Instructions Before Visiting Earth

Before you go, there are a few things you should know.

First, you will forget.

This is important.

You will forget where you came from.
You will forget what you are.
You will forget why you chose to go.

Do not panic.

Forgetting is part of the experience.

You are going somewhere extraordinarily beautiful,
but beauty there comes with gravity.

Things will feel real.

Very real.

You will have a body.

Take care of it.

Move it.
Feed it well.
Let it touch the Earth.
Let it swim in oceans.
Let it sweat, dance, make love, climb mountains, breathe deeply and occasionally do things that make absolutely no sense.

Your body is not an obstacle to awakening.

It is one of the doors.

You will also receive something called a mind.

Useful instrument.

Terrible master.

It will spend considerable amounts of time explaining why you should be somewhere other than where you are.

Listen to it.

But don’t believe everything it says.

You will meet other beings who have forgotten too.

Some will remember something when they see you.

You will remember something when you see them.

This is called love.

Follow it.

Not only romantic love.

Love between friends.
Love between strangers.
Love for trees, animals, ideas, places, sunsets and projects that refuse to leave you alone.

Love will be one of your greatest clues.

It will also break your heart.

Let it.

A broken heart is not necessarily a broken thing.

Sometimes it is simply a heart becoming large enough for more life.

You will experience fear.

Fear is convincing.

It will tell you to stay small, stay safe, stay where everybody understands you.

Thank it for trying to protect you.

Then keep walking.

At some point, you may wonder what all of this is for.

Why come here at all?

Perhaps you came to experience.
To learn.
To grow.
To love.
And to transmute.

To take what life gives you and turn it into something more conscious.

Fear into courage.
Pain into wisdom.
Loss into depth.
Anger into clarity.
Wounds into compassion.
Desire into creation.

You are not here to become perfect.

You are here to become more awake through the experience of being human.

And perhaps that is why you had to forget in the first place.

There will be roads everyone takes.

And there will be small paths disappearing into forests.

Take some of those.

Get lost occasionally.

Earth rewards curiosity.

You will be given opportunities to collect things.

Money.
Titles.
Followers.
Properties.
Objects.
Companies.
Opinions.
Proof that you were important.

Enjoy the game if you wish.

Build beautiful things.
Create abundance.
Taste comfort.
Surround yourself with beauty.

There is nothing wrong with having things.

Just remember that you never really own them.

You borrow them.

For a few years, a house may carry your name.
A piece of land may appear on a document as yours.
Money may sit in an account attached to your identity.

But all of it was here before you,
or made from things that were,

and eventually all of it will continue without you.

You are less an owner than a custodian.

A temporary guardian between those who came before you
and those who will come after.

Treat what passes through your hands accordingly.

Leave the land healthier.
The house more beautiful.
The business more meaningful.
The community stronger.
The people around you more capable of carrying it forward.

And be careful with the ownership button.

If you push it too much,
what you own will eventually begin to own you.

Every possession carries a little gravity.

It asks to be protected, maintained, insured, defended, stored, managed and worried about.

Enough things accumulated in the name of freedom
can quietly become a very sophisticated prison.

Travel light when you can.

Because everything you acquire adds a little weight to the journey.

And strangely, what truly travels with you is harder to measure.

How deeply you loved.
How courageously you lived.
How much beauty you created.
How generously you shared what passed through your hands.
How many people felt more alive because you were there.

None of these will ever appear on a balance sheet.

They may be the only things you truly get to keep.

You will make mistakes.

Many.

This is expected.

Please do not spend half your visit punishing yourself for the first half.

Learn.

Apologize.

Repair what you can.

Then continue.

You will meet teachers.

Some will arrive as teachers.

Others will arrive disguised as lovers, enemies, children, business partners, illness, failure, delays and people who are unbelievably good at pressing exactly the wrong button.

Pay attention.

Especially to the last category.

You will occasionally become very certain that you understand everything.

This usually means another lesson is approaching.

Stay curious.

There are things on Earth that cannot be understood from the mind alone.

Music is one.

Silence is another.

Breath is another.

So is standing beneath a sky full of stars and suddenly remembering, for no logical reason, that you belong here.

When this happens, don’t analyze it too quickly.

Breathe.

There are messages hidden in presence.

You will be encouraged to become someone.

Spend some time becoming no one too.

Sit quietly.

Walk without a destination.

Watch the ocean.

Listen.

Underneath all the identities you accumulate, something ancient is still there.

You may catch glimpses of it.

Do not try too hard to hold them.

Remembering comes and goes.

That is part of the dance.

Create.

This is important.

Create businesses.
Create art.
Create communities.
Create experiences.
Create strange ideas that nobody understands yet.

Earth is a participatory planet.

You are not coming only to observe.

Leave something beautiful behind.

But do not confuse your mission with your worth.

You were worthy before you accomplished anything.

Rest sometimes.

Seriously.

Humans have a strange habit of turning existence into a productivity competition.

Do not fall completely for this.

There will always be another email.

There will not always be another sunset with the people you love.

Choose accordingly.

Play.

Laugh at yourself.

Dance badly.

Swim naked when appropriate.

Eat extraordinary food.

Travel.

Fall in love with places.

Ask questions that make dinner conversations uncomfortable.

Stay close to people who make your soul feel spacious.

And every once in a while,

stop.

Put your hand on your chest.

Take one slow breath.

Look around.

You made it.

You are on Earth.

Against impossible odds,
for a ridiculously short amount of time,
you have been given a human life.

Do not wait until the end to realize how extraordinary this is.

And when your visit is eventually over,

you will leave the body behind.

The things you thought were yours will belong to someone else.

The noise will become quiet.

And perhaps, in that moment,

you will remember.

There was nowhere else you were supposed to get to.

No final version of yourself you were supposed to become.

No cosmic exam you were supposed to pass.

You came here to experience it.

To love.

To create.

To learn.

To lose.

To find.

To forget.

To remember.

To become fully human
and discover something infinite hiding inside it.

One last instruction.

While you are there,

try not to spend too much time wondering what the meaning of life is.

You might miss it happening.