What I Found at the End of the Healing Journey —The Discovery of “As It Is” and Meeting the True Self

Have you ever felt the desire to become better?

For a long time, I was on a healing journey.

I wanted to be better. To grow. To be healed. To feel at ease.

To be happy.

Believing in that,

I tried to heal myself through many different approaches.

It was an exciting and fulfilling journey.

And yet, at the same time, there was always a quiet feeling:

Something is still missing.

My true self must be somewhere else. I should be able to connect more deeply with the whole.

(Without even knowing what that “whole” really meant.)

So I kept searching.

And gradually, I began to notice something.

Perhaps this journey has no end.

I was trying to become someone.

But who was that, really?

The Moment of Realization

One day, during meditation, something shifted.

It felt as if the foundation I had been standing on quietly gave way.

And something very simple became clear.

“This is already enough.”

In that moment, everything softened.

It felt as if what had been holding everything up fell away—as if the bottom dropped out, and everything simply released.

The effort of “becoming something” dissolved.

All along, I had been trying to add something—

to eliminate something,

to change something.

But nothing needed to be added.

Nothing needed to be eliminated.

The very assumption that there is a self to fix, a better self to become—

That was what had been holding everything together.

There was nowhere to go. Nothing to become.

What I had been searching for had always been here.

Just as it is.

And that was enough.

In fact, it was the only thing that had ever been.

From that point on, I simply sat.

And kept sitting.

The Paradox

And here is the paradox.

Even though I realized that nothing needed to change, by not trying to change anything, a deep healing began to unfold.

Simply being “as it is” naturally started to loosen everything.

When I stopped trying to do something, what needed to shift began to move on its own.

This became a lived experience.

This is how sonomama meditation began.

Are you trying to become something right now?

Or are you already here?

Trees teach us we are already here. Words and Photo by K E I K O