Pilgrimage

[Guest guest]

We are a strange land, we must leave in order to find again.

A pilgrimage is a journey to a region that is our own uncharted

unearthing. This realm must be created as it is

explored. It is a path without tracks, and therefore can be

crossed with no concern for paths. The pilgrim must lay

down in himself in order to be the way of himself. It is a

territory where discovery is the only measure of distance,

and translation the only rule of direction. A journey that

retraces an in-folding map in order to find the beginning at

the arrival.

Every pilgrim must go down to the river and pray, for he

must be shown the way, by a guidance he prays into being.

Without this fasting from words and thought, he cannot

learn the language of the river, that contours the expression

of this transpiring world. He must become this stream that

forms his own mandala. A river that flows swiftly, but bears

its source, as a stillness beneath it, like a fish that drinks its

own water, yet never moves of itself, but holds the river

flowing within.

This strange way of traveling calls for a letting go of all

conceptions of the idea of destination, for the journey

becomes meaningless if the pilgrim looks for a goal to set.

Being both the fish and the water, he must learn the art of

swimming without reckoning what it is to be saturated or

evaporated. This way he can move beyond land, sea and

sky, to be the wellspring of the river itself.

It is not enough for the heart to be still without the

comprehension of what this stillness speaks of. This

watching must also be known in adoration. That this vigil be

the prayer of the universe of the watcher. Until the prayer is

all that there is to be known. Nothing but this prayer, that is

a rivering in the heart of stillness.

And so the pilgrim becomes the journey, and finds that he is

the adoration of himself alone. That the devotion that

stirred him to travel was the guide of his divinity that called

him to speak of himself. A self that returns to this world no

longer a stranger to its appearance.

You are appointed to Loves fulfillment.

Remember your sacred part

and you alone complete the holy circle.

Surrender now, to this ineffable grandeur.

If you have another plan, forget it!

Love

eric

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All works and compositions found on the page submitted by

ErcAshfrd (AT) aol (DOT) com Are the Copyright of E. J. Ashford.

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