Anyone who does not feel the weight of the battles they face in life and who does not learn from them and through that learning process correct their missteps has lost their connection to the very spirit of their soul. While those battles may play themselves out on a larger or smaller scale, the real battles are fought within.
Believe it or not, after much struggle this year, which led to a stalling in limbo here in North Carolina after my flight from New Hampshire I have gotten my letters of transit from one of the Christines, and not the one I expected, but one who has long been my good friend and sister, one whose given name is Tina but who prefers to go by Kris. Through her I have temporary residency down in Orlando, as soon as I can find myself there.
It may seem strange, and at times seems strange to me, that I have this urgency to return to Orlando. And then I realize, I left for my own reasons, to pursue something I was convinced was somehow a reward for all I had tried to do in following The Path put out before me. In the end, it was a diversion, and by no means a vacation. I chose to follow this side road to its inevitable and horrible conclusion, and I accept full credit for the missteps I made in doing so. Had my ego not demanded I jump into the fire with the belief I could change the course of things that were out of my control, I would have instead stayed in Orlando, which I know now to be my home, and been satisfied with having achieved that I sought to achieve, which was to be back in communication with she who had disappeared from my life for nine years. Instead, ego, pride and vanity demanded I turn it into a rout. This lesson will serve me well on the road ahead.
What do we learn when we allow ourselves to be distracted by dreams of glory and by imagining we can change something that is beyond our control and influence? If we are smart, we learn that retreat and admission of our sins is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength. We negotiate our path in life. When we stop negotiating we lose, and this is a pure and simple fact of life. Everything is a negotiation. There is no black and white.
And within this lies many answers. I've had to gently negotiate my way back down to coast from New England to Florida. I could have held onto my pride and vanity and remained in New Hampshire, fought out the battles there and tried to adjust and accept the climate and the shadows of the past, but why do that? There was no reason aside from ego. That is the only reason you continue to fight a losing battle. There is no other reason.
Dispensing with ego and overcoming pride are essential in any real commitment to the journey of life, as clinging to them causes everything to be about a illusory destination rather than the journey itself. Finding peace within the moment and knowledge of every moment you find yourself in is key. In my return to New Hampshire I let my pride convince me there was an end game that was being played out as some kind of reward, as if I deserved a prize. None of us deserve prizes, no matter how a prize is defined. Prizes are illusions, images created in the mind's eye to convince us the reason we do things are to win these prizes. Some accumulate and show off their prizes. Others safeguard them and convince themselves and others they are security for a rainy day. There is no security against the rainy day. That security creates the rainy day because it allows us to fall into stagnation believing we are protected from it as well as somehow deserving the umbrella we built from those prizes. We stop living in the moment, we stop being in the now because we devote so much of ourselves in the present to safeguarding our future and impale ourselves on the two-pronged fork of no longer truly living and then dying within ourselves by living in the security created in the past.
I have been unsettled for sometime, unable to embrace the present as situations have arisen and surrounded me that kept me from achieving peace of mind. This has nothing to do with not preparing myself or embracing the imagined security so many will preach to you about. It had to do with taking steps in hand with ego and pride rather than following what I knew in my soul was the path to be taken. I created my own Hell by allowing, and directing, myself into it. And no matter how many reasonings I came up with to convince myself it was the right path, I always knew it was the wrong one. The easiest way to lose the path and find yourself trapped in the weeds is to convince yourself of things you know are not true.
Having a knowledge and understanding of the meaning of death gives one a different perspective on the meaning of life. Knowledge of the eternal nature of things serves as a reminder that any end games and any objectives in life thought to be an ultimate goal are quite entirely pointless. Every moment is created to exist within the present and any of those moments wasted lamenting the past or dreaming of the future cheats us of the moment that is. I am merely an acolyte and I know nothing, and for this reason I often stumble, but to be any more than nothing is also an illusion and if we stop stumbling and pretend we know more than nothing is to stop learning, and in turn to stop being. Arrogance is the most self-destructive force in this world. It keeps us from negotiating a way to bring life to the moment by walling us up inside the arrogant notion that we can enforce our will, our beliefs, on others. Therein lies destruction.
And I am as guilty of it as anyone. There is no better way I know of to remain human.
For me, to return to Orlando has nothing to do with attempting to reclaim the past, even as I will often tell people that my first two years there were the golden era of my life. It has to do with having left there under such circumstances that I very quickly began to lose my way and wander away from everything I knew, believed and understood, all in order to overcome ghosts from the past. It wasn't about realizing the love between myself and The Former Muse. It wasn't about trying to help her to help herself heal and escape the extremely destructive path she had placed herself on. I wasn't even aware of that aspect of her until months after I had moved back north. It was about me overcoming the last ghost of my past, to serve my ego by using all I had learned and all I had become in order to "win the love" of the girl who had, for twenty years, told me such a thing was impossible.
To return to Orlando is not to erase those two years, just as it is not to reclaim the past. It is about returning to the place I was led to, to place I was told I would find peace and come to understand myself and why I continue to live and exist in this world. It was there I found all these things and more. To return is simply my acknowledgment to myself that I lost my way and I am committed to finding it again.
The way my mind works, this is the only way I can do it. And now, next Thursday, July 26, 2007 I will land again, with the help of some of my old friends, back where I once belonged and now belong again, where I will rebuild the mystery.
The journey holds the meaning, not the destination, and with that in mind, I give all my thanks and more to those who have helped me along the way in this four week long journey... home.