In every gathering, in any chance meeting on the street, there is a shine, an elegance rising-up.

Today I recognized that that jewel-like beauty is the presence, our loving confusion, the glow in which watery clay gets brighter than fire,

the one we call Friend.  I begged. "Is there a way into you, a ladder?"

                 "Your head is the ladder.  Bring it down under your feet."

The mind, this globe of awareness, is a starry universe that when you push off from it with your foot, a thousand new roads come clear, as you yourself do at dawn, sailing through the light.

                                                                                                                -Rumi

selected parts of the THE MUNDAKA UPANISHADS

9. Children, when they have long lived in ignorance, consider themselves happy. Because those who depend on their good works are, owing to their passions, improvident, they fall and become miserable when their life (in the world which they had gained by their good works) is finished.

10. Considering sacrifice and good works as the best, these fools know no higher good, and having enjoyed (their reward) on the height of heaven, gained by good works, they enter again this world or a lower one.

11. But those who practise penance and faith in the forest, tranquil, wise, and living on alms, depart free from passion through the sun to where that immortal Person dwells whose nature is imperishable.

12. Let a Brâhmana, after he has examined all these worlds which are gained by works, acquire freedom from all desires. Nothing that is eternal (not made) can be gained by what is not eternal (made). Let him, in order to understand this, take fuel in his hand and approach a Guru who is learned and dwells entirely in Brahman.

10. Whatever state a man, whose nature is purified imagines, and whatever desires he desires (for himself or for others), that state he conquers and those desires he obtains. Therefore let every man who desires happiness worship the man who knows the Self.

SECOND KHANDA.

1. He (the knower of the Self) knows that highest home of Brahman 2, in which all is contained and shines brightly. The wise who, without desiring happiness, worship that Person 3, transcend this seed, (they are not born again.)

2. He who forms desires in his mind, is born again through his desires here and there. But to him whose desires are fulfilled and who is conscious of the true Self (within himself) all desires vanish, even here on earth.

3. That Self 4 cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by understanding, nor by much learning. He whom the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained. The Self chooses him (his body) as his own.

4. Nor is that Self to be gained by one who is destitute of strength, or without earnestness, or without right meditation. But if a wise man strives after it by those means (by strength, earnestness, and right meditation), then his Self enters the home of Brahman.

5. When they have reached him (the Self), the sages become satisfied through knowledge, they are conscious of their Self, their passions have passed away, and they are tranquil. The wise, having reached Him who is omnipresent everywhere, devoted to the Self, enter into him wholly.

You are asking the wrong questions.

8. As the flowing rivers disappear in the sea 5, losing their name and their form, thus a wise man, freed from name and form, goes to the divine Person, who is greater than the great 6.

9. He who knows that highest Brahman, becomes even Brahman. In his race no one is born ignorant of Brahman. He overcomes grief, he overcomes evil; free from the fetters of the heart, he becomes immortal.

You must loose yourself to gain what you want, and in the end, you'll discover that you want nothing.