One of the best songs I ever found to describe the path I chose and that was chosen for me if I chose to accept it is ‘Days Are Numbers’ by Alan Parsons Project. I heard this song on the radio when I was a lot younger and it sank in. I understand now that it was supposed to mean something to me later.
On the outside I’m not horribly adventurous unless you count some of the strange food I’ve tried at new restaurants when I’m out and about with one of my friends. I plan out my vacations, at least as far as the hotels and motels go, and I like to have a good general idea of what may be going on in an area I’ll be visiting. There’s some room for spontaneity but only so much; it isn’t in my nature.
The world changes when you look within me then look out again through my eyes, however. Even a familiar landscape doesn’t look the same anymore. It’s a landscape I love but one that scares a lot of people because it is so unfamiliar. That is as it should be; only a few are meant to walk this pathway and it can be unnerving and mindboggling. I’ve known some who started down this particular road only to veer off and take the main path favored by the many because they couldn’t take it, and that’s just fine. I will not judge anybody for being on that larger and more traveled path if that is where you need to be so long as you don’t judge me as I travel mine. Travel in peace.
This path involves mentally and spiritually leaving that familiar landscape and stepping out into a world that you’ve never seen before. It’s like seeing an ancient forest for the first time and slowly coming to notice the faint traces of a footpath in and amongst the rocks, moss and ferns. The more you follow it the more colors you notice and the more your fear disappears until you forget what it ever meant to be afraid. The further you go and the more you see – mountains, white beaches, caves behind waterfalls, streams, lakes, rivers, grassy plains, sand dunes… - the more you want to share and show.
But something stops you from sharing, something within you that reminds you others would not truly understand. Many will even see you as insane or strangely different. Family and close friends will try to talk you into getting on the main path with them again and they mean well but their road isn’t for you. If you told them the dreams and visions you are witness to, the ones that are changing your point of view and rebuilding a different belief system for you, they would be hostile. It takes another Traveler to understand a Traveler.
It’s a lot like Tolkein’s hobbits. They were homebodies, content to be in their fields and gardens and seeing missing something like lunch to be a tragedy. But for every mass of hobbits there is one solitary hobbit that wonders what’s on the edge of the familiar and seeks a deeper truth. He/she suddenly disappears and when they turn up again at the end of the adventure they are never the same. They leave home again…and again…and sometimes they don’t return to the old homestead because it isn’t home anymore. A lot of Travelers are like that.
As you move further on the Traveler’s path you start to detach from material things in general; they only hold you back and keep you from journeying further, deeper and higher. Some downsize and become minimalists and a great many take that inner Traveler and give it life in their outer lives. Then there are the Travelers who take nuggets of what they have learned from their journeys and they become authors and teachers. Do their students ever truly get what they are talking about? Some do. Others kind of get it but don’t really understand the deeper truths behind what they’re being told.
Still others don’t get it at all so they misinterpret it and turn these bits of knowledge into dogma.
Here is a tale based on what I have seen when I enter into that world. I’ll write it down and you can make of it what you will.
VALLEY OF SHADOWS: A TRAVELER STORY:
{ I came upon a gate guarded by a white haired gatekeeper. He told me this was the Valley of the Shadow of Death and confirmed that I truly wanted to go inside and that I was doing so of my own free will. Once I assented he smiled and nodded and he silently let me in. Once the gate closed behind me I saw a path lined with old oaks and birch trees leading between two garden-like plots of land covered with flowering vines. It was quite beautiful; the flowers were of pleasing hues of blue and white and the soil beneath them was dark and rich.
The burden on my back was suddenly very heavy so I took it off and I looked inside; it was the misconceptions and outmoded beliefs that I had carried with me too long, the ones that were slowing my progress. I set that burden down on the ground and the vines suddenly snatched and covered it, dragging it down to their roots, until my burden was no more. I felt light and was momentarily surprised at how fast it all had happened.
Then I looked out at the sky above me and saw the blue above, the white clouds, the sunlight. I drank from a well by the gate on the other side and tasted sweet clear water. But out in the field there was a commotion. I saw more than a few people going slowly insane as they searched in and amongst the fields of vines for the burdens they had set down because they weren’t really ready to let go or they didn’t know how to go on without these attachments. I felt sad for these folks but I decided not to linger. I wanted to be in the safety of the woods before darkness fell. I closed the gate behind me and walked away…}
That, my friends, is a Traveler dream. Perhaps you have had one of your own.
Be Blessed Wherever You May Roam,
Traveler K
4/26/13
