Everything You Need is Already Inside You

Everything you need is always inside of you. All it requires is the time and willingness to journey within to uncover it. Patanjali’s Sutras speak to this in a simple story: a young boy hears a knock at the door. When he opens it, he sees a stranger standing there, who asks him to fetch his mother. When she arrives, she doesn’t see a stranger; instead, she sees the boy’s long-lost father. The boy cries, “Papa!” But Patanjali reminds us—this man was never a stranger. Just as we are never strangers to ourselves.

We create the illusion of separation, of “not having,” or of things being “impossible,” when the truth has always been with us, and will always remain. This truth is self-love. We are the ones who construct self-hatred, who give in to comparisons, who convince ourselves we are lost. In reality, we are simply choosing to close our eyes, to turn away, to search in hidden places for what has been with us all along. If we would just sit, breathe, and look ahead, we would see that we’ve been here, facing ourselves all along.

But why do we create these illusions? Who gains from us believing we can no longer “find” or “see” ourselves? Who benefits when we are led away from our own truth?

As I write this, I am bleeding, my body releasing what it no longer needs. My uterus sheds, my body feels tired, and my head finds relief from the dull ache that hung on last night. Now, finally, I can ease into what I love: basking in light, lying back with a pillow behind my head, feeling the gentle weight of a soft comforter, the subtle warmth of my computer screen, and the vibrational hum of sound around me.

An apple rests in my front teeth, half-eaten, with its core exposed. I thought I’d left this apple behind. I told everyone in the car how sad I was to have lost it, how I’d wanted it so much I even dreamed of it. But this morning, when I reminded myself that I always have access to good fruit and nourishing food, there it was—the apple I thought was gone.