Going Nowhere

Beltane and the Mesa View Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Tom. Rebecca. Diane. Going Nowhere. Maui. Shadow Mountain. The heart and its journeys. Joy. Simcha. Kate and her yellow roses. Jon’s prints. Gabe and his guitar. Ruth and her art. Kep, my sweet boy. Rigel, my sweet girl. Living alone, but not lonely. Dave and Anytime Fitness.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Simcha

One brief, shining moment: Ram Dass after his stroke made a short film, Going Nowhere, and watching it last night before bed the title burrowed into my heart-mind (lev) and released my soul, freeing it from need, from desire, from the ache of producing, not bad for thirty minutes of TV. (Thanks, Tom.)

 

Yeah. So simple. The best stuff is. Going Nowhere. But home. And, my favorite Ram Dass quote: We’re all just walking each other home. Yes. Sink into that idea, that feeling, that koan. And find the via negativa.

Embrace the way of no way. Walk the path of no path. Live the life of no ambition. For in the literal end we are all going nowhere. Except home. Kate is home. Regina is home. Kep is home. Rigel is home. And, in some paradoxical way that I do not understand, so am I.

Here is also a truth. I do not find my no path to nowhere following Ram Dass. I do not need or want a guru. A Hanuman. Though I admit I would enjoy living in his house. I have found my own via negativa.

Didn’t recognize it until that phrase going nowhere pinged around in mind like a pinball shot by Tommy, the deaf dumb and blind kid. Yes. The Great Wheel. It goes nowhere turning always back to its beginnings, the same seasons, the same celebrations, the same holidays, the same Earth, the same Winds and Weather, the same life coming up from the Soil, the same Fallow time when we all need to rest.

We all go nowhere from the start. From birth we could know the release of life’s journey home because we experience it over and over. If we wanted, we could celebrate our birthdays as our unique marker on the via negativa that is the Great Wheel. We take our journey around Sol and return to the same spot. Having gone nowhere. (I bracket the movements of the Solar System and the Milky Way because they too are going nowhere.)

Each year we live is a rehearsal for our journey home. No. Not a rehearsal. A lived experience of the via negativa. What a thing to acknowledge on our birthdays! All the striving and sorrow, all the anger and love, all the joys and learnings, all going nowhere as we have done each year. A true and lasting journey to nowhere. The real ancientrail.

The ineffable journey home. No. Not ineffable. We train for it each year. If we could embrace the changed seasons, the changing seasons, as our teachers, our guides on the way to mystery, the mystery would reveal itself to us.

The fallow time is now my time, heading toward my own Winter Solstice, the great and final dark night of my soul’s ancientrail in this earthly instance.