The act of writing has a way of crystallizing and refining my half-baked thoughts and weaving the patterns together of disparate threads. It's one of the zillion reasons I love blogging.
However, it's not time for me to finalize and synthesize yet. So over the next week, I'll let you connect the dots. I'll keep noticing the patterns, but it's not time to wrap it all up yet. I'm still trying to remain in the receptive Illumination stage.
I'm alert and attentive. I'm in observation mode. Many of the insights come in the form of symbol and metaphor. It's a time to be led.
I make sure not to veer off without my journal. I'll jot some observations here on the blog for posterity and to share relevant gleanings, but it's overflowing and thus I'll have to cull much out of it out.
I recently heard Anne Lamott speak on her recent book tour. "I think I'm getting a lot of your ideas," she says directly to the audience. "God says, I think I'll give this one to Anne Lamott because she has a pen." She carries a pen and a few index cards wherever she goes.
In closing, I want to offer you the one passage that has stuck with me and reverberated through me the entire Dwelve process. It speaks of following the path with heart.
For me personally, the insight spontaneously arose during the Incubation phase retreat (or, the Advance) that this means following the path that opens my heart further, and allows me to practice what Buddhists call boddhichitta, or open-heartedness.
And we come full circle back to the journey, or the Camino, metaphor. Here is wisdom for all of us at any stage in our life:
Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.
This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.
Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. The desire to learn is not ambition. It is our lot as men to want to know.
The path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.
For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel--looking, looking, breathlessly. - The Teachings of Don Juan, by Carlos Castenada
thank you. too bad i didn't read this in my 20s.
regardless, we also are guides for other people and their paths. maybe, that is my path...to teach my children to only follow paths with hearts...as i have trod down many heartless paths that i care they not follow.
Posted by: jbr | Apr 15, 2005 at 04:58 PM
jbr, Who says it's too late? You're reading it now. Now is all that matters traveling on the path.
Posted by: Evelyn Rodriguez | Apr 15, 2005 at 07:20 PM