The Missing piece.....

Yesterday I found a puzzle piece in the parking lot next to work. It was a charm for a bracelet or hung on a necklace as you can see. It is someone's missing puzzle piece.

I have been finding things on the ground for many years. I almost always ponder the meaning of these appearances in my life. What is the message from the universe? There have been a lot of messages. A lot of stories have been woven around found objects. 

So many things have been found I have made a little wall of junk or WALKER'S JUNK WALL as I have named it. The trod upon, broken, shiny, lost earrings and combs of lives I have picked up and kept. This is the abundance of life as a materialist. I love things...having things...arranging things...gathering them together just to look at them. This junk wall is at the entrance to my garden...also a collection.... of plants from everywhere and pots and rusting "sculpture"...just to look at and be with.

Detail of Walker's Junk Wall

When one lives the life of a materialist one is destined to discover the reality of things. No matter how much material wealth one has there is always the anticipation of the next acquisition. And things seem to come into the vortex of a materialists life. The pattern is fed as all patterns are. Life saying "Here take these things....more and more things! Perhaps you will realize one day that the external can satisfy only fleetingly."

I have lived a life of anticipation...a pre-occupation with what is coming next, until the time I began to look back at the blur of a life. This shock at seeing how much of life had been missed spurred a search for the truth....and not just any truth. Where is the lasting satisfaction? What is the bottom line of reality? Of me and all me's?

Spiritual books flowed my way....many books detailing Theories of Everything, personal awakening experiences, the mystical natural world....stacks of books spurring my own spiritual journey. This is a materialists way...accumulate more in the journey to find NOTHING. No matter...there are 7 billion ways to "get there".

And "get there" finally meant going no where. And NOTHING was found. A NOTHING that holds everything and is HERE always. The very NOTHING from which all material arises. All of the journey to the bottom line of everything took place in the looked for miracle. You can hear or read that what you are looking for is where you are looking from 100 times and still be looking externally (as subtle as external became).

More junk

Mary will always be a materialist, enjoying the sensual. The pattern lives on and is still nourished by the stuff of life. Refinement is happening to the pattern...and the grand puzzle* becomes clearer, but never known. There is only a missing piece to find while there is a someone searching. When it is seen that you are the puzzle, complete and ever evolving, and are also that which in it's empty nothingness holds it all, there is an awakening..... and then you find a broken doll's leg and go back to hang it on the junk wall.

 * After I published this blog post, the video The Missing Piece of the Spiritual Puzzle by Jeff Foster showed up in my Youtube feed. I thought I would add a link to it.