All good things must come to an end. So the old proverb tells us, and we appreciate its wisdom. What it doesn’t tell is us that all the bad, sublime, and ugly things must also come to an end.

All that we perceive, all that is experienced – thoughts, strong emotions, bodily sensations, or anything else that can be named – must come to an end. In other words, all ‘things’ come to an end. But that which is not a thing, that which knows all things, in fact, that from which all things arise, does not come to an end with them.

If you know the coming and going of all things, yet don’t come and go with them – for example, a thought comes and goes, yet you who are aware of the thought remains – who are you? What are you?

You can’t be a temporary body-mind made up of fleeting thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions, as these all come and go. If you look closely at your experience, there is something about you that is aware of the coming and going of all things, yet doesn’t come and go with them.

Become aware of the ‘you’ that exists prior to, during, and after a thought, feeling, sensation, or perception has come and gone. This knowing presence is unchanged by anything that comes and goes in its field of awareness, and its essence is that of peace, happiness, and love.

Understand that this knowing presence, the awareness with which you know any ‘thing’, is all that can be found when we look for the background of our experience. Then recognize its limitless, ageless nature – for no edge or boundary, beginning or end, can be found – and realize that there can be only one.

Therefore, we must conclude, and rightly so, that you, I, we, are each a unique manifestation of this one infinite and eternal source.

One source for all appearances, all things.

Not two.