Think about this : your feet carry you where you want to go. They cope with hills and stairs and valleys, with rock and beach sand and grass. They are close to the solid earth. They don’t have the agility of your hands; they won’t manage to tie their own shoe laces. That is not their purpose.

As for discerning the path to follow through the undergrowth, or observing the changing colour of the sky portending rain, you need a finer instrument for that: your eyes. Life attuned itself to light in all its brilliance and delicacy, and created something much more perceptive than your feet. The horizon of the eye is so much vaster than the domain of the foot.

But if you want to know the infinite, horizonless One, the perfection of love, harmony and beauty, don’t expect your feet or your hands or your eyes to be up the the task. Go to the finest, most sensitive part of your being : your heart. Don’t waste time trying to formulate the Divine with your confused thoughts, or endeavouring to extrapolate God from your unreliable senses. Go to the heart.

But don’t suppose that just being born on earth qualifies you for this quest. To find the infinite in your heart, first let go of all the finite stored up there: a lifetime of labelling all that arrives there as ‘me’ and ‘mine.’ Surrender; let go of everything. Then you will know what God meant in this Alapa : Give all you have, and take all that is given to you.