How did this journey begin? This I will tell you, it didn’t start in sunshine and soft green pastures with a bubbling brook winding its way through it all.
It started in an ongoing state of stubborn stuckness-and-movement. It started with an unvoiced ache. It started with a deep sense of disconnect from inside. It started with a giant hole in the universe.
It started with conversation; honest and very private conversation between me, and myself and the stranger
No one told me how to carry that conversation or where it should go or how it should be conducted. I only knew that I had to keep the conversation going. I had to keep circling back each day and re-enter it with a freshness and openness. I knew, I should say: “I came to know,” that the most heart-felt parts of the conversation had to be voiced aloud.
In those early days it was part soliloquy, part picking up a feeling, a sense, a moment, past or present, and to closely examine it. Honest discussion with myself. At the time I had my hands full just staying present and exploring those deeply shaded places. Only later, much later did the conversation, still private, open towards The Other.
Yes, this journey began with inward trouble. There was no beaten path there to follow; only haze and shadow and deep valley with bursts of dark lightning.
Not till decades later did I realize how fortunate I was that I could not even see any footprints to follow…
