L.M. Browning

The purpose of a pilgrimage is about setting aside a long period of time in which the only focus is to be the matters of the soul. Many believe a pilgrimage is about going away but it isn__; it is about coming home. Those who choose to go on pilgrimage have already ventured away from themselves; and now set out in a longing to journey back to who they are. Many a time we believe we must go away from all that is familiar if we are to focus on our inner well-being because we feel it is the only way to escape all that drains and distracts us, allowing us to turn inward and tend to what ails us. Yet we do not need to go to the edges of the earth to learn who we are, only the edges of ourself.

Belief acts as a temporary bridge when we are trying to accept something that seems incomprehensible. We use belief and simply accept the workings we cannot understand until the time comes when at last we comprehend.

Evil demons dwelling in underworlds, Gods sitting on-high, angels battling and protecting. We have become so wrapped up in these stories, and in the in-fighting between the different religions, that the reality of the matter has gone unseen and unresolved. We__umanity__ust move out of this adolescence, put down the fairy tales, and take responsibility for our actions. There is no devil to blame, and there is no God to plead to. There is simply you and the choices you make each day__hoices that will either make you a force of good in this world or an ill-presence. People are the evil in this world, and likewise we are the divine. __vil___ll that is detrimental to humanity__as come about as a result of poor choices and, by the same hand, the divine__he immortal goodness__ndures as a result of loving, compassionate choices. Heaven is created here__n this earth__y a community of compassionate people, and Hell is created here__n this earth__y a community of greedy, self-centered, apathetic people. Our small choices define the greater picture.

Question everything__o matter how beloved, or how long-held, or how exalted__ithout apology. Only those who build their world upon lies need fear an inquisitive mind. The truth will remain, even after a storm of doubt and revolution has washed over it. Only illusions need be protected. The truth need not be defended; it existed before us and will continue to exist after us.

The divine is in the present and you must be present to experience it. When you vacate the present and recede into your mind, allowing worries or work to remove you from the moment, you leave the plain upon which the divine dwells. When you are constantly under the anesthetic of digital distraction, you withdraw; you are no longer conscious, and therefore are in no fit state to commune with the sacred. If you wish to hear the answers you seek, you must be present to hear them. If you wish to partake in the insights there to be known, you must be present to receive them. If you wish to know the divine, you must be present to meet it. _you must be present.

Life doesn__ have a singular purpose and yet we try to pigeonhole this infinite gift by searching for a single meaning behind our existence. We hunger for meaning the way a starving man does food__onvinced we will waste away without it. As though to experience what it is to be alive weren__ enough to justify drawing breath. Life is a multi-layered practice in exploration, self-definition, connection, and realization. The greatest challenge presented to us as human beings is to allow the infinite to be infinite; to accept that we will always be the student never the teacher, and allow the truths we__e gathered to evolve because what we seek to understand is a living thing and is in a perpetual state of change. Humanity__ progression of understanding is open-ended. Anyone who professes mastery only shows their ignorance of the infinite procession of enlightenment of which they are a part. Each of us get to add a line into the coverless tome of understanding, which has no beginning and no end.

Beware the God who seeks praise. Beware the guru who presumes to teach that which is unfixed and boundless. Beware the healer who sets a price on aid. Beware the lover who would make you a lesser version of yourself. Beware the doctrines that discourage independent thought. Beware any person of faith who doesn__ understand doubt. Filter all things through yourself. Accept only that which sits right with your soul.

The cure for our modern maladies is dirt under the fingernails and the feel of thick grass between the toes. The cure for our listlessness is to be out within the invigorating wind. The cure for our uselessness is to take back up our stewardship; for it is not that there has been no work to be done, we simply have not been attending to it.

Justified within ourselves that we have suffered more than others, we feel guiltless when we disregard those in front of us, be they our family, our co-workers, strangers we interact with during our daily business, or faceless masses in foreign lands.There are those who transcend the bitter acts done unto them, declaring that the pain shall end with them. And then there are those who use the crimes committed against them as a free pass to commit crimes against others. Wronged as we each have been, nothing gives us the right to disregard the fragility of another. We can and must halt the hate passing throughout this world. A hateful act done unto us can be absorbed and transcended or it can be re-projected, thus allowing its ill force to continue moving throughout the population.We must work to transcend those hateful things already carried out upon each of us and in doing so prevent new acts of hate from being done. We must work to heal from the wounds already received and connect to a sense of consideration, to ensure that we do not pass along any of our pain to the generations as yet unburdened.We must declare a general amnesty; we must forgive each other and in doing so find that we have been forgiven. We must put away our bitterness and extend an open hand.

We pass hatred and prejudice on to our children, as though they were heirlooms of humanity. We cling to traditions that keep us bound to a way of life that no longer works and arguably never has. Those who can glean the wisdom of the old traditions, but put away the ignorance and prejudices interwoven into them by the generations to come before, have always played a vital role in our global community; though their actions are usually met with resistance. We__ll of us__ust be assured that change can come without loss of identity. There are certain things we can leave along the roadside without becoming less than we are__ertain heirlooms that, when let go, free us to move forward into a healthier future.

Becoming aware of the dearness in what might otherwise be regarded as mundane is the ultimate form of insight.

Take all those things that would propose to be important, and weigh them upon the scale of your soul. Asking how much each thing actually impacts, not just the moment, but the years ahead. Discard all that is trivial masquerading as significant, and reserve your days for those things that truly matter.

The pace of this modern age is not conducive to maintaining one__ consciousness. Glued to our electronics, we are blind and deaf to the world around us. Run down by our long work days, we are too exhausted to think and too hurried to feel. The day ends in a haze of strained thoughts, numbness, and fatigue. And we rise the next morning only to start the cycle again. In this age of distraction, if you desire to fritter away your life with empty diversions, there is an abundance of gadgets available to aid you. Quietness is a characteristic of ages gone by. Our generation is the one it died with. Connected to the virtual world, we ignore the presence of those in our home. One can only hope we will awaken to the need for balance before we look up from the screen to find our loved ones have gone, and our life has passed us by.

We must seek out that which invigorates us, and engage it at all fronts. Art, music, literature, conversation, travel, nature__hatever it is that keeps the fire of our spirit bright__e must build our life around it; for, without our passions, the years ahead become a burden rather than a gift.

From time to time, we all must go unto a landscape__e it inner or outer landscape__here there are no hiding places. Allowing the stark awe and silence to aid us in both communing and confronting the depth of ourselves. We fear emptiness because we know that within those places of nothingness we will come face-to-face with who we are and gaze into the internal mirror. But what is the alternative? Shall we go our entire life without hearing our own voice . . . without ever having met who we are when isolated from all?

We all have those things that help us carry on through life. It is important that these things upon which we depend for daily strength are healthy for our character rather than harmful. We must ask ourselves whether the comforts we reach for each day are vices or virtues? Do they feed the best parts of us or do they rob us of them? Even when we are at our most fatigued and are tempted to reach for self-destructive things, we must try to seek out and take solace in those things that will lead to our eventual renewal; rather than those things that will only serve to bring us lower.

In the beginning we seek truth. In the middle we seek reason. In the end we seek peace.

Do not hold a lazy faith. Miracles are not spontaneous events we must wait for helplessly. Miracles are an achievement__ breakthrough accomplished by those who pushed themselves beyond what was thought possible while holding a belief in a better life. Get up off your knees, and roll up your sleeves.