The Windows on the Mountain

I imagine I am meditating in a small, circular room.

The walls feel close. The air feels tight. I am trying to meditate on spaciousness — on openness — but it feels artificial. I am straining toward something that doesn’t match my experience.

There is a story in the background: perhaps I was confined. Kidnapped. Locked in a trunk. Enclosed somewhere against my will. The body remembers constriction. Even sitting still, I feel contained.

But I do not know where I am.

Then something begins to change.

Around the circular room are windows — many windows — each covered by a shade. I hadn’t noticed them before. One by one, without my effort, the shades begin to fall.

The first window opens: light floods in.

Another shade drops: sky.

Another: horizon.

Another: distance so vast it almost destabilizes me.

Finally, all the shades fall away.

I am not in a box.
I am not trapped.

I am sitting at the very top of a mountain.

Above treeline. Above obstruction. Nearly in open space.

Nothing was added. Nothing was built. The mountain was always there. The vastness was always surrounding me. Only the coverings fell away.

And with that unveiling, there is a sudden expansion — almost like a Big Bang inside awareness itself. The room was never the limit. The walls were never ultimate. The field was always open.

It reminds me of Jacob awakening from his dream and saying he had been standing on holy ground and did not know it. The sacred was not imported. It was recognized.

Each moment is like this.

We think we are confined inside the known — inside thought, identity, memory. We identify with one corner of the triangle: the knower, the known, or the vast field that surrounds and holds them both.

But when the shades fall, the distinction softens.

The field, the knowing, and the known are not separate territories. They are one landscape viewed from different angles.

Nothing changes — yet everything changes.

The mountain was always beneath me.

The sky was always surrounding me.

The openness was always here.

I simply did not know it.