The brain, home of man’s magical mind, is always in a whiz, always on the go. It dashes off here or there without warning, maybe to China or back to the swimming pool scene of its favorite movie. It travels fast, light (despite its personal baggage). Time cannot hold it down. The mind jumps backwards and forwards with the same breezy ease. Always darting from one spot to another. It doesn’t know how to be still. An old song floats out of the radio and, oops, off it goes again. I’m at my first dance in the junior high school gym. Here it lingers, but only for an instant. Flighty, floaty, flaky, fluky. The mind darts about everywhere because, formless, it can never actually be anywhere.

The body, an intricately complex doing machine, is all about physical form. Oh, its right here, with all of its aches and pains and extra pounds. It can’t be anywhere else. The body can only be where its feet are planted. To be in China it must first purchase a ticket, stand in long lines, pass security checkpoints, board a plane and fasten a seatbelt.

It is true that the mind-made future, or recreated past, often seems so real that the stomach begins to develop an ulcer. But just take body’s dried out hand, with its bitten fingernails, wave it through the mind’s mirage and poof it’s gone.

Brain and body. Two radically different modes of life walking hand in hand. We scrutinize this, our, odd couple. We focus on their failings. Body never looks quite right. Brain is sometimes wrong! Then we secretly compare ourselves with other couples strolling by and always come up lacking.

But we are more than this imperfect pair. Humans have their own holy trinity: body, brain and being.

Neither brain nor body can exist without being. Being is the prerequisite condition for both. They are like fine tools but without being they can serve no purpose. Being was there before brain could think a thought. Being was there before body could take a walk. Being is always there… beneath. It is what holds them together. It is what we are.

Nobody complains about being. Nobody compares, ‘Your being is so much bigger than mine.’ It is our very essence and yet we are oblivious to it.

Your life purpose, if you are willing to accept it, is to discover your being. Brain must be stilled to find it. Body must be awakened to feel it. Shift your focus from the woes of an unworthy, odd couple to the simple pleasure of being.

Bliss is being aware that you are.