I have two favorite places that I visit often. Sometimes, several times a day. I can go to these places anytime I like.
My first favorite place is the ocean. I like to sit on the sand in the dusk and listen to the waves and smell the salt air. I can hear the cries of the sea gulls and watch the sandpipers leave their tracks in the sand.
My other favorite place is a conservatory at a monastery. It has a stone floor, lush plants and trees growing to the skylight above, and a koi pond with a soft, rushing waterfall.
Both of these places are real. Both of these are places I've actually visited. I know the sounds and smells and feelings that these places give to me.
But how am I so fortunate to go to these places whenever I like?
It's easy. I take them with me wherever I go. They live in my heart and in my mind.
If you sit in the room you're in right now, and you close your eyes, the room around you then only exists in your imagination. You can't see it.
The computer and the desk in front of you, the carpet on the floor, the wallpaper on the wall ... all are real only in your mind when you have your eyes shut.
You are just visualizing them and believing that they are there.
You are choosing to keep yourself in that place in your thoughts.
But since these things now exist only in your mind, can you not just as easily imagine that you are at the seaside or in a beautiful monastery garden? When your eyes are closed, the whole world is what you imagine it to be.
And if you truly believe you are there, you can even begin to smell the salt air and hear the sounds of the water and the monastery bells.
The weather is always perfect, there are never any crowds, and you never have to pack a bag or buy a ticket.
So now, instead of wishing you were at the beach or beside a koi pond, you can simply be there.
It's easy if you try.
