The Answer is…Within?

The answer is within.

How many times have I heard it said? And completely ignored it.

Not intentionally, of course. Not insolently. More like the way someone ignores a tedious detail about the functions of a car’s engine—it might technically be true, but it doesn’t really feel relevant to the actual driving. Until it is.

The answer is within.

What does that even mean? Maybe the answer is within others, but I assumed I must have missed out on that specific feature.

For me, the answer has always been without.

Need to figure out something complicated? Ask an expert. Need to make a decision? Take a poll and see what others think. Need to choose between one path and another? Ask around.

The answer must be out there. Somewhere. Someone must know. Someone must have an idea. Someone must be able to help solve the problem.

This strategy is fine if the question deals with car engines, stock market calculations, or other practical, tangible logistics of life. It is an excellent strategy for the external world.

But when dealing with one’s own self? One’s own soul?

The answer is within.

The thing is, I always assumed that meant I just needed to “figure out” the situation enough. To think about it harder. To put my intellect toward solving it. To make an exhaustive list of pros and cons, considering every single available option from every angle. As though there were some place within where all the answers lived and I just needed to find them.

But this strategy? It can leave you exhausted. And usually, completely devoid of actual answers.

The problem is, thinking doesn’t get you there.

That’s the trap those of us who were always the “smart kids” in school never seem to unlearn. You cannot think your way out of a box your thoughts created. As Einstein is famous for noting, the same mind that created the problem can’t be the one to solve it.

So, then, what is left? If outsourcing the answer doesn’t work, and if grinding through the intellect fails, where do we look?

The answer is within.

But what I’ve realized is - within is not a destination. There is no ‘answer place’ inside, just waiting to be discovered if we only look hard enough or long enough or diligently enough.

Within isn’t a destination - within is the direction.

The ‘answer’ is found by turning away from the externals and turning toward the internal. Turning toward that quiet space—the stillness within—which somehow, amazingly, acts as a portal.

The stillness isn’t an end in and of itself. It’s actually not the goal. Instead, it is the gateway. To what?

To all.

To source.

To connection.

The place where creativity is encountered and where life actually resides. It’s what Elizabeth Gilbert calls Big Magic.

I stumbled upon that portal just the other day on the beach while riding Fortuna—a pure, felt sense of her communicating with me. It wasn’t my idea to gallop; it was hers. I became the receiver for her communication.

But it was with Alegria, years earlier, that I first became aware of this way of being together. I was riding her when I suddenly had a strong desire to eat some green grass. Wait, I thought, I’m pretty sure that is not my thought.

A few weeks later, I experienced an even more intense version of it. We were participating in a clinic, standing in the middle of the arena, when I felt a powerful wave of longing to lie down in the warm sand. The next thing I knew, to the distress of the onlookers, Alegria and I were both on the ground, about to take a nice roll. I was shocked—not by where we had ended up, but by the undeniable knowing that had just passed between us. What was that? How had that happened?

This feeling is as though a completely new system is coming online—one based on sensing rather than thinking. A direct channel of knowing.

The answer lies within because within is where this knowing lives.

We don’t need to manufacture ‘answers.’ We just need to become still enough, centered enough, and present enough to encounter them.