing his dream, his God out there. It was published the year I was born along with many others of the same kind, a fertile ground for me to be born into.

I am steering towards the open sea
to stand in the core of peace
and sailing towards a faraway country.
The sea is becalmed here
and it’s turning green.
The last spar-buoys
have vanished from sight
a long time ago
and the small ships have taken
another course as usual.

How am I allowed to leave like this,
how can the propellers of my ship
thus beat the eternal water,
never to return.
How can I thus leave the country
where all others remain,
and were nothing remains?

These are just questions
that are thrown in vain,
in vain are answers sought.
I do not answer them,
no-one else answers them
in the country of petty answers
filled with eternal craving
and eternal din of trivial deeds,
there within the short and restless sleep
no-one ever answers them.

I am standing in the core of peace
and sailing towards a faraway country
on the other side of thought,
where there are no questions
not a thing that is unclear
or dark, but where everything
is good and clear,
everything so bright and true.

I am sailing past all land,
feeling deep compassion
for the shipwrecked faces
hardened in questions,
sailing towards God
past the final stretch of open sea
into the great bosom
to the other side of all dreams.

It is no wonder that I have also yearned to come to God, to reach to the faraway God of my dear parents. I chose them, I chose their dreams as theirs were the dreams nearest to the dreams that I myself also carried. They were the manifestation of my dreams, together they were the best possible representation of the dreams of my own soul, my dream to reach back to my God, the home out of which I once started my journey.

Oh, how I have yearned, how I have sought to come to God as well! I have used a whole life for that purpose, and only reached momentary glimpses of that great goal. I am still yearning to come to God, still yearning to become whole and come back home to where I once started my journey.

I have yearned and yearned, just like my parents did. I have sought God in all the corners of my world, from all the corners of my mind. All in vain! God does not seem to be mine to yearn, God keeps eluding my quest!

What if God is not to be yearned? What if God is not somewhere out there? What if God is not AWAY from us? What if God is right within us, the very thing that is yearning to be realized? What if God is what I am? What if God is the truth of what I am, the truth what is?

Obviously if I am God, the very source of life and creation, there would be no point in yearning to become that which I am, yearning to become something else than that which I already am. What if my parents, chosen by me, set me up on a wild goose chase of God, of something that cannot be chased as it is the very chaser itself? What if there is nothing to be yearned for, only the Yearned for itself, or God, to be acknowledged? What if I have always been the God I have learned to yearn for? What if I have always been that which I am, the God of my world, the Creator of my own reality? What if I am in spite of all my yearnings? What if there is nothing whatsoever lacking from what I am? What if I am what I am and my my yearnings are just playthings of God that I am? What if all is God, all is Good, just as it has always been? What if…

I am standing in the core of peace
…
on the other side of thought,
where there are no questions
not a thing that is unclear
or dark, but where everything
is good and clear,
everything so bright and true.