Inner Gathering: Introduction (Chapter 7)
Welcome to the Welcomer!
If you need a refresher before reading Chapter 7, you can click here to read Chapter 6. If you’re new here, you can click here to start from the beginning. Or you can get started right away on Chapter 7 below!
7
It’s time to tell you about the Welcomer, but I tremble a little here…
How do you give form to something that is formless without turning it into something it is not? How do you speak of spaciousness without distilling it down into something smaller than it really is? How do you help people see the thing in them that can’t be seen because it is the thing doing the seeing?
Let’s try this:
Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Imagine someone hands you a glass mason jar. It’s sealed with one of those two-piece canning lids—a flat circle of metal held in place by a ring of metal. They tell you it holds something unspeakably precious. You look closer. It’s empty, you say. No, they say, it is full of air.
Presenting the Welcomer to you is like handing you a mason jar full of air.
Yes, we could tweak the moisture level of the air in the jar and change its temperature, so some of the air would condense on the inside of it. But then you wouldn’t really be observing the air. You’d be observing moisture. Likewise, the Welcomer cannot be condensed into something tangible, or it ceases to be the Welcomer.
The Welcomer can’t be seen in you, because it is doing the seeing of you.