Every spiritual quality that we need, we already have. To find all the spiritual qualities, we need only search for them sincerely, in the right place.
To source gold, we dig in a gold mine; for croissants, we come to a bakery; for legal advice, we turn to a lawyer. The source and home of all spiritual qualities, is our own spiritual heart.
Imagine your spiritual heart is a vast palace. Peace, love, joy, beauty, power, wisdom, sweetness, subtlety – each has its own room, its own domain on one of the many floors and wings of your vast heart-palace.
Not far from your heart-palace, your mind-hotel accepts all manner of rowdy and disruptive guests, happily welcoming ignorance, arrogance, intolerance, fear, greed, aggression and suspicion. When these guests are blowing and banging their bugles and drums at all hours, the occupants of your heart-palace retreat into their rooms, close their doors, and wait in patient silence. You no longer feel their presence and may imagine they have fled. Actually, they never flee, but sometimes lay low for their own protection.
As the owner and manager of both your mind-hotel and heart-palace, your first task is to evict all unwanted guests from the mind-hotel – which you can and you must. Once the noise and disturbance has died down, you may not immediately see or feel peace, light, love and joy, as they are still locked in their rooms.
Establish and maintain strict policies at your mind-hotel: keep the place clean and orderly, and accept only respectable, well-mannered guests. Now return to your heart-palace. Knocking on each door in turn, you find the occupants awaiting your arrival: love ready to embrace you, peace waiting to feed you, light willing to illumine you, and joy eager to play with you.