1978but it is february 18th, 2008.
so...
where have i traveled in this time? where have i been? and where have i arrived?
almost 10 years ago i did a road trip across america, crossing from the east coast to the west coast and back again in an enormous circle with two girlfriends. to keep expenses down we drove other people's cars, delivering vehicles to their owners who had moved interstate. each place we dropped off a car, we picked up a new one.
for one month we drove, and the road was almost always straight. sure, there were turns we took, there was some weaving, some wavering as well. but the experience was one of driving always onwards, and the pervasive image in my mind of that trip is of a straight and endless open road, wide beneath our wheels and narrowing out somewhere far in the distance, at a point which we never reached.
perhaps the seed of an insight was planted then and is only ripening now, a decade later. the insight that while life seems to be a linear journey, that in fact it is a circular one.
that just as i left new york city and drove in a straight line only to arrive back in new york city one month later, so it is with all our journeys, internal and external, large and small. even the wildest road trip of all - life itself - is a journey like this, seemingly progressing through age and time, but in reality moving always from dust to dust.
for a couple of days now, T.S. Elliot's words have been purring in my chest:
we shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time
and so it is.
every journey, and every experience within that journey, is not a departure from where you were or an arrival to somewhere new, but rather it is an awakening to something you always were; and at its best, it is a becoming of something more that you could be.
we leave home and become a stranger until on some distant shore we feel at home again; we leave love and survive loneliness and fear only to recreate love anew; we travel far and go deep only to arrive back at a place we never left... our own selves.
in the past four months, i have been in nepal, thailand, vietnam and america. i have lived in a monastery, a hostel, a bungalow, a luxury resort and a white picket fence house in suburbia. i have walked, climbed, rafted, peddled, jumped, danced and sat very still. i have studied yoga, studied tantra and studied buddhism. i have renounced sex, drugs and other distractions, and then un-renounced them all again in one day. i have spent precious time with close friends, and precious time with strangers, and precious time alone. i have experienced new levels of happiness and contentment, and i have fallen from grace and into instability. i have made many plans, and some of them i have forgotten, while others may change my life yet.
i have traveled far in the world, but much further in myself. and while i set out wanting every day to get further away from where i started, i see now that my final destination was inside me all along.
and so as i walk through these final days before i return home, i feel unbelievably blessed to understand that i have ultimately arrived exactly where i started...
and know the place for the first time.
because here, at the beginning, there is a new possibility to merge who I have been with who I could be. to infuse the creative and the practical, with the truth-seeking and the spiritual.
and to for the first time truly acquaint myself with, well, my self.
and at the center of all my development is a new awareness of my relationship with my mind.
through teachings, meditation, reflection and some field testing, I understand now that my life will be what my thoughts make it. i don’t mean I understand it with my intelligence. i mean my whole being has understood it, and a new destiny for me now feels possible.
i can see now how my thoughts, which i habitually worship and then dismiss, are actually the vehicle to every place I do, and don’t, want to be. and that understanding where they come from - the mind - is the key to everything mystical and everything practical, at the same time.
and so, knowing my mind is the greatest influence I can have over my destiny. and it is also the closest I can come in this life to the divine.
this is what traveling has taught me. this is what love has taught me. this is what the buddhists have taught me. this is what my divorce has taught me. this is what retuning to australia has taught me. this is what starting a company has taught me. this is what fear and joy have taught me. this is what yoga has taught me. this is what the sea has taught me. and airports. and the himalaya. and hedonists. and shamans. and taoists. and the ordained. and the completely lost. and the seekers. and the drifters. and the nihilists. and the believers.
and my reflection in the mirror.
because some days i feel beautiful, and others like a wilted flower, like something to put away. some days i am brimming with promise and plans, and others i feel destined for an average, pedestrian existence. some days i meditate peacefully and fruitfully, while others i wrestle with shadows and emerge exhausted, having lost.
everything, all of it, comes only from my mind.
meaning as i emerge from these travels, i no longer blame my skin, or my body, or my meditation pillow, or the DJ, or Thai airways, or my health, or my parents, or my failed marriage, or anything that exists outside of my own thoughts, for what I make of my life.
i would like, without judgment, to take responsibility for all of it.
but please, do not misunderstand me. i am not (by a long shot) suggesting that i am no longer susceptible to external forces. i absolutely am, and pathetically so. like a leaf in the wind, i will allow myself to be pushed around by all manner of things.
but what i am suggesting is that maybe i have found a way of binding that leaf more tightly to its stem, and so maybe now, although that leaf still flutters and tears, it is no longer so easily blown away.
maybe.
and also, maybe not yet.
but it is a great journey i have traveled to understand that this strength can come. and that i need nothing and no one else to create this change in myself. that the two things that i want most in this life – to find peace inside myself, and to live in a meaningful way – rely not at all on external forces, but rather in entirety on how my own mind works.
T.S. Eliot continues…
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
"not known, because not looked for… but heard, half-heard… in the stillness between two waves and the sea."
so much for me has been half-heard. but I am looking now. and what I see, is beautiful.
