I want to tell you about a major epiphany I had recently but some background is required in order for it to make sense.

It started innocently enough – I decided to take a yoga class at work. I heard yoga is good for building flexibility, reducing stress, and improving balance and mobility. Those were all things I needed so I said, “Sure, let’s give it a try!”

At the end of the first class, our instructor, April, would bring her hands to her heart center, say “Namaste”, and bow slightly to all of us individually. I didn’t really think much about the deeper meaning behind her words and gestures. But I knew there was something there that I needed to understand.

My therapist had been encouraging me to try meditation for a long time and, for some reason, I just couldn’t get into it. But she was patient with me (she is always patient with me) and continued to water the seed she had planted in me.

The turning point occurred when I was searching for a retreat opportunity. I had been through a lot, dealing first with the loss of my mother-in-law Carol in late 2016 and then my dad Ronn in early 2017. I needed to get away for a couple of days to press the reset button in my life.

When my father-in-law Dick was alive, we went to a Catholic retreat together and I really enjoyed it. The retreat center in Shrewsbury closed since then but they transferred their member list to the Holy Family Retreat Center in West Hartford, CT so I had been receiving their info for several years.

But when I thought about doing a retreat at Holy Family, I admitted to myself had been struggling recently with my Catholic faith and felt I needed to do something different.

I found a link on the Holy Family site to an affiliated entity that was on the same site, The Copperbeech Institute. As I explored their web site, I realized that I had found what I was looking for.

Copperbeech Institute is focused on meditation and mindfulness. It is an outgrowth of the Holy Family Retreat Center – the Institute’s executive director, Brandon Nappi, started it as a result of introducing mindfulness at Holy Family retreats (something he continues to do to this day) when he realized there was a big opportunity for spreading the word about mindfulness and meditation to a non-religious audience.

I decided to attend a weekend retreat at Copperbeech with Rev. Bhante Wimala, a Buddhist monk. The focus of the weekend was building a meditation practice. It was truly a magical experience for me. This time, meditation stuck, and I found myself walking on a new path that I am still walking today.

Over time, I began to explore Buddhism and realized that it spoke deeply to my soul. It didn’t tell me that I needed to drop my Catholicism but rather embraces all religions. In fact, Bhante told us that he knows several people who are both Catholic priests as well as Buddhist monks.

As I explored Buddhism, I purchased the book “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching” written by internationally known Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. This book has literally changed my life. I can’t begin to tell you the impact it has had on me but I will try in future blog posts.

Armed with this background, let’s talk about my recent epiphany.

I was struggling mightily with a Buddhist concept that Thich introduced in his book – that “truth” lies within all of us. He said that we need to quiet our minds through meditation and look within to find not only truth but everything we need – joy, happiness, relief from suffering, love, compassion, empathy, and more.

But here’s where I was stuck: how can I be so self-centered as to think that “the truth” is inside of me? What do I know about life, and truth, and spirituality, and The Universe, and Divinity that makes me so fucking wise?

And then, it hit me. It all comes back to April my yoga instructor’s greeting “Namaste”.

As my therapist explained to me, Namaste means “the Divine in me honors the Divine in you”. It is a greeting of deep respect, reaffirming the worth of every human being. In other words, Divinity lives within all of us – it is not something that we need to try find in Heaven or some other place outside of ourselves because the Divine lives within you and me every day.

It was then that I had my epiphany – the truth is within me and I am so wise not because of me or anything I have done but rather because the Divine lives within every one of us.

When I realized this, I literally burst into tears and I am still choked up as I write this. But it’s as simple as that: the truth can be found inside each one of us because that’s where Divinity lives.

May we all take the time, every day, to look deep within and listen carefully to the truth that Divinity is trying to tell us.

Namaste.